Bobzilla

This nifty little package - 1 DVD and 2 CDs bargain-priced at $11.98 for the set, and only available at Best Buy - captures two of the intimate acoustic productions put together by Rachel Fuller, the English composer, arranger and singer who is also the longtime partner of Pete Townshend, at various stops on the Who’s 2006-07 world tour as a way to keep herself busy. “I said, if I’m gonna go, I’m gonna...

In 2003, writer Bill Tuomala offerred a career overview of Van Halen from an alternate universe in which The Stooges, The Ramones and the Clash had become stadium rockers and knocked heavy metal bands deep into the underground. “If you were lucky and knew someone in the know or if you hung out in the right record store, you might have gotten turned on to some metal during the seventies. Like there was underground...

“She looks so beautiful with her top down / Let’s hop inside and take a ride to town.” “The awesome power of electricity / Stored for you in a giant battery!” “Her engines running and her fuel is clean / She only uses it cause she’s a machine.” “Got a pot belly, it’s not too big/ Gets in my way, when I’m driving my rig.” OK, so, Fork In The Road, Neil Young’s latest...

Check out these clips from Neil Young's new album Fork In The Road, due out April 7. Archives be damned, it's time for a concept album about energy-efficient cars. Not content to write a song about it, he's gone and had himself a Lincoln Continental re-tooled for extra clean burning. You can also check out the car's very own blog at www.lincvolt.com. Tune in at the right time and you might catch ol' Neil driving...

For over a decade now, Prince has been straddling the line between the mainstream and the underground. He’s a major star capable of rocking the Super Bowl, who still acts like a 19-year old jamming in the garage and posting the tapes on his MySpace page. He moves back and forth between quietly producing work sold only to hardcore fans on his old web site, orchestrating mass media blitzes like the one we saw...

Photo by Bobzilla/LAist “We’ve been playing a lot of country tonight”, said Chrissie Hynde as the Pretenders returned for their first encore at the Wiltern. The previous 90 minutes had been heavily weighted toward the band’s latest album, the faintly Nashville-flavored Break Up The Concrete, with a healthy dose of their greatest hits and a couple of 80s-era fan favorites dropped in. “But you deserve punk!” With that, the band dove face first into...

As part of the opening weekend festivities for the Robert Berman Gallery’s Rock, Paper, Scissor exhibit, Bergamot Station hosted a benefit for the Santa Monica Museum of Art on Sunday, March 1. Where the exhibit focused on visual art by famous musicians (Daniel Johnston, the Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes and most of Sonic Youth are among the contributors), the benefit turned the tables, featuring musical performances by some famous artists: Ron English and Raymond Pettibon,...

L-R Steven MacDonald, Steven Nistor, Ron Mael, Russell Mael, Jim Wilson, Marcus Blake. Photo by godscomic via Flickr/Used with permission At the near-forty-year mark in their career, the bro-team of Ron and Russell Mael are finally receiving the kind of success that occasionally visits extremely unique musicians who hang in there for the long haul. Even if their music is so out-there as to only appeal to 1% of the listening audience, there’s a...

Photo of Ron (foreground) and Russell Mael courtesy of Republic Media Since their emergence at the beginning of the 1970s, Sparks has been an outsider act. But while commercial success has only struck a handful of times in the course of their twenty-one albums, everyone who grew up during that time seems to know who they are. There’s something about the sight of Ron Mael, the sinister, Chaplinesque accountant stoically rocking out behind the...

Photo by James Minchin III/used by permission It's a great week to be a Brian Wilson fan in Southern California, with the release of a great new DVD package, an in-person signing and, finally, a performance of his very fine new album in the city that inspired it. Wilson and his long-standing team of supporting players, which includes his latest songwriting partner, Scott Bennett, and several members of local retro-pop overlords the Wondermints, have...