It was a night of charming indie rock and adoring fans at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, California. On January 25th, Bad Suns played to a packed house full of screaming ladies and a few dudes here-and-there. You could tell that the band was really excited to play in their hometown, they seemed to be floating on cloud nine. Before playing their hit title “Cardiac Arrest”, lead singer Christo Bowman made mention that “sometimes you write a song, and you just don’t know where it is going to take you,” when he said that he had a huge smile on his face and gracefully said “thank you, Los Angeles”. The energy was so positive for Bad Suns that night that Bowman decided to stand our far as he could into the crowd and balance himself on the barricades. Bowman happily fell into the audience and surfed the crowd for a brief moment. It was a nice moment for both him and the fans.
Speaking of the audience, some of those girls were nuts. After each band’s set the girls would stand in the front row and yell for a copy of the set list. At the end of Bad Suns set, the band threw a couple set lists out into the crowd, and holy shit you would have thought it was Michael Jackson’s hat being thrown out after a moonwalk during “Billie Jean”. I thought these girls were going to get down like Black Friday at Walmart and just scrap with each other to get a piece of paper. It was pretty funny (and amazing) to see their passion for the band.
To start the night up was Coasts, a band from Great Britain touring their Rush of Blood EP. These guys also had a great effect on the crowd. I was looking into the crowd at times and saw a large number of people singing along. Frontman, Chris Caines was also not shy about getting up in the crowd. He stood at the edge of the stage and made sure to touch the hands of many audience members like he was and has been a rock star for years. I had never heard of them before but they really seem to have something cohesive in their music. Definitely a band worth checking out.
Photography & Words: Wes Marsala
