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......

I wasn’t much of a Tom Petty fan in my pre-L.A. years, but like most people, I knew him from the basics…I had caterwauled the lyrics to "Free Fallin’" alongside other angsty Massachusetts teens at a dance or two, and I had been baffled by, but pretended I knew what the hell was going on in, the "Mary Jane's Last Dance" video. But beginning with my drive cross country, I began to develop a taste......

This is a good time to be a Kinks fan. Last year Ray Davies put out a solo album, then "A Well-Respected Man" and "This Time Tomorrow" popped up this year in movies like Juno and The Darjeeling Limited. And now a Kinks Retrospective box set is scheduled for release in 2008, and NME has announced that a reunion tour for the seminal 60s, fighting-brothers band The Kinks is supposed to take place this year.......

If you missed Tinariwen at Temple Bar last November, Fader and a few other blogs have posted this from the Taureg band's instore at Other Music in New York. The group's latest cd Aman Iman has been making everyone's Best Albums of 2007 list from Rolling Stone to Pitchfork to KCRW. Their next tour is not announced yet, but we'll let you know when they're headed back to Los Angeles.......

Cardinal Roger Mahoney revealed that he had been assaulted in July outside of Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral; the attacker was "enraged by the Catholic Church's sexual-abuse scandal within days of a record settlement with hundreds of victims." Karl Dorrell will not be coaching UCLA in its upcoming Las Vegas Bowl game. Defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker will coach in the interim. If the world weren't already all shook up by Jakob Lodwick's departure......

James Jean signing at Gallery Nucleus....

The shiny happy and beehived B-52's have been playing a handful of intimate shows around the country that started with a Halloween show with The Rapture at NYC's Roseland Ballroom. Tonight, for example they will be up at the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez (wonder if they'll do a Jackson 5 cover?), tomorrow they're at the Roxy, and Saturday they wind up the mini-tour at the Depot in Salt Lake City. Clearly we are......

LA Times staffer and Buzz Bands blogger Kevin Bronson's story "Taking the L.A. indie rock scene personally" hit stands last Thursday. By means of an intimate portrayal, Bronson set forth his pick of indie rock up-and-comers for L.A.'s indie rock scene in 2008. While I completely admire that he would put his neck out there for three rather small, entirely worthy bands (The Airborne Toxic Event, Castledoor, and The Deadly Syndrome) at the forefront of......

Here's what we know: on Thursday night at 7pm, Walter Kirn (who we believe is a genius, but we cannot prove it), former U.S. Senator George McGovern, writer James Q. Wilson and editor extraordinaire Robert Vare will be in discussion at the Central Library. What will they discuss? How literary masters of the past have both interpreted and rebuked American society and culture, as documented in the new anthology The American Idea: The Best of......

As Kanye West says in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, "Hip-hop is the only sport of music. Rock artists aren't thinking about each other to that extent. And these are like the championship moments." Today is that championship moment Kanye is talking about, as both he and 50 Cent, two of the biggest names in hip-hop are dropping albums on the same day. This kind of thing happens a lot, actually it has......

You’ve heard it already, “Wow, they’re like 13 years old and in a band!” The Jack Bambis have gotten a lot of attention for their ages – guitarist Indio, bassist Jasper and singer Lia are all 13. Cash, the drummer, shies a few years behind. But the Jack Bambis sound better than a whole lotta crap on the radio being made by people 21 and up (i.e. old enough to know better). Cash graduated......

A Word or 17: Season finales are upon us friends, keep your eyes open for your favorite shows wrapping things up. Tonight - Thursday - May 10, 2007 Indians @ Angels (Fox Sports, 7:00 p.m.) Dodgers @ Marlins (PRIME, 7:00 p.m.) Survivor: Fiji (CBS, 8:00 p.m.) Major challenges this evening. My Name Is Earl/The Office/Scrubs (NBC, 8:00 p.m.) Season Finale!/Will Michael be replaced?/JD and Turk head to a surgeon convention Smallville/Supernatural (the CW, 8-10:00......

A Word or 4 dozen : Somehow I totally missed posting that the Shield was on last night and again it was good. I think one would be hard-pressed to find more raw and compelling performances on any other show available on the networks or basic cable. Being a former SF resident, I haven't been able to get enough of Conan's broadcast from the Orpheum theater on Market Street- too bad that's still bum-junkie......

There are hundreds of bands who make their way to Los Angeles to try to make it big, but sometimes it seems like they refuse to learn the lessons being laid down by their forefathers. And one of the greatest rock legends is still doling out the lessons on how to be a rock star, even though he says he's not. In an article published today in NME, 63-year-old Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richards......

Just a teeny bit shy of Daydream Nation's twenty-year anniversary in June, Sonic Youth is hitting up festivals this summer with their performance of their classic album, in its entirety. Their first stop is in Chicago on July 13th as part of the Pitchfork Music Festival in collaboration with ATP’s Don’t Look Back Series. From there, the foursome (Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, and Steve Shelley) will move onto dates in Berkeley, Los......

Sometimes you're in the right place at the right time. Rolling Stone contributing editor Vanessa Grigoriadis just happened to be finishing up an indepth, behind-the-scenes look at the medical marijuana craze here in LA when 11 dispensaries were raided. Needless to say a good story suddenly got a lot better and even more timely. Taking the reader pretty much everywhere medical marijuana dispensary owner "Daniel" goes throughout his day, Grigoriadis describes a world that's......

Tonight - Thursday Kings @ Sharks (Fox Sports, 7:30 p.m.) "Survivor: Cook Islands" (CBS, 8:00 p.m.) The scheming gets more intense, it's all in your head. "The Office" (NBC, 8:00 p.m.) Christmas party double episode! "The OC" (Fox, 9:00 p.m.) For those that can stomach its Chrismukkah episode. "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" (Comedy Central, 11:00 p.m.) Rajiv "Say it 10x Fast" Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post "The Colber(t) Repor(t)" (Comedy Central, 11:30......

- The Simpsons have their Tire Fire, LA has its Tire Store Fire - LAFD blog - Some Hollywood women too Busy to shave their armpits? Say it ain't so! - Reuters - Martini Republic asks "who's the bigger idiot, Instapundit or Bill Kristol?" Which makes us finally understand that IT WAS A CONTEST ALL ALONG! - Martini Republic - Mom calls cops on her 12-year-old son for opening his videogame before Christmas -......

- John Kerry calls the President stupid, President and his bros are too stupid to know that they were being called stupid, so Kerry calls them stupid again - johnkerry.com - The Political Director of ABC News is stupid - Tristram Shandy via Martini Republic - Drew Brees doesn't want his mom to use his image in her stupid election - Austin Statesman - Vice President Cheney says Charles Rangel "doesn't understand how the......

The posterboy of rock 'n roll drug excess, Keith Richards, is quiting the illegal activity because of shitty quality, the scrawny guitarist told London's Q magazine recently. "I think the quality's gone down. All they do is try and take the high out of everything." Richards slurred, not specifying who "they" are. "I don't like the way drugs now are working on your brain area instead of just through the blood stream. That's why......

Lindsay Lohan is lounging at the beach in a bikini - Egotastic K-Fed is explaining that his laughable single was an ingenius game of reverse psychology, "At first, when I put out PopoZao, people were kinda laughing at me. I did it on purpose so people would look at me exactly the way they did," Federline said. "That way, when I come out with my real s**t, people are f**king blown away." - Hindustan......

There were many repulsive things about Pearl Jam during the short yet beautiful Grunge Years. All of it had to do with their music. On paper they did everything right -- they were against videos, they took on Ticketmaster, they didn't hang out with model/actresses. But musically they were the worst parts of REM mixed with the worst parts of STP. Vedder posed like everything he was mumbling was soooo important, he fluttered his......

drop like a Stone Rolling Stone Keith Richards was airlifted to a New Zealand hospital after falling out of a palm tree in Fiji, where he was vacationing. It's serious, but it looks like he'll be OK. author! author! LAist's own Adrienne Crew will be signing her book Blogosphere: The Best of the Blogs at LA Times Festival of Books today from 10am-12 nooon. Look for her at Booth 530, where the 2000 Plus......

John Sylvain produces websites, films and theater. He is also a writer, actor, director and father. John possesses a singular talent for organizing performing arts troupes; a knack that enriches us all. Fresh out of college, he helped found The Annex Theater in Seattle. After moving down to Los Angeles in the '90s, he started the Sacred Fools Theatre Company, one of Los Angeles's most prolific and innovative theater companies. How can you not love......

Vanessa Grigoriadis is a fearless and whip-smart journalist whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, New York and Radar magazines. A recent LA transplant, Vanessa excels at writing influential trend analyses and razor sharp profiles. In 1998, she authored the infamous New York feature "Power Girls," about Lizzie Grubman and other power publicists/socialites. Lizzie Grubman subsequently appropriated the article's title and made it the basis of her own reality series on MTV. It hasn't taken......

Austin Young is our final respondent from the Fallen Fruit Project, which, incidentally, is about more than a couple of guys wandering the streets with a fruit picker and paper bags. This group also makes art. Their work is on view at these locations through the end of the month: http://www.artleak.org/civicmatters/">Civic Matters exhibit at LACE and the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art downtown. Co-founder Austin Young is a photographer and filmmaker. His work......

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......

KCRW presents the Dears live at The Troubadour and LAist would like to give you a pair of tickets to the show. NME calls them "the best new band in the world right now" and Rolling Stone says they're one of the ten bands to watch. Click here to enter to win a pair of tickets to tonight's show with Robbers On High Street and The Sun and a copy of the Dears' CD......