Russ Parsons gives BBQ tips, we remember the car evangelist William Matalyan, Mattress Tracker update, goodbye Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, fireworks how-to
'Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide,' the final edition. It's a death in the family
Since 1969, film historian Leonard Maltin has put out a guide to movies on TV. The cover has changed — you could watch Leonard’s hair get grayer and grayer in his cover photo — but the guts of the book have not changed: pithy capsule reviews of new and old movies, plus credits, format, and running time. Except for this year, when Leonard’s introduction starts with this horrible sentence: "This is the final edition of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide." Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene has this obituary for an old family friend.
"You know, I actually went through my mourning process when I saw this coming. That this book that has been a constant in my life since I was 17 years old (I'm now 63), that it might not be there anymore." — Leonard Maltin to R.H. Greene
Gather ’round, for the story of a birth and a death, a rise and a fall... of a time before everyone had a computer in their pocket. When data was something you had to look up by hand. And when those family arguments about whether Harvey Keitel is in "Taxi Driver" or who played Pippi Longstocking erupted at dinner time, nobody whipped out a phone or asked Siri.
They ran to the living room, grabbed the thickest paperback they were ever going to own from the top of a square TV, and said out loud, "Let's check with Leonard Maltin."
(A scan of the cover of Leonard Maltin's personal copy of the first edition of his guide, published in 1969.)
The book variously known as "TV Movies," "Movie and Video Guide," and "Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide," has been losing money the last few years, according to Maltin. But it was a yearly bestseller, taking off when Maltin started appearing on Entertainment Tonight.
Watch Leonard Maltin -- with dark hair in 1985! -- review "Fletch" on ET
"I got a call from my editor in New York," Maltin said. "He said, 'We want to put your name above the title, and your picture on the cover.' It was the most satisfying phone call that I've ever had, because it meant that my new, budding television career was having an impact on my longtime publishing career."
Its latest edition holds around 16,000 capsule film reviews, all of them edited by Maltin, many of them written by him. But reference books are buggy whips now, because they cost money to produce, you can't talk back to them, and they don't glow in your hand. The Encyclopedia Britannica itself — the gold standard of reference for over two centuries — ceased print publication in 2010, and not that many people noticed. It's no mean feat that Maltin's guide kept publishing for four more years with that kind of writing on the wall.
RELATED: Beverly Hills police defend arrest of black film producer
Still, the death of the guide wasn't unexpected. In 2011 he foretold its demise on Off-Ramp.
Rabe: How long can you keep doing a paper book guide to the movies when we’ve got apps that can do something like this same thing?
Maltin: We have an app, but I hope we can keep going for a while longer.
What Maltin didn’t expect was the outpouring of affection, and in some cases, real grief, that has followed his announcement.
Robert Abele reviews films for the L.A. Times. At the age of 12, he bought his first Maltin. That 1979 edition still occupies a place of honor in Abele's library. It’s worn but well-preserved, showing it’s been both used and loved. Today, Abele numbers Maltin among his professional acquaintances. For Abele, Maltin's congenial personality, coupled with his unaffected love of movies, makes the guide something special.
As a global guide to cinema in a time before Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, the Maltin Guide's influence on criticism was profound. As important was its impact on filmmakers, especially those who came of age in the 80s and 90s, when the guide was at its peak.
Will it matter that there was a Maltin Movie Guide? That it inspired dozens and maybe even hundreds of kids who went on to become actors, directors, costume designers, and film critics themselves? Sure. Especially if you believe in the idea of popular culture as an endless conversation between eras, ideas, and artifacts both tacky and profound.
Matt the mattress got recycled (and we've launched a #sadmattress Tumblr)
KPCC's Environment Correspondent Molly Peterson and Off-Ramp Producer Kevin Ferguson left a mattress in front of a house in Silver Lake. It was Thursday, August 14. Inside the mattress, we installed a GPS tracker. We named the mattress Matt, because that's what you do when you care that much about a mattress' whereabouts.
We wanted to see where Matt would go once we left him on the curb — would the city pick it up? Would an unlicensed refurbisher take it to their workshop and try to turn it into a new mattress? You can find out more about the story here.
On Monday afternoon around 12:07 p.m., we got a text alert from the GPS tracker: motion detected!
Soon after that, we followed the mattress through Silver Lake and down the 5 Freeway into Lincoln Heights. Its destination? The Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation's North Central District Yard on San Fernando road. We drove to the area to confirm — there's a few industrial and nonprofit buildings that might've caught Matt.
Sure enough, Matt was in the hands of the city. After a sheepish phone call to the Bureau of Sanitation, they graciously allowed us to retrieve the GPS tracker from inside Matt. The photo above was taken at about 7 in the morning Tuesday, just before workers with the city helped bring down the mattress from the top of Mount Trashpile.
Where does Matt go from here? According to the Bureau of Sanitation, he'll avoid the landfill for now and instead head to Blue Marble Materials — a mattress recycling factory in Commerce. From there, Matt can become any number of things: his springs can be melted down into scrap metal; the foam inside turned into insulation for carpet. But his days as a mattress are over.
This is not the end.
We've started a Tumblr showing sad, abandoned mattresses of California, and we want you to share your sad mattress photos with us. You can tweet at us using the hashtag #sadmattress or submit your own directly. We may even choose your found mattress to track next!
Orland bus crash: 25 survivors start college at Humboldt State University
Twenty-five survivors of April's horrific bus crash near Orland, Calif. — which killed five high-school students and injured 38 others on their way to tour Humboldt State University — have graduated from high school and are enrolling at Humboldt, which started its new year Monday, a university official said.
Each of the students is receiving a $1,000 scholarship, a memorial to the two chaperones and HSU admissions counselor who also lost their lives. The new Humboldt students are among the majority of Southern California students from that ill-fated bus tour who were offered a second chance to tour Humboldt's campus — and not by bus.
Steven Clavijo, who was raised in the Santa Clarita Valley, said he's still adjusting to life among the forests of Redwoods in Arcata, where it’s a lot colder and greener. “Here is just completely different," he said. "I mean, the trees and everything. It’s really amazing. It's more natural and organic in a way."
Just starting college is hard enough for most kids, but HSU's Adrienne Colegrove-Raymond said survivors have had to endure incredible emotional and physical pain. For his part, Clavijo said he doesn’t want to talk about the crash now.
“Many of them have been in physical therapy most of the summer," she said. "They have been in counseling. Many are still dealing with a lot of medical and dental appointments and still getting teeth repaired, skin grafts, rehabilitation to their bodies.”
Colegrove-Raymond runs HSU's "Preview-Plus” program, which helps low-income high school seniors travel to the campus for tours. These kids were part of the program. " I really worked to get those students on the bus, and so it's hard not to feel responsible, you know," she said. "I know I shouldn't feel that way, but that's how I feel."
The crash on April 10 involved a FedEx truck that slammed into the bus full of high school seniors from Southern California.
RELATED: Orland bus crash: NTSB releases preliminary report
Not all of the survivors are going to Humboldt. Miles Hill, a 19-year-old from L.A.'s Mount Washington neighborhood, is going to San Francisco State University instead. "I probably would have liked Humboldt a lot more if it weren’t for the crash. That is what ruined going to Humboldt for me," he said.
Hill's injuries from the crash have healed for the most part, but he said that he still has nightmares and feels anxious about riding buses. Going to San Francisco State means he's closer to home and can aim for a fresh start.
“I would go up there being like Harry Potter, 'The boy who lived,' and it would be very difficult for me to get the college experience with everybody knowing, 'Oh, my god, it's Miles Hill,'" he said. "I feel like it would be genuinely hard to make friends if everybody knows who I am, and I didn’t want to deal with that.”
RELATED: California school bus crash survivor sues FedEx
Meanwhile at Humboldt, there are counselors on hand to support survivors. Colegrove-Raymond said they eventually want to make some kind of memorial on campus for the crash victims, but not yet. It's too soon.
“We’re trying to be respectful to the students because some of them are dealing with post traumatic stress syndrome and some things trigger these memories and we’re just trying not to put those students in that situation," she said.
She said they're pretty concerned with how the survivors will react on the one-year anniversary of the April crash.
For now, Clavijo is getting used to his dorm and walking up and down the many hills and stairs around campus.
“It’s insane. I mean by the end of this year, our legs are going to be so toned," he said.
Clavijo is studying film at Humboldt and wants to be a director. He gets the irony, considering he grew up less than 30 miles from Hollywood.
But he said he took the advice of a high school teacher and chose a college far away from home to get a new perspective. And, so far, he said he likes what he sees.
Meet the pair who ignite the Hollywood Bowl's fireworks show
Some come for the music, some for the picnic. But for many Angelenos, Summer at the Hollywood Bowl is all about the fireworks. Setting off fireworks to live music is a performance in itself — helmed by pyrotechnician Eric Elias and score reader Sara Hiner.
On a weekday night in Hollywood, Eric Elias and Sara Hiner rehearse their score: Aaron Copland's "Hoedown." Elias counts out loud, as each number signals when he'll push a button that fires off the fireworks with the music.
While Hiner marks the score, Elias works out the cues to go with the fireworks display he has in his head.
"That's 40... well, whenever he starts up again, that's 41," Elias says to Hiner.
Eric's remote firing device is about the size of a desk phone. It’s linked to a bigger, refrigerator-sized box backstage that blasts the fireworks skyward. It's all controlled by a red button, of course.
Hiner, a classically trained bassoonist, both reads the score and watches the conductor in order to call out the cues. But with live music, there can always be surprises.
"I've sort of jokingly had this argument with a few conductors over the years," says Elias. "No matter what they tell you, if he has one cup of coffee for rehearsal and two cups of coffee before the show, they play faster."
That's where Hiner comes in.
"I can follow the conductor. Where it gets interesting is where we bring in collaboration concerts. When rock and roll bands come in, and somebody decides to take an extra solo, or forgets a line, or completely changes what they're doing midstream," says Hiner, "then we have to get a little creative."
Hiner's debut as a score reader was like a scene from a movie. It was during a 2008 Bowl show. Hiner was backstage, managing the musicians for the Los Angeles Philharmonic when Elias came in, panicking. The original score reader had just gotten sick and Elias scrambled for a replacement.
In a hurry, Hiner started learning the entire score to "Not the Messiah," a musical by comedian Eric Idle.
"It's not something that's in the standard repertoire for musicians, so I was pretty much sight-reading," Hiner says. "And I guess the closest thing you can describe is stage fright."
Hiner and Elias have been working side by side ever since. "The score reader I work with is invaluable to us being able to get the job done that we do," says Elias. "There are no computers involved — it's my score reader and I, and she keeps me on track."
Because fireworks only get deployed once, Elias designs every program completely in his head. And he looks forward to watching the show as much as anyone else.
"For most of the concerts, other than "1812," that night, the entire audience, along with me are seeing that fireworks show to that music for the very first time in the world anywhere — except in my head," he says. "So our work literally goes up in smoke."
If you want to see the fireworks for yourself, there's still a chance: the Los Angeles Philharmonic will perform Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring Suite" and more at the Hollywood Bowl this Thursday evening, Sept. 4.
New galleries highlight the 'whippersnapper' part of the Huntington
Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele reviews the new show "More American Art," shown in the new galleries at the Huntington.
The sergeant in his sun-faded uniform raises the sharply bayoneted World War II rifle against a black, stormy sky. But this is no recruiting poster — the man’s dark, gnarled, aged face is deeply seamed, as resigned as it is hardened to the soul-destroying fact of combat.
(Larny Mack/Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens)
“The Soldier” is just one of the astonishments at the Huntington’s new show. It’s brought the American 20th century to the traditional home of “The Blue Boy” and its hallowed halls of classic European Old Masters.
"Blue Boy," a Gutenberg Bible — that’s how most of us still think about that unique culture and garden spot. But almost from its start, the Huntington has included American art, albeit from colonial and early post-colonial times. Gilbert Stuart’s Washington portraits, antique silver tankards and furniture, and some fine Copleys and Benjamin Wests are familiar if ancient Americana. But now there’s 5,400 square feet of new galleries dedicated to 20th century art of the USA.
“Soldier” is an extraordinary painting by Charles White, an African-American artist few Americans have heard of, but it’s not the only such work. Just as impressive, and from the same period, is a gorgeous sculptured screen by versatile African-American artist Sargent Claude Johnson. It hangs on the back wall of the new hall, but it used to mask a pipe organ in the state school for the blind in Berkeley. At one point, the three-part creation was sold for $164. It’s valued in the hundreds of thousands now, and is worth the trip to see all by itself.
Johnson and White’s works hang in illustrious company. There’s some splendid stuff by Reginald Marsh, like his wondrous steam locomotive portrait — a study in fresco-like surface textures that is also anatomically correct, so you could almost re-invent the steam engine from its details.
By contrast, there’s “Summer Fantasy,” a joyous sunset landscape reverie as far as possible from the brutal boxing pictures that made artist G. W. Bellows famous. George Luks’ “The Breaker Boys” shows another form of brutality: children working in the coal mine, sorting the rocks from the coal.
And what is this? An entire room of 1960s modern icon Robert Rauschenberg’s work? How did this happen? Curator Jessica Todd Smith explains, "As we've begun to dip a toe into the Post-War period, we can tell so many more stories with the American collection in the galleries. We're the sort of young whippersnapper part of the Huntington collections."
Smith says that, back when Rauschenberg was in the Navy at the end of World War II, he made a visit to the Huntington that first exposed him to great art and he decided to become a painter. The room contains a wide variety of his work, but it is also a form of tribute to the deep and terrific experience and influence that the gallery has brought to millions of visitors over so many years.
Cypress Park evangelist William Matelyan hit by car, killed
UPDATE: We recently learned that William Matelyan died in July after being hit by a car on North Figueroa Street in Cypress Park; he was 84. LA DOT was planning to improve pedestrian and bike safety on that stretch of road, before the project was stopped by LA City Councilman Gil Cedillo.
Matelyan tragically died at 12:30pm on July 22, 2014, after complications resulting from being hit by an automobile earlier that morning. Matelyan had just gotten off the phone with local pastor Jesse Rosas prior to his accident. ... Rosas estimated during his podium time speech at the (memorial) service that Matelyan had crossed Figueroa for his morning ritual of coffee at the Yum Yum Donuts near Avenue 26 when he was accidentally hit. -- LA1 News
Here's Jerry Gorin's piece on Matelyan from September, 2012:
There are always three cars parked at the intersection of Cypress Avenue and Figueroa, along with a companion RV parked at the Union 3 auto body shop on the corner. Each vehicle is covered bumper to bumper in bible verse and posters of lions and eagles. There are American and Israeli flags waving over the windows, and newspaper clippings from the Vatican. "Repent," appears over and over, "for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." This is the home and headquarters of William Matelyan, a spirited Korean War veteran who's on a crusade to save mankind.
Matelyan was born Jewish. His parents were Austrian immigrants who changed their names and fled Nazi Europe. They settled in Philadelphia, re-opened their old tailoring business, and tried to ignore their Jewish background.
"My parents told me, ‘Don't tell anyone you're a Jew’," says Matelyan. "And soon I said, ‘Why? I'm a man, and a Jew. What's the difference?’"
When asked if he considers himself Jewish now, Matelyan answers, "Yeah, in fact a completed Jew. A messianic Jew.
"I was (once) a wicked person. I went to Korea, to fight in the Korean War. I was drinking at that time. I had Canadian Club; I took about one third, and I hit the ground and started to vomit. I heard a voice say, ‘You're going to go to war’. I said, ‘I'm in one.’ And God says, ‘This is for the truth. You're going to work for me. You're going to take my word out there and get killed, the same as you do for America.' Matelyan then sings the Battle Hymn of the Republic as he relishes the memory.
After the war Matelyan started looking for work as a house painter, and he and his wife and children moved to LA, where there was painting work year-round. He would end up working for 35 years as the Painting Supervisor at East LA College, where he also gave informal music lessons to students. When he retired he could no longer afford his rent, so he moved out.
"I lived in Elysian Valley," he says, "and I finally moved out of a rented house into an RV. I was parking the RV on the street, and the city was going to penalize me, either by putting me in jail or a $1000 fine. They didn't carry the threat out, but I didn't let them. I went over and told Carlos, and he said he had a spot for me. So he let me come and park here."
About three years ago, Carlos Cruz, the owner of Union 3 auto body shop, let Matelyan move his RV onto his lot permanently, and that's where it stands today. Cruz and his workers makes a big racket everyday, just 20 feet from the RV, but Matelyan doesn’t let it bother him. He's made it as cozy as possible.
"We got Gardenias, Chile plants, tomatoes – an apricot tree from a seed. This is like the Garden of Eden. And the word of God is out here for everyone to see. It's free!"
On the other side of the RV, his messianic clunkers are parked right on Figueroa Street.
"I move them around, I keep them here. It's a moving, preaching, word of God. I park at IHOP and hand out gospel tracks, because that's the menu."
Matelyan tries to spread the word as much as he can, but lately he's been disappointed with his audience. He blames poor political leadership, and Americans' ongoing obsession with money.
Still, he believes that when the time comes and the pressure builds, most people will repent.
Russ Parsons: How to throw a BBQ and not kill your partner
With Labor Day — and Labor Day barbecues — fast approaching, we turn to LA Times food editor Russ Parsons for help. Not just help cooking f0od; you can find that in any book. But help doing something much harder: throwing a party you can actually enjoy yourself ... without harming/killing your partner/spouse.
A few years ago, I invited Russ to my patio after throwing a party at which, I confess, I got overwhelmed and said something nasty to my husband, Julian. "The first thing you have to remember," Russ admonished me, "is why are you doing this? You're not doing this to show people what a wonderful cook you are. You're doing this to get people you like together, and break bread with them. So you plan your menu accordingly; stuff you know you can do."
RELATED: Parsons says don't grill or squish your burger
In a nutshell, he says, if you're going to grill food at your party, prepare the other things in advance. And don't attempt some fancy dish that will keep you in the kitchen. Chill out. There's much more in our interview (listen above), but Russ also gave us a recipe for tri-tip, which I can personally attest is delicious. And I can also attest that at the BBQ where he served it, he was present and happy and did not seemingly annoy his lovely wife Kathy.
Russ Parsons' Ultimate tri-tip
(Total time: 50 minutes, plus at least 1 hour marinating time)
Servings: 4 to 6
Note: Oak chips are available at Barbecues Galore stores.
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup oil
4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 (2- to 2 1/2 -pound) tri-tip roast, with thin fat layer
- In a blender, grind the garlic, oil, salt and black peppercorns to a coarse paste.
- Pat the tri-tip dry with a paper towel and score the fat layer with a sharp knife, cutting through the fat, but not through the meat. Place the meat in a sealable plastic bag, scrape in the garlic paste, press out the air and seal tightly. Massage the meat with the garlic paste until it is evenly coated. Set aside at room temperature for at least 1 hour. If you are going to marinate more than 2 hours, refrigerate the meat but remove it 1 hour before cooking to allow it to come to room temperature.
- About 1 hour before serving, start a fire on the grill using 1 chimney full of charcoal briquettes, about 50. Put one-fourth pound of oak or hickory chips in a bowl and cover them with water. Place an inverted plate on top of the chips to keep them submerged. When the flames have subsided and the coals are covered with white ash, dump the chimney into a mound on one side of the grill. Drain the wood chips and scatter them across the top of the coals.
- Sear the fat side of the tri-tip, cooking directly over the flames with the grill lid off. This will only take 3 or 4 minutes. Don't worry if there is a little char; that is almost necessary in order to get a good crust. When the fat side is seared, turn the tri- tip and sear the lean side directly over the coals. This will take another 3 or 4 minutes; again, don't worry about a little char.
- When the lean side is seared, move the tri-tip to the cool side of the grill and replace the lid, with the vents open. Cook to the desired doneness, checking the temperature of the meat every 4 or 5 minutes. It will take 20 to 25 minutes for 125 degrees, which is on the rare side of medium-rare, 25 to 30 minutes for 135 degrees (on the medium side). Cooking times will vary according to the type of grill and temperature of the fire.
- Remove the roast to a platter and set aside for 10 minutes to finish cooking and for the juices to settle. Carve the tri-tip fairly thinly (at most one-fourth-inch thick), against the grain and with the knife held at an angle to give wide slices. Spoon the carving juices over the meat.
'The Simpsons' inspires KPCC's Adolfo Guzman-Lopez to ask, 'What's in a name'?
A funny thing happened to KPCC's Adolfo Guzman-Lopez a few weeks ago that's made him think a lot about his name, how he pronounces it, and why he hasn't watched "The Simpsons" since it was on "The Tracey Ullman Show."
It all started on a Monday, when I got an email from KPCC anchor Hettie Lynn Hurtes.
"Did you watch 'The Simpsons' this past weekend? Guess what, you were mentioned," she said.
I thought it was spam, but then two more people told me I should check it out.
The episode is about Lisa Simpson running for second grade class rep against bilingual, bicultural, super-popular, Isabel Gutierrez. She's dressed in a business suit, and the kids love it when she switches from flawless English to Spanish.
Here's a clip. Skip ahead to 7:00 to hear my name:
They're both introduced at the last debate: "Please welcome Lisa Simpson, and Isabel — Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Gutierrez."
I didn't ask for it, but, yeah, I'll gush. Look at me, I'm a pop culture reference!
I'm totally flattered, but for a moment, I thought, really, "Is that how I'll be remembered?" After thousands of radio reports over 13 years at KPCC. Is that what'll be on my tombstone, a phonetic spelling of my name? Whaaa?
"It's the only thing we as radio reporters or hosts have are our names, nobody can see our faces," said smarty-pants Rico Gagliano from Dinner Party Download.
"Especially for public radio, which people keep on all day long, we're all basically interchangeable voices for people; the only thing that makes us stand out is our name," he said.
For the record, I was born in Mexico. Spanish was my first language, then I learned English when we moved to San Diego when I was 7 years old.
My name's been a battleground for my mom. When she split up with my dad, she officially changed my name to "Adolfo Lopez": That's her last name. She was a stickler for language. When I was growing up, she was always aware of how people's opinion changed based on how you spoke.
On a visit to San Diego, I asked her what she thought if I Anglicized my name.
"You'd be a faker," she said in Spanish.
She was even more of a nationalist when I was a kid. She feels strongly about it, but she has arthritis now, so she won't back it up like she would in the old days. Now she's an American citizen, votes and gushes about the African-American ladies she exercises with at the Y.
Hey, speaking of names, have you ever repeated your name over and over again, so many times, in your head that it lost its meaning? It's kind of a mind-expanding exercise.
Lots of other broadcasters in English media keep the Spanish pronunciation of their names. You've heard Maria Hinojosa for years, right? And last month, I caught an anchor I hadn't seen before, Rosa Flores, on CNN saying her name in Spanish. And it wasn't on CNN Latino.
Then there's Luis Torres. He's an institution in LA radio news. His first big story was the massive 1968 East L.A. high school walkouts that he covered as editor of the Lincoln High School "Railsplitter."
In 1980, just out of journalism graduate school, he got a job at KNX.
"I'd get letters from people saying, 'Why do you say your name that way? This is America.' And, almost inevitably, they would write, 'Why don't you go back where you came from?''' he said.
Well, he came from Lincoln Heights, about 10 miles away from the radio station.
There's a history to the hate letters he got. Many people remember Bill Dana's "Jose Jimenez" as a high point for the comedian's popularity but a low point in ethnic perceptions of Spanish-speaking Americans.
Even in 2014, with so many Spanish surnames in politics, sports and entertainment, it still grates on the ears of some people.
Here's part of a voice mail I got recently after a story I did about the high community college enrollment rates of Latinos attending high-performing schools:
"This poor Latino, no his mommy won't help him, and the whites go to four year colleges but the Mexicans don't. You know what, boo-hoo!" he said.
Which brings me back to my name appearing on "The Simpsons." I had UCLA Chicano studies professor Marissa Lopez watch it.
"How bizzare!" she said.
I told her about Bill Dana, Luis Torres and came up with some weird theory to tie it all back to "The Simpsons." She's a real academic, so she saw that it was all half-baked. But the conversation did remind her of a joke.
"Have you heard that riddle, 'What do you call a Mexican astronaut? An astronaut, you racist!'" she said.
Marissa Lopez is doing some big thinking these days using philosophical models to look at Latinidad, Chicanidad and shifting identity in the not too distant future, when the mainstream point of reference is no longer white. Hey, sort of like Isabel Gutierrez in "The Simpsons."
I asked John Rabe about it, and he said, "It's radio. It doesn't really matter how you say it. What matters is that people remember it."
Which they do. So you'll have to click on the audio for this story on the left side, to hear me say, "For Off-Ramp, I'm Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, 89.3 KPCC."
Matt Sharp on the Rental's first album in 15 years: Return to Alphaville
In 1994, Matt Sharp was in his mid 20s playing bass in an Los Angles band called Weezer. They’d just recorded their major label debut, and once released the album would quickly become one of the biggest rock records of the 90s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHQqqM5sr7g
Sharp stuck with the band for just one more album before he left to focus on his own project—the Rentals. The Rentals 1995 debut—return of the Rentals—is a sunny power pop album that featured a lot of vintage analog keyboards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi-H6ohY37k
The Rentals have put out a steady, solid stream of work since then, and on August 26, their newest album—Lost in Alphaville—comes out on Polyvinyl. The new record also features contributions from members of the Black Keys, Lucius, and Ozma.
"Thought of Sound" is a track from the new album:
https://soundcloud.com/polyvinyl-records/the-rentals-thought-of-sound/s-tHmwo
Off-Ramp Producer Kevin Ferguson talked with Sharp in his home in Los Angeles.
The Rentals are also playing live on September 5 at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, and in Pomona on September 7.