Current Obsession: Jail Weddings (MP3)

I am going on total assumption here but I don't think it is mathematically possible for bands with ten or more members to ever fail.
If you go to a show and each member brings on average 8 people that means at least 80 people will be watching that band. Add the number of stragglers already there to see other bands (or just aimless souls with nothing better to do) and there is a pretty good chance that there will be 100 people watching this band at any given time.
Next, we will use what Malcolm Gladwell described in his book The Tipping Point as "The Stickiness Factor" and consider the very idea of seeing a 10 piece band with 100 people watching them will indeed "stick" with you giving you good reason to become a one person street team for said band and be what Gladwell also referred to as a "Maven" or "people we rely upon to connect us with new information." Before you know it, the ten piece band is the biggest thing in your tiny universe and begins touring with bands that command large guarantees, so large that your broke ass is unable to see the opener live ever again.

Okay, enough from the bullshit mathematics.
Jail Weddings from Los Angeles do indeed have ten people working together but their membership size should not be the reason you find yourself entranced with this band.

Led by Gabriel Hart the singer/guitarist of the late, great Los Angeles band The Starvations, Jail Weddings take the Gun Club/Flesheaters foundation Hart's former band was based on and build walls of sound to house old time religion (Relijun?) in.
All this is weaved together in songs that bring to mind teenagers in love circa '59 with the wail of an old Klezmer or Gypsy band in the background.

An easy comparison to Jail Weddings would be a groups like Gogol Bordello and World/Inferno Friendship Society. Both bands have an army of members that evoke crystal ball images of what a dance party full of Balkan teenagers who ended up going over dead man's curve would look like. However Jail Weddings rely less on the theatrics that seem to outline the image of World/Inferno to take a more organic approach to re-designing torch songs and doo-wop and unlike Gogol Bordello lead singer Eugene Hutz, none of them (as far as I know) actually come from Eastern Europe. They only sound like it.
Jail Weddings do evoke the ghosts of their hometown though. Or maybe the souls of Hollywood Babylon and John Fante posses them and this music is the only way to exercise these spirits? And while Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil, Jail Weddings are making Beelzebub grin by taking the initiative to compose this music that can help entice folks his way.

If indeed possession is the case, I can only hope the spooks that have take over enjoy the lodgings long enough for Jail Weddings to record the upcoming full length that is said to be in the works and maybe a live show or two on the other coast of the United States.


LISTEN: Jail Weddings "Somebody Lonely"