‘Salvation’ takes its leave of Silver Lake, while the Silverlake Lounge goes on without bookers the Fold

Kevin Bronson on
4

Silver Lake lost its “Salvation” this week.

“It’s not lost,” Scott Sterling says, “just on sabbatical.”

Sterling, the man behind concert promoters the Fold, has vacated one of his company’s longtime venues, the Silverlake Lounge, where the Fold has regularly booked shows for 15 years. Gone is the venue’s signature “Salvation” sign, which has back-lit players on the bar’s small stage for about a dozen years. Sterling packed up “Salvation” along with his sound system this week after hosting one final show, the Little Ones’ headlining gig on Monday night.

The Silverlake Lounge will continue to host live music, the venue says, and booking will be done in-house. Already scheduled: East of the River and the Lexingtons on Monday, and Golden State on May 17. A website is in the works, the venue says.

The Fold’s exit from the Silverlake Lounge does close a lengthy chapter in the neighborhood’s live music legacy. The roster of now-familiar names who paid their dues at the club is long, including Silversun Pickups, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Metric (when they were a local band) and more. In recent years, bands such as Local Natives began their roll toward the big time with Monday night residencies there.

Sterling, whose company has enjoyed a lot of recent success at the multi-room Bootleg Bar/Theater, once booked many other venues – among them the Derby (R.I.P.), Tangier (ditto), Bordello (now called One-Eyed Gypsy), El Cid and King King. A representative of the Silverlake Lounge says Sterling’s decision to exit two weeks ago came as a surprise. Sterling merely says, “It was time.”

There were myriad memorable moments in the Fold’s tenure, though. Sterling remembers the time the room installed new sub-woofers that were not fully tested by the time Metric did a soundcheck. When the band kicked in, the bottles of liquor behind the bar flew off the shelves. And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead played a show there, the late Elliott Smith did, the Breeders did. Then there were the Black Lips, known for trashing stages with various bodily functions. “I told them I’d kick their amps in if they pissed on the stage,” Sterling says. “They did, and I did.”

The “Salvation” sign became a local landmark, casting a spell over players and patrons, and over the years Sterling did plenty to further its mystique. He would tell various stories about its origins – I think he told me once that he’d found it at the Salton Sea. On Monday night as the Little Ones closed out the Fold’s tenure, he said he had the sign made for a show by local hardcore band 400 Blows. “We brought it in and set it on the floor,” Sterling says.

Funny thing about the sign. The venue’s low stage makes it difficult for the audience to see the performers. “In the three years before we had the sign, there were a lot of complaints that people couldn’t see the bands,” Sterling says. “After the sign went up, the complaints stopped.” Even though the performers had not been elevated, Sterling says, “at least people were looking at something.”

Notoriously volatile Timothy James, frontman of the Movies, once threatened to smash the sign to bits but didn’t follow through. “Salvation” survived for more than a decade, with no worse than occasional burned-out lightbulb.

Sterling won’t disclose his plans for it, but don’t be surprised if it re-appears someday at the Bootleg Bar.

Photo of Milo Greene playing a 2011 show at the Silverlake Lounge