A peek inside Dave Navarro's loft: Naturally, there's snakeskin involved

Dave Navarro, former Carmen Electra man-thing and Jane's Addiction guitarist, wants to know if you'd like to come cuddle with him and his very pouffy pillow?

No? Well, OK. On Wednesday, LATimes.com's Home section put up some pictures of Navarro's loft in the Broadway Hollywood, and it makes for some prime, time-sucking clickage. Now, there's no denying that the loft is cool with lots of playful, sleek design (I'm totally digging the faux deer), but there are also a few elements that can't help but provoke a snicker, not to mention a resounding sense that a few illicit activities have gone down between these walls, which, thankfully, cannot talk.

But, going back to those quintessentially Navarro touches, what do we think of the snakeskin table with the silver skull on it? I don't know about you, but is that the first thing you want to look at when you're groggy in the morning, sipping juice and reading the newspaper? A silver skull perched atop slithery snakeskin? I guess this is what separates the rockers from the rest of us, the ability to eat one's eggs while surrounded by reptilian splendor.

Then again, maybe Navarro doesn't eat eggs at all for breakfast. Or maybe not chicken ones, anyway. Maybe, say, lizard ones. Yum!

-- Margaret Wappler

Photo credit: Edward Duarte

Superunknown: Will Hillary Clinton rock out with Detour Fest kids?

We always suspected Hillary Rodham Clinton was a big Soundgarden fan. The New York senator will host a $500-and-up fundraiser at downtown L.A.’s swank Edison bar Oct. 4 to raise money for Barack Obama.  Former Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell will perform at the benefit, along with additional musical acts to be announced.

Coincidentally, LA Weekly’s annual fall happening, the Goldenvoice-produced Detour Music Festival, also takes place just two blocks away Oct. 4 near City Hall.  Fortunately, both events will occur on a devoid-of-traffic Saturday, preventing a certain valet-and-Secret Service-induced nightmare. 

Still, those arriving downtown via car next Saturday had better be prepared for street closures, especially late arrivals. “We are closing Spring between Aliso and 2nd, Main between Aliso and 2nd, and Temple between Broadway and Los Angeles, 1st between Broadway and Los Angeles,” says Goldenvoice event producer Phil Blaine. “There is a special entrance at 1st and Broadway for Metro riders but the main entrance is at 2nd and Main Street.” (Exactly where most patrons will find their way to the Edison’s side alley entrance.) Find out if Clinton is on the guest list for the Detour festival after the jump....

Stevie Nicks-themed tambourine art will save our economy

With our financial infrastructure in free fall, the dollar staring at a precipice of worthlessness and vast swaths of America about to become hobo villages, Soundboard has a suggestion for a sound investment for you and your family's future: Stevie Nicks-themed tambourine art.

We received this tip from a friend-of-the-editor's blog about Johanna's Art, your home for "fantasy portraits of Stevie in magical settings that you may enjoy." Many of which appear on Nicks' preferred instrument, the tambourine! Sadly, the site is no longer accepting commissioned portraits where your likeness can share shaker space with Nicks, but for those out there who spent their childhood -- and adulthood -- crooning along to "Tusk" into a hairbrush (certainly no one we know, right, Margaret?), this might be the single best Christmas present ever.

-- August Brown

Photo of tambourine art featuring Nicks and a lupine friend from www.johannas-art.com

Metallica album sparks more sales, some fan complaints

Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” album holds down a second week atop the national sales chart, which may be music to the ears of the speed metal band and its record label, but not to a growing number of fans who are squawking about what they're hearing.

The album, which sold an additional 370,000 copies last week after moving 490,000 during its first three days in stores, is the subject of an online petition decrying the sound quality and demanding that it be remixed or remastered and re-released with improved audio. That petition contained more than 10,000 signatures as of this afternoon...

Hey, a new Echo Park record store?

This morning, a little bird (actually, a burly contractor in the front seat of a pickup truck) told us that all the construction happening next door to the Echo will yield some new and savvily target-marketed delights for eastside show-goers. The block will soon host a future-themed pizza parlor and an ice cream shop (which our epicurean colleagues over at the Daily Dish have more on). But a UPS package notice at the in-progress adjacent space at 1816 Sunset Blvd. had been left for an intriguing-sounding "Origami Music." The construction team working on the space told us that it would indeed be a record store, but we wonder if this has anything to do with the Echo Park-based record label Origami, which has local stalwarts Army Navy and Wait.Think.Fast. on its roster. We'll have more details after we put our bloodhounds on the trail, but for those kids still pouring one out for Sea Level Records, start holding out hope for a new income-sucker in the neighborhood.

(UPDATE: Looks like we guessed right! Neil from Origami confirms below.)

(SECOND UPDATE: Add to that stretch of Sunset Blvd. a forthcoming new/used bookstore and cafe, STORIES, in the old Sea Level Records space. STORIES is co-owned by Spaceland's Liz Garo, and they expect to open in late Oct.)

-- August Brown

Photo of the block by neighborhood n'er-do-well Jessica Gelt/Los Angeles Times

Heavy D: Reggae's new champion

For those who grew up on hip-hop music in the late 1980s, Heavy D is a familiar name. The "money earnin'" Mount Vernon-raised rapper was a fixture on BET and urban radio stations nationwide, and scored crossover R&B hits with songs such as "Somebody for Me," "Now That We Found Love"
and "Gyrlz, They Love Me."

Now, the onetime self-professed overweight lover (who has slimmed down considerably since topping the scales at 250 pounds back in the '80s) is tackling a new genre, reggae, with a full-length release, "Vibes," out Tuesday via iTunes. A physical release will follow in early 2009.

“If you go back and follow my career, you’ll see that I’ve always had reggae influences,” the rapper said earlier this month from his house in Beverly Hills. "I’ve always toyed with the idea of doing a full reggae album, but I wasn’t feeling I could live up to the standard."

With “Vibes,” Heavy D, born Dwight Errington Myers, has arguably lived up to the standard his fellow countrymen (Myers was born in Jamaica) demand from their top musicians. Tracks such as "Love You Like This" (stream a sample here of his collaboration with Barrington Levy) pulse with infectious rhythms that could fill a dance floor in a Kingston minute. 

Clay Aiken said 'yes' instead of 'yep': Gay pride in celeb-speak

When “American Idol” winner* runner-up Clay Aiken decided to come out of the closet this week, announcing his homosexuality in the latest issue of People magazine, celebrity watchers and etymologists alike sat up and took notice -– but for vastly different reasons.

Dogged by rumors since entering the public consciousness in 2003, Aiken confirmed widely held suspicions regarding his sexual orientation in an interview with the magazine. Its cover features a photo of the fleet-voiced, elf-like singer hugging his newborn son accompanied by the headline: “Yes, I’m gay.”

Crystallizing the general reaction from the celebrity press, a blog post yesterday from the self-declared “Queen of all media” Perez Hilton blares “Finally!!!!!”

But for word lovers, close readers and celebrity obsessives, the “Yes, I’m gay” headline exists as a subtle tweak on the way mainstream media has historically handled celebrity self-outing.

In 1997, comedian Ellen DeGeneres similarly came out by appearing on the cover of Time magazine. Her headline: “Yep, I’m gay.” The magazine was presumably quoting DeGeneres, then a sitcom star. Nonetheless, such a subtle gradation of language sounds downright folksy contrasted against Aiken’s highly starched “Yes, I’m gay.” (That year “Yep, I’m gay” began to appear on keychains and was memorialized in a song by Jade Esteban Estrada.)

The headline accompanying sitcom star Neil Patrick Harris’ self-outing article in People in 2006 was comparatively verbose: “I am a very content gay man.”

But for former N’Sync member Lance Bass, who revealed his sexual orientation on the cover of People in 2006, less is apparently more. Unlike Aiken, Harris and DeGeneres, his headline dispensed with any sort of qualifiers or subtle, conversational cues and cut directly to the chase, flatly declaring: “I’m gay.”

-- Chris Lee

Photo credit: Associated Press

*CORRECTION: Aiken was the runner-up on "American Idol" in 2003.

Flea, USC freshman, talks about his upcoming solo record

As fellow L.A. Times blog All Things Trojan reported last night, Michael Balzary -- better known as Flea 'round these parts -- is indeed a freshie at USC. I interviewed the bassist last week about Hullabaloo, the upcoming benefit concert for the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, which he founded with childhood friend Keith Barry in 2001, and we got a chance to gab about his classes, his upcoming solo work and whether or not things will be resuming with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

--Margaret Wappler

So you're taking classes at USC. What brought that on?

I’m glad my music education has developed the way that it has, but it’s so much fun to learn this stuff because I never knew anything. I played trumpet in the school bands. I learned things I liked to play on my trumpet but I didn’t learn why this note goes with this note and why it produces that sound. Or how to create tension in the composition. The Chili Peppers did that in our song structures but all based on emotion and intuition as opposed to knowing the math and academics of it. Knowing the structure is really fun.

What classes are you taking?

I'm taking three: theory, composition and jazz trumpet.

This year's Eagle Rock Music Festival will incur much less wrath than Sunset Junction

Well, huh! Suddenly, the Eagle Rock Music Festival, one of the latest entries into the busy late-summer/early-fall street fair scene in L.A., seems to have found a niche this year: move the Smell scene north and east, and let the venerable beardy guys who run the Ship studio curate a stage. The neighborhood is already ground zero for older rocker types who need cheap space but don't want to compete with 21-year-old CalArts grads vomiting on their Echo Park doorsteps. This year's ERMF (a fun acronym to say aloud if there ever was one) seems to further cement that trend -- Abe Vigoda, Mika Miko and Crystal Antlers headline along with jangly expat Silver Lakers Earlimart and Radar Bros.

Soundboard to fear for its life at 'The Death of the Critic' panel

Because we felt that this week of news was all sunshine and unicorns, Soundboard would like to cordially invite all of you chin-stroking music-thinker types to stare your own soul-sucking irrelevance right in the eye and weep at the altars of our job-killing Internet commentariat overlords. Kidding! But The Times' own Pop Czar Ann Powers will host a hopefully less-than-prophetic panel addressing "The Death of the Critic" in music and media on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at USC, discussing the role of professional music criticism in the age of Twitter, TorrentSpy and shrinking newspapers. Panelists include Soul-Sides.com editor Oliver Wang, LA Weekly's Randall Roberts and plenty of other pretty faces attached to regular bylines around town, but you've got to RSVP to go.

We'll be the ones outside holding the stick-and-satchel combo containing our meager possessions while huddling around a trash can fire of promotional kits.

-- August Brown 

Photo of some critics who slammed the latest Coldplay album by Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times