Salami Rose Joe Louis at Reggies.
A night of magical music and misplaced masquerade.
photo by Fabrice Bourgelle.
Bay Area indie chanteuse Salami Rose Joe Louis (née Lindsay Olsen) is as strange an artist as her stage name might suggest. Her music, with its endless list of influences, defies categorization, and her label, Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder, describes her affect as that of “a fictional post-apocalyptic keyboard-toting earthling with a flashlight, a can of cashews and a hopeful optimism.” Much like that metaphor, the first performance of her “live sauce” tour, “A Midnight Masquerade at Reggie’s,” was flat-out weird.
The first oddity of the night stood at the venue door: a twelve-foot tall Beetlejuice sporting a pair of stilts and heralding an American flag with marijuana leaves in place of stars ushered in partygoers—this was no ordinary concert but a Halloween Eve party spanning from 8:00 PM to 2:00 AM, courtesy of the aptly named event planner 420Chicago. However, the promised revelry fell flat mere steps past the towering costumed bouncer: the venue was near vacant at eight, save a few early attendees, a shorter, flagless Beetlejuice, a balding Despicable Me minion, and a woman dispensing complimentary THC-infused lemonade behind the box office. Fortunately, Reggie’s is tucked off of Cermak Road, allowing for a brief retreat into the heart of Chinatown Square for shumai and boba before returning for the second of three openers.
A host dressed as Towelie, the perpetually stoned anthropomorphic towel from South Park, introduced a band called Zoofunkyou to the still-meager crowd at 9:30. Five hipsters clad in scrubs and surgical masks took the potted-plant and jack-o-lantern lined stage. The lead guitarist dangled latex gloves from his side pocket, and a stethoscope coiled around the wiry saxophonist’s neck. After a “spooky” greeting, the band launched into a convincing pastiche of 70s funk, with bluesy, half-growled Delta soul vocals, a sticky bass groove, and shimmering vintage keys. The cherry on top was a sax solo ripped with vein-popping gusto. This impressive musicianship persisted through their set. Each song was aesthetically cohesive but structurally unique, ranging from riffy, jaunty Joe Jackson pop rock to dense, layered crescendos, the latter accompanied by a contortionist in black and red velvet occupying center stage with hypermobile gymnastic interpretive dance. While novel, the cabaret-esque performance was incongruous with Zoofunkyou’s soulful croons and rather futile in front of the vacant space where a crowd was supposed to be—at this point, the four hundred person venue was no more than twenty deep. A bearded flame-swallower in a neon basketball jersey accented the next opener, DJ Vrop, who played a respectable techno set to a similarly sparse attendance. Before such a miniscule audience, the circus acts went from bizarre distractions to hokey street performances, and the event’s atmosphere adopted a sense of cruel comedy that accelerated every time the fire eater dropped a blazing stick or ignited a patch of facial hair—another reason why no one was there to watch vaudeville and sip marijuanade on a Wednesday night.
At midnight, Salami Rose Joe Louis was greeted by passionate applause from a growing audience (thirty-five at its peak). As soon as she started playing, the energy of the venue shifted. She was good. The bulk of Olsen’s recorded material is airy and ambient, layered with lush, fluttery keys and her signature twee, girlish vocals. When she plays live, melodies creep to the forefront, the percussion and bass thicken and saturate, and her subtler jazz and rock influences reveal themselves. The foliage of polyrhythms, bass grooves and glimmering synths resemble that of her label boss and former tourmate Flying Lotus, and when her band strips back into a bridge or a ballad, her vocals, even more stunning live, reach a lilting register like those of Stereolab’s Dots and Loops (1997) or Trish Keenan of Broadcast fame. For certain mid-tempo RnB-adjacent passages, Olsen opted for a steadily emotive, slightly sultry tone resembling Fiona Apple’s, and when the beat simplified into a ramshackle pulse, the band sounded like early Clairo, another artist she has opened for. On the topic of Olsen’s band, they were excellent. Her guitarist unleashed a bevy of mind-expanding, jazzy solos, the drummer poured his soul into the kit on every track, and the bassist laid the foundation with flair. There was no weak link; every track was at worst pretty and at best uniquely excellent.
What Salami Rose Joe Louis brought in musicianship, they lacked in stage presence. They remained seated and gave half-enthused comments between every other song. That is no knock—their music spoke for itself. The trio of circus arsonists that surrounded the crowd for the final stretch of the set spoke loudly as well, trying in vain to burn brighter than the headliner thirty-odd people bought tickets for. While Salami Rose remained unscalded, licks of fire seared the night with a burnt aftertaste.
The show ended in the only way it made sense to—with the house lights fading back to brightness, Salami Rose Joe Louis retreating backstage, and the crowd trickling towards the exit, backs turned to the contortionist who had reappeared, searching in vain for a pair of eyes to witness her leg stretch towards the ceiling.
edited by Adriel Sixto Mendez.
photo by Fabrice Bourgelle.