THE other morning -- it was the 4th of July -- the phone rang. It was Eddie Izzard calling from England. I'd had no caffeine yet. And due to the holiday -- on a Monday no less -- and a kid who'd just gotten out of the emergency room, I'd completely forgotten that he'd be calling.Yikes.But Izzard ended up being a perfect gentleman and we spoke for a while about his career and the figures who'd … [Read more...]
The 5 Browns on the Piano
Photo Andrew SouthamA GROUP of cherubic, Julliard-educated young people came to Irvine this weekend to play 5 pianos in tandem. This could be heaven or it could be hell, but this group of siblings is good.HERE is my interview with the band in the LA Times. There is more to the story than met the eye when I accepted this piece -- their backstory is a bit complicated. I enjoyed talking to two of the … [Read more...]
Happy 100th to John Lautner
THIS weekend would been the 100th birthday of the man who may be my favorite architect -- he was voted runner up, just below Neutra, in this blog's Favorite California Modernist poll not long ago.Lautner's Chemosphere house, above the treesNot long after wild-man publisher Benedikt Taschen restored the Hollywood Hills-sited Chemosphere House, which had fallen into very serious disrepair, I wrote a … [Read more...]
Retro rock with LA’s Dawes
ONE of my favorite newish West Coast bands is the LA quartet Dawes, who both draw from the classical canyon rock of the 60s and 70s and work to carve their individual place in the tradition. The voices of Jackson Browne, the Byrds, Neil Young and others echo through their songs.HERE is my profile of the band in today's LA Times.I really enjoyed talking to singer/guitarist Taylor Goldsmith: We … [Read more...]
Two Weeks in Indie Rock
OVER the last few weeks I've seen a bunch of bands and gotten some good new albums by groups on tour; three of the four are from the Golden State. I'll have to be brief here, but I want to sign the praises of a few of them.The bands are:The Bixby Knolls:I've been hearing about these guys for a while now, so was happy to stumble into them at a show at the Silverlake Lounge about a week ago. There's … [Read more...]
The Roots of Bobby McFerrin
IS there a more annoying song from the 1980s than "Don't Worry Be Happy"? Maybe -- a lot of bad childhood memories are now flowing back, some of them involving George Michael -- but not one of my favorite number from that low dishonest decade.Debut LPHERE is my brief LA Times exchange with the man who helped revolutionize jazz singing and has made an impact in the classical world as well. (He also … [Read more...]
Kickass swimmer Diana Nyad
NOT often do I venture far from my music-film-authors obsession to write about sports, but I could not resist the chance to speak to Diana Nyad, the record-breaking swimmer and NPR commentator who has decided, in her 60s, to swim more than 100 miles between Cuba and Florida.We spoke about regrets, physical endurance, killer sharks, nasty jellyfish and the importance of Neil Young for the site … [Read more...]
Rockin in 1970
ON Friday I have a New York Times review of an interesting if imperfect new book called Fire and Rain, which looks at the year 1970 and the making of four hugely popular records -- The Beatles' Let it Be, CSNY's Deja Vu, James Taylor's Sweet Baby James and Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water.If you love all these artists, by all means pick up David Browne's book. Otherwise -- as I get … [Read more...]
The Return of the Archers of Loaf
WHEN the band filed at the Troubadour the other night, I wondered if this might be an Archers of Loaf cover band -- a Chapel-Hill-meets-'90s nostalgia version of Beatlemania. But despite the fact that gawky, bespectacled Eric Bachmann has transformed himself into a lumber jack since the band's late-'90s breakup (don't rock musicians usually waste away?), this was the Archers of old -- all the … [Read more...]
Britain’s "Electric Eden"
THE best of it still sounds as fresh as the day its long-haired practitioners pulled out their mandolins and plugged in the amps: British folk rock is one of the great unsung stories, at least in this country. The new book, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music, gets at the movement's greatest musicians -- Vashti Bunyan, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Bert Jansch, … [Read more...]