American Idol

Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine Donate $70 Million To USC For Arts Academy

Must be nice to have so much cash that you can pair up with a buddy and donate $70 million to a private, rich kids' school like USC. Of course, the headphone-endorsement business has been good to Dr. Dre, a.k.a. Andre Young. The same endeavor has been good to Jimmy Iovine, not to mention American I ... More >>

The Ballad of Nellie Oleson

Jekyll & Hyde

The Ten Best Country Albums of 2012

By Alan Scherstuhl This list of the year's best country albums is assembled with two important premises in mind: First: If the people who record and listen to these records consider them country, than they're damn well country. Purists who argue that country should still sound like '68, '76, '84 o ... More >>

Martin Crimp's The City and How Obama Got His Groove Back Show the Art of Escaping Reality

Pssssst: L.A. -- Your Pride Is Showing

Grand Opening Party for Café Dulce's Downtown Pop-Up Tonight

Café Dulce has been serving fine coffee and pastries to the Little Tokyo community for a little more than a year now, and, starting tonight, also will have a presence in the South Park neighborhood of Downtown: The shop will launch an indefinite pop-up coffee bar in an empty converted warehouse spa ... More >>

Aerosmith On Their New Album and How Impossible Steven Tyler Is After American Idol

It's been years since "The Bad Boys from Boston" have put out a studio album, with their most recent being 2004's Honkin' on Bobo. Yesterday, Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton, and Joey Kramer (minus Brad Whitford who is currently on tour with The Hendrix Experience) greeted an eager crowd at Th ... More >>

William Hung Speaks, Fresh Off Being Crowned The Greatest Musician Of All Time, In Any Genre

​See also: Top 20 Musicians of All Time, In Any Genre: The Complete List Last week we crowned former American Idol contestant William Hung the greatest musician of all time, in any genre, beating out luminaries including Beethoven, the Beatles, Michael Jackson and Guido D'Arezzo, the guy who ... More >>

The Three Best Karaoke Bars in L.A.

Tiffany Rose We can't promise James Franco doing karaoke in drag, but you never know​Did you catch our Best Of issue and snag our free Best Of app? Even if you did, we're betting you didn't make it through all of our write-ups; there are about a billion. So in the coming weeks we'll walk you t ... More >>

Mick Jagger's Superheavy New Supergroup, Plus Five Songs About and/or Referring to The Rolling Stones' Frontman ... Maybe

From Mickjagger.comJust Super.​There may not be a Rolling Stones tour happening anytime soon (wonder if Mick is still pissed about Keef's "tiny togder" remark?) but for fans of The Stones frontman, musical satisfaction has been trickling in. Last week, at a press conference here in L.A., Sir J ... More >>

Graveface Records No. 1: The Loose Salute

Dallas Mavericks Diss L.A. Lakers on YouTube: 'Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Lakers Fans'

YouTubeDirk Nowitzki, the "Toy Story" version​Something to rile you up for tomorrow's big Game 3 between the Lakers and the Mavericks: This infuriatingly catchy, anti-L.A. jingle we haven't been able to get out of our heads since we heard it on the radio yesterday morning. (Damn you, KNX!) Th ... More >>

Romance Novels Are Alive. Reality TV? Not So Much

Reality Rocks Expo Brings Out Black Leather, Bedazzler Studs, Marc Marcuse, American Idol Losers and More

L.J. Williamson​ In the Considerable Town column in LA Weekly's print edition this week, L.J. Williamson covers the Reality Rocks Expo that took place in downtown L.A. at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel April 9 and 10.

Soul Surfer

Sunset Strip Follies

Theater Reviews: Chinese Coffee, Daddy, Love, Sex and the IRS

Also, Fatigued, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Greedy and more

Theater Reviews: Cinderella, Schmutzigen Deutsche Kabarett

Also, Sweet Mama String Bean and more

MR. CLEAN TALKS!

Mary J. Blige Comes Out of the Closet as Zeppelin Fan

Mary J. Blige has partnered up with American Idol's Randy Jackson (who plays bass), plus Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, Steve Vai, and Michael Jackson's former touring guitarist Orianthi, to record versions of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and "Whole Lotta Love." This strange project was pro ... More >>

Crate Diggin': Tennesse Ernie Ford Does The Beatles

​Today's crate-diggers' delight comes courtesy of Dan White, who's blogging American Idol's Beatles-themed week for the Queersighted blog. Here's what he posted about his find at Los Feliz's amazing metalhead-run-and-operated mecca for used and new vinyl Vacation Records: I got this record I ... More >>

Transferring Jobs No Panacea For City Budget Crunch

​On a week when Los Angeles city administrative officer Miguel Santana expressed optimism that half of the city's planned 1,000 layoffs could be spared through job transfers to independent city departments such as LAX, the L.A. Daily Breeze reported that only 86 open positions could be found f ... More >>

Naruto Tops American Idol in 2009 Yahoo Searches

Check out Shannon Cottrell's timeline "Britney Watch Out, Naruto Dominates." It's not that Naruto hadn't made Yahoo's top searches of the year before, but when we saw the anime series sandwiched in between Britney Spears and American Idol, we couldn't help but notice the rank of the anime/manga fra ... More >>

Fox Headed For A Pull-Out From Time-Warner Cable

FoxTan Stewie from an episode of Fox's 'Family Guy.'​It looks like Los Angeles Time-Warner subscribers will usher in the New Year with the subtraction of a major network from their cable boxes. Yesterday we told you how the Fox network was threatening to pull its programming from Time-Warner b ... More >>

Perky Jerky: Beef Jerky and Caffeine in One Fix, or How To Launch a Business with Stuff You Spill on a Ski Trip

Perky Jerky​Spend any time in truck stops or bars or watching the commercials during football games, and you quickly realize that beef jerky is America's secret snack food of choice. Okay, maybe not so secret. And now, not only can you get Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger's line of beef jerky, y ... More >>

Chavolot: Heavy Mariachi Parking-Lot Party

And fun at El Chavo, Rock 'n' Roll Au Go Go and HLNR boutique

Afghan Star: Kabul Meets American Idol

British Director Havana Marking's Feature Doc on Singing for Fame in a Wartorn Country

Movie Reviews: American Cowslip, Deadgirl, In the Loop, Orphan

Also, Afghan Star, Shrink, Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg and more.

We Are the Tallow Men: New Madame Tussauds Opening in Hollywood

In a town of fakes and pretenders, a wax museum populated by celebrity mannequins might be the only way for today's tourist to encounter movie stars -- when, 70 years ago, Hollywood visitors and locals could often encounter the real things in clubs, restaurants and drug stores. Today Madame Tussauds ... More >>

Stage Raw: Molotov Cocktail Flung in the Cold

THE LATEST NEW REVIEWS ARE EMBEDDED IN THIS WEEK'S COMPREHENSIVE THEATER LISTINGS MOLOTOV COCKTAIL FLUNG IN THE COLD Photo courtesy of HighwaysThat's the PR description for the "Free Performative Mixtape (dub)zeck being staged at Highways on Saturday, Aug. 1, 8 p.m. And it's free. "Plunging Pa ... More >>

Proud, Out and About

Nightranger: Thriller Nights Before, During and After Halloween

Steel Wheels, Darling Stilettos and the Boo-Over

USC Thornton School of Music Announces New Popular Music Performance Program

Wanna be famous as a superstar musician? Learn how to bed groupies by the sheer force and magnetism of your stage strut? Find out which hallucinogens will help best develop the plot of your career-defining Concept Album? Before now, you'd have bang your head against your snare a few times, have to s ... More >>

Rock Picks: Stagecoach, Alicia Keys, Vetiver

And other shows happening May 1-8

Major Comings and Goings in Hollywood's Big Leagues

For Whom the Ax Falls

Grammy Kisses

Pre-awards parties; star spotting; survival of the hippest

Rock Picks: Lucy Lawless, The Dagons, Big Daddy Kane and more

For the week of Jan. 25-31

Celeb Rehab's Surreal Aftermath

Picking up the pieces of reality excess

In the Kodak, in the Pink

And in the dollhouse

Hungry Like the Woof

Theater Reviews

For the week of April 21-27

Film Reviews

For the week of April 21-27

We Heart Denim...Honest

I'm not sure if any of us Style Council gals were at the denim shows last night... Buffalo, Yanuk and Taverniti were the designers showing, and even though denim and sportwear are LA's greatest exports - or at least most lucrative - how exciting can a pair of jeans get, right? Maybe that's why I ... More >>

Hipsters Must Die

10 signs of the (Yindie) apocalypse

3 Myths About the Recording Industry Debunked

On the Road

John Kerry’s purposeful pranksters

Paradise Glossed

The loopy Paradise Hotel, plus queer make-overs for straight guys, and the demented new pseudo-Japanese series, Banzai

Fox Idols

Who the network should worship for its sweeps month success

The Year in Style