Rebecca Haithcoat

Jahcyy and Galli

​See also:
*Save Sessions LA
*Syd the Kyd on Odd Future, Her Sexuality and Why She Hates the Word "Lesbian"

When Jahcyy and Galli, the lyricist-producer duo Jahlli, are asked how they got together, Jahcyy's husky voice dips into a lower register. "Girls," she says.

They might be the first male-female duo in hip hop to have lived Usher and R. Kelly's "Same Girl" dilemma. "We were both talking to one girl at the same time! Might still be," she says, with sly glance at Galli.

It's a Saturday afternoon in late January, and the two are spending the day on Jahcyy's porch in Watts. After placing second in the House of Blues Foundation Bringing Down the House competition last October, they used the $300 prize money to buy a proper microphone and stand. The Internet, Syd and Matt Martians' Odd Future subgroup, are in the process of remixing one of their songs. Finally, the 19-year-olds are feeling confident about their future.

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Timothy Norris

Gotye

​See also: Our Gotye slideshow
Gotye
El Rey Theatre
2/02/12

Better than ... watching the music video for "Somebody That I Used To Know" over and over.

"Somebody That I Used To Know" is the kind of song you can never get out of your head. It might have something to do with the fact that if you sign on to Facebook or turn on your radio, there is a good chance you will hear it playing or see it posted (multiple times). After seeing Gotye perform live however, it is clear that what he brings to the table is something special -- and that's really why it sticks.

Wouter "Wally" De Backer -- the true identity of Gotye -- started the sold-out show with a bang. Literally. When the curtain was finally drawn, he emerged from backstage and began to play the array of drums displayed across the front of the stage. Three mics were set up around the drums giving him ample ability to belt his soulful songs while he played percussion.

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The corner of Figueroa in Highland Park

​Over the last couple of months I've been doing a lot of what a writer does best, hanging out in bars and listening to people talk. I live in Echo Park, and around these parts the bar banter is usually centered around one question: what's cool. In L.A., the answer to that changes as quickly as the cars speed down the 101.

Lately, a lot of people have been ragging on this fair barrio of mine. Guys with unwashed hair and paint on their jeans complain about how Echo Park is becoming too gentrified. Too much like our now-grown-up neighbors in Silver Lake. (Shocking to realize it's been more than a decade since Beck was couch-surfing his way to stardom.) Someone actually complained the Gold Room isn't "dangerous enough anymore."

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​KCRW Broadcast #150 for Saturday, February 4, 2012

See also: Henry Rollins: The Column! Hands Are Groping Me, Breasts Are Pushed Into Me

Fanatics! Coming to you from freezing Scandinavia! I am on a rare night off in Copenhagen, Denmark. Some amazing records stores up here, Fanatic!

Last several days have been fruitful on the endless record hunt. Holland, Belgium and Germany were very good to Road Manager Ward and I. Cosmic Jokers, Brigitte Fontaine, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Takehisa Kosugi, A really clean first UK pressing of Low by David Bowie, My Cat Is An Alien, Suicide's first album, German pressing -- never saw that one before.

I thought my present geographical location was the perfect jumping off point for a bit of a concept show and if you scan the tracks that we have for you, it is easy to see that we have done our level best to keep it all in Scandinavia.

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Timothy Norris

​Fujiya & Miyagi, Evan Voytas, TV Girls
The Echo
2/01/12

Better than... listening to Fujiya & Miyagi through headphones.

There were moments where it felt incredibly awkward to stare at Fujiya & Miyagi, the British four-piece, as they played at The Echo last night. Frontman David Best would back away from the mic and continue to play guitar. Sometimes he would jerk his upper body back and forth in moves that were so natural that it seemed as though he was completely unaware of the crowd in front of him.

This wasn't limited to Best, though; the others in the band looked to be equally entranced. When those moments hit -- and they did repeatedly -- watching the band felt like spying on some incredible moment where four people were lost in music. I shouldn't be watching this, I thought, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the stage.

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Jennie Warren

​See also: Schoolboy Q's Questions and Answers: He Didn't Know What to Do With His Life. Rap Was the Last Resort

This week's music feature is on Schoolboy Q. Lounging on a couch in his manager's house in Carson, the rapper told us about transitioning from stuffing a baggie of crack in his cheek to selling out headlining shows across the city. Q, who often adopts a slightly unhinged, snarling rap persona, was relaxed and spoke openly about his spirituality, why he won't spend more than 15 minutes in his old hood and the one question he hates. Below are excerpts from our conversation that didn't make the story.

On why he hates some of his songs:
"I hate all the real true songs I have, like 'Birds & the Beez,' 'Blessed.' I haven't listened to 'Blessed' since I made it. All the real true, true, true songs, no lies in them? I make those 'cause I feel like I have to make them. It needs to be done. You have to do certain records so people won't categorize you as this [rapper who talks about nothing]. To make sure they don't say that, you gotta make 'em cry at least once on the album."

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Gustavo Turner

Prince, wielding the world's largest metaphor

​How can an artist be hailed as one of the greatest of all time, when a big chunk of his later career is dismissed or hated on by his fans? Sure, lots of young firecrackers age into old snoozes and perhaps this means they're not the greatest of all time. But the other possibility is that "fans" are the old snoozes, too detached to engage with an old artist's new tricks. Surely the man behind history's greatest Super Bowl halftime show is still writing relevant music.

Prince, for all his weirdness, still more or less sounds like Prince. This places him in Neil Young and Rolling Stones territory, rather than Madonna and Michael Jackson -- he doesn't have to keep reinventing himself. Which is neat considering that Young/Stones signify old grooves, whereas Prince embraced future-funk, hip hop and synthetic devices like his helium-fueled alter ego "Camille," and managed to age respectably without compromising himself. But that doesn't mean people didn't get bored with him. So if you're sick of Sign 'O' the Times and Purple Rain, here are five worth revisiting.

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Maarten de Boer

Scott Aukerman

​Comedian Harris Wittels is witty and thoughtful; his writing for NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation hinges on his subtle sensibilities. He's also a huge fan of Phish, a band with which those characteristics are not usually associated.

Having attended some 70 Phish shows over the years, he counts himself among the most devoted fans of the Vermont-based jam band. His friend Scott Aukerman -- host of popular podcast Comedy Bang Bang -- finds this perplexing, and not just because Wittels doesn't have dreadlocks.

"I can't believe that a college-educated man with a respectable job likes them so much that he follows them around," Aukerman says. "Typical Phish fans are some of the most annoying people in the world."

Wittels saw Aukerman's antipathy as a challenge; after all, Aukerman hadn't really heard all that much of the band's music. So in August the pair started a spinoff podcast called Analyze Phish, which consists of Wittels playing the group's music for Aukerman and trying to convince him of its merits.

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​[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Saturday KCRW broadcast.]

Time becomes fluid and is then smashed, compressed, elongated by miles and then slammed into a wall and rearranged. It is force-fed periodic sleep, border crossings, long nights onstage, visits to the gym and a never-ending series of small rooms to spend time in before and after the shows and told to keep going. Some of the venues I have been in and out of for literally decades, and the familiarity I feel in them is a hard-earned currency that, while worthless in the real world, is a valuable asset out here. I crossed the line of 10 shows a few shows ago and now I am officially on tour and there is no separation between me, the audience, the road -- it's all on all at once and it never closes. That's the number I have in my head. You have to do 10 to know you're doing it, and then from there you go deeper and deeper.

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​Don Cornelius, creator of Soul Train, is dead of a reportedly self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He was 75.

As our news blog The Informer reported this morning, Cornelius was found in his Sherman Oaks home and taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center around 4 a.m. Investigators from LAPD have not officially ruled if the death was a suicide or homicide.

Cornelius was born in Chicago in 1936. He began his career as a journalist and was hired by Chicago's WCIU-TV as a news and sports reporter. At the same time, he was emceeing a traveling concert series featuring local acts he called "The Soul Train." The station soon became home to the program, and its first airing was August 17, 1970.

As documented in 2010's Soul Train: The Hippest Trip in America, Cornelius was a visionary, not only introducing African-American musicians to a mainstream audience, but also creating one of the first African-American owned media empires. As the writer, producer and host of Soul Train, he was integral in the show's immediate, overwhelming success -- by the end of its first season, it was syndicated and running in 24 markets outside of Chicago.

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