WHAT do get when you cross the men behind Deadwood and Miami Vice with Dustin Hoffman? Bet you didn't think it would be a television series set at the Santa Anita racetrack and revolving around a quartet of degenerate gamblers, a crusty Kentuckian who talks to himself, some nasty white-collar criminals and a few noble, beautifully photographed horses?Somehow, this is what fortune -- or at least, … [Read more...]
Pacific Standard Time: The Gallery Scene
ANOTHER bit of catching up here: My latest article concerns the art galleries that made Los Angeles an important center for contemporary art in the years before the LACMA opened. I looked primarily at three gallery owners -- Irving Blum of Ferus, Virginia Dwan and Riko Mizuno.The late, great Wallace BermanHERE is the story, which due to the Times' layout looks like it is almost entirely a … [Read more...]
Closing of Laemmle’s Sunset 5
IT was one of those places that seemed like it would be there forever. But the Laemmle Sunset 5 -- which always seemed to me the key indie cinema in Los Angeles -- closed last month, largely because of competition from other theaters.The good news -- or some variation of that -- is that Sundance Cinemas will renovate and reopen the space, and the Laemmle family just opened a seven-screen arthouse … [Read more...]
2011 in Music
IT'S always a bit daunting to have to sum up an entire year's musical output -- even the best of it -- so I'm not gonna try to do that. But I'd like to mention a few unexpected highlights. First, I'm a surprised as anybody that Chapel Hill's '90s heroes, Archer of Loaf, reunited and managed to fill the Troubadour for not one but two nights. Those guys have not lost a bit of energy from the days … [Read more...]
Author Chuck Palahniuk
ODDLY, it was a very pleasant evening the night I met with Chuck Palahniuk in Portland a few years back to discuss his then-new novel, Snuff, over dinner. (The book is not as appetizing.)The Fight Club author has a new novel, Damned. And HERE is my conversation with him.Here's part of my profile:Palahniuk's method is to sniff out such subjects, then pounce. "Things that last in the culture tend to … [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...]
Novelist Neal Stephenson
ONE of the smartest, as well as the toughest, writers I've ever encountered in Neal Stephenson, who is somewhere between a cyberpunk writer, a science-fiction novelist and a cultural historian.I met Stephenson, who has a new novel out, in his hometown of Seattle just before the publication of Anathem. HERE is my interview with the author of Snow Crash and The Baroque Triology.One of Anathem's … [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...]