Echo Park, meet ‘Rockville’
Kevin Bronson on
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The Times had a nifty preview today of “Rockville, CA,” the Internet series that debuts in 2009 on TheWB.com. Color me curious.
The series, in five-minute “webisodes,” will chronicle the travails of some music scenesters surrounding the fictional Echo Park nightclub Rockville. It’s the product of Josh Schwartz (“The O.C.” and “Gossip Girl”) and is being filmed at the Echo and Echoplex. I stopped by today for a session and was treated to a little Travis for lunch.
The music is being curated by Alexandra Patsavas of Chop Shop Music. Twenty-two bands will be taped in all (20 will make the cut), and the lineup is pretty good. Among them: the Duke Spirit, Nico Stai, the Kooks, Earlimart, Eagles of Death Metal, White Lies, Kaiser Chiefs, Oppenheimer, the Republic Tigers, the Little Ones, the Broken West and Lykke Li.
Just seeing Travis onstage again reminded me of the great Coachella moment from two years ago, when guitarist Andy Dunlop clambered to the top of a stack of amps to play a solo, then jumped off, so I dug this photo out of my archives:
ive been waiting for good ol kevin bronsons take on this. question kevin, does the la times have to go first before you can write about it? is that the deal?
Actually, I’m not sure I *have* an opinion on “Rockville,” seeing how it hasn’t been webcast yet. I’m not going to trash anybody for simply having an idea and executing it. The Times got to the story before I did, and I thought the writer’s appraisal of what might be portrayed in the webisodes vs. the reality of the Eastside scene was fair. It’s all “based on a true story,” after all. Speaking of which, I can highly recommend Michael Shilling’s forthcoming book “Rock Bottom,” a novel that depicts the dying days of a “next-big-thing” band that broke out of Silver Lake.