Saturday’s spread: ‣ HARD Summer goes off at L.A. State Historic Park downtown, featuring dubstep/house music sensation Skrillex, along with Chromeo, Odd Future, Duck Sauce, Boys Noize, Ratatat, the Juan Maclean, James Murphy & Pat Mahoney, Digitalism and Gaslamp Killer. That’s Skrillex’s video for “Rock n Roll (Will Take You to the Mountain),” above. ‣ […]
Three fantastic free shows, and other fabulous ones: ‣ The first week of this year’s Also I Like to Rock at the Hammer Museum was a smash hit – and tonight’s second installment of the four-week series promises to be every bit as rockin’. The Soft Pack (pictured), who are working on a follow-up to […]
[Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, whom you know as Katy Perry, was born on this day in 1984. Cheers.] Tonight’s top 3 visitors from foreign lands: ‣ UNKLE (new album “Where Did the Night Fall” and new EP “The Answer”) makes its first visit to L.A. in more than three years at the El Rey Theatre. That’s […]
Top 3 U.K. acts to see in L.A. tonight (and the best one is not a Mercury Prize nominee): ‣ The RSVP-only It’s a School Night at Bardot features the French Horn Rebellion, Mia Doi Todd and secret guests from across the pond. I hear it’s a Manchester band signed to a local label. Be […]
Top 1 show for a special occasion if were in charge of the special occasion: ‣ Teenage Fanclub and this blogger go way back. Not quite to when I was teenage, but I got “Bandwagonesque” early and never hopped off. Tonight, the Scottish quintet visits the El Rey Theatre behind their new album “Shadows,” supported […]
Tonight’s top 3 shows that don’t involve hitting one of the very good October residency kickoffs: ‣ I don’t usually post amateur live video, but I’ll make an exception for the clip above from Guided by Voices’ Sunday night show at Matador at 21. It’s nice to see that a guy in my age bracket […]
The easy way to find Buzz Bands tonight: ‣ Radars to the Sky celebrate the release of their new album “Supra/Infra” at Spaceland, supported by Death to Anders and Smokers in Love – and, playing the late set, the Henry Clay People. I had a sneak peek of the album last week. [And on a […]
Radars to the Sky remain one of those best-bands-you’ve-never-heard phenomena that populate the L.A. landscape – people with days jobs and families and lives who somehow find the juice to write and record original material, instead of maybe playing in that AC/DC cover band for beers on the weekend. It’s slow going sometimes (the first […]
[Once around the weekend while wishing a very happy 70th birthday today to Smokey Robinson:] Tonight: Fitz & the Tantrums have been busy working on their full-length debut, but last week the soul-slinging sextet played a superbly sweaty set at Club Underground at the Echo. They reprise that tonight, with O.C. dance-rockers Pop Noir adding […]
Haven’t been able to set aside “A Brief History of Love,” the debut album from U.K. electro-shoegazers the Big Pink, since it arrived in my mailbox and got me all excited. The collaboration of producer Milo Cordell and guitarist Robbie Furze, the Big Pink expands to a full band for live shows, and they finally […]
