Repose: The Men @ The Smell, 6/26/12

Aaah, The Smell. Let me start this post by announcing I will not be saying anything about this dank L.A. punk rock institution's odor, or umm, stink, aroma, scent, yea it's just been done too many times. Go to Yelp if you want to read it in every review. They named it The Smell. The. Smell. It's a punk club...1+1=2.

I'm a sucker for post-punk, and The Men's Dinosaur Jr./ The Wipers vibe is too familiarly awesome for me to pass up.

Another overly mentioned thing about The Smell: no alcohol sales. They did have an uptight straight-edge girl selling Skittles and chocolate bars for a $1 like it was a high-school bake sale. There were even vegan brownies. I'm sure vegan brownies are great, but the world may never know. I did partake in the Skittles. I also really turned on the charm to get a free cup of $.50 water in a cup so small it screamed: "should be free!" I smiled, begged, and appealed to the dude beside her for damn near 6 minutes before I was rewarded with that all-too-serious 4 oz. of water.

And I needed some water badly because my friends and I jump-started the pit and were completely drained by song 3. The Men rocked, but maybe it's smart not to sell alcohol in a venue 20 feet wide with no ventilation or fans. My flask not even empty, I felt like a train had run over me, hungover like it was already the next day at only 10 PM. I spent the rest of the show in the alley-way getting a few sweaty photos before heading home early. I actually feel bad for the band in a situation like that, I don't know how The Men even finished the show.

And it smelled. Fuck damnit fuck I said it.

Opener, Zig-Zags, sweet dudes.

These bros had been coming to The Smell for years and just weren't gonna shell out the extra 3 bucks when "all the shows used to be 5". To me $8 for a blog-worthy touring band is as good as it gets, but, hell.