For several years, Tommy Dietrick of L.A. shoegaze stalwarts Sky Parade staged a weekend benefit at Pappy & Harriet’s called the Clean Air Clear Stars Festival. (Ah, good times.) This year the event has morphed into the Desert Stars Festival, and the news bulletin is that the two-night affair, going off this Friday and Saturday […]
We give you a couple lovely acoustic videos to go with your Thursday show list: ‣ Good Times for a Good Cause Dept.: Wires in the Walls, Telstar and Little Red Lung team up for a benefit show at the Mint presented by Rock Is a Girl’s Best Friend and Buzz Bands LA (who will […]
George Sarah has a list of credits as long as the line at Wal Mart on Black Friday. Like a lot of songwriter-composers whose work is prominent in film and TV, he’s not a household name, except to the many household names with whom he has colalborated, and to the cognoscenti who’ve gained an appreciation […]
The latest scribbles in my notebook: ‣ Word on the smoking patios is that L.A. electro-soul newbies Electric Guest, the Danger Mouse-produced guys who’ve done audience-building gigs all over town this summer, are doing a deal with Downtown Records. The project, the brainchild of songwriter/composers Asa Taccone and Matthew Compton, has wrapped up an album […]
Excellent shows to tout for a Sunday: ‣ Scottish rockers Broken Records [check out “A Darkness Rises Up”] bring their arena-sized music to the U.S. for the first time, hitting the Satellite on a show that also features Washington, D.C., quartet U.S. Royalty. That’s U.S. Royalty’s video for “Equestrian,” above, and you can download the […]
[Happy 24th birthday today to Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys. In L.A., meanwhile, the new year is starting to get busy …] Does the warm weather (it was 75 today at Buzz Bands HQ) have you longing for winter? Might be a good night to take in Spaceland on Ice at Pershing Square downtown. […]
The show calendar overfloweth: The Dead Weather’s gnarly blues-rock sounds exactly like what you’d expect, considering the players in the side project – Jack White (White Stripes), Alison Mosshart (the Kills), Jack Lawrence (the Raconteurs) and Dean Fertita. [Stream: “Treat Me Like Your Mother.”] Their debut, “Horehound,” is out July 14, and quartet makes its […]
[So flipping radio stations on the way home last night I heard Van Halen’s “Jump” for the trillionth time and thought, ‘How old is that song, anyway?’ Turns out that 25 years ago this week, it was No. 1.] I wanted to find out which of the estimable performers at tonight’s “A Tribute to Scott […]
Unless you’re British, or an American of a certain age, chances are you don’t know Scott Walker. Oh, you may have heard the voice – the soaring, tremulous baritone behind the ’60s hit “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” and some other gems from that era. To most, Walker’s name, if it was recalled at […]
