A Concrete Blonde who is always game for some spirited fun

Johnette NAPOLITANO, singer for the band Concrete Blonde, was born in Hollywood but makes her home in the desert near Joshua Tree National Park. Her group, which scored a radio hit in the early ‘90s with “Joey,” broke up in 1994 and reunited in 2001. Its latest album, “Mojave,” will be released June 29.

Right to work

I love weekends because everyone else is doing something and I can get work done. I know everybody will leave me alone. So Friday night and Saturday, at odd hours, like 4 or 5 in the morning, I’ll usually be up and working on something. Sundays, however, are very good to hang out.

Generally on Sunday morning, the Fairfax flea market (at the corner of Fairfax and Melrose) is a really good thing to do. Last time I was there I got a really cool Chinese lamp, because I have no lights in my house. I like clothes, but I can’t find the vintage stuff anymore. The kids now are all into the ‘70s stuff, which I didn’t like the first time around. The stuff I like, the ‘40s and ‘50s stuff, and even some of the ‘30s stuff, is getting harder to find.

Enjoying cronies

You’ve got to go to the Las Palmas newsstand and pick up the New York Times and Bazaar or something. They have all kinds of good stuff there. Then I’ll go to Miceli’s restaurant in Hollywood and hang with my cronies or read and have some wine or whatever. Everyone must have cronies. One of my good cronies at Miceli’s was Toni Macaroni. She was the oldest waitress in L.A., but she recently passed away. There are pictures of her on the walls there from when she was younger, acting in movies with Robert Mitchum.

Old Hollywood

I’m so old school, the only places I go are Miceli’s, Musso and Frank’s, and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. I dig the Roosevelt because it’s haunted. When we did L.A. shows, we used to book ourselves in the Roosevelt. We used to take a Ouija board up there and sit in the hall and talk with the spirits. They’d give us room numbers that weren’t room numbers, but then we’d go back and find out that the whole thing was gutted and changed and it had in fact been a room number. They also have an incredible brunch.

Like another world

The desert is a seriously good place. I don’t think enough people really understand that. In 2 1/2 hours, you’re just on another planet. I have other cronies in the desert. They’re up there in Pioneertown. There’s no place in the world like it. It was built in the 1940s as a movie set. “Cisco Kid” was shot there. And it’s still pretty much like that.

I like to shoot pool at a biker bar there called Pappy & Harriet’s. My dad is a biker, and he’s been going up there since the ‘70s. There’s an old soundstage next door. It’s the Wild West for sure. If you don’t want anybody to find you out there, they won’t. Whoever the guy is out in the parking lot may be wanted for murder in three states. But it’s still a cool place. People ride their horses up to the bar.

-- Patrick Day