Nite Jewel

​Ramona Gonzalez may be growing up, but the music she is making as Nite Jewel isn't growing out.

On her new EP, Am I Real?, made in collaboration with Cole Greif-Neill, follows up last year's debut album Good Evening with more spare, spacey explorations of electro-funk and disco-pop. It's bedroom knob-twiddling at its most literal -- you can almost imagine the songwriter dancing with herself.

The new disc does include a collaboration with art-funk newbies Daniel and Andrew Aged of Teen Inc., who will open tonight's show at the Troubadour, where Peanut Butter Wolf will lend his DJ skills.

A Grand Performance

​Sometimes, the Gods just give it to you. Phenomenal music, that is. And at the Grand Performances series on July 23rd, the stars aligned for a one of a kind union of like-minded bodies and souls. The Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble joined up with beat scene maestro and Brainfeeder boss Flying Lotus to dish out some live renditions of tracks from his phenomenal "Cosmogramma" to an eager audience at Grand Performances. Violinist and composer Miguel Atwood-Ferguson lead a troupe of musicians from FlyLo's album in a beautiful rendition of "Drips," which shifted into a special adaptation of J Dilla's "Take Notice." All night, the musicianship was top notch as harpist Rebekah Raff wove dreamscapes with her fingers, and low end theorist Stephen 'Thundercat' Bruner explored the outer reaches of bass.

Luckily* it was all caught on video.

After the jump we have a film of the performance and a free mp3 download too.

AND because we're feeling generous, we've included a new cut from Flying Lotus' new EP Pattern+Grid World, just so you can see where this cat been and where he is headed.

Death to Vinyl will covert human or animal ashes into playable vinyl.

​Someone grab a shovel -- we've got to dig up every seminal music-maker of all time. U.K. music company Death to Vinyl Records is offering a highly unusual postmortem service.

For a whopping £2000, the macabre bastards will take the ashes of you, your loved one or your pet(s), and form them into hard plastic which will then be cut into a neat black circle and grooved with whatever sounds you've chosen.

Yes, they will make a record out of you -- up to 30 discs per order to be exact, though we imagine some of the magic is lost in subsequent pressings.

As for the sleeve, they provide that too. Either a headstone-style D.O.B to D.O.D. accompanied by an ominous "R.I.V." (rest in vinyl), or a portrait by a successful painter, James Hague.

Oh but there's more.

Gustavo Turner

How to promote your band on the cheap

​
It's getting harder and harder for musicians to get noticed these days (memo to local bands: if you hire an unprofessional, annoying PR hack who can't even write an email subject line spelling out the what/where/when--we won't name names--it's even harder...)

That's why we have to applaud the pluck of this guy (we're assuming it's a guy--that's guy handwriting) who just scribbled the MySpace information for both of his bands (we're assuming they are his bands or it would be just creepy) on his busted-up Toyota truck.

(There was an X-factor, though: he was lucky a certain music editor for a certain influential local publication got stuck in traffic behind him.)

Here's a detail of the brilliant, young-Don-Draper-worthy grassroots marketing effort. Now go check out those bands (sorry, we don't have time--we're too busy trying to find relevant info in annoying PR emails):

I wannna beeeeee perfume-ayaaaaaa!

​Eau de Rotten?

No, just "Sex Pistols -- The Fragrance," ready to be issued in the US by Paris-based perfume brand Etat Libre d'Orange. There's gonna be a "Never Mind the Bollocks" soap as well. No, really.

We've been reading Billboard's fascinating article about the incredibly strange world of Sex Pistols merchandising.

Once you get over the initial cynicism (cue 1977's "Anarchy in the UK"), meta-cynicism (cue the mid-'90s "Filthy Lucre" tour version of "Anarchy in the UK"), and meta-meta-cynicism (cue Johnny Rotten's 2000s appearances in butter commercials and cheesy celebrity reality shows), what makes the article so compelling is that it features insider interviews with the people who help market the Sex Pistols brand and put these deals together. (Yes, LiveNation is involved, of course...)

Think about this next time you play Never Mind the Bollocks (we always liked the Spunk versions better, by the way):

Michael Krassner, executive VP of worldwide retail and licensing for Live Nation Merchandise, says frontman Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon) and other band members are "closely involved" with all licensing decisions.

"They know who they are better than we do," Krassner says. "That's difficult in some respects, as opposed to someone who just approves everything. But ultimately, if you want your brand to endure, you have to have a level of consistency and quality over time."

​A couple of weeks after the "lyrics" video for Cee-Lo's "Fuck You!" became a viral sensation (and he started selling t-shirts), the Goodie Mob/Gnarls Barkley vocal genius drops his official video for the song.

Controversy-bait alert: it features children lip-synching the chorus.

Here it is, folks--the official "Fuck You!" video by Cee-Lo!:

Glitch Mob provide the music for Fighting Gravity's aerial acrobatics.

​America's got talent and beats, evidently.

All things considered -- the rising cultural cachet of Flying Lotus, the crossover appeal of Baths, the insane showmanship of the Gaslamp Killer -- former Low End Theory affiliates Glitch Mob have undoubtedly found the largest audience of any L.A. beat scene artist yet.

That's because last night, in an episode of America's Got Talent that racked up an estimated 10.5 million viewers, Glitch Mob's "Animus Vox" accompanied the astounding aerial acrobatics of black-light dance crew, Fighting Gravity.

What's more, it wasn't the first time. Watch the clips after the jump.

May we invite Jonathan D. Haskell inside your head?

It'll only take a few minutes, really. There. Now relax.

Haskell makes ambient music under the name Seven Saturdays, the kind of stuff that belongs in movies that haven't been made yet, or maybe even imagined. His orchestrated tomes are are part of an internal dialogue he seems to be having with his native Los Angeles; Seven Saturdays' new album "The Snowflakes That Hit Us Became Our Stars" (out this week) is that which we overhear.

The conversation is informed by genteel keyboards, weeping strings, droning guitars and touches of vibes and samples, the latter arranged as almost a call and response to his music's oozing melodies. Headphones on.

Haskell's collaborators on the project, recorded in downtown L.A., included Daniel Farris (St. Vincent), Lester Nuby (Verbena), Morgan Kibby (M83), Mike Garson (David Bowie, Smashing Pumpkins), Wesley Precourt (Dave Stewart, Jenny Lewis) and Eric Heywood (The Pretenders).

Seven Saturdays celebrates its album release tonight at the Bootleg Theater, supported by Helen Stellar and Tapedeck Mountain.

Fish sticks anyone?

​Kanye West and Jay-Z have apparently collaborated on a new EP called "Watch the Throne," according to the West's Twitter. West recently released a first listen to the results of the collaboration called "Monster" featuring cameos by Rick Ross, Bon Iver (?!?!!), Nicki Minaj, and of course, Jay-Z. The song is not half bad especially near the end where Minaj goes a little nuts, in that good way.

Of course a Jay-Z and Kanye West collaboration isn't as exciting if you consider the rumors going around that West doesn't make his beats and Jay-Z doesn't write his own lyrics. A notable producer (who wants to stay anonymous) told me that West uses a team of producers to make his beats, and Jay-Z has a group of writers who help him lay down lyrics. They basically pick and choose the best material made by their people and run with it. It's like the Sizzler buffet, only with hip hop parts, not tiny corn cobs. Sure, this is no different that 98% of pop music, but then again, commercial rap is pop music.

But I digress. Kanye joined Twitter a little over a month ago, and has been dropping gems ever since. Comedian/actor Aziz Ansari even went as far as creating the hashtag #predictingKanyesTweets to preview the hypothetical insanity West could espouse in 140 characters or fewer. (Ansari has since moved on to #predicting50centTweets)

After the jump, listen to "Monster" featuring Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Bon Iver And Nicki Minaj, and take our quiz to see if you can tell the difference between real Kanye and fake Kanye tweets.

Lina Lecaro

Myles Kennedy, Fergie and Slash perform SSMF 2010

​L.A. Weekly's Nightranger Lina Lecaro put it best in her Sunset Strip Music Festival live review:

"Whether you're 20, 40 or 60 years old, grew up in Los Angeles or hopped right off the bus a la Axl Rose in 'Welcome to the Jungle,' if you're a music fan, the Sunset Strip's legacy and continuing eminence as a rock n' roll nucleus is and has been an undeniable draw. It may have lost some luster over years, but in the last few, it's definitely come to recapture the old magic, albeit in a new way."

The third annual Sunset Strip Music Festival kicked off last Thursday, August 26, with a benefit for its 2010 honoree, guitar legend Slash, at the House of Blues. The festival culminated Saturday, August 28, with performances by over 50 bands including Slash with Myles Kennedy and Fergie, the Smashing Pumpkins, Semi Precious Weapons, Filter, Kid Cudi, Common, Travie McCoy, Warner Drive, The Binges, Beth Hart, David George, Delta Rose, Whiskey Six, The Outline, Thick as Thieves, Tucker Jameson & The Hot Mugs, and more.

In addition to interviews with Slash, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, Richard Patrick of Filter, Steven Adler of Adler's Appetite/ex-Guns N' Roses, and Warner Drive, L.A. Weekly reached out to other performers during the festival to talk their favorite Slash stories and the impact that the guitarist has had on their careers and lives.

Read on for more about hearing the solo in "November Rain" for the first time, watching Slash shred with Michael Jackson at the MTV Video Music Awards, and one particular sexual fantasy involving both the axe man and Debbie Gibson...