Dean SPUNT and Randy Randall of the L.A. experimental punk duo No Age have played plenty of warehouse shows but none like the one late last month in Hollywood. For a taping of "FNMTV," the music channel's new Friday night video show, the network retrofitted a cavernous concrete-block space on Cahuenga Boulevard with an armory of strobe lights, a live performance catwalk and a semicircle of bleachers, making the stage look like a gladiator pit for caffeinated teenagers.
No Age typically packs filthy clandestine venues with hundreds of kids, but a video appearing on MTV was a first for the duo. Minutes after a Rihanna performance and rapper T.I.'s introduction of a single with host Pete Wentz, Spunt and Randall jogged onstage with bewildered grins, high-fiving the young audience. They cracked wise with Wentz about Phil Collins' influence on fellow singer-drummer Spunt, then debuted the video for their single "Eraser," a goofy series of tracking shots in which Randall gets smacked with a bag of flour and fans in No Age shirts destroy an enormous skull pinata.
At the “FNMTV” website, reactions to "Eraser" varied from "I don't understand it, but it's cool" to "I feel stupid because of this video. It is really messed up. Please stop showing it on MTV."
But the fevered split response is typical for the band. No Age subverts many current paradigms of modern rock's hyper-commercialism, but it also might represent the final prize for a battered corporate music industry -- the DIY community itself.
"It feels like everybody wants a piece," Randall, 27, said over lunch at Flore, a vegan cafe in Silver Lake. "Even the kids sometimes, man."
Spunt, 26, and Randall met as two-thirds of the band Wives and formed No Age in 2005, cutting their teeth at the stalwart downtown all-ages venue the Smell. They're often cited alongside peers like Health, Mika Miko and Abe Vigoda as the vanguards of a vital new wave in L.A. punk. That's true to an extent, but the Smell is 11 years old and most bands that play there are still defiantly amateur. Jim Smith, the club's owner, said he isn't entirely sure why this particular crop of "Smell scene" bands seems to have caught a national zeitgeist.
"Maybe it took 10 years," said Smith, who by day is a union organizer. "These are bands that grew up coming to shows during the early days of the Smell. In 10 years there'll be bands that came of age listening to No Age and Mika Miko."
