By: Aldo Morazan
Rating: 4/11

Where have all the punkers gone?

It’s hard to know for whom Brody Dalle writes songs nowadays. Her new band, Spinnerette, opened their recent show at the Troubadour in Hollywood with “Valium Knights,” which is possibly the only song in their repertoire that resembles the shadow of the music with which she once delighted audiences. Songs like “Borderline” and “Ghetto Love” appeal more to Hollywood’s trendy who cannot, for the life of them, dance their way out of a shoe box. Apparently, this group of Hollywood trendies made up most of the audience, all mimicking a guitarless Dalle’s lead in a way that can only be described as a Christina Model-esque shrugging of shoulders to monotonous drum beats.

As for the guitar, it was inaudible through most of a set that included such pseudo dance numbers as “Geeking,” which was virtually nothing but a bass too loud, as well as metronome-like drums. However, this is not to say the entire show was without highlights. For instance, while singing without her guitar again in “Distorting a Code,” Dalle treated us to what can only be construed as her version of Carlton Banks from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”

It’s hard to imagine that this band will not go far, as many people enjoy dancing, as well as celebrities impersonating has-beens. If not, Dalle and company have a future waiting for them in entertaining children. After all, it is quite possible that these songs started as lullabies. One thing is clear, the days of singing, “We are kids, we play punk rock and roll, if we didn’t we got no soul” are long gone (“Sick of it All,” Sing Sing Death House, Hell Cat records, 2002).