The Smell

The Smell is the moral and spiritual center of Los Angeles's underground music scene. Founded in 1998 by Ara Shirinyan, Jarrett Silberman, and Jim Smith as one of the only all-ages, alcohol-free performance spaces in the city, it has operated continuously in downtown LA's Gallery Row ever since, surviving fire-code shutdowns, rising rents, and the repeated predictions of people who underestimate what a community can sustain when it is genuinely committed. The room is small, hot, poorly ventilated, and decorated with a rotating gallery of art from the community it serves. There is a vegan snack bar, a library, and a zine section. Shows are run entirely by volunteers. Admission is typically five to fifteen dollars. There is no alcohol, which is part of the point: The Smell is one of the only spaces in the city where a thirteen-year-old and a thirty-year-old can stand in the same room and share a formative musical experience without either of them being out of place. The musical identity of the room is proudly avant-garde: experimental, noise, punk, hardcore, lo-fi indie, and anything else that prioritizes creative risk over commercial appeal. No Age, Matt and Kim, Wavves, and Ty Segall all have early history here. The venue is not-for-profit and volunteer-run from top to bottom, which means every dollar that comes in goes back into keeping the space alive. For listeners who want music that is genuinely new, genuinely raw, and genuinely made by people who are not doing it for the money, there is no better room in Los Angeles.