Falling James

The Ettes, Tulsa Skull Swingers The Echo 8-25-11 Better Than . . . Attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It's understandable that Angeleno music fans might think of the Ettes as the band that got away. There was a time early in the garage-pop trio's career when they were based here......

The Go-Go's, Girl in a Coma The Greek Theatre 8-17-11 Better Than . . . Falling 20 feet from a cliff while hiking in Northern California. You've got to hand it to the Go-Go's. At a time in their career when they could be touring with some predictable '80s new-wave......

Summer Darling The Satellite 8/5/11 Better Than ... The drive-by shooting that occurred just a block down the street from the nightclub over the weekend. "I've been here before," singer-guitarist Ben Heywood mused coyly between songs, halfway through Summer Darling's show at the Satellite on Friday. "I recognize this place."......

There were some impressively mighty, fearsomely mechanized sounds emanating from the Sepulveda Pass on Friday night, and not all of them were from the army of construction workers digging holes into the mountainside in anticipation of Carmageddon. The local alt-rock trio Autolux were set up in the Skirball Cultural Center's......

So much of punk rock is centered around nostalgia these days, whether it's played by modern corporate pretenders aping their elders in watered-down, insipid ways or the surviving elders themselves, whose reunions are often too sluggish and self-congratulatory to evoke the mad passion and fearless spontaneity of punk's early years......

This unusual, three-headed bill had a familial, down-home vibe, as members of each band sat in on one another's sets or stood supportively in front of the stage and -- in a modern rarity -- actually listened to the other musicians. Even with this spirit of community and musical cross-pollination,......