The sixth annual Also I Like to Rock series kicked off Thursday night at the Hammer Museum with lightning-charged set’s by L.A. rockers Saint Motel and Kitten. A big crowd turned out early to catch the almost-feral performance by Kitten’s 15-year-old singer Chloe Chaidez, and the courtyard was full of bouncing fans for the danceable […]
Billy Corgan debuted his leaner, meaner Smashing Pumpkins on Wednesday night, roaring through a scintillating 80 minutes of songs old and new before ending the set nonplussed, a ukulele in his hand. A ukulele? Yes. Near the show’s end, Corgan took up a four-stringer to play a solo acoustic version of “Love Is the Sweetest […]
So as a means of introducing you to Judson & Mary – whom you’ve probably met, if you’ve been to a show in Silver Lake or Echo Park recently – I thought I’d share the postscript from the June 15 Buzz Bands LA show at Spaceland. I’d initially planned to have a “special guest” play […]
Favorite 5 T-shirts I saw at the Friday’s kickoff to the 16th annual Vans Warped Tour at the Home Depot Center in Carson: “Talk Nerdy To Me” “Tell Yr GF 2 Stop Texting Me” “Make Mosh Not War” “Free F*cking Hugs” “F*ck Free Hugs” Oh, and there was the kid walking around holding out a […]
Photos, recap by Andrew Herrold Words and pictures can only go so far as to fully encompass what happened Tuesday night at the Mayan Theatre. At 9:45 Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello took the stage clutching an acoustic guitar. Beginning by strumming “Illumination” off their third album, “Gypsy Punks,” the rest of the members began […]
If I were to review Sunday’s concert at the Greek Theatre the way Erykah Badu played it, I’d disappoint my loyal readers by waiting two weeks to publish it, I’d start it agonizingly slow, I’d forget some of the important parts and I’d pepper it with non sequiturs. (Commenters, feel free to have a field […]
On any number of his eight albums – especially his last three – Matt Pond PA comes off as warm and inviting, his trenchant observations on the human condition oozing with yearning, and wrapped in pastoral arrangements. Live, Pond – who’s now based in NY and has said he might even be moving to CA […]
Even with frontman Tommy Walter [pictured at top] a bit under the weather, Abandoned Pools’ comeback show on Tuesday night at Spaceland was strong. The L.A. quartet, playing live for the first time in five years, sprinkled in some new material with songs from their 2001 and 2005 albums, highlighting a Buzz Bands LA-hosted evening […]
Mumford & Sons have it down pat. Maybe even too pat. When the West London quartet brought its folkbluepopgrass* to the Fonda Theatre for the first of two sold-out shows on Thursday night, the lads were everything that Angelenos have come to love in visitors from Old Blighty: handsome and dapper with snappy British accents, […]
School of Seven Bells‘ performance on Wednesday night at the jam-packed Echo wasn’t so much a show as it was a seance. The band – guitarist Benjamin Curtis and twin sirens Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, newly expanded to a quartet with the addition of a live drummer – conjured up the ghosts of the Cocteau […]
