Tonight is Nocturno over at Catch One and I’ll be playing in the new wave vs. darkwave room, where it is also Depeche Mode night. If you’re going and you have a request, send it my way before the party starts. At the time of writing this, there were still some tickets left on Dice, so get yours asap if you plan on attending tonight. 

I have a few other recommendations for concerts, clubs and movie screenings happening in LA this weekend (and early next week), so head over to Beatique if you’re looking for something to do. No matter where you’re reading this, I highly recommend seeing Nirvanna the Band, The Show, The Movie if it’s playing near you. It’s a hysterical take on Back to the Future with inventive use of archival footage and guerrilla filmmaking techniques. You don’t need to have seen the Canadian TV show to get into the movie. It stands on its own. 

New Interview with the black watch

At some point in the middle of a conversation with The Black Watch founder John Andrew Fredrick and producer Rob Campanella the subject shifts to Fredrick’s flip phone. Or, really, it shifts to Fredrick’s unease with technology. “I’m a very right brained kind of person who thinks that technology is killing us,” he says as we sit on the back patio of the Echo Park bookstore/cafe Stories,  “and I don’t want to be the sort of person who is staring at a phone all the time or going on Tinder or anything along those lines at all.”

That’s fair. Technology probably is killing us and scrolling is tedious. Plus, Fredrick’s flip phone has become a conversation-starter in its own right. “It’s a way to make people chuckle. They want to touch it and consider me a relic, which is fine. I don’t care,” he says.

“Brian Wilson isn’t the only guy who just wasn’t made for these times,” he adds. “I was not either.”

So too is Fredrick’s band, The Black Watch, not made for these times. It’s rabbit hole music, the sort of referential indie pop that could send the listener in search of a dozen other musicians or books or movies not because an algorithm suggested them, but because the band did. If Fredrick’s Brian Wilson reference prompts you to search for the Beach Boys song, “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” then you understand rabbit hole music. And if you start humming a certain Stevie Wonder song when you read that the title of the new Black Watch album is Varied Superstitions, then you probably are his audience. 

Read more in “The Black Watch Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”

March 2026 Edition of Beatique on Mixcloud

I didn’t review any of this week’s new albums, but did record a new mix. It’s a little over an hour long and features music from The Smiths, Peaches, Charli xcx, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and more. 

Listen to Beatique

That’s it for this week. See you on the dance floor!

Liz O.