When I first heard about The Great Glass Elevator, it< wasn’t through a magazine, or on the marquee at one of their favorite haunts in Hollywood, or even on the website of the national label that they are now signed to, but instead, we found them at church.
It was in Whittier, California. It felt like April, but it just as easily could have been September. A few friends and I went to a showcase at this local church to hear the band that one of our friends drummed for. It was more of a trip for support, not really much enjoyment (sorry Nick!). With free admission (but $1.50 slices of cold pizza outside) a local band showcase should have been enough to pack the oh-so small venue. But instead, there were at max, roughly 10 high-school kids in the audience, counting me and my friends. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
After our friend's set, we had spent just about enough time in the poorly-ventilated room to call it a night, but at our buddy the drummers suggestion, we decided to stick around and catch one or two songs of this new group out of La Mirada.
By the midway point of the first song we were hooked. Rocking out in room with virtually no people should have been a chore, but the GGE seemed to take it as a blessing. We didn’t know at the time if we caught the boys on a “let’s just go crazy nuts! Besides, who’s here to see us anyway?” kind of night or if this was the standard fare, but whatever it was, it certainly lit a fire under our asses.
None of the boys at the time were over 18 years of age and the five college juniors who had stuck around to watch them just starred in shock at what we were witnessing. We were starstruck! I know that it is a cliché thing to say, but certainly a bright future was destined.
As David took the stage to open the set with “The Rapid Eye Movement”, he can at us full-force with all the thrashing around, clapping and in-time jumping of a seasoned road-traveled rock veteran. He knew how to play the crowd from the opening notes. Despite all of this, he managed to lock eyes with all 13 of us in the room while he sang.
As they ripped through their, at the time, small catalog of songs, they took time to do things on stage that the small bands are too scared to try and the big bands are too proud to. Be it playing the guitar with a coke bottle or the twirling airplane spin through the smoke machine that I am pretty sure David managed to break out during the set, the Elevator picked up steam and didn’t give themselves a chance to slow down.
It’s been three years since that show, and it seems weird that those same boys we saw are now old enough to drink (barely). And with three years of performing and kicking all asses in front of them, comes the fruits of labor, namely their just released first EP
under Atlantic Records. The band brings a psychedelic flavor of dance-pop-rock that seems at times to come straight out of 1976, but other times is right in line with the newer sound of Arcade Fire, The Killers, or he Kaiser Chiefs.
While I was immediately impressed with The Great Glass Elevator, I tried not to get too hopeful of seeing them down the line. After all, they were a group of kids too young to buy smokes playing in front of a bakers dozen worth of fans. But shame on me for doubting them. It seems that the Great Glass Elevator has found themselves a place in this musical landscape and here’s to wishing them even more success as they go farther than even they could possibly imagine.
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After our friend's set, we had spent just about enough time in the poorly-ventilated room to call it a night, but at our buddy the drummers suggestion, we decided to stick around and catch one or two songs of this new group out of La Mirada.
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