PickLarge

OTEP and Whisky: “When I started the band, I didn’t know much about music,” OTEP told us in 2018. “I was more of a knucklehead running around the streets of L.A., getting in trouble, and I thought I was going to be a street artist or street poet.” Add punk rock, and the job is done. Innocents Torn, Truth Untold, Dirty Delta Trio, Pretty Blackmore, and Kella Sin also play.

This writer chatted with singer Otep Shamaya back in 2017, when she said that, “I put a band together quickly and we wrote five songs. We went out on the Sunset Strip in LA, and started playing like every other band there. The difference was, people responded to us. LA is an industry town. People go there to ‘make it’ in the entertainment industry. The town is a little jaded because it sees everything. I come from a writing background, and you put everything into your writing. When I was performing, I tried to put those same emotions into the songs. That way, it was an internal experience, externalized.”

“What gives Trump the right to trample on human rights?” she said. “He doesn’t have that right. Mike Pence is a known homophobic. Vocally crazy. Steve Bannon is a known white nationalist sympathizer. Trump’s just a puppet. We’re not going away though. Trump and his people can do what they want to try to “Make American Great Again,” as they say. Well, when exactly was America greater than it is now? That’s an insult to all the people who have died for this country, all the civil rights activists who have died. Women have only had the right to vote for 100 years, while gay people can finally get married legally. When was America greater?”

Fair enough.

OTEP and Whisky: The event takes place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, September 15 at the Whisky A Go-Go.

Photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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