Bobzilla

With the arrival of the Beach Boys’ Smile Sessions on Capitol Records today, rock’s most famous unfinished album is finally on shelves in close-to-complete condition. It’s an occasion that many feared would never come, due to the decidedly Bad Vibrations evoked in the mind of Brian Wilson every time he heard those tunes.

So it was gratifying when Who vocalist Roger Daltrey announced that his own Tommy tour would follow the album as faithfully as possible. At the Nokia Theatre on Wednesday, Daltrey and his band of young American players, along with Pete’s brother Simon Townshend on guitar, gave the work life as a raw, bloody piece of rock and roll once again.

LA resident Mark Oliver Everett -- perhaps familiar to you as E out of the EELS -- is calling me from the middle of Pennsylvania, most of the way through an extensive world tour, in the midst of a serious jones...

Head Lip, Wayne Coyne, shares his thoughts on mentally preparing for a double album, the ultimate stage show, the power of the PC to enable music-making weirdos, and why completist collectors’ angst doesn’t faze him one bit.

In the middle of the 1980s, Neil Young was having what many people perceived to be a mid-life crisis. Instead of getting himself a red sports car and a mistress, he’d show up one day with a new band and a new persona - one day embracing edgy German electronica, the next turning into Carl Perkins with a slick fifties haircut and sideburns and and the whole bit. Finally around the time he put a cowboy hat on and started jamming with Willie Nelson - “Willie Neil”, his associates called him - Geffen Records decided to stop financing what they saw as a hopeless, self-destructive binge and sued him for not sounding enough like himself, right around the same time that Fantasy was suing John Fogerty for sounding too much like himself. The eighties were a big decade for midlife crises (and lawsuits) among sixties rockers, but Young took the desire to mutate with the times and head into unpredictable territory much further than any of his peers.

Psychedelic extremity gets up and close and personal this Thursday, when Oklahoma’s Flaming Lips open their very own pop-up shop in the lobby of the the Nike/ Ricardo Montalban Theater. Open from noon to midnight, the shop promises “unique artifacts available on this day and location” including a vinyl pressing exclusive to the event, as well as tickets to see the Lips play a full set inside the theater that night. Tickets are also...

Considering the amount of undiluted road rage our society has experienced in recent weeks, the return of Hope Sandoval to the American music scene comes not a moment too soon. Through The Devil Softly, her latest collaboration with musical partner Colm Ó Cíosóig of My Bloody Valentine and their group the Warm Inventions, has the power to soothe the savage beast with its dreamlike, candle-lit ambience and transcendent melodies. Fans of Sandoval’s earlier work with Mazzy Star and Opal already know what to expect: a warm bath and a glass of wine, surrounded by fog in a state of suspended animation. Hers is the odd hallucinogen that has a sedative effect, a thick, sensual slow drip into the bloodstream that inspires heavy lids and slackened jaws, just the kind of valium our water supply could use about now. If you already hold tickets to their heavily sold-out show at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Tuesday, we offer our congratulations. If not, we suggest you snap up tickets to her US-tour-ending stop at the Mayan while they last.

Photo by Elise Thompson for Laist The notion of the three guys in Spinal Tap embarking on an acoustic tour designed to showcase the group's musical aspects and downplay their history as an over-the top metal band has a certain, how would you say... Spinal Tap quality about it. "This is our chance to do all those things...like that rock opera about Jack The Ripper... acoustically!" But that's what they're doing - a costume...