Bleu McAuley had his first (and only) brush with the mainstream back in 2003, when his shifty ode to insecurity, “Somebody Else,” found its way onto the hugely popular soundtrack to the first Spider-Man movie. The tune was also on Bleu’s second album, Redhead, a delectable slab of power-pop bombast and one of the most unjustly overlooked albums of the early 2000s. Seven years and one falling out with Columbia Records later, Bleu knows better than to go sniffing around for scraps amidst the carnage of a dying industry. Recently, he averted any future label shenanigans altogether, appealing directly to his fans for money to make his latest CD, Four (The Major Label). They responded by forking over almost $40,000 via online funding platform Kickstarter. Over the years, Bleu has found highly entertaining ways to celebrate his knob-twiddling heroes. Alpacas Orgling is the 2006 product of his Jeff Lynne-loving collective known as L.E.O. And for LoudLion, he’s recruited Rooney’s Taylor Locke, the Donnas’ Allison Robertson and some other L.A. pals to shamelessly emulate Mutt Lange. The band’s contributions to the Balls Of Fury and The Hills Have Eyes 2 soundtracks couldn’t sound any more like circa-Hysteria Def Leppard if they had spots. Bleu will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.
Bleu: I just found out about these establishments recently and I’m in love. Located in a neighborhood rarely visited by the Hollywood elite or the Silverlake hipsters, AMF’s Midtown Lanes (a bowling alley) and World On Wheels (a roller-skating rink)—located right next to each other in a mostly Mexican/African-American neighborhood at the junction of Venice, Pico and San Vicente boulevards—are like the bowling lanes and roller rinks that I remember from my youth. The basic layout and decor seem virtually unchanged since the early ’80s, and can provide a full day’s worth of nostalgia-filled entertainment that not only includes the requisite activities, but also pinball, air hockey, scratch tickets, fry-o-lator delights and ’80s electro funk or smooth R&B (depending on the place and the night). Plus WOW (you’d better believe that’s the acronym, biatch) has a night called Wumpskate!! Frankly, I don’t care what it is; I want to be there based on the name alone.
Video after the jump.
