Pillow Of Wrongness

This is a review of the band's own Pillow Fight Club concert series, along with the band:

COMMUNISM AND CAPITALISM EXCHANGE bodily fluids at the monthly-or-so Pillow Fight Club at the Joint, where music workers of the world unite in solidarity over cheap grog. Russell Wiener, the genial Tim Allen of rock, hosts the opposite of a Battle of the Bands, with groupsters settling in for a full evening and toasting their comrades instead of packing off to their vans post-set, whining that they didn’t get a sound check.

Fact is, almost nobody gets one, as Wiener gently encourages eight bands on and off the stage in a frenzy of equipment changes between 30-minute sets. The format is friendly: If after a few songs you hate the Muckups, the Upmucks will be on before you’ve drained your $2 Soundman Special (Red Bull and vodka), and your drink arrives with a raffle ticket entitling you to a chance at regularly dispensed, band-provided prizes like a Rock Star DVD or a not-so-crisp $20 bill.

It’s a nuclear condensation of the club experience, where you can not only dig the noise, but witness the traditional Circle Dance of the Band Girlfriends, study the classic Alcohol Rites of Nervous Parents and observe as members of dissimilar groups figure out how to accommodate one another’s close proximity. July 20’s bill featured white-girl pop followed by black funk-rock followed by Sunset Strip ’80s anthems. And then there was Wiener’s fine trio, Pillow of Wrongness (which appears at all the Fights), whamming out hooky melodies via Mr. Wrong’s endearing combination of vigorous guitar sawing and this-ain’t-opera vocals.

Since minimal door cash remains after promotional and staff expenses, the players (often Pillow Fight returnees) sign up for the party and the exposure. Indeed, the bands-stick-around policy assures that the tastefully appointed shoebox environs are crammed with appreciative onlookers for the duration, and the bartenders run like sled dogs. Who gets picked to play? "The most important thing is passion and intensity," says Wiener, a 26-year-old recording-studio hand, who thanks club booker Ed Levy for the imagination to engage his event. Judging from the Joint’s quickly depleted kegs and cases, though, Levy must feel like a business genius, not a philanthropist.

- LA Weekly

Gigging in Southern California is seldom easy. We’ve all had our share of disappointing nights, many times due to circumstances beyond our control. But a handful of musicians in the L.A. music community felt compelled to take matters into their own hands. This special edition of the Promoter Profile speaks with band-members who decided to take the responsibility for booking and promoting their own club nights.
Pillow of Wrongness frontman Russell Wiener’s “Pillow Fight” nights have moved to the Knitting Factory after outgrowing the Joint. Music Connection: First, tell us what inspired you to establish a club night and take control of the booking process.
Russell Wiener: When you play in a band in Los Angeles, pretty soon you’re friends with a lot of other bands, and we wanted to get together a show where all those bands could play. The easiest way was to book an entire night, get everyone on the bill, and turn it into a party. The first “Pillow Fight” did so well that we’ve been doing them monthly ever since.
MC: How did you go about finding a venue that would give you booking control over a full night?
Wiener: We’d played the Joint regularly for a year or more, so we took the club idea to the coolest booker in town, Ed Levy, and he basically told us to do whatever we wanted — and gave us a Saturday night to do it. No contract, no agreement, no door guarantee, no bar guarantee. He believed in us, and in turn we gave the Joint a year of successful events.
MC: What’s special about your club night that has been attracting people to attend?
Wiener: We set out to simulate the ambiance of a house party, the type of environment where people are just having a good time and aren’t going anywhere. We have drink specials all night — especially during Pillow of Wrongness’ set — and there are raffles after every band. We buy drinks for fans who are cheering, supporting, and generally having a good time. We always do it on a weekend, and we always keep the cover low.
MC: What have been the most successful promotional techniques in getting people to come out?
Wiener: We create the flyers for all the bands and make the signs for the event. We go out to the venue to flyer regularly and talk to people. We involve each band in the event, too — the bands choose their own drink specials, and provide raffle prizes that are unique to the band and their personalities.
MC: Has the experience of booking your own night helped you to better understand promoters’ business practices?
Wiener: It’s pretty hard work getting the “Pillow Fight” together, so in that sense it’s easier to understand where promoters are coming from. But I still don’t think most promoters promote; they just give a band a place to play and make them do all the promotion. If promoters put in a bit more effort, there would be more cool events happening that offer a little more enticement for club-goers than “come see these bands play.”
“Pillow Fight”’s inaugural Knitting Factory (7021 Hollywood Blvd.; 323-463-0204) date is set for Friday, April 11, and will benefit the L.A. Food Bank. Raffle prizes will include tickets to Magic Mountain and Knott’s Berry Farm.

Contact Pillow Of Wrongness at www.pillowofwrongness.com
- Music Connection Magazine

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- Various

The four quarrymen called Pillow of Wrongness do everything that makes for the most hellacious rock and pop: They drink, they sweat, they break strings, they charge around and bang into things.

They’ve got the meatiest songbook in town. And they’re smart and congenial enough to do all that in their Pillow Fight events, where several compatible groups play five songs each and everybody stays all night whooping it up. PoW are the vanguard of the revamped Partyist Commune, founded in 2001 by Ace Frehley and Groucho Marx to combat boredom, dry tonsils and artistic egomania. It’s fun.

You need a serious guy like bassist Albert Kim to explain throwback ideas like fun and community. “What was cool about Sunset Boulevard in the ’80s,” he says, “was that you could go watch Motley Crue before they were big — members from other bands would be hanging out on a Tuesday night at Gazzarri’s and the Whisky.”
Crue?

The Pillow dudes may not be similarly glammed, but they’re similarly clanned, and similarly damned when Tennessee-born Matt “Theasshole” (which he ain’t), a fully loaded Guns N’ Roses fanatic, starts yanking his guitar and shaking his hair around. “I can’t play unless I’m completely wasted,” he brags genteelly. “I jump around so much onstage that I just go headlong into the drums occasionally. Jack makes his own drums, so he can remake them.”

Jack Mayer is indeed a drum manufacturer — fortunate not only because of the Matt factor but because he kicks with destructive boots of pure Led. Drumcraft is a great job: “You start makin’ ’em, and a couple of people like ’em, and the next thing you know — you’re in huge debt!”

The man who oversees the digging of this glorious pit is co-guitarist Russell Wiener, a tough nerd from Arizona. He’s got a cut-through-it-all voice, and a casual way of singing that begs you to think he doesn't care, which is how you know he cares like a sonofabitch. And boyo, he can write songs. They come in many flavors on PoW’s demo compendium: helium pop (“Stuck in My Head”), slogging crash (“Falling Down”), trueblood rock (“Throw It Away”) — there’s even the hugest, dick-stickinest epic Pete Townshend never wrote, “Flood,” a tsunami of ambition that lifts this band into a whole other category.


Though listeners distracted by the grand melodies won’t notice, musicians will: Wiener is a rulebook burner when it comes to chord changes. Pillow of Wrongness (a phrase cadged from street-schizo musician Wesley Willis) says it, all right. “Russell makes me do things on guitar that I had no idea existed,” complains/rejoices Matt. “I love playin’ in this band!”

For now, Pillow’s recordings are basic — no enhancements needed with material this strong. “The studio is a fun instrument,” says Wiener, “and it’s your opportunity to do something that’s different from what you do live, but that’s for after we’re all going to weird yoga classes and maharishis, and doing acid and stuff.”

“We’re not there yet,” shuffles Matt. “We’re not cool enough for that.”

“The acid days and the Indian philosophies are coming,” says Wiener, “but so far we stick to the simple studio stuff . . .”

Matt hoists a brew: “. . . and the simple drugs!”

The kind you can get at the corner store? Sure, but Wiener pays his rent in one of the trashiest districts of Hollywood. “You can get anything on the corner around here,” says Kim.

“Lexington is the great dividing line between Hollywood and Trannytown,” explains Wiener. This must be the ghetto of Trannytown, if the street life is any indication.

Kim: “Yeah, it’s a little scary.”

Matt: “Some of ’em don’t even try. They just put a wig on, and they’re done.”

Mayer: “There were a couple I saw, they should definitely just shave.”

Motley Crue, 1982?
- LA Weekly, by Greg Burk, 7-8-04

Material: On this night, Pillow of Wrongness was billing itself as “Billow of Bongness” in support of Dread Zepplin, and the music fit the bill perfectly. Pillow’s original material sounds like classic rock of the Sixties and Seventies — not the long epic rock, but the three-minute variety, with both psychedelic and metal elements.

Musicianship: Award a few points for keeping the audience in the bar and watching the stage, even if several riffs sound as if they are borrowed whole from Led Zep (and a few others from Jethro Tull). At times, Pillow’s members sound and look as if they’re playing in four different bands, but they prove they can keep the joint rockin’ over a Lakers game on TV.

Performance: Award several more points for having a frontman who carried the show. Weiner was an expressive singer who put personality into his stage presence. He showed a sense of humor, had a little fun with the audience, and basically kept every moment entertaining.

- Music Connection