Los Angeles Music Blog

Fan Art by deviantART's CaribbeanBlue

We Want Your Fan Art!

​Like the entire music-listening world (#9 album on Amazon.com on presales alone!) we at West Coast Sound are extremely excited about the November 23rd release of For Your Entertainment, the debut album by our fellow Angeleno and America's once-and-future Idol, Mr. Adam Lambert.

That's why we are going to start what we we'd like to call "COUNTDOWN TO LAMBERTGEDDON," a series of posts leading to the date when the sure-to-be-seminal album will drop from heaven on the ravenous Lambertfans like manna on the starving Hebrews.

Today is Day 17 of our countdown and we'd like to start off with a little request from our readers. We would like you to go out in LA this weekend and do one of two things:

• Take a picture of Adam Lambert if he's in town and email it to us for publication here!

or else

• Get intoxicated with your friends and make some ORIGINAL FAN ART (see above) showing us and the world how excited you are about LAMBERTGEDDON 2009!

Send photographs of Adam Lambert in the wild or your amazing Fan Art to: lambertgeddon@gmail.com

We will choose the best pictures to illustrate our Lambert-related items counting down to Lambertgeddon itself.

Review by Daiana Feuer.

Back in the distant mists of last April, the Echo held its first ever all-ages residency for Avi Buffalo (then and now supported by his mate Bobb Bruno). Since then, it seems 18-year-old Avi Zahner-Isenberg and his bandmates skipped much of the learning curve and went straight pro. The band's return performance last night at the Eastside venue had a clean, platinum-record tightness--down to the closing grungy breakdown's polite precision.

Anna Webber

Avi Buffalo

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The show began on a far more eccentric note, though, as children hid behind columns and elbows watching a bunny play with sticks on stage. Clad in a white unitard topped by a giant balloon bunny head, Bobb Bruno appeared to be playing a live soundtrack to an RPG video game. A one man band on drum pad, he builds epic ride-and-snare rhythms and synthesized ballads note by note.

Last year chanteuse Inara George released An Invitation, her lush collaboration with legendary arranger, lyricist, composer and singer Van Dyke Parks. After the largely positive--though slightly muted--reaction to that collection, Inara went back to the drawing board and has just issued a digital solo collection of related sketches and reinventions.

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Inara (who's also known as the fairer half of neo-twee duo The Bird and The Bee) will be showcasing Accidental Experimental, her kinda-DIY companion piece to An Invitation, next Tuesday at the Bootleg Theatre.

(FREE MP3 and show info, after the jump)

​Here at West Coast Sound we have been long-time fans of the RZA's 2005 book The Wu-Tang Manual, a really inspirational retelling of the conception and formation of hip-hop's unlikeliest spiritual gang. So we were thrilled when we learned earlier this year that The Abbot was working on a followup of sorts to be called The Tao of Wu.

The book has been out for a few weeks now and we have been enjoying it tremendously. Not only is it a better read than the previous book, but it also contains some awesome stories about the RZA as a Los Angeles dweller! The Clan is so identified with the mythos of Shaolin (Staten Island, NYC) that many people don't realize that for over a decade now the RZA has been a bona fide Angeleno.

Here are some of the LA nuggets to be found in The Tao of Wu. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy for more Wisdom, Mathematics, and Higher Learning:

• In 1997 the RZA relocated the Wu-Tang Clan to LA to work on their second album at Amerycan Studio in West Hollywood. The rappers lived in the not-that-ritzy-but-still-amenable Oakwood Apartments in Toluca Lake.




Continue reading " LA Stories: The Wacky Adventures"...
Tags: Bobby Digital, Los Angeles, RZA, Tao of Wu, Wu Tang Clan

Tool-man Maynard James Keenan just posted his new Puscifer music video as a preview of next week's digital EP "C" Is for (Please Insert Sophomoric Genitalia Reference HERE). (That's what he's calling the record. It's not us being Victorian. We can say "cock" all we want. Cock cock cock cock.)

Our own Web Editor Erin Broadley has had some experience with the singer's penchant for filmmaking. "Oh, we know how much Maynard likes making videos...," says Broadley, her wrists still smarting from her encounter with the Puscifer frontman. (which you can watch after the jump).

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L.A.'s premier purveyors of sweet Sixties' style soul jams (sorry for the alliteration attack), Fitz and the Tantrums play KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic riiiiiiiight... NOW! Tune in to hear the uptempo soulful cuts from their latest EP, Songs for a Breakup, Vol. 1.
Listen and watch it live here, and tune back into West Coast Sound later today for KCRW's video recap. Or just catch them live at the Echo tonight.

Get them mid-morning dancin' shoes on!

(More F&T media after the jump, and KCRW video update to come!)

Last night the 2009 Latin Grammys--a consistently far more entertaining and classier (and Kanye-free!) event than its gringo counterpart--were celebrated in Las Vegas. The highlight of the evening was a crazy-ass performance by Mexico's legendary Juan Gabriel.

The flamboyant veteran performer, beloved of sentimental aunts and tough gangstas alike, took to the stage backed by an army of mariachis and folkloric dancers and, Courtney Love-style, refused to leave for 40 minutes. What originally was meant to be a three-song meddley honoring his status as this year's Latin Recording Academy's Person of the Year devolved into a full set showcasing the endless appeal of "el Divo de Juarez." (For the record: he's awesome!)

In case you were wondering about the pink elephant in the room, when someone had the balls to ask Juan Gabriel if he was gay, the star allegedly replied "Lo que se ve no se pregunta, mijo" ("What you can see, you don't need to ask about, son.")

The relationship between machismo, sentimentality, and even good old camp is very complicated in Latin American cultures, and this is especially true of Mexican culture. But as Cindy Casares points out in Guanabee, "This old queen is another one for whom the entirety of Mexico just looks the other way. Macho men in cowboy hats go to his shows, call him a fag and then cry during his songs. No one would care, Juan Gabriel, if you just admitted it. Except the gays, who would love you for it."

Long Beach's 60 Watt Kid is a band on the rise. Since moving to Southern California from San Francisco, the trio has become a regular fixture at art-oriented, all-ages venues like The Smell and Echo Curio. Both live and on record, the group maintains an odd but enticing duality, vacillating between skuzzy noise-punk and ethereal psych groove. As evidence to the former, we've got the just-released, super DIY, super apeshit video for "Virtual Plastic Surgery," from 60 Watt Kid's just-released Absolutely Kosher album, We Come From The Bright Side. And as evidence to the latter, you'll find an MP3 of "2012" after that.

Our friend Brian

​A few months ago, Marilyn Manson got upset about a story we published and used his MySpace to rant and threaten our reporters (and journalists in general) with the wrath of his minions. Here's an excerpt:

But if one more "journalist" makes a cavalier statement about me and my band, I will personally or with my fans help, greet them at their home and discover just how much they believe in their freedom of speech. I dare you all to write one more thing that you won't say to my face. Because I will make you say it. In that manner. That is a threat.

So, it is with trepidation that West Coast Sound must report today that there's a new Marilyn Manson professional music video doing the rounds, in which the Glam Goth Ghoul that inhabits the flesh of fortysomething Floridian Brian H. Warner appears to be beating a young woman to a bloody pulp.

But the question remains: Is this an elaborate film production with fake blood and stuntman's punches made to look like an amateur snuff video? Or did the man who renamed himself "Marilyn Manson" really go too far this time and beat a poor woman almost to death?

Decide for yourself. Video after the jump.

From the iconic red energy dome hats on its cover to its sublime synthesis of robotic riffs and synths, Freedom Of Choice is more than just the album that broke Devo into the mainstream (for some, their last great album), it's a potent, punchy, pogo-worthy, pop culture masterpiece. The Fonda sure was 'abounce all around us Wednesday night, when the band played the 1981 release in its entirety for a crowd consisting mainly of 30 and 40-somethings, including yours truly (FOC was the first album we bought with our own money... we were 11 years old and the title was not insignificant for a kid on the verge of pre-teenhood).

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, which the guys performed the night previously (reviewed here and garnering quite a debate in the comments section), was a little too eccentric for our 9-year-old tastes, but we, like many young fans sucked in initially by "Whip It," discovered it later.

​ Photo by Lina Lecaro