One year and four days after they played their first headlining gig at the Troubadour, Austin psychedelic rockers The Black Angels return to the West Hollywood beacon to music taste June 5 in support of their newest record: Directions to See a Ghost. The Angels' first full length, Passover, enjoyed wide-spread acclaim and love on local radio. Their second album, due out later this year (but available now in digital format) builds on some of......

It’s midnight, and while I write a monotonous series of buzzes and feedback loops razes through my living room. The cats are wide-eyed and alarmed. These are not the normal noises of everyday life. They are the aural explorations of Spectrum, one of the most prolific projects of Sonic Boom, cofounder of Spacemen 3. When Spacemen 3 split up, it seemed fans diverged as well. Many followed Jason Pierce (aka J. Spaceman), who went on......

Twilight Sleeps is one of the bands that opens for Pity Party tonight at Spaceland | Photo by Joya Martuscello Sometimes Monday nights lead to tough choices. For Jax at Rock Insider, it's between The Pity Party (who we interviewed this morning) and The Henry Clay People. Luckily, both bands are playing all month. Still, there are many choices. If you like your music Folk, your drinks cheap and have never been to Joe's......

Smash Fashion plays Monday nights at Crash Mansion | Photo via their MySpace page Month-long residencies are one of the best ways to catch up-and-coming bands in Los Angeles. You have at least four times to catch a band, and each time, if they are gaining popularity over each show, it will be harder to see them. Last Thursday at their final residency concert, The Airborne Toxic Event played a sold out show with......

Pity Party at Little Radio on New Years Eve | Photo by Koga/LAist Despite it being Superbowl Sunday, February residencies got off to a great start last night with Alex & Sam at Tangier. Tonight is the first night of February residencies at Spaceland, Silverlake Lounge, Crash Mansion and The Echo/Echoplex. By last Thursday, The Airborne Toxic Event had gained so much popularity from their January residency, they had to reject 300 people from......

"Big Fish" - Jesca Hoop The Kevin Eubanks Group @ The Baked Potato Kiss or Kill @ El Cid Restaurant Sarah Stanley Band, Bob Woodruff @ TAIX Office, Tiger City, Via Audio, DJs at Club NME @ Spaceland Velvet Revolver @ Gibson Amphitheatre Liz Pappademas, Sally Kellerman, Loni Trock @ Genghis Cohen Bjork @ Nokia Theatre Mia Doi Todd, Anders & Woods, Sara Lov @ Tangier Ben Lee, Cary Brothers, Kate Voegele @ El......

Hanson - "Go" Hanson @ Viper Room Exodus @ Whisky Fionn Regan, Ferraby Lionheart, James Bowers @ The Hotel Cafe Robbers on High Street, 1990s, Mezzanine Owls @ The Troubadour Blair, Travel by Sea, The Switch, Robert Francis @ Silverlake Lounge The Prix, Astra Heights, Red Button, Unbearables, Io Perry, 17 Pygmies @ Spaceland Boys Night Out, The Dear Hunter, Pierce the Veil, Four Letter Lie @ El Rey The Good Listeners, Miranda Lee......

Weird Al - "Bob" Weird Al Yankovic @ Orange County Fair The Psychedelic Furs, The Fixx, The Alarm @ Pacific Amphitheatre Eastern Conference Champions, The Vampire Weekend, Faker @ Silverlake Lounge Spoon @ Cinespace Crowded House @ The Troubadour Puddle of Mudd @ Viper Room OK Stranger, She's your Sister, Shiloe @ Spaceland Adam Franklin, the Black Watch, Benni Hemm Hemm @ The Echo Maxeen, MS90, The Audio Club, The Kids of Widney High......

We like to keep you informed after we've started something, so here's that 24-second clip of Kobe caught on tape complaining about the Lakers. Or rather, about 10 seconds of Kobe as the cameraman pans back and forth between his friends and the Lakers star. My favorite part is the creepy music at the start. Last I checked, the guys selling this video for $1.99 hadn't gotten more than 10,000 people to buy it off......

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Ditty Bops (above), Woody Harrelson, others @ Henry Fonda Willie Nelson, George Strait, Lucinda Williams, many more @ Stagecoach Cypress Hill @ Vault 350 The Jerry Garcia Band @ Fais Do-Do Manic Hispanic @ Galaxy Theatre Rosanne Cash @ Disney Hall One+One (James Zabiela & Nic Fanciulli) @ Vanguard David Grier @ Boulevard Music Victor Wooten @ El Rey Suzanne Somers @ La Mirada Theater for Performance Arts......

Can't make it out to the desert this weekend? No worries, AT&T's Blue Room broadcasts live streaming video from select performances at Coachella beginning at 3 p.m. today. So kick back with some brews, crank up the A/C and turn the speakers up to 11. Coachella streams via this link. Read on to check out the Blueroom schedule, subject to change. photo of the Coachella DJ Dome, Thurs. night, by Dave Bullock (eecue).......

LAist is proud to offerer a weekly, chart roundup of Billboard Magazine’s most coveted rankings. Join us as we revel in the conventional standard of musical success. Let us cross our fingers, hoist our lighters, and dream together of the supreme resurrection of artist-driven recordings that will forever eclipse the dark cloud of big label greed, A&R sleaze and disposable audio. Amen. Here are this week’s chart toppers. Behold the #1s. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Billboard Charts......

Beyonce continues to bully the charts. And far too many people think that buying Kenny G CDs is an appropriate use of money. I know we can do better than this. Here to make miserable your otherwise sunny day is a list of this week’s Billboard No.1s. Below is the short list. More good news after the jump... Billboard Charts Issue Date: January 27, 2007 The Billboard 200 - Dreamgirls:Soundtrack The Billboard Hot 100......

Oops! CNN puts "Where's Obama" where it should have been "Where's Osama." Wha? You don' know who Obama is? You Should. Need inspiration to bike commute in Los Angeles? Meet Monica Howe. "In an unusual match-up, Los Angeles City Councilman Tony Cardenas will face four challengers, including three candidates from the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council, in the March 6 election." "L-A-X hasn't had a major overhaul since the 1984 Summer Olympics and the Tom......

Daily News tells tales of earmarked federal funding to go to the wayside in the Valley due to Democrats going lean on the budget. Of course, it won't be just the Valley. Watch out basin/metropolitan LA. The California Report looks into the future of rest stops along California's highways. Coffee vendors, farmer's markets, solar power, wifi and more. (Download Audio Here) Closer to home, Art Center College of Design's downtown campus's roof is green.......

Ciara - The Evolution (comes with limited-edition DVD; LaFace) Billy Cobham's Glassmenagerie - Stratus (MVD Audio) Danny Elfman - "Charlotte's Web" soundtrack (Sony Classical) Dreamgirls soundtrack (two-CD deluxe edition also available; Columbia/ Sony Music Soundtrax) "Fast Food Nation" soundtrack (Park the Van) James Horner - "Mel Gibson's Apocalypto" soundtrack (Hollywood) Lil Scrappy - Bred 2 Die, Born 2 Live (Reprise) Brian McKnight - 10 (Warner Bros.) Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape (Interscope) Eminem......

Blackmore's Night - Winter Carols (Locomotive) Brand New - The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me (Interscope) Daughtry - Daughtry (19 Recordings/ RCA) Handful of Hate - Gruesome Splendour (Cruz del Music) Il Divo - Siempre (Columbia) Jay-Z - Kingdom Come (Roc-A-Fella) Killswitch Engage - As Daylight Dies (Roadrunner) Patti Labelle - The Gospel According to Patti Labelle (Bungalo) Rock Star Supernova - Rock Star Supernova (Epic) Snoop Dogg - Tha Blue Carpet......

Beenie Man - Undisputed (Virgin) Blag Dahlia - Nina ... and Other Delights (MVD Audio) Damage Case - Tyranny (Punkcore) Támar Davis - Milk & Honey (Universal Motown) Dirty Dozen Brass Band - What's Going On (Shout! Factory) Dream Theater - Score: 20th Anniversary World Tour Live (Rhino) Bob Dylan - Modern Times (Columbia) Grates - Gravity Won't Get You High (Cherry Tree) Gwar - Beyond Hell (limited-edition version with DVD also available; DRT)......

People probably expected Luchadores at the rally but did they expect Filipinos? The New York Times joins the Clipper Nation. Online Karaoke can't really be the next myspace can it (and would anyone have gotten it if we had made a "Your mom's in my business" reference here?)? Lost returns tonight with new episodes all the way til the finale. There's a whole new Hanso Foundation site and they even issued a press release......

Is anybody driving three hours to the desert for this? Two day passes ($167 + $23 in fees) and Saturday tickets ($86 + $15 in fees) are still available. Most of the rock bands have played LA clubs in the past few months. Otherwise you better really like DJs and house music…… Saturday 4/29 Depeche Mode (about 16 years past their prime), Daft Punk (five years past their prime), Franz Ferdinand (the last album......

It’s a 24-hour Tut party! King Tutankhamun’s last stand! First extended from November 15th until November 20th, now LACMA has announced their wildly popular Tut exhibit will stay open around the clock this weekend before closing up shop and heading to the next stop on the Pharoah’s tour, Fort Lauderdale. The exhibit starts with a short film about Tut and then opens up to a one-way path showcasing over 100 objects on loan from......

Over the past few years, Michele Berc has gone out of her way to create and curate the coolest art show gathering in LA, Create:Fixate. This month's gathering, an all photography edition of the "Optical Lounge and Audio Lab" located in Downtown on the mezzanine of the Spring Arts Tower, was packed full of a diverse crowd of urban hipsters, art enthusiasts and an assortment of beautiful people. Jason Elias, contributing editor of American......

Ed Note: We postponed publication of Monday's LAist Interview until today in honor of the Independence Day holiday. Craig Havens, a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, is a fine art photographer whose commercial assignments have appeared in magazines such as Rolling Stone, JANE, Los Angeles Magazine, WYWS, and Detour. In 2004 he became the first American photographer to be honored with a solo exhibition at the Grand Hall Artists Union......

THURSDAY • Bane are at the Troubadour tonight with Evergreen Terrace, Cursed and Verse. Doors open at 7 PM; tickets are $12 advance. • The Knitting Factory is hopping tonight: in the Main Room, see Helio Sequence, Rogue Wave and Audio Out Send at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $10 advance, $12 at the door. In the Front Room, Afrirampo, Babyland, Scout Niblett and The Pope are performing at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $10. •......

TUESDAY • Michelle Shocked performs a free in-store at Amoeba Music tonight to celebrate the release of Threesome at 7 PM. • Bright Eyes is on stage at the Grand Olympic Auditorium at 8 PM with The Faint and Airborn Audio. Tickets are $30. • The Raveonettes perform tonight with Gram Rabbit in the first of a three-night gig at Spaceland. Doors open at 9 PM. • Wilco play the Greek Theatre with The......

Today is your last chance to enter to win tickets! LAist would like to send one lucky winner (plus a guest) to see Rob Thomas, frontman of Matchbox 20, performing in support of his new album, ...something to be, at the Avalon on April 19th at 8 PM. You can listen to the song "Lonely No More" in Real Audio here. Enter to win tickets by filling out the form below:......

The LA Weekly weighs in this week with Kate Sullivan's plea to save Indie 103. Realizing we're in the minority (even among LAisters), we have to say, no thanks. Because: 1. ClearChannel explicitly said its goal was to suck ad dollars away from KROQ -- to screw with the smaller conglomerate that owns KROQ. (Audio link). They don't want to create an alternative rock station: they just want to weaken and kill someone else's......

We're noticing a trend here as art and dance seem to come together more and more often downtown. Create:Fixate has its first show of 2005 tonight when The Optical Lounge and Audio Lab comes to the Spring Arts Tower at 453 S. Spring Street. The Gallery opens its doors at 4 PM and the party starts at 7 PM. General Admission is $10 but if you get there early (like before 7), you can......