The Beatles

Quit Disrespecting the Taste of Teenage Girls and Start Appreciating Justin Bieber

By Brittany Spanos At what point did teen girls suddenly just become wrong? "Serious" music fans have little patience for any artist who willingly sells to the rabid teen girl market. It's why we non-teen-girls only divulge our love for Justin Bieber and One Direction with a "self-aware" laugh. Se ... More >>

Fanatics! Henry Rollins' KCRW Show Tomorrow Night: FIDLAR, Pissed Jeans and Lamp

KCRW BROADCAST #202 02-16-13 See also: Henry Rollins: Football, Violence, and America Fanatics! Tonight's show is a great one from top to bottom. I am listening to it right now and I am excited to roll it all out for you. I just got the Fidlar and Pissed Jeans records last week and am digging the ... More >>

The Six Best "Hey!"s in Rock and Roll

By Ryan Wasoba No musician puts a "Hey!" in a song for him/herself. "Hey!" is a social cue, an opportunity for engagement between a musician and the audience. It means nothing, but it means the same nothing to all of us and therefore means something, maybe even everything. Whoa. Here are the six be ... More >>

Carry On My Wayard Son

The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand": Why This Song Sucks

[Editor's note: Why This Song Sucks determines why particular tracks blow using science. It appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday.] Song: The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand" History: The Beatles are The Beatles and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is "I Want To Hold Your Hand." Let's all just ... More >>

Our Bluth Period

5 Revelations About L.A. Music History at the Grammy Museum's Show 'Trouble In Paradise'

Becky Sapp​ For some, Los Angeles' musical history fits nicely into categories; there was bouncing beach pop, Laurel Canyon folk, West Coast rap and Sunset Strip rock. But behind this shroud of notable names and iconic acts, there is a richer, more diverse portrait of music in Los Angeles. Th ... More >>

Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time: The Complete List

​What makes a terrible band? Is it being prepared to do the wrong thing, whatever the price? That and a pair of testicles. Only, some of the below groups possess testicles only in the symbolic sense. Because, even if you're composed of ladies, it takes balls to make music that is simultaneousl ... More >>

Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time, #15-11

​See also: Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time: #20-16 15. Pretty Ricky Emerging with their mid-aughts hit "Grind With Me," Pretty Ricky somehow managed to lower the bar when it came to heartthrob groups with baby-oil-smeared chests. It's excellent that they've got great abs, and they certainly ha ... More >>

Ringo Starr, Russell Brand - Troubadour - 1/30/12

Ringo Starr The Troubadour 1/30/12 Better than... Sitting in your cubicle on a Monday afternoon It's always surreal entering a dark rock club in the middle of the day, but it's even more bizarre when you find yourself standing next to a Beatle and Katy Perry's ex while most people are sitting at th ... More >>

Henry Rollins: The Column! The Beach Boys' SMiLE: Even Better than Advertised

​[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: A Tour Of Beach Boys' Haunts In Their Hometown Of Hawthorne, California - With ... More >>

Spago: 99 Essential Restaurants 2011

There's Three Of Us, But We're Not The Beatles: The Ten Most Illogical Rap Lyrics In History

Wait, where's Ringo?​By Chaz Kangas "No one ever climbs a ladder alone," said Bill Clinton at his Hollywood Bowl fete on Saturday. This makes not a lick of sense. But perhaps he was just taking cues from the world of hip-hop, which is famous for its wildly inaccurate and illogical statements. ... More >>

Orson Welles' Moby Dick, a Beatles Cabaret and Romeo and Juliet: Monsters in Love

Craig SchwartzThis​ The Playwrights Horizons production of Melissa James Gibson's domestic comedy, This, opened on Sunday at the Kirk Douglas Theatre (presented by Center Theatre Group). In an excellent production, it's an absorbing soap opera with a metaphysical reach it can't quite grasp. See ex ... More >>

Top 10 Music Managers Who Fucked Over Their Clients

The family Knowles in happier times​In light of the surprising news over the reasons Beyonce fired her longtime manager (and longtime father for that matter) Mathew Knowles, we remembered a time when scummy managers were not only the norm, but expected. Here are the Top 10 Managers in Music Hi ... More >>

Music to Pick Up/Download

Music Picks: Adele, Wanda Jackson, Bootsy Collins, Buffalo Springfield, Gayngs, Amor de Dias

Also, Cerebral Ballzy, Sea of Bees, Shabazz Palaces, Miasmal and others

The Day Captain Beefheart Outsold the Beatles, the Stones and Pink Floyd

Beatle Bones and Smokin' Stones: The Captain abides​It is a widely known (and kind of sick) fact of the music business that nothing helps sales of the back catalog of an artist like the death of said artist. The massive sales bump caused by people rushing to online (and occasionally also to b ... More >>

Top 10 Rock Books of 2010

​With the year coming to a close, we're heading off the inevitable barrage of "best" lists coming your way with one that will actually be useful and problem solving (a holiday gift guide for the music lover in your life, that's not actually music... or a t-shirt). Buy 'em a book! iPad and Kin ... More >>

When We Were Fab

Peter Asher's Apple days

Remembering Lena Horne with Incredibly Strange Beatles Cover

Lena Horne, the mesmerizing jazz singer and actress who bewitched everyone with her beauty, talent and class from the segregated forties, through the civil rights era, through the 21st century, passed away at 92 yesterday. Since everyone is posting her fantastic rendition of "Stormy Weather" from t ... More >>

"Wait! Who's That Singing????": Top Ten List of Major Stars Covering Other People's Music

Bowie also waited for his man​Pitchfork reports that Peter Gabriel will be releasing an album of covers, in which he will tackle hits and more obscure cuts by David Bowie, Paul Simon, Elbow, Bon Iver, Talking Heads, The Arcade Fire, Regina Spektor, Radiohead, Lou Reed ("The Power of the Heart" ... More >>

DREAM ON, HIPPIE CHICKS

FUNNIER THAN JESUS

GO LA: Let's Play Fuck, Marry, Kill With Morrissey, Molly Prather and Christoph Eschenbach

And other reasons to not go straight home after work, May 22-28

Coachella Friday: Beatles Bonanza, Burning Flesh (and M.I.A.'s Saturday morning Sound Check)

This weekend we pledge not to bitch about: the heat, the long-ass lines, the girl(s) wearing the same dress as us, the camera bullies in the photo pit (think big cars are penis extensions?), forgetting earplugs, and the fact that we WILL miss a band (or 4) we want to see... We will, as we did last ... More >>

A Personal Note to Paul McCartney: Could You Play "Jet"?

We've had our differences, Sir Paul, too many go into here ("Silly Love Songs," "Let Em In," "Ebony and Ivory"). I miss the simple Beatles songs that you crafted, some so beautiful ("Martha My Dear," "Eleanor Rigby," "Yesterday," "And I Love Her," and on and on) that you can't imagine them not exi ... More >>

Coachella Adds The Orb, Murder City Devils, Etienne de Crecy and Others to the Bill

In its new web 'zine, Coachella Digital, the Coachella festival, which this morning confirmed that Amy Winehouse wouldn't be performing (surprise surprise, unfortunately), announced the addition of five new acts to the roster. None of them are U2, Pavement or the Smiths, nor are the Beatles yet re ... More >>

It's the Housewives!

Black Lips, El Rey, 2/14

Black Lips, El Rey, February 14 By Jonah Flicker Reports of Black Lips’ onstage antics have apparently been greatly exaggerated. The Atlanta quartet, which released Good Bad Not Evil on Vice Records this past fall, is renowned for committing alleged acts of debauchery at live shows including, bu ... More >>

Letters: Don’t Stomp the Music

Our readers write

It's Wonderful to Be Here

What to do in Los Angeles this week

McCartney's Vintage Clothes

Paul gets heavy on Memory Almost Full

The Best of James Bond, Agent 007

Oops! Year-Ended Again!

Pringles, Hot Apple Pie and Sir Paul

Sex, God and Little Armenians

Generational divides, from Hollywood to NYC

Home Again

O, No!

Arthurfest headliner Yoko Ono on the Beatles, baseball, sex and peace

A Small New Future

ALEC HANLEY BEMIS on the casualties and survivors in the war between the Cynics and the True Believers

The Kids Aren’t Alright . . . They’re Amazing

Why what was old and lost and a bit odd is young and new — and exciting — again

War Talk: Reserve Judgment

Midnight Movies at the Planetarium

Peace operatives Super Furry Animals’ non-proliferation treatise

Ticket to Rut

The World Outside, Again

Never mind the bollocks, reissues can be newer than new

Anonymity, Misery, Softness

Can Elliott Smith save pop music?

Gettin' Twiggy With It

Mods and Rockers, purple hearts and movies

For You Blue

Soft-Shoe Sushi

Tap with your tuna in Studio City

The Morning After