Alie Ward

Friday 10:26 p.m.: “It’s not you .?.?. I hate everyone.” With Lilith Fair sincerity, “comedy indie chick rock” act Mandy Steckelberg is strumming an acoustic and spewing delicate vitriol in the back room of The Derby. The small stage is cluttered with her full band and a potted palm tree......

Friday, 8:17 p.m.: “I’m totally checking out this woman’s hooters.” I’ve been sawing at a hunk of cheese at the Harmony Gallery on Franklin Avenue, but my companion is standing transfixed before a Kathleen Lolley painting. I glance up from the Gouda expecting some impressive cleavage, only to find that......

Tuesday, 10:13 p.m.: “Come see us play with Evangelicals. The band. Not the crazy white people with sweaty foreheads.” Comrades from the Eastside distortion-rock trio the Front have lured me to Spaceland, where they rumble through fuzzy material off their new EP, and open for Oklahoma-based Evangelicals. But between acts,......

Wednesday, 10:49 p.m.: I’m on a ceaseless stretch of highway. Orchards blur past my windows in the dark. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and with each passing moment, I get farther away from Los Angeles, and Kevin Federline. The self-proclaimed “America’s Most Hated” man is at this very minute “rapping” onstage at......

Tuesday, 9:48 p.m.: “What is with you and this fucking moose?!” I admit, I’m getting a little confrontational. The atmosphere at the inaugural Echo Park Book Club is growing heated as an assembly of local artists and musicians discuss themes of power, love and moose abuse in Jack London’s classic......

Wednesday, 11:17 p.m.: “This has GOT to be violating some labor rules.” We’re not lawyers, but my comrade and I are fairly certain that authorities should be tipped off to tonight’s Silverlake Lounge show. “Heisenflei” (a.k.a. Julie Edwards) of two-piece L.A. darlings The Pity Party is simply working too hard:......

Thursday, 9:08 p.m.: “I figured, how can I come to Largo and not sing a folkie murder ballad?” Sean Watkins (of lauded bluegrass outfit Nickel Creek) is moonlighting in his two-piece band, Tractor Beam, during the Watkins Family Hour. It’s an elegant, high-class hootenanny. Candles in mason jars glow like......

Tuesday, 7:57 p.m.: “It’s only 8! We have so much awesomeness ahead of us!” My comrade Maria is nothing if not enthusiastic. Pyschedelic rock trio The Secret Machines are set to play in Union Station during the first of the “Public Displays of Affection” concerts geared to promote transit awareness......

Monday, 9:18 p.m.: “What has 1,000 legs and two tits? A heavy metal audience!” Yes, the crowd is overwhelmingly male, but there are at least four hooters in the house, as my sister and I are in attendance at The Jägermeister Monsters of Mayhem Tour at House of Blues. We......