Photo by Angela Ratzlaff
As The Three O’Clock guitarist Louis Gutierrez hoists nine-year-old Ryan Kupsh into the air, the intimate crowd of Paisley Underground fans dropped their jaws and cracked a few smiles.
“I’ve never been through something like that,” Ryan Kupsh, who has been playing guitar for two years, said. “It was very exciting.”
The Oso Grande Elementary student latched onto The Three O’Clock after his dad, drummer for local punk group The Whitekaps Jim Kupsh, introduced him to the energy-filled 60s pop-inspired music.
“I like The Beatles, and then my dad introduced me to The Three O’clock, and it was just amazing,” Ryan explained, “Because I like punk rock and I like The Beatles, and The Three O’clock is like a mix between them.”
Popular in the ’80s, The Three O’Clock introduced Los Angeles to a new genre–Paisley Underground–most associated with lead vocalist and bassist Michael Quercio and made famous by Prince, who named his record label, Paisley Park, after the style. The genre combines full sounds of psychedelic rock, jangle pop and folk, a rare combination in the early-to-mid ’80s.
After a 27-year hiatus, the group’s temporary revival came after an invitation to play the 2013 Coachella music festival.
The band maintains that energy they put into their pop-filled performance, offering hints of ’60s garage rock influence with Guiterrez’s 12-string Rickenbacker guitars and Danny Benair’s simplistic heavy-hitting drumming. The 88s Adam Merrin rounded out the sound, sitting in on keyboards and percussion.
They went through some of the classic hits, playing songs off of the 1983 album Sixteen Tambourines, as well as songs off of their first EP.
After a swing around Southern California, with shows at The Glass House in Pomona and the Troubadour in Hollywood, the group played their last show of the short-lived revival at Fingerprints, making some leave the record shop in tears, knowing they might never see the group play live again.
“I just really like how, the way they play.” Ryan Kupsh said, after having seen them play in Sherman Oaks the night before, “I love the Three O’clock, and they are my favorite band, and it’s been like that for a long time.”
The Three O’Clock have two new pressings out: Live at The Old Waldorf, a Burger Records release of the 1982 San Francisco show, and the compilation The Hidden World Revealed, a CD-only release from Omnivore Recordings.
{gallery}angela/3oclock{/gallery}
{FG_GEOMAP [33.7716112,-118.18720989999997] FG_GEOMAP}