Tour the San Antonio Winery ... the new doc about Phil Spector ... the all-volunteer Casa Italiana opera company puts on La Gioconda ... Dinner Party Download ... legendary producer Lou Adler on talent ... Sit'n'Sleep switches shticks.
Phil Spector doc director Vikram Jayanti
The American Cinematheque shows the new documentary "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector" Thursday through next Wednesday (8/19-8/25). (FOR SHOWTIMES AND TICKETS, COME INSIDE).
Filmmaker Vikram Jayanti ("When We We Were Kings") talks with Off-Ramp host John Rabe about his approach: letting Phil Spector, his music, and the murder trial speak for itself.
These are the long and short versions of the interview; the short one will be broadcast this weekend on Off-Ramp.
Volunteers put on La Gioconda opera with heart
For 39 years now, volunteers have been putting on operas at the Casa Italiana Cultural Center next to St Peter's Italian Church, one of the last remnants of LA's Little Italy. This Sunday, the Casa Italiana Opera company does "La Gioconda," preceded by a five-course Italian feast. Off-Ramp's John Rabe talked with members of the company, including Phyllis Elliott, who is directing this production.
Call 1-800-595-4849 for tickets or come inside for a link to the company's website.
Above, cast and musicians rehearse the first act of the Amilcare Ponchielli opera, set in Venice. (Credit: John Rabe)
COME INSIDE for a "La Gioconda" trivia question. QUIZ: Why should Amilcare Ponchielli have won a Grammy in 1964?
Sit'n'Sleep's Shtick Switch Swings Sales
Why is this man (business writer Mark Lacter) smiling? He just got a good night's sleep and did an interview with Off-Ramp's John Rabe about Sit'n'Sleep. After a dip in revenue, the mattress store switched ad strategies, retiring longtime harried accountant Irwin.
Tour an unexpected treasure: Downtown LA's San Antonio Winery
UPDATE: The San Antonio Winery turns 95 this month; another reason to lift a glass!
Steve Riboli takes Off-Ramp host John Rabe on a tour of his family's San Antonio Winery, which has made it more than 90 years through wars, Prohibition, recessions and a Depression, not to mention the Great California Wine Revolution. It's one of the last remnants of LA's Little Italy, and still sells more sacramental wine than any other maker worldwide.
Tip for Off-Ramp listeners: The winery's wine shop is probably the best one in downtown Los Angeles, and it doesn't only sell its own makes.
The first piece of audio is the short version. Come on in for the one-hour tour we released as a special Off-Ramp podcast ... all the more reason to sign up for them at i-Tunes!
Saved from Brillo: Haefele on Getty exhibit of Renaissance drawings.
"100,000 years ago, someone made a humble sketch on a flat rock with a burnt stick. And the art of drawing — the parent of painting, architecture and sculpture -- was born. But it didn’t grow up until much more recently." Marc Haefele reviews the Getty exhibit, "From Line to Light: Renaissance Drawing in Florence and Venice."
Editor's note: Why does the Getty, with all its money, need to follow the crowd and put a colon in every exhibit title. I should hold a seminar called, "The Colon: its Use and Mis-Use in Academic Nomenclature." -- John
(Image: Vittore Carpaccio, c. 1500. Accession No. 91.GG.38. Getty Museum.) Marc's script: HAEFELE GETTY DRAWING 100,000 years ago, someone made a humble sketch on a flat rock with a burnt stick. And the art of drawing — the parent of painting, architecture and sculpture -- was born. But it didn’t grow up until much more recently. HOST: Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele on about 200 years of Renaissance master drawings, now showing at the Getty. All visual art begins with drawing. But it’s such a fragile medium that for millennia, it left barely a trace. Until 600 years ago, when the art of papermaking and the art of the Renaissance ignited the art form of master drawing. 45 of these pictures are at the Getty, mostly from Florence and Venice. The drawings come in all shapes, colors and sizes, some big as a major painting, some smaller than post cards. Sometimes they were the prototypes of great paintings. Or they were simply jotted down ideas or solutions to artistic equations like, how do you show a fiddler’s elbow from below? Or the Martyrdom of a saint? The first thing you see when you enter the two-room gallery is Veronese’s 1576 “Martyrdom of Justina,” patron Saint of Venice. At its bottom, the holy woman is about to be stabbed. But dominating the sketch is a celestial mushroom cloud, crowded with the intricately drawn ranks of Christ, his angels, saints and prophets, all happily awaiting poor Justina’s ascension to glory. This heavenly array is so extreme that Veronese dropped it when he finally painted the martyrdom. His original idea was simply too big for his canvas. Many of the drawings demonstrate similar primary sparks of artistic imagination. Nothing was too small or too big for these artists to draw — Raphael’s lissome Asian girl playing a flute, or Carpaccio’s Lord God the Father Himself, in an absurd papal tiara, glowering down at gallery visitors over a bank of finely-rendered storm clouds that perfectly match the gnarly dark hair of God’s beard. Curator Julian Brooks says the show includes works of two of the four legendary “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” old masters—Michelangelo and Raphael. But he adds, “We decided to give the other guys a chance” … geniuses like Giovanni Bellini, Mantegna, Pontorno. Filippo Lippi. Perino la Vaga and Titian. Starting with a simple anonymous figure of 1380, you see techniques advancing into the late style known as mannerism, wherein artists worked their simple lines like sculptors molding clay. Cross-hatching, color washes, colored chalk, metal point and pen came into use, and the line between drawing and painting, like the lines of the later drawings themselves, became blurred. A masterpiece was a masterpiece, on paper or in paint. Some of these precious works were carefully treasured by the artists’ heirs and generations of collectors. Yet the vast majority was simply tossed away. Curator Brooks notes that one great painter used old sketches … to clean his kitchen pots. We’re lucky that in this show, we can see so many of those great drawings that weren’t used up as Brillo.
LA Record talks with latin rockers Chicano Batman
Local band Chicano Batman, yes that's their real name, formed just a couple years ago but have a sound that spans decades and continents: Brazilian tropicalia, Mexican cumbia, Chilean funk, even American psychedelia.
They take to the stage wearing crushed velvet blue shirts that look ripped right from their fathers’ closets and play an organ that sits on top of an ironing board. They just got back from a tour of Colombia and sat down with Chris Ziegler from LA Record. Click here for info on this Sunday's Chicano Batman show!
Dinner Party Download and Aamir Khan, the world's biggest movie star ... who's a "regular guy."
Dinner Party Download with Brendan Newnam and Rico Gagliano, who are also "regular guys."