Nikki Darling

Credit: ILLUSTRATION BY PJ MCQUADE

Esther Wong: Her Flawed Legacy

Nikki Darling
Upon her 2005 death from lung cancer, Esther Wong's place in the city's rock lore was solidified by a Los Angeles Times obituary that called the 88-year-old mastermind behind Madame Wong's in Chinatown the "Godmother of punk." The phrase quickly spread throughout the Internet, and the title became firmly entrenched......
law logo2x b

Quetzal, East L.A. Activists to Their Core, Play Tomorrow

Nikki Darling
See also: *Las Cafeteras Defy Tradition Sitting in a Highland Park restaurant behind a plate of french fries and a mint tea, Quetzal Flores talks about gentrification. The subject plays into his new album with his Mexican-Afro-Cuban rock band Quetzal, called Imaginaries, which is out next month on Smithsonian Folkways,......
Credit: courtesy hardly art

Interview: La Sera: "More Eerie, Hopefully More Angelic"

Nikki Darling
La Sera is Kickball Katy, the ginger-haired Vivian Girls bass player who sings the high parts and who now lives in L.A. With her released-yesterday single "Never Come Around" (on Hardly Art) and its subsequent video, Katy displays her eviscerating talent. Here she talks about New York winter, Kathleen Hannah......
"It was mostly stuff that was stuck in my head": Gemma Ray's shameless interpretations; Credit: PHOTO BY ERIK WEISS

Gemma Ray: Under the Covers

Nikki Darling
Sultry English crooner Gemma Ray has slowly been casting a strange spell on the indie powers-that-be since the release of her 2008 album The Leader. Her second album, Lights Out Zoltar! (2009) was named for the fortune-telling dummy inside electronic psychic reading boxes on piers and arcades, and took on......
“We like to call our music ‘body music’”: Pocahaunted; Credit: PHOTO BY CAITLIN C. MITCHELL

"We're Not Sexual Blobs!"

Nikki Darling
"I mean, we aren't sexless blobs," says Amanda Brown, one of the two lead singers of local psychedelic band Pocahaunted. She plops down at an outside table at Eagle Rock coffee shop Swork and immediately launches into a tirade about media sexism and everyone else's obsession with her band's boobs......
Credit: Nikki Darling

Last Night: Emily Lacy's LACMA Performance

Nikki Darling
Emily Lacy's experimental sound performance, Temples of the Minds, Saturday night at LACMA was a great example of how music can transform a space. That the piece was set in the museum's Japanese sculpture garden made it easy to arrive at an open and meditative state: It's an indoor spiraled......
Jerry Only of the Misfits at the Key Club; Credit: Nikki Darling

Misfits at the Key Club: Danzig Who?

Nikki Darling
The Misfits show Saturday night, the first in a two-night sold out gig at the soon to be closed Key Club, left no room for wallowing in original lead singer Glenn Danzig's absence. Current singer and bassist Jerry Only grabbed the crowd by their sweaty nuts and tossed them about......
law logo2x b

Last Night: Gowns Are Ready for the Big Time @ the Echo

Nikki Darling
Gowns continue to be one of the most innovative, original bands in Los Angeles. As they showed last night at the Echo, performancewise they just can't be touched. Erika Anderson shreds a guitar, sings, emotes--and now also raps!--like a woman possessed. The spirits of young Courtney Love and Patti Smith......