Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Jorma Kaukonen – Blue Country Heart, The Dandy Warhols – Welcome to the Monkey House…

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On the way from his old band, Verbena, to playing solo under his birth name, A.A. Bondy watched a lot of movies and a few meteor showers in between watching movies, and finally in 2007 he recorded his first album in a barn near his house. His newest, When the Devil’s Loose, is out now on Fat Possum. This interview by Dan Collins.

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Andrew W.K. emerged from a black velvet box and stumbled over a nonsensical speech (about how we should make sure to bring extra quarters to the store when we’re buying water to tip the cashier. WTF?) before sitting at the mirrored beast and improvising simplistic songs about food, being a boy and dog ownership. Clearly hanging out in another dimension where he wasn’t expected to play the instrument in front of fans, Andrew (despite being classically trained since age 4) banged out staccato couplets until they bled into a garbled Nordstrom piano-player audition over which he sang, “You gotta eat food/You gotta eat to live.”

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The world is now a DEVO song, and so Warner has just reissued two vital early DEVO albums barely containing some of the most annihilating reality ever twined into vinyl. And so L.A. RECORD’s Dan Collins reissues this vintage interview with Mark Mothersbaugh from the archives of the defunct Ostrich Ink. DEVO will perform Freedom Of Choice at the Fonda tonight.

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Jack Oblivian got his last name with Eric and Greg and their Popular Favorites but—like Cartwright and Reigning Sound—he found new greatness with his solo work. His Disco Outlaw is rock ‘n’ roll as natural as Charlie Feathers and Johnny Thunders and he’ll play his first show in Los Angeles in ten years tonight at the Echoplex. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

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The mood of the music reveals Dylan as he is now and the lazy grooves are perfect for a man who no doubt has had some time to reflect, but has not lost his sense of fun or caustic wit. “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum” is an example of a tune with this swing and bite. I was warned that Dylan no longer plays guitar on stage. Finally seeing Dylan and he won’t pick-up a guitar? Blasphemy!

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It wasn’t just the appearance of this husky crew that made them seem out of place in the chandeliered El Rey—the nature of their music simply belongs in the backwoods of Oregon. The state was mentioned as the inspiration behind several of their songs (“This one’s about a river in Oregon;” “We found this song in an Oregon forest;” “We were thinking about the roller skating rink back home”).

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Leslie and the Badgers play in a style more retro than vintage country but nevertheless unique. With their multi-talented instrumentalist stage show, like a gypsy caravan picking up musicians and fans along the way (at least more since I had last seen the group), the band plays its well crafted melodic lines in particular with sweeping violin, slide pedal steel guitar and lyrics such as “When you say I miss you day and night / with love brighter than the ballpark lights / I’m a boat lost at sea siding on the shore / say you miss me once more” which are real enough to steal one’s heart away.

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Happy Mondays were the actual 24 hour party people and legendarily—but perhaps not really, says drummer Gaz here—helped bankrupt Factory Records. They have been banned from Disneyland and the BBC and speak now despite mea culpas about being boring. This interview by Dan Collins.

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