[Fun, festive fundraisers. Cool concerts. Punchy parties. And the Pity Party. This weekend has it all, and I must be quick so I can try to find my godawful-est sweater for the Christmas Sweater Festival on Saturday:] Tonight: Foreign Born [pictured] headlines Spaceland. I hope they use the sleigh bells if they play “Union Hall.” […]
The beers were flavorful, and the indie-rock was tasty – all that was missing from the first Hollywood Brew Fest on Saturday at the Fonda Theatre was a good crowd. The event went flat under a sparse turnout, despite a formidable beer menu and a reasonable-for-an-event-of-its-kind ticket price of $45 (which got you unlimited tastings […]
[Birthday wishes to Butch Walker on Saturday. … Here’s what’s on my weekend radar, for one reason or another – for a more comprehensive list, please visit Duke at You Set the Scene:] Tonight: It’s Week 2 of Julian Casablancas’ flashy residency at the Downtown Palace Theatre, and when I saw the opener last week […]
Craft beer meets locally crafted indie rock on Saturday at the first Hollywood Brew Fest – and it’s a good day to forget you ever took that big swig of PBR. The Brew Fest, which runs from 3 to 11 p.m. at the Fonda Theatre and the adjacent Blue Palms Brewhouse, offers unlimited tastings from […]
Fans who remember the Deadly Syndrome as a wiry, winsome indie-rock band had another thing coming Saturday night at the El Rey Theatre. Headlining the music night of TarFest, the Los Angeles quartet played a set that suggests they must have been guzzling protein shakes in the months they’ve been working on their sophomore album. […]
Thanks to LA Record, I was turned on to the Polyamorous Affair’s video for “White Hot Magic.” [Caution: The version above has some dirty words in it.] Like the duo’s Manimal Vinyl debut, “Bolshevik Disco,” it’s the product of the vivid and slightly warped imagination of Eddie Chacon (he of 1992’s “Would I Lie to […]
Swedish songstress Lykke Li [pictured], whose 2008 debut “Youth Novels” was produced and co-written by Bjorn Yttling of Peter Bjorn & John, brings her danceable (and remixable) indie-pop to the Wiltern. Local quartet the Deadly Syndrome, who’ve been holed up working on a new album, open. … Speaking of danceable, the Ting Tings are paired […]
[Second of two parts] The past few years, in the halcyon days when I toiled for the local newspaper, I wrote an annual L.A. music review, handicapping the bands I thought might, for one reason or another, have the stuff to break out of the local scene. Following are my Bands to Watch 2009 [and […]
[Where I was and where I wasn’t this past busy weekend …] I’m sure KROQ-FM threw one heck of a Christmas bash at the Gibson Amphitheatre this weekend, but the Cure’s MySpace-sponsored show at the Troubadour on Saturday night stole all the headlines. Strange to me that the Cure would play opposite the first night […]
[From the clipboard of an Interweb sieve:] ‣ This almost qualifies as a brazen theft: An upright bass belonging to Mike Ibarra of the local music collective Killsonic was stolen from his van in downtown L.A. about 2 a.m. Nov. 16. There’s a benefit to help replace the instrument at 8 p.m. Saturday at Edgar […]
