Our glasses weren’t 3D. We were watching a live performance inside downtown L.A.’s Mayan Theatre and, like the robot on stage told the crowd on Sunday afternoon, that’s already 3D. These were decoder glasses. Some in the audience had blue lenses. Others, like me, had red ones. The color of the lenses determined what you would see on the screen behind Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra, the human-and-robot duo from San Diego who were playing as part of Exotikon.
Now in its third year, Exotikon is an annual celebration of exotica and related mid-20th century retro fascinations. It’s a very tiki-heavy event, or, at least it was on the second day of this year’s fest. Hawaiian shirts and kaftans were worn like uniforms amongst the cocktail-sipping attendees inside The Mayan, a former 1920s movie palace designed in the Mayan Revival style with intricately carved walls and sculptures by the Mexican artist Francisco Cornejo. There were panels on collectables, like lamps and matchbooks, and live performances throughout the weekend. The Residents played on Saturday, but, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend that day.
Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra is Professor B. Wells on synths and SPO-20, the robot, on vocals. The songs draw from a lot of different genres, including exotica, and the lyrics encompass many different themes. In fact, Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra is in the midst of releasing 20 theme albums. There’s also a strong satirical vibe to the project. For example, they played a song called “Jingle,” which is a bunch of phrases from old commercials strung together and connected by the chorus, “I can’t remember anything, but that’s the jingle I can’t forget.”
The live performance is accompanied by video montages that bring together song lyrics with retro imagery, from commercials to educational films. The closest comparison I can make for Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra is not to a band, but The Venture Bros., the cartoon series that ran on Adult Swim for years. Both draw from pop culture references and the optimism of mid-20th century design to a tell a darker story.
During the portion of the set that required decoder glasses, things got really dark. Or, at least they did with the red lenses. During a song called “Pick ‘em Up,” from the album, Have an Existential Crisis, I saw images cops chasing kids, perhaps from an old TV show or movie, juxtaposed with footage of what looked like a students’ meeting, juxtaposed with graffiti. Meanwhile, the robot sings, “Every reasoned argument exposes more cracks/They’re crumbling apart fact by fact by fact.” The chorus— “I’m picking up the pieces of my belief system”— is a good summary of life in the social media age. In fact, the whole concept of this portion of the performance, where people sitting in the same room are not seeing the same images on screen, is an apt metaphor for this age.
I would be remiss to not mention what else was happening downtown. Sunday was the third day of protests in L.A., with most of the activity centered about a mile-and-a-half away from The Mayan. To get to the theater, I did have to skirt the edge of the protest area, but things seemed pretty quiet in the afternoon. I took one of the Hill Street buses and saw protesters, mostly young adults on the bus and some families who were walking towards City Hall from Hill Street. On my way back, somewhere around 5:30 p.m., people appeared to be heading home from the protest. It all looked normal, particularly considering that protests happen fairly often here. The only thing I saw that was out-of-the-ordinary was a row of LAPD cars speeding down Olympic while I was waiting for the bus, but even that isn’t extremely unusual in Los Angeles. After I got home, I saw a plume of smoke in the distance and, based on what was on the news at around the same time, I can only assume that it was from a burning Waymo. All this is to say that nobody sees the same thing.
The decoder portion of the set included a few songs and, at one point, I did try to watch the screen without glasses. It was an indecipherable mess. Y’know, kind like going online these days, where the lines between fact and fiction are virtually non-existent. When Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra plays “Reboot the Simulation,” it sounds like a rallying cry.
To be honest, I did feel a bit weird about going to an event on such a strange, depressing day in L.A., but Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra fit the vibe of the city at the moment without directly addressing anything. That helped me make sense of what was happening, especially later in the evening when the “Are you okay?” texts and phone calls came and I realized that there’s a big gap between what I’ve seen living downtown and what others see on socials or TV.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs or listen to the latest Beatique Mix. Follow on Instagram or Bluesky for more updates. Subscribe to the weekly Beatique newsletter.
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