John Payne

IRMIN SCHMIDTGormenghast (Mute) Lo! The rock opera returneth. In the past, the idea of combining the story line and extended structure of the opera or stage musical with the visceral slam of contemporary music has brought us bathroom-tissue commercials such as Jesus Christ Superstar or histrionic corn like Meat Loaf’s......

Photo by Ted Soqui In a rather, oh, let’s say adventurous affair held last Thursday evening at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood, the winners of the L.A. Weekly Music Awards 2000 were announced. A glitzy array of show biz’s finest (and those who love them), along with their bodyguards......

Photo by Charlie Gross Yes, friends, once more the time has come for les critics musiques to put their pointy heads together, to jab fingers, hurl invective, get all damp and bug-eyed, pompously proclaim and proudly pontificate pretentiously on who and what, indeed, are the greatest things on the L.A......

This is a brief, probably familiar tale about how the music biz (and life) can grind a man into tiny grains of sand, and how we all might take inspiration from those hearty souls who use the tough lessons they learn to rise ever higher and higher. Amen. Chris D......

Illustration by Tony Mostrom Just flew in from Austin, and boy, is that rock & roll tired. Can’t get away from that shee-it. In Austin on a good/bad night, you cannot avoid it, you cain’t hide from the people who love it like a plague. And I was riding around......

William Orbit: Pieces in a Modern Style (Maverick) Ambient tech-pop whiz (and Madonna producer) Orbit gets serious with the old ”electronic interpretations of classical favorites“ routine, ’cept he‘s rather holy about the material. Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the Pachelbel‘s Canon of the ’90s, is played straight -- from the......

Feeling cornball, I once called Azalia Snail “an American original” -- just couldn’t find a better way of expressing it. The self-taught, self-made, self-styled Snail makes a mostly low-tech music unfettered by hoary old rules about harmony, melody and structure. With the logic of dreams, these fantasias begin in one......

selected Jon Hassell discography solo albums: 1999 Fascinoma Water Lily Acoustics 1994 Dressing for Pleasure Warner Bros. 1990 City: Works of Fiction OpalWarner Bros. 1989 Flash of the Spirit Intuition (with Farafina) 1987 The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things by the Power of Sound Intuition 1986 Power Spot......

Photo by Blake LittleIGGY POP WAS BORN JAMES JEWELL OSTERBERG in 1947, the son of an English teacher. An only child brought up mostly in a series of trailer parks near Ann Arbor, Michigan, James was an inquisitive, sensitive child, not a troublemaker -- he even became student-council president of......

Like its populace, L.A.’s music scene comes from all over the USA and elsewhere, and if you dig a bit, you’ll find that most of the various strands we’re hearing today, from rock and hip-hop to R&B to jazz and country, share intriguing intermusical roots. Pop music in L.A. dates......