Mayor Bob Foster is expected to say more this morning about his $570 million plans to rebuild streets, sidewalks and alleys–plus the more bureaucratic-sounding storm water management systems–but already we know more than we did about what’s in store.
In this morning’s Press-Telegram, Paul Eakins reports on a 102-page streets audit City Auditor Laura Doud released [...]

Doomtree does things their way

PHOTO by BO HAKALA
After seven years of being a collective/rap group/business/record label, you would think Doomtree would at least be on their third or fourth album by now, but they’re just about to release their first. Doomtree MC, producer and Rhymesayers signee P.O.S. says it’s for the best. First, when Doomtree [...]

Davie Allan takes on Peter Fonda, fuzz guitar and Nazi bikers

ILLUSTRATION by JOE MCGARRY
Davie Allan comes from the era when bands wore uniforms and stood motionless on black and white TV, changing positions only when the camera did. Back then, he and his band were just “the Arrows” and America had the patience to watch [...]

Aceyalone’s omnipresent ambition

Aceyalone wants to make hip-hop an art form, he says. So it makes sense that he’s doing a poetry book, and that he has ambitious ideas about what an album should be. 1998’s A Book of Human Language was literary to the hilt—different tracks are chapters, not songs, and he recites Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” [...]

Thee Makeout Party’s ‘Play Pretend’: kids songs and reckless Nick Lowe riffs!

PHOTO by FEVER DRAGON
Anaheim’s Thee Makeout Party has an extensive history highlighted with shows at the OC Fair, the Smell, and, last weekend, a filled-twice-past-capacity speedboat parked outside Shoreline Village. Teenacide Records’ Play Pretend, their first full length, is rife with good vibes and [...]

Getting down to the business of getting down with Ozma

PHOTO and ILLUSTRATION by STERLING ANDREWS
At their best, the ’90s were a clusterfuck of brilliant and weird pop bands that now either sit comfortably idle on pedestals (Nirvana, that dog., Ben Folds Five) or uncomfortably idle in a debilitating vegetative state. These bands (names withheld to [...]

Be Your Own Pet: Banned in the U.S.A.

PHOTO by MICHAEL LAVINE
Be Your Own Pet are from Nashville, a town so infested with country-music-industry cutthroats that it rivals only Los Angeles on the entertainment-biz creativity-discouragement index. So it’s little surprise, maybe, that their music—unpredictable, rapid-fire tempo, 1980s-camp-movie meets rock-party—has fallen victim to industry censorship. Universal, the [...]