Jena Ardell

​Guess we hit a nerve when we called out Dave Grohl for his anti-EDM Grammy Awards acceptance speech.

Besides tons of hate mail (our favorite told us to " ... go eat a bag of dicks") and some support (Moby's former manager noted we were there when that real punk rocker went electronic in the early 1990s), lots of folks noted Grohl has uttered similar comments in the past as part of his spin for the Foo Fighters' latest album, Wasting Light, which he has said was recorded with all-analog equipment (but which went digital post-production). Sure, that was his spiel, but the timing was pointed. It was the most "electronic" Grammy Awards ever.

Feeling the heat, Grohl today issued a clarification of his comments, made during his acceptance speech for Best Rock Album at last weekend's awards:

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Jena Ardell

​See also: Dave Grohl "Clarifies" Grammy Speech After We Call Him Out For Sounding Like an Anti-EDM Geezer

We like Foo Fighters. They're the Samuel Adams beer of pop -- solid, familiar, a good call in a one-jukebox town.

But innovators they're not. Quite the opposite: If one could feed off a dying aesthetic -- long-haired white guys with guitars -- for the better part of two decades, Foo Fighters can show you how.

And so it is with some irony that the band's leader, Dave Grohl, had disparaging words for electronic dance music last night during a Grammy Awards acceptance speech for Best Rock Album:

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Skrillette

​See also our original post: Top Five Girls Who Look Like Skrillex

Skrillex is back in town for a six night performance run. Here's our review of his show at Cinespace, and be sure to check out our cover story from a few months back, in which we embedded with the reluctant dubstep star and told his definitive story.

Still, our most popular piece on the guy was our Top Five Girls Who Look Like Skrillex post. And so, back by popular demand -- culled from our favorite Tumblr site ever created, Girls That Look Like Skrillex -- here are five more girls who do, indeed, look like Skrillex.

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Star Foreman

Skrillex In San Diego

​See also:
*Our cover story on Skrillex
*Top Five Girls Who Look Like Skrillex

Skrillex, Alvin Risk, Koan Sound, Dan Sena
Cinespace
1/25/12

Better than... Seeing Skrillex at a festival

Skrillex's six night hometown tour began yesterday, when the local boy-done-good held court before a sold out crowd at Cinespace. It might have seemed like an unusual venue choice; he normally plays for thousands at festivals, while Cinespace is an intimate spot where you often catch DJs hanging out at the bar.

But the Hollywood venue -- home to Dim Mak's famed Tuesday night parties -- strongly influenced a young Sonny Moore back in the mid-'00s. As he noted last night, without the party and its founder Steve Aoki, there wouldn't be a Skrillex.

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Liz Ohanesian

​See also: Our Moguai Interview: Deadmau5's Associate Leads A Big Beat Comeback.

Moguai
Monday Social @ The Playhouse
January 24, 2012

Better than...Remembering that the week has only just started.

When I interviewed Moguai for West Coast Sound recently, he spoke about keeping an eye on the crowd. That's exactly what the German DJ did last night at Monday Social, which isn't a typical club night. The weekly party has been going strong for 15 years, hosted gigs from some of the biggest DJs, and has a reputation as a spot for serious club-goers. After all, you have to be pretty hardcore to dance until 2:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning.

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​Veteran DJ Moguai was born Andre Tegeler; he's been playing parties and putting out music since the mid-'90s. Jams like "U Know Why" (2002) picked up on the Big Beat sound popularized by artists like Fatboy Slim, while 2007's "Freaks" is a guitar-inflected electro track. He's even got his own label, Punx, but has remained under the radar for many EDM fans.

This is, until he hooked up with Canadian powerhouse Deadmau5, who has been releasing much of Moguai's recent work on his mau5trap label. Since then, the German DJ, who splits his time between Recklinghausen and Berlin, has remixed the likes of Britney Spears, Beyoncé and Afrojack. He turned Fatboy Slim's 2000 track "Ya Mama" into one of last fall's big club hits. His new single "Mpire" is doing great on Beatport, and his album of same name will be out on January 30. Ahead of his show tonight at Playhouse, we caught up with him about subjects including Deadmau5 and Big Beat.

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Timothy Norris

​Club Cheval
Check Yo Ponytail 2 @ Echoplex
1/10/12

Better than... spending another night looking for Soundcloud mixes.

You know DJs have skill when Shazam is completely confused by what's playing. That was the case at Check Yo Ponytail 2 last night, where the Club Cheval DJs chopped up tunes from artists like Nicki Minaj and Ciara into dance jams. When Shazam finally did start identifying tunes -- like "Wet" by Snoop Dogg and "Coke, Dope Crack, Smack" from J-Doe -- it was a sign that the crew was winding down.

Club Cheval is a group of four French DJs: Canblaster, Myd, Panteros666 and Sam Tiba. Each one has carved out an individual career and unique sound, but when they are on stage as Club Cheval they work together. When I got there just after 10, the crew was already in the mix, and didn't stop until the venue closed at 2 a.m. Throughout the night their selection veered from techno to hip-hop to house.

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Liz Ohanesian

Nero

​ Nero (DJ Set)
The Music Box
12-22-11

See also: Photos from Friday night's set.

Better than... Listening to Nero's new CD.

Earlier this month, Cherrytree Records released in the U.S. the hard copy of Nero's debut album, Welcome Reality. The U.K. electronic dance music duo's work had already been available in other markets, and several songs from the album were already huge club hits. But the U.S. release has been followed by a tour here, which drew a full house to The Music Box last night. It was a long night, but one thing was clear -- listening to Nero DJ (in this case, just Joe Ray) -- was more exciting than listening to Welcome Reality, which is already pretty interesting.

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​

They fired Jim Ladd on a Tuesday. Ladd had been the nighttime DJ on L.A. classic rock station KLOS, in various incarnations, since 1969. He's a rare DJ with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and inspired Tom Petty's song "The Last DJ."

Cumulus Media, having absorbed bankrupt former KLOS owner Citadel Media, fired Ladd without warning along with 26 other employees in a morning meeting on October 25. (The following day, Clear Channel fired scores of DJs from their 850 stations, as well.) "What am I going to say to my wife?" Ladd thought.

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​See also:
*In Defense Of "Fratstep:" An Open Letter To James Blake
*Wait, Now Korn Invented Dubstep?!

It's fair to say that most political nerds don't know what dubstep is. But last month libertarian sites like The Daily Paul and Lew Rockwell got geeked up about Porter Robinson's track "The State."

The ominous dubstep number uses samples taken from economist Murray Rothbard's seminal For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. "How f'n awesome is that!?" wrote someone on The Daily Paul, which is, you guessed it, inspired by everyone's favorite gadfly presidential candidate Ron Paul. "...This is just further proof that the concept of liberty is being spread and becoming engrained in our culture, most obviously in younger generations."

Maybe, maybe not!

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