What Kinda Man Bleu Is: Gyu-Kaku

Bleu McAuley had his first (and only) brush with the mainstream back in 2003, when his shifty ode to insecurity, “Somebody Else,” found its way onto the hugely popular soundtrack to the first Spider-Man movie. The tune was also on Bleu’s second album, Redhead, a delectable slab of power-pop bombast and one of the most unjustly overlooked albums of the early 2000s. Seven years and one falling out with Columbia Records later, Bleu knows better than to go sniffing around for scraps amidst the carnage of a dying industry. Recently, he averted any future label shenanigans altogether, appealing directly to his fans for money to make his latest CD, Four (The Major Label). They responded by forking over almost $40,000 via online funding platform Kickstarter. Over the years, Bleu has found highly entertaining ways to celebrate his knob-twiddling heroes. Alpacas Orgling is the 2006 product of his Jeff Lynne-loving collective known as L.E.O. And for LoudLion, he’s recruited Rooney’s Taylor Locke, the Donnas’ Allison Robertson and some other L.A. pals to shamelessly emulate Mutt Lange. The band’s contributions to the Balls Of Fury and The Hills Have Eyes 2 soundtracks couldn’t sound any more like circa-Hysteria Def Leppard if they had spots. Bleu will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.

Bleu: Gyu-Kaku is Japanese BBQ dining. I live minutes away from the Beverly Hills location. (It’s actually a chain with locations in California, Chicago, New York and Hawaii.) I could technically walk there, but we don’t do that in L.A. My friends and I go at least once a week. The one near me has happy hour from noon to 6:30 p.m. and then again from 8:30 p.m. ’til close. So basically, it’s happy hour all but two hours that they’re open: $1 beers (in L.A.?!?!), $5 large sake. I don’t eat meat, but they have filet mignon and a ton of other stuff for $5. It’s freaking insane. There’s a grill in the middle of the table and you cook your own food. It rules.

Video after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwztL-47BUE