by LORRAINE CARPENTER

The majority of people, being unfamiliar with the wildly diverse and experimental back catalogue of To Live and Shave in LA, would be forgiven for getting the wrong idea. Sure, the band is named after a Ron Jeremy porno and features Andrew WK, but they’re not the party band that those factoids may suggest—they’re an experience.

“An experience that is so outside what you expect or what you think you know that it just leaves you in a state of pure physical sensation,” explains WK, vowing, “to never settle, to never resign myself to something less.”

To Live and Shave in LA was founded in the early ’90s by Tom Smith, the heart of a collective also featuring Rat Bastard, Ben Wolcott and NYC alt-rock gurus Thurston Moore (an “honourary” member) and Don Fleming. Though it’s occasionally mistaken for a WK “side project,” Monsignor Intensity is among the newest members of the band. However, WK first met his mentor at the tender age of 15, when Smith travelled to Ann Arbor, MI to record WK and other young vocalists, part of a series of field recordings for one of his many music projects.

“It was a lot of different feelings all at once,” recalls WK. “I was surprised that he was different than I thought he would be. I was intimidated ’cause he was so much older than me. I was also confused, but the biggest feeling was of excitement, that somehow, by being around this guy, I was going to see more, hear more, do more and then ultimately become more, that he was going to have a very strong impact on me, and he certainly did.”

Following that recording session, WK crossed paths with Smith again, as a co-worker at Kim’s Video in Manhattan, but it wasn’t until after his solo career blew up that he decided to seek out Smith, join his band (as a drummer/keyboardist) and relinquish all control.

“I want Tom to lead the band. I want it to be all about him. I don’t want to make decisions, I want him to tell me what to do,” says WK. “Everybody in the band would feel fine about saying that we’re here to create a chalice for Tom’s vocals to reside in. The only reason I’m playing with Tom, aside from all the great personal stuff I mentioned, is because of his singing and the lyrics. His imagination is very thrilling. I wanna be around that. Everybody wants to be around that.”

In case you’re not sold on Smith and TLASILA yet, WK promises a sound that transcends mere musical descriptors, that “unlocks the vastness of the human experience of the world.”

“This is a really nice guy who just makes the craziest-sounding music, and it’s completely free. We don’t need to break it down with language into an identifiable, understandable matrix—it can be this swirling, far-out thing, and it’s all about these feelings of possibility and feelings of positivity and feelings of love. That’s as good as it gets.”

With the Other Thing and DREAMCATCHER at la Sala Rossa on Friday, Sept. 1, 8 p.m., $12 For more info on this and other Meg shows, go to www. megmontreal.com

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