Orin Portnoy - Guitar, Vocals
Ward Reeder - Drums, Vocals
Jeff Cardello - Bass, Vocals
"If you put 'Space is the Place' on a jukebox, you'll find that the bartender will usually cut if off before the end," says Orin Portnoy, Automatic Erasers guitarist and co-vocalist, referring to the group's habit of playing the music of Sun Ra, the legendarily bizarre free-jazz pioneer who claimed to have learned his far-out musical concepts while visiting Saturn.
"We were at the Time Out Lounge, playing pool," confirms Jeff Cardello, who plays bass and sings in the band. "We got away with it once, but the second time through, everyone left the bar."
As drummer/vocalist Ward Reeder joins in the fray, listing obscure jazz, Tropicalia, and psychedelic rock the group collectively digs, I think back to my own experience with angry bar patrons and questionable jukebox selections. One night while hanging at the Bikini Lounge, my former bandmate Jeff and I dueled each other over who could pick the most room-clearing songs, filling the wonderful dive bar with the latter-day prog-rock excursions of Os Mutantes and, you guessed it, Sun Ra.
"The bartender learned that there would be trouble when we came in," Portnoy says, snapping me back into the moment. "We had the space, not the place."
It was my friend Jeff who first introduced me to the Erasers, booking them for a gig at the Yucca Tap Room. "You've got to hear these guys," he said. I asked him what their sound was like, and a grin took over his face. "Loud, man," he laughed. "Just some awesome older dudes who really rock."
The band was more than just loud, however. It was an enveloping experience (despite the fact that the band sounds, on paper, like a typical punk band, with three-minute songs, ear-blasting distortion, and snotty attitude to spare); their music took on an otherworldly quality, mining the best bits of psychedelic rock and experimental noise and breaking them down to bite-size nuggets of white noise and swagger.
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