Amanda Brown: Raw Foodist, Colossal In Kiev

Britt Brown

Amanda Brown

At Cafe Gratitude on Larchmont Boulevard, the menu items aren't labeled as soups or burgers or salads or whatever; instead, they're hippie affirmations, like "I Am Liberated" or "I Am Honoring." When the waitress delivers your order, she tweaks its moniker into the second person. "You are transformed," she says, placing my beans-and-squash tacos before me.

A fine vegan dish. But LA Vampires members Amanda Brown and her husband Britt Brown have ordered off the raw food side of the menu. Wearing bright red lipstick and big sunglasses -- her disordered dyed blonde hair running past her shoulders -- the 30-year-old former member of Pocahaunted imparts that they're practicing raw-fooders, a jaw-dropping dietary restriction in a city famous for them. "I've never done drugs," she says, "but you really get high on how good [raw foodism] makes you feel."

It's a tenable lifestyle for the pair, actually, considering she spent six weeks studying how to be cook-less chef. Growing up in Agoura Hills it was much worse; her parents "wouldn't budge an inch" on the veganism she developed in her early teens, so she'd too often find herself facing unappetizing dishes at the Sizzler: "Well, this is my dinner, a plate of mushrooms."

It's fair to say that Brown does things the hard way. The principled way. The way that, while it can be tough, tends to pay off in the end. At least theoretically. That seems to be the working philosophy behind the label she and Britt run, Not Not Fun, which they founded in 2004 while they were dating. (They married two years later.)

The imprint has released some 200 artists' music. Many are getting published for the first time; less common is the situation of dub/psychadelic Wisconsin group Peaking Lights, whose album 936 came out earlier this year and has sold thousands of copies. A big hit for Not Not Fun, it led to the group getting snatched up by major indie Domino, requiring Not Not Fun to get a lawyer to sort out distribution rights. (They still don't have a publicist, or much in the way of press photos. [See above.])