The Airborne Toxic Event Pledge to Sweat on You, Diss Painters

L.A.'s the Airborne Toxic Event is on pace to play 300 shows in the span of a year, and neither laryngitis nor a tanking economy nor knives-out Pitchfork reviews are going to stop them. The five-piece takes its name from Don DeLillo's novel White Noise, which caused the fight that broke up my book club, but that's DeLillo's fault, not the band's. They're slated to hit the Black Cat mainstage tonight at 2230 hours. It's no surprise that frontman Mikel Jollett has done some time in music journalism himself -- where else do you think he'd learn to give quote like this?

"[The road] is where you want to be if you're a musician," says Jollett from a van somewhere on I-95 en route to the show. "You gotta touch the flesh. You gotta sweat on them; they've gotta sweat on you. Everyone's gotta have the same kind of shared experience. That's the thing about music as an art form, as opposed to painting or something: It's all happening and being created right there in front of you. With painting, the observer is so divorced from the actual act of creation. That's not true for music. That's what's great about it."

We agree: Live music is awesome. Better than live painting, certainly. But unless Bob Seeger is a liar, touring sucks, right?

Wrong!

"We're like a troupe of traveling gypsies," Jollet continues cheerfully. "We go from town to town. We set up shop, we sell our wares, we have a time with the people who show up, and do our little art project disguised as a rock band, and then move on to the next town. That's the idea."

The Airborne Toxic Event plays tonight at Black Cat, with support from Alberta Cross and Henry Clay People open. $13, 8 p.m.