This week in the music section we are meditating on purity—of intent and personality and transmission, which align themselves only as mathematically frequently as a three-wheel slot comes up only cherries, and possibly that is where Jonathan Richman’s unstoppable persistence is rooted; as the song warned me [...]
Joneses guitarist/singer Jeff Drake is a smart man; he’s waiting for the train in Bakersfield the day before Thanksgiving—sounds like the beginning of a Buck Owens song—instead of dealing with the sock inspectors at the airports and he’s working toward a doctorate in history, too, but he [...]
Don’t expect a history lesson with Invitation Songs, as the American folk influences here are raw and muddled. However, do expect to be pleased. This album inspires euphoria, and it’s a pleasure to listen to—specifically, stand out tracks “Helen” and “Oh Christine.” Lyrics like “In my bedroom I seek a foreign [...]
Word still is that Calvin Johnson is coming to town tomorrow. He’s supposed to be stopping in at Zephyr, but K Records doesn’t seem too sure. Nobody in the know has heard anything of a venue change, but the folks who handle booking at Zephyr aren’t in at the moment.
Chances are Calvin will turn up [...]
Stones Throw Records was born out of every corner of California, with a roster plucked from unsuspecting places like Oxnard and San Jose. That’s a lot of land to rake over, so it makes sense that the label took years to cultivate. But more than 10 [...]
“The Orphans are all soft and gentle as fresh blooming flowers.”
—Mike McHugh, Orphans producer and engineer, as told to Kat Jetson, 2003
If you saw the Orphans, you saw the Orphans do something and from the live shows I’m sure we all got stories if not persistent scorch marks [...]
The members of Tinariwen play Saharan desert blues like they invented them, and as far as this world music neophyte knows, maybe they did . . . though the music itself sounds like it comes from a time and place much older than anything our American innovators knew about. “World [...]
First Sat./Sun. so is that Record Swap or Pasadena Swap or Veteran’s Swap or Rose Bowl Swap or Cypress Swap or what swap? Explain, thanks.
Also Tinariwen plays Sat. at Temple Bar. Should be cool. Like when Konono No. 1 played Knitting Factory. Tinariwen are nomads from the Sahara desert that posed with Danelectros amid the [...]
The best night at one of the best hip-hop clubs in LA: Low End Theory’s debut Unreleased Beat Invitational, when producer Daddy Kev says (like King Coleman said before him) show me what you got, and contenders line up to try out new beats in front of a ferociously literate [...]
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