My holiday weekend heavy-rotation handful: "The Ortolan" by the Deadly Syndrome; "Astronomy for Dogs" by the Aliens; "A New Hope" by Minipop; "Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John" by Peter Case; and "The Brit Box," the four-disc box set coming in October from Rhino.
And, by the way, the Deadly Syndrome turned its song "Eucalyptus" into an arena-rocker last night at the Roxy.
People (and some of them may be your friends) are all atwitter over the new Britney Spears "Gimme More," which is all glitch and heavy breathing and so disposable I'm tired of it after streaming it once here.
It'll be almost like getting of town for the weekend -- Brian Jonestown Massacre, Saturday and Sunday, at the Echoplex.
No explanation, but the Little Ones have cancelled their West Coast tour dates with Voxtrot, including Sept. 23 at the Fonda.
PJ Harvey has scheduled a show Oct. 15 at the Orpheum.
Imagine that, the Cold War Kids, headlining the Wiltern, on Nov. 23.
There's one of those nifty art space shows tonight with a pretty strong lineup of locals; details here.
Stores like Urban Outfitters make me break out in a sweat, but I'll be stopping by to drop $14 on the two-disc charity compilation "Give.Listen.Help #4," which features tracks from the likes of Patti Smith, Coldplay, Mew, Silversun Pickups, The Go! Team, Travis, Rilo Kiley, Band of Horses, Interpol, Cold War Kids, Air and Blonde Redhead.
[Colleague Frank Farrar catches up with local favorites the Like:]
Fans showing up to hear old favorites from the Like at Spaceland on Wednesday were out of luck. But there didn’t seem to be too many disappointed faces after the still-young group’s energetic set cast entirely of new material. It’s been a couple of years since the Like’s debut album, “Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking,” came out -- and that CD recast songs on earlier EPs. No surprise, then, that the trio reveled in playing some new stuff.
At one point during the typically casual, amiable show, singer-guitarist Z Berg responded to an inquiring mind by promising that a new album “will come out after we make it.” However, after the set, she said she expects Geffen will release it next year, and the Spaceland set was just the second of two shows the band wanted to do before going to Europe in October to record with producer Youth (the Verve, Crowded House).
Some of the new songs may have felt a little underdeveloped, and the first ones were marred by a sound mix that came off like Rock Night in an underwater grotto. But once that got cleared up, the band’s strengths came through: the Blondie-fied ’60s girl group allure of “Release Me”; Charlotte Froom’s confident bass playing, especially on the evening’s closer; Tennessee Thomas’ increasingly vital drumming (she sure likes those toms); and Z’s upper-register vocals, which can give the music a particularly memorable signature touch as it cascades from throbbing garage psychedelia and mid-’60s pop to visions of prog and even a lilting, tamed-down ska line here or there.
“We’ve got a thousand new songs,” Z joked after the show. OK, narrow it down to the 500 best and you’ll have something.
Songwriter Scott Masson is not the first art-schooler to turn to pop music as a means of self-expression. Indeed, the 28-year-old frontman of the Chicago quintet Office credits the year he spent at Goldsmiths College in London, segueing from struggling painter to installation artist, for changing his point of view.
“It taught me how to look at the world with a more critical eye and be more focused,” the singer-guitarist says, remembering that as he emerged from undergrad school in Michigan he was “kind of lost.” Speaking of his early musical excursions, he says, “I was really only talking to myself rather than bringing in the world.”
With the Sept. 25 release of Office’s debut “A Night at the Ritz,” Masson and bandmates Tom Smith, Alissa Noonan, Erica Corniel and Jessica Gonyea will be bringing themselves to the world, dance beats and cheeky humor intact. Office’s glammy histrionics (think Pop Levi) and stuttery synths (think the Cars in stop-and-go traffic) put a hip-shaking twist on boy-girl vocal pop. The album was almost five years in the works. “Our greatest hits that no one’s ever heard,” Masson says with a laugh.
Office caught the attention of James Iha, who signed the band to his New Line-affiliated Scratchie Records. Masson jumped at the chance to work with the ex-Smashing Pumpkins guitarist “rather than some business-type A&R man,” he says. “Plus, I just like the idea of a small label.”
||| Office performs Thursday night at the Roxy with standout local bands the Deadly Syndrome, Let’s Go Sailing and the Western States Motel as part of Filter’s Revenge of the Sunset Strip program. In late September, Office will tour with Earlimart, including Oct. 24 at the Troubadour. (no L.A. dates listed, but Oct. 23 at the Casbah in San Diego). [Thanks to commenter Jenn, who pointed out the Troub date that was not on Office's original schedule.]
Downtown L.A.'s newest block party will get a visit from Bloc Party on Oct. 6.
The British quartet will be one of the headliners for the second annual LA Weekly Detour Music Festival, held within boogieing distance from Los Angeles City Hall. Tickets, which go on sale at noon Thursday, are $30.50, Attendees get you four stages of music, plus DJs and displays of art. This just in: Presale tickets are $30.50, but that price expires at 10 tonight; regular tickets will be $35.50.
There's a strong local contingent in the lineup -- Moving Units, Autolux, the Aggrolites, the Deadly Syndrome and Nico Vega are on the bill. And plenty of others: Justice, Satellite Party, Kinky, Comedians of Comedy, Turbonegro, Teddybears, the Raveonettes, Shout Out Louds, Celebrity Skin, the Aliens, Busy P, Noisettes, Scissors for Lefty, Johnossi and Augie March. Among the DJs: Franki Chan, Travis Keller and Bruce Perdew.
Makes you want to start a band called the Street Closures.
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By the way, if your tastes run a little more neighborhood-y, the Eagle Rock Music Festival is again scheduled opposite the Detour. Mia Doi Todd, the Pity Party, Chuchito Valdes, Bodies of Water, the Front and the Mormons are among the acts playing the evening affair along Colorado Boulevard.
When I first saw and heard Driveblind, I was pretty sure the sextet from Aberdeen, Scotland, could be the next big thing. Of course, it was after midnight at a smarmy club on the Sunset Strip and I had not yet learned it's best to check your critical thought processes with one of the uppity doormen. I was seduced by Driveblind's leviathan anthems and Scottish accents -- not to mention that they named themselves after a Ride song.
That was four years ago. The short story is: Driveblind signed to A&M, which folded into Geffen, which never quite seemed happy with the album the fellows were making, which delayed it seemingly interminably. Which happens. "Driveblind" came out last October, a solid if overpolished effort, and whether it was the product or the dearth of promotion, the album failed to gain the band any momentum.
Now Driveblind and Geffen are parting ways. "A mutual thing," guitarist Nick Tyler says. "We're not happy; they're not happy."
And the band (a quintet with the departure of rhythm guitarist Cameron Taylor) is striking out on its own. Driveblind headlines the Troubadour tonight, ready to test-drive some new material that Tyler describes as "more upbeat." He adds, "We're trying to shake the cobwebs off."
||| Stream four new demos on Driveblind's MySpace page. And Rehearsals.com has some Driveblind stuff here.
||| Driveblind plays the headline slot at the Troubadour tonight; up-and-coming blues band Back Door Slam performs at 9:30.
Happy Tuesday. You might be jazzed about the Boss' announcements -- Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band are playing Oct. 28 in Los Angeles (venue TBA) and the very rocking new single "Radio Nowhere" is available for free here -- but the fact that P.J. Harvey has new music on the way is great too.
Harvey's new album, due Sept. 25, is titled "White Chalk." No U.S. tour dates have been announced yet.
Are they really charging $30 for a ticket ($40 at the door) for the Summer Strummer festival in Santa Monica on Sunday? I mean, Brett Dennen and Mat Kearney are nice singer-songwriters and all, but the lineup is filled with acts who play around town a lot, draining a lot of the cachet from their appearances there. Maybe people will be excited to see Duane Peters both play and skate. Or maybe they'll just show up to ogle the emcee.
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Touts for Tuesday, Aug. 28
Crowded House and the Greek and Gogol Bordello and the Fonda are the big shows, but there are plenty of club choices: The Watson Twins and Everest play a benefit for the Circle X Theater at Spaceland. ... No Age celebrates the release of "Weirdo Rippers" with a 7 p.m. in-store at Amoeba. ... The Finches finish up a run of Tuesdays at Bordello. ... The Amateurs and the Lonely Years play the Let's Independent night at Boardner's. ... I See Hawks in LA headline at the Echo. ... And Map comes in from the Inland Empire to play the Silverlake Lounge.
[It's good to have colleagues -- especially guys like August Brown who will tell me what I missed at Sunday's second night of the F-Yeah Fest without sticking his tongue out and going "nyah-nyah!"]
The latter night of F-Yeah Fest begged one big question -- what constitutes punk rock in 2007? Is it the shirtless, Iggy-aping sex-god sneer of Pissed Jeans' Matt Korvette? The icy noise blasts of local chin-strokers No Age? Deerhunter's Bradford Cox picking a fight via e-mail with freelance writer (and occasional Buzz Bands contributor) Jeff Weiss for comparing his band to Wyld Stallyns?
Yes and no on all counts. The violent, physical sounds of the F-Yeah fest were on their own terms invigorating, especially since the Eastside rock scene has gone belly-up into tedious psych-folk and bizarre attempts at torch songs for underfed (and undersexed) white kids.
But to coalesce it all into one loose scene, with its own designated weekend-long showcase replete with a Dewars sponsorship, seems further proof that any danger in underground music gets swallowed whole by omnivorous, consumptive hipsterdom before kids can get anxious for the revolution.
What's the real cost of the special packages to see Morrissey for all 10 nights of his run at the Palladium? Well, it's $391.50, as publicized. Plus $96 in Ticketmaster convenience fees. And plus $20 for UPS delivery.
This apparently constitutes the promised "savings of over $50" over the surcharges incurred by buying individual tickets. Makes my head spin. But it'll make Moz fans' wallets open.
[One Illinois-born fiftysomething attends a show given by another Illinois-born fiftysomething, and lives to blog about it:]
Given the way John Doe's music can inhabit your brain -- I've been humming "Golden State" for almost two days straight now -- it's no surprise how the X Man's presence carried the room Saturday night at Safari Sam's. Playing in a steamy room to an appreciative crowd that spanned at least a couple of generations, Doe and his parade of talented collaborators gave you a 90-minute warm-and-fuzzy.
There was original material -- including a healthy dose of stuff from the album many are calling his career-best, this year's "A Year in the Wilderness" -- there were covers, there were rockers and folk songs, and there was even a moment of reflection: "Having been taken for granted a couple times in Los Angeles," he told the crowd, "this is nice to see."
Doe, sweating through his dress shirt and justifiably magnanimous with his praise of his side players, gave back as much as he soaked up. I chuckled at one point when he seemed to get ahead of himself -- for some reason I thought of the jokey T-shirt that a local rock band gave me last fall for my 50th birthday. It said: "Middle age is all the rage."
I'm sure that Friday and Saturday, when he is fronting X at the House of Blues Anaheim, that'll be even more of a joke. But at Sam's on Saturday, in the genial company of members of Dead Rock West (drummer Bryan Head, bassist David J. Carpenter and vocalist Cindy Wasserman backed him after playing an opening set), Doe's songs were as vital as anything you'll hear from anybody. Kathleen Edwards joined him to duet on "Golden State," and Dave Alvin brought his estimable guitar talents onstage for a few numbers.
And I don't think anybody took one note for granted.
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Postscript: Doe also got a boost from Dead Rock West keyboardist Phil Parlapiano, who filled in for ailing Doe regular Nick Luca. Amazingly, Parlapiano hadn't rehearsed any of the songs he played on.
Luca, by the way, has an album coming out Sept. 25 by the quartet that bears his name. It's titled "Fractions;" he'll play the Knitting Factory on Oct. 23.
||| Stream a nice acoustic version of "Golden State" here.
Photos: Top, John Doe duets with Kathleen Edwards; above, Doe with Cindy Wasserman, Dave Alvin and David J. Carpenter (background). By Kevin Bronson / LAT.
[Colleague Liam Gowing sends me this little narrative from Saturday's opening night of the F-Yeah Fest in Echo Park:]
It was an evening of treble-heavy highs and one deep low at the first night of F-Yeah Fest 2007.
The Echoplex was the spot to be for the “traditional” punk bands: Toys That Kill tore it up with thrashy pop-punk imbued with Bro-down choruses that seem to go hand in hand with a South Bay ZIP Code. Likewise, the Fleshies, who added a glam edge to their gobbing-and-spitting anthems.
The real weirdness, however, was upstairs at the Echo, where Bobby Birdman was doing his thing -- crooning mellifluously over gloppy, canned digitalisms -- with an endlessly oddball approach that evoked Bjork fronting 8-Bit. Love it or hate it, it was, in a word, singular. I for one, was down with it.
Up next at the Echo were the Mae Shi, who were explosive and fun as usual. Powered by the magical, funk-a-licious Omnichord -- yes, the children’s toy -- “Run to Your Grave” was just one of the sing-a-long, clap-your-hands and-stomp-your-feet standouts. The crowd really went nuts for the anarchic closer, “HLLLYH,” however. There was crowd-surfing -- like legitimate, triumphal, festival-style crowd-surfing -- which was a quite a thrill to see at the Echo.
Leaving the Echo behind in a race to see Greg Ashley -- he of the giant pop obfuscation that is “Medicine F* Dream” -- I was waylaid by an iconic act of guerilla rock 'n' roll that goes back as least as far as the Beatles’ “Let It Be”: A sloppy, scrappy little quartet from Garden Grove called AM, which had neither applied for nor been invited to play the festival, set up on the sidewalk two doors down from the Echo and began to play an impromptu set of good-times garage-rock. Explaining the tactic, co-lead singer Fonzie said, “[Heck with] venues, [heck with] shows. We’ve got a portable generator!”
But what should have been a nice little diversion became an ugly little incident when two bouncers from the Echo decided that the foursome posed a clear and present danger to the festival and attempted to shut it down. Taking a cue from Ringo, the kids kept playing despite some unnecessarily aggressive alpha-male posturing. Instead of waiting for the end of the song to issue his decree, however, one of the muscle-bound bouncers actually tackled singer-guitarist Felipe mid-riff, railroading the skinny non-threat against the iron security gates along Sunset, knocking his guitar -- and probably his spine -- right out of tune. That was the end of that.
Shame on you, F-Yeah Fest. Of all fests, you should know better.
Kevin Bronson Kevin Bronson has covered emerging and indie music since 2002 in his weekly Buzz Bands column in the Calendar Weekend section of the L.A. Times. He adores caffeine, judicious use of falsetto and the 6-4-3 double play. He abhors exclamation points, modern country and any notion that New York City is the center of the cultural universe. He's older than any music blogger he knows but has been known to pogo. He'll try not to pretend.
Bronson's Buzz Bands show can be heard Wednesdays from 6 to 8 p.m. Pacific time on the Internet radio station LittleRadio.com.
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