Jack Johnson

Theater to See in L.A. This Week, Including a Pulitzer Finalist About the Iraq War

Lee Melville, a true gentleman and decades-long friend of our theater, died last night. Melville was a critic and editor at Drama-Logue and, most recently, L.A. Stage. More details as they come in. Christopher Shinn's drama Dying City, about a family in the wake of the Iraq War, being performed a ... More >>

Marco Ramirez's The Royale and Theatre Movement Bazaar's Hot Cat Make Old Stories New

Theater to See This Week, Including a Riveting Police Story

L.A. Weekly critic Lovell Estell III found a police melodrama Cops and Friends of Cops to be a refreshingly unpredictable new play, and made it this week's Pick. Good reviews also for Peter Pan, presented by the Blank Theatre at Second Stage, and Falling for Make Believe, a play about the theater at ... More >>

Henry Rollins: The Column! Our America

[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Saturday KCRW broadcast.] Today: I am in Oklahoma City. Outside the tour bus, the wind is blowing nonstop, hair-dryer ho ... More >>

Sam Choy Launches Pineapple Express Truck This Week

It's been a while since we've gotten revved up over a mobile eatery, but when Sam Choy, a James Beard Award winner and the so-called "father of modern Hawaiian cuisine," decides to open a food truck, it's time to bust out your hula shirt. The Pineapple Express truck will serve breakfast, lunch, an ... More >>

The Craigslist ''Non-Pussy" Drummer Is a Phenomenon: But Is He Real?

By now you've surely heard about the "Real Rock" drummer desperately in search of a "NON-Pussy" band in L.A. Since posting to Craigslist almost a month ago (his ad is below), he's become something of a phenomenon, reposted on sites like Buzzfeed, Metal Injection and many many more. Scads of people ... More >>

Top Ten Jazz Albums for People Who Don't Know Shit About Jazz

See also: *Top 10 Rap Albums For People Who Don't Know Shit About Hip-Hop *Top 5 Los Angeles Jazz Albums of 2011 Lots of folks know almost nothing about jazz, but condensing the hundred some odd years of the genre into ten albums is not easy, something akin to asking someone to describe the histor ... More >>

Ryan Adams - Disney Hall - 2/17/12

Ryan Adams Disney Hall 2-17-12 See also: Why Ryan Adams Isn't Allowing Photos Better than... Listening to Love Is Hell in its entirety on Valentine's Day because Heartbreaker just wouldn't be depressing enough. Unless that's your thing. I guess I'd consider myself in the 90th percentile of Ryan ... More >>

Jack's Banana Pancakes at Jacks N Joe

M. Caskey​ The pancake menu at Jacks N Joe offers cryptic pancake titles like Pudgie Elvis, Hula Girl and Chloe's Blues. But don't be afraid to try something mysterious, especially Jack's Banana Pancakes (a nod to a Jack Johnson song perhaps?) Opened just a couple of years back, Jacks N Joe s ... More >>

So & So - Viper Room - 9/7/11

Danielle BacherSo & So Viper Room September 7, 2011 Better than: Being stuck in a steam room with 98.7 FM on the radio.Los Angeles-based folk-rockers So & So performed a triumphant gig at the center of a nuclear reactor last night. . . oh, wait. It was actually the Viper Room, which se ... More >>

James Earl Jones, Beyond Darth Vader: Five More Fierce Onscreen Roles of the Honorary Oscar Recipient

​ The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced yesterday that James Earl Jones will receive an honorary Oscar this year. For many tinseltown pundits, an honorary Oscar is the equivalent of an over-the-pants-hand-job -- a mere token gesture -- for decades of hard work. While we sup ... More >>

Music Picks: Tinariwen, Colbie Caillat, A.R. Rahman, Best Coast

Also, Monopoly, David Bazan, Gravespawn and others

Music to Pick Up/Download

Henry Rollins Column: How to Talk to Right Wing Talk Show Callers

Maura LanahanOur eminent columnist, Mr. Henry Rollins!​[The one and only Henry Rollins will be contributing a weekly column and far-reaching reportage to the music section of the LA Weekly. Look for your weekly Henry Rollins fix right here on West Coast Sound every Friday and make sure to tune ... More >>

Tonight: Remy Zero, Macy Gray, Eels, the 88, Alice in Chains, Fran Healy, the Blakes

Cinjun Tate of Remy Zero​Remy Zero winds up a bittersweet reunion tour tonight, but it might not be the last fans have heard of the Alabama-bred, L.A.-based quintet. The band known best for the single "Save Me" (the theme for TV's Smallville) reunited earlier this year to play shows in memory ... More >>

This weekend: Klaxons, Chapterhouse, the Besnard Lakes, Maroon 5, Caribou, Jack Johnson, Liz Phair, Tom Tom Club, the Weepies

The Besnard Lakes​The Culture Collide festival, which kicked off Thursday night at five venues in Silver Lake, Echo Park and downtown, is making for some wonderful daze in the neighborhood. The brainchild of Filter music mag, the inaugural event has imported bands from more than a dozen natio ... More >>

Nightranger: Bringing Sounds to the Sea

HUNG- Hang The DJs Herculean Memorial Weekend Happening

In our upcoming Nightranger column (out Thursday) we joined the mainstream masses in a major way (the American Idol finale at Nokia Theatre, a Sex and the City 2 party at Arclight and Jack Johnson on the Santa Monica Pier) but for Memorial Weekend it was all about a homier locale (as in "what up, ho ... More >>

Live in L.A.: At the movies with Isaac Brock, Band of Horses, Angus & Julia Stone, Peter Himmelman, the Airborne Toxic Event

​Think of it as an indie rocker with extra butter. Modest Mouse main man Isaac Brock is in town tonight to perform a short set after a screening of a documentary to which he (along with James Mercer, Jack Johnson and others) contributed music. The film is "180ΒΊ South," which retraces a 1968 t ... More >>

Live in L.A.: Jack Johnson, Sweethead (and famous friends), Noodles, the Like, War Tapes

Jack Johnson​Surf's up, and so is Jack Johnson's domination of the saleable-sappy-soft-surf singer-songwriter market. The 35-year-old Hawaiian feel-gooder's new album is called "To the Sea" (perhaps you've heard the cloying single "You and Your Heart"), out next week, and that's where Johnson ... More >>

Air America Goes Down; Liberal Talk Radio A Fail

Liberal talk radio network Air America announced Thursday that it will cease programming. The network was launched in 2004 but saw its share of troubles, including bouncing a check to a radio station that aired the network in Los Angeles only two weeks after Air America launched. In 2006 it filed it ... More >>

Boxing, Sex and Madness: Mike Tyson, James Toback and the Ties That Bind

In Tyson documentary, boxer tells it in his own words

Busted Rhymes: The Top 10 Most Preposterous Rap Songs of 2008

By Ben Westhoff Hip-hop A-listers including Rick Ross, Akon and Plies were caught grossly exaggerating their gangster credentials this year. (Turns out they were painfully law-abiding. The horror!) But even if your favorite rapper wasn't caught in a lie, you can bet he or she put out a hilariously ... More >>

Hitsville: The Year in Music, by the Numbers

You don't need a half-wit music critic to tell you it's been a remarkable year for America, one historians will be discussing and researching for centuries to come. War, financial collapse, politics, technology: All have been dinner-table topics for many Americans. Racial barriers in 2008 were dem ... More >>

Stage Raw: Robert Wilson at USC

Ragtime: The Musical

Theater Reviews: 9 to 5: The Musical, 43 Plays for 43 Presidents

Also, Asleep on a Bicycle, Speech & Debate, Pugilist Specialist and more

Rock Picks: Ice Cube, Bob Dylan, Dog and Pony Show

Also, Chuck Berry, Southern Culture on the Skids, Paul Weller, and more

Outside Lands Day 3-We Have a Winner

Ted DiBiase knows a winner when he sees one. That's how he earned the nickname "The Million Dollar Man" when those Cash Money clowns were still learning to ice their first teeth. And rest assured, Teddy B. would've inevitably proclaimed Day 3 of Outside Lands, the winner of the match, even if he wo ... More >>

Good Times Never Seemed So Good: Snapshots From Coachella

From the express train to the Gobi Tent to the VIP and beyond

Coachella Friday: Easy Breezy

One down. Two to Go! Coachella Friday was actually very easy breezy. Okay, we left Thursday night thereby avoiding most traffic and we spent a big chunk of yesterday poolside at the BPM party (which was supposed to be Smurf-themed but didn't exactly turn out that way... more on this in our Nightran ... More >>

Coachella Day One: Walk the Line

I hate lines. They're somewhere in the lower rungs of my own personal inferno along with club kids in fedoras, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the abstract concept of valet parking. Unfortunately, entering Coachella brings me into contact with three of those four food groups as quite often, while wai ... More >>

Coachella by the Numbers

Digging deep into the Valley

Ill-Thought Out Observations From This Year's Grammy's

Because Live Blogging is so gauche. Occasionally the Grammy Committee's old fogey sensibility yields huge dividends. See the inclusion of Morris Day and the motherfucking Time. As far as I know, only two people have paid much attention to Morris Day and the Time post "Jerk Out:" the illustrious ... More >>

Low Voltage: Brushfire Records

One of the planet's most eco-friendly studios is nestled in Larchmont Village

Rogue Wave, El Rey, 10/11

Rogue Wave El Rey, October 11, 2007 When the red curtains parted, Zach Rogue stood on the drum riser pumping both fists in the air like a prize fighter, while Pat Spurgeon pounded out the beat (and the too long intro) to "Harmonium," the fist track off their new album, Asleep at Heaven's Gate. It's ... More >>

Rock Picks: Lee ''Scratch'' Perry, The Swell Season, Maximo Park and More

For the week of July 26 – August 2

Rock Picks

For the week of July 5 - 11

Smoked Out

Joint interviews with a medical-pot pharmacist and a neighbor who says, Not in My Schoolyard.

The Side Man

The Kidz Are Alright, Mate!

    There was an Aussie Assault at the Troubadour earlier this week, and I got hit, hard! The night started smashingly with a literal rock star parking space: none other than Seal was sitting in a Ferrari convertible outside Dan Tana's, so my uber rock chick friend Laurel chatted up the si ... More >>

Rock & Pop Listings

For February 10 - 16

Rock Listings

For Feb. 10 - 16, Country & Folk listings follow

Rock Picks

For February 9 - 16, 2006

Picks for Saturday, February 11

The Malloy Brothers Conspiracy

They left behind the world of competitive surfing and big-money contracts to get back to the roots of classic surfing. They might just save the sport.

Ho Down

Mos Def

Planetary Waves

Jack Johnson defeats the horizon

Reach for the Sun

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, April 27-28

Titanic Tales and the Roots of Rap