Results tagged “kcrw”

                                   

It's hardly surprising that KCRW knows how to throw a party. I mean they are the home of Morning Becomes Eclectic one of the best music shows on air. And I don't mean in Los Angeles. I mean in the country. The radio station had rented out the gorgeous Park Plaza Hotel in MacArthur Park and threw a masked ball Louis XIV would have been proud of. KCRW's famed DJs spun tunes in every room as costumed guests milled around in varying states of inebriation. In the parking lot, food trucks waited patiently for the midnight hour to strike, a time when the guests would give in to their secret desire for tacos and grilled cheese.

"Sesame Street" is about to enter its 40th season and it's making us feel, well, all of our own 40 years. As a little TV Junkie we were plunked down in front of that show as soon as we could sit up and the power of this incredible show has stayed with us all these years. Characters from the show will be popping up all over the place this week, including co-hosting "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" on Monday, November 9th.

              

Evan Kleiman's love of pie began when she was a little girl. A native Angeleno, the Angeli Caffe Chef/Owner and KCRW Good Food host grew up in Silver Lake, and remembers her family getting their baked treats from Sarno's bakery. It was a family tradition to get one of the bakery's rum cakes to celebrate a birthday, however Kleiman soon yearned to branch out. "At some point in my early childhood I started requesting a pie for my birthday," she explains. "And in spite of the fact that my birthday is in July I requested an apple pie." Her request soon led to her having hands-on kitchen time and a long-running tradition: "I went from requesting them to making them," she adds. "Now I still have a birthday pie every summer but I have berry or peach."

Los Angeles is a metropolis, a diversified city of 3.6 million with interests as varied as the neighborhoods that comprise its vast mosaic. Yet, one of the most persistent knocks against this town is its lack of interest in news and politics. Television news, what with its raging hard on for weather-related pieces and sex scandals, gives some life to those pernicious slanders. Print journalism's slow death also does nothing to dispel what may be a lack of interest in the news and the second largest media market in the nation now has one full time AM news station. Thankfully, for you news junkies out there, we have public radio and its weekly news show Left, Right & Center.

“I met and fell in love with a girl in Montreal while on tour with Irving, and just before signing with Dangerbird,” Church recalls. “And then, while touring behind the Sea Wolf record, I spent most of my time off in Montreal with her. Apart from "Wicked Blood" and "O Maria!," which I wrote in Los Angeles, everything on White Water was written in Montreal, holed up in our little apartment, a block away from the river. That was all of last fall, winter and spring, so I was very much influenced by that experience, and a lot of the record is set there in my immediate surroundings, along with remembrances of being home on the West Coast.”

This week was a bleak one for those who love "see food"--as in the words and images of the 60-year-old magazine Gourmet, which will serve up its last meal in the November issue following a death notice from publisher Conde Nast.

Dutch Apple. Cherry. Banana Cream. Chocolate Peanut Butter. Almond Mocha. Lemon Meringue. Strawberry-Rhubarb. Blueberry. Black-Bottom. Mixed Berry. Banana Caramel Cheesecake. Pie, glorious pie! That list might make you drool, but for the culinarily-inclined, it might make you feel inspired to break out your baking dishes and best recipe to enter KCRW's Good Food Pie Bake-off.

              

As you may have heard, the 29th annual Sunset Junction Street Festival is this weekend. "I've only attended the last three years, and never knew the festival back in [its] free days," says Brad Roberts from Radio Free Silver Lake. "So, frankly, the cost isn't as much of an issue for me as it is for others. The days of expecting a bankrupt state and federal government to provide something as ephemeral as a music festival, are, unfortunately, relics of the past. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself at the last three, all of which introduced me to many of the local bands who are regular favorites of mine. The cultural mix is a Los Angeles specialty and in spite of occasionally resembling a frying pan, everyone seems to really enjoy themselves, the variety of food available is impressive and the atmosphere remains laid back and So Cal."

Raise your hand if you've been a long time KCRW member who keeps on forgetting to use their Fringe Benefits card? Yeah, that's us, too. We keep on imagining the money that could have been saved--from airport parking to a plethora of restaurants and yoga studios--all over the region. After launching three iPhone apps earlier this summer, KCRW this week announced a free GPS-enabled Fringe Benefits app that lets you know where discounts are in relation to your current location. The application does, however, require you to be upgraded to 3.0 software. And speaking of discounts and good deals... did you read this week's Recession Obsession on breakfast sandwiches?

It's a 140-character, bullet point list, soundbite world we live in, and while many of us turn to 89.9 KCRW for long sets of good music or informative programming, they're now offering up a way to get "a bite-sized glimpse into some of their favorite things." Personalities and behind-the-sceners at the Santa Monica College-based NPR station are sharing a list a week of 5 Things. Already in the archive are DJ Dan Wilcox's 5 Best Places to Expose Your Kids to Music, DJ Tom Schnabel's 5 Bands that Defined surf culture in LA, and DJ Jason Bentley's Top 5 Condiments (Sriracha, FTW!). And now that the station's Summer Pledge Drive is done, look for more forthcoming 5-ers from your favorites.

              

Last month, local art-rockers Fol Chen dropped by KCRW in Santa Monica for an in-studio performance and interview on hosted by Jason Bentley.

       

In Recession Obsession -- a weekly guide on how one can inexpensively achieve a beer gut during The Recession without beer -- we’ve obsessed over Guatemalan, and we’ve obsessed over chicken. But not yet Guatemalan chicken. (No, not GFC.)

Evan Kleiman is well known on the local foodie scene thanks to her tasty weekly KCRW show Good Food, and her involvement in many local food endeavors and events. Of course, Kleiman is also the owner of the fabulous Angeli Caffe, where local foods, including market-fresh veggies, are celebrated with an Italian flair. This is their colorful season antipasto plate, as captured recently by LAist's Lifestyle Editor Julie Wolfson, featuring asparagus with parmesan, crisp carrots, farro with beets, mozzarella and olives. Simple, fresh, and delicious.

After tearing apart a sold out Wiltern, LAist faves from France, Phoenix popped into KCRW for a wonderful hour with Jason Bentley on Morning Becomes Eclectic. Addressing demand, the band returns to The City of Angels on September 16. They're playing The Greek.

KCRW has plenty of excellent original programming, but among the best is "The Treatment", a weekly film-heavy pop culture show that airs on Wednesdays at 2:30pm. We suggest that you crawl through the archives and grab podcasts to play during long drives or other such travel. Mitchell has been a film critic for many newspapers, most notably and recently, the New York Times. He has taught at Harvard, is the host of Turner Classic Movie's "Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence", and has produced two excellent documentaries about the experiences of being black in this country: The Black List: Volume One and The Black List: Volume Two.

KCRW today officially launched three iPhone apps connecting listeners with live streams, calendars, videos and archived shows. Each cost 99-cents, which "will help offset costs for future iterations of this app and future apps," says a station spokesperson.

KCRW's Good Food offers a mini taco truck tour in this video podcast. First stopping in Highland Park (home to recent LAist Recession Obsession taco crawl,) this colorful segment ends by getting their Kogi on. We dare you not to salivate.

KCRW’s “Martini Shot” is TV writer/producer Rob Long's weekly peek into showbiz. Told from his experiences, Long's four-minute commentaries explore Hollywood's inherently humorous dualities, and eccentricities.

Today Santa Monica-based public radio station KCRW divulged the details of the latest addition to their DJ roster. Black Flag front man Henry Rollins, who completed his first radio work nearly twenty years ago at the aforementioned station, will commandeer local airwaves every Saturday from 6 to 8 PM. The big move, of course, comes on the heels of Indie 103's untimely demise in mid-January. It is uncertain what the exact driving force of the decision to sign on with KCRW was. However, it can be surmised that since Indie shuttered—subsequently regressing to an online-only broadcast—its demographic has been severely constrained. KCRW is poised to anoint Rollins during tomorrow's edition of Morning Becomes Eclectic with Jason Bentley.

KCRW's Evan Kleiman, host of the popular and long-running show "Good Food" has issued this video plea to anyone who considers themselves a part of one or more of the following categories: Foodies, food bloggers, or fans of KCRW. She's reminding us that it's the Winter Pledge Drive, and to keep tasty programming like her show on the airwaves, the station needs our support.

"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years," said Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, to NPR this week. Today, KCRW's To The Point looked into the issue further, even bringing up population problems as a contributor to causing the global climate change.

Tonight, downtown's upscale patio bar J Lounge plays host to the "Artistic Stimulus Package," an event that is bringing together music, artists, socially conscience brands and from the looks of the people who have RSVP'd on the event's Facebook page - some really good looking people.

The Neighborhood Map hanging in GOOD's offices on Melrose (Photo by Emily Lerman for LAist)

If you're not into watching the Rose Bowl parade or game and are more of the 20th Century classical music type, KCRW 89.9 FM has been airing a marathon broadcast and live webstream simulcast of an 11-hour documentary series, Leonard Bernstein: An American Life. It started at 9 a.m. and goes 'til 5 p.m., then continues for two hours at 7 p.m. Bernstein is one of America's iconic composers--you might recognize his work from West Side Story, Candide or On The Town. Today's schedule is below...

Making a living in dance music is supposed to be tough. Apparently Vermont-born, LA-based Morgan Page never heard that one. His moving melodies have stood atop both Billboard's Club Play Chart (a bunch of times,) and iTunes' Dance Chart. The 20something has also done remixes for big guns like Nelly Furtado and Stevie Nicks. If you've not yet heard this scruffy-faced Vermonster, you've probably seen him in traffic. Page is featured on LA city buses as part of KCRW's latest string of ads.

Jason Bentley began his journey at KCRW 89.9 FM in 1988 as a volunteer. Today he takes the helm with the one of the most important jobs at the radio station: Music Director. He succeeds Nic Hartcourt who announced that he was stepping down earlier this month. That means Bentley leaves his weeknight show, Metropolis, for the popular Morning Becomes Eclectic, which airs this morning at 9 a.m. We shot over a handful questions, thanks to LAist staff and readers, to ask him about the changes, local bands and more.

On the heels of the announcement of Nic Harcourt's retirement from the post of Music Director, and longtime KCRW host Jason Bentley's move to replace him, comes word that DJ Garth Trinidad will be back weeknights on the station in the 8-10 p.m. time-slot.

Once a volunteer for the radio station when he was in high school, DJ Jason Bentley has been named as the new Music Director at KCRW, replacing Nic Hartcourt who will step down from his post after 10 years.

Veteran KCRW deejay and longtime station Music Director Nic Harcourt has announced he will be stepping down as head music man and scaling back his on-air duties. From a press release:

After 10 successful years as host of Morning Becomes Eclectic, KCRW’s signature music program, KCRW Music Director Nic Harcourt is stepping down November 30 to pursue several independent projects. Harcourt will continue as a KCRW deejay, hosting a 3-hour show on Sundays from 6-9 pm.