The crowd went apeshit as Mick Jagger strutted and bawled through “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Paint It Black,” his ancient hellfire snarl fully intact as cameras zoomed in on Keith Richard’s knobby hands, elegant Ron Wood carrying the brunt of guitar chores and the great Charlie Watts blandly ticking away on the riser, the drummer’s chalky skull-like face looking in repose like some senior vice president in charge of soul acquisition.

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Jean Karakos formed Celluloid Records in the waning hours of disco but the label took off internationally once the label chief tied with the likes of Bill Laswell, Fab Five Freddie, Manu Dibango, Richard Hell, and the Last Poets, all of whom lend a shiv to this cacophonous two-disc rumble.

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Ayers quit Soft Machine in ’69, spending much of the next decade helming a series of whimsical solo albums for a fanbase he held onto as long as progressive rock lasted.

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The cool, the dorky, the unsmiling, the spastic, the silent, the pimpled and the suave all rocked out with as much self-consciousness as preschoolers. No one took their pants off, yet the rafters knocked.

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The Cigarette Bums were up next. Already among the first rank of Eastside bands, they bid as fair to be Silverlake’s champion road dogs, playing this last local stand before departing for yet another tour. They swaggered to the stage and laced into their customary biff-bang-pow like nothing else mattered. Midway through, Steve broke a string, leaped from the stage, faceplanted beautifully, and bombed out the door to return with a replacement guitar twenty seconds later. The set concluded when a short-circuit briefly snapped off every light in the building. Cheering was little short of maniacal as the Bums took bows in the dark.

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MORE INFO HERE! Another ramshackle literary event, of fiction/poetry/essays/criticism/historical revisionism/sheep dip. This month we’re “thankful” to have all of the following amazing authors, some of whom cut their teeth and their fingers playing music in California: Paul K (The Empire of Death) Claire Mckeown (Dirt Bird) Ron Garmon (L.A. RECORD) Maya Ford (the Donnas) Virginia [...]

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At this point in a long, fabled literary career, Harlan Ellison requires about as much introduction to Angelenos as Ray Bradbury or Charles Bukowski. Before celebrity, before influential TV scripts for Star Trek, Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, Ellison ran with a 1950s Brooklyn street gang and lived to write the tale not once, but innumerable times, released now as two collections on Kicks Books. This interview by Ron Garmon.

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Lovely Bad Things are not only Brayden Ward, Camron Ward, Lauren Curtius and Tim Hatch, but everything you always thought of as an L.A. garage band in one supremely un-self-conscious package. They play with the Cosmonauts at a FREE show at the Standard Hotel downtown this Thursday! This interview by Ron Garmon.

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I’d meant to lead off with a long surreal analysis of the mindbending underground club scene now running far below media radar at a stretch of urban blight near you. Well, that will have to wait until next installment, for news McWorld was shutting down effective June 5 meant the Charlie Kane’s Xanadu of the whole movement was about to become one with Nineveh, Bodie and Acres of Books. If opening a DIY music venue in one of the abandoned retail spaces that now dominate the L.A. cityscape may be reckoned a positive act, then McWorld czar Jivin’ John Schoenkopf deserves a statue at least the size of Bullwinkle J. Moose and possibly a term as mayor.

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Calls to go out and interview Can’s Irmin Schmidt, living legend from progressive rock’s palmiest years, don’t come every day. So the first chance was the first one I took, arriving at Amoeba Music just before his scheduled DJ set. The occasion was Mute’s release of The Lost Tapes, nothing less than a boxed set full of previously unheard material from arguably German rock’s greatest and most pathbreaking band. This interview by Ron Garmon.

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