Aron F. Gibson
Aloha Mad Planet!
So I told my friend Nancy Hancock that I was going to check out this band called Mad Planet over at The Silver Lake Lounge on Tuesday. I was all excited about being on the cutting edge of the Los Angeles indie scene and I proudly told her, “Yeah, the guy from Bang Sugar Bang is in the band.” She replied, “Oh, Cooper? You’ve already met her. She’s a good friend of mine from our Club Kiss or Kill days.”
Well, I’ll admit that I somehow missed Club Kiss or Kill so I didn’t know he was a she. Even worse was that I actually had already met Cooper at an Annie Stela show over at Hotel Café about a month ago. Believe me, I know….I am simply not cool.
But in case you didn’t know, Mad Planet is a duo that features singer/bass player Cooper Gillespie and drummer Greg Gordon. Gordon, formally of Nervous Return, was signed to Travis Barker’s LaSalle Records and toured with the likes of No Doubt and Blink 182. Bang Sugar Bang was on SOS Records, home of some of the most legendary punk and ska bands of all time like Sham 69, The Toy Dolls and Bad Manners.
Though Gillespie and Gordon both have enviable punk rock pedigrees, Mad Planet is actually a trip hop duo. The band’s MySpace page describes them perfectly:
“Greg and Cooper formed Mad Planet in order to stretch in new directions different from their normal musical styles. Their music is about the darker side of love and life. It’s an eclectic mix of trip hop, rock, jazz and soundtrack music. Their sound is tied together by Cooper’s alluring melodies.”
Nancy and I were sitting at the back of the bar when Gordon and Gillespie swept in through the front entrance of club, about eight minutes before they were scheduled to play, wearing matching Hawaiian outfits (they’d just come back from Maui on vacation). Smiling and waving at everyone, I felt like a guest in their living room. As hosts, they didn’t disappoint. Their set was a perfect mixture of electronica, driving beats, melodic bass lines and angelic vocals.
I look forward to the day, when Mad Planet is playing somewhere like Coachella, so that I can say that I saw them on a Tuesday night at The Silver Lake Lounge. I’ll be able say that I was one of the first Mad Planet fans before the world discovered them. In other words, I’ll be cool once again.
~AFG Must Rock
Sources:
Mad Planet on MySpace
[...] werid enough that it’s been exactly one year to the day since their last show at Silver Lake Lounge. That’s almost too cosmic to comprehend. I mean Is Mad Planet aligned [...]