Well, we know he has "Faith," har har, but George Michael as a guardian angel? Watch the pilot episode of "Eli Stone" at 10 tonight on ABC and you'll see George in the role of Jonny Lee Miller's heavenly adviser. According to the George Michael online fanclub (and no, I'm not an official member), "the series follows a successful corporate attorney, Eli Stone (Miller), who turns over a new leaf and sets forth to help out the 'little guy.' George appears in dream sequences where he imparts sage advice to Eli, encouraging him to do good deeds." And taking things even further, each episode of the season will be titled after a song from George's extensive oeuvre. Can't wait for the "I Want Your Sex" episode. C-c-c-c-c'mon!
-- Margaret Wappler
[Photo: Miller, left, is blessed by a grinning George. Credit: Dean Freedman / ABC]
San Francisco's Noise Pop finalized its lineup today, throwing on last-minute additions such as She & Him (Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward) and the venerable divorce duo Quasi. IMHO, there's not much to get excited about, save the Magnetic Fields and the Mountain Goats.
-- Margaret Wappler
[Photo: The Mountain Goats in the ring. Credit: 4AD]
Finally, someone had the good sense to combine two of our favorite things in the world: drum sequencers and candy. This delightful little time-suck of a thesis project comes courtesy of Hannes Hesse, Andrew McDiarmid and Rosie Han, students at UC Berkeley's School of Information. Who says that a liberal arts education isn't practical? Or tasty?-August Brown
OK, so the new single "Lights & Music" from Australian disco dudes Cut Copy is a couple laps late on the blog-house/Italo revival. And in the accompanying video, everyone in the band is looking exactly a foot away from the camera, to an oddly detached effect. But still, after a year where M.I.A. took our wallets while we did the shotgun-cocking dance to "Paper Planes," Skull Disco loosened our fillings with sub-bass and a string of great stuff on Kompakt made us fear German efficiency all the more, it's nice to get a playbook dance single making all the right moves -- shimmering arpeggios, chilly harmonies and threadbare guitar licks. DFA's in-house producer Tim Goldsworthy midwifed it for Cut Copy's upcoming album on Modular, "In Ghost Colours," but the real treat is the band's mp3 DJ mix of where its collective head was while writing it. Moroder and Fleetwood Mac on the same mix! Someone get me some tissues for this sudden, unstoppable nosebleed.-- August Brown
It was busier than usual at Hollywood's Green Door once word got out that Snoop Dogg might join Deron Johnson's Tuesday evening jazz group for some freestyle good vibes. And although the D-O-to-the-double-gizzle failed to show, onetime music "star" Macy Grayjoined the ensemble around midnight. The singer, who took to the floor with a pronouncement ("I've been drinking") treated -- if that's the word -- the foxy crowd to two songs. Her first offering, a sultry rendition of "Whatever Lola Wants," was actually quite good at times, but then she sabotaged the tune, sputtering nonsense over the standard's quieter parts. Gray also gratuitously pointed out that Pink was in the audience, but the Grammy winner really wore out her welcome, however, with her second song: a downright awful cover of Radiohead's "Creep." By the end, people were heading toward the exit. Hey, we were there to see Snoop. And if Macy doesn't take herself seriously, it's hard for anyone else to, either. That said, seeing Macy sing is far superior to watching her "DJ," as she did at a Slimfast party (we swear we're not making this up) in January.
--Charlie Amter
[Photo: Macy gripping the mike. Credit: Charlie "Shorty" Amter / Los Angeles Times]
Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry
Shearer, David Wain and others.
Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a
driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was
(Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely
entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance
Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a
budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well
worth their intrusion.]
There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs
from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking a recliners.
"I can't compete with the set-up on Letterman" Was says with a laugh.
"But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?'
The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."
First things first: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers will be playing the Hollywood Bowl on June 25 and Verizon Wireless Amphitheater on Aug. 22 with a little help from opening act Steve Winwood. Tickets to both shows go on sale Monday, and if you're even a petite Petty fan, you should pick one up then.
Scratching a completely different itch among folks in a similar demographic, those time-signature abusing Canadians, Rush, also announced two shows: May 6 at the Nokia Theatre and May 11 at Verizon Wireless. Tickets go on sale Monday, but there's no, umm, hurry to buy them.
In less geriatric news, the Bamboozle Left is coming to Verizon Wireless on April 5-6. You can pick up passes to see both shows (which include Paramore, Jimmy Eat World, Face to Face and the All-American Rejects the first day and My Chemical Romance, Anti-Flag, Chiodos and Armor for Sleep the second) here right now, or wait 'til Saturday to get one-day tickets.
If neither aging rockers nor cheesy emo bands are your thing, don't fret. Other options await at Will Call. There are KCRW faves such as Ed Harcourt, March 10 at the Echoplex (tickets available now), and Kaki King, March 26 at the Roxy (tickets available Friday). There are hip-hop artists worth the drive to the Vault 350, including Pitbull and Baby Bash, April 3 (get tickets Saturday), and Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and Aceyalone, Feb. 20 (get tickets now).
But the winner? That has to be Harptallica, the all-harp tribute to Metallica, which plays the Malibu Inn on May 13 (tickets now). Why? With the possible exception of the Gregorian Masters of Chant, who play the El Rey on April 15 (tickets Saturday), there's no one else quite like them.
A friend of mine recently sent me a link to this video, saying that this is one of the hotter tracks in Sao Paulo clubs these days. Now, I don’t speak Portuguese and I have no idea what Mc Creu is talking about in this song, but I have a pretty good idea after watching the video (especially when it comes to the not-so-subtle confetti shot around 2:30). Sure, Americans may own air guitar, but it looks like no one can touch the Brazilians when it comes to “air humping” with control and rhythm. Not sure what to make of the repetitive jaw harp sample, however.-- Charlie Amter
Cute Band Alert! Back in the days of grunge, Sassy Magazine invented that feature to tell the world that indie rock boys could be heartthrobs too. We might have to revive the category just to accommodate Vampire Weekend, the painfully adorable quartet enjoying an avalanche of hype.
Columbia grads who coat songs about preppie life in a light veneer of world-beat guitars and rhythms, the Vampire Weekend calls what it does "Upper West Side Soweto" -- a catchphrase that's now biting back as skeptics question their artsy-craftsy appropriation of African influences. The band's mix is pleasant enough if you like your eyebrows arched, but we at Soundboard thought it might be useful to remind readers that actual African music is pretty awesome too.
For listeners who tire of Vampire Weekend's Izod jungle beats, here are a few relatively recent gems from the continent that these boys claim to sort of understand. Readers, we'd love to see your own picks in the comments section!
Tabu Ley Rochereau, "The Voice of Lightness" (Stern's Africa): Thanks to longtime African music fan Robert Christgau for the tip on this one -- an anthology of vintage tracks from the Congolese singer, one of Afropop's greatest voices. Soukous, Rocherau's particular subgenre, is crazy danceable music based on guitar lines that seem to float on helium. I saw Rochereau in an Oakland club back in the 1980s, and believe me, he really makes it rain.
Tinariwen, "Aman Iman: Water Is Life" (World Village) Revolutionary trance blues from desert nomads -- how hot is that? Tinariwen's excellent backstory (its members are Tuareg, a desert people, and allegedly trained as armed rebels before turning to music) has helped make it a favorite among upper-boho Westerners. What matters, though, is the band's groove : a fluid, sneaky thing, equally rooted in Arabic and psychedelic traditions, that packs more heat than most Euro-American rockers can even imagine these days.
Vusi Mahlasela, "Guiding Star" (ATO): Hipsters are never going to approve of Dave Matthews, and maybe that’s why this exceptionally graceful South African singer’s first studio effort for the jam master's ATO Records gained only marginal attention in the U.S. Or maybe Mahlasela’s gentle, folkish style, often communicating harrowing tales of life under and after apartheid, put people off. But “Guiding Star” is, in its quiet way, an African answer to Paul Simon’s groundbreaking “Graceland,” blending traditional sounds and contemporary stories to powerful effect.
Various artists, "The Very Best of Ethiopiques" (Union Square Music): Francis Falceto first heard Ethiopian pop on a friend’s cassete player in 1984; since then, the French promoter has devoted much of his life to getting that music past its homeland’s borders. The Ethiopiques series is at Volume 22 and growing; this two-CD collection highlights some of the best tracks from this archival treasure trove, ranging from haunting, Coltrane-esque jazz to ancient tunes on a King David’s harp.
Amadou & Mariam, "Dimanche a Bamako" (Nonesuch): It’s a couple years old, but this breakthrough album by the Malian expat husband-wife duo still ranks as one of the sunniest musical outings released this century. Manu Chao, the real king of world fusion music, produced. Some tracks boogie like classic rock, others roll along on those gloriously langorous Malian rhythms, some flirt with hip-hop. Every one will make you jump up and dance.
Soundboard contributor Casey Dolan also recommends the out-of-print "Songs the Swahili Sing," issued in 1983 on the legendary Original Music label, run by musicologist John Storm Roberts. “It introduced to Western audiences the sinuous music of taarab -- the music of the Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts, amalgamating traditional Arabic music, Bollywood film scores, classic Memphis R&B and the Kenyan pop tradition,” writes Casey. “Some great music from the mid/late '60s is represented, including the Black Star and Lucky Star musical clubs.”
So that’s just the tiniest foray into African pop -- we didn’t even mention such obvious notables as Vieux Farka Toure, Orchestra Baobab, Youssou N’Dour and Rokia Traore. If you can still make time for Vampire Weekend, cool. But don’t say we didn’t try to steer you right.
-- Ann Powers
[Photo 1: Vampire Weekend. Credit: billions.com. Photo 2: Amadou & Miriam at the Knitting Factory in 2005. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times.]
The Arthur Russell story begins in an unlikely place: A gay cello virtuoso from Oskaloosa, Iowa, moves to New York and takes up with the downtown literati, palling around with Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass in the '70s and '80s while crafting otherworldly disco singles and experimental chamber suites. It might have ended on a sadly all-too-precedented note, when Russell died of AIDS complications in 1992.
Fortunately, it didn't. A resurgent interest in Russell's work, helped along by lovingly curated compilations and reissues like Soul Jazz Records' 2004 "The World of Arthur Russell" is catching on among young artists who, like Russell, don't see boundaries between pop, disco and the avant-garde. A new four-track e.p. of covers by admiring indie songwriters and arrangers (such as the effortlessly charming Swede Jens Lekman, whose kalimba take on Russell's "A Little Lost" is above, and one by Victoria Bergsman, the ex-Concretes singer and inescapable-in-'07 Peter Bjorn and John collaborator) highlights the songcraft buried beneath his bottom-of-the-ocean atmospherics, and Deerhunter frontman/ Atlas Sound mastermind Bradford Cox recently posted a woozy remix of Russell's "Answers Me" on the Deerhunter blog.
Lekman and Cox are heirs to Russell's wide-eyed instincts for making art songs and noisy tone poems into inviting and danceable pop singles (they also each evoke his sad-eyed pan-sexual showmanship). But for the orginal article, Matt Wolf’s forthcoming documentary "Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell" evokes Russell's playful, melancholy and ever-searching mind through interviews with Glass, Russell's lover Tom Lee, Lekman and many others along with often-devasting footage of the man at work and a downtown utopia (fantastical or otherwise) collapsing around him.
I’ve run into a few hipster parents who proudly say they’ve made sure their kids don’t get into the Beatles. These people are being idiotic. Sure, it’s a better bar boast (on those nights you’ve hired a babysitter) if little Jared prefers the Ramones or Kanye West. But liking the Beatles is as easy as falling off a log for a reason: the songs are smart and welcoming, simple and memorable, exciting without being sleazy. They’re the perfect gateway into appreciating “adult” music. And Ringo is the gateway of the gateway.
My daughter Bebe got into Ringo the logical way: through “Help!” Recently reissued in a deluxe DVD set, “Help!” is Ringo’s caper. With a giant red ring stuck on his finger, he rushes around London and other scenic spots dodging inept mad scientists and crazed Oriental (yes, the outdated word is used) cultists who want to make the drummer a human sacrifice. The mildly offensive “Hinduface” aside, “Help!” is a lot of silly fun for a preschooler, and it left Bebe quite smitten with “the funny one.”
So I took Bebe out of Montessori early today to catch Ringo’s short House of Blues set, celebrating the Jan. 15 release of his memoiristic new album, “Liverpool 8.” (It’s on Capitol Records.)
Nervous about her grasp of the four-decade gap between “Help!” and now, I explained that Ringo would look like a “young grandpa,” but that she would still be able to recognize him by his voice. Just before 1 p.m., we grabbed a spot near some other lucky music biz offspring and their folks on the Sunset Strip club’s secone-floor balcony. “Is the real Ringo going to be here?” Bebe asked. I assured her, yes.
The real Ringo entered and grabbed a stool for a quick pre-set chat with journalist David Wild. Confusing things for Bebe (and me!) was his current musical collaborator, Eurythmics man Dave Stewart, whose close-cropped hair, beard and sunglasses made him a Ringo ringer. “Is that Ringo?” Bebe asked. Yes, I said, then I realized she was pointing at Stewart. It’s cool that they’re close, but the twin act was a bit odd.
Ringo’s Liverpudlian twang let us all know who was who, as he joked about being up much earlier than usual (“When I started, we only played at night”) and his failing memory, which he cited as one reason for recording, rather than writing, an autobiography. “There’s a lot of people, some here today, who actually know more about several years of my life than I do,” he chuckled.
A few bon mots later, Ringo and Dave forsook their perches and were joined by the “Liverpool 8” band, which included Randy Cook on drums and Sierra Swan on backing vocals. “He’s not a granpda!” Bebe shouted as Ringo did some agile dancing during “Photograph.” I hear Ringo eats a lot of broccoli; it’s doing him good.
She was happy to see him drum on “Boys” and liked the new album’s nautically flavored title song, which reminded her, predictably, of “Yellow Submarine” -- her favorite Ringo song, even though it’s not featured in “Help!”
After a rousing singalong on “With a Little Help From My Friends,” Ringo and his pals departed and the capacity crowd began filtering out. “Isn’t he going to do 'Yellow Submarine'?” Bebe asked. No, I said, I guess not this time. Bebe decided someone must have stolen the song from Ringo and hidden it away, so she forgave him, but not before announcing, “I won’t marry him if he doesn’t perform my song next time.” And this, my friends, is how teenyboppers are born.
As for “Liverpool 8,” it’s a charming listen, warm-hearted and expertly crafted -- a great family album, all around. I’m hoping it grows on Bebe. I’m getting a bit tired of “Yellow Submarine.” I’ll bet Ringo did too, sometime between “Help!” and today.
-- Ann Powers
[Photo: Ringo performs for "The Rachael Ray Show" last week. Credit: AP Photo/The Rachael Ray Show, David M. Russell. Photo 2: Ringo and ringer (Stewart, right) on the "The Late Show with Craig Ferguson." Credit: AP Photo/CBS, Monty Brinton]
If you need any proof of the lockstepping ways of today's music critics, just check out the top of Idolator's Pop 07 poll and compare it to Pazz & Jop at the Village Voice, the old dinosaur Idolator's poll was designed to defeat -- or at least challenge -- in its inaugural edition last year, when they called it Jackin' Pop. If you hadn't been told who was the flashy young upstart and who was the venerable old coot, could you tell the difference?
Idolator Pop 07 Album Top 10 (surveyed from 452 critics/voters):
1. LCD Soundsystem -- Sound of Silver
2. M.I.A. -- Kala
3. Radiohead -- In Rainbows
4. Arcade Fire -- Neon Bible
5. Amy Winehouse -- Back to Black
6. Spoon -- Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
7. The National -- Boxer
8. Kanye West -- Graduation
9. Panda Bear -- Person Pitch
10. Of Montreal -- Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
Pazz & Jop Album Top Ten (surveyed from 577 critics/voters):
1. LCD Soundsystem -- Sounds of Silver
2. Radiohead -- In Rainbows
3. M.I.A. -- Kala
4. Amy Winehouse -- Back to Black
5. Arcade Fire -- Neon Bible
6. Kanye West -- Graduation
7. Spoon -- Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
8. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss -- Raising Sand
9. Bruce Springsteen -- Magic
10. The National -- Boxer
Only the bottom of the top 10 gives a little hint at Idolator's younger crowd. I started to do some math regarding the finer points of the two polls, but I hate math so I'm happy to report that someone did it for me. It'll likely hurt your brain, following along with all this parsing and delineating. I recommend stepping away from your computer after three minutes of analysis and then staring out the window nearest you, which with hope will show at least one scrap of nature.
--Margaret Wappler
Photo: LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, the undisputed king? Credit: Robert Lachman/Los Angeles Times
On what he hopes to accomplish with the money he raises at his StaplesCenter shows, which start tonight:
“We’d like to do 10 million [dollars] in a weekend. It’s for fire victims, and then I would like to start an endowment for the future of California firefighting, and use the interest to get them something every year – a fire truck, something they can wear, whatever will make their job easier. I got a buddy at home who’s a firefighter, and I took him out to
California with me [recently], and he looked around and said, there’s no way to control fires here. It’s crazy!”
Unless you’re in Warrant or Def Leppard (or you're Liz Phair), rarely does a songwriter get to indulge the part of one’s psyche that inspires lyrics like “I’m going to beat off … all my demons.” But local sad-eyed folkie Charlie Wadhams, a veteran of the Gary Jules/Mia Doi Todd/Tom Brosseau axis of pearl-buttoned singer-songwritery, got to flex some not-often-used double-entendre skills in his contributions to the “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” soundtrack: the spaghetti-western kiss-off “Guilty as Charged” and the Sonny-and-Cher baiting “Let’s Duet.” Here, we duet with him in conversation.
How does one get into the business of writing for "Dewey Cox"?
I was finishing a record with Mike Andrews, who scored "Walk Hard,” and he told me that they still needed a load of songs written. They didn’t give me a lot of pointers. When I gave them “Guilty as Charged,” I didn’t even realize the movie was a comedy.
On “Let’s Duet,” was it hard to mock the cliché of the pop duet while also writing a functional song?
I wanted to write a duet that still worked as a serious song. The first two versions were pretty tame, but they kept coming back and saying they wanted it way nastier and more sexual, and finally I got the message and wrote that first line “In my dreams you’re blowing me … some kisses.” I tried to think of every line like that I could.
You wrote it with [famously hirsute local singer-songwriter] Benji Hughes, it’d be amazing to see the two of you sing that together.
I was really hoping that song would get nominated for an Oscar so me an Benji could perform it. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Benji in person, but people look at him and don’t realize he’s a master of the craft.
Writing songs like that and “Guilty as Charged” must have made you feel like AC/DC or Motley Crue or something, getting to be completely alpha male in song.
I could never do that in my own music, it’d come off as a total joke, so to live through "Dewey Cox" was a blast. There’s a bunch of songs that didn’t make that I hope will be on the DVD.
You’ve spent some serious time on the local songwriting scene. At what point in your career were you walking hardest?
When I had to step up and try to write like Dewey Cox. I’ve only written sweet love songs as long as I can remember, so to hike up my pants and write tough, that was the hardest I’d walked.
--August Brown
Wadhams’ album “Free Up Your Schedule” is out now. Photo by Laura Heffington.
Grizzly Bear will be sharing a bill with the L.A. Phil on March 1 at Disney Hall. They will not be playing together, but instead will divide the program: L.A. Phil opens and Grizzly Bear headlines?!
A more inspired double bill can scarcely be imagined. Los Grizzlies exemplify the best of the chamber music sensibility in D.I.Y. indie rock. The Philharmonic's share of the program will include pieces jointly agreed upon by the band and the orchestra, while the group's will include material from its lush 2006 opus, "Yellow House." Tickets go on sale next Saturday, Feb. 2.
That album landed on many Top 10 lists for that year and was my No. 1 choice. Few albums set me back in gobsmacked wonder as much as this one did. I met Grizzly Daniel Rossen last year when the band opened for Feist, and I told him so. He was openly embarrassed. Such is ursine humility.
“My youngest daughter wants to follow in Trisha’s footsteps. [Ed. note: that's singer supreme Trisha Yearwood, Garth's main squeeze, for those of you who didn't notice the nuptials a few years back.] She really wants it so bad she can taste it. So did I. When I was eighteen, they had a thing called Opryland USA and it would go thru the nation and pick 11 people . [Ed. note: Brooks seems to be referring to a regional contest sponsored by the Grand Old Opry called the Opry Talent Search.] I drove into Oklahoma City and played, went back home and a month later I got a letter and listed the fourteen players and I was one of them. But mom and dad said, you can’t go to that. That’s your summer, you gotta make money here to go back to school! It broke my heart but they were right. All I can do is look back and say, I’m where I’m at, and so some right choices must have been made. Same thing with my youngest. [Ed. note: C'mon Garth, give little Allie a chance!]
For a couple nervous minutes at the Troubadour on Wednesday night, Gallows' singer Frank Carter looked like he was going to stage-dive from the upstairs balcony. It's likely been done a few times in the Troubadour's history, but it's surely impossible to do well, even for the redheaded firecracker who fronts the most promising punk band since the Blood Brothers called it quits. Fortunately for his vertebrae, he was only feigning it, and he stuck to climbing the lighting rigs and shrieking bloody murder while his band updated the '77 playbook with Oi! shouts, math-rock breakdowns and snaking call-and-response surf metal licks. L.A.'s quite great "new punk" scene at the Smell (No Age, Health, Abe Vigoda, Mika Miko, etc.) has earned scads of deserved press, but it was exhilarating in its own right to see the London-based Gallows strip the art school pretensions down to punk's spit-and-vinegar essence while still elaborating on hardcore formulas. Also, they do the second-best (behind Dirty Projectors) Black Flag cover going these days. Expect these kids to get much, much bigger.
We got news a few minutes ago that Scarlett Johansson's first album will arrive with the May flowers. Now, many famous thespians lament that the media don't take these endeavors seriously, but we think it's perfectly fine if actors want to flirt with being rock stars, chanteuses, country badasses or whatever else. But we're also allowed to be skeptical. Don Johnson, Corey Feldman, Paris Hilton, William Shatner and dozens of others have made us this way. It also, frankly, reeks of fame-hogging. Share the wealth -- literally! Anyway, here's the press release:
"Scarlett Johansson will release her debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, on Atco Records, an imprint of Warner Music Group's Rhino Entertainment, on May 20. The inspired album features 10 Tom Waits songs and includes one original track. Collaborating with TV on the Radio producer David Sitek, Johansson is also joined by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner, Sean Antanaitis from Celebration, as well as others. Johansson spent five weeks last spring recording in Louisiana at Dockside Studios."
Despite our teases, we're keeping an open mind on this one. Lucky for Scarlett, we still watch "Ghost World" on an annual basis. Here's hoping she can summon a little more presence than she did singing along with the Jesus and Mary Chain at Coachella last year, where her wispy vocals apparently disappeared into the admittedly powerful hive of guitars. So, Wendy O. Williams she ain't, but maybe she can work some kind of femme-hobo spirit covering those Waits tracks.
More soon on celebs and records...
-- Margaret Wappler
[Photo: Scarlett Johansson performs with Jim Reid, lead singer of Jesus and Mary Chain. Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times]
The big Will Call news this week came from Goldenvoice, which announced the lineup for the 2008 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, to be held April 25-27 at the Empire Polo Fields in Indio. It's an interesting crop blooming in the desert this year with surprises right up to the top of the bill, which includes surfer-singer Jack Johnson, a reunited Portishead, and Pink Floyd visionary Roger Waters, who'll be playing "Dark Side of the Moon" in its entirety.
Surprised by one or two of the headliners and interested in discussing it? Want to know who else is playing the festival??? Go here for the complete lineup and a lively thread on the topic.
In other news, it was a decent week. Bittersweet songstress Cat Power will be playing the Wiltern on Feb. 29 (tickets on sale Saturday). Brooklyn indie rockers Grizzly Bear will be teaming up with the L.A. Philharmonic for a March 1 show at Walt Disney Concert Hall (tickets on sale next Saturday, Feb. 2). And dance-rock acts MSTRKRFT and Z-Trip will be performing with LA Riots and DJ Diabetic at the Music Box at the Fonda on April 18 (tickets on sale Saturday).
Hip-hop fans will be happy to note the Paid Dues concert featuring Book Camp Clik, Sage Francis, Living Legends and Hieroglyphics at the San Bernadino NOS Events Center on March 22, and that Common will be playing the House of Blues West Hollywood on Feb. 12 and Anaheim on Feb. 13 (tickets to both shows go on sale Saturday).
The winner this week? Clearly, it' s Jack Johnson. (Headlining Coachella's first night? Seriously, whose board did he wax to attain that honor?) But in the interest of simplicity, let's give it to the whole of Coachella 2008 for that curveball of a lineup.
--Liam Gowing
Editor's note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that tickets for Grizzly Bear's show with the L.A. Philharmonic (March 1 at Walt Disney Concert Hall) would go on sale this Saturday. In fact, tickets for the show will go on sale next Saturday, Feb. 2.
In the ranks of overwrought music writing that have appeared in the Village Voice, Garrett Kamps is a god among fanboys. His recent review of Cat Power's flawed but arresting "Jukebox" covers record is especially troubling. It's not so much the rank misogyny or his John Yoo-level torturing of the em dash that really derails this review, but the fact that he doesn't seem to know what, exactly, a "cougar" is. Given our close approximation to Orange County, we know all too well. Cougars are sexually aggressive women on the far side of 40 peddling consequence-free hookups to inexperienced young men who will relay the tales in hushed, reverent tones over Halo 3 tournaments with their friends. Does that sound like an apt description of Cat Power (a.k.a. Chan Marshall), who once wrote a song about Patti Smith's children and her own abortion? Or the one who wrote one of 2006's most generous, uplifting Southern soul albums, "The Greatest?"
If Kamps is truly hunting for cougars, we can suggest a fewbetterplaces for him to start trolling.
-- August Brown
[Cougar photo by Christine Cotter / Los Angeles Times. Chan Marshall photo by Stefano Giovannini / Beggars Group LTD via Bloomberg News]
An earlier version of this blog incorrectly referred to John Yoo as John Wu. And that was all Margaret's fault and not August's, so she will be buying him a latte something-or-another later today. Maybe.
Well, we know he has "Faith," har har, but George Michael as a guardian angel? Watch the pilot episode of "Eli Stone" at 10 tonight on ABC and you'll see George in the role of Jonny Lee Miller's heavenly adviser. According to the George Michael online fanclub (and no, I'm not an official member), "the series follows a successful corporate attorney, Eli Stone (Miller), who turns over a new leaf and sets forth to help out the 'little guy.' George appears in dream sequences where he imparts sage advice to Eli, encouraging him to do good deeds." And taking things even further, each episode of the season will be titled after a song from George's extensive oeuvre. Can't wait for the "I Want Your Sex" episode. C-c-c-c-c'mon!
