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• Posted Thursday: John Fogerty's Travelin' Band Hits LA to LAist
  Henry Rollins once reminded us about John Fogerty, “The man was born in Berkeley, California - there’s not a bayou within two thousand miles!” But despite a lack of physical proximity, Fogerty absorbed a feel for the American heartland through records, and the songs he wrote at the end of the sixties have only added to its mythology. Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of the most stubbornly tradition-minded of Bay Area bands during the psychedelic era, gleefully hooting about listening to Buck Owens when stating such a preference was an unnerving freak-flag to the other freaks. With songs like “Out My Back Door” and “Lodi”, they pretty much invented country-rock as it would come to be known a few years later. But CCR was also in on the revolution, and no one who’s heard “Fortunate Son” or “Run Through The Jungle” could mistake them for reactionaries. The body of work they produced in just six years together is among the most revered and influential in American music, a touchstone that Toby Keith and the Minutemen can both raise a glass to.
• Posted LAist Interview: Jerry Casale of Devo to LAist
  When Devo first appeared on the scene in 1978 (1977, if you were hip enough to be at a punk show where their independent film/ music video “The Truth About De-Evolution” was screened in between bands), there was nothing remotely like them under the sun. In a heavily macho scene, they offered a stiff, robotic alternative. Highly conceptual, wickedly funny, and possessed with a knack for garage-rock riffs, which were then mangled by machinery like a thumb under a drill press, it was Poindexter Rock that could also get you to move your ass
• Posted Far Out! LA Nuggets Film Fest At The Egyptian on Sunday to LAist
  For fans of a particular kind of sixties music, the Nuggets series can seem like a longtime friend, one with a really good record collection. The guy knows his stuff. He combs through the bins of 7-inch ephemera and peeks inside every rockin' garage in America so you don't have to, and puts together reliably excellent mixtapes according to whatever theme was picked that day. Rhino's recent release of the four-disc Where The Action Is!...
• Posted Radical Nostalgia: The Jesus Lizard and the Butthole Surfers to LAist
  It was a hell of a week for old post-punk college-rockers in Los Angeles, what with former Husker Du guitarist Bob Mould at the Troubadour and Mike Watt of the Minutemen/ fIREHOSE playing the Redwood in the same five-day period that saw return visits from two of the major acts from Chicago’s legendary Touch & Go label. The Jesus Lizard and Butthole Surfers were two of Independent America’s most beloved bands, renowned for their...
• Posted Roger Daltrey @ Orpheum Theater 10/17/09 to LAist
  Just four lines into the LA stop on Roger Daltrey’s “Use It Or Lose It” solo tour - so named for the singer’s desire to keep his instrument in shape for a planned burst of activity from his “other” band, the Who, in the coming year - he seemed in danger of losing it... It was a nervous moment, especially with the knowledge that Daltrey’s ailing throat had forced a few last-minute cancellations during the Who’s 2007 tour. But he plowed on, muttering “we’ll come back to that one,” picked up an acoustic guitar, and led his band through a dramatically re-arranged version of “Who Are You.” Now in a more familiar vocal range, he managed to warm up and start belting it out. And from that point, through the whole two-hour show, everything was more than fine.