L.A. Weekly Music Awards 2000

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. music scene.

We know, we know, awards shows are a dime a dozen, they’re super way cheesy, and they don’t prove a dang thing except what a deluded herd of self-important twerps all music critics are. Fine and dandy. Hey, don’t get us started — we know everyone hates critics, we know no one loves us, least of all ourselves . . . Waaahhh!

Anyway, that’s what we’re here for: to bring us all together, for better or worse. With that in mind, the Weekly polled 25 writers on the best of L.A.’s musical best. Again, most of our nominees create sounds that straddle several borders, so categorizing them proved to be among the chief difficulties; you can take their inclusion in this or that stylistic division as a pretty rough demarcation, with plenty of spillage into other zones of endeavor. We recognize that we’re honoring a mere small sliver of L.A.’s fertile musical tree, thus our choices reflect such factors as the artists’ length of service, their potential for future greatness, depth of concept, skill in execution, cultural relevance or just pure entertainment value. Our only criterion was that the artist lives and/or works in or around Los Angeles, signed or unsigned, major or independent, megastar or megastarving.

The LAWMA pays tribute not just to outstanding individual musical achievements, but to the amazing diversity and wealth of the Los Angeles music scene as a whole — and we’re talking a true embarrassment of riches. Everyone’s a winner for being nominated, of course, and if we didn’t get to you this time, we will.

The L.A. Weekly Music Awards 2000 will be held at the Henry Fonda Theater on Thursday, June 29, at 8 p.m. For tix and info, call (323)-993-3648.

And the nominees are:

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