M.I.A. struts her stuff at the Echoplex, July 31 UCLA's online student radio station UCLAradio.com has released its list of top 10 most-played albums of 2007. Looks like it was a good year for hip-hop at the station, with the above-pictured third-world jetsetter M.I.A. taking the number one spot. The station also recently put out favorite record lists from many of its managers. Longtime Promotions Director Jason Stern describes his favorites using only lyrics......

The newly reunited Spice Girls hit the stage at the Staples Center for two sold out nights this past Wednesday and Friday. Today's LA Times review says the girls are "thinner and more plastic than ever" and that "the show was even more elaborate and pyro- technic than the British pop group's 1998 L.A. debut at the Forum." However, the article goes on to say that the spectacle "played more like a Broadway production......

Monday Keith Gessen & Chad Harbach discuss the latest issue of n+1 7pm @ Book Soup Jay Inslee & Bracken Hendricks presents Apollo's Fire 7pm @ Vroman's Jenna Bush signs Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope 7pm @ Barnes & Noble, The Grove Robert Hass presents Time & Materials 7pm @ Central Library Tuesday John Leake presents Entering Hades 7pm @ Book Soup Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg present Superbad: Seth's Drawings 7pm @......

Monday Eliot Tiegel presents The Latinization of America 6:30pm @ Book Soup Judith Freeman discusses and signs The Long Embrace 7pm @ Vroman's Roz Chast discusses Theories of Everything 7pm @ Central Library Robert Kuttner in conversation with Arianna Huffington about The Squandering of America 8pm @ James Bridge Theater, UCLA Tuesday Cesar Millan presents Be the Pack Leader 7pm @ Borders, Pasadena Frank McCourt presents Angela and the Baby Jesus 7pm @ Borders,......

Last Friday night at the Roxy, Paper Magazine treated attendees to a raucous tournament-to-the (almost) death, of guitarist vs. guitarist. We might all be playing Guitar Hero III but these guys were doing it for real. At least 8 guitarists competed head-to-head over several rounds - each guitarist had 90 seconds to shred their guts out with an optional rhythm section. A three judge panel would decide or resort to a 30 second face off......

Can we please do the OPPOSITE of adding fuel to these fires? A Sun Valley day laborer has been charged with arson after he was caught attempting to start a blaze in the Woodland Hills area earlier this week. Do you use your cell phone? Of course you do. The future of this important device lies in the hands of visionaries, such as the ones who are attending MobileCampLA on Sunday. And you too......

These days, the Roosevelt Hotel is all about partying. After the painstaking restoration of its Spanish-Moorish lobby, with its hand painted beams, tiled floors and leaded glass windows, the hotel is home to the Tropicana Bar, where guests get in free till 9pm (How generous!) and long lines develop of the young and the beautiful. They don't hold a candle to the older residents of the hotel though. The Roosevelt is rumored to be......

Grindhouse Monday and Tuesday it's The Muthers, a combination blaxploitation and women-in-prison flick that stars Janine Bell and Rosanne Katon as a pirate duo who must rescue Bells sister from the private jail of an evil coffee plantation owner, followed by Fight for Your Life, a revenge thriller about a pacifist black minister whose family is taken hostage and tortured by a trio of convicts, until he finally snaps and wreaks his vengeance. Wednesday and......

FRIDAY • The Helio Sequence, King of France (featuring Michael Azerrad, author of Our Band Could Be Your Life) and The Can't See are at Spaceland tonight. Doors open at 9 PM. • Rademacher, Harpeth Trace, The Kris Special and Raymond Richards (of The Idaho Falls) are playing a free show tonight at Mr. T's Bowl in Highland Park. The show starts at 10 PM. • Kristin Hersh's second night at Tangier opens with......