Dan Epstein

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Rock Candy Rock

Dan Epstein
COURTNEY HOLT HAS AN IMPORTANT announcement to make. Sitting in a glow-in-the-dark bowling alley somewhere in Koreatown, the Sissy Bar guitarist and songwriter takes a sip from his fluorescent vodka and tonic, then addresses his assembled bandmates. "I had a sour cinnamon bear today," he says. "I've never had one......
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Odds and Ends

Dan Epstein
IT'S MIDAFTERNOON AT A DOWNTOWN barbecue joint. As traffic rolls slowly by and an overhead police 'copter does its best to render conversation inaudible, Stew of The Negro Problem pushes back the remains of his "sampler plate" and ponders life in the strange city he calls home. "I remember reading......
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For a New Love Song

Dan Epstein
WHEN WALTER CLEVENGER WALKS INTO the club, heads do not turn. Compared to the buff surfer types and well-manicured himbos that populate our particular corner of the universe, there isn't much about the small, soft-spoken Costa Mesa resident that would instantly command your attention. On the off chance that you......
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A Change in the Air

Dan Epstein
Imagine a radio station with a wide-open programming policy, well-informed DJs, no corporate or collegiate affiliations, and no annoying commercials or pledge drives. Sounds enticing, doesn't it? Well, between Thanksgiving evening 1995 and Oc tober 30, 1998, L.A. actually had a station that fit the above description. It was called......
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Korla Pandit, 35 B.C.?-1998 A.D.

Dan Epstein
That Korla Pandit hadn't been seen around town recently seemed little cause for worry; those who knew and loved him just assumed he was off traveling somewhere on his flying carpet. In reality, the keyboardist par excellence was residing in a Bay Area convalescent home, where he died on October......
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Buck Stops Here

Dan Epstein
"Music is just one giant popularity contest," says Lisa Marr. "If you have any sort of lingering insecurities from high school, it can really hit you. If they don't like you, it's like you didn't get asked to the prom. But you can't just say, 'Fuck 'em' - as much......
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For You Blue

Dan Epstein
There was always something deeply, ineffably sad about the music of Badfinger. Now considered to be "power pop" classics, "Baby Blue" and "Day After Day" were explicit in their ache, and even the relatively upbeat "No Matter What" had obvious underpinnings of melancholy; all that business about knocking down "the......