It was three in the morning, the music had long since stopped, but the night was deliciously warm and even the automatic weapons fire up in the Heights had dwindled to sporadic. Here and there, a thinly clad single or couple capered in the empty streets, dancing madly a few hours before the dawn of yet another apocalyptic year.

The Happy Hollows’ guiding genius was as wound-up giddy as ever, leading the veteran art-rock trio through a set of mostly new songs that I’m glad to report are as warm and wobbly as their entire output from 2006’s Bunnies and Bombs EP to date. She’s turned into something of a guitar wizard in the past few months, fingertapping expertly and looking momentarily nonplussed when a string broke. “I think I’m handling this crisis well,” she giggled, while tuning up trusty guitar # 2 for its public debut.

What Milagres has done (which only occurred once, I bet, in the brilliantly warped Japanese movie Funky Forest: First Contact) is set to music the precise feeling of sinking into a mossy clearing in the woods at 4 a.m., on purpose.

I pride myself on being able to capture the sound of music in words, but there really is no way to convey what came out of that man’s throat and into our hearts Friday night. The closest I can get is to say that he sounded effortless and full of love, like butter melting slowly over Mom’s pancakes. He sounded awake and alert, classy, not cluttered in Rastafarian claptrap but “transcendent” in as close to a literal meaning as an atheist like me can believe in.

Mike Burns, who was a little “meh” last time I saw him, was in top form this night, spurred on by a cooing couple at the bar three feet away from the stage who would NOT TURN AROUND AND ACKNOWLEDGE HIS PRESENCE, no matter how many times he LOUDLY insulted the man’s hipster manhood or the woman’s purity, and despite the fact that Mike was recovering from being stabbed just the week before. Stabbed!

photos by lauren everett This year’s KCRW Ball may have come the closest one can get to the experience of William Randolf’s famed costume parties at the Hearst Castle during the decadent 1920’s. No matter which way you looked, there was no shortage of jaw dropping transformative wonder. Attendants pulled out all the stops, whether [...]

In case you’re wondering, Jade solo is the same Jade you think you know, just as smiley and happy from two feet away as in every photo of her in Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros on a festival stage you’ve ever seen. As she tuned and tried to adjust to the crappy sound system by leaving her elevated stool and sitting cross-legged on the low stage, even her eyes smiled, and her eyebrows too. And if I’d had a magnifying glass, I would suspect that her dimples are smile-shaped.

It was a full house at the Echoplex. A large ‘Drums’ banner hung on the stage. The excitement rose before the show even began, as loud new wave sounds bumped on the speakers. People had already set up shop at the front. I took my place and prepared for fast drum beats and sexy bass.

Though he doesn’t look much like a typical rock star, at 91, Ravi Shankar could have fooled anyone during his mesmerizing performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Uniquely worthy of the term “living legend”…