SOMETIMES it takes the French to appreciate the best aspects of American culture. Whether it's jazz, detective novels or the films of Howard Hawks, the Gauls have often seen something in our own art that we've overlooked.The silent, black and white movie The Artist is the latest example. It's an homage to American cinema of the '20s and early '30s. I wrote an extensive feature HERE for the … [Read more...]
Kenny Burrell and The Future of Jazz
LAST week I wrote a story about the jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell, who celebrates his 80th birthday with a concert at Royce Hall on Saturday. In the course of it, I corresponded with music historian Ted Gioia about Burrell and some related issues concerning the past and future of the art form.I've included here our exchange. Gioia's The History of Jazz, on Oxford University Press, was recently … [Read more...]
Kenny Burrell and the Jazz Guitar
RECENTLY I had the pleasure to walk down memory lane with one of my musical heroes, who marked his 80th birthday over the summer and is still going strong.Here is my story on jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell, who will mark that milestone with a concert on Saturday Nov. 12. Burrell's playing is a very elegant and disciplined take on the blues.Burrell told me a lot of interesting stuff -- including that … [Read more...]
Wild Flag at the Troubadour
THERE was so much buzz about Wild Flag – the indie super group made up of members of Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Quasi and the Minders – that the question going into Thursday night’s show at the Troubadour, the second of two packed Los Angeles shows, was whether this would be a good night of indie rock, or something transcendent.The answer turned out to be, a little of both.The Portland/DC four piece … [Read more...]
Catalina’s Jazz Club at 25
SOMETIMES culture works in strange ways. Twenty-five years ago this month, Catalina Popescu, who had emigrated to LA from an authoritarian Romania, a country without an especially rich jazz tradition, met the horn player Buddy Collette, and within a week had opened a jazz club.A quarter century later, Catalina's on Sunset is still open. With the demise of the beloved Jazz Bakery (soon to rise … [Read more...]
Introducing Pacific Standard Time
IT'S finally happened. After a lot of talk, the postwar art blowout Pacific Standard Time has opened at dozens of museums and spaces across Southern California.Your humble blogger wrote a piece for Los Angeles magazine about the origins, offerings and meaning of the whole thing -- it includes a dozen recommended shows, from the Getty's overview, Crosscurrents, to a show of swimming pool … [Read more...]
Pacific Standard Time’s Life and Times
WE'RE getting close to the launch of a gargantuan art blowout -- much bigger than an exhibit, not as cheesy as a "celebration" -- called Pacific Standard Time: Art in Los Angeles 1945 to 1980. This will be a six month initiative involving museums and galleries from Santa Barbara to San Diego, Santa Monica to Palm Springs.For Sunday's LA Times I put together a timeline intended to be helpful in … [Read more...]
Pres. Obama and the Plight of the Middle Class
FOLKS, I'll be appearing on KCRW's To the Point with Warren Olney, which will broadcast today at noon on 89.9 FM in Los Angeles and later, presumably, elsewhere around the country on the PRI network.We'll be talking about Obama's jobs speech and the larger issue of the middle class during the economic downturn. I'm there to discuss my experience as a laid off newspaper reporter who's struggled … [Read more...]
Jazz, Joni Mitchell and the Hollywood Bowl
YOU'LL get less of the introverted poet of Blue and only a hint of the lipstick-and-beret chanteuse of Court and Spark. Instead, Wednesday night will summon the jazz phase Joni Mitchell went through in the mid-to-late '70s. HERE is my LA Times story on the Hollywood Bowl show, Joni's Jazz, which will include all kinds of good people -- including Herbie Hancock, who recently took some … [Read more...]
Eddie Izzard at the Hollywood Bowl
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...]