[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR reasons I can’t entirely figure out or explain, continental Europeans have not had much luck with rock music, not matter how you define the term. (And no, the Scorpions are not excepted.) Why the average blues band from Birmingham or Belfast can typically do better than the finest combo in Rome or Frankfurt is a mystery I may never understand. The Swedes started to … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2017
Walter Hopps and “The Dream Colony”
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR Angelenos in the visual arts world, Walter Hopps (1932-2005) was an almost godlike figure -- an eccentric, disorganized, perpetually tardy pill-popping genius who both discovered young artists and found ways to frame established figures that made them seem new. Hopps -- best known in these parts as a founder of the legendary Ferus Gallery in the late '50s and … [Read more...]
Lloyd Cole and All the Poets
[contextly_auto_sidebar] YOUR humble blogger has been a fan of Lloyd Cole since songs like Lost Weekend and Why I Love Country Music showed up on "alternative" radio in the mid-'80s. I've seen him perform and interviewed him numerous times since then, and have been struck by what a fine storyteller as well as what an intellectually curious and overall literary (whatever that means) cat he … [Read more...]
Two Los Angeles Choral Groups
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR reasons I don't entirely understand, I've had a harder time with vocal and choral music than most other sorts of classical music. The human voice is the first ostensibly musical instrument we ever hear -- why should it not strike strike my ear and naturally as the violin, cello or piano? In any case, I've tried to make up for it this year by seeing more … [Read more...]
Jan Swafford and Classical Music
[contextly_auto_sidebar] YOUR humble blogger is a longtime fan of the classical music writer Jan Swafford, ever since friend gave me his lucid and wise Vintage guide. Swafford, who's known for biographies of Beethoven, Brahms, and Ives, has just released The Language of the Spirit, an introduction of a different sort. I corresponded with the author for a piece on the LA Review of … [Read more...]
The Late, Great Kevin Starr
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LIKE a lot of people, I was originally baffled when I moved to California, which in my case was 20 years ago, this July. Some of the key to its complex code arrived in the books of historian Kevin Starr, which begin with statehood and move epoch-by-epoch to the early post-World War II years. Today I have a sort of appreciation of the man, who I regret to say I met … [Read more...]
Pianist Vijay Iyer and the Ojai Music Festival
[contextly_auto_sidebar] This year sees an unlikely but, I suspect, fortuitous paring: Pianist Vijay Iyer — one of the most inventive figures in jazz today — is curating the Ojai Music Festival, a friendly, mellow outdoor gathering dedicated to new, challenging, and rarely performed classical music. (The festival starts Thursday and runs through Sunday.) Part of Iyer’s emphasis is presenting … [Read more...]
Sgt Pepper’s at 50
[contextly_auto_sidebar] SO, you may have heard that a famous record from the ‘60s is marking an anniversary. If you’ve not heard more than you can stand about Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band — which the Beatles released 50 years ago today, in the States — let me offer the assessment of a longtime Fabs fan whose teenage years were in the ‘80s and whose most zealous listening years were … [Read more...]
Cory Doctorow’s Post-Apocalyptic Utopia
[contextly_auto_sidebar] THE other day I hung out with Burbank resident and globe-trotter Cory Doctorow, who is a cult figure with a very large cult. We talked mostly about his new novel, Walkaway, which is intellectually fascinating and really moves. Will try to fill in this post a bit for now, but here is my LA Times profile. I will point out that obvious that I find him a bit … [Read more...]