Oh noes: Devendra Banhart and Natalie Portman break up

Usually we don't cite tabloids around these parts, for better or worse, but InTouch is suggesting that Natalie Portman and L.A.'s beardiest beardo, Devendra Banhart, have called it off.

The two 27-year-olds met on the set of Banhart's video for "Carmensita," which Portman starred in, and she reportedly had moved to L.A. from New York to be with him. Soundboard mourns the passing of yet another indie rocker-dreamy/alt-ish actress relationship, though it appears Banhart's wasting no time in finding new ways to express his spirit of eros (you can find the full album art on your own, as it's NSFW, or safe for anyone, really).

--August Brown

Photo: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

The Viva Yiddish! Project is a look backward and forward into L.A.'s polyglot musical heritage. In decades past, neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights had significant populations of Yiddish speakers whose uptempo klezmer tunes made unlikely but easy bedfellows with the pachuco and mambo of their Latino neighbors. Though L.A.'s neighborhoods are more broken up today, this dozens-strong ensemble -- founded by Frank London of the Klezmatics, Yiddish music scholar Michael Alpert and USC professor and music writer Josh Kun -- is a fond remembrance of the era, a thoroughly contemporary example of the possibilities of localized world music, and most important, a giant, giddy dance party. They play at 8 p.m. on Saturday at California Plaza.

-August Brown

Photo: Courtesy of Yiddishkayt Los Angeles

Some of you may have caught my brief history of personal pop-critic mishaps today. A highlight of my ill-spent youth came when a chemically altered friend took a lighter to my then-long, curly hair at a Queen concert in 1980. Needless to say, the smoky smell distracted me from my singular opportunity to experience Freddie Mercury live -- though thank goodness I hadn't yet started my lifetime of dye jobs, or I wouldn't be around to blog today.

At any rate, my memories prompted an e-mail from Cynthia Fox of KLOS-FM (95.5), noting that tonight at 8:30 on KCET, you can witness a Queen show not unlike the one I loved despite the damage to my split ends. The public television station is broadcasting "Queen Rock Montreal," which captures a 1981 performance of the band at that Canadian city's Forum. Because it's pledge drive time, you'll undoubtedly have a chance to phone in for a "gift" of the concert DVD as well.

Here's a sample of the program:

Extra fun comes during those pledge breaks, when Ms. Fox will be interviewing Queen guitar god and PhD-accredited astrophysicist Brian May about the band's new life with Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers in the Freddie seat, his gig as chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University and his recent book "Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." More than virtually any other classic rocker, Dr. May has proved that there's more than one way to keep yourself alive.

-- Ann Powers

Contrary to what themed frat parties across America would have you believe, the disco world in the '70s was actually a defiant, experimental scene celebrating racial and sexual minority cultures with righteous jubilance. LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy is embarking on a DJ tour to help correct the socio-historical record while grinding today's club kids into the ground. Special Disco Version is the pet project tour from Murphy and LCD drummer Pat Mahoney, where they'll crack open the same crates of obscure remixes and lost 12-inches that yielded their awesome disco-heavy "Fabriclive" mix.

The tour comes to the Roosevelt Hotel on Sunday, but if, like so many of us at the Board, you're banned from the Tropicana Bar for past indiscretions (or just can't get in, as is often the case), there's a warehouse show Saturday at 647 Lamar St. in downtown L.A. Tickets are at blackdisco.net, and leave the paste-on sideburns and chest hair at home, thanks.

-- August Brown

Photo of Mahoney and Murphy by Ruvan Wijesooriya 

When I met Sean Nelson in his now-hometown of Seattle in 2001, the L.A. native had already peaked as a pop star.

His band, Harvey Danger, had one big hit perched atop the Modern Rock charts 10 years ago -- “Flagpole Sitta,” a lovely burst of poison sunshine that perfectly captured alt-rock’s transition from grunge-era heaviness to Death Cab-style cheerful neuroticism. (You remember it: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well,” Sean sang, his choir-boy tenor cracking on the high note. If you've forgotten, this YouTube video should jar your memory.)

“10 years ago (pretty much exactly), we had the number one song on KROQ, and sold out the Troubadour, The Roxy and The Viper Room during the summer. Next week we'll play in front of 60 people. And we're happy,” Sean wrote in a recent e-mail announcing Saturday’s acoustic Harvey Danger show at Largo.

The most touching moments at Saturday’s Grammy Foundation salute to longtime Beatles producer George Martin came from those who shared stories of their associations with Martin and/or the Beatles.

Before delivering his own whisper-sung version of the hit theme song from “Alfie,” veteran composer Burt Bacharach (above) recalled meeting Martin for the first time in the mid-1960s when Cilla Black was recording the song in England (before Dionne Warwick’s U.S. hit version). “I must have driven everyone crazy,” Bacharach said. “I think we did 34 takes.”

A new photographic exhibit at New York City's Morrison Hotel Gallery offers a glimpse of rare recording session images from Columbia Records' legendary studio on 30th Street. Among the artists captured on film are Billie Holiday (left), Bob Dylan and Miles Davis (see those two after the jump). Johnny Cash, Leonard Bernstein, Tony Bennett, Thelonious Monk and Ella Fitzgerald can be seen as well. And you don't need to be in New York to look at the photos.

Last year, the local Stones Throw impresario and DJ extraordinaire Peanut Butter Wolf taught a master class in turntabling with his 777 tour of Los Angeles. Over seven nights and seven venues, he spun sets of seven different genres of music without touching any medium besides delicious hot vinyl or repeating a song in any set. This year, he's upping the degree of difficulty by making it an 888 tour with genre nights such as Early House, '70s Disco and movie music. The full schedule is below, and let it be known that, like A-Trak or Aaron LaCrate, Peanut Butter Wolf is a rare DJ who's scads of fun as a performer as well as a party-starter. Any night is well worth the trip.

(Update! We were sent some wrong information about the sets: turns out PBW will be playing videos and spinning with Serato, the beloved DJ software program. Looks like even the most avid vinyl advocates hate lugging those crates around town. Genre nights also updated after the jump.)

Depending on which part of the country you grew up in, or what kind of cable system you had in the 1980s, you might remember a little counter-culture TV program called "Night Flight" that frequently showcased concert footage and early '80s music videos from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran and Wendy O. Williams. The music was thematically packaged with the odd cartoon (early "Beavis and Butt-head" shorts) or full-length movies, such as France's animated "Fantastic Planet."

"Night Flight" aired on the fledgling USA Network from 1981 until 1988. Creator Stuart S. Shapiro and co-producer Stuart Samuels got their hands on archived tapes of the show just last year and are hoping to bring this iconic program back to its stoner glory.

Wu-Tang Clan's abbot and resident chess master, RZA, is starting to look more like a neo-soul singer instead of the ruckus-bringer from the early '90s. I guess that's what becoming a Hollywood composer and actor will do to you. The change has actually brought him a fair amount of flack from his brethren for his softened, more focused beat production on the Wu's recent "8 Diagrams" album.

But fear not, RZA loyalists: Superhero hedonist alter ego Bobby Digital is back.

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Viva Yiddish! Project is a glimpse at vintage L.A. music

The Viva Yiddish! Project is a look backward and forward into L.A.'s polyglot musical heritage. In decades past, neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights had significant populations of Yiddish speakers whose uptempo klezmer tunes made unlikely but easy bedfellows with the pachuco and mambo of their Latino neighbors. Though L.A.'s neighborhoods are more broken up today, this dozens-strong ensemble -- founded by Frank London of the Klezmatics, Yiddish music scholar Michael Alpert and USC professor and music writer Josh Kun -- is a fond remembrance of the era, a thoroughly contemporary example of the possibilities of localized world music, and most important, a giant, giddy dance party. They play at 8 p.m. on Saturday at California Plaza.

-August Brown

Photo: Courtesy of Yiddishkayt Los Angeles

Some of you may have caught my brief history of personal pop-critic mishaps today. A highlight of my ill-spent youth came when a chemically altered friend took a lighter to my then-long, curly hair at a Queen concert in 1980. Needless to say, the smoky smell distracted me from my singular opportunity to experience Freddie Mercury live -- though thank goodness I hadn't yet started my lifetime of dye jobs, or I wouldn't be around to blog today.

At any rate, my memories prompted an e-mail from Cynthia Fox of KLOS-FM (95.5), noting that tonight at 8:30 on KCET, you can witness a Queen show not unlike the one I loved despite the damage to my split ends. The public television station is broadcasting "Queen Rock Montreal," which captures a 1981 performance of the band at that Canadian city's Forum. Because it's pledge drive time, you'll undoubtedly have a chance to phone in for a "gift" of the concert DVD as well.

Here's a sample of the program:

Extra fun comes during those pledge breaks, when Ms. Fox will be interviewing Queen guitar god and PhD-accredited astrophysicist Brian May about the band's new life with Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers in the Freddie seat, his gig as chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University and his recent book "Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." More than virtually any other classic rocker, Dr. May has proved that there's more than one way to keep yourself alive.

-- Ann Powers

Contrary to what themed frat parties across America would have you believe, the disco world in the '70s was actually a defiant, experimental scene celebrating racial and sexual minority cultures with righteous jubilance. LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy is embarking on a DJ tour to help correct the socio-historical record while grinding today's club kids into the ground. Special Disco Version is the pet project tour from Murphy and LCD drummer Pat Mahoney, where they'll crack open the same crates of obscure remixes and lost 12-inches that yielded their awesome disco-heavy "Fabriclive" mix.

The tour comes to the Roosevelt Hotel on Sunday, but if, like so many of us at the Board, you're banned from the Tropicana Bar for past indiscretions (or just can't get in, as is often the case), there's a warehouse show Saturday at 647 Lamar St. in downtown L.A. Tickets are at blackdisco.net, and leave the paste-on sideburns and chest hair at home, thanks.

-- August Brown

Photo of Mahoney and Murphy by Ruvan Wijesooriya 

When I met Sean Nelson in his now-hometown of Seattle in 2001, the L.A. native had already peaked as a pop star.

His band, Harvey Danger, had one big hit perched atop the Modern Rock charts 10 years ago -- “Flagpole Sitta,” a lovely burst of poison sunshine that perfectly captured alt-rock’s transition from grunge-era heaviness to Death Cab-style cheerful neuroticism. (You remember it: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well,” Sean sang, his choir-boy tenor cracking on the high note. If you've forgotten, this YouTube video should jar your memory.)

“10 years ago (pretty much exactly), we had the number one song on KROQ, and sold out the Troubadour, The Roxy and The Viper Room during the summer. Next week we'll play in front of 60 people. And we're happy,” Sean wrote in a recent e-mail announcing Saturday’s acoustic Harvey Danger show at Largo.

The most touching moments at Saturday’s Grammy Foundation salute to longtime Beatles producer George Martin came from those who shared stories of their associations with Martin and/or the Beatles.

Before delivering his own whisper-sung version of the hit theme song from “Alfie,” veteran composer Burt Bacharach (above) recalled meeting Martin for the first time in the mid-1960s when Cilla Black was recording the song in England (before Dionne Warwick’s U.S. hit version). “I must have driven everyone crazy,” Bacharach said. “I think we did 34 takes.”

A new photographic exhibit at New York City's Morrison Hotel Gallery offers a glimpse of rare recording session images from Columbia Records' legendary studio on 30th Street. Among the artists captured on film are Billie Holiday (left), Bob Dylan and Miles Davis (see those two after the jump). Johnny Cash, Leonard Bernstein, Tony Bennett, Thelonious Monk and Ella Fitzgerald can be seen as well. And you don't need to be in New York to look at the photos.

Last year, the local Stones Throw impresario and DJ extraordinaire Peanut Butter Wolf taught a master class in turntabling with his 777 tour of Los Angeles. Over seven nights and seven venues, he spun sets of seven different genres of music without touching any medium besides delicious hot vinyl or repeating a song in any set. This year, he's upping the degree of difficulty by making it an 888 tour with genre nights such as Early House, '70s Disco and movie music. The full schedule is below, and let it be known that, like A-Trak or Aaron LaCrate, Peanut Butter Wolf is a rare DJ who's scads of fun as a performer as well as a party-starter. Any night is well worth the trip.

(Update! We were sent some wrong information about the sets: turns out PBW will be playing videos and spinning with Serato, the beloved DJ software program. Looks like even the most avid vinyl advocates hate lugging those crates around town. Genre nights also updated after the jump.)

Depending on which part of the country you grew up in, or what kind of cable system you had in the 1980s, you might remember a little counter-culture TV program called "Night Flight" that frequently showcased concert footage and early '80s music videos from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran and Wendy O. Williams. The music was thematically packaged with the odd cartoon (early "Beavis and Butt-head" shorts) or full-length movies, such as France's animated "Fantastic Planet."

"Night Flight" aired on the fledgling USA Network from 1981 until 1988. Creator Stuart S. Shapiro and co-producer Stuart Samuels got their hands on archived tapes of the show just last year and are hoping to bring this iconic program back to its stoner glory.

Wu-Tang Clan's abbot and resident chess master, RZA, is starting to look more like a neo-soul singer instead of the ruckus-bringer from the early '90s. I guess that's what becoming a Hollywood composer and actor will do to you. The change has actually brought him a fair amount of flack from his brethren for his softened, more focused beat production on the Wu's recent "8 Diagrams" album.

But fear not, RZA loyalists: Superhero hedonist alter ego Bobby Digital is back.

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

KCET airs a 1981 Queen concert tonight

Some of you may have caught my brief history of personal pop-critic mishaps today. A highlight of my ill-spent youth came when a chemically altered friend took a lighter to my then-long, curly hair at a Queen concert in 1980. Needless to say, the smoky smell distracted me from my singular opportunity to experience Freddie Mercury live -- though thank goodness I hadn't yet started my lifetime of dye jobs, or I wouldn't be around to blog today.

At any rate, my memories prompted an e-mail from Cynthia Fox of KLOS-FM (95.5), noting that tonight at 8:30 on KCET, you can witness a Queen show not unlike the one I loved despite the damage to my split ends. The public television station is broadcasting "Queen Rock Montreal," which captures a 1981 performance of the band at that Canadian city's Forum. Because it's pledge drive time, you'll undoubtedly have a chance to phone in for a "gift" of the concert DVD as well.

Here's a sample of the program:

Extra fun comes during those pledge breaks, when Ms. Fox will be interviewing Queen guitar god and PhD-accredited astrophysicist Brian May about the band's new life with Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers in the Freddie seat, his gig as chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University and his recent book "Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." More than virtually any other classic rocker, Dr. May has proved that there's more than one way to keep yourself alive.

-- Ann Powers

Contrary to what themed frat parties across America would have you believe, the disco world in the '70s was actually a defiant, experimental scene celebrating racial and sexual minority cultures with righteous jubilance. LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy is embarking on a DJ tour to help correct the socio-historical record while grinding today's club kids into the ground. Special Disco Version is the pet project tour from Murphy and LCD drummer Pat Mahoney, where they'll crack open the same crates of obscure remixes and lost 12-inches that yielded their awesome disco-heavy "Fabriclive" mix.

The tour comes to the Roosevelt Hotel on Sunday, but if, like so many of us at the Board, you're banned from the Tropicana Bar for past indiscretions (or just can't get in, as is often the case), there's a warehouse show Saturday at 647 Lamar St. in downtown L.A. Tickets are at blackdisco.net, and leave the paste-on sideburns and chest hair at home, thanks.

-- August Brown

Photo of Mahoney and Murphy by Ruvan Wijesooriya 

When I met Sean Nelson in his now-hometown of Seattle in 2001, the L.A. native had already peaked as a pop star.

His band, Harvey Danger, had one big hit perched atop the Modern Rock charts 10 years ago -- “Flagpole Sitta,” a lovely burst of poison sunshine that perfectly captured alt-rock’s transition from grunge-era heaviness to Death Cab-style cheerful neuroticism. (You remember it: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well,” Sean sang, his choir-boy tenor cracking on the high note. If you've forgotten, this YouTube video should jar your memory.)

“10 years ago (pretty much exactly), we had the number one song on KROQ, and sold out the Troubadour, The Roxy and The Viper Room during the summer. Next week we'll play in front of 60 people. And we're happy,” Sean wrote in a recent e-mail announcing Saturday’s acoustic Harvey Danger show at Largo.

The most touching moments at Saturday’s Grammy Foundation salute to longtime Beatles producer George Martin came from those who shared stories of their associations with Martin and/or the Beatles.

Before delivering his own whisper-sung version of the hit theme song from “Alfie,” veteran composer Burt Bacharach (above) recalled meeting Martin for the first time in the mid-1960s when Cilla Black was recording the song in England (before Dionne Warwick’s U.S. hit version). “I must have driven everyone crazy,” Bacharach said. “I think we did 34 takes.”

A new photographic exhibit at New York City's Morrison Hotel Gallery offers a glimpse of rare recording session images from Columbia Records' legendary studio on 30th Street. Among the artists captured on film are Billie Holiday (left), Bob Dylan and Miles Davis (see those two after the jump). Johnny Cash, Leonard Bernstein, Tony Bennett, Thelonious Monk and Ella Fitzgerald can be seen as well. And you don't need to be in New York to look at the photos.

Last year, the local Stones Throw impresario and DJ extraordinaire Peanut Butter Wolf taught a master class in turntabling with his 777 tour of Los Angeles. Over seven nights and seven venues, he spun sets of seven different genres of music without touching any medium besides delicious hot vinyl or repeating a song in any set. This year, he's upping the degree of difficulty by making it an 888 tour with genre nights such as Early House, '70s Disco and movie music. The full schedule is below, and let it be known that, like A-Trak or Aaron LaCrate, Peanut Butter Wolf is a rare DJ who's scads of fun as a performer as well as a party-starter. Any night is well worth the trip.

(Update! We were sent some wrong information about the sets: turns out PBW will be playing videos and spinning with Serato, the beloved DJ software program. Looks like even the most avid vinyl advocates hate lugging those crates around town. Genre nights also updated after the jump.)

Depending on which part of the country you grew up in, or what kind of cable system you had in the 1980s, you might remember a little counter-culture TV program called "Night Flight" that frequently showcased concert footage and early '80s music videos from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran and Wendy O. Williams. The music was thematically packaged with the odd cartoon (early "Beavis and Butt-head" shorts) or full-length movies, such as France's animated "Fantastic Planet."

"Night Flight" aired on the fledgling USA Network from 1981 until 1988. Creator Stuart S. Shapiro and co-producer Stuart Samuels got their hands on archived tapes of the show just last year and are hoping to bring this iconic program back to its stoner glory.

Wu-Tang Clan's abbot and resident chess master, RZA, is starting to look more like a neo-soul singer instead of the ruckus-bringer from the early '90s. I guess that's what becoming a Hollywood composer and actor will do to you. The change has actually brought him a fair amount of flack from his brethren for his softened, more focused beat production on the Wu's recent "8 Diagrams" album.

But fear not, RZA loyalists: Superhero hedonist alter ego Bobby Digital is back.

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

LCD Soundsystem's vintage disco party

Contrary to what themed frat parties across America would have you believe, the disco world in the '70s was actually a defiant, experimental scene celebrating racial and sexual minority cultures with righteous jubilance. LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy is embarking on a DJ tour to help correct the socio-historical record while grinding today's club kids into the ground. Special Disco Version is the pet project tour from Murphy and LCD drummer Pat Mahoney, where they'll crack open the same crates of obscure remixes and lost 12-inches that yielded their awesome disco-heavy "Fabriclive" mix.

The tour comes to the Roosevelt Hotel on Sunday, but if, like so many of us at the Board, you're banned from the Tropicana Bar for past indiscretions (or just can't get in, as is often the case), there's a warehouse show Saturday at 647 Lamar St. in downtown L.A. Tickets are at blackdisco.net, and leave the paste-on sideburns and chest hair at home, thanks.

-- August Brown

Photo of Mahoney and Murphy by Ruvan Wijesooriya 

When I met Sean Nelson in his now-hometown of Seattle in 2001, the L.A. native had already peaked as a pop star.

His band, Harvey Danger, had one big hit perched atop the Modern Rock charts 10 years ago -- “Flagpole Sitta,” a lovely burst of poison sunshine that perfectly captured alt-rock’s transition from grunge-era heaviness to Death Cab-style cheerful neuroticism. (You remember it: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well,” Sean sang, his choir-boy tenor cracking on the high note. If you've forgotten, this YouTube video should jar your memory.)

“10 years ago (pretty much exactly), we had the number one song on KROQ, and sold out the Troubadour, The Roxy and The Viper Room during the summer. Next week we'll play in front of 60 people. And we're happy,” Sean wrote in a recent e-mail announcing Saturday’s acoustic Harvey Danger show at Largo.

The most touching moments at Saturday’s Grammy Foundation salute to longtime Beatles producer George Martin came from those who shared stories of their associations with Martin and/or the Beatles.

Before delivering his own whisper-sung version of the hit theme song from “Alfie,” veteran composer Burt Bacharach (above) recalled meeting Martin for the first time in the mid-1960s when Cilla Black was recording the song in England (before Dionne Warwick’s U.S. hit version). “I must have driven everyone crazy,” Bacharach said. “I think we did 34 takes.”

A new photographic exhibit at New York City's Morrison Hotel Gallery offers a glimpse of rare recording session images from Columbia Records' legendary studio on 30th Street. Among the artists captured on film are Billie Holiday (left), Bob Dylan and Miles Davis (see those two after the jump). Johnny Cash, Leonard Bernstein, Tony Bennett, Thelonious Monk and Ella Fitzgerald can be seen as well. And you don't need to be in New York to look at the photos.

Last year, the local Stones Throw impresario and DJ extraordinaire Peanut Butter Wolf taught a master class in turntabling with his 777 tour of Los Angeles. Over seven nights and seven venues, he spun sets of seven different genres of music without touching any medium besides delicious hot vinyl or repeating a song in any set. This year, he's upping the degree of difficulty by making it an 888 tour with genre nights such as Early House, '70s Disco and movie music. The full schedule is below, and let it be known that, like A-Trak or Aaron LaCrate, Peanut Butter Wolf is a rare DJ who's scads of fun as a performer as well as a party-starter. Any night is well worth the trip.

(Update! We were sent some wrong information about the sets: turns out PBW will be playing videos and spinning with Serato, the beloved DJ software program. Looks like even the most avid vinyl advocates hate lugging those crates around town. Genre nights also updated after the jump.)

Depending on which part of the country you grew up in, or what kind of cable system you had in the 1980s, you might remember a little counter-culture TV program called "Night Flight" that frequently showcased concert footage and early '80s music videos from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran and Wendy O. Williams. The music was thematically packaged with the odd cartoon (early "Beavis and Butt-head" shorts) or full-length movies, such as France's animated "Fantastic Planet."

"Night Flight" aired on the fledgling USA Network from 1981 until 1988. Creator Stuart S. Shapiro and co-producer Stuart Samuels got their hands on archived tapes of the show just last year and are hoping to bring this iconic program back to its stoner glory.

Wu-Tang Clan's abbot and resident chess master, RZA, is starting to look more like a neo-soul singer instead of the ruckus-bringer from the early '90s. I guess that's what becoming a Hollywood composer and actor will do to you. The change has actually brought him a fair amount of flack from his brethren for his softened, more focused beat production on the Wu's recent "8 Diagrams" album.

But fear not, RZA loyalists: Superhero hedonist alter ego Bobby Digital is back.

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger: There's life after a one-hit wonder

When I met Sean Nelson in his now-hometown of Seattle in 2001, the L.A. native had already peaked as a pop star.

His band, Harvey Danger, had one big hit perched atop the Modern Rock charts 10 years ago -- “Flagpole Sitta,” a lovely burst of poison sunshine that perfectly captured alt-rock’s transition from grunge-era heaviness to Death Cab-style cheerful neuroticism. (You remember it: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well,” Sean sang, his choir-boy tenor cracking on the high note. If you've forgotten, this YouTube video should jar your memory.)

“10 years ago (pretty much exactly), we had the number one song on KROQ, and sold out the Troubadour, The Roxy and The Viper Room during the summer. Next week we'll play in front of 60 people. And we're happy,” Sean wrote in a recent e-mail announcing Saturday’s acoustic Harvey Danger show at Largo.

The most touching moments at Saturday’s Grammy Foundation salute to longtime Beatles producer George Martin came from those who shared stories of their associations with Martin and/or the Beatles.

Before delivering his own whisper-sung version of the hit theme song from “Alfie,” veteran composer Burt Bacharach (above) recalled meeting Martin for the first time in the mid-1960s when Cilla Black was recording the song in England (before Dionne Warwick’s U.S. hit version). “I must have driven everyone crazy,” Bacharach said. “I think we did 34 takes.”

A new photographic exhibit at New York City's Morrison Hotel Gallery offers a glimpse of rare recording session images from Columbia Records' legendary studio on 30th Street. Among the artists captured on film are Billie Holiday (left), Bob Dylan and Miles Davis (see those two after the jump). Johnny Cash, Leonard Bernstein, Tony Bennett, Thelonious Monk and Ella Fitzgerald can be seen as well. And you don't need to be in New York to look at the photos.

Last year, the local Stones Throw impresario and DJ extraordinaire Peanut Butter Wolf taught a master class in turntabling with his 777 tour of Los Angeles. Over seven nights and seven venues, he spun sets of seven different genres of music without touching any medium besides delicious hot vinyl or repeating a song in any set. This year, he's upping the degree of difficulty by making it an 888 tour with genre nights such as Early House, '70s Disco and movie music. The full schedule is below, and let it be known that, like A-Trak or Aaron LaCrate, Peanut Butter Wolf is a rare DJ who's scads of fun as a performer as well as a party-starter. Any night is well worth the trip.

(Update! We were sent some wrong information about the sets: turns out PBW will be playing videos and spinning with Serato, the beloved DJ software program. Looks like even the most avid vinyl advocates hate lugging those crates around town. Genre nights also updated after the jump.)

Depending on which part of the country you grew up in, or what kind of cable system you had in the 1980s, you might remember a little counter-culture TV program called "Night Flight" that frequently showcased concert footage and early '80s music videos from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran and Wendy O. Williams. The music was thematically packaged with the odd cartoon (early "Beavis and Butt-head" shorts) or full-length movies, such as France's animated "Fantastic Planet."

"Night Flight" aired on the fledgling USA Network from 1981 until 1988. Creator Stuart S. Shapiro and co-producer Stuart Samuels got their hands on archived tapes of the show just last year and are hoping to bring this iconic program back to its stoner glory.

Wu-Tang Clan's abbot and resident chess master, RZA, is starting to look more like a neo-soul singer instead of the ruckus-bringer from the early '90s. I guess that's what becoming a Hollywood composer and actor will do to you. The change has actually brought him a fair amount of flack from his brethren for his softened, more focused beat production on the Wu's recent "8 Diagrams" album.

But fear not, RZA loyalists: Superhero hedonist alter ego Bobby Digital is back.

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Highlights from the Grammy tribute to Beatles producer George Martin

The most touching moments at Saturday’s Grammy Foundation salute to longtime Beatles producer George Martin came from those who shared stories of their associations with Martin and/or the Beatles.

Before delivering his own whisper-sung version of the hit theme song from “Alfie,” veteran composer Burt Bacharach (above) recalled meeting Martin for the first time in the mid-1960s when Cilla Black was recording the song in England (before Dionne Warwick’s U.S. hit version). “I must have driven everyone crazy,” Bacharach said. “I think we did 34 takes.”

A new photographic exhibit at New York City's Morrison Hotel Gallery offers a glimpse of rare recording session images from Columbia Records' legendary studio on 30th Street. Among the artists captured on film are Billie Holiday (left), Bob Dylan and Miles Davis (see those two after the jump). Johnny Cash, Leonard Bernstein, Tony Bennett, Thelonious Monk and Ella Fitzgerald can be seen as well. And you don't need to be in New York to look at the photos.

Last year, the local Stones Throw impresario and DJ extraordinaire Peanut Butter Wolf taught a master class in turntabling with his 777 tour of Los Angeles. Over seven nights and seven venues, he spun sets of seven different genres of music without touching any medium besides delicious hot vinyl or repeating a song in any set. This year, he's upping the degree of difficulty by making it an 888 tour with genre nights such as Early House, '70s Disco and movie music. The full schedule is below, and let it be known that, like A-Trak or Aaron LaCrate, Peanut Butter Wolf is a rare DJ who's scads of fun as a performer as well as a party-starter. Any night is well worth the trip.

(Update! We were sent some wrong information about the sets: turns out PBW will be playing videos and spinning with Serato, the beloved DJ software program. Looks like even the most avid vinyl advocates hate lugging those crates around town. Genre nights also updated after the jump.)

Depending on which part of the country you grew up in, or what kind of cable system you had in the 1980s, you might remember a little counter-culture TV program called "Night Flight" that frequently showcased concert footage and early '80s music videos from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran and Wendy O. Williams. The music was thematically packaged with the odd cartoon (early "Beavis and Butt-head" shorts) or full-length movies, such as France's animated "Fantastic Planet."

"Night Flight" aired on the fledgling USA Network from 1981 until 1988. Creator Stuart S. Shapiro and co-producer Stuart Samuels got their hands on archived tapes of the show just last year and are hoping to bring this iconic program back to its stoner glory.

Wu-Tang Clan's abbot and resident chess master, RZA, is starting to look more like a neo-soul singer instead of the ruckus-bringer from the early '90s. I guess that's what becoming a Hollywood composer and actor will do to you. The change has actually brought him a fair amount of flack from his brethren for his softened, more focused beat production on the Wu's recent "8 Diagrams" album.

But fear not, RZA loyalists: Superhero hedonist alter ego Bobby Digital is back.

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Historical Columbia Records photos on view

A new photographic exhibit at New York City's Morrison Hotel Gallery offers a glimpse of rare recording session images from Columbia Records' legendary studio on 30th Street. Among the artists captured on film are Billie Holiday (left), Bob Dylan and Miles Davis (see those two after the jump). Johnny Cash, Leonard Bernstein, Tony Bennett, Thelonious Monk and Ella Fitzgerald can be seen as well. And you don't need to be in New York to look at the photos.

Last year, the local Stones Throw impresario and DJ extraordinaire Peanut Butter Wolf taught a master class in turntabling with his 777 tour of Los Angeles. Over seven nights and seven venues, he spun sets of seven different genres of music without touching any medium besides delicious hot vinyl or repeating a song in any set. This year, he's upping the degree of difficulty by making it an 888 tour with genre nights such as Early House, '70s Disco and movie music. The full schedule is below, and let it be known that, like A-Trak or Aaron LaCrate, Peanut Butter Wolf is a rare DJ who's scads of fun as a performer as well as a party-starter. Any night is well worth the trip.

(Update! We were sent some wrong information about the sets: turns out PBW will be playing videos and spinning with Serato, the beloved DJ software program. Looks like even the most avid vinyl advocates hate lugging those crates around town. Genre nights also updated after the jump.)

Depending on which part of the country you grew up in, or what kind of cable system you had in the 1980s, you might remember a little counter-culture TV program called "Night Flight" that frequently showcased concert footage and early '80s music videos from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran and Wendy O. Williams. The music was thematically packaged with the odd cartoon (early "Beavis and Butt-head" shorts) or full-length movies, such as France's animated "Fantastic Planet."

"Night Flight" aired on the fledgling USA Network from 1981 until 1988. Creator Stuart S. Shapiro and co-producer Stuart Samuels got their hands on archived tapes of the show just last year and are hoping to bring this iconic program back to its stoner glory.

Wu-Tang Clan's abbot and resident chess master, RZA, is starting to look more like a neo-soul singer instead of the ruckus-bringer from the early '90s. I guess that's what becoming a Hollywood composer and actor will do to you. The change has actually brought him a fair amount of flack from his brethren for his softened, more focused beat production on the Wu's recent "8 Diagrams" album.

But fear not, RZA loyalists: Superhero hedonist alter ego Bobby Digital is back.

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Peanut Butter Wolf to again humiliate iPod DJs

Last year, the local Stones Throw impresario and DJ extraordinaire Peanut Butter Wolf taught a master class in turntabling with his 777 tour of Los Angeles. Over seven nights and seven venues, he spun sets of seven different genres of music without touching any medium besides delicious hot vinyl or repeating a song in any set. This year, he's upping the degree of difficulty by making it an 888 tour with genre nights such as Early House, '70s Disco and movie music. The full schedule is below, and let it be known that, like A-Trak or Aaron LaCrate, Peanut Butter Wolf is a rare DJ who's scads of fun as a performer as well as a party-starter. Any night is well worth the trip.

(Update! We were sent some wrong information about the sets: turns out PBW will be playing videos and spinning with Serato, the beloved DJ software program. Looks like even the most avid vinyl advocates hate lugging those crates around town. Genre nights also updated after the jump.)

Depending on which part of the country you grew up in, or what kind of cable system you had in the 1980s, you might remember a little counter-culture TV program called "Night Flight" that frequently showcased concert footage and early '80s music videos from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran and Wendy O. Williams. The music was thematically packaged with the odd cartoon (early "Beavis and Butt-head" shorts) or full-length movies, such as France's animated "Fantastic Planet."

"Night Flight" aired on the fledgling USA Network from 1981 until 1988. Creator Stuart S. Shapiro and co-producer Stuart Samuels got their hands on archived tapes of the show just last year and are hoping to bring this iconic program back to its stoner glory.

Wu-Tang Clan's abbot and resident chess master, RZA, is starting to look more like a neo-soul singer instead of the ruckus-bringer from the early '90s. I guess that's what becoming a Hollywood composer and actor will do to you. The change has actually brought him a fair amount of flack from his brethren for his softened, more focused beat production on the Wu's recent "8 Diagrams" album.

But fear not, RZA loyalists: Superhero hedonist alter ego Bobby Digital is back.

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

‘Night Flight’ flies again

Depending on which part of the country you grew up in, or what kind of cable system you had in the 1980s, you might remember a little counter-culture TV program called "Night Flight" that frequently showcased concert footage and early '80s music videos from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran and Wendy O. Williams. The music was thematically packaged with the odd cartoon (early "Beavis and Butt-head" shorts) or full-length movies, such as France's animated "Fantastic Planet."

"Night Flight" aired on the fledgling USA Network from 1981 until 1988. Creator Stuart S. Shapiro and co-producer Stuart Samuels got their hands on archived tapes of the show just last year and are hoping to bring this iconic program back to its stoner glory.

Wu-Tang Clan's abbot and resident chess master, RZA, is starting to look more like a neo-soul singer instead of the ruckus-bringer from the early '90s. I guess that's what becoming a Hollywood composer and actor will do to you. The change has actually brought him a fair amount of flack from his brethren for his softened, more focused beat production on the Wu's recent "8 Diagrams" album.

But fear not, RZA loyalists: Superhero hedonist alter ego Bobby Digital is back.

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

RZA gets into digital mind frame for the Fonda

Wu-Tang Clan's abbot and resident chess master, RZA, is starting to look more like a neo-soul singer instead of the ruckus-bringer from the early '90s. I guess that's what becoming a Hollywood composer and actor will do to you. The change has actually brought him a fair amount of flack from his brethren for his softened, more focused beat production on the Wu's recent "8 Diagrams" album.

But fear not, RZA loyalists: Superhero hedonist alter ego Bobby Digital is back.

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Afrika Bambaataa on ‘the aboriginal music of the planet’

Hip-hop culture, as it was formed in the '70s in the Bronx, New York, owes a lot to Germany. The group Kraftwerk's bass-driven electro music would influence countless musical styles, but so did a group of pioneering DJs that included Afrika Bambaataa. In his 50s, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation still tours as a DJ and member of Soulsonic Force and he's up again for possible induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bambaataa is referred to as the godfather of hip-hop, but in a recent chat with Soundboard he says he prefers the title "Amen Ra of Universal Hiphop Culture." The Amen Ra is the headlining DJ tonight at Crash Mansion. We caught up with him as he lounged in his hotel suite downtown before a Friday performance.

-- Camilo Smith

For those who think the terms are synonymous, can you explain the difference between "hip-hop" and "rap"?

Well, rap is part of hip-hop. Hip-hop is really a whole culture, it deals with all the five elements and then the plus elements. So, if you deal with DJ, B-boys, graffiti art, emceeing and that fifth element that holds it all together, the knowledge, you're dealing with hip-hop as a culture. And then you deal with all the other, plus that deals with fashion and all that. When you say "rap," you're just dealing with only one little aspect of hip-hop.

You're called the "Godfather" of hip-hop. Do you see things coming full circle now in hip-hop music?

It's still got some more to go. When I see that coming full circle is when we become galactic humans and head to these different planets, which I know they're getting ready to take you... it's going beyond the planet Earth.

It seems like for a while hip-hop lost the use of electro beats and electro funk that you pioneered. Only recently does it seem that a lot of popular rappers and hip-hop artists have veered more toward that sound again.

Well, it never got lost. It's always been there. The people who didn't hear it, and other DJs playing it, was because their minds were so closed to one style of hip-hop music. Electro's always been there; in fact, that's one of the biggest styles of music in the world, is the electro and the techno. The biggest festival of all is the Love Parade, where you have over 3 million people coming to hear DJs playing electro.
You have the breakbeat DJs from Miami, bass and all that with Uncle Luke; and you have the music out of Rio de Janeiro... so it never went anywhere. The only people who think it disappeared is because they don't understand hip-hop as a culture. They only understand what the radio plays, so, if they tell you it's gangster, then that's all the people who listen to radio heard, while the other people were listening to all the other styles of hip-hop culture, whether it's hip-house or jungle, or drum and bass, or Ragga-hop; different styles of music but also made up of hip-hop.

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Peanut Butter Wolf and Dâm-Funk wax nostalgic

Peanut Butter Wolf isn't the first DJ to use music videos in conjunction with the usual DJ arts of crowd-reading, beat-blending, mixing and scratching.

A DJ and producer since the early '80s, the former Chris Manak of San Jose (pictured above) turned the dance floor inside out Tuesday night at Cinespace's Dim Mak weekly event. Videos blasted out from a big screen that PBW (or the Wolf, as many call him) was more than happy to share.

"It's almost like a YouTube set, I guess. But I don't get any of my videos from YouTube because it's low quality," he said after blasting the crowd with a mix of '80s and '90s dance and rap hits. This was his first time on the mixer since coming back from a tour stop in Japan, though he frequently performs at the Dim Mak showcase.

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Bob Dylan performs ‘Hava Nagila’

"I'm Not There" hits DVD shelves today and, in keeping with the film's theme of the "many faces of Bob Dylan," we offer you one of the more unexpected performances in the prodigious YouTube archive of Zimmy's stagework: Dylan perfoming "Hava Nagila" with Harry Dean Stanton. Really. We're not joking.

And is it just us, or does the Spokesman for a Generation look eerily like a brunet Harpo Marx in this clip?

Some "Hava Nagila" trivia: Julie Andrews, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, Dick Dale and Harry Belafonte are some of the unexpected folks who have recorded the song or pinched its melody.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: AP / DEA

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

A little more on Rock the Bells — with full lineup

"Everybody needs to bring their A-game," Dave, a.k.a Plug Two, a.k.a Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, hollered into his microphone during the news conference Tuesday in Claremont for Rock the Bells.
He was referring to the all-star lineup, representing the so-called golden age of hip-hop that will anchor this year's annual concert.

Fans of that era, (late '80s to the early '90s) will no doubt be reminded of yesteryear when the South L.A. quartet the Pharcyde takes the stage this summer, consisting of MCs Fat Lip, Slim Kid Tre, Bootie Brown and Imani. The group, which split in the mid-'90s, only released two albums that yielded a handful of classics, including "Drop" and "Passing Me By."

"We've always been doing music [since the breakup], but to do it up here," says Imani, raising his hands up in the air, "as the Pharcyde, we haven't done it in a while."

When asked about the convergence of young and old that will see relative newcomers such as Washington, D.C.'s Wale and New Orleans' Jay Electronica (for whom Erykah Badu created a record label solely to release his upcoming album), A Tribe Called Quest DJ and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad said: "Lyrically, they're carrying the same flag we picked up ... in bringing something that's positive and uplifting. We all from the same root."

-- Camilo Smith

P.S. Also filling out the bill, which was rapped in a freestyle by MC Supernatural, are:
Co-host B-Real of Cypress Hill
Kid Sister
Flosstradamus
Amanda Blank
Kidz in the Hall
B.O.B
Santogold
Cool Kids
Dead Prez
Spank Rock
Immortal Technique
Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef
Redman and Method Man
Rakim
Nas
Mos Def

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Rock the Bells adds Pharcyde, A Tribe Called Quest

Hip-hop reconciliation and reformation will be the marquee draws at this year's Rock the Bells, the top-grossing hip-hop event in the country last year.

A year after the multi-platinum-selling rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine played on the traveling festival's stage, two late, great rap groups that splintered in the '90s are getting their acts together for Rock the Bells.

The Los Angeles alterna-rap quartet the Pharcyde will perform as "special guests," while the Queens, N.Y., "abstract poetic" trio A Tribe Called Quest will come together at the festival for the second consecutive year; in 2007, the group reformed for Rock the Bells after a six-year absence.

At a news conference for the event in Claremont on Tuesday, organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union promised that unlike in previous years, 85% to 90% of the headliners would perform in every city.

"Rest assured there will be surprises," Weisberg said. "Music history could be made every night."

Other featured headliners for the tour, which kicks off in Chicago on July 19 and reaches Los Angeles on Aug. 9, include De La Soul, Rakim, Nas, Mos Def, Murs and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan.

"Everybody up here is legends in their own right," Murs said at the event. "Being part of this is awesome."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad, A Tribe Called Quest's DJ-producer, put into perspective how special it was to reunite with the members of De La Soul -- the group's confreres in the Native Tongues hip-hop collective, leaders of the so-called "conscious" rap movement in the '90s.

"We haven't been in the same room together since 1994," Muhammad said. "I'm really amped right now. I can't wait to get to it."

Added the ne plus ultra freestyle MC Supernatural, another Rock the Bells headliner: "It's going to be the best summer vacation I ever had."

--Chris Lee

Photo of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest by Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind Prince — here come the Smurfs!

The Purple Prancer, as I heard Prince recently called, is all fine and good -- but what about little blue creatures who only want Smilax berries and peaceful working villages?

That's right, the Smurfs are coming to Coachella and you can party with them until you're blue in the face. Or, more likely, blue on the tongue. Hpnotiq, the turquoise-hued liquor, is one of the sponsors of the Smurf Village, a weekend-long event that will celebrate all things Smurf at an undisclosed residence close to the Polo Fields. (Read: You can't get in unless you're on the guest list. Or, maybe a desperate dip in blue body paint will get you in. Talk to your neighborhood Blue Man for that.)

A few of the highlights of the event, according to co-producer BPM Magazine's Matt Colon: Papa Smurf and Smurfette will be making the rounds in classic costumes (let's hope those get-ups are air-conditioned) and celebs, our village's version of Vanity Smurf (some named Hilton, some not), will be on hand to get gift bags and be photographed, much to the glee of your favorite nasty-tempered blog. Oh, and on the decks: Steve Aoki, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez and other special guests. There's also a Gargamel potion bar.

Why Smurfs in the desert? For one, the demographic is just right: We people in our late 20s and early 30s have a seemingly endless reservoir for nostalgia, especially when alcohol is supplied.

BPM and the Smurfs are also priming us for Paramount's the re-release of the vintage cartoons on DVD in about six months (distributed by Warner Home Video), along with T-shirts, mugs and the like, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian creation.

So, yes, this is a giant advertisement and, at first glance, little blue friendlies in the desert may seem an odd fit, but lest you forget, the desert is a trippy place. "I just got a shipment of plush mushroom seats, and a fold-up mushroom house," Colon said. "The irony isn't lost on anyone."

--Margaret Wappler

Illustration of Papa Smurf by Peyo/IMPS

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

A moment of ‘motorik’ silence

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

The re-ascent of bro core

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band's recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion's been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-'90s ("You and meee ... have a diseeease ..." ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the '90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the "Epitaph Sound" put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.'s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Odds, ends and awards

A country for starlets: I love the Coen brothers, but their shruggish acceptance speeches unfortunately defined what felt like one of the most perfunctory Oscars in years -- with one notable exception: Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf to brilliant, mind-blowing, shape-shifting perfection in "La Vie en Rose." You might think I'm grossly overselling it, but the frothy adjectives apply. See it now, if you haven't already.

Homeward bound: We're heathens around these parts but we were sad to hear about Larry Norman's death Sunday.

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Requiem for TVT Records from a former publicist

I was caught off guard this week by the news that TVT Records had fired a good 80% of its staff and that it is expected to file for bankruptcy soon. In the mid-'90s, I worked as a publicist for the label in its New York office on 4th Street, across from what was then Tower Records.

TVT is best known these days for its roster of hip-hop acts (Pitbull, Lil John, the Ying Yang Twins, etc.), but in the late '80s/early '90s it was (briefly) the home of Nine Inch Nails. And while NIN's Trent Reznor famously had a falling out with TVT founder and President Steve Gottlieb (as it seems most big artists on the label eventually did), TVT still prospered over the last 15 years due to Gottlieb's determination. At one point, TVT was the nation's largest indie, cranking out CDs at a dizzying pace and competing with major labels despite numerous distribution disadvantages.

People can say what they will about the news of TVT's seemingly imminent closure (although, in fairness, Gottlieb says a leaner version of the label will soldier on and the publishing division will likely remain open, according to Billboard), but Gottlieb was a vicious and incredibly smart competitor. He started TVT on his own (while still in law school) and went on to build a music publishing empire and record label that produced multiple platinum-selling albums. And like most music industry figures in New York, he was eccentric (and, sadly, ponytailed).

But what I'll remember most about my time at TVT (besides the bad records I had to promote, such as the dreadful Gravity Kills debut) was the bizarre interview I went through with Gottlieb in 1996. Almost everyone in the music industry in New York during the '90s passed through Gottlieb's office for an interview at some point in their respective careers. What transpired during my sitdown seems sufficiently strange, looking back on it now.

Instead of being asked the usual questions about my qualifications as a publicist (and I was qualified, mind you, just coming off a stint as national director of publicity at a Virgin Records-affiliated label), Gottlieb, barefoot in his office, proceeded to ask a series of questions better suited to a game show than a job interview. "What would you say the square footage of the office is, Charlie?" is the one query that sticks out in my mind the most. Needless to say, I got the job -- hey, I have good spacial skills!

The staff at TVT probably aren't too jazzed today; on the other hand, Reznor is certainly pleased.

-- Charlie Amter

Photo of Gottlieb, left, and a visibly drunk Charlie at SXSW circa 2000 by Victoria Smith.

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

No Depression, lie low in peace

Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.

I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.

Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.

Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.

It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.

The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.

-- Ann Powers

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

The many faces of Herbie Hancock

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Rhino Pop-Up Store is here

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn't Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they've opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

--Margaret Wappler

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Happy birthday, dear punk-rock

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here's Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It's the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club's founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, "Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley," on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents "Punk 365," whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos' seminal "Destroy All Music," collected with the band's first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

--Richard Cromelin

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Thy Head Shall Bang No More

Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow, 52, was found dead at his Las Vegas home on Sunday. The news of the death was reported by several news sources as well as the personal website of the band's drummer, Frankie Banali.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin DuBrow

1. He was a foodie.


2. He spent his teen years growing up in Van Nuys.


3. Metal Health made Quiet Riot the first metal band to reach #1 on their U.S. debut album.


4. He was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Small Faces.


5. Radio station KRNA in Cedar Rapids, IA has posted a 19-minute audio interview with DuBrow from May 2007 in which he explains how he keeps his vocal chords in shape. (Hint: clean living.)

--Elina Shatkin

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler

Remember record clubs?

I don't know why, but I'm thinking about record clubs. I remember a time when my older brother belonged to one and he'd show me his cool new tapes. (Yeah, tapes. Don't laugh.) "I got this for a penny!" he's say, shaking Duran Duran's "Rio" in my face. I was amazed. A penny? How can they do that??

So I started searching around to see if any are left.

Turns out that BMG Columbia House still has one but from their home page, you can tell they're making their money from DVDs. "Music Service" is off to the side. When you click on it, it takes you to one of the saddest little web pages in the world, seemingly designed by Your Local Mall's Party Store circa 1988.

I'm going to find out a little more about this whole thing, but in the meantime, does anyone still belong to a record club out there?

[Crickets.]

--Margaret Wappler