The Roots (Band)

The Economics of Music Festivals: Who's Getting Rich, Who's Going Broke?

By Chris Parker It's as though the sad, lamentable death of recorded music was accompanied by a kick-ass wake. Sure, label executives have had to sell their fancy homes and put their kids in public schools, but the rest of us have been feasting on a musical smorgasbord. Nothing better exemplifies ... More >>

Music Picks: Coachella, Merle Haggard, Spiritualized

Black Flag Are Back Together

Black Flag is back together, and are almost done with a new album, according to an SST press release. See also: Black Flag's Damaged Changed Punk, and L.A.: 30 Years Later, Its Impact Is Still Felt The lineup is Greg Ginn on guitar, Ron Reyes on vocals, Gregory Moore on drums and Dale Nixon on bas ... More >>

Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained Is Both Seriously Thoughtful and Seriously Entertaining

I Go Out With the Group Substance Abuse and a Rapper Who Tries To Convince Me to Ho

[Editor's note: Soon-to-be-award-winning gonzo music journalist Danielle Bacher prowls the late late night scene for West Coast Sound. For this installment, she hit the town with MCs Subz and Eso Tre from Substance Abuse, who are known for their well-regarded 2006 album Overproof and their just-rele ... More >>

DJ Douggpound Mines Pop Culture for Gold Nuggets

At gatherings with extended family, Doug Lussenhop has a hard time explaining what he does. They might be familiar with Portlandia, the show for which he's an editor. They may have even seen Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, which he edited and co-wrote, though he prefers if they haven't, if only f ... More >>

Fiona Apple, Blake Mills - The Greek Theatre - 9/14/12

See also: Our review of Fiona Apple at the Hollywood Palladium Fiona Apple, Blake Mills The Greek Theatre 9-14-12 Better than . . . getting knocked out by shadows. There's something about Fiona Apple that makes you want to take care of her. Maybe it's because she's so slender, you assume she mus ... More >>

Fiona Apple - Hollywood Palladium - 7/29/12

Fiona Apple Hollywood Palladium 7-29-12 See also: Our Fiona Apple slideshow It's hard to be a Fiona Apple fan sometimes. Half a decade can go by between tours, and the notoriously reclusive singer-pianist has released only four albums since emerging as a teenage phenom in 1994. Apple's latest albu ... More >>

Music Picks: Aesop Rock, Azealia Banks, Toots & the Maytals

Also, Mariachi El Bronx, Phil Ranelin, Spaceghostpurrp and others

Phife Dawg Is Down With Posthumous Holograms, Likes Funyons

See Also: Michael Rapaport's A Tribe Called Quest Documentary A lazy reader of the internet would believe that since A Tribe Called Quest's 1998 breakup, Q-Tip has a platinum album and Grammy wins, while Phife Dawg has done little more than gotten a kidney transplant and eaten a bag of Funyons. Of ... More >>

Music Picks: Smokeout Festival, Mike Miller Group, Zola Jesus, Saul Williams

Also, New Multitudes, Cool Moms, Alpha & Omega, Cloud Nothings and others

Steely Dan Fans Are Assholes

William Gibson called them "the most genuinely subversive" band in late-20th Century pop. Bryan Cranston sneaks winking references to them into Malcolm In The Middle and Breaking Bad episodes. Ice Cube sampled them and The Roots play them on Jimmy Fallon. Who are they? The gold standard in rock and ... More >>

Music Picks: Woody Allen & His New Orleans Jazz Band, Jane Monheit, Manhattan Murder Mystery

Also, Fishbone, Luciana Souza, Infected Mushroom and others

R.I.P. Jovan "J-1" Coleman, Drummer in Dam-Funk's Group Master Blazter

Jovan "J-1" Coleman, producer and drummer in Dam-Funk's band Master Blazter, passed away Sunday. He was 32 years old. The cause of death is unknown. Late yesterday afternoon Dam-Funk tweeted, "At this time we send our most deep condolences 2 family & friends of @THEDEER (aka J-1/Jovan Coleman) who ... More >>

Kenny Burrell, B.B. King, Stevie Wonder - Royce Hall - 11-12-11

Reed Hutchinson​Kenny Burrell, B.B. King, Stevie Wonder and others Kenny Burrell: 80 Years Young UCLA's Royce Hall 11-12-11 Better than...working on my birthday. On Saturday night guitarist and UCLA jazz studies director Kenny Burrell celebrated his 80th birthday alongside his colleagues, hi ... More >>

Fanatics! Henry Rollins' KCRW Show Tomorrow Night: New Track from Fall's Upcoming Album Ersatz GB

​KCRW BROADCAST #139 for Saturday, November 5, 2011 Fanatics! The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas. At least that's what I've heard. For the first hour of our show, we will focus on music from the great state. I am in Austin, TX this weekend. I will be at the Fu ... More >>

Fish Tale: The Never-Ending Story of Fishbone Gets Another Chapter with a New Documentary

Steve Appleford​The oracle came to Angelo Moore in 1989. It was during a tour with his band Fishbone, as they waited to cross the U.S.-Canadian border in the misty, early morning hours. Moore suddenly found himself face-to-face with the great bluesman B.B. King, who had a profound message for ... More >>

Music Picks: Joan Osborne, Tears for Fears, the Cute Lepers, J. Cole, Low

Also Bon Iver, Cerebellion, Surfer Blood and others

Blu Interview: We Chop It Up With ​L.A.'s Patron Saint of Lyricism

Blu ​Blu soundlessly materializes in Silverlake's La Mill coffee boutique. The rapper's aura is so serene it forms a barrier against the sounds of jittery fingertips flitting across keyboards and conversations that seem to be in fast forward. I think of a line from "Down to Earth," a song from ... More >>

Music Picks: Janet Jackson, John Escreet Quartet, DJ Quik, Charles Bradley

Also, Charlie Haden Quartet West, John Williams, Philip Glass and others

Thurz on Reinventing Himself, U-N-I's Break-Up, and Why West Coast Hip Hop Hasn't Gone Mainstream (Yet)

Thurz​In "Los Angeles," the first single from Inglewood rapper Thurz's debut solo project, L.A. Riot-- out yesterday --a girl chirps, "To me, L.A. means home, sunny skies, and happy people." But in Thurz's next verse, he flips the city over to examine its underbelly, "Cats would raise a gun b ... More >>

Music Picks: Stiff Little Fingers, CunninLynguists, The Nubians, System of a Down

Houses, Aloe Blacc, Krautrock Nite, The Radio Dept. and others

Music Picks: Iannis Xenakis Now and Tomorrow, Ozzy Osbourne, War Tapes, Liz Pappademas

Also, Savage Republic, Tanya Morgan, the Church, the Fling and others

Top 10 Bizarre and Awesome Musician Twitter Feeds of 2010 (Part 1)

Top Ten Bizarre and Awesome Musician Twitter Feeds

Music Picks: Amanda Jo Williams, Usher, Masaki Batoh, Procol Harum

Also, Dustin Wong, Greg Dulli, Ghostface Killah

Stage Raw: Loveland

COMPREHENSIVE THEATER LISTINGSNEW THEATER REVIEWSTheater Feature on La Razon Blindada and A Wolf Inside the Fence and NEW REVIEW GO LOVELAND ​Photo by Leland Auslender What a rare experience it is, when a character that's as maniacal, sexually overheated and as transparently off the rails as a ... More >>

Cut Chemist: Too Many DJs

Call yourself a DJ 'cause you bought two turntables and a mixer? World-class L.A. DJ is putting you on notice

Attention J-Dilla Heads: Slum Village's T3 on Finally Releasing the Album, Dilla's pre-Tribe Beginnings and that Whole "New Native Tongues" Reputation

E1 MusicSlum Village's T3: No fear of a black hat​"The idea for a Slum Village reunion album came from a conversation I had with J Dilla before he passed away," says T3, the last living member of the beloved Detroit rap group. Released this week, Villa Manifesto is a fitting end to the Slum Vi ... More >>

Free the Robots, Dr. John. Alex Cuba and Merle Haggard

Also, Bestial Mouths, The Dreaming, Echo Lush and Elevaters

Peruvian Surf Rock's Greatest Hits by Maestro Jose L. Carballo and Brooklyn's Chicha Libre (En Español!)

Peruvian Surf Rock's Greatest Hits by Maestro Jose L. Carballo and Brooklyn's Chicha Libre (En Español!)

How to Blow Your Career and Alienate Your Family, featuring Scott Storch

Illustration by Jason Seiler​Our sibling publication Miami New Times just published a long article about hip hop/pop producer (and LA resident) Scott Storch. Writer Gus Garcia-Roberts tried to interview Storch for this account of the spiral into drug-addiction and debt that destroyed his once- ... More >>

Destination Coachella

L.A. bands take to the desert for three days of music overload

Getty's Foundation: Dirty Projectors Play Disney Hall

Show features L.A. Philharmonic and Alarm Will Sound

Kids’ Rock

Unlocked Grooves: Breakestra, Mayer Hawthorne, Myron and E.

L.A., Bay Area artists redefine the sound of soul

Rock Picks: Rain Machine, Pearl Jam, Wallpaper, Bon Iver, Dodos

Also, Seasons, Brodinski, Autolux and others

Last Night: Jay-Z, Eminem, and the Celebrity Cult of the DJ Hero

The economy isn't entirely moribund, it's just that the real money's in wish fulfillment. At least that's the logical conclusion gained from last night's star-scarred Jay-Z and Eminem concert promoting DJ Hero, the latest sure-to-be-blockbuster installment of the Guitar Hero Franchise -- an event th ... More >>

Creed vs. The Great Poets: What Do Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman Have that Scott Stapp Doesn't?

Scott Stapp (left) and William Wordsworth, poets Yes, Creed is back. You got a problem with that, snobby aesthetes and holier-than-though dismissers? Finally returning to argue for their continued relevance after a decade of being shit upon by the critics and Elites who don't know anything about Fa ... More >>

SXSSXSW Day 4/Days Late (Pt. 1): On Rap/Rock, The Legacy of the Beasties, and Asher Roth Vs. The Knux

Other than freshman Delta Sigma Theta rushes at Cal-State Chico, no substrata of the American population has worse taste in rock than rappers. Sure, your little brother likes Fall Out Boy, but eventually, he's going to grow up and discover The Clash, then weed, then hopefully Junior Murvin and Lee ... More >>

Live at Amoeba Records: Illa J and the Timelessness of J Dilla

Erin Broadley Los Angeles is always hot, but it's rarely warm. And cold, cavernous Amoeba Records is hardly an emotional bastion, unless you're talking caustic clerks castigating a moldering collection of Chicago records. But behind me, a group of saucer-eyed sophomore girls, eyebrow rings and flann ... More >>

The 50 Best Albums of the Year (#10-1) (Sponsored By My Secret Identity )

And people acted surprised when Jerry O' Connell landed Rebecca Romjin. 10. Why? Alopecia (Anticon) It's tough to write about Why?'s breakout record without anxiously jotting down a few choice lyrics from songwriter Yoni Wolf's notebook. Not to downplay its musicianship, but Alopecia is forem ... More >>

The 50 Best Albums of the Year (#30-21) (Sponsored By Medieval Times)

You better believe they serve Pepsi at Medieval Times. 30. Los Campesinos-Hold On Now, Youngster (Wichita/Arts and Crafts) Gareth Campesinos and Co. clearly grew up not just liking music but being obsessed by bands, and they've done the only honourable thing you can in that position: they've ... More >>

Weiss' 50 Best Hip-Hop Songs of 2008 (#50-26)

Over the next two weeks, myself and a very talented cadre of contributors will be emulating the book above. Unlike said tome, it won't cost money and you'll get free MP3s--which, presumably, serve a tangible purpose. Now go cry into your near-beer, Phillip Ardagh, you lovable rogue. 50. Redman ft ... More >>

Interview: The Kids In the Hall Storm Vegas!

This month, The Comedy Festival in Las Vegas returns to inject a major dose of comedy diversity into Sin City, rising above and beyond the mainstream standards for standup on the Strip. Amongst the biggest gets for the fest is the Vegas debut of Canada's sketch comedy icons, The Kids in the Hall; ... More >>

An Interview with J Dilla's Mother, Ms. Maureen Yancey

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece discussing the difficulties J Dilla's estate has had in enforcing copyright law and paying off the six-figure IRS debt left behind. In the aftermath of the story's publication, I had the chance to speak with his mother, Ms. Maureen Yancey about Dilla's legacy and ... More >>

Jay Electronica: Much Better Than His Name Would Suggest

You may not know who Jay Electronica is yet, but I'm willing to bet that you would had he chosen a better name. Jay Electronica does not sound like the one of the most buzzed about rappers of 2008. Jay Electronica sounds like the name of a small-potatoes Milwaukee techno DJ circa 1999 who magicall ... More >>

Raw Power

Los Angeles sushi chefs reinvent the modern kitchen