John Payne

Photo by Thron Ullberg BRIAN WILSON, Gettin’ In Over My Head (Rhino) Though various highly professional musicians and engineers grabbed their mixing boards and rode Brian Wilson’s waves on this new collection of totally worthy songs, the album is, I’m relieved, not characterized by too much outer producerly interference and......

Photo by Mike Piscitelli A couple of weeks ago I spent some time talking to guitarist-composer John Frusciante, best known as a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but also recognized by those close to him as a bit of a seeker — of new ways of making music,......

Chuck Berry photo courtesy Chess archives I always write record reviews without the benefit of the heaps of press materials that come with the discs — you know, those raves and analyses by Spin, Rolling Stone and The New York Times, etc. that accompany the records by the time I......

Photos by Austin Young (top) and Kate Garner I was thinking the other day that, like most of us, I feel I’m somewhat misinterpreted, generally speaking. What I meant was that if anyone wanted to pick a fight with me, a mere man, why then they had to understand that......

Photos by Ted Soqui Friends, fans and the faithful flocked to the Music Box at the Fonda Theater last Thursday night for the L.A. Weekly’s sixth annual music awards, and once again it was a typically feral and undomesticated affair (about as slick as a music awards show ought to......

OCTAVIUS Audio Noir (Mush) This man and his trip have been called “experimental hip-hop,” and sure it’s hip-hop, because about 50 layers down there might’ve been a beat or two in the mix at one time. He’s a.k.a. William Marshall, and he likes to bring the ruffest rap tracks to......

FOR THIS YEAR’S edition of our annual Music Awards, to be held at the Music Box Henry Fonda Theater on June 24, the artists were selected in a poll of 30 local music writers asked to single out the best L.A.-based musicians. Our nominees were chosen on the basis of......

SONIC YOUTH, Nurse (Geffen) Fresh load of briskly bristly thrashing suffocation from a rather recharged post-post-9/11 Sonic Youth. Everything’s a bit more urgent, right from the opening track, “Pattern Recognition,” which resets the terms (We make noisy stuff with a new shape and attitude; we’re rock but not dummy-rock). Thurston’s......

Photo by U-She Today, Holger Czukay is a busy man, running back and forth as he packs things up for the big move back to the old Can studio in Weilerswist, near Cologne. This is a very special thing: The Weilerswist studio, a former movie theater also known as Inner......