Hollywood Babble On

Frank Vignola plays John Pisano's Guitar Night - Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012 at Vitello's

Music pretty much pours out of Frank Vignola, a New York-based guitarist who brings gypsy and modern jazz together with incredible chops not lost on listeners who aren't also guitarists.

Always a guitar player's guitar player, Vignola's market basket of sideman gigs included years of steadfast support for Les Paul, accompanying the electric-guitar legend for years during his residency at Manhattan's Iridium, and a list of musical legends that includes Ringo Starr, Wynton Marsalis, Donald Fagen and Madonna.

In my mind, Frank Vignola's greatest contribution to the music world has been his constant support for gypsy jazz, playing in that style himself and spotlighting the work of others who share his love of the sounds popularized by Django Reinhardt. (See the video above of Frank playing "Tico Tico.")

Jazz is about swing. And so is Frank Vignola.

He heads West to play John Pisano's Guitar Night at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012 at Vitello's, 4349 Tujunga Ave., Studio City. 818-769-0905. Cover is $5 -- and well worth it.

In case you don't know who John Pisano is, the L.A. based guitarist has been pretty much single-handedly keeping to jazz guitar scene alive in this city with his weekly Guitar Night series that has bounced from one club to another when needed.

Pisano is known by many for his work as Joe Pass' rhythm guitarist both in the '60s and before Pass' death in the 1990s. He's even better known for playing with Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, the blockbuster group for which Pisano wrote a few tunes that are no doubt providing nice royalty checks even today.

Pisano's two 1990s duo CDs ("Among Friends," and "Conversation Pieces") pretty much lay out why Guitar Night is so important. Few are the musicians willing to share the spotlight and help both listeners and fellow players get so much more out of the music.

Guitar Night is well-chronicled in the 2007 CD, "John Pisano's Guitar Night."

That Guitar Night has continued as venus have come and gone is a testament to Pisano's own commitment to jazz guitar music. Both the ongoing series of performances itself and Pisano are treasures that L.A. probably doesn't deserve. We are, indeed, lucky to have them both.

L.A. Film Fest Highlights

The 2011 L.A. Film Festival was, among other things, a feast of fine
acting. Yes, it may have started with a "Green Lantern" screening and
concluded with the so-so horror entry "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark."
But in between, practically every movie that I saw, whether fair to
fantastic overall, was enhanced by outstanding performances.
And isn't that, essentially, one of the best things a successful
festival can hope for?
"Drive" was one of the festival's higher-profile indies. Nicolas
Windig Refn won the directing award at Cannes earlier this year, and
this slickly cool study in gradually escalating brutality sure has
style to burn. It's also deeply ridiculous, but Ryan Gosling's
portrayal of a movie stunt driver who moonlights as a wheelman for
L.A. criminals counterbalances even the nuttiest moments. Through the first
half of the film, Gosling's in the imperturbable Buddha mode he perfected
for "Half-Nelson." As The Driver's situation goes steadily south in
the stretch, however, cracks appear in his "Le Samourai" facade. They then become fissures. It's a marvel of pitch control as impressive as the
protagonist's driving skills, in a movie that misuses some other
prime talent (Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston) - although Albert
Brooks' turn as a film producer gone to the dark side [insert your
own oxymoron joke here] is a total gas.
"Tyrannosaur" is almost an unintentional a parody of British miserablism movies, but its ensemble's powerful commitment to horrid behavior makes it a sterling example instead. Scottish actor Peter Mullan plays a widower so filled with rage, he drunkenly kicks his own dog to death in the first few scenes. He's moved to
some kind of tenderness, though, after meeting a religious woman (Olivia
Colman) whose husband (master wretch Eddie Marsan, the seething
driving instructor from Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky") makes Mullan's
character look like St. Francis. It's the feature writing and directing
debut of actor,Paddy Considine, who can currently be seen in an
altogether lighter Brit film, the winsome coming-of-age comedy
"Submarine." He makes sure "Tyrannosaur" showcases his colleagues'
full range of skills and depths of sensitivity, and by doing so makes
"Tyrannosaur's" grim goings-on altogether exhilarating.
"How to Cheat" won LAFF's best performance award for its
principles, Kent Osborne, Amanda Street and writer-director Amber
Sealey. Well-earned and pretty good for an initially insufferable,
micro-budget indie about a Silver Lake couple whose marriage has
become strained by their failure to have a baby. Though mostly told
from the mopey husband's point of view, the narrative gets happily
hijacked by the unpredictable behavior of his mistress (Street) and
wife (Sealey) as his awkward foray into infidelity leads to surprising and not always convincing, but often enough emotionally breathtaking, behavior.
The French "Tomboy" is another oddball drama made special by
outstanding playacting. In this case, it's two children - barely
tween Zoe Heran and the much younger Malonn Levana - who create an
astonishing psychological jungle gym to skitter upon. When their family moves to a
leafy southern town one summer, Heran's shorthaired Laure takes the opportunity to
introduce herself as a boy so she can horse around with the rambunctious
local fellas. As Laure's deception grows, and grows more perilous, her
adorable and adoring little sister Jeanne (Levana) gets giddily roped
into the game. "Tomboy" may not make a universal statement about
childhood, but it's good at showing kids having fun in ways parents
can't begin to imagine.
"The Destiny of Lesser Animals" works a wholly different but equally neat neat deception. On the surface, it's the story of a Ghanaian cop, desperate to return to the
New York from whence he was deported, on the trail of a thief who
stole his crucial fake passport. As the story unfolds, however, the
film becomes nothing less than a dialectical examination of
post-colonial Africa's unfulfilled promise. Yao B. Nunoo affectingly
charts the detective's growing understanding that getting the hell
out of there may not be the best the thing he can do for his country
or himself.
Are you ready for Iraqsploitation? Or is that Iraxploitation?
Whichever, it's coming next week a theater near you, and it's called "The
Devil's Double." The kinda true story of an army veteran
who's forced to serve as Saddam's psycho son, Uday Hussein's, lookalike
decoy, this slick Lee Tamahori film does not skimp on the decadence
and violence. By the time Uday's sixth or seventh, apparently nightly
orgy ends inevitably ends in gunfire, even the most id-driven
filmgoers will probably have had their fill, and there'll still be a
lot more to go. The thing is most surely redeemed, though, by Dominic
Cooper's twin turn as the maniac princeling and his fundamentally
decent doppelganger - and by the fact that, although the movie's
leads are English and French (Ludivine Sagnier is the Uday consort
who prefers the Double's company), it provides a dozen decent roles
for Arab actors.
Speaking of Sagnier, she's the best thing about "Love Crime," a
French corporate thriller that otherwise unengagingly turns into a
perfect murder scenario. Sagnier is a smart but passive assistant to
the amoral head (Kristin Scott Thomas, having a wicked good time) of
a big multinational's Paris office. As the boss exploits and
manipulates her to the breaking point, Sagnier employs all her actorly skills to show us her character has learned well. Too bad the lessons in the late Alain Corneau's
final feature aren't nearly as intriguing as they ought to be.
I'm not sure acting is "The Yellow Sea's" strongest point, but I will
praise the cast of this insane Korean crime thriller for its
collective stamina. The convoluted tale of an ethnic Korean from
Manchuria, in Seoul to fulfill a hit contract and hunt for his
long-gone wife, Na Hong-jin's lengthy thriller has so many chases,
fights and brutal encounters, you marvel that anyone is still
ambulatory, like, an hour before the end, let alone by the film's extended set of ghastly climaxes. Over-the-top by even South Korea's extreme standards,
this is hardly the artful kind of mayhem we associate with the work
of Park Chan-wook and other masters of this impressive national
cinema. But it does fulfill its bloody promise in an exhaustively
satisfying way.
Miranda July is a filmmaker/actor about whose gifts many find
dubious. "The Future," follow-up to her funky quirkfest "Me and You
and Everyone We Know," makes "How to Cheat" seem like a work of
Shakespearean rigor - initially, anyway. She and Hamish Linklater
play a couple of particularly mumbly Silver/Echo/E-Holly slackers who
use their impending adoption of an injured cat (that talks!) as an
excuse to behave even more irresponsibly. But as she pursues an
extra-cohabital affair and he perfects his ability to stop time (!),
these immature whiners' souls become rich and poignantly exposed. As
for the cat . . . well, it's worth seeing for yourself when the movie
opens commercially next week.
This weekend, though, you'll want to rush out to any theater playing
"Another Earth." The LAFF (and Sundance) darling was picked up for
distribution by Fox Searchlight; it's a redemption tale so lovely and
touching that releasing it through one of his divisions could
actually lends Rupert Murdoch a bit of much-needed absolution.
As a parallel world is discovered moving closer to our own planet, a
young astronomy nerd (co-writer Brit Marling) and a traumatized composer (William Mapother) enter each other's damaged orbits. Mike Cahill's film could be your standard relationship indie if not for the expertly deployed sci fi metaphor, a perfectly disorienting electronic score by Fall on Your Sword - and two of the most compelling performances of the year.
I also thought "Another Earth" had the best final shot of any movie this year until, on the last day of the festival, I saw "Higher Ground." Actress Vera Farmiga's directing debut may not be the most visually arresting piece, but much like an Ozu film, its
unfussy form focuses us on the characters' issues and relationships
in an unusually immersive way. Based on Carolyn Briggs' memoir about
her journey through fundamentalist Christianity during the latter
third of the 20th Century, "Ground" is a marvel of exquisite tone
control. Helmer/star Farmiga expertly sidesteps multiple
opportunities to emotionally vulgarize the material, subtly and with
thorough conviction keeping the focus on one woman's crisis of faith
through to that very last shot, an image so powerful and true it
brought me to tears for the first time in a theater since - oh, I
don't know, "Sophie's Choice"?
That may not have been a conventionally celebratory way to end
something called a festival, but I daresay nothing could have been better.
"Higher Ground" is scheduled for commercial release in late August.

Film of the Week: Ironclad

Fans of medieval mayhem should have a field day at "Ironclad." There's hacking and torture aplenty; the low-budget, high-production value effort even built its own trebuchet, the first one of the ancient catapults manufactured, they say, since they went out of service sometime around the War of the Roses.
History buffs will likely also be engaged by this little-known slice of 13th Century politics. Not thrilled at having been forced to sign the Magna Carta, King John (Paul Giamatti, having frothing-at-the-mouth fun) leads a legion of Danish mercenaries against the barons who imposed the document. Main action takes place in and around the siege of Rochester Castle, where a handful of anti-royalist holdouts fight to delay the king's forces until a French army can land and catch up.
"Ironclad" is hardly a perfect film. Whenever a big action scene starts, director Jonathan English goes all step-printed quick-cut, which is annoying and ugly. The hothouse romance between the lady of the manor (Kate Mara) and a celibate Knight Templar (James Purefoy) gets pretty campy pretty quick. But the film nicely captures the confused feudal loyalties and conflicting self-interests that somehow enabled the first baby steps of Western democracy. Like that eventuality, "Ironclad" is a good thing, despite its flaws.

Film of the Week: The Names of Love

For awhile there, The Names of Love's agenda seems to be all about getting a French girl out of her clothes. Actress Sara Forestier is so adorable, that's amusing for awhile, but just when you're ready to ask how much director Michel Leclerc thinks he can get
away with, this sophisticated sex farce evolves into a rich and moving treatise on what it's meant to be French for the last 75 years.
As Forestier's half-North African Bahia takes political commitment to an unusual degree - she seduces right wingers of various stripes in a harebrained effort to convert them to her more liberal views - Arthur (Jacques Gamblin), the older, half-Jewish
scientist who's the closest thing to her real boyfriend, comes to terms with a lifetime's worth of avoided epiphanies.
Every skeleton in the collective Gallic closet - Nazi collaboration, the Algerian and Vietnamese debacles, cultural revolutions and their failure, the place that that whole "thank heaven for little girls" attitude comes from -and much more gets addressed and woven into the very real growth the odd couple undergoes. The political is made personal, and how, often via high risk narrative and cinematic tricks that succeed
beyond any reasonable exppectations.
Bahia's anti-racist screwing around hits an ironic wall when she targets a radical Muslim, Arthur figures out a way to combat the memory of the Holocaust with whipped
cream. I already hear some people screaming about how inappropriate and offensive the whole thing sounds. But history and human nature are nothing if not inappropriate and offensive, and Leclerc celebrates the goodness (or, at least, the naked joy) we can all get out of life anyway.

Joe Pass, jazz guitarist

Joe Pass isn't so much an acquired taste as a player whose instrument seemed to pour out standards and bebop lines. The more you know the tunes, the more you "get" the bebop idiom, the more you'll understand, enjoy and appreciate the music of this pioneering instrumental genius.

It isn't as if Joe Pass was the first jazz guitarist to walk out on a stage and play without accompaniment. He just took it much further than anybody before (and few since).

Live review: Tears for Fears co-founder Curt Smith plays residency shows at Whitefire Theater

Curt Smith struggled to keep his singing voice distinct and his throat clear during his performance at the Whitefire Theater in Sherman Oaks Thursday night, at one point resorting to several shots of throat spray to soothe his vocal chords.
Fortunately for the audience and for Smith, he didn't have to sing loud. The Whitefire only has 84 seats.

To say the show was intimate is a massive understatement. It's more like having lunch with Jack Nicholson or sitting next to Magic Johnson on a plane.

It's a bit like having U2 playing in your living room.

Perhaps sensing the extraordinary venue and unforgettable circumstances, the room was respectful, absorbed and dead silent from the moment the band took the stage.

It doesn't seem that long ago that the English pop rock band Tears for Fears were producing multi-platinum-selling records and packing stadiums world-wide.
But as we all know, nothing lasts forever and the band's co-founders Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith parted ways in 1989.

Orzabal continued to record and tour through the 1990s using the Tears For Fears name and although the duo reunited and released a record of new material in 2004, the level of success TFF achieved in the 80s wouldn't be reached again.

Smith moved to New York in 1991 and later to Los Angeles where he now lives in the San Fernando Valley.
Since moving to the Valley Smith has played residency shows at the Cactus Lounge at The Standard Hollywood in West Hollywood and is now nearly halfway through a six-show engagement at the Whitefire.

The show, dubbed "An Evening of Music and Sarcasm" draws mainly from Smith's solo records and includes a sprinkling of TFF favorites, a couple of covers and, plenty of sarcasm.

Between songs Smith jokes, tells stories banters about songwriting and talks about the meaning of the lyrics most of which come from his life experiences, his parents, his childhood and his friends.

The show's first set opened with Smith playing a solo, acoustic version of "Drive," the much-covered Cars hit from, surprise, 1984. That was followed by several songs from Smith's solo work including his album "Halfway Pleased" and "Mayfield."

The second set included more Smith solo songs, a sweet cover of Coldplay's "Yellow" and ended with a soft, melodic version of "Mad World" from TFF's first album.

The band consisted of longtime collaborator Charlton Pettus on guitar, sequencers and various MacBook Pro applications, Doug Petty on keyboards and squeezebox and Jamie Wollam who played a cajon, a kind of box drum, thing.

The acoustics at the Whitefire, typically used for live theater, are surprisingly good and the sound coming from the stage was clean and authentic.

Smith will play four more nights at the Whitefire including Thursday, April 28 and Wednesday May 18, 25 and June 1, all at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 general admission and are available online only at eventbrite.com/.

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Mayaguez, slated for 2012 release

The film Mayaguez is a new war film now in pre-production, with filming commencing in Cambodia in late 2011.

Brendan Moriarty - who produced and directed another war movie "The Road to Freedom" - is producing from a script by James Larson - son of legendary television writer and producer Glen A. Larson.

The film is based on real events that occurred in the last official battle in the Vietnam War in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge seized the container ship the SS Mayaguez.

Mayaguez is scheduled for release in June 2012 from bajan Vista Productions.

SXSW Day Five/Wrap Up: The Bubble (Puppy) Bursts

It's nearly 2 am on the final night of South by Southwest 2011, and after nearly five full days and nights of complete running-around-town insanity, I find myself indoors, in air-conditioned comfort, sitting on a chair - a cushioned chair! - at the Hilton Garden Inn. And while these tired old bones could be excused for being there solely for the environment, I'm there because I honestly can't think of anything better than spending the last few hours of this music-gone-wild event (did I say in my Day One report that there were over 1200 acts? I was off just a tad; turns out there were over 2000) than watching back-to-back sets by two of the neatest music people I know: the irrepressible Syd Straw, whom we'd already seen and delighted in earlier at the festival, and the inimitable Peter Stampfel, whom we'd be perfectly happy to see play every day of the year.

That these performers together are barely a milli-blip on the radar screen at a festival like this probably says more about where we're at as a culture than where they're at as artists. There can't be more than 75 people here and, well, so be it. These folks play and sing and talk like real people, because they are. "What I lack in volume I make up for in finesse," joked Straw after she muffed lyrics and chord changes to "When My Ship Comes In," one of her typically funny-bone-ticking, heart-touching confessional tunes. Hard to not love a gal who brings up her musician boyfriend, Mark Boone Jr., for a deadpan Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra style duet cover of "What's New Pussycat?" - or who tells the audience before her last number that "I'm prepared to love you all - and I have drink tickets!"

Peter Stampfel, meanwhile, should simply be declared a national treasure and subsidized to do whatever the hell he wants to for the rest of his life. Back when the folk revival was at its self-serious height in the 1960s, Stampfel and his then partner-in-rhyme Steve Weber landed as flies in the movement's ointment as the Holy Modal Rounders, a duo that took the traditional music everyone around them was so seriously genuflecting to and gave it a good hearty kick in the rear with carefree versions of such old-timey classics as "Sugar in the Gourd" and "Bully of the Town" and giddy originals such as "Happy Scrapple Daddy From the Pennsylvania Farm " and their Easy Rider soundtrack hit, "If You Wanna to Be a Bird." Stampfel's knowledge of American music is encyclopedic, and he lives/loves to mash up the entirety of music history in every show I've seen him do over the years.

Tonight, with the help of the three-piece string band the Ether Frolic Mob, Stampfel does his merry thing, flitting from "The Drunken Banjo Waltz" ("Some may call it schmaltz") and "Bar Song" ("I'm gonna hear some crappy band/playing some song that I can't stand") to Hank Williams' radio theme, "Happy Roving Cowboy" and an updated version of "Deep in Heart of Texas," with lyrics by veteran journalist and longtime Austinite John Morthland ("The SUVs/they grow on trees/deep in the heart of Texas/And everyone/has got a gun/deep in the heart of Texas"). For good measure, Stampfel proudly presents his entry in pop music's longstanding series of "answer" songs. To the tune of Norman Greenbaum's old boogie charttopper "Spirit in the Sky," he sings "Demon in the Ground," looking forward to the day "When I die, my soul will be cursed/I'm gonna go to the place that's the worst."

The Straw/Stampfel shows tops off a day that had found me doing a fair amount of musical time zone flitting myself. Things I'd taken in over the past 12 hours included: an eardrums-or-bust noisefest by UK retro psycho-rockers the Jim Jones Revue, whose so-named frontman has virtually every textbook rock star pose - the sneer, the prance, the crotch thrust - down cold; Kelly Willis, a onetime fair princess of the New Traditionalist movement whose smart songs, old and new, continue to serve as a reminder of where contemporary country music could and should be; and - wonder of wonders - a sizzling reunion performance by new Texas Music Hall of Fame inductees the Bubble Puppy, who back in 1969 gave us the riff-rock all-timer "Hot Smoke & Sassafrass." (Having personally singled out the Bubble Puppy for a well-deserved place of honor in the One-Hit Wonders exhibit I curated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame when the Museum first opened in 1995, I couldn't have been prouder.)

Speaking of bubbles, SXSW 2011 did unfortunately bubble over at times with some scary moments. There were unfortunate incidents at the Strokes show, where fences got knocked over by frustrated fans determined to get into the 20,000-plus past-capacity free show, and at Stubb's, where a 350-pound camera boom crashed down on the audience just as OMD began to play, resulting in several people having to be taken to the hospital. There were far too many too many shows that failed to follow the posted schedule, making any plans for covering this behemoth on a go-here, then go-there plan virtually undoable. Corporately-sponsored shows that had nothing to do with the official festival itself took place all week - since the festival pays nominal fees to its participants, many performers play supplemental compensated sets to make back the money it costs to come to Austin - and so the not-so-pungent smell of blatant consumerism ran pretty rampant.

Perhaps in 2012 some of the "professional" musicians at SXSW will take their cue from the aforementioned Mr. Stampfel, who spent part of his Saturday with his fiddle and banjo out on the street of downtown Austin - busking. "Hey, I made 25 bucks!" he cheerily told me when I asked him about it. Honest pay for honest work; what a novel concept.

See you next year, friends.

SXSW Day Four: Nearer My God To Thee - Or Not

Given my assorted disasters on Thursday, Friday at South By Southwest 2011 started for me on a much-needed confidence boosting note when I ran into my Sound + Vision magazine editor Ken Richardson at an early afternoon pit stop at the Convention Center's Media Lounge. (Given the socially [network] responsible requirements of instant journalism these days, that title does strike a rather funny chord; at events like this, a Media Triage Tent with a physician on call would make much more sense.) On Thursday, Ken and I had our long-running annual SXSW dinner (and thanks as always for picking up the you-know-what, sir) before we'd both set out for the evening's skirmishes and, as it turned out, he'd encountered just about as many schedule foul-ups as I had. Conversations with other friends/colleagues I saw that day ran along the same lines: the running-like-clockwork miracle that SXSW somehow always pulled off was simply not happening this time around. Good to know I no longer had to feel like Eric Von Zipper in those Frankie and Annette beach movies, wondering "Me... Why is always me?"

In any event, the Spin party at Stubb's seemed a safe bet for catching a few of the proverbial buzz-worthy acts for '11, so I headed there. The good news was that while I was there over the next two hours, I got to hear a both of both the Vaccines and the Kills. The bad news was I got to hear a bit of both the Vaccines and the Kills. Conclusion: Buzz just ain't what it used to be. In between, however, came another unlikely SXSW '11 blast-from the-past surprise - Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, who, in the best what-goes-around-comes-around fashion, sounded absolutely au courant reprising some of their hits from the 1980s - and not only because Moby turned up to play bass on a few tunes. Sure, singer Andy McCluskey looked positively Pee-Wee-esque in his dance moves, but that is indeed what you saw when songs like "If You Leave" and "Dreaming" had folks out on the dance floor, and bands like OMD and the Human League were making synth-pop an actual genre and not just a joke - A Flock of Seagulls notwithstanding, that is.

Speaking of dancing, Austin's newly opened Moody Theater has plenty of floor space to accommodate it, whether it be state-specific two-steps or universal good foots. And while he and his rhythm-section-plus-horn cohorts may be Austin-based, Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears specialize in generating the latter rather than the former - and quite well, I might add. Successfully blending downhome blues, midtown soul and uptown r'n'b is no mean feat, but guitarist/singer Lewis does seem to have the neighborhood well-canvassed; he's the first act since the J.Geils Band who could cover Dyke & The Blazers' "So Sharp" and get away with it. In fact, he could probably cover "The Wrong House" and get away with it. Midway through, he brought out the Relatives - a Houston gospel quartet so cool they come with their own conga player - and soon they had the crowd following them through what I guess you'd call Gospel Zumba handclaps and jumping jacks on Lewis' socipolitical rave-up "You Been Lyin'." As they say: grits ain't groceries.

By the time Friday's festivities were over, we'd taken in the usual here-to-there run of musical and cultural styles ranging from the fine country singer-songwriter Hayes Carll, he of the instant classic "She Left Me For Jesus" ("She says I should find him and I'll know peace at last/If I ever find Jesus, I'm kicking his ass"), to alt.pop tunesmith John Grant, who in his work also Jesus on his mind - though in his case from a decidedly less well-humoured perspective. Struggles with substance abuse and sexual identity are part of Grant's back story, and they turn up in hard-edged compositions such as "Jesus Hates Faggots" and "Queen of Denmark," the title track of a debut solo CD that Mojo magazine crowned 2010's Album of the Year.

I don't think I'd go that far myself, but Grant is an impressive composer and singer, with shades of "Whiter Shade of Pale" Procol Harum in his piano-centered melodies (I kept waiting to hear the whistle from "A Salty Dog" to go off ) and a vocal forthrightness that had me flashing on Gordon Lightfoot and Glen Campbell. All told, that puts Grant in a certain place influence-wise, and it's not a bad one. I just wish he hadn't done all that religion bashing and cussing in the venue he was booked into: the Central Presbyterian Church. Given not only the church's stunning visual and sonic beauty (best acoustics at SXSW, always), but far more relevantly, the overly respectful way the gentle people who run this very liberal house of worship treat any and all visitors, I don't think they're the bad guys.

SXSW Day Three: On Thursday, A Manic Monday

I admit that I spent a fair amount of time on Thursday trying to figure out what I might have written in my two previous missives from Austin that caused me to fall victim to the dreaded South by Southwest time/space continuum curse. It's a condition in which a festival goer keeps arriving at venues only to find that the act they've come to see a) has been pushed back an hour; b) has canceled entirely; c) experiences technical difficulties just as you finally get through the door of the packed club; or d) though you never thought you'd have a problem getting in, you arrive about 15 minutes after the maximum number of folks allowed in have jammed the joint to capacity, and the line is already a block long.

At some point on Thursday, I experienced all of the above. To give you an idea of just how jinxed I was, I decided on a semi-whim to head across Austin's Town Lake to catch the 8 pm performance by the Strokes, who were headlining one of the free show (i.e., no prepaid festival badges or wrist bands needed) that SXSW presents every year as a gift to the city for putting up with all this insanity.

Figuring it'd be snap - giant space, outdoors - I arrived at 7:45 and found thousands of people still on line and what seemed like thousands more heading towards the general area. Didn't see too many badges or wristbands, either. And faster than Homer Simpson says "D'oh!," I did finally get that when you have a popular band playing for free, chances are they'll draw a pretty good crowd. After about half an hour, the Strokes still hadn't started, so I decide to head back to downtown. Naturally, just as I began crossing the bridge, a giant roar came from the crowd and the show was underway.
Now too late to turn back, I took some solace in the fact that I did have enough time to make it to Antone's to see some of the 9 pm showcase by Abigail Washburn, whose old-school clawhammer banjo playing and old-soul songwriting style has made her one of the nicer surprises on the current folk scene. Naturally, the sound system got all fouled up and she didn't get going until a good quarter of her allotted time was already up. Once she began, she sounded fine, though, and since I've seen her before, I left after hearing a few choice tracks from new CD City of Refuge and, upon a friend's tip, headed to the Belmont, where Brit-rock maniacs the Jim Jones Revue were supposed to play at 10. Soon as I got there, I found out that they were playing at 11 - maybe.

At this point, I was seriously considering running up the white flag and heading back to my hotel so I might finally get more than four hours sleep for one night, but instead I opted to give the festival gods one more chance, and walked over to the Cedar Street Courtyard where I was greeted by the comforting sights and sounds of an all-girl punk band clawing their way through a Ramones-accented take on the Stooges' "Search and Destroy." At the end of the next song by the quintet - Austin's own Schmillion, by the way - the lead singer pogo'ed into another band member and nearly fell over. "I rocked my shoe off!," she yelled excitedly. So, that young, and with all options available in the current musical genre game, these girls had actually chosen first generation punk? This was promising.

By the time they were done, I figured I'd turned the corner, and chose to stay at the Cedar Courtyard, where, at 11:45, '80s pop princesses the Bangles were due to play. But then their stage crew started having all sorts of "setup" issues, and when better than 40 minutes past their scheduled start time passed without much of anything happening, I started to sense my little black cloud reappearing overhead. But then Susannah Hoffs and sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson finally hit the stage, and over the next half-hour, my faith in SXSW - and, as ever, rock 'n' roll itself, was restored. Gloriously, I might add.

Lest anyone had forgotten - and, admit it, most of us probably had - the Bangles were one tight little garage rock-inspired power pop unit in their days as pioneering female rockers. They looked great, sang great, and yes, not only for girls, played great. And from the evidence of this show, here in 2011, they do still have it, and in rose-petaled spades. Not only did Hoffs and the Petersons nimbly run through their formidable string of hits - everything from "Manic Monday" and "Eternal Flame" to "In My Room" and "Hazy Shade of Winter"; they even tossed in a sizzling version of the great old Todd Rundgren/Nazz classic "Open My Eyes" and a tres cool nod to the Who's "Magic Bus." That one came in the middle of their rousing set-closer "Walk Like An Egyptian," featuring lead vocals split among all three of these still-smokin' September Gurls. Hookah pipes, anyone?

SXSW Day 2: That's Right, The Mascara Snake - To The Fjords!

It's not every day that you find yourself sitting next to a person responsible for one of the hippest catch phrases in all of 20th century music. But Wednesday at South by Southwest began with my participation on a midday Convention Center panel devoted to the late savant garde musician and painter Don Van Vliet - aka Captain Beefheart. Seated next to me was Van Vliet's cousin and fellow painter Victor Hayden, who, as the Mascara Snake in the Beefheart Magic Band that recorded the late '60s classic Trout Mask Replica album, gave an entire generation of music listeners of a certain, shall we say, ilk, three wondrous little words that have forever stayed in our cracked consciousness: "Fast and bulbous."

Start your day like that and you know you're good to go - and go I did, through the first full day of SXSW activities and the maze of panels and events at the Convention Center, day parties with round-robin mini-sets by acts big and small, and the "official" showcases running from around 8 pm until 2 in the morning (and don't even ask about after hours buzzfests). Adhering to the eating/listening daily requirements I mentioned yesterday, the first stop was the Canadian Blast BBQ and Showcase for a dose of both. The best of what I heard here was a neat as a pin female-fronted power pop band called Imaginary Cities with enough bright hooks to make you remember that Avril Lavigne is Canadian. Mission accomplished.

From there I ran across town to the Guitartown/Conqueroo day party, where I walked in on a country rocker telling everyone, "You know the lyrics; come on and sing!" My guess if virtually no one there knew the song, but had to miss when your chorus goes "Na Na Na Na Na Na Na." I also caught a bit of the fine singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves, who did some unexpected fancy yodeling to the swing classic, "Out on The Texas Plains" and then turned 180 for a terrific gospel original called "Go For The Gold." I stayed long enough to see old fave Syd Straw, probably best known for her work with the loose-knit Golden Palominos collective. As ever, Straw's ragtag set found her as entertaining between songs as during them. Living these days in the Northeast, she wisecracked that she doesn't get many gigs because "I've been told there's room for only one cool female singer in Vermont. Everyone says I'd like Neko Case if I met her, but I don't know. Maybe I should start a feud to get some attention: Alright b*tch, I'm gunning for you!" If she can't get a record deal, someone should at least give this gal a talk show.

By nightfall, I was ready to not, repeat, not, deal with the inevitable hour-plus line at Stubb's for the latest Duran Duran reunion tour (how many is this now, anyway?). Yes, I know the '80s are back; with a vengeance. But outside of where their hairdos are now at, personal interest was slim, and though I wish Simon LeBon, Nick Rhodes, and various Taylor all the best, joining thousands in a hearty singalong of "Hungry Like the Wolf" isn't exactly my idea of quality time.

Instead, the night was spent merrily rambling up, down, all around around intensifyingly chaotic 6th street, ducking in and out of clubs, to get a taste of things like: ex-Texas cosmic cowboy Jimmie Dale Gillmore playing no-frills old-time country and bluegrass standards; a Scottish singer-songwriter known as Withered Hand with taut, fragile songs and a taut, quavering voice to match; a Chicago screamo band called Veil of Maya fairly ordering the slamming to commence, which it then naturally did; the Baseball Project, a just-for-fun amalgam featuring indie-rockers Steve Wynn (the Dream Syndicate), Scott McCaughey (the Minus 5) and REM's Peter Buck that plays nothing but bat-, ball- and glove-centric songs; Austin's own irrepressible piano-pumping true blue blues belter, Marcia Ball; and the Hobart Brothers, featuring L'il Sis Hobart, who, in their more familiar musical guises as Jon Dee Graham, Freedy Johnson and Susan Cowsill, thankfully sound better than their name.

All told, then, the festival's first full day offered, as SXSW invariably does, just about anything and everything under the sun. Or should I say under the fog, since the remarkable Faroe Islands songstress Gudrid Hansdottir, whom I discovered completely by accident at last year's SXSW, was back for a much welcome return engagement. "The sea gives and the sea takes," she sang in one of her captivating new songs about her unique world located amidst the foam and rock between Norway and Iceland. Performing indoors at the Hilton Inn, she had everyone so entranced you could hear a pin drop - so much so that at one point she asked, somewhat quizzically, if we were enjoying her songs. "So," said Gudie. "I'm good. Are you good?" "You're amazing," someone shouted. Spoke for all of us.

South by Southwest 2011: Gentlemen, Start Your Loudspeakers

2011 marks the 25th anniversary of South By Southwest Music Festival, and lest there be any question that the ever-sprawling event has become quite the gorilla in the multi-day music marathon room, consider this: The once handy-dandy Pocket Guide that they give to help you try and navigate your way through the event is now up to a near non-pocket sized 94 pages in its listing of the better than 1200 acts (not a typo, folks) all vying for attention at the 79 venues (also not a typo) all located in and around downtown Austin.

Moreover, whereas the festival used to start on Wednesday, build up speed on Thursday, and then explode and nova on Friday and Saturday, this year Tuesday became the new Wednesday. A host of events and showcases, official and unofficial were already in full swing when I landed in town late Tuesday afternoon, and so I had little choice but to hit the ground running - which is, as the experience of covering the last dozen of these has taught me is the only way to do so - and hope I'm still in some semblance of one piece, and sanity, come Sunday.

To wit, then: Thanks to the good folks at BMI and Stubb's restaurant, the evening began with the requisite first meal on the tried and tested when-in-Texas diet plan - barbecue and beer, and that's about it - and first good music, courtesy of the longtime Longhorn Dale Watson, a strict constructionist who does not let a note of post-Bakersfield country music infect his straight-no-chaser songs and style. When a guy with a now all-white pompadour sings songs entitled "My Baby Makes Good Gravy," and lines like "I drink when I like it, and I like it a lot," and plays like his guitar strings are made out of razor wire, at least you know that the Sugarlands and Rascal Flatts of the world haven't killed all of country music, at least not yet.

We hung around at Stubb's backyard amphitheater long enough to get at least a few song glimpse of the evening's requisite "unannounced" big show: The Foo Fighters, who'd just premiered a documentary on the final day of the overlapping SXSW film festival. Befitting the fact that this was still the slowest night on the music schedule, the FF's gig drew just about anyone who'd hear about it - badge or no badge, special event wristband, regular wristband, or no wristband at all, and naturally an insanely long line materialized a good hour and a half before their show, which, also befitting superstar rock acts, didn't begin until well past the supposed 9pm start. By the time we actually got in, Dave Grohl and crew were about midway through their start to finish run through of their not yet released new CD, Wasting Light. Since I haven't heard the finished product yet, I can't say much other than it sounded loud, tense and serious, which is what their music has always sounded like. Not quite generic, but not quite what you keep hoping for the Nirvana survivor.

Since the FFs were running late, we left to make sure we could race to the Central Presbyterian Church to catch all of guitar wizard Gary Lucas' live accompaniment of a rarely seen version of Dracula, filmed in Hollywood in 1931right after they wrapped the Bela Lugosi classic, using the same sets and script - only all in Spanish with Spanish actors. Several years ago, Lucas was here, playing to another movie, the silent classic The Golem - a brilliant concept matched only by the brilliance of his performance. This screening-with-music of Dracula came with a sensational twist, as the "Spanish Dracula," as it's called, isn't silent. However, outside of the opening credits and a few scenes, the film had no original soundtrack.

Well, it sure has one now. Seated on a chair angled to the side of the screen, and armed with a variety of guitars and a floor full of effect-generating pedals and gizmos, Lucas - whose dazzling career resume includes work as an accompanist and collaborator with the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Captain Beefheart and Jeff Buckley - took viewers, and listeners on a nearly two-hour journey through themes and variations that could best be described as a cross between Ennio Morricone, Bernard Herrmann, Dick Dale and Andre Segovia. Whoever thought Bram Stoker's great old story could inspire an aural tour de force? Lucas may be creating an entire new musical genre: Con Pollo Horror Western. Alternately chilling and heartrending, Lucas' Dracula soundtrack - performed, it should be noted, with the projection screen sitting right beneath the church's daunting oversized crucifix (talk about the perfect prop), and through the stroke of midnight, made wonderful sense. As the Spanish Dracula, Carlos Villar, so aptly put it in the scene where the howling wolves send a chill through the Transylvania air: "Listen to the children of the night. What beautiful music they make." Er, amen to that.

Back with more before too long...

Live review: STRFKR at the Troubadour

WTF?
Seriously, what is in a name?
That's a question the Portland-based synth-pop band Starfucker has been asking itself, and their fans, for the past two years.
What started out as a personal project for Josh Hodges, recording dance music on a laptop in his bedroom, has gained momentum and morphed into a full band currently working their way from L.A. through Phoenix and Santa Fe enroute to five nights at SXSW in Austin.
After adding Ryan Biornstad (vocals, guitar, keyboards, turntable), Shawn Glassford (bass, keyboards, percussion), and Keil Corcoran (drums) Starfucker, or the more marquee-friendly STRFKR, began to enjoy some success with the release of their first, self-titled album in 2008.
The song Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second was even used in, of all things, a Target commercial in 2009 which was selected as AdWeek's "Ad of the Day" in 2009.
Last fall, the band opened a contest for their fans to come up with a new name that might fly better with mainstream media and moms dropping their kids off at all-age clubs where they might be playing.
The name they settled on was PYRAMID which later became Pyramiddd. That lasted for 6 months when the band reverted to Starfucker.
Now on tour in support of their sophomore album "Reptilians" Starfucker played a 90-minute set at the Troubadour last Friday night.
From the moment the lights dimmed and the rotating laser light show began Starfucker showed they're not just another disco-pop band cashing in on a preowned trend worn well by MGMT, Passion Pit and others.
This is a group of talented musicians playing accessible air-tight pop hooks that are danceable and, despite their incautious moniker, radio friendly.
Starfucker mixes sugar-coated guitar hooks and synthy atmospherics with dueling percussion, hazy vocals and jumpy, on-stage antics.
Oddly, they've occasionally been known to perform in drag although they appeared gender-appropriately dressed Friday night.
The oddity doesn't end there as they also mixed parts of lectures from Zen philosopher Alan Watts with recordings from the muppets between songs.
The staging was further enhanced, or cheesed up depending on your point of view, by Biornstad's pseudo Greek god posing and efforts at audience surfing.
A highlight of the night may have come from, not an original composition but a sarcastic cover of Cyndi Lauper's 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun' which had the packed house bouncing in unison and singing along.
During the final song of the night the band carelessly invited the audience onstage which, miraculously resulted in no equipment or human casualties.
Starfucker's meteoric rise from a backyard kegger band to a five-night SXSW force-to-be-reckoned-with is quite an accomplishment.
To get beyond that may require the band to rethink their name.
Again.

Opening

Skull Tape, a frenetic, spazzy thrash band from L.A. opened the show and were followed by the infectious power trio Unknown Mortal Orchestra, also from Portland.

Black swan night

Black Swan takes best picture at Spirit awards giving it 3.

More Spirit wins

Natalie Portman win best actress and Darren Aronpfsky as best director at Spirit awards.

King Speech wins

"The King's Speech" wins Spirit award as best Gordon film. Must be the bloody accents.

James Franco wins best actor award at Spirit Awards

"127" Hours actor talks about his NYU filmmaking thesis in acceptance speech.

"The KIng's Speech" gets PG-13 rating

A re-edited version of "The King's Speech" has won a PG-13 rating, the Motion Picture Assosiation of America, Announced on Friday.

The original version of the film was rated R for a colorful string of explitives. The MPAA and the National Association of Theater Owners also waved a rule requiring the 90-day withdrawal of a film from theaters before replacing it with the new version.

Hollywood makes more money home and away

Thanks to 3D and the hits like "Avatar" and "Toy Story 3, the global box office set a record high in 2010 at $31.8 billion, an 8% increase over the previous year, according to the Motion Picture Association of America's annual report released Monday.

But everything isn't rosy.

Overall, the domestic box office was up a bit at of $10.6 billion, but attendance at home actually dropped by 5% with 1.34 billion tickets sold. 3D helped offset the lack of bottoms in seats, accounting for 21 percent of revenue, with $2.2 billion.

MPAA president Bob Pisano blamed the lower attendance on baby boomers aging.

"There's an obvious trend when audiences get older; they go to the movies less," Pisano said.

Sure, or maybe boomers don't want to drag themselves out to see some of the overblown under-imagined 3D trash the studios have tried to foist on the public. Even young people are already wary of shelling out the extras bucks. But if Hollywood doesn't mix in more creativity with the technology, 3D will be last year's gimmick and more people will be happy sitting home watching "Justified."

Live review: Ólafur Arnalds at the Echoplex

If you have previously heard of Ólafur Arnalds, consider yourself a well-informed music aficionado. If you have not, don't feel unaware or out-of-touch.

Former metal drummer turned neo-classical composer from Iceland, Arnalds is not exactly at the top of pop charts.

And although his music borders on experimental and his appreciation is still growing, there was still a fairly good line to get into the Echoplex where he was performing on Feb. 4.

The Echoplex it's essentially a dark dance club. The kind of place that you expect to hear trance music that would be thumping your car windows from street parking three blocks away.

Not exactly the place you'd imagine seeing a new Icelandic artist with a tuxedo and a string quartet.

But for Arnalds the house set up a few rows of folding chairs in a semi circle on the dance floor which filled up quickly. It was standing-room for the few dozen others beyond that.

The opening artist, George Sarah and Strings are from North Hollywood and are dabbling in a musical genre that I previously didn't even know existed.

Sarah's MySpace page defines his music as classical/electronica/emo.

You know, like washing down chocolate chip cookies with cabernet sauvignon. An unlikely combination but somehow it works.

Because Sarah is from NoHo, you'll likely be reading or hearing more from this artist in this space later.

His opening set had the small crowd mesmerized with complex string arrangements layered over a scratchy, trancey beat. The orchestration seemed a surprisingly good match for electro-throb and you could feel the joy the musicians were experiencing.

If Sarah had the crowd mesmerized, Arnalds hypnotized them.

Taking the stage behind an electronic keyboard stacked with sequencers, a laptop and other midi gear, Arnalds was accompanied by a string quartet and another musician/programmer "playing" a laptop and various other electronica.

With the exception of a small technical glitch at the beginning of the set - a laptop had overheated - the sound from the six pieces was exquisite.

The tiny stage was mic'd perfectly and the set was gripping and intimate. Strings of large, bright, incandescent bulbs were strewn about the stage and timed to movements in the music to ingenious effect, given the size of the venue.

The lighting from above and below was surprisingly inventive and the visuals were clearly as much a part of the performance as the music.

The set consisted mostly of pieces from Arnalds' new record "... and they escaped the weight of darkness" released this past summer. Although the name of the record sounds, well, weighty and dark, the music is bright and uplifting.

Often building from gentle piano and soft melody the compositions then thwack you with ultra-low frequency bass tones and synthy top-end sounds that are skillfully interlaced with luscious orchestration from the quartet.

The result is an ingenious, drop-dead gorgeous kind of mellow-tronica.

Between songs the banter from 23-year-old Arnalds revealed a soft-spoken charm and sense of humor that complimented his emotional and moving compositions.

Los Angeles was the last date for Arnalds and his band in North America before they headed off for a one-night stand in London and two final nights in Instanbul.

If you didn't get to see this gig or haven't previously heard of this important new artist, consider yourself informed.

When they come back to Los Angeles, I'm sure the lines will be much longer.

Live review: the church

Chatting with a nearly forty-year-old woman in the lobby of the El Rey Theatre last Wednesday night, I got a pretty good idea of the kind of loyal fan base the church has developed over the years.

When I asked her if she'd seen the band before she replied, "Yes, 42 times."

Serious church worship.

She then went on to tell me how it's been her mission for years to get the entire band into her living room.

"I had Steven (Kilbey) at my girlfriends house in San Francisco last year," she said. "I just need to get everybody all at once."

Somehow, this did not sound the least bit stalkery.

After talking to a few more fans I realized that I may be the only one in the house who was seeing the church for the first time.

For 11 dates during February "the church - future, past, perfect" has the band performing three albums in their entirety starting with 'Untitled#23' from 2009 followed by 1992s 'Priest=Aura' and ending with 1988s 'Starfish.'

The show was as much a long documentary of the band's three-decades together as it was a set list and once the lights went down, on time at 8 p.m., the evening could only be described as authentic and exclusive.

Typically a standing-room-only venue the El Rey had filled the main floor with padded chairs, presumably to keep the audience from collapsing during the 4-hour-plus show. Upon entry the audience was issued a free, 4-color program.

It felt a little more like Les Miserables at the Dorothy Chandler than a neo-psychedelic 80s band at the El Rey.

The room sounded nearly perfect from the first note and although the band seemed a little under-rehearsed at first they quickly warmed up and were playing like they were in their teens, although a bit more skillfully.

Band leader Steve Kilbey's affecting voice still showed the strength and range of an angst-ridden juvenile even if he occasionally had to put on readers and read from lyric sheets.

I give him credit. Thirty years of poetry is not easy to retain.

Kilbey switched from bass to guitar and back to bass playing more than bottom, root notes but expressive and melodic bass lines. Kilbey stuck mostly to a the cartoony but sustainy Rickenbacher 4003 bass and played through Black Star cabinets.

Co-founder Marty Wilson-Piper looked like a middle-aged biker just released from rehab but his role in the band has clearly taken on something akin to artistic director.

Wilson-Piper plays bass, guitar, sings, co-manages the band, designed the program and the tour concept.

He even designs the friggin T-shirts.

Wilson-Piper spent much of the evening hunched over his Richenbacher 330 or Fender Jazzmaster. His posture onstage made him look as though he was in pain and straining to get the licks out for most of the night but his playing was polished and flawless, his guitar sound was at once jangly and bright then gravelly and heavy.

Peter Koppes guitar playing brought a sweet color to the mix like a splash of grenadine in a cordial. Switching between a custom solid-body, a semi-hollow 12-string and a Stratocaster and playing through Orange Ampification, Koppes layered standard fuzz, flange and reverb on top of Wilson-Piper's driving chords as well as an occasional specialty effect like an EBow.

Tim Powles drums sounded big, fat and round. Using heavy sticks and bass drum sticks Powles took advantage of the PA and the acoustics of the room to get a muscular sound that powered the set.

Guest musician Craig Wilson added keyboards, guitar, mandolin, six-string bass, percussion, vocals and a little youth.

The multi-layered guitar and superb arrangements complemented Kilbey's songwriting and somewhat mystical lyrics and they had control of the room from the beginning.

There were very few woohoos and no shouting demands for "Under the Milky Way."

The audience came to listen not participate.

They were there for the sermon.

If any one thing comes to mind about the church's performance at the El Rey it may be that even without an encore and at more than 4 hours, it was a lot of church.

But at the end of the night the house was still full of the devoted.

I doubt I'll see them 42 times, but I've been converted.

Eastern Conference Champions new record

Eastern Conference Champions are returning with their first album of new material in four years. Speak-ahh will be released on April 26th on RockHampton Records.

The trio, which consists of Josh Ostrander, Greg Lyons and Melissa Dougherty, has kept quite busy since the release of their debut album (Ameritown) in 2007, releasing two critically acclaimed EP's (Santa Fe & Akustiks).

Lead singer Josh Ostrander explains why it took four years to finish their second album: "We knew this was going be a very important record for us when we started demoing and collecting songs. Every record and EP we released up until this point was truly a stepping-stone to this record. We wanted Speak-ahh to hit on every level. For the most part the band has adapted itself to getting things on their first or second takes whilst recording. I cant for the life of me tell you why this is our darkest record to date, it's not something we planned, we didn't even realize it until we looked at what we had finished."

Recorded in downtown Los Angeles, The ten-track album is a departure from the sound of their debut album. "After we recorded Ameritown with Owen Morris, we had a hell of a time pulling off some of the songs live, it just got away from us in the studio," Josh reflected. "Since we began recording on our own, we always go into recording a song with a 'are we gonna be able to pull this off live' mentality. We never put two guitars down when one will do the job. We prefer the bones of it to an orchestra. We love the rawness."

Eastern Conference Champions made waves last year when they were tapped to contribute an exclusive song "for the third installment of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. The unsigned act was chosen from more than 400 bands competing for the coveted soundtrack slot, and the resulting song, "A Million Miles An Hour," received rave reviews and raised the band's profile considerably.

"Twilight was ridiculously good for us," Josh commented. "If anything it showed a million kids out there that you don't need a label or even proper representation to get a foot in the door. We had two songs in the running for the movie, but they just weren't right. The band was taking me to Vegas for my birthday when we got the call that wanted something else. It was the night before we were leaving, nobody wanted to go in, but we did, we powered through, wrote, recorded, and mixed the song in about six hours, then left for Vegas. We would find out a week later that we got it."

Eastern Conference Champions are planning to tour around the release of Speak-ahh. Dates will be announced shortly.

Live review: Atlantic/Pacific at Hotel Cafe

Atlantic/Pacific at Hotel Cafe, January 2011 from Thomas Gapen on Vimeo.

The release of Atlantic/Pacific's new album "Meet Your New Love" may surprise some.

The Brooklyn-based based band has roots in a heavier style of emo-branded rock, having had a major influence in the genre on the East Coast in the mid-'90s.

But their one-hour set at Hotel Cafe last week revealed a more developed sound that is less emotionally charged and more hushed and soulful.

The band is made up of Garrett Klahn (Texas Is the Reason,) longtime friend John Herguth (House & Parish) and a changing cast of professionals which often include Ian Love (Rival Schools) and Sergie Loobkoff (Samiam).

Currently touring with Klahn and Herguth are bassist Chad Dziewior and drummer Brian Malone.

Atlantic/Pacific's set brought together an intertwining of lushly layered guitar work and subtly swirling keyboards on top of a tight rhythm section.

Klahn's distinctive and wrenching voice blends with Herguth's more sympathetic and smooth vocals like coffee and cream.

The result is an ethereal mix of relaxed, folksy, ambient sound with a splash of synthy, progessive indie rock.

Think the Smiths meets the Shins.

Klahn plays acoustic on some songs and a blonde Guild archtop on others, producing a shimmery effect that meshes with Herguth's edgier, jet-black Epiphone.

The swirly comes from Herguth's Juno-G.

But the strength of the band is in the Klahn's vocals and songwriting.

From "Picture Perfect's" country-flavored rythms to the sweet two-part harmonies on "Some Weary Valentine" to the anxious and dreamy "Let Me Into Your Light," the new album shows a wide range of styles and superbly crafted arrangements that will appeal to everyone from acoustic devotees to shoegazers.

Their set last week for some reason even included a cover of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream."

The album which was released in late 2010 on No Sleep Records is available now in all the usual places, including Amazon and iTunes, and the band will return to Los Angeles for a gig at The Echo on February 12 with Jarrod Gorbel.

http://www.myspace.com/atlanticpacificband

Zappa Event at the Grammy Museum Thursday night

The Grammy Museum downtown will host 'S'Talking Zappa' the special event honoring the life and legacy of musician Frank Zappa.

The presentation will be a musical examination and discussion of the details of Zappa's statement 'Music is the Best!" which will include audio and visual elements, electronica and live music presented by Gail Zappa with Todd Yvega and Joe Travers (drummer with Dweezil Zappa for over 18 years and archivist of the Zappa Family and Frank Zappa material).

The Grammy Museum's Scott Goldman will be the moderator of the event that starts at 7:30

The museum is located at 800 W Olympic Boulevard, downtown in the LA Live complex.

You can view more about Zappa here and more about the Grammy Museum here.

Dweezil Zappa - one of Frank's sons - is currently touring with the band Zappa Plays Zappa, which plays re-arranged Zappa tunes with a bigger band. For more on ZPZ, go here.

Care and Feeding of Actors

Another thing to hate about actors: They eat better than you do.
Monday at her restaurant Lucques on Melrose,chef Suzanne Goin displayed the dishes she plans to serve some 1250 hungry thesps at Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony.
Gorin is a very nice lady, and I'm not just saying that because she didn't just let journalists look at the food, she let us taste it.
Go ahead and hate me, too. I don't care, I'm full.
So, without further ado, here's what you'll be missing Sunday:

A salad of blood oranges, dates and arugula

Beluga lentils with carrots, pinenuts and feta cheese. I don't know if beluga actually makes lentils or if that means caviar is in the mix. I'm guessing the latter, since after some rather bland initial bites, the stuff explodes with delicate flavor in the back of your mouth.

Slow-roasted king salmon with cucumbers, yogurt and ginger-mint chutney. I wonder what people who like salmon will make of this, since this guy who's never been a fan of the fish thought it was nirvanalicious.

Slow-roasted Colorado lamb with chickpeas, black olives and feta salsa verde. It's hard to find good, lean lamb done rare and satisfyingly. There'll be 140 pounds of it at the Shrine Sunday.

Fresh baked herb crostini with parmesan, chopped thyme and parsley.

I asked Goin, who's catering her second SAG Awards this year, what it takes to keep 1200+ egomaniacs - most of whom will NOT be winning any award this weekend - full (if not, God forbid, fat) and happy.

"We just try to make the food like we make it at the restaurant," she said. "We try to make little versions of really tasty, locally sourced food. Everything's room temperature, so I work with a lot of bright, full flavors like olives, salsa verde, herbs and capers. I tried to think of four little dishes that work together but also sort of sing individually, to have a nice balance that, hopefully, they will eat and appreciate."

While no actors were moved to sing about the food at last year's awards, none had their managers or agents call to complain about it afterward, either. Good news for both viewers at home and attendees, when you think about it.

Film of the Week: Applause

You may think recovering addict movies are all pretty much the same. But there's something in the latest from Denmark, "Applause," that makes a real difference. Call it compassion, or behavioral pragmatism in the face of melodramatic potential; however it's labeled, it makes this one of the most persuasuve movies about alcoholism and its shaky aftermath ever made.
Throwing vanity to the wind, Paprika Steen opts to let her character Thea's every jittery move, tentative act and desperate insistence that she's "OK now" tell the story, while first-time feature director Martin Pieter Zandvliet undercuts every opportunity for a bad situation to turn disastrous.
Thea is a pretty good stage actress, drunk or sober, and her sad but determined attempts to stay on the wagon and reconnect with her two young, alienated sons are interspersed with scenes of her performing that ultimate boozy gripe session, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
At her real-world worst, Thea hurls Albee-esque insults at her ex-husband, who along with his new, psychologist wife is cautiously agreeable to integrating the mother back into the lives of her children. But "Woolf's" bitterness does not key "Applause's" tone. Neither does the film go too far into the grinding angst of Zandvliet's most obvious influences, Bergman and Cassavetes (critical comparisons of Steen to Gena Rowlands in "Opening Night" are easy but not really accurate).
Rather, this movie admires the effort of an often difficult woman to honestly make a go of it one day at a time. It acknowledges her mistakes and, in persistent raw close-up, her fading physical and spiritual beauty. But it also knows she's capable of some limits, shreds of self-control, and that in her particular life these can be quite gorgeous things.
In its realistic, unpretentious way, "Applause" is kind of gorgeous, too.

Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards Dinner

As usual, filmmakers and movie reviewers enjoyed an edgy but good-humored detente at the 36th Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards dinner in Century City Saturday night.
"For all the bruises and scrapes and abrasions that have landed upon me over the years - and I've probably gotten fewer than I deserved - when critics really love actors, we really, really love you," noted "The King's Speech's" Colin Firth, the group's best actor designee.
"I have to say, this feels much better," Firth could not help but add.
The packed event in the InterContinental Hotel's ballroom got off to a rousing start with musical performances by Jackie DeShannon and Kris Kristofferson, two acts associated with LAFCA's 2010 career achievement award winner, Paul Mazursky (DeShannon's rendition of "What the World Needs Now Is Love" was used memorably in the director's first feature, "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice"; Kristofferson acted in "Blume in Love").
"This is an historic moment for me," Mazursky's longtime pal Mel Brooks, who helped present the award, revealed. "I've never eaten with a film critic!"
Mazursky himself recounted the mood swings he'd undergo back in the 1970s and '80s heyday of serious film criticism, when the depression of a negative notice in The New York Times could only be counteracted by a supportive phone call from The New Yorker's legendary Pauline Kael.
But the 80-year-old auteur of such humanist classics as "Harry and Tonto," "An Unmarried Woman" and "Enemies: A Love Story" concluded his richly anecdotal acceptance speech with an outcry against a current corruption of film criticism that both artists and those who write about their work equally find appalling.
"Two great Iranian directors have been jailed for six years and ordered not to make movies for 20 years," Mazursky said, referring to Jafar Panahi and Mohammed Rasoulof, to whom the 2010 LAFCA awards were dedicated. "We're trying to get a demonstration together at the United Nations to get them out of jail. I hope you all can do something about it, and thank you very much."
The night's big winner, as it has been throughout this event-packed awards season (of which LAFCA remains one of the few programs dedicated to the art of cinema as opposed to celebrity-fawning and buzz-generating), was "The Social Network." It shared best director (David Fincher) and Music Score with, respectively, "Carlos'" Olivier Assayas (the former French film critic also accepted the best foreign language film prize on "Carlos'" behalf) and "The Ghost Writer."
Screenplay winner Aaron Sorkin delivered one of the night's least-jokey tributes to the reviewing community in his acceptance speech.
"I've read over the last three years that the impact of film critics has been diminishing," Sorkin said. "I think that everybody who made 'The Social Network' strongly disagrees with that. Film critics were the first ones to see the movie. They liked it and told people to see the movie, and they did. They then told their friends to see the movie and that made it, that's the way it all worked. We are very, very grateful for that."
Before taking the best picture plaque, notoriously competitive "Social Network" producer Scott Rudin admitted that, when it comes to appreciating good film work, there are really no good reasons for either contention or contests.
"It's hard to sit in a room with all of this talent and believe that only one thing can be 'the best'," Rudin observed. "Everybody in this room deserves huge acknowledgement for what they've done here."

Film of the Week: Burning Palms

Five tales of madness laced with perverse sex and bad behavior, "Burning Palms" attempts to tell us what living in L.A. is all about.
The separate chapters, each representing a different part of the city, don't add up to anything profound. Furthermore, writer-director Christopher B. Landon either doesn't possess the psychological insight or give himself enough time to delve deeply enough into his characters (or both) to lend the vignettes a lot of resonance. And a few of the plotlines, such as the last one about a Valley rape victim's odd reaction to her violation, are simply just awful.
The film's saving grace, though, is a humor so dark and demented that it makes Black Swan look like a little girls' first dance class.
The wackiest and most wicked story involves a UCLA coed (Jamie Chung) whose boyfriend's request for an unsanitary lovemaking act leads to outrageous, Lady Macbeth
delusions. Chung plays the grossed-out aftermath just perfectly - although I wouldn't know what imperfect would be, since I've never seen anything quite this icky/loony before - and thereby explodes any charges of sexism or even ethnic stereotyping that might be leveled at the sequence.
The same can't entirely be said for some other bits, such as the ones about a superficial gay couple's unhappy adoption of an African daughter or a Holmby Hills brat's persecution of the mansion's Latina housemaid. Despite his wavering success, though, Landon deserves credit for consistently trying, at least, to flesh-out cliches with extreme and often clever exaggeration.
Or maybe Landon, whose dad Michael was a television superstar, actually knows more about the deviant nature of our town than most of the rest of us do - or would want to.

Teena Marie has died

R&B songstress Teena Marie has died at the age of 54. Details of the singer's death are scarce but she reportedly passed away in her sleep. The confirmation came from a publicist, Jasmine Vega, who worked with Teena Marie on her last album. Her manager, Mike Gardner, also confirmed her death to CNN.

Born Marie Christine Brockert, Teena Marie -- famously known as Rick James' protegee as well as her nickname 'The Ivory Queen of Soul' -- rose to fame in the late 70s and 80s. The Grammy nominated singer-songwriter released her debut 'Wild and Peaceful' via Motown Records in 1979. The album featured 'I'm a Sucker for Your Love,' Marie's first Top Ten hit, but Marie would go on to have many more hits, including 'Square Biz,' 'Lovergirl' and 'Ooo La La La.'

Nick Galifianakis Cartoons

Cartoonist and humorist Nick Galifianakis has been drawing cartoons for the nationally syndicated advice column 'Carolyn Hax' (formerly called 'Tell Me About It') since 1997 and his first book of his work called If You Loved Me, You'd Think This Was Cute: Uncomfortably True Cartoons About You has just been released.

Hax's column, which was called 'Tell Me About It' and now it's just known by her name, is much like the Dear Abby-type of question-and-advice/answer format and it originates from the Washington Post. The column is mainly about relationships, marriage, sex and interpersonal relationships among friends, family and incidental family, for the most part. In the presentation of the column, Hax posts the question or problem and answers it and a Galifianakis cartoon that paints a visual version of the problem or solution appears next to it. Sometimes the cartoon has a dialogue and sometimes it doesn't, but every column is matched visually with a cartoon.

Along with illustrating Hax's writing, Galifianakis also does his own separate work and has illustrated for other people, many times drawing cartoons about angst-filled men and women and relationships but also about he and his dog Zuzu. He's done what most pet-owners would want to do, drawing and incorporating their pets into everyday life with the pets expressing their thoughts and/or conversing with their human counterparts. (Who doesn't project a voice or more of a personality onto their dog or cat at any given time? Everyone does that).

Although Galifianiakis' cartoons of and with his dog are fairly well-known, his new book is compiled mainly of cartoons that relate to relationships, men and women, family and marriage with only one pencil drawing of he and Zuzu in the front. The cartoonist has divided the book into themes with 'The Bastard Files,' 'Unfair Sex,' 'Finding the One(s),' 'So This Was the One,' 'Bridal Industry Complex,' 'Putting the Eff in Family' and 'Just Kidding' being several of the categories. The section called 'When We're Five, We're All Artists' changes the format a bit and features one cartoon on the left side and then a blown up version of the most complex part of the drawing on the right side. Every cartoon is intricately done and this section shows the grave detail of what Galifianakis does. You can see how great an artist he is when you see the blown-up pictures.

The book is humorous from start to finish and many times the reader sees a cartoon or a line and says to themselves 'I've always wanted to say that.' Galifianakis has captured men's and women's feelings and has his subjects say what everyone else always thinks but never says out loud. Most of the time, he hits it right on the head.

Nick's visual style has a bit of Bill Plympton (just not as surreal) and a smidge of Bill Watterson and Garry Trudeau, but his style is original. The humor and realism is what draws you in as well as the fact that most readers will find themselves somewhere in one of the cartoons. Many times, I saw a cartoon and I said 'I've done that.' (Extra credit to Galifianakis for drawing a diverse population of characters from white to black to Asian and other ethnicities in his frames).

The book is a great find for anyone who likes to make light of relationship scenarios or the ridiculousness of people and enjoys well-drawn, intricately-detailed, one-frame cartoons.

There is also a foreword by actor/comedian Zach Galifianakis (Nick's cousin) and a preface by Hax.

To see more of his work, you can go to his still-being-constructed site here on online with Hax's column here. You can also google his name and see a variety of his work or get his and Hax's first book called Tell Me About It: Lying, Sulking, Getting Fat ... and 56 Other Things NOT to Do While Looking for Love.

He also has a gallery exhibit showing in Falls Church, Virginia that runs until November 28 - if you find yourself in that part of the country over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Keaton Simons playing The Hotel Cafe Saturday

Fresh off his second stint on the REO Speedwagon/Pat Benetar tour, blues singer/songwriter/guitarist Keaton Simons plays The Hotel Cafe Saturday night. He goes on at 11pm.

If you get a chance, check out Simons. He's not in town too often these days and he's something to hear and see. The last time he played the Hotel, it was a packed house, so get tickets as far ahead as you can.

The same night also features performances by Jakob Martin (midnight), Raining Jane (10pm) and Connie Lim (9), among others.

This is Simon's site to follow his tour schedule and get onto the mailing list.

Here is an example of what he does.

Another Cas Haley show in LA

After completely blowing away the audience at the Roxy on Thursday night, reggae singer Cas Haley is playing again in the LA area at St. Rocke in Hermosa Beach tonight. The evening starts at 7pm and Haley is the headliner - so he goes on last.

In case you missed it the first time, go see him and his band Woodbelly play. Really fun and a great live show. He plays many tunes from his new album called Connection (available on iTunes here), as well as some reggae versions of other songs, including 'Easy' by the Commodores and 'No One' by Alicia Keys. Three of his standout originals include "Release Me (The Fear)," "Better" and "Take a Chance," which are the first three songs on the album.

Go check them out tonight or get the CD.

Cas Haley: A rare show in Los Angeles Thursday

The Easy Star All-Stars play tomorrow at The Roxy Theatre as does Texas-based, reggae artist Cas Haley, who, up until now, has rarely ventured this far west for a show. This is first time Haley's played in Los Angeles since finishing second in the second season of the NBC talent show America's Got Talent in 2007. He starts the evening's festivities at 9pm.

Haley, who hails from the small town of Paris, Texas, has a brilliant new record called "Connection" - his first major label release, which is on Easy Star Records (hence the tour with the Easy Star All Stars). Connection - which was released on Sept. 14 (look for a CD review in The Daily News in the coming week or so.) starts with three consecutive fantastically catchy tunes: '"Release Me (The Fear)," "Better" and "Take a Chance" and continues the good vibes throughout, showcasing Haley's pure joy in singing and performing.

The new album follows his self-titled debut (on another label), released in 2008, which featured a few tunes that he covered on the television show, including reggae versions of 'Message in a Bottle' by The Police and 'Easy' by The Commodores.

Haley's music is a happy, Caribbean-sounding reggae that evokes joy and positivity. His voice lands in the medium-to-high register, but is flawless in its movement within the ranges and gives the listener chills when he harmonizes with himself - sometimes four and five layers on top of each other. The singer himself is an infectious, likable entertainer with a bright smile and personality, who obviously enjoys what he does - and it rubs off on the audience.

After finishing second in America's Got Talent, Haley returned to Texas and instead of immediately capitalizing on his new found fame and perhaps rushing into something, he resumed his extensive touring with his band in Texas called Woodbelly. For several years thereafter, he played solo shows and with Woodbelly in and around the south.

After taking his time, he finally signed with Easy Star and recorded and released Connection - which is now available on his site and on iTunes. You can also see some of his performances on youtube.

For more on Haley, you can go to his website, his myspace or his facebook page and he has a twitter account, where he blogs about his tour and talks to his fans.

For more on the Easy Star All Stars, check out their website here.

To see what introduced Haley to the country, here is his first audition on America's Got Talent.

Hurley from Lost is back on TV

Jorge Garcia is going back to the island called ABC.

The Lost alum will guest-star on Matthew Perry's midseason comedy, Mr. Sunshine, Entertainment Weekly reports.

Garcia will play a staffer at the Sunshine Center, a second-rate San Diego sports arena managed by Perry's self-involved character, Ben. Garcia's character will also be added to the retooled pilot.

Perry -- a self-professed Lost fanatic -- also serves as executive producer on Mr. Sunshine, which stars Allison Janney, Andrea Anders and James Lesure as well.

Garcia recently crossed over into music when Rivers Cuomo of the band Weezer selected a photo of the actor as the cover of his new album - called 'Hurley' (nickname of Garcia's character Hugo Reyes) - which was released Sept 14th. Garcia also recently appeared onstage with Weezer at a show - and here is some of the video of it.

This is the album cover. Pretty cool. Like the episode says; Everybody Loves Hugo.

Hotel Cafe tonight

Make a night of it at The Hotel Cafe Wednesday night with Amanda Shaw (7pm), then Lindsey Ray at 8 and the remainder of the evening with Bleu, Mike Viola and friends, starting at 9 (and ending at midnight).

Ray has a new record called Goodbye, California - which is available on iTunes and her own website where you can hear some of her tunes before you go.

She calls her style 'quirky-pop' and a few of her songs have been featured in television shows such as Knight Rider and on The Style Network, E! Channel and the Lifetime TV Movie "Sorority Wars"

Bleu will also have a new album out November 2nd and its called 'Four'. A Boston native, he has been a staple in New England for years, playing not only solo, but also with the power-pop bands L.E.O. and The The Major Labels - the latter with Viola. Bleu has made six records - either full length or EP - since 1999 and his newest, 'Four' is a blend of British Invasion sounding pop .

You can hear and read about Bleu on his myspace page.

The Hotel Cafe's address is 1623 1/2 N. Cahuenga Blvd (between Hollywood and Sunset).

An Evening with Daughtry

On Tuesday, The Grammy Museum will host the multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated rock group Daughtry (fronted by American Idol participant Chris Daughtry) and special guest, producer Howard Benson, for an interview with Executive Director, Robert Santelli. In the intimate setting of the Museum's Clive Davis Theater, Daughtry and Howard Benson will discuss the band's career - how far they've come and where they're headed. With two #1 multi-platinum albums under their belts, they will also talk about the band's involvement in the creation of their latest album "Leave This Town," songwriting and life on the road. Daughtry will field questions from the audience before treating attendees to a stripped down musical performance.

The Grammy Museum is located at the LA Live Complex downtown.

You can read more about the Museum at their website.

Eastern Conference Champions Residency at Spaceland

Fresh off their strong appearance at the Sunset Junction Festival Aug 21 and 22, the indie band Eastern Conference Champions will begin their residency at Spaceland Monday at 11pm and continue it until the 27th.

They play at 11 on each of their Monday nights, including this one with 2 Years Before the Mast (at 9), Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits (10) and The Shivas (midnight). In later shows, they will be playing on the same night as Andy Clockwise (on Sept 20), Moving Picture Show (Sept 27) and Therapy Session (also Sept 27th), among others.

ECC has their song 'A Million Miles an Hour' on the Twilight: Eclipse soundtrack - which you can hear here.

Cherry Poppin Daddies at The Mint Saturday

On Saturday night, The Mint will be the place to go for a shot of musical energy. The ska/swing band the Cherry Poppin' Daddies will bring their high-energy show back one of the music areas that made them them most famous. They hit the stage at 10:30 after Erin Boheme (9pm).

Although they started playing music in the late 1980's in Oregon, the Daddies (their short name) gained their most popularity in the late-1990s swing revival era and Los Angeles, the movie Swingers; the tune Zoot Suit Riot and the L.A. clubs The Derby and The Dresden helped propel them to the national level.

Singer Steve Perry has fronted the band since its inception in Eugene, Oregon in 1989. Their style started - and has continued to be - fast-moving, danceable music with a lot of horns playing mostly ska and swing, but also adding punk, funk, rockabilly and some glam rock into the mix. Perry and the band took their style that way not only because that's what they liked, but it was also a direct contrast from the genre in the Northwest at the time, which was the rising movement of grunge.

The band gained a large following in Oregon (first) with not only their ska/swing music, but also with their flamboyant stage shows, which were equal parts ridiculous, extravagant and raunchy. At times, their shows were so raunchy that clubs refused to let them play and, if they did, their shows sometimes were protested and labeled as being pornographic.

Their ska music got the most attention in the early 90's and they gained another following in the Bay Area. Their presence became part of the 'third wave ska' movement and they were part of the West Coast portion of it that also included The Uptones as well as Fishbone and Sublime (in Los Angeles) and No Doubt, Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, The Hippos and Goldfinger (in Orange County) and The Toasters and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (on the East Coast).

While fully immersed in the ska movement, they also quietly played and recorded swing music and peppered those tunes throughout the first several albums "Ferociously Stoned" (1990), "Rapid City Muscle Car" (1994) and "Kids on the Street" (1996).

The film Swingers (released in October of 1996) starring Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn broke open the door of the swing revival, with the characters club-hopping around the Los Feliz joints The Derby and Dresden, listening to and dancing to swing music and evoking the old days of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. The movie introduced a wider audience to swing and helped revive the popularity of the culture. It also featured several swing bands in the movie, including Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

As the swing revival accelerated, Cherry Poppin Daddies released all of their swing songs on a compilation album in March 1997, called "Zoot Suit Riot: The Swingin' Hits of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies" and it hit the exact right chord, putting the Daddies (along with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy) at the forefront of the movement - even though they were technically not exclusively a swing band. Many other swing (and ska) groups became popular because of it including North Carolina-based Squirrel Nut Zippers and The Brian Setzer Orchestra (which was doing swing already but just didn't gain the mainstream popularity until the late 90's).

When Zoot Suit Riot became a hit, the Daddies (like most of the other bands that played swing) changed their look from what looked like a white, misfit version of George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars to wearing suits and ties - usually double breasted ones from the 30's 40's - and wingtips. They've kept that costume selection ever since.

For the next three years, the revival thrived and the Daddies played all of their genres of music in shows, but most of the audiences wanted to hear the swing stuff primarily (except for Oregon audiences, who knew they had more material).

The Daddies released another record Soul Caddy in 2000 just as the revival was coming to a close and it didn't do very well and the band took a long hiatus after.

They regrouped in 2002 and resumed touring and recording independently and found that tailoring their music setlists to their respective audiences worked well (going to ska festivals and playing only ska, playing swing to the bigger crowds and mixing it up everywhere else).

In 2008, they released their fifth record called "Skaboy JFK" and started taking out several months a year touring - but in little chunks (during a long hiatus from the band, singer Steve Perry finished his degree in molecular biology and works in a lab in his non-band time.)

At The Mint show, they should go for about 90 minutes, playing many cuts from all of their five records including the ska, the swing and the occasional song in Spanish. They go on at 10:30.

To get a preview, you can go here or see them in action below.

The Kris Special CD release party at Echo Curio Saturday

The two-piece band The Kris Special has a new live CD - called 'Rockin the Future' - and they're having a release party at Echo Curio Saturday night to celebrate it. They will be there most of the night and then play at approximately 11pm.

The band - which was a three-piece at one time, but now is two - is a mix of DIY indie rock/hard rock/punk and Americana, with Anne Pointer (guitar and lead vocals) meshing a harder-Jenny Lewis-type vocal style with heavy guitar and drummer Nick Schutz adding very active playing and backup singing.

They frequently play in and around Los Angeles - much of the time in the Silverlake joints as Echo Curio, Spaceland and The Echo, as well in the Santa Clarita Valley and they sometimes travel to San Luis Obispo and surrounding areas and the Pacific Rim on tours.

The CD is a live record and follows up their previous studio record 'Alone Feels Like a Hotel' which came out in 2008. They are pressing a limited number of 'Rockin the Future' CD's (1,000) and numbering each of them, so when you get one, you'll be in a select group.

You can hear samples of 'Alone Feels Like a Hotel' - which was then a three piece and has more bass and some steel guitar - and get a copy here and you can pick up a copy of the live album when you get to Echo Curio

Spaceland in Silverlake - Friday night

If you're in for a good night of indie music, go over to Spaceland in Silverlake and check out The Delta Mirror, Afghan Raiders and Healamonster & Tarsier. The evening starts at 8:30, just show up and see everybody.

The Delta Mirror is a three-piece group that is part brooding and part electronica and their CD "Machines That Listen" is available on iTunes. You can preview some of their tunes on their facebook and myspace pages.

(playing at The Echo in March)

The Las Vegas-based Afghan Raiders will bring their fusion of electro/grunge/pop to the stage (at approximately 10pm) and you can get their free MP3 preview here and see more of them here.

Healamonster & Tarsier finish out the night with their electronica/ambient pop mix and they can be heard here.