Henry Clay People Headline the Annual Rock and Roll Circus Tonight

— from Jeff Miller, Thrillist LA Editor

Few bands are as uncooly-cool as The Henry Clay People, the five-piece darlings of the Silverlake scene who for the past few years have become popular precisely by rallying against everything that scene stands for, embracing sloppy, drunken messiness over hipster cred and evoking an all-for-one mantra that often finds their shows ending in an all-out covers set, with the audience on stage and the band in the crowd singing “Proud Mary,” or “Born in the USA,” or “American Girl.” That’s not to knock their own songs (the pretty-ugly assertion of purpose “This Ain’t A Scene,” especially) — its their strength, in fact, that got them signed to Radiohead’s TBD label earlier this year (their most recent release, “Somewhere on the Golden Coast” is out now).

Here’s a live favorite, “Switch Kids,” that didn’t make it onto the album:

It’s that friendliness that’ll be embraced tomorrow at the Echo and Echoplex, for a giant Halloweeny party that HCP’s calling a “Rock & Roll Circus“, which’s set not only to feature 14 of LA’s best bands (ranging from the range-y Red Cortez to Le Switch, who the Henry Clay People wrote a song about), but free popcorn and cotton candy and free CDs of all of the bands for the first 100 costumes through the door.

Hold on to that: in 5 years, it’ll likely not just be a memento that you saw a band on their way through the infinite abyss, but an exact document of the coolest bands in LA right now — uncoolness be damned.

— Jeff Miller

Editor’s Note: DJ Nic Harcourt is a big fan of these guys, if you don’t have enough reasons to check them out already!