When Laura Ann Masura’s longtime friend Josiah Mazzaschi heard she had been injured in a motorcycle accident, he didn’t sit on his hands. He got on the phone. Mazzaschi, the frontman of local indie-rock band Light FM, has organized a benefit concert, Jam for Laura Ann, on Sunday at the Echoplex to help Masura, a […]
The Happy Hollows’ debut album “Spells” is at turns exhilarating, experimental and excruciating – as if the Pixies, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bikini Kill and Bis got together to compare anxiety attacks. Its yelpy, guitar-spiked sketches, couched every so often by unfailingly catchy shout-along choruses, are at least nervy, if not downright neurotic. It’s far too […]
The Black Lips, Lucero, No Age [pictured], Lightning Bolt and the Thermals will be among the acts playing Sean Carlson’s FYF Fest (formerly known as the F Yeah Fest), scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 5, at Los Angeles Historic State Park in downtown. The lineup, announced today, includes locals such as Darker My Love, Dios, Avi […]
It’s been too long since I posted a podcast, so this is Step 1 in catching up. This fourth edition of the Buzzsicle features songs from 17 L.A. artists whose names I heard in the aftermath of last month’s South by Southwest Music Festival. In my Austin wanderings, I mostly avoided L.A. bands, figuring I […]
What do you get when you combine rock ‘n’ roll musicians, a love for trompe l’oeil and a fascination with 18th- and 19th-century portraiture? “Gooseberries,” apparently. Which is not the same as goosebumps, although L.A. photographer Sterling Andrews might have gotten some of those too in creating the images in her “album,” which will be […]
[Happy 30th birthday to Norah Jones …] Nico Stai’s residency at Spaceland this month has been a high-energy affair, owing first to his quartet’s squeezing every ounce of juice out of his ’90s-vintage pop-rock, and second, to a lineup of buzzy opening bands that got things tingling. Tonight’s Flaunt Magazine-stamped finale (which follows Stai’s taping […]
Nailed down your plans for New Year’s Eve yet? The Times has exhaustive guides of options for ringing in 2009 — I went through two plates of hors d’oeuvres just reading them, then got a stomach ache over the ticket prices. Not one to partake of any of the dance-music massives (and not one to […]
[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 […]
