[contextly_auto_sidebar] TYPICALLY, the PEN awards, held at a fancy hotel in Beverly Hills, ends up as one of the best parties of the year for literary and journalistic folk. The group and its events, of course, also have a bloody point to them: PEN is, mostly, a free-speech group, and its annual banquet is an attempt to honor artistry and freedom of expression and to raise money so they can do … [Read more...]
The Legacy of ’90s Indie Rock
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IF you live long enough and write for a living, there's a pretty good chance you will end up "curating" -- to use the current term - your own youth. That's what happened to me when I tried recently to make sense of where "alternative" or indie rock was 20 years ago today. I see it as a cultural high point, and its making -- as well as unmaking -- remain fascinating … [Read more...]
Classical Music and The Echo Society
[contextly_auto_sidebar] SOMETIMES -- certainly not always -- it makes sense to take a chance and see something you have very little sense of. Because I had the night free and knew/ liked some of the people involved, I went Sunday night to the final concert of a weekend-long chamber-music festival (or something) in Los Angeles's Silverlake Hills. I figured there'd be a cocktail party for a few … [Read more...]
Lauren Greenfield and “Generation Wealth”
[contextly_auto_sidebar] GENERALLY, I think the art world has missed the opportunity to address the Great Recession and the amping up of income inequality and the one percent that followed. But some visual artists have made strong and eloquent statements, and one of them is longtime Los Angeles photographer Lauren Greenfield. I caught her Generation Wealth late in its hometown run at the … [Read more...]
Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, Darker Than Ever
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LAST night, seeing Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings play their last real LP, 2011's The Harrow and the Harvest, at the Orpheum in downtown LA, I realized that this was not just a record that I liked, or one that had made me play around with a couple of its songs on guitar, but one of the finest and most timeless albums of the last decade. It's got songs like Scarlet … [Read more...]
Tom Petty at the Hollywood Bowl
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LAST night, Tom Petty concluded a lengthy tour with the third of three shows at the Hollywood Bowl. The tour was designed to look back at 40 years with his band, The Heartbreakers, and is rumored to be the group's last go-round together. As a music fan who grew up in the '80s, who heard song after Petty song on both AOR and the local "modern rock" station, it was like a … [Read more...]
The Artistry of Siegfried Tieber, Magician
[contextly_auto_sidebar] THE other night I was invited to a private session at the Magic Castle in Hollywood with a young magician. Siegfried Tieber -- his real name, apparently, with no relation to the lion-baiting duo -- practices close-up magic, which typically involves cards, rings, dollar bills, and other things that can be observed in small rooms with no smoke and mirrors, no rabbits, … [Read more...]
Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile at the Ace Hotel/ LA
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IN some ways, this pairing makes absolutely no sense -- a jazz pianist and a bluegrass mandolinist, playing together? But in another, it's nearly inevitable. And, the other night, not just a natural union but often a spectacular one. Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile are not just universally well-regarded musicians but also virtually parallel figures. Both are (still) … [Read more...]
The Literary Richard Thompson
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FEW living musicians fascinate me as much as Richard Thompson, the London-reared, Los Angeles-dwelling, Fairport Convention-founding guitarist and songwriter whose recording career just hit the 50 year mark. I've been listening to Richard's work for three decades now -- since I first heard "Valerie" and "A Bone Through Her Nose" on WHFS as a teenager -- and have been … [Read more...]
Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis
[contextly_auto_sidebar] MY interest in Herbie Hancock's music has ranged over the years, but it has not so much gone up and down as much as side to side. I first heard, and loved, the funky stuff. Later I discovered his years with Miles, and then, still later, his Bill Evans-y solo records like Speak Like a Child and Empyrean Isles. My sense of his best and most enduring music varies, but … [Read more...]