Joy Division

The Killers - Los Angeles Sports Arena - 5/2/13

The Killers Los Angeles Sports Arena 5/2/13 "Tonight, the City of Angels and Sin City are getting together," said Brandon Flowers last night at the Sports Arena, lead singer of the Las Vegas based Killers. "We'll try not to corrupt you." For 90 minutes, Flowers and company danced and moved on stag ... More >>

The Best Concerts to See in L.A. This Week

Monday, April 8 Thao & the Get Down Stay Down THE TROUBADOUR Usually, when songwriters are as wickedly intelligent as Thao Nguyen, they tend to write morbidly gloomy and/or overly serious anthems of great meaning and purpose. That's not to say the Virginia native doesn't have her grand and heavy mo ... More >>

Artist Neto Velasco's Tattoos and Stencils Tell the Story of His Life

Neto Velasco came to Los Angeles to make his mark, but the city also made its mark on him. He arrived from the Mexican town of Querétaro a year ago. "I had a really good life in Mexico, but I prefer adventure," he says. "That's why I came here." Velasco, a graphic designer, had left his house ... More >>

Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground

The Hives and Fidlar - The Wiltern - 9/14/12

See also: Fidlar on Hangovers, House Parties, and How They Came Up With Their Name The Hives with Fidlar The Wiltern 9-14-12 Better than... getting kicked in the face with a bandy skate. Only the Hives can pull out a pan-punk-genre-fest kumbaya like they did last night -- even if they're hitting ... More >>

A Place to Bury Strangers - Echoplex - June 7, 2012

A Place to Bury Strangers Echoplex 6-8-12 Even outside of their hometown New York base, A Place to Bury Strangers has a diehard fan base. In the smoking courtyard of the Echoplex last night, a man in a leather jacket told a much younger woman, also wearing leather, that he had driven all the way f ... More >>

Henry Rollins: The Column! Memphis on My Mind

[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.] Sitting on the tour bus, the Bon Jovi Mobile-Def Leppard Express (no offense to either corpora ... More >>

Five Must-See L.A. Bands at SXSW

Initially a place where music executives could check out a bunch of emerging bands in the span of a few days, SXSW has become the spring break of the music biz. Bands from all over the globe descend on Austin hoping to convince the masses they're the next big thing. While megastars like Bruce Spring ... More >>

Fanatics! Henry Rollins' KCRW Show Tomorrow Night: Henry's Ode to Winter

KCRW Broadcast #151 for Saturday, February 11, 2012 See also: Henry Rollins: The Column! I'm Not Dead Yet Fanatics! Cold much? Scandinavia has all the cold you could ever want. I am sitting in the airport in Helsinki, Finland, waiting for a flight to Frankfurt. From there we will go to Linz, Austr ... More >>

Fanatics! Henry Rollins' KCRW Show Tomorrow Night: A British Invasion

KCRW Broadcast #149 for Saturday, January 21, 2012 See also: Henry Rollins: The Column! Are You Collector Scum? Fanatics! Sitting on the tour bus here in raining Wolverhampton UK. I am well into the Long March Tour and things are going well. I am sorry to put you Fanatics through a pre-taped show ... More >>

Henry Rollins: The Column! The Time I Made a Punk Rocker Cry

[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.] Weeks ago, my L.A. Weekly super editor Ben Westhoff asked me about my plans for 2012. I told h ... More >>

Fanatics! Henry Rollins' KCRW Show Tomorrow Night: Three for the Price of One -- Engineer X, the Young Will Bentley, and Henry

KCRW Broadcast #147 for Saturday, January 7, 2012 Fanatics! Just so you know, this set was specifically engineered and put together with great care in order to bring you the maximum enjoyment as we gather together live for the first time this year. 2012 promises to be interesting to say the least ... More >>

Fanatics! Henry Rollins' KCRW Show Tomorrow Night: Brand New Track from The Mark of Cain

See also: *Henry Rollins: The Column! The Time I Drank The Sweat From My Socks Onstage *Henry Rollins, Scott Ian, Mike Watt, Corey Taylor, Dave Navarro - Avalon - 11/30/11 KCRW Broadcast #143 for Saturday, December 3, 2011 Fanatics! What a week. Finally. We have arrived at our meeting place, Satu ... More >>

Top Ten Bands Who Need To Reunite, NOW

Nope, this doesn't count​Last week, we discussed ten bands who ruined their legacy by reuniting. Don't get the wrong idea, though -- we're not complete haters. And so, here are the groups we'd like to see put together one last reunion tour. Note: We're only talking about bands with all of thei ... More >>

WU LYF's Anti-Establishment "Heavy Pop" Hits L.A. Tonight

Jonathan FlandersThis BBQ's getting out of control​Leading today's pack of gnashing, anti-establishment wolves are Manchester's WU LYF, a quartet who play self-described "heavy pop." Formed in 2008, they are the latest followers in the Mancunian footsteps of Joy Division, the Buzzcocks and the ... More >>

Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan Covers Joy Division At MusiCares MAP Fund Show

Lina Lecaro Dave Gahan feels it at Nokia.​Happy Birthday Dave Gahan! The Depeche Mode singer turns 49 today, but he came frighteningly close to never seeing this milestone. Fifteen years ago, he in fact died from an overdose at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood and was brought back to life ... More >>

LinA in LA: Top DJ & Dance Club Picks for this Weekend (& Beyond)

Charo gets 'Sexy, Sexy' at Mr. Black this Tuesday​If all the Cinco de Mayo tequila doesn't te-killya tonight (click here for some suggested fiestas), there's still mucho mas in the way of dance parties and booze-y/beat-heavy revelry to recommend this week. Indeed, tonight is just a warm-up for ... More >>

Fanatics! Henry Rollins' KCRW Show Saturday Night: Kaoru Abe, Acid King, Pontiak

Timothy Norris​KCRW BROADCAST #111 for Saturday, April 23. Fanatics! It is Friday, early afternoon and I am just now getting a chance to write these brief notes up for you. One of these days I'm going to get some sleep. Just back from Ann Arbor, Michigan where we had a major blast at the Stoo ... More >>

Top 5 Things to Do This Weekend in L.A.

​ [Originally posted March 4, 2011] So much stuff happening this weekend, we had a hard time picking just five! The weather is warming (slightly), spring is in the air, and it's a good time to get out there and see some shows before spring break madness descends on the city and it's filled w ... More >>

News Haiku: Gucci Mane Arrested, MC Hammer Is Terrible, Weezy's Last Days in the Can, New Michael Jackson Tracks Fake?

News Haiku: Gucci Mane Arrested, MC Hammer Is Terrible, Weezy's Last Days in the Can, New Michael Jackson Tracks Fake?

Nightranger: Lost Weekend

Echo and the Bunnymen Play Ocean Rain in its Entirety at the Nokia

Echo & the Bunnymen at the Nokia Theater, Oct. 24. Seeing a maddeningly underrated and undervalued band like Echo & the Bunnymen is a good way to keep the ears and soul in check, especially the day before a cold front from Dublin swoops in to take over all of SoCal, and to remind us who pays for Th ... More >>

Brendan Mullen the Writer: Highlights of his Work for the Weekly

In addition to opening punk club the Masque, LA DIY music giant Brendan Mullen, who died at age 60 yesterday after suffering a stroke on Saturday, was a longtime LA Weekly music writer whose prescient insight and in-the-trenches curiosity captured the experience of being a music head in LA in the 8 ... More >>

Best LA Radio Shows: Required Listening for Traffic-Clogged LA

​In this week's Best of LA issue of LA Weekly, writer Wendy Gilmartin gives proper love to two radio shows on KXLU: Part Time Punks' Michael Stock snagged Best Afternoon DJ, and Melissa McAllister was honored with the award Best Reason to Turn on Your Radio in the A.M. Both great shows, and ... More >>

Goth for Life? A View from the Dark Side

When I stumbled upon Emily Gordon's Lemondrop post "A Secret Most Dark (I Was a Teenage Goth)," I read it eagerly. While it was an amusing, slice-of-life piece, I couldn't understand why Gordon would be embarrassed by her goth past. Is it any different than having been a hippie in the '60s or a punk ... More >>

West Coast Sound Interviews Silk Flowers re: Christian Bale, the Smell and Sun-Bleached Chicken Bones

​ New York's proud sons Silk Flowers make the kind of mood music you can loose yourself in on a sunny winter day, traversing the long open roads of your neighborhood trying figure out what it all means. A most excellent mix of the hypnotic 80s electronic sounds and bizarre noises, the band is ... More >>

Rock Picks: Amanda Palmer, Metallica, War Tapes

Also, J.D. Souther, Von Iva, Juliette Commagere and others

Goth is Dead, Long Live Goth: Post-Thanksgiving Darkness At Ruin Hollywood

By Liz Ohanesian It's barely 11 p.m. on the day after Thanksgiving, but the modest, early evening crowd inside Koreatown goth party Ruin Hollywood is already congregating on the dance floor. Underneath the chandeliers inside the Monte Cristo, about two dozen people pirouette and snake their way acr ... More >>

Madness at Medusa, Nettwerk's Sync space and Tigerheat at Avalon

Girl Talk: One Trick Pony, or 21st Century Steinski?

Girl Talk: One Trick Pony, or 21st Century Steinski? By Ian Cohen If you’re the kind of poor soul who watches the workday tick away at places like ilxor.com, June has been Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Tet and the Feast of Maximum Occupancy all rolled into one. Not only have we experienced the ... More >>

Peter Saville explains why he won hearts & minds with his record cover designs

On record cover design: "But you don't get much work to do when you're young, because you haven't learned how to do it yet... You're given simple, disposable things to design for other young people."

Record Reviews: Badd Santa, Beanie Sigel, Regime Noir

Holiday music that doesn't suck, unhinged thug talk and a MySpace page

Tell 'Em Why You Mad: The Guide to Hipster Haberdashery

If home is where you hang your hat then Silver Lake is rapidly turning into the world's largest hat rack. Over the past 12 months, it has become de rigueur in hipster courting rituals for male hipsters (homo habilus hipstericus) to trot out increasingly ridiculous pieces of vintage head-ware in an ... More >>

Rock Picks: John Fogerty, Band of Horses, Eek-a-Mouse, Gram Rabbit

For the week of November 23 - 29

Fuck the DNA

The evolution continues with the return of Genesis P-Orridge and Psychic TV

Rock Picks

For the week of May 17 – 24

Love Is All; Urgent Originality Would Be Nice

Love is All at the Echo, Ecstatic Sunshine and Eastern Youth at Spaceland

Gnarls Barkley, the Beauty of Being Blunt, and the Poppy Lips Battle the Apocalypse

Shit, Forgot the Drugs

She Wants Revenge at El Rey Theater, January 20

Editors at Cinespace

Meet Interpol’s heirs apparent, all drizzled in Celtic melancholy and hope

Nightranger

Nightranger

Lit Up and Emotional

Amalgamated Cure

We Are the Fall

Sons of the City

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have made an unlikely pop masterpiece by singing bittersweet songs of salvation that could have only been born in L.A.

Booty Recall

Letting go with Supreme Beings of Leisure

Liberation Frequency

Punk's not dead, it just needs a wash

Let's Get Dead

Music for the modern zombie

Highway 65 Revisited