Jay Babcock

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Like a Rhinestone Preacher

Jay Babcock
Photo by Thomas Rabsch NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS at the Wiltern, April 16 and 17 Six or seven eras ago, Spin magazine famously declared Nick Cave "The Last Rock & Roll Star." That was wrong, of course, but on any given night, Cave and his band the Bad......

Midnight Movies at the Planetarium

Jay Babcock
It‘s easy when you know how To get along without Biff! Bang! Pow! --Super Furry Animals, “Juxtapozed With U” Today, the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the minute hand of the “Doomsday Clock,” the symbol of nuclear danger, from nine to seven minutes to......
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Canon Fodder

Jay Babcock
THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES at the Point Loma Quality Inn Hotel, March 23 ”They’re gonna a build a new dimensionAnd make a soundtrack of our livesThey‘re gonna build a new dimensionAnd drill a hole of imaginary time,“ sings Ebbot Lundberg on the Swedish six-piece the Soundtrack of Our Lives’......

One More Real Cool Time

Jay Babcock
When Ron and Scott Asheton walk onstage March 15 to perform songs from the first two Stooges albums, we will be witnessing a genuinely special occasion. The last time the Asheton brothers played a full set of this material -- songs like “No Fun,” “1969,” “T.V. Eye,” “Loose,” “1970” and......

Akashic Offering

Jay Babcock
“Know that it is not imagination, but experience, which makes poetry. And that behind every image, behind every word, there is something I am trying to tell you, something that really happened.” Ira Cohen said that, on a CD he made with DJ Cheb i Sabbah (The Majoon Traveler, Sub......
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Face Value

Jay Babcock
From the looks of his debut album‘s front cover -- the one with the photo of a bloody-nosed, wet-longhaired Adonis -- the 23-year-old superstar-in-waiting Andrew W.K. has been fighting for your right to party. And judging from the record’s song titles (”It‘s Time To Party,“ ”Party Hard,“ ”Party Til You......
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A Dossier of Desperate Measures

Jay Babcock
Photo by Arthur E. Giron 1. From Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, circa 400 B.C.: “87. Those diseases which medicines do not cure, the knife cures; those which the knife cannot cure, fire cures; and those which fire cannot cure, are to be reckoned wholly incurable.” 2. Available now for download from Earth......

The Rational Shaman

Jay Babcock
Photo by Richard Pleuger Dressed in black and more than 6 feet tall, his head enshrouded by a mass of hippie hair and beard, writer Alan Moore arrived onstage at London’s South Bank Centre early last year looking as if he’d just strolled off a William Blake engraving. He was......
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Kid AAAA

Jay Babcock
THE FIRE SHOW Above the Volcano of Flowers (Perishable) This record arrived out of nowhere, popped me twice on the forehead, and swiftly jettisoned Radiohead’s new live album — the tedious, why-was-this-released? I Could Be Wrong — from the CD tray, never to return. Why? Because that eight-song, 40-minute record,......
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A Walrus Shrugged

Jay Babcock
Down there -- out there -- between a tangled garland of six freeways -- the 57, 105, 91, 5 and 605 -- is the space where L.A. and O.C. bleed together: a terrain of bluebloods and cholos, soccer fields and drive-through milk depots, cow-stickered Dodge wide-bodies and Harvest Christian Fellowship--branded......