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Tim Heidecker: L.A.'s Driest Wit

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here. When Tim Heidecker says his wife is in school studying "criminalistics" to be a "private investigator, in law enforcement," it's hard to know whether to believe him. After all, ... More >>

Dawes Is a Modern Band, Up to a Point

"We're still a small band," Dawes frontman Taylor Goldsmith insists. "We've still got a long way to go before we are, like, 'This is a secure position for us.' " He's sitting outside the tiny Sqirl cafe on the seedy border between Silver Lake and East Hollywood, hunched over a wooden box that dou ... 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 >>

Low Cut Connie Is the Coolest Critically Lauded Band That You've Never Heard Of

Low Cut Connie is a band that basically defies all laws about how a band is supposed to make it in 2013. I know this because instead of sending me a CD or asking me to review a show, the duo's singer took me out to lunch and invited my band to open for them. Combustible frontman/upright pianist Ada ... More >>

Don Was on Running Blue Note Records

Don Was is a frequent sight at shows around L.A. He's hard to miss: all hair, hat, sunglasses, and smiles. He made a name for himself as a bass player with Was (Not Was) as well as a producer for the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt. Last year, he became the president of Blue Note Records. ... More >>

The Five Best Concerts in L.A. This Weekend

Friday, December 14 Thrill Jockey 20th-anniversary party with Wooden Shjips, Liturgy, Trans Am, Kid Millions THE ECHOPLEX Back in the '90s, arty Chicago alt/indie warhorse label Thrill Jockey basically drew the map for marginalized music's move into the mainstream, with a roster including Tortoise, ... More >>

Henry Rollins: The Column! When It Comes to Cracking Down On Protests, Are We Any Better Than Russia?

[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.] See also: Who Is Pussy Riot, and Why Do So Many Western Musicians Care? I have been thinking ... More >>

How the Wolf Survived

On the 20th anniversary of seminal album Kiko, a look back at Los Lobos' early days

Neil Young and Crazy Horse -- Outside Lands Festival -- 8/10/12

While he's putting everything into a solo, Neil Young's face looks like his electric guitar sounds: flush with feeling, vaguely threatening, and thoroughly aged. Not old as in frail, but venerable; geologic. On the chilly, windy opening night of San Francisco's Outside Lands festival, Young the lege ... More >>

Top 20 Albums Not In The Canon: 20-11

*Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time *Top 20 Musicians of All Time, in Any Genre *Top 20 Sexiest Female Musicians of All Time *Top 20 Sexiest Male Musicians of All Time A few months back Rolling Stone put out their updated 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. (Here's a quickly-scannable version; Sgt. P ... More >>

The Brand New Tupac Wax Statue Is Fucking Uncanny

See also: *Here Are Pictures of Dr. Dre's New $13 Million House *Bruce Hornsby on Tupac: "The original 'Changes' was a lot dirtier, had a lot of the n-word." Like most folks on their 41st birthday, Tupac celebrated with his old friends. Except that Tupac is now a wax statue. On Saturday night at ... More >>

Rock of Ages Review: Why Hair Metal Is 'Bone Stupid, Creatively Bankrupt, Morally Debased Pop Trash'

Rock of Ages, a new star-clogged pop-musical diversion, is a cinematic event. It's not every day, after all, that you get to see two great American traditions--guitar/bass/drums rock music and Tin Pan Alley musical theater--so thoroughly, mutually degraded. This mess originated as a stage productio ... More >>

3 Out of 4 Americans Want Obama Off Medical Marijuana's Back

Obama's flip-flop on medical marijuana last month might seem like a political ploy meant to appease Middle Americans for whom legit cannabis dispensaries aren't even an option, let alone a right. After all, if you don't like it, who are going to vote for? Mitt Romney? Yeah right. But it turns out ... More >>

Obama: Marijuana Dispensary Busts by Feds Aren't About to Stop

If you think President Obama is a liar for promising to hold back on federal prosecution of medical marijuana and then seeing his feds bust more pot shops than they did under George W. Bush, maybe you're not listening to him carefully enough. Obama says that, perhaps, you misinterpreted his words w ... More >>

Races Made an Album Based on Breaking Up With a Witch

Seated on a couch on the porch of the Glassell Park house he rents with two musicians, L.A. native Wade Ryff, singer/songwriter for local band Races, is smoking a Nat Sherman cigarette and drinking a concoction of coconut water infused with mineral greens. "I'm wearing a Lakers shirt and I have coco ... More >>

Lauryn Hill's Top Five Career-Torpedoing Tendencies

​Lauryn Hill is the world's greatest unhinged rapper-turned-singer. As part of the Fugees she came to worldwide fame, and then released a widely-loved solo album. But that was before she proceeded to bicker with her bandmates, give horrible live performances, and embark on a series of decision ... More >>

Judith Hill: Why Just About Everyone Is Falling for Her

Before she was picked to sing back-up for Michael Jackson's ill-fated 2009 London shows, Judith Hill was a relatively unknown perfomer from Pasadena. When Hill appeared near the end of Jackson's memorial service to lead the stage in singing "Heal The World," most of the Staples Center audience did ... More >>

Moshe Brakha, Legendary Photographer, Collaborates with Son on Project of Interviewing One Subject a Week for a Year

Black Flag, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves and Devo have all been shot by famed photographer Moshe Brakha. Charismatically colorful from the start, his photographs burst with movement and personality. He shot the cover for Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees album in '76, shot Run DMC for Rolling Stone, a ... More >>

Make No Mistake: Bleached Are Punk as Fuck

Smooth out punk's crinkly guitar riffs, replace the genre's frenetic deliveries with soothing harmonies, and give its drums a low dose of Xanax, and you have Jennifer and Jessica Clavin's brand-new band, Bleached. Like the visuals from their recent "Think of You" video, their sound is that of a vint ... More >>

Tupac and Biggie Murders: An Up-to-Date List of Characters, Given New Evidence From Ex-LAPD Detective Greg Kading

Update: "The 'Keffe D' Tapes: 10 Highlights of Confession From Gangster Who Says Sean Combs Hired Him to Kill Tupac." Of the many theories that have emerged over the last 15 years as to who was behind the drive-by killings of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, the closest thing we've seen to an invest ... More >>

Toronto Punks Fucked Up Attempt the Most Un-punk of Records, the Rock Opera

Saveur, Cooking Light are National Magazine Awards Finalists

WordRidden/Flickr​The National Magazine Awards finalists were announced yesterday, and aside from the usual suspects (The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire), never-before-nominated Cooking Light was a finalist in the Leisure Interests category -- alongside Golf Digest, Runner's World and Los ... More >>

Stage Raw: Pursued by Happiness

COMPREHENSIVE THEATER LISTINGSNEW THEATER REVIEWSSTAGE FEATURE on Edward Anthony's Wish I Had a Sylvia PlathL.A. WEEKLY THEATER AWARDS NOMINEES                          & ... More >>

Did Justin Bieber Really Tell Rolling Stone that Rape 'Happens for a Reason'?

​The Bieb has had to learn some tough lessons since becoming one of the world's biggest child pop stars. (Remember that whole gay-bashing thing? Can't a lil' millionaire play laser tag without being harassed?) Well, here comes another one. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, cover star Jus ... More >>

Das Racist: Are They Laughing with Us or at Us? (Exclusive Interview)

Now you're hungry. Or grossed out. ​Das Racist might be genius. Or a big joke. Or maybe both. "We're not joking, just joking-we are joking, just joking- we're not joking," they intone dully on "hahahaha jk?," the funniest track from last September's very funny mixtape Sit Down, Man. But it's p ... More >>

Phil Collins Tells Rolling Stone He's Contemplated Suicide -- Well So Have We, Every Time We've Ever Listened To 'In The Air Tonight'

Last.fmThe last thing we saw before we slit our wrists​This week's issue of Rolling Stone featured an EXCLUSIVE interview with Sting -- er, Phil Collins. (Remember when RS wrote about shit that was relevant, instead of resorting to a loop of Mick Jagger career retrospectives and top-5,000 list ... More >>

Cambodian Pop Freaks Dengue Fever Sign to Concord, Pick Up 'Jeopardy' and 'True Blood' Nods

Dengue Fever appear (in name) on "Jeopardy!"​The last L.A. indie band to get featured on Jeopardy! wound up going to the Grammys. That was Silversun Pickups last May, of course, and now it seems the Cambodian-Angeleno weird-pop ensemble, Dengue Fever, has earned that rare gameshow designatio ... More >>

Remembering Neil Young's Collaborator Ben Keith

Billy W. Chernoff, billychernoff.comBen Keith in 1969 at Nashville's Music City Recorders​Ben Keith, the respected Nashville multi-instrumentalist whose distinctive and evocatively lonely steel-guitar adornments provided an inescapably haunting accompaniment to many of Neil Young's biggest hit ... More >>

Manic at the Polysexual Disco

Music geeks and local promoters have created a gay-straight dance alliance

WHAT'S NEXT, THE IRAQI HORROR SHOW?

EXCLUSIVE: Legendary Rock Photographer Jim Marshall Remembered by Baron Wolman, Neal Preston, Lisa Law and Other Colleagues

[Legendary rock photographer Jim Marshall passed away last week at 74. One of our own photographers and writers, Anna Webber, wrote this personal reminiscence about Marshall and his legacy. She contacted Marshall's fellow purveyors of iconic '60s images and got their exclusive permission to reproduc ... More >>

Rock Picks: Al Kooper, Year Long Disaster, Steven Severin, the Phenomenal Handclap Band

Also, Kimya Dawson, the Cigarette Bums, Willi Williams and others

Just Shoot Me: Creed's Scott Stapp's Martyrdom Fantasies Vindicated by Billboard Chart!

Meanwhile, back in the mainstream... ​ In 2006, Creed's hilarious frontman and Jesus-as-a-Chippendale-Dancer figure Scott Stapp told Mark Binelli from Rolling Stone about his near-suicide three years before: One evening, after polishing off a bottle of Jack Daniel's, [Stapp] removed two fir ... More >>

Working with Annie Leibovitz

Insane in the Lanes

Catwalkin', swag dolin', 10-pin bowlin', kid lovin' party time

“Die in Anacortes”: Phil Elverum (aka The Microphones aka Mt. Eerie) Interviewed: Part 4 of 4

What happens in Anacortes, stays in Anacortes.

Our Favorite Undernourished Books of the Year

Unsung heroes

99 Essential - List Only

OK Go Dress Me

Getting off the jeans-and-T-shirt treadmill

Rock PIcks

For the week of Nov. 24 - 30

Paxilback - It's An L.A. Story

Here's how the story goes. A boy moves to L.A. from Brooklyn. Let's call him Daniel. Daniel Stessen. Why not. And let's imagine he looks something like this:  Daniel Stessen writes book of poems called More Lonely Than Alone, all about making out with midgets in Brooklyn (among oth ... More >>

L.A. Simonized

Kerry Simon, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Chef, comes west

Who Hates Their MTV?

How the rebel network sold its soul for bimbos, princesses and bucks

Remnants of the Day

Letters

Independent Music�s Right to Fight

The record industry sued Napster and has just inhaled MP3.com. Is there a future for music on the Internet? Analog Pussy thought so... Then they got a scary e-mail...

Taking Thee Piss

Punk rock in re Headcoats, Cometbus

For the Record

The life and premature death of Mary�s Danish

Power of Flower