Los Angeles Music Blog

It was a shambolic, funky night at the Echo.

This is what was supposed to happen: Stones Throw had arranged a shindig for the release of Toechizown, the new album by DâM Funk, LA's self-procclaimed [see comment below] "Ambassador of Boogie Funk."

Mr. Funk was supposed to have gone up at 11, after an announced bill that included sultry underground soul songstress Jimi James, Detroit's turntablist Kyle Hall, and a set by DâM's side-project (or is it main project?) Master Blazter.

It didn't quite work out like that.

Gustavo Turner

DâM Funk and Master Blazter

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View more photos in Timothy Norris' "Snoop Dogg, DJ Quick @ Club Nokia" slideshow.

Jay-z once said, "Rap is a young man's game... you gotta have a plan for when it's over." Nice words, Hova, but for quintessential West Coast rapper Snoop Dogg the game goes on. At D-O-double-G's performance at the Club Nokia, the prototypical West Coast rapper dropped his classic cuts, old school covers, and hosted a cameo cavalcade that wasn't just a rap show: it was Snoop Dogg's Variety Hour.

Timothy Norris

Snoop: Paid Da Cost To Wear Da Onesie

​There was the Tupac tribute, the choreographed dancers dropping it like it was hot, and throwback collaborations featuring Lady of Rage, Xxibit, and hip hop pioneer Too $hort. Snoop wielded his greatest hits, "Gin and Juice," "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang," "Who Am I (Whats My Name)," and some new tracks from his upcoming release, "Malice in Wonderland." The crowd exploded for the classics, rapping along as if everyone had pocketfuls of rubbers.

But make no mistake, this isn't the Snoop of the Doggystyle era.

Liz Ohanesian

​In the Adult Swim series Metalocalypse, which recently began its third season by moving from a fifteen-minute spot to a half-hour one, Dethklok is so huge that they've spawned an economy larger than that of most countries, so famous that fans will do anything for them. While the live Dethklok, fronted by show creator Brendon Small, isn't quite so massive (nor does it's music drive fans to an epic demise), there's no denying that this band is adored. When WCS's Gustavo Turner spotted the line for last night's sold-out Palladium show early yesterday afternoon, we were impressed by the devotion.

The shrieking washed through Avalon in a solid wave of 14 year-old girls wearing short dresses from Forever 21 and boys whose bright sneakers gleamed in the darkness like the eyes of ghosts trailing sparkly wallet chains.

Chris Brown's Fan Appreciation show last Wednesday was morally tormenting. I wanted to "Run it Run it" on the dancefloor as I have in my car, but I worried about the kids. Avalon was packed. Why were they here?!? The children are our future, and I wanted America to punish him and teach them a lesson. Instead, the human capacity for compassion (or corporate desire for $$$) enabled these kids to forgive Brown, for booty shaking's sake at least.

Timothy Norris

Chris Brown...

​"People make mistakes," a ninth grader told me in the bathroom. "And he's a great performer," said her little sister, smoothing on lipgloss.

Timothy Norris

...and his Appreciating Fans

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View more photos in Timothy's Norris' "Them Crooked Vultures @ the Wiltern" slideshow and also from the band's surprise gig at the Roxy.

Timothy Norris

Josh Homme of Them Crooked Vultures (among other bands)

​From fist-pumping stomps to face-melting solos, Them Crooked Vultures' performance at the Wiltern Tuesday wasn't an avalanche of hard rock--it was a monolith.

From the very start, the Vultures had the Wiltern's sold-out crowd pulsating to the lumbering rhythms of "No One Loves Me & Neither Do I," a rafter-quaking riff rocker from their self-titled debut album, released this week.

The crowd's excitement nearly matched the energy blasted from a stage filled with hard rock's heavyweights: Led Zeppelin's bassist, John Paul Jones, Nirvana's drummer, Dave Grohl, and Josh Homme vocalist/guitarist of Queens of the Stone Age and Kyuss.

View more photos in Timothy Norris' "The Raveonettes @ Henry Fonda Theater" slideshow.

Do Scandinavians sweat? After watching The Raveonettes play over twenty songs from their growing catalog last Friday at the Fonda, I'm not positive I can provide the answer to that question. Sure, the Danish twosome named their new album In and Out of Control, but there was nothing "out" in their supremely controlled performance to a less-than-capacity crowd. Sune Rose Wagner (he) and Sharin Foo (she) came, played, and went on their way. I would describe him as professional, her as icy, and the whole show as appropriately efficient, if I wasn't worried that "professional," "icy" and "efficient" could be taken as prejudiced, or even cliched, when writing about a Northern European duo.

Timothy Norris

The Raveonettes

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Shannon Cottrell

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Click here to view Shannon Cottrell's slideshow from Hello Kitty's Bats and Cats Masquerade.

If there's one song that can drag me to the dance floor anytime it's played, it's "Lady Shave," a weird, minimal synth gem from Fad Gadget. Friday night, when DJ Amanda Jones (Malediction Society, Perversion, Das Bunker) dropped it at Royal/T's Hello Kitty Bats and Cats party, I tried to dance, but it just wasn't going to happen. Even if the song had a pogo beat, which it certainly doesn't, there would have been no room to move. The back room of Royal/T was packed, just as the cafe in the front portion of the venue and the gift shop were crammed with people. Somewhere between the lines to get into the gift shop, get seats in the cafe and get photos taken with Hello Kitty, goths, metalheads, Lolitas and Sanrio-obsessed youngsters were squeezed together into a sea that rarely parted.

In 1979, Mission of Burma debuted the controlled blast of their calculated chaos to pogo-ers and punks of Boston and the world. Three decades later, the pogo may be gone, but Sunday nigh the post-punk originators got the Echo's sorta mopey audience swaying to their genre-defining brand of tightly wound rock.

Although Mission of Burma abandoned youth-angst long ago, the live show sacrifices none of the volume and intensity that solidified their place in the canon of rock legends. Alt-music nerds' gush-o-meters nearly sweat bolts of excitement when lavishing praise on their early 1980's works, but seeing MoB in action justifies nearly all the critical frothery.

Timothy Norris

The good ole Miller-Prescott-Conley MoB lineup!

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View more photos in the "She's My Cherry Pie: Edible Girls Burlesque" slideshow.

"Who likes to eat girls?" asked burlesque queen Courtney Cruz before a packed house at Bordello on Saturday night. While some in the audience blushed and giggled, most hollered with a resounding "hell yeah" as L.A. Weekly's Best of L.A. '09 winner introduced "Edible Girls," the November installment of Devil's Playground's monthly downtown residency that featured burlesque performances by sexy gals dressed (and undressed) as their favorite desserts.

Shannon Cottrell

Courtney Cruz does a banana split sundae

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View more photos in Anna Webber's slideshow.

The Smell will not stink for long.

After ten years collecting sweat, The Smell's fundraiser for an A/C unit, last Wednesday night, brought out excited supporters, but also protestors who enjoy asphyxiating. Neither party could resist Health, Abe Vigoda, Man's Assassination, Man, and Tearist on one Smelly lineup.

The venue traps B.O. night after night, spiritually nourishing reckless bands and raucous audiences. "In the middle of summer when the place is super hot and packed, we always say we're getting A/C, then we end up putting it off one day when it's not so bad. But this time we're really going to do it. Right away," says co-owner Jim Smith. But will the Smell be as sweet if it doesn't reek?

Anna Webber

Health performs at the Smell's Health Benefit fundraiser

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Lucent Dossier Experience Grand Opening Event "Gateway 11.11" at H. Wood
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Better than: Watching Spider-Man get arrested on Hollywood Blvd.

Shannon Cottrell

​Most Angelenos steer clear of Hollywood & Highland like they screen their phone calls after a one night stand -- with anxiety-fueled commitment to avoid reminders of an anti-climatic night out at all costs. The overly ambitious shopping complex is a swarm of tourists and celebrity impersonators with criminal records, surrounded by one of the most traffic-clogged arteries of an intersection in Los Angeles. So when we heard that Lucent Dossier planned to launch its new Wednesday night residency at H.Wood within the Hollywood & Highland complex, we admit we were a bit skeptical. This was, after all, the fantastical post-apocalyptic circus troupe we fell in love with during its 2008 stint at the Edison downtown, an underground bar whose romantic and industrial atmosphere meshed flawlessly with the Lucent Dossier aesthetic. It was hard to imagine this working in a mall.

(Coverage of this seemingly incongruous event, and barelySFW photos of lingerie-clad aerial performers, after the jump.)

Gowns continue to be one of the most innovative, original bands in Los Angeles. As they showed last night at the Echo, performancewise they just can't be touched.

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Erika Anderson shreds a guitar, sings, emotes--and now also raps!--like a woman possessed. The spirits of young Courtney Love and Patti Smith pass through her, alternately spitting and delicately singing lines like "They say love to turns to rot and I'm going to give him everything I got."

But the striking Anderson is only one piece to this wall of sound that builds and breaks and drones with modular intensity called Gowns.

(More on Gowns' show at the Echo, plus bonus video of the band in action at the Emeryville Hotel last February, after the jump)

Last Friday the so-called Party Rock Tour descended on the Hollywood Palladium in a homecoming of sorts for LMFAO, Shwayze, and their partners in neon electro-hip-hop. The all-ages event (read: mostly between onset-of-puberty and 20) offered a nonstop party from sundown till closing, a full bill going from the more rudimentary sets of the earlier acts to the full-blown "sex and drinking music for people too young to know anything about sex or drinking" jams of the headliners.

Timothy Norris

Let's Do The Time Warp: LMFAO Fans Really Dig the Eighties!

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(Longish--yet rewarding!-review and pictures of party rappers and possibly drunk teenagers after the jump. For a full Slideshow by WCS's shutterbug Tim Norris, click here.)

After a canceled show in Santa Barbara, Imogen Heap opened up her tour last night in Los Angeles to a sold out crowd at the Henry Fonda Theater in support of her latest release, Ellipse. If you missed her beautiful set last night, don't worry.It sounds like she'll be back in April, though you might need some sunscreen and a room in Palm Dessert to catch the set. Just saying.

Timothy Norris

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Very occasionally, what should have been yet another multi-band bill turns into something much bigger than the sum of its parts. On Friday, The Smell witnessed what might have been the shortest, most satisfying mini-festival in recent memory. Though not billed as a music festival at all, the combination of Hawnay Troof, Snowsuit, The Urxed and Dave Scott Stone packed all the punch of a well-curated event.

(Mysterious Hawnay Troof transmission below. Read the rest of our "Smell-fest" review after the jump.)

View more photos in Timothy Norris' "Julian Casablancas at Palace Theater" slideshow.

Downtown L.A.'s Palace Theater may be best known for its role in Michael Jackson's "Thriller." In a memorable scene, Jackson exits the theater and tries to convince his frightened lady-friend that the scary creatures, loud sounds and haunting music were just a spectacle. "It's only a movie," he says. On Friday night, another shaggy haired, leather jacket-wearing singer paid a visit to the Palace: Julian Casablancas. The Strokes singer kicked off a series of Friday gigs at the Palace, following the release of his solo album, Phrazes for the Young. But like Jackson's critique of Thriller's mini-movie, Casablancas' Palace performance, though big budget and flashy, was mostly spectacle.

Timothy Norris

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Rupa and the April Fishes sent out an invisible wave of energy, which zipped through the room and lit the crowd like a fire as they came onstage at The Mint Friday night. The supportive crowd at the legendary venue was a diverse mix of pretty ladies, hipsters, hippies, and parents who packed the sultry, dark quarters wall to wall. The only thing these viewers had in common was their affinity for the music, yet the band's mesmerizing energy vibrated to create a sense of a community amidst the gathering.

Aja Viafora

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View more photos in Colin Young-Wolff's "The Crystal Method Secret Show @ Echoplex" slideshow.

Colin Young-Wolff

​If electronic dance music ever gets its own This Is Spinal Tap-like parody, The Crystal Method would have to be the film's hard-partying, amplifier-past-10 inspiration. Not that there's anything wrong with that: Since the mid-1990s Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland have been injecting dance music with a rockist sense of urgency. It's just that TCM is a stadium band for the 21st century, sans the British accents, but definitely with the rock-star appetites.

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.

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

"Fucking Pixies," No Age's Dean Spunt muttered in lieu of an actual introduction to his own band's set at the Hollywood Palladium on Wednesday. It was the first night of the Pixies' Doolittle tour - wherein the seminal indie group's original lineup performs their classic 1989 album end to end.

Anna Webber

​Spunt's simple utterance rightly captured the mix of disbelief and electric anticipation coursing through the cavernous room. It seemed to be all anyone could think about, even, unfortunately, as No Age performed a strong set against steep odds. To wit, it took Spunt getting off of the drums and grabbing the mic of partner Randy Randall for the venue staff to notice the obvious: "Can someone fix my fucking microphone?"

Though the night would prove a success, even the Pixies got off to a slow start.

Shane Young and his fellow long-haired metalhead friends stand outside the Slayer autograph session at Hot Topic, and chat with Rita Haney, longtime girlfriend of the late Pantera guitarist Darrell "Dimebag" Abbott. "Show her," Young's friends with patchy facial hair say, gathering around him in a group of denim jackets with Slayer badges.

Drew Tewksbury

Slayer for Mayor

​ "Alright," Young coyly agrees shaking his stringy reddish mane as he sits on the floor of this cheesy mall at Hollywood and Highland. He unlaces his black boot, and reveals a mangled foot, missing a big toe, his other toes twisted like tree branches. "A 3 foot tigershark bit my toes off," Young tells Haney, who from behind her sunglasses looks impressed. She grabs his hand, leads him to the Slayer table, where three kings of American metal (sans injured bassist/vocalist Tom Araya) have been signing autographs for ravenous fans of all ages.

"Put it on the table," Haney says, and Young obliges, thumping his 4 toed foot in front of Slayer. "Sign it, guys," she orders, and the legendary 3/4ths of Slayer, guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, and drummer Dave Lombardo, scrawl upside down crosses and pentagrams all over his twisted sweet potato of a foot.

Welcome to Hot Topic, Slayer style, where a shark bitten foot gets you a front of the line pass, and a pentagram cures all that ails ya'.

LA 101 at Gibson Amphitheatre featuring Silversun Pickups, Dandy Warhols, Matt and Kim, Dengue Fever
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Better than: Watching Biff Griff get arrested outside the clock tower while chilling on your hoverboard.

Erin Broadley

Matt and Kim backstage

​"Okay everyone, for this photograph I want you to think about the night you lost your virginity."

Silence. Snap, the shutter clicks, and Matt and Kim erupt into laughter. Now that's a candid. Backstage at the Gibson Amphitheatre the Brooklyn-based indie pop duo sit with friends following their performance at L.A. Weekly's inaugural LA 101 music event, when suddenly Matt mentions that earlier he discovered the original Back to the Future DeLorean time machine parked in the Universal back lot behind the venue. The best part? It's unlocked. Chairs are pushed aside and drinks left unattended as the group scurries outside past security and into the lot where Doc Brown's most famous invention sits like a crown jewel, crammed in between thrashed stunt cars, just begging to be played in. Before the night's end, even the Silversun Pickups would take turns behind the wheel.

Twitpic by @msshutterface

Silversun Pickups' Brian Aubert in the DeLorean time machine

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Who needs the Fountain of Youth when you can grow old disgracefully with DEVO?

Nicole Campos

​DEVO are so old they probably heard Darwin himself explain his evolutionary theory. They have a combined age of 234. Guitarist Bob Casale looks like he has to take a deep breath just to pick up the guitar, while singer Mark Mothersbaugh looks like he's ready to skip his twilight years and jump straight into the twilight zone. And they can still sell out a venue on a Tuesday night and fill it with kids willing to spend $30 for a plastic dome hat and jump around to music, which, to them, really is new wave.

Nicole Campos

Attack of the $30 Hats

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To mark Warner Bros.' recent reissues of their 1978 debut Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO! and 1980's Freedom of Choice, DEVO made the first stop of their nationwide tour dedicated to playing the entirety of both albums over two nights. After screening the early '70s videos to "Secret Agent Man" and "Jocko Homo" (featuring a cameo by the Mothersbaughs' dad), the Mothersbaugh and Casale brothers hit the stage. And no sooner did the four--along with drummer Josh Freese (formerly of Nine Inch Nails, and currently with Weezer, A Perfect Circle and the Vandals), a mere pup at 36--tear into the album's opener "Uncontrollable Urge" than Mothersbaugh started ripping the sleeves off their yellow jumpsuits as if they had been pieced together with Scotch tape, leaving them looking a bowl of half-eaten bananas.

(More DEVOtion, rad photos of some good-looking senior citizens, and bonus video of Pearl Jam "Whipping It!" for Halloween after the jump)

View more photos in the "White Rabbits, Local Natives @ El Rey" slideshow.

Rock and roll sextet White Rabbits are on their Fall tour with eccentric duo Glass Ghost. Last night both Brooklyn groups were joined by LA's own Local Natives at the El Rey. The result: one of the best performances we've seen lately at that venue or elsewhere.

Anna Webber

White Rabbit

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There were 8 drummers across three bands in total, with keys, vox pedals, and approximately 100 million decibels (give or take a few) across dexterous polyphonic sound waves. From the sound and pressure of the thing, we were in Heaven.

The word is out: if you showed up at Spaceland last night to check out the much ballyhooed month-long residence by the Happy Hollows then you know that the mystery guest star was none other than (former?) Strokes frontman and Sexiest Man of 2001 Julian Casablancas.

Oscar Rangel at The Scenestar has a good write-up of the secret show and Rami Dearest shot a beautiful pro-am video of the performance:

Dig that bouncy Rebel Rebel beat!

Patrick Range McDonald

​Now that the costume stress and sugar rush are history, take some time to check out LA Weekly's Halloween party coverage.

View more photos from HARD night one and night two here.

Anna Webber

Urgent rush for the dead alien

​Halloween at the HARD Haunted Mansion brought out the big guns for L.A.'s all-age night walkers and candy ravers. The sold-out event was held at the historic Shrine Auditorium, a landmark event venue and home to many of Hollywood's Emmy and Grammy award shows. But last night the HARD dance promoters threw down one of the best Halloween parties in L.A. this year, a piercing electro-charged DJ dance party with sets from Justice, Basement Jaxx, Soulwax, Buraka Som Sistema, Steve Aoki, Major Lazer, and more. Even the smog was neon.

Anna Webber

Dilated pupils

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Check out more photos in Erin Broadley's "Grimm Fairytale Ball" slideshow. Some photos are NSFW.

Erin Broadley

​You can pack thousands of scantily clad party people into a theater and give them Deadmau5 and Justice, but no mega-party can compare to goth clubs during this spookiest of holiday seasons. Friday night, we headed to Koreatown to start our weekend at Ruin's Grimm Fairytale Ball featuring DJs Xian (Malediction Society, Wumpskate) and Pumpkin (Wandering Marionettes, Cirque Berzerk). Throughout the night, we were reminded of why so many call Halloween "Goth Christmas" and so, we've compiled eight great reasons why goth clubs are the only place to spend Halloween.

Read Jeff Miller's overview of the first evening of Phish's three-night stint at the Coachella grounds, and read his recap of day two.

Jeff Miller

Hugs and drugs

​Sometimes, being a Phish fan is kind of like being a parent: your kid presents you with a completely ridiculous challenge ("Mom, mom, I'm gonna build a rocket ship to the moon!"; "Fans, we're going to cover The White Album front to back!") and all you can do is stand there and nod, knowing it'll probably never actually happen, but also knowing it's a lot worse to challenge the notion in the first place.

So consider Phish's first-ever all-acoustic set (the first set of the third day of their massive Festival 8 this weekend at the Coachella Polo Fields in Indio) a series of these challenges, each stepped up to, one after another. "Hey, hey, we're gonna serve 40,000 custom made doughnuts in the shape of an 'eight' to tired/strung out superfans at 11am!!" Sure you are, honey.