KCRW launches Spotify application

Spotify earlier this week unveiled an upgrade to its streaming radio features, allowing mobile users to sample stations based on artists, genres and time periods, as well as hatch a more personalized station from a selected playlist or track. Today, Spotify added an actual in-real-life radio station to its stable, as influential Santa Monica public radio station KCRW-FM (89.9) has launched its very own application for the popular music-on-demand service. 

Dubbed "KCRW Music Mine," the app is inspired by the station's already-developed iPad app and offers a very streamlined experience. Upon launching via Spotify's desktop client, users can scroll through up to 100 tracks at a time, as well as view selections handpicked from KCRW personalities and listen to up-to-the-minute, on-air playlists. If there's an obvious difference between the Spotify and iPad apps, it's that the latter format allows for more editorial and design flourishes.

KCRW's Spotify app is updated with the day's top track, and one can easily explore the breadth of an artist's Spotify catalog from the app's home page. Also, Spotify users who missed a favorite KCRW show -- or didn't catch the name of a specific act while driving to work -- can easily head to the app, click a DJ's photo and set aside the playlist for later exploration.

KCRW boasts that it is the first U.S. radio station to launch a Spotify app.

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Image: A screenshot from KCRW's Spotify application.

Raphael Saadiq, Moby booked for free Century City concerts

The heavy commercial district that is Century City will be getting an injection of rock 'n' roll this summer. In conjunction with the upcoming exhibit “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present,” KCRW-FM (89.9) has revealed the lineup for three free Saturday evening concerts outside the Annenberg Space for Photography. Raphael Saadiq, Moby, Band of Skulls and Portugal. The Man are among the artists scheduled to play the events, which will require an RSVP.

The concert series begins July 14 with a live performance from electronic artist Moby, who has dabbled in photography himself. Moby last year released a book of photos with his album "Destroyed." Moby will DJ, but will also perform an acoustic set, according to KCRW. 

The evening of July 21 will serve as a tribute to glam rockers T. Rex, as the day coincides with the 40th anniversary of the band's album "The Slider." In addition to a performance from rock act Portugal. The Man, who performed Wednesday night at UCLA's Royce Hall, the event will function as a release party for the “KCRW vs. T. Rex Soundclash” EP, which features T. Rex remixes from KCRW DJs.

PHOTOS: 'Who Shot Rock & Roll' at the Annenberg Space for Photography

The free concerts will wrap up on Aug. 4 with a performance from R&B star Raphael Saadiq and English rock act Band of Skulls. Each artist appeared on the four-CD, 70-plus-song multi-artist tribute album “Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan: Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International,” and no doubt each artist will roll out Dylan covers. 

Each concert will also feature DJ sets from KCRW personalities. All performances will begin at 7 p.m. and are free, but advance registration is required on the KCRW site. On arrival, those who RSVP-ed will be given wristbands to gain admittance to the concerts. The concerts will be staged on an outdoor plaza next to the Annenberg Space and the gallery will stay open for the performances. 

Pop music review: KCRW's 'Are Friends Eclectic?'

The FM station’s annual holiday show indeed featured a wide range of entertaining acts, but there were a few stylistic gaps.

Are friends eclectic?

Yes. The answer to the question posed in the title of KCRW’s holiday show is a definite, though qualified, affirmative. The 10 artists crammed into five hours at the Orpheum Theatre on Saturday night included a young Malaysian folksinger (Zee Avi), a historic reggae crooner (Jimmy Cliff) and a flamenco-blues guitar heroine (Anna Calvi).

You’d expect to find a few bad apples in such a mixed bag. But even those acts relegated to playing short acoustic sets in front of the curtain while full bands plugged in behind played as if their careers hinged on it. After all, as several musicians acknowledged onstage, KCRW-FM (89.9) has a history of breaking new acts.

"It feels like ‘The Gong Show,’" singer-guitarist Barbara Gruska joked as she and her four bandmates in the Belle Brigade lined up before the scrim. The awkward setting did not stop the young L.A.-based country-rock group from singing and playing their hearts out. Gruska’s strong tones anchored her brother Ethan’s sweet strains as they toasted the virtues of being uncool in a rendition of "Losers" that seemed like the night’s breakout, take-away moment. Until there came another, and another, and another.

Review: V V Brown samples 2012 album 'Lollipops & Politics'

Aiming for pop stardom is a perilous thing, and Britain's V V Brown isn't taking anything for granted. Performing at Hollywood's intimate Bardot on Monday night, Brown seemed to acknowledge that a return trip to the United States was no sure thing, and inspired only by modest success. She thanked the audience not for buying her album -- Brown didn't have grand illusions -- but instead for purchasing her single "Shark in the Water." 

The song, she said, had sold 750,000 downloads, and allowed her to record sophomore album "Lollipops & Politics," to be released via Capitol on Feb. 7. She performed the single near the end of a mini-set at a weekly Monday night showcase for KCRW-FM (89.9), using her versatile but small five-piece band to replace the triumphant, doubt-conquering orchestrations of the recorded version with near ballad-like pacing, lending a more reflective air to the retro, bubblegum R&B that marked Brown's 2009 debut,  "Travelling Like the Light." 

While it played no doubt to tighter confines of the room, the more spacious rendition also fit in nicely with the few songs Brown sampled from "Lollipops & Politics." Candle-burner "Like a Fire," for instance, was largely atmosphere, with moments that flirted with spoken word amid verses that were caught in a give-and-take between elastic synths and waves of cymbal crashes. 

KCRW-FM's December benefit concert plans scaled back to one night

Public radio station KCRW-FM (89.9) is scaling back its plans for holiday fundraising concerts in December, dropping to a single night on Dec. 3 at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

The "Are Friends Eclectic?" shows were slated on Dec. 2 with reggae star Jimmy Cliff as the headliner along with Brett Dennen, Fool’s Gold, White Denim and Mia Doi Todd, and on Dec. 3 with Iron & Wine topping a bill that would also have included Belle Brigade, Anna Calvi, Zee Avi and the Secret Sisters.

“Early ticket sales for the first night were slow, so we decided to make it one blockbuster night of KCRW music that will blow your mind,” KCRW music director Jason Bentley said in a statement issued Friday.

Mariachi El Bronx, Dengue Fever make KCRW Halloween party a scream

Halloween, a holiday inspired by the grateful dead, can make those of us who are gratefully alive reflect on, and revel in, the pleasures of the temporal realm we inhabit.

In Los Angeles, one of those fleeting seasonal gifts is KCRW-FM (89.9)'s annual Masquerade dance party. On Saturday, the costumed bacchanal took over the Legendary Park Plaza hotel -- built in 1925 and overlooking MacArthur Park -- with a musical lineup that included Moby, Mariachi El Bronx, Dengue Fever, Milagres and the Santa Monica-based radio station's own gifted mash-up artists (Jason Bentley, Liza Richardson, Chris Douridas, et al).

Roaming the Art Deco hotel, patrons dressed as zombies, airline stewardesses, Black Swans, Travis Bickle and Cap'n Crunch (among many, many other guises), swigged drinks and sampled tunes across a wide sound spectrum, spaced across various lounges and ballrooms on two floors.

One of the evening's early revelations was Milagres, a Brooklyn-based band that, after changing its name and reshuffling personnel, deserves to find a wide audience for its ethereal, haunting compositions such as "Halfway." Kyle Wilson, the group's lead singer and principal tunesmith, hits high notes with the breathy eroticism of a young Prince, while his bandmates assemble a sophisticated sonic skeleton that evokes Radiohead and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.

KCRW holiday concerts slated for Dec. 2, 3 at the Orpheum

 
KCRW-FM (89.9) has enlisted a cadre of acts that have been championed on its airwaves for a pair of holiday shows Dec. 2 and 3 at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles to help support the station’s programming costs.

The Dec. 2 lineup is topped by reggae star Jimmy Cliff, and also includes pop singer Brett Dennen, world music group Fool’s Gold, psychedelic-funk band White Denim, Oklahoma chamber pop group Other Lives and L.A. singer-songwriter Mia Doi Todd.

The following night’s show will feature headliner Iron & Wine, L.A. indie pop band the Belle Brigade, English rock-noir singer-songwriter-guitarist Anna Calvi, Malaysian pop singer Zee Avi and retro country-folk duo the Secret Sisters.

“When envisioning a holiday concert to celebrate KCRW, I wanted to bring it back to basics and create an event that resonated with the spirit of the season,” station music director and “Morning Becomes Eclectic” host Jason Bentley said in a statement.

Tickets will be $55 to $200 and go on sale Tuesday to KCRW subscribers at www.kcrw.com, and a week later to the general public.

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Photo of Sam Beam, lead singer of Iron & Wine, during a concert in January at Los Angeles' Wiltern Theatre. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

Graffiti 6, Eastern Conference Champions open 'Also I Like to Rock' series at the Hammer

 
According to pop music dogma, deploying  a cover song at the height of a set can be a blessing or a curse.  Surrounded by tree canopies, stage lights and balcony silhouettes of Westside urbanites,  KCRW-FM darlings Graffiti 6 prepared to test that rule -- not with rock, but with R&B. Scanning a crowd of doting females at the inaugural night of the annual "And I Also Like to Rock" series at the Hammer Museum on Thursday night, green-eyed front man Jamie Scott hastily plucked a dark-haired admirer in a torn Beatles T-shirt and mini-dress from a growing crush of concertgoers. Her task: to hold up a lyrics sheet he’d barely memorized.   

Luckily, as the band’s silk-shirted, fauxhawk-wearing bass player dropped a crawling bass line to Blackstreet’s “No Diggity,” the crowd of disciples quickly bought in. A swell of closed-mouthed “mm-hmmms” that begin this 1996 club banger rose from the audience like smoke drifting from a smattering of cigarettes. 

Wandering through corridors of glass and white marble at the Westwood museum, free-spirited bohemians draped in flowing Coachella wear collided with off-duty college kids in UCLA Bruin garb. Families with fanny packs toted babies in strollers. Turntables manned by KCRW DJ Dan Wilcox emitted woofer-rattling electro and indie rock as a soundtrack to the crowd swell.

Rickie Lee Jones drops by School Night at Bardot in Hollywood

 
This post has been corrected. See the note below for details.

It didn't look as though anyone in the tightly packed space that is the Bardot club in Hollywood was the least bit thrown by the nominally surreal aspect of Rickie Lee Jones’ appearance there Monday night.

The veteran singer-songwriter dropped in for a brief live performance arranged, in part, to highlight her new DVD documenting ... a live performance.

The DVD, "Live in Stockholm," due July 5, is the first of her 30-plus year career, and after her quick solo set she said backstage that it was the culmination of a long-brewing desire to collaborate with filmmaker Ian McCrudden, director of the Grammy-nominated 2009 documentary “Anita O’Day -- The Life of a Jazz Singer.” Jones said she'd been wanting to work with McCrudden, who also has been a neighbor during her many years in Los Angeles, since she saw the O'Day film.

The often self-critical musician, celebrated both for her relentless sense of adventure in concert and perfectionism in the recording studio, said: "It’s got some pretty good parts. I don’t do much that later I don’t go, ‘Blecch, I suck.’ But on this, it’s got some good things on it." She did the 2010 show in a trio setting for which she was accompanied by bassist Joey Maramba and percussionist Lionel Cole.

The 2 1/2-hour video encompasses 19 songs spanning her career, and the audience at Bardot got a sampling before Jones took the stage armed with just an acoustic guitar. Monday's show was part of the 14-month-old School Night series at Bardot, curated by KCRW-FM deejay Chris Douridas, that's also hosted the likes of Chrissie Hynde, Neil Finn and Ron Sexsmith, as well as rising local and touring musicians the station is championing.  Jones played just three songs: “Altar Boy,” a left-field cover of Jefferson Airplane's "Comin’ Back to Me" and one of her concert standards, “Satellites,”  for which she recruited the house to provide choral backup.

Elsewhere on her current tour, she's decided to join the growing number of heritage artists who are performing entire albums in concert by playing her first two,  1979’s "Rickie Lee Jones" and 1981's "Pirates," from beginning to end.

 “I’ve done so much of ‘Pirates’ and so much of  the first record -- they’re never far from me -- I thought I’d like to do them in their entirety -- maybe even doing them in sequence as they are on the record; we’re still working that part out,” she said. Seeing Van Morrison play his 1968 album “Astral Weeks” on his 2009-2010 tour inspired her to try it with her own material. If one of rock’s most notoriously willful iconoclasts could do it, she reasoned, why shouldn’t she?

“Artists like that, their refusal to do what people want them to do for decades, then when they finally come and do that, maybe it’s fresh for them,” she said before stepping out of Bardot’s green room for a cigarette. “But the record has to be of a piece to make it worth doing in its entirety.”

For the record, 1:05 p.m. June 28: An earlier version of this post said the "School Night" series is sponsored by KCRW-FM. It is curated by KCRW deejay Chris Douridas.

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Photo: Rickie Lee Jones performing during the 2010 concert at the Berns Salonger theater in Stockholm. Credit: Ian McCrudden.

Electro-folk on the L.A. fast track from Seattle's Motopony

It's not a secret that aspiring bands cross state lines to seek fortune in the L.A. music scene. Enthusiastic acts come and go with the frequency of our city's Metro bus line -- there's almost always one driving in from somewhere. Motopony, however, landed in SoCal with a bit more momentum than the average lot.

The four-piece charged in from Seattle with a full head of public radio steam, winning over tastemaking DJs with its electro-inflected folk-rock. Together since 2009, Motopony recently caught the attention of Jason Bentley, music director of KCRW-FM (89.9), who championed the band's format-friendly sound by playing rather intricate tracks such as  "King of Diamonds" and "June." Not bad for a band whose self-titled debut was released on May 24 via New York's budding tinyOgre. 

Comprised of frontman Daniel Blue, keyboard/beat maker Josiah Sherman (a.k.a. Buddy Ross), guitarist Brantley Cady, and drummer Forrest Mauvais, Motopony will have a busy Saturday with two free shows -- one at 1 p.m. at Origami Vinyl in Echo Park and at 7 p.m. at the KCRW Summer Nights concert series in Pasadena. 

Pop & Hiss recently caught up with Blue from inside the band's tour van.