Timothy Norris

Springsteen with Steven Van Zandt

We've been watching Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play in concert for decades, and it seems as if he and his crew only get better with every tour. How? With few rare exceptions, aren't rockers supposed to kind of get stale once they get older? Not Mr. Springsteen.

Whether it's today's troubled zeitgeist or solid new material from the album Wrecking Ball or the recent passing of longtime saxophonist Clarence Clemons, Springsteen was inspired and inspiring, once again making fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena true believers in the power of rock 'n' roll. As one fellow simply told us as we left the building after a nearly three-hour concert, "It was mind blowing."

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Crazy Town's Shifty Shellshock

We were saddened by word that Crazy Town frontman Shifty Shellshock fell into a coma last week. According to TMZ, the 37-year-old Los Angeles native (real name Seth Binzer) is now conscious, though he remains in an intensive care unit at a local hospital. We love the guy, and figured this was as good a time as any to tell you everything about him.

Shellshock first came to national attention with Crazy Town's hit 2001 single "Butterfly." At rap-metal's absolute peak, the seductive ballad was hard enough for rock stations but still catchy enough for pop radio, topping Billboard's Hot 100 chart and reaching #1 in six other countries. The third single from the group's debut The Gift of Game, it gave their then-almost 18-month-old album a second life and catapulted the group to worldwide stardom.

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Bob B. Brown and Weekly Dig/CC 2.0

See also:
*Interview With a Raver Who Wears Electrical Tape on Her Boobs
*Ask a Teen Raver

Lines stretched for blocks in northeast L.A. last night as fans jostled to get a taste of the latest Skrillex project -- a literal taste, that is, of the diminutive dubstep pioneer's new mobile culinary lab, Grillex.

The Grammy-winning L.A. native Skrillex (born Sonny Moore) launched Grillex to minimal initial fanfare, keeping it mostly a secret until yesterday afternoon, when the truck rolled up to the corner of Echo Park Avenue at Sunset and tweets piled upon tweets, prompting a rush of mostly black-clad superfans to get their hands on his new creations.

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Neil Jacobs

Yes, that's Val Kilmer

See also:
*Our review of Ryan Adams, for whom Kilmer as Twain opened
*Renaissance Man Val Kilmer May Have Met his Match

A bomb threat has sealed off the streets surrounding us, but Val Kilmer is calm. His long blond hair tied back into a loose ponytail, the actor is wearing a blue blazer, blue and white checkered shirt, and Levis, and sitting on a couch in his publicist's Hollywood office. He pours himself tea from a thermos and water from a mason jar. As he points to a piece of carrot sticking out of the middle of his "healthy" hamburger patty, he jokes that the meal is nutritious.

This is the infamously difficult Val Kilmer?

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Ben Westhoff

See also: Ximena Sariñana: An Indie-Pop Star In Mexico, Anonymous In L.A.

Ximena Sariñana knocked the wind out of us at the SXSW PlayNetwork showcase last week. We weren't quite as delirious as a pair of Mexican twink uber-fanboys who'd traveled hundreds of miles, but we were certainly smitten. For starters, she's funny. "When I started performing in the U.S. I wasn't used to hauling my own gear," she told us after the show. "In Mexico there's a lot of cheap labor."

Then there's the latest single off her self-titled album, "Echo Park," a tender skewer of the L.A. neighborhood and its denizens. "Everyone's like, 'Hipsters suck,'" she says. "But at the same time, we're all hipsters." (The video is below.) Though she's about to move to Mar Vista, she's a former Echo Parker herself, and in the spirit of the song here are five things she loves about Echo Park boys.

5. They don't take baths

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Elano Pizzicarola

Laura Kelsey, 24, Marz Beeuwsaert, 17, Kristin Cooper, 21, and Beth Boyd, 20

The Flytraps will have you know that they have no feminist agenda. Oh, and their members can "out-drink any guy," says their bassist Kristin Cooper, on a warm Sunday afternoon in drummer Laura Kelsey's backyard.

The group members are prone to giggling and teasing each other in person. They've been together for about two years; two previous members left for school. "They weren't rock and roll types," Cooper says.

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Rebecca Haithcoat

Ted, Ben, Muffin, Lane

Mansions on the Moon are not at home.

It's an unusually warm Wednesday afternoon, and I'm camped out on the front porch of their Hollywood home thirty minutes after our scheduled meeting time. Suddenly, my phone rings and Ted Wendler, the band's lead singer and guitarist, breathlessly and profusely apologizes for forgetting the interview. "We're running down from Runyon Canyon right now!" he says.

That they're a little spacey is only fitting for a band whose name and sound are inspired by such. Also, the band, rounded out by drummer Lane Shaw and keyboardist Ben Hazlegrove, have just released a 5-song EP called Light Years, completely written and produced by them and executive produced by Pharrell Williams. They're about to set off on tour. Mac Miller is a big fan. In other words, they've got a lot going on.

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Dreaming Dead

Despite the fact that there are some excellent female-fronted extreme metal bands these days, the genre is still often thought of as a macho, testosterone-fueled aggression pit. The comment sections of popular metal websites like Blabbermouth are full of locker-room talk (or worse) whenever they run an article about a female metal vocalist.

But Elizabeth Schall, the vocalist/guitarist for Dreaming Dead -- who play tonight at the Echoplex -- says her gender hasn't limited her. "I think it's mainly just because I disregard it," she says, speaking from her Echo Park apartment. "I like to think I live in a world where my gender has nothing to do with what I am capable of doing. You go onto YouTube and see 13-year old girls shredding out on metal songs."

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Sinead O'Connor is still making headlines, 20 years into her career. Having battled everything from the Catholic Church to drug addiction, the Irish icon remains beloved and despised. Though nothing compares to her pop stardom of the early '90s (har har), we're nonetheless psyched for her shows at the El Rey tonight and tomorrow. Here, then, are our most memorable Sinead moments.

Date: October 3, 1992
Event: Tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live
Summary: After performing Bob Marley's "War," O'Connor took everyone by surprise by whipping out a picture of the Pope and tearing it to smithereens. She then looked into the camera and said "Fight the real enemy," referencing the church's blind eye to child abuse. Joe Pesci, among others, wasn't thrilled.

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Intronaut's Sacha Dunable, on a stage much larger than the ones he played before

See also: Intronaut's Tour Diary I: From Playing Clubs to Opening For Tool in Sports Arenas

Los Angeles metal group Intronaut is currently on tour opening for Tool. Last week, guitarist/vocalist Sacha Dunable shared his thoughts on the trip's opening days -- which saw them playing arenas for the first time but also sleeping in their stinky show clothes in a parking lot. Below, he tells us what's happened since.

1/16/12 11:30 am - Clearly, the arena rock lifestyle has gone straight to [our guitarist/vocalist Dave Timnick's] head as he shows up to breakfast at Excalibur the morning after our Mandalay Bay show wearing sunglasses and nursing a 24 oz Tecate. While the rest of us presumably spent our first real party night curled up with a cup of hot chamomile and a good book, Dave got all "VEGAS" with a capital "party." We laughed about it over a greasy buffet feast and hit the road to Arizona.

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