Bobzilla

On a sweltering Friday night at the Echoplex, Sergio Dias led his band mates, Os Mutantes, on multiple musical excursions through rock & roll, samba, and bossa nova, with a bit of Kurt Weill thrown in for good measure. Delivering a rousing set that was exciting, fiery and continuously pleasing, Baptista demonstrated his guitar virtuosity with flashes of references to his early musical icons including George Harrison and The Ventures’ Noke Edwards while marking out his own sonic turf, getting tones of unbelievable beauty, both delicate and powerful, out of his Super Nova Kier.

Elvis Costello’s not shy when it comes to genre-hopping. Folks who are only interested his “straight” rock and roll incarnation as leader of the Attractions/ Imposters (same difference give or take a bass player) need to do a little research before shelling out for tickets, to make sure they don’t end up on the wrong end of a jazz orchestra or an acapella choir. Those people may have opted out of this most recent trip fronting the Sugarcanes, a crew of traditional bluegrass musicians, each one a celebrated player in his own right. But the loss is their own. While the drumset-free, accordion-rich stage setup might have looked a little odd, there was no mistaking who the dude at the mic was.

Donald Fagen's dentist is in the front row, photo from the Beacon Theater in New York last month, by Podbay via Flickr. Previewing Steely Dan’s latest visit to LA for LAist last month, in talking about their three-night run in which a different full-length LP from their catalog would be performed in entirety on consecutive nights, I called the 1980 release Gaucho their "least compelling album." By coincidence or conspiracy, that was the work...

“Please don’t get the band stoned!”, begged Wayne Coyne about three songs into the Flaming Lips’ set at the Greek last Monday. “I don’t even like to smoke bud anymore… but we like it when you guys smoke bud!” Having just watched VH1’s career retrospective on Cheech and Chong a couple nights earlier, it was hard not to think of Chong alerting his audience, “We’re a lot funnier when you’re stoned, man!” Within moments, Coyne was delivering his lines from atop the shoulders of a giant gorilla. Some gags never lose their charm, especially if, you know…

ome of the farthest-out hipster prose in the original print run of Ed Sanders' highly readable Manson account, The Family, concerns the supposed "hooded snuffoids" from the spookily-named but otherwise harmless Process Church Of The Final Judgement. This kind of statement, made despite the fact that no one in the group has ever been convicted of anything like murder, is somewhat like blaming the people who ran Amok Books for all the horrible killings written up in their inventory.

Rob Halford, making fetish gear safe for frustrated hetero youth once again following a twelve-year absence, is leading a crowd of heavily amped looking dudes through a catchy singalong chorus that all of them know by heart. Dudes are grabbing dudes by the shoulders and hollering “Living after midnight! Rockin’ till the dawwwwn!” at each other with great feeling, gazing into each others eyes. The band behind him sounds tight and powerful, twin guitar lines pinching off the air between the strings. It’s the end of the seventies once again, my friends, like the entire decade of eighties metal never happenned and we’ve returned to the source. Long live Judas Priest.

Photo by Mick O Says So on flickr. For the second time in two weeks, the Hollywood Bowl experienced a spontaneous breakout of Carnaval as Brazillian legend Sergio Mendes and his band polished off a night of intoxicating rhythms by inviting a troupe of female dancers into the crowd to shake out some of their own. This colorful presentation - the primary color on display being "skin" - was enough to make one concerned...

Since the advent of the mp3 era, there’s been a lot of talk about the death of the “album” as a medium for music delivery. As the argument goes, bands have no incentive to write forty-five consecutive minutes’ worth of content, since consumers no longer have to sit through three decent-to-mediocre tracks to get to the one they like, buried in the middle of side two. Now that the listening experience is entirely customizable, those deep cuts that never passed muster for airplay or “best of” collections will be tossed away like so many pot seeds, completely unheard by the audience that only cares about their favorite songs.

“Did I dare to wear my tightest gown tonight?” Not having access to Aretha Franklin’s wardrobe closet, we can’t say for sure, though after checking out the figure-hugging rhinestone-studded black number she’d just changed into, it seemed likely. Why not, it was a night for bold moves. A short time later, she’d dare openly lust after our President (“Brother is fiiiine… mmmm!"). Judging from the rapturous response generated by her every word, Franklin could have dared to do just about anything. Who can complain when the singing’s this good?

All your friends know the Lowriders, but they may not know exactly where to find them nowadays. While there is a band, nominally called War, that performs “Spill The Wine”, "Why Can't We Be Friends" and “The Cisco Kid” around the world, its current incarantion is reduced to one original member, keyboardist Lonnie Jordan, who apparently leases the rights to use the name from the band’s old manager and producer, filling out the ranks...