Concert review: Gorgeous Got a Gun at the Fonda Music Box

Friday night was rain soaked in Hollywood. Perfect for a late evening performance at the Fonda Music Box Theater. The occasion was the RAW Artist Awards, for which Gorgeous Got a Gun was nominated for Musicians of the Year and where they would be headlining following the event.

This would be my third time seeing Gorgeous Got a Gun live. I was introduced to them via Twitter last year and as much as I loved their debut album, bassist Jimi Blaze assured me their live performance was even better. He was so very right.

Friday night was special in my mind because it would be the first time I'd seen Gorgeous in a proper concert venue. The first time, almost exactly one year ago, was in a "pop-up store"(something big in LA that will likely be spreading East, soon) held in an empty retail space. It was very interesting. Not ideal acoustics for a band, and there were little retails stalls all around the room. A very cool concept to say the least.

The second time was in July at the Scott Pilgrim Experience at San Diego Comic-Con, which they won their way into based on the votes of their fans during the Indie Rock vs. The World online contest. This time the stage was outdoors during a hot summer day on a short riser set amongst a party-like space filled by epic numbers of Scott Pilgrim marketing booths.

Friday night was at the historic Fonda Music Box, a stage where artists like Devo have trodden. Where Nine Inch Nails played one of their final concerts. A truly proper concert setting, where one can stand and look up at the performers.

Gorgeous Got a Gun took the stage just after 11pm and played like the headliners they deserve to be. Hearing the band in a space with proper acoustics brought out subtleties I had not heard in their previous performances. I have to hand it to them for having an incredibly clean mix on stage. I've seen tons of bands turn everything up so loud that instruments aren't discernible between each other countless times. Gorgeous Got a Gun's mix allowed the guitars of both Ernesto Rivas and vocalist Veronica Torres to be heard discretely, held together by a thunderous yet not overpowering bass tone from Jimi Blaze and the drums of Josh Zeigler.

The band opened with their hit "Violent Games", the song that

won them into the Scott Pilgrim performance. Someday, this song will hopefully earn encore-only status, being played after larger and larger audiences applaud for their return to the stage. They also played a pair of new songs, "It's Almost Over" and "You're Back", both of which I am now looking forward to hearing recorded. While they didn't win the award they were nominated for, they got to perform in front of a good sized audience in an historic venue, which makes them winners in a larger sense.

It had been far too many weeks since the last time I'd been awash in the sound and energy of a live concert and Gorgeous Got a Gun delivered. Hopefully sooner rather than later this band will get the backing to play live outside of Southern California. When that happens, do whatever you have to and get yourself into a venue to see them. For now, if you are reading this in the Los Angeles area, I can't highly recommend enough that you go see Gorgeous Got a Gun perform live. As a message to myself, I need to do exactly that more than just every six months.

You can follow Gorgeous Got a Gun via Twitter. If this is the first time you have heard of the band, please listen to the music samples on their official website while reading my review of their debut album.