Luckily, since SXSW Music officially starts on Wednesday, tonight's massive line-up of residencies is hardly affected, save for The Voom Blooms who are replaced by We Barbarians and others at the Viper Room tonight (full list of tonight's residencies after the jump). However, the exodus of Los Angeles based bands is upon us. Also, ticket sales for 2008 Premiere Marquee Club have begun. The "club" has no membership fee and will host over 60 concerts......

A couple more days of this visual and mental assault. I've discovered that drinking really helps though. 7:30pm Where Eagles Dare TCM - Here's your chance to bypass most of the new and quite possibly very mediocre offerings this evening by watching this classic. Richard Burton is wooden and robotic in this good guys vs. the Nazis flick, Clint Eastwood is fantastic and there's lots of cool explosions and Nazis getting shot and stuff. 8:00pm......

Tonight, Los Angeles will be playing host to the Democratic Presidential candidates as they square off in a forum to specifically discuss gay issues. The groundbreaking event will be televised on LOGO, and simulcast on the Internet, and will be moderated by Washington Post writer Jonathan Capeheart, Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese, and singer/friend of the trees, Melissa Etheridge. Many of the candidates will continue their courting of a specific demographic with fund-raising......

LOGO, the nation's first (and only) openly gay television network, is set to host the next Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles on August 9. The moderators will include Joe Solmonese, the president of Human Rights Campaign, and Melissa Etheridge, the Academy Award (for her rendition of An Inconvenient Truth's "I Need to Wake Up") and two-time Grammy Award-winning rock musician and prominent gay rights activist. So what specific topics will be on the......

The Oscars as TV This is strictly opinion about the Academy Awards broadcast on ABC - not the pre- or post- shows. This isn't about who won and the merits of their winning, this is just about the nearly 4 hours of TV that was on. The Oscars are a marathon, no doubt about it, and a slow marathon at that. Most able bodied people should be able to do a marathon in about......

Joss Stone, the 19-year-old British soul singer, who's probably best remembered for singing barefoot with Melissa Etheridge at the Grammys in 2005, has a new album due out in March. But LA fans have the opportunity to see her test drive her new material on Monday (1/29) in West LA at 7 p.m., courtesy of Yahoo! Music and Virgin Records. The first 200 fans to e-mail: Invites@YahooLiveSets.com will get in the doors (with a......

Look at that line-up, people. Accept that you live in the greatest city in the world for live music. We might not have a thousand venues, but how do you resist these options? LAist is going to see the Format, but only because we've already seen the Chilis a million times, and the Subs earlier this summer, and the Foos, and Talib, but never Steve Wynn, especially in a tiny place like that. Hmmmm.........

Lots of baby news today: - Brooke Shields and TV writer husband Chris Henchy had a baby girl Grier Hammond Henchy on Tuesday. - Melissa Etheridge and partner Tammy Lynn Michaels also announced on Melissa's website Tuesday that Tammy is pregnant with twins. - Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are in Nambia reportedly awaiting the birth of their child. And they're considering a Nambian name. - And, oh yeah, a little girl named Suri......

Our college guest speakers were never this cool. (Except maybe for the group of Hare Krishnas in sociology sophomore year, but that's another post.) Rock star and cancer survivor Melissa Etheridge surprised about 300 UCLA cancer biology students today for a guest lecture as part of filming for MTV's college network, mtvU's "Stand In" series. She talked about her personal struggle and her music -- and that bald-headed Grammy appearance where she left young......