LA Weekly

Photos of Gogol Bordello at the Henry Fonda Theater.

Photos of Wilco at the Greek Theater

Photos by Timothy Norris

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By Randall Roberts
Top Songs (that aren’t trance or prog house) heard last night kicking out of
any of the hundreds of rolling sound systems (or someone’s mouth) roaming
the desert.

1. “Sara Smile,” Hall & Oates.
2. “Apache,” the Sugar Hill Gang.
3. “Fizheuer Zieheuer,” Ricardo Villalobos
4. “Funk #49,” James Gang.
5. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” the Beatles
6. “Sex Bomb,” Flipper.
7. “Kerosene,” Big Black. Screamed by some dude riding along the Esplanade.
“I was born in this town/Lived here my whole life!/Probably come to die in
this town!/Lived here my whole life!/Set me on fire, kerosene!”
8. “The Truth,” Handsome Boy Modeling School.
9. “Bitch,” Rolling Stones.
10. “Lose Yourself” (instrumental), Eminem.

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By Randall Roberts

He’s out there somewhere. I know it. He apparently comes every year. At least that’s what they tell me up in Seattle, where Bruce Pavitt, co-founder of Sub Pop Records, is some sort of minor legend. You know, Bruce Pavitt, the dude with the vision to uncover a few of the great rock bands of the 1990s: current or former home of Mudhoney, Nirvana, Sleater-Kinney, the Shins, Postal Service and the wonderfully odd new Jennifer Gentle record.

Photos by Charlie Evans More after the jump.

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By Randall Roberts

The Burning Man, which was prematurely torched by burner-assassin Paul Addis
on Tuesday morning, has returned. This morning at about 11:30, a crane
lifted what is now known as the Spawn of Burning Man into its rightful place
at the center of Black Rock City. The soundtrack to the celebratory moment,
courtesy of an art car with a crystal-clear, blaring sound system? Not as
expected, a crappy trance track, nor "76 Trombones," or "Anarchy in the UK."
Rather, much of the fifteen-minute moment was honored with a ritualist
playing of, yes, "Freebird," by Lynyrd Skynyrd. As the dualing guitars
soloed and wailed, at least a few happy campers sang along: "Lord, I can't
change."

Photos by Charlie Evans

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Wilco
Greek Theatre, August 29, 2007
by Jonah Flicker

I’m sure there were plenty of celebrities peppered throughout the crowd at the Greek Theatre as perennial underdogs/yuppie-faves, Wilco, took the stage on a balmy Wednesday night. My celebrity sighting, however, was limited to one Mr. Fred Savage. At least I’m 99.9 percent sure it was Fred. But whatever; The Wonder Years was a great show, it was a beautiful evening, clouds flitting about over an ample moon, and band leader Jeff Tweedy was in one hell of a good mood. His crowd banter was jovial and actually pretty funny, as he gave one lucky fan a hard time for lifting aloft a lighter during the sauntering “Jesus, Etc.” (comparing himself to Don Rickles in the process) and held his mike out for some crowd participation in the middle of “Hummingbird.”

More after the jump. More photos of Wilco here.

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By Randall Roberts

If it's true, as many haggard hipsters have dismissively opined, that 'Nobody goes to Burning Man anymore,' then who the hell are all these people? The unofficial verdict among many regular burners is that this year is going to be huge, and although population estimates are notoriously inaccurate, last year's tally of 40,000 seems likely to be trumped.

Photos by Charlie Evans

Predicting turnout is a fool's game, but looking at the crowds both last night and Monday night, it's easy to see that there are a lot of damn people here already, more so than this time in 2006, which was enormous. Black Rock City is more built out on a Tuesday night -- more flashing lights, more structures, more unsolicited hoots and hollers, more bike thieves (fuckers snagged mine!) -- than it was on a Thursday in 2006. And on the sound systems strapped to art cars, trucks and buses, they're listening to the Stooges (Funhouse at 3 a.m. real loud will rock your world), Tracy Chapman (no shit, "Fast Cars" cranked to eleven) and Pharoah Sanders' massive "The Creator Has a Master Plan." Each song seems to ring true on some metaphoric level, seems to snap into place the moment you hear it (if you're really high, even "Fast Cars")."Wild in the Country," by Bow Wow Wow, "Your Own Private Idaho" by the B-52's. And always, of course, a lot of bullshit, lowest-common-denominator trance and progressive house. At night, the throngs race the city looking for adventure, which is everywhere.

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un:armed
The Echo, August 27
By Nazanin Arandi

They are armed with black, gray and white ensembles, bringing endless energy to the stage and into the audience. un:armed creates a dark moody sound with catchy hooks through songs of love, lust, heartbreak and our political misfortunes. They play their hearts out and make you move to the march of an army of melodies and beats.

(All photos by O'Ryan McKinney)

Bands that follow the principle of equilateral triangles are rare commodities in the music scene these days, but un:armed is an exception. Each one of these three shades of black, or if you are an optimist you might say shades of white, play an equal weight in the performance. You'd expect nothing less than a balanced and energetic show from them.

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News Flash from the Playa: The Man Upstaged the Moon
By Judith Lewis

Here's the news. While the full eclipsed moon still floated above the Playa like a smooth orange balloon, the man went up in flames.

In case you haven't been here, this typically happens on Saturday, at the end of the event. Not Monday at 3:00 a.m.

First reports said the neon on the man had shorted out after they turned him off and then back on again in honor of the eclipse (I didn't notice this; I was immersed in the spetacular sky.) Most more reliable reports now say it's arson; two rangers I spoke with told me that at least one person is in custody. Several witnesses apparently saw at least one person climb the structure supporting the Man and set off fireworks. (Some people have also said he hurt himself.)

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Janine Kahn at OC Weekly took her camera to the Marilyn Manson / Slayer show at Verizon Amphitheater on Friday, Aug. 25.

More of Janine Kahn's photos at OC Weekly.

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photo by Charlie Evans

The ring of the bell is the first thing you hear once in range of the Burning Man Festival in bumfuck Nevada. Two of them, the size of logs, hang from poles at the front gate. The cars, RVs, trucks and buses crawl along the highway toward the entrance like ants to a watermelon. As you roll onto the dry lake bed on which the annual festival is held, the clangs get louder and louder. Finally, an arrival, and the source of the sound reveals itself: A sprite little angel giggles then strikes a bell. She's a virgin, so she must strike the bell. Then a shirtless dude with washboard abs swings like it's a pinata. He's a virgin, too.

The gatekeepers pound on the door and quiz the carloads: “Any virgins inside?” -- virgins being newbies to the festival, which last year drew nearly 40,000 wandering souls from all over the world. Last year a man dressed as a Victorian aristocrat handed me the hammer, instructed me in a very refined British accent to strike it as hard as I fucking could. Last year, I was new blood, and for a brief moment the whole of Black Rock City (the town that is Burning Man) knew that some new blood has arrived, new blood to perhaps carry the torch, new blood to perhaps ruin this for the rest of us, but new blood nonetheless. The gentleman ordered me to lay down in the playa dust and roll around. Then he spanked me.

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Juan MacLean
Avalon, August 24
By Jonah Flicker

The parking gods were smiling on this chilly Friday night. It’s 11:45, I’m in the area around Hollywood and Vine, and I actually find a street spot in less than six minutes? Sweet satisfaction. I’m heading over to Club 82, where the DFA-affiliated Juan MacLean has flown in from NYC to work his turntable magic. As it turned out, there was an abundance of the former while maybe the latter could have used a touch of fairy dust.

Photos by Jonah Flicker. More after the jump

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It was the bitterest of ironies. Deniece Williams’ opened her Sunset Junction set with an a cappella version of “God is Amazing,” punctuated with sista girl testifying (“If you woke up in your right mind this morning, God did you a favor,”) only to tumble from the stage in a fall that left her lying on the ground for a good ten or fifteen minutes as the hushed crowd wondered how badly she’d been hurt. Minutes crawled as her sons rushed tearfully from backstage, dramatically hugged, lead the crowd in prayer and sang gospel songs. Eventually, she was given a mic and she joked, “I am fine. I’m not leaving here till I sing something.” And from the ground, she performed a stellar version of “’Cause You Love Me, Baby,” insane high notes and all. The crowd went nuts. Then she was lifted back onstage, hobbling onto a chair where she sat and sang the hell out of “Silly” – hair askew, clear grimace of pain on her face (she kept rubbing her head), and tears flowing.
It wasn’t just a textbook case of “the show must go on,” but a sublime lesson in performance – her obvious physical discomfort was funneled into the song’s words of emotional anguish and the result was transcendent, climaxing in gospel fervor. Following “Black Butterfly,” which she introduced with an apropos speech about the necessity of hardship and obstacles in life, she asked the crowd, “Two more [songs]? Is that okay? ‘Cause I’m sitting up here with an ankle the size of Baltimore.” But the pain won out, and after a lilting version of “Free,” a wheelchair was brought to the stage and she was taken to a hospital. It’s hard to imagine there was a better overall performance (still magnificent talent, unscripted drama, barreling forward through pain) all weekend.
Earlier, the Emotions had won the packed crowd over with hits everyone knew (“Best of My Love,” “Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love,” “Boogie Wonderland,” “Flowers”) and classics from their Stax days (the Isaac Hayes penned “Show Me How.”) Their joy in performing was obvious – the very animated Sheila broke out every old-school ‘80s dance except the Running Man – even if their voices were sometimes ragged and poorly miked. Still, their harmonies were often as thrilling as ever, with the combined voices somehow filling in what the sisters might have individually lost to time. (Ernest Hardy)

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Public Enemy, EPMD, Mos Def, The Roots, Wu-Tang Clan and a reunited Rage Against the Machine played in San Bernadino over the weekend. Timothy Norris was there and took loads of pictures.

All photos by Timothy Norris. Click here to see a whole lot more.

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Which Van Halen? The Diamond-Dave fronted VH, of course.

The band is slated to play the Staples Center on November 20. As previously speculated, the band will consist of Eddie, David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen. Michael Anthony will not re-join the band for the tour and bass duties will fall to Eddie's son Wolfgang, who was born five years after the group played with Roth.

More details of the press conference are on the way.

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Bad Religion
New Maps of Hell (Epitaph Records)
By Tony Ware

New Maps of Hell, Bad Religion's 14th original studio album, does an admirable job proving that the L.A. sextet is still the epitome of a tempestuous, polemically driven punk band. The anti-establishment espousers conform here to what they do best: melodic hardcore featuring increasingly cynical, doctorate-driven lyrics that threaten to get a bit pedantic at times. For better or worse, this album could've easily been released between 1990's Against the Grain and 1992's Generator, but it also sounds comfortable following the recent spate of Bad Religion's releases with reunited/founding guitarist Brett Gurewitz.

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The man who founded Factory Records in Manchester, home of Durutti Column and A Certain Ratio (as well as Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays) has died of kidney cancer at age 57. O.C. Weekly's Dave Segal has more at Heard Mentality.

Here's a clip of Wilson shot a few months ago in Southern California introducing the Happy Mondays at Coachella.

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Universal Consciousness Orchestra, with the Ashram Community Choir and Flying Lotus
Japanese American National Museum, August 9, 2007
By Randall Roberts

It's a heady goal, for sure, and takes a pretty confident bunch to even name themselves the Universal Consciousness Orchestra. As if any dozen humans would be sold bold as to presume, through music, the ability to collectively float above (or over, or within, or without) the corporeal world and meet together on the astral plane -- let alone outside on a concrete stage between two buildings. But last night in front of the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, the dozen-odd members of the Universal Consciousness Orchestra, whose mission is to honor the music of the late Alice Coltrane, did indeed tap into the mystic.

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M.I.A.
Kala
XL Recordings
Scheduled release date: August 21
By Oscar Pascual

The “World” section at your local music retailer is just a way to pile together all the stuff that isn’t from America or the UK. It really isn’t fair that Bossanova joints can be found right next to some Riverdance jams, but English-born Sri Lankan M.I.A.’s latest, Kala, truly deserves to be called a World album.

She proposes in her new disc that this is the Third World Democracy, and there’s no arguing here. M.I.A. did a lot of jumping from continent to continent for this one, and the end result captures the musical flavor of several different cultures and manages to infuse them with booming 808s and frantic rhythms.

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Old Crow Medicine Show
Avalon, August 8
By Ryan Colditz

Having grown up in the boonies of Northern California, far from the smog and street lights, "Country" is a way of the land. I did everything I could to stay separated from it. All that line dancing and rodeo action just isn't my thing. My comfort zone stops with the Allman Brothers. But by golly Old Crow Medicine Show was a hoo-hah, take-your partner doe-see-doe experience. I think that's how they say it. A fun sound with good, meaningful messages like "Don't you never let no woman rule your mind." It reminded me that no matter how you package a song, if it has a good beat and some soul, its good music. They genuinely enjoyed the show they were performing. This group of guys from Nashville knew they were south of the Mason-Dixon line and brought the south to Southern California.

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Old Crow Medicine Show
Avalon, August 8
By Rena Kosnett

It pains me to say this about Old Crow Medicine Show, because the Nashville quintet just seem so nice. Kind. Smiley. Like the good country boys they are. I would love to be friends with all of them. And after attending their packed Avalon show last night and discovering how many die hard fans they have in L.A., I know I'm going to get flak for saying so, but their music is just too easy.

I don't mean easy as in simple—some of their arrangements are quite intricate and complex, incorporating banjos, guitars, fiddles, upright bass, harmonica, vocal harmonies. I mean easy as in the opposite of difficult. There was nothing risky in their performance, nothing out of the ordinary, and therefore I didn't gain anything from it. Just a little too tame/lame, as pretty as the music is. It could have been sponsored by Wal-Mart.

All Photos by Rena Kosnett

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Roving photographer Timothy Norris was in Chicago for Lollapalooza - the non-traveling festival now firmly anchored in the Midwest.

M.I.A. (above), Modest Mouse, Daft Punk, Pearl Jam, !!!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Satellite Party and dozens more played over three days. Click here for shots from Friday and here for Saturday and Sunday's bands.

First, however, Tim did go to a Cubs game:

All photos by Timothy Norris

Some more Wrigley Field shots after the jump, for no particular reason, except that they look cool.

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Entrance
Safari Sam's, August 3
By Rena Kosnett

Entrance are not who you think they are. They are not a quiet, mellow trio nipping at the heels of the psych-folk pack mule, despite their long hair, skinny limbs, pale skin and bare feet (which make them look like they're on their way to see the California country line-up at Topanga Days). As their set on Friday confirmed, they are thoroughly guns-blazing, balls-out rock n' roll. How such a full-throttle wailing voice can come out of such a slim young man is a mystery, but the ferocity with which Guy Blakeslee ripped into songs off his 2006 rock opera album Prayer of Death managed to get me head-banging unconsciously — I didn't realize what I was doing until I hit the guy behind me.

Photos by Rena Kosnett
More after the jump

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A Benefit for 400 Blows drummer Ferdie Cuilda
The Echoplex, August 4.
By Arlie John Carstens

For a long nine years, drummer Ferdie Cuilda has been the hard-hitting, wildly entertaining backbone of 400 Blows, L.A.’s best brutalist noise-punk band. His mathematically complex drumming-style is precisely what drew me to the band from the start, and I've proclaimed their greatness to anyone within earshot ever since.

Cuilda deserves a benefit show just to honor his drumming, but last night's show at the Echoplex was bittersweet. While on a summer U.S. tour, Cuilda woke up in Hot Springs, Arkansas in the throes of respiratory failure and full-blown immune system collapse. Close to death, his bandmates rushed him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a severe case of adult chickenpox. He was quarantined for a week. With no health insurance, one of L.A.'s favorite drummers accrued $20,000 in medical bills. He continues to face a lengthy convalescence, which he will undertake in Santa Barbara. What's most heart-breaking is that he's decided to quit music.

The Bronx
All photos by Arlie John Carstens

Also, more photos of the concert here.

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The Purple Rose of Dublin
The Swell Season
El Rey, August 1
by Ryan Ward, Photos by Bryce Wilson

Everyday there are songs and musicians that attempt to do what they believe is meaningful. Pseudo-laureates and full-on liars buzz around our heads on a daily basis, but The Swell Season, the concert-ready manifestation of the heart-string-tugging duo of the film 'Once' knocked me back into reality like a Brinks' truck. Yes they wrote those songs that left many-a-couple swooning over each other after they left the theater, and yes, they are TOURING! In the flesh, stepping off the screen from their romantic masterpiece of a film, more gracefully than Woody Allen could have imagined a pair.

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Peter Bjorn & John
Henry Fonda Theater, July 31
By Carlie Armstrong

To kick off their North American tour, Swedish indie-poppers Peter Bjorn and John started at The Henry Fonda. And, to start the night off right, they indulged in the longest sound check in the history of time, making incredibly strange noises and sounding quite like the spaniels that adorned their tour shirts.

After the concert officially began, however, besides the absence of John, everything seemed to be in order. Peter and Bjorn pranced and sprung with pizazz and incited a gracious amount of clapping from the very diverse audience, which consisted of roughly half mid-twenties hipsters and half pre-teens with their open minded chaperones. In any case, the entirety of the audience was delighted with the opening song, “Let’s Call it Off,” which was made even more exciting with an addition from the makeshift drummer, who decided to spew a grand mixture of water and Stella Artois over the stage at the peak of the song.

Photos by Carlie Armstrong

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If you missed Peter Bjorn & John's sold out show last night, worry not. They'll be returning to the Wiltern Monday, Sept. 17th with the Clientele. Click here or the image below to see Timothy Norris' photos from the concert, including opener Cass McCombs.

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Before you even start reading this, open a new browser window and head to http://www.myspace.com/mia. After a few seconds, M.I.A.'s recent single, “Boyz,” will load. That'll give you thumbnail approximation of what we're discussing. Then return here and continue reading.

The above photo was taken with a very expensive camera, set at a high shutter speed, its tripod secured to the floor with gigantic battleship bolts. If so desired, the camera could have taken a photo of the inside of Maya Arulpragasam's left pupil. (It looked pretty crazy in there from where I was standing.) But even a million dollar gadget couldn't compete with the bass at the Echoplex last night during the second of two performances by M.I.A. It rumbled the floor as though emanating from the Earth's molten core. Thus the photo above, in which the barely visible specter of Sri Lanka born, London-bred Arulpragasam – who is M.I.A. - tosses off a few caw-caws during the evening's pre-encore closer, “Bird Flu,” while the room vibrates.

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