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Rising rockers take novel approach

The Airborne Toxic Event rose to notoriety in near-record time: Hometown station KROQ began spinning the L.A. band’s first single, “Sometime Around Midnight,” in January, three weeks after the unsigned quintet finished recording it at a friend’s house.

But frontman Mikel Jollett, 34, and guitarist Steven Chen, 30, of the band— which plays the Blank Club on Wednesday — put in years of struggle first. In the literary world, not the musical one.

After Chen graduated from the University of California-Berkeley in 2000, a mutual friend suggested he speak to Jollett, a 1996 Stanford alum, for advice on making it as a writer in San Francisco. At the time, Jollett didn’t even know Chen played guitar, and Jollett “had no ambition to be a musician, none whatsoever.

“I wanted to be a writer. And then this whole music thing just happened. It’s a little absurd.”

In 2006, after years of scuffling, Jollett finally was getting... 

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