Last Saturday, Little Radio (MySpace) resumed its weekly Summer Camp (MySpace) series Downtown with performances by local bands Crystal Antlers (MySpace), Imaad Wasif (MySpace), and The Pity Party (MySpace). Tomorrow, Summer Camp continues with a lineup that reportedly includes local bands No Age (MySpace), Abe Vigoda (MySpace), and The Deadly Syndrome (MySpace) as well as the Charleston-based The Explorers Club (MySpace). Admission (21+) is a $15 donation to the Little Radio Sound School Project......

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......

Photo of Carter Tanton by Amanda Zee Carter Tanton of Tulsa always gets rave reviews about his voice like this one from Pitchfork: "Lead singer Carter Tanton has a spectacular voice... [he] could probably sing a recipe for chocolate éclairs and still make it sound good." And Rolling Stone said "his indie-seraphim voice is not of this world." Both reviews referenced the similarities to My Morning Jacket. And not to forget the band, the......

Julia Fordham | Photo by freefall 2007 via flickr If you cannot make it to hear the amazing jazz vocalist, Julia Fordham, at The Roxy tonight, opening up at Hotel Cafe tonight is Tiffany Randol, who we caught at one of strong>Alex & Sam's Tangier shows. The front woman of NYC based glam rock band, Valeze, has now gone solo singer/songwriter style, making Los Angeles her second home, and is bringing out a new......

Fresh off their tour with Morrissey, Girl in a Coma is playing their third and final show with Killola tonight in Glendale at The Scene. One Killola member says that the "shows have been extra saucy, and filled with hot love." We'll let you make your own decision. Joan Jett did when she visited the two bands last week to just to listen and have a good time. Also, in our Alex & Sam interview......

Arthur Paul Carmona, 26, an advocate for people wrongly accused of crimes who was wrongly accused himself and incarcerated for 2 1/2 years as a teenager in Orange County was killed this weekend. His name became widely known when he was arrested when he was 16 and convicted of robbing two juice bars in Irvine and Costa Mesa:His mother mustered support for her son and political and community outrage followed over police tactics that led......

Whether it’s free bands by the river, obscure films at the Silent Movie Theatre or music festivals featuring great non-mainstream bands, Arthur magazine has improved L.A.’s sullied corporate reputation by organizing eclectic, margin-friendly events that embody the magazine’s mission to represent “transgenerational counterculture.” Case in point: Arthur’s Sunday Evenings series at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, which continues this weekend with eccentric songwriter Michael Hurley and next Sunday evening with psych-rock band Wooden Shjips.......

Grizzly Bear, via Grizzly-Bear.net Of all the indie bands with some sort of animal in their title, Grizzly Bear might be the top dogs. After all, can Deerhoof, Deerhunter, Caribou, Panda Bear or even Animal Collective claim they are co-headlining a show with the Los Angeles Philharmonic? Nay. It is just the Brooklyn-based quartet who will share a stage at the Walt Disney Concert Hall for a one night only performance with the L.A.......

We just received an unbelievable e-mail from friend-of-LAist and local indie troubadour Matthew Moon and wanted to share. Some amazing and surprising things really do happen at Sundance. Read on: Two days ago I was performing at a Sundance Film Festival event in Salt Lake City, UT. After my performance at Rose Wagner Theater, I began driving the 25 minutes it takes to get back up to Park City. I checked my voice mail......

Sometimes you see rock tonight and sometimes you want to be rock tonight. If the latter, every Wednesday night at the Hyperion Tavern in the Los Feliz/Franklin Hills area, groups of friends gather to unite as one, to test their skills, woo the crowd and find their glory in Rock Band. Wednesday nights at the shack filled with chandeliers used to be reserved for Guitar Hero zealots, now groups of four can hit the stage......

It's uncommon that a rapper takes the name he used for over 6 years and transforms it into an indie-rock band, but founder Yoni Wolf is known for breaking the rules and getting great results. Operating within the Anticon collective Why?'s sound is self described as "smart, shimmering, sweetly soured" and front man Yoni's delivery as a "candytime-dissonant, singsong-suicide style". Anyways, this is a special intimate performance previewing material from the band's forthcoming album,......

The Tangier is hosting Shark Aid and it has nothing to do with saving those sometimes nasty sea dogs. Aaron Finely, a local sound engineer and musician (Rexaquarium, Kennedy, Joe Lies) was attacked by a shark last October, losing a good chunk of his leg. The medical bill is quite steep, so his friends set up this benefit concert to help out (story via Metromix). Lucky for Finely, his friends play great music. Tonight:......

It's the biggest dance club night in Los Angeles over at The Vanguard and tonight is a special one -- GIANT is having its eighth-anniversary party. Join Steve Aoki, Glycerin and others along it 1500 clubbers. Metromix has the low down. And speaking of anniversaries, the monthly Dragstrip 66 at Safari Sam's is celebrating its Quinceanera! 15 years ago, January, L.A.'s queer/mixed underground have been eagerly descending upon the club night every second saturday......

The Pasadena Star-News is looking for you. Or if there are problems to rant about in general throughout the SGV, then the San Gabriel Valley Tribune might be where you go. Or hey, same goes for Whittier and the Whittier Daily News. "It's a new year and we are on the lookout for letters to the editor. If you have a person that wants to write one, or is expressing an opinion on an......

Washington DC based minimalist postpunk trio, Antelope, is hitting town tonight at The Smell along with Bad Dudes Mi Ami (ex-members of Black Eyes from SF) and Bipolar Bear. Since we love classical minimalism, we thought to ask the band a few questions before tonight's show: 1. First, you've gotta explain what minimalist postpunk is. It's difficult to talk about music, which is invisible. We just try to create songs that are simple and......

Welcome to Hollywood Today, an LA City commission voted recommending that Charles Bukowski's former home to be designated a historic cultural monument. Yay books and reading! According to state representative Fabian Nunez, who represents the Downtown LA area, the biggest crisis we're facing today is foreclosures. ""It's a more immediate crisis," he told the AP. Meanwhile, protests are beginning to hit the streets over this. Drink up! It's the holidays! Caroline on Crack has......

The WORST NEWS IMAGINABLE: you know that shiny new Fender Strat Rock Band controller? It's probably going to break. I KNOW. Harmonix is finally responding to the issue, but we hear it's fairly easy to fix at home. More fallout from striking writers: the Democratic party has cancelled next month's candidate debate due to a contract dispute between CBS and its many creative staffers. The Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger aircraft, is at......

For many of you, this week is all about Turkey Day. For others, it's still all about The Strike. For me? This week will go down in history not because of the strike or Thanksgiving, but because the most awesome video game of all time, Rock Band, was released yesterday. I got my kit set up and ready to go within minutes, and began rocking out almost immediately. First impressions? The drumming element is......

It's a dream date for fans of Canadian songstress Feist and Austin's Spoon. Feist is just now making her break on the world stage, with a little help from Uncle Steve. But anyone with an ear to the Toronto indie rock scene could hear her coming ever since her solo debut, Monarch, was released on the heels of By Divine Right's "Bless This Mess" Tour (she was their rhythm guitarist). For most of this......

Attempting to pull sticky, er, bubble gum out of your hair was as vain as trying to banish Hanson's "MmmBop" from your brain ten years ago. A decade ago, that was your little sister's Hanson. Fast forward to 2007 and you've got three grown men who have purposely done nothing to shed their image of the past but have somehow emerged as a band for today. Unlike comparable, so-called boy bands, the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based......

Somehow "The Tonight Show" scored a trifecta of controversy tonight as they were able to book the most punk rock of punk rock bands, the most conservative member of Congress, and the wackiest Scientologist all to appear on its air in the same hour. Tonight the Sex Pistols, Ron Paul, and Tom Cruise will all be in Burbank to tape the late night chat show. Strangely, whatever wire service the LA Daily News used......

Marking the first Los Angeles appearance since 1998 (when legend has it members of the Scottish alternative rock band decided to part ways), last night The Jesus and Mary Chain headlined after opening acts Evan Dando and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Earlier this year the band reunited, playing a show at Coachella that seemed to elicit more mentions about Scarlett Johansson on stage than the actual music. If the performance at the Wiltern yesterday......

Imagine our surprise when we discovered from the LA Times' Buzz Bands blog last week that our friends Rocket were not only on the new tv show The Next Great American Band but they had made it pretty far already. Rocket is the all-female pop rock band from East Hollywood who we first told you about during the summer of last year when they were playing shows almost every day in LA. Then this......

Ninitendo Wii demonstration units at the 2007 E for All Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center Nintendo extended an invitation for a female writer from LAist to meet Perrin Kaplan , VP of Marketing for Nintendo at the E for All Expo. I sent my R.S.V.P. and planned to check out the latest games and technology that Nintendo has to offer. Now I should tell you that I know next to nothing about......

Sure, the inaugural E For All doesn't really hold a candle to the bloated spectacle of old E3, but then again, the new low-key Santa Monica-based E3 doesn't hold a candle to the old E3 either. And sure the big guns (Sony, Microsoft and Capcom) didn't show up, the LA Convention Center's South Hall is only half full with exhibits, crowds have been disappointingly light and the power went out Friday night, ending the......

Interpol the international police organization is everywhere (186 member countries), even though you never really take notice of them. So it’s fitting that the post-punk rock band of the same name has reached similar ubiquitous status, though dipping still ever so slightly below the radar. But now it appears the secret is out. Ever since Interpol announced the release of Our Love to Admire in May, they’ve been scouring the world, touring virtually non-stop.......

On the last night of a short west coast tour to promote his ridiculously great new record Bluefinger, (review here) Charles Thompson the Third aka Frank Black aka Black Francis hit Safari Sam’s last night with a blistering hour-plus set comprised of the entire Bluefinger “rock opera”, and just a very few extra songs thrown in for good measure. The set was loose and blissfully raw. Like any good maestro, Black was talkative, and......

LAist just lost a writer to the Midwest, and on Monday, the Los Angeles blogasphere may lose another major player -- Mayor Sam, otherwise known as Michael Higby who is a City Hall watchdog and whistle blower. "The last week or so I've been exploring whether to stay in LA or move to my family's hometown of Waterloo, Iowa," Higby wrote in an e-mail last night to LAist. Over the past week, he's compared......

Eddie Van Halen still sorta is the greatest guitarist alive. And maybe you don't like your rock gods to be a little looney and close to death, but we do. And if we learned one thing about David Lee Roth it's that he aint no morning man, which is fine. What he is is the only front man that Van Halen should have ever had, and we're glad that all the nonsense was able......

From singing a Pussycat Dolls song in "Wild Hogs" to playing a hobo on "Friends", Kyle Gass is always ready to jump into character. (He and Jack Black have a little band called Tenacious D too.) Since 2002, Kyle's country-rock band has played over 150 gigs across the country. Trainwreck features lead vocals by J.R Reed and Kyle conducting the craziness with his trusty guitar. If you are looking for a honky tonk party......