fri 3/11
Motorhead: See Friday.
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Holy Sons, Castanets, Dolorean
@ SATELLITE
[See Music Feature]
Motörhead
@ CLUB NOKIA
"Nobody's crazy like me," Lemmy Kil- mister growls on Motörhead's latest album, The Wörld Is Yours. "Sometimes I wear other faces/Sometimes I sit and grieve." The fearsome singer-bassist wears at least one of his other faces in the acoustic rockabilly project the Head Cat and reveals the surprisingly genial and philosophical sides of his multilayered personas in the new documentary Lemmy, which charts his progression from roadie for Jimi Hendrix and participation in Hawkwind to forming the British hard-rock trio Motörhead. Lemmy is at his craziest with Motörhead, where his superdistorted bass lines are cranked up louder than guitars and his ravaged vocal cords celebrate the endless joys of endless touring. New ditties like "Bye Bye Bitch Bye Bye" emphasize that he's not exactly sitting around and grieving in his old age. —Falling James
Mike Watt & the Missingmen, Le Butcherettes
@ REDWOOD BAR & GRILL
Mike Watt describes his latest operatic opus, Hyphenated-Man, as "a mirror from just inside my head, shattered into 30 pieces and then stuffed in the head to show a piece of my state of mind." This fragmented, minimalist approach recalls the San Pedro singer-bassist's heyday with the Minutemen, and the album successfully merges Watt's shifting, schizophrenic perspectives thanks to the deft participation of Missingmen drummer Raul Morales and the inventive shimmers of guitarist Tom Watson (Overpass, Red Krayola). More fascinating juxtapositions are provided by the confrontational Mexico City combo Le Butcherettes, as singer Teri Geri Bender rants about sexism and sexuality over drummer Normandi Heuxdaflo's noise-punk soundscapes, which are as expansive and extroverted as Watt's new songs are condensed and shrunken down. —Falling James
Tchaikovsky's Shakespeare (With Celebrities!)
@ WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL
As with his Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the ever-ardent Tchaikovsky had a penchant for themes that would supply the dramatic intensity that his romanticized view of musical beauty required. A great admirer of Shakespeare, he composed a trio of slightly lesser-known orchestral pieces based on the Bard's Hamlet, The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet. No slouch in the feeling department, Gustavo Dudamel is the ideal interpreter for these lushly melodicized works. For these performances, each piece is preceded by selections from the plays, with Orlando Bloom as Romeo, Malcolm McDowell as Prospero and Matthew Rhys as Hamlet. Actress Kate Burton (Richard's daughter) directs the staged excerpts and hosts the L.A. Phil LIVE broadcast on March 13. —John Payne
ScHoolboy Q
@ KEY CLUB
TopDawg Entertainment is strategizing the rap game like it's a war, and with two of its artists, Jay Rock and Kendrick Lamar, consecutively rising to national attention the past two years, it's winning. Smart money, then, is now on ScHoolboy Q, the latest rapper to emerge from its camp. Though he will bare his teeth and spit out his lyrics, ScHoolboy Q is best when he's slouching through a song, easy charm and poignant punches rolling off his tongue, as in the breezy "#BETiGOTSUMWEED" or the hauntingly beautiful "I'm Good." TiRon and Skeme are scheduled, too, along with "special guests." Not that ScHoolboy Q needs any help — at last month's Kendrick Lamar show on the same stage, he revealed a penchant for the theatrical. See him before his shows start selling out. —Rebecca Haithcoat
Also playing Friday:
GAME at House of Blues; STARFUCKER, SKULL TAPE at the Troubadour; MEDESKI MARTIN & WOOD at El Rey; YANN TIERSEN at Music Box; DATAROCK, DIRTY GHOSTS at the Echoplex; WOUNDED LION, TWERPS, G. GREEN, COLD SHOWERS at Pehrspace; FAIR TO MIDLAND at Whisky A Go Go; THE 88 at Hotel Café; THE COSMETICATORS at Redwood Bar & Grill; MR. OIZO at Avalon Hollywood; MEAN JEANS, APACHE, CLOROX GIRLS, GESTAPO KHAZI, THE CHEMICALS, WELCOME HOME at 5-Star.
sat 3/12
DeVotchKa, Mariachi El Bronx, Hands
@ THE MUSIC BOX
Despite the fact that there's only one lady in the group, Denver's DeVotchKa take their name from the Russian word for "girl." The NPR-touted four-piece infuse their culturally hybridized music with heaping helpings of Eastern European swing, and even when their songs aren't about love's longing, they feel like yearners — the perfect tunes to soundtrack a summer spent abroad, chasing down a tryst already doomed to fail. Fittingly, their latest is called 100 Lovers. It was recorded in the Arizona desert with help from members of Calexico, which explains the strong dose of mariachi that informs the new songs, ranging from rollicking calls to dance like "Contrabanda" to pretty folksy ballads like "Transliterator." With Mariachi El Bronx on hand, expect horns galore. —Chris Martins
Fishtank Ensemble
@ Broad Stage
[See Page Two]
HARD Weekend L.A.
@ CLUB NOKIA
The Electric Daisy Carnival disaster screwed things up mightily for L.A. promoters looking to throw dance-music fetes, but the folks behind HARD haven't let up. They're pulling out all the stops for this incredibly packed night, importing London production provocateurs Simian Mobile Disco to headline. That duo specializes in a nuanced, often tropically tinged brand of house, so count on a constant beat and bright soulfulness. Their neighbor Fake Blood takes a choppier, more technical approach but thrills nonetheless, while local Destructo is known to cut his steady grooves with gritty sound effects and vocal snippets. Get there early enough for the aqueous, off-kilter loops of Toronto's Egyptrixx and the cracked electro of Belgian crew Mumbai Science. Also, DFA dance-punk deity the Juan MacLean DJs. —Chris Martins
