Still Flyin’ strikes a chord with Los Angeles

June 12, 2009, at the Echoplex

By Melissa Bobbitt
Published: June 15th, 2009 | 9:10pm

They say that too many cooks in the kitchen can spoil a recipe. But what if a dozen kooks got together and each brought their own valuable ingredients to the melting pot? You’d get Still Flyin’, a San Francisco music collective that rivals the Polyphonic Spree in immensity and Vampire Weekend in jangly, pan-continental flavor.

Opener Shark Toys left a bad taste in the mouth, though. It was tempting to yell to the foursome that this wasn’t Olympia, Washington, circa 1991. Adorned in slouchy stripes and bad Burt Reynolds mustaches, they ambled through deceivingly excitable songs, even knob-twiddler Rina Garcia looked more bored than most of the perplexed audience members. Watching an emaciated hipster couple make-out to the side of the stage was more enthralling than Shark Toys.

Headliner Love Is All was a refreshing whirlwind from Sweden, who satiated cowbell lovers and those with itchy feet needing to dance. The adorable singer, pixie-ish Josephine Olausson, bounded like a kitten across the stage as her mates delivered rhythmic squalls of sound. During some downtime, Olausson apologized for being less than ladylike. “I don’t smell like strawberries tonight,” she said with a giggle.

It was Still Flyin’, however, that pasted the most smiles upon attendees’ faces. They kicked off their half-hour hootenanny with the horn-heavy “Forever Dudes,” from 2008’s Never Gonna Touch The Ground (Lost & Lonesome), which leading man Sean Rawls dedicated to their backing dancers. With the sales tag still dangling off his guitar, Rawls conducted the 11-person moppet orchestra with a virility Los Angeles rarely sees. It might have taken the audience a while to warm up to the overtly sunny jams, but the group’s rainbow rock eventually connected with the lot of them.

Marveling at the random visuals projected behind him, Rawls remarked about the videographer, “I asked if he had any aliens and Shaquille O’Neal. … He’s going to do something with a hot dog later.” This same kind of irreverent mirth permeated the whole set: Still Flyin’s dancers would slap each other airborne high fives, and xylophonist Gabe Saucedo leaped as if he were video game hero Mario hopped up on power-up mushrooms. Even the brass players wind-milled their instruments like Pete Townshend.

No member of Still Flyin’ ever stayed stationary. During the reggae romp of “Rope Burn,” the whole group took a seat like a kindergarten class that awaited story time, but yet swayed to the beats anyway. Keyboardist Maria Niubo and dancer “Ice” did a little two-step together as the rest of the gang jumped to their feet and closed out the rollicking tune. And even after a string snapped on Rawls’ guitar, the group charged on, and capped off a gleeful performance with the Police-like jam “Dead Memory Man.” Unlike the song title, one thing’s for certain — the memory of Still Flyin’s Echoplex gig will resonate for a long time.

For more photos from this show visit Venus Zine’s Flickr page

Still Flyin’ official site

Still Flyin’ MySpace page

Lost & Lonesome Recordings