TOMORROW, Saturday, is dedicated to an endangered species that had an important role in raising yours truly: the humble record shop. Record Store Day was launched in 2007 to recognize and help preserve independent shops, which have taken a serious beating from the economy, predatory chains and the music's shift online.The holiday includes various live events, sales, cookouts, and so on. (Check out … [Read more...]
Archives for 2011
The Sitar and Abstract Art
RECENTLY I spoke to Anoushka Shankar, daughter of sitar legend Ravi Shankar, about her influences across the artistic genres. Some of her answers did not surprise me -- she mentioned her father, saying, "Having taught me from my very first day playing the sitar, he's shaped my technique, style and sound." Others, like abstract painter Mark Rothko, were less obvious: She talked about the … [Read more...]
British Sea Power invades the West Coast
JUST a quick note to say that I remain convinced that British Sea Power is one of the best live bands from the dreary isle. Your humble blogger has caught the Brighton band on all three of its Los Angeles appearances -- two at Spaceland and now last night's at the Troubadour.The goofy faux-military costumes are gone, but their blend of early '70s Bowie and early '80s is stronger than ever. The … [Read more...]
USC Historian Discovers Witches (and Vampires)
WHEN I heard that a USC professor had written a bestselling vampire novel I thought, This sounds like what the English call a train-jumper -- someone who latches onto a trend, half-heartedly and after the fact. Boy was I wrong. Deborah Harkness is the real thing, and her novel, A Discovery of Witches, comes out of her scholarship on the shift from the supernatural medieval period to the … [Read more...]
Is Gen X an Afterthought?
THE new issue of MOJO magazine has a cover story on the 25th anniversary of the Smiths' The Queen is Dead LP, an article on the 20th of Primal Scream's influential Screamadelica record, and another on a reunion tour by Mick Jones' Big Audio Dynamite.It's a great issue, of course, of our favorite music magazine. But it also feels like the Gen X teenage years have now been fully commodified and sold … [Read more...]
The Beatles in Hamburg — on Record
OF the many great shows your humble blogger attended last year, one of the very finest was a performance by Bambi Kino, a kind of indie-rock supergroup formed to pay tribute to the Beatles ragged, rockabilly-loving years in Hamburg.The show, at Echo Park's Taix, was full of so much energy and musical invention (Guided by Voices' guitarist Doug Gillard was especially inspired that night) it made … [Read more...]
Elizabeth Taylor’s vs. The Hayes Code
THE writer M.G. Lord, a longtime friend of The Misread City, has a wonderful, counter-intuitive piece on Elizabeth Taylor, especially the films Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Butterfield 8, in the brand-new issue of The Hollywood Reporter. For your humble blogger -- who belongs to a generation for whom Taylor was best-known for big hair and serial divorces -- the piece was an eye opener.The … [Read more...]
Novelist Jonathan Kellerman
AFTER many years as a child psychologist, and more than a decade of rejection slips for his literary endeavors, Jonathan Kellerman discovered a Ross MacDonald novel at a going-out-of-business sale.Photo by Blake LittleThat was about 30 years ago, and this week, Kellerman publishes the latest in his series of Alex Delaware crime thrillers. This one, Mystery, starts with the leveling of an old hotel … [Read more...]
Elizabeth Taylor in Big Sur
IT'S hardly a great movie, and it seems quite square and timid in its embrace of what we now know as "the '60s" -- art, bohemia, individualism. But I'll never forget Elizabeth Taylor's role in The Sandpiper and those great shots of the Big Sur Coast -- perhaps this blog's favorite West Coast locale.Liz plays a free-spirited singled mother, with raffish friends, and nearly bursts out every … [Read more...]
Remembering Jazz Guitarist Lenny Breau
COULD one of the most inventive and technically gifted jazz guitarist of the last half century be an obscure Canadian raised by country musicians? That's what I often think listening to the mighty Lenny Breau. Readers of this blog know that we try to uncover West Coast culture overlooked by the rest of the nation's media and critical establishment, and Breau was an overlooked West Coast artist par … [Read more...]