“I Fell in Love With the Grateful Dead” is a rework of “Raised by Hippies” off 2006’s California Country, but “Highland Park Serenade” is one of their most affecting tunes ever—a tender and dearly felt tribute to one more gently crumbling jewel box neighborhood.

[Read more →]

Not so much post- as pre-rock, L.A. chanteuse LaMuff evokes several of the entries in Nick Tosches’ estimable study Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘N’ Roll while working her own permutation of SoCal hip-hop. The title track’s epically weird “It ain’t lame/It’s lamé” is merely the opening salvo in a Somme-like bombardment of half-connected nouns and verbs that add up to the funniest thing since Lothar & the Hand People.

[Read more →]

The place was three-quarters full when these four guys from Tazewell co. Virginia proceeded to bounce the crowd all over the back of the room like handballs. O, great was the delight on my homeboy’s face floating up there on the stage where Otis and Crazy Jim and Rod the Mod once capered with just as little inhibition. That moment made my rock ‘n roll year, with nearly a dozen months left to go.

[Read more →]

But for all the times it’s been burned, blogged, and mp3’d, White Boy & the Average Rat Band’s 1980 self-titled debut LP would be a late (and possibly the last) entry in the Greatest Post-Punk Albums Nobody’s Ever Heard. Here, for the first time ever, is the singular weird story of the deepest of all deep-underground rock albums. This interview by Ron Garmon.

[Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]

L.A. reggae band the Aggrolites have been slogging it out Studio One style since the early 2000s, most recently releasing their Rugged Road on Boston label Young Cub. Hot in pursuit of the question of just how a man comes to play reggae in Southern California anyway, we called Jesse Wagner for a few minutes diagnosis. This interview by Ron Garmon.

[Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]

all photos by romana machado The first tipoff that big things were afoot at Solidarity Park came in a flurry of panicky missives on OLA’s email list early last Tuesday evening. Wild rumors of National Guard movements, police surrounding City Hall and blue-boy battalions massing in Dodger Stadium were enough to get us motoring downtown, [...]

[Read more →]

photos by romana machado (Watch for Journal No. 4 and how L.A. RECORD’s #OCCUPY desk fared in Tuesday’s LAPD swarm! Thrills! Adventure! Fireworks! More cops than a Buster Keaton movie!) You may as well say, that’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion. – Henry V, Act III, [...]

[Read more →]

photos by romana machado In the comments section of Friday LAT story on the endgame between OLA and City Hall you’ll find paramilitary analysis of the tactical situation that ought to win props for Blithering Obviousness. “[The LAPD],” says this freelance Nostradamus, “will bring in a monstrous swarm of riot officers. They’ve had 2 months [...]

[Read more →]