A new album from the late oddball singer Tiny Tim, who was, among many other things, an astounding musicologist, with a focus on obscure Tin Pan Alley songs. ... A new investigation by NBC-4 raises serious questions about possible collusion between the owners of a kids camp and a state agency that oversees toxic sites. ... RIP Keith Mitchell, famous drummer for Mazzy Star, but also the "Buddy Rich of punk rock." (That's him far left in Lynda Burdik photo of The Romans)
Check out the zine collection at the Long Beach Public Library. No, really. You can check them out!
The glued-together and handcrafted mementos of modest circulation known as zines will be celebrated at the sixth annual Los Angeles Zine Fest next Sunday.
Zine culture in Southern California is thriving and growing thanks to grassroots efforts from local zinesters who throw these festivals as a way to buy, sell, and trade zines. Since the first LA Zine fest in 2012, similar events have popped up in the Inland Empire, Orange County, San Diego, and Long Beach.
But there is one place in Southern California where you can flip through zines and take them home without having to wait for a zine festival, and all you need is a library card.
In 2015, Ziba Zehdar-Gazdecki was hired by the Long Beach Public Library as a senior librarian for community services. She worked in the makers space on the bottom floor of the Main Library in downtown Long Beach, a studio that allows visitors to create, build, and design various things with the help of tools like 3D printers, glue-sticks, and rulers.
“Part of the maker space monthly programs was a zine workshop,” Ziba says. “We wanted to bring the collection to the public eye and explain what a zine is. Now you can check out zines with your own library card – 25 items at a time, for three weeks at a time. We have almost 1,000 zines ordered by title. In a way we are collecting Long Beach history.”
Browsing the collection at the library, there are zines on almost anything you can think of. “Subject Perspective of Disease” is a surreal zine about absurd lyrics, “Louder than Bombas” explores the Raza identity and its obsession with Morrissey and the Smiths, and a vibrantly colored comic zine titled “The Pretty Ugly Fish Club" is about ... well, you figure it out.
Long before she was a zine librarian Ziba was a student at Long Beach Polytechnic High School. Her friend Reena Rosales distributed a self-published work titled “Luna in Tuna” in the hallways of the school— and that’s how Ziba fell in love with the ephemeral medium. The zine had recipes, movie reviews, and plenty of knee-slapping jokes from students who attended the school. It took more than 10 years until Ziba started making zines of her own.
“I do a zine called ZibraPizza, which I started three years ago with my now husband,” Ziba says. “He is pizza and I’m zebra because my name Ziba sounds a lot like zebra. I started collecting images of zebras in discarded books, and I’ll cut it out and rip it out to put in our next zine. My husband does more poetry… he will take songs and make them about pizza.”
The latest volume of ZebraPizza was released on Ziba’s wedding in January of this year; it’s a 24-page zine, which also served as a program guide for the celebration.
The word zine is a broad term used to describe all kinds of periodicals that are of special interest, hand-made, and of low-circulation. Ziba says the literary magazines created by Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century can be considered some of the first zines. These short-lived mementos can often be found in library archives , but it's rare for them to find life on the circulation shelves due to their flimsy nature.
“Zines are more prevalent in academic libraries and archives,” Ziba says. “You can do research for music and different decades to see what the people were really talking about. Those are reference and you can’t check out. We could get donations of special zines like that too, but I think we would add them and let them circulate…We are the only California public library that has a zine collection catalogued that you can take home with your library card.”
If you have a zine you’d like to donate to the Long Beach Public Library Ziba is always happy to take any donations. This is your chance to have your temporary mementos preserved at a public library for years, decades, maybe even centuries.
The Los Angeles Zine Fest is next Sunday at the California Market Center in Downtown. Keep and eye out for Ziba at the festival; she'll be there to purchase new zines for the growing collection at LBPL.
Before Mazzy Star, the late Keith Mitchell was 'the Buddy Rich of punk rock' in LA groups
Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with Juan Gomez, a founding member of The Romans, a "Pasadena supergroup" with Keith Mitchell as the drummer.
"Our hearts are broken. We have lost the much beloved Keith Mitchell, a very talented and amazing drummer that we have had the privilege to work with for many years, he will live in all of our hearts forever. We'll miss you Big Fella." -- Hope Sandoval & David Roback of Mazzy Star
Long before he was "Big Fella" to the members of Mazzy Star, drummer Keith Mitchell, who died Sunday after a very short illness, was "Big Beat" to the members of Monitor and The Romans, two important, adventurous bands on the LA scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Juan Gomez, guitarist for The Romans, Human Hands, and Billy Wisdom, remembers when Mitchell joined Monitor: "I remember Michael (Uhlenkott, co-founder of Monitor) telling me the next day ... I said, 'How's the drummer search going?' And he said, 'Oh, we found this real oddball guy. He's just got all kinds of character.' 'How's his playing,' I asked? 'Oh, I don't know,' Michael said. 'But he's in the band.' ... And he turned out to be a hell of a drummer."
Mitchell, Gomez says, "took music very seriously, and his ability was such that he could fit into this band like Monitor, who were doing polyrhythmic even written-out compositions," then move to The Romans, who started as a thrash punk band" and morphed into what was perhaps the first alt-country band. "He was like the Buddy Rich of punk rock. He was incredibly capable, and loved so many different types of music." His skill, Gomez says, gave the rest of the band the confidence to try whatever they wanted because Mitchell had their back(beat).
In Mazzy Starr, Gomez says, he brought a "steady sense of minimalism and pulse, and knowing where to fit and where not to play. He left a lot of space in that band for Hope Sandoval's haunting voice, and never overplayed. It takes a lot of restraint for somebody of that capability. He was a rock star and he was in his place, behind the drum kit. That's where he was meant to be. Rest in peace, Keith."
Some details on Keith's career, via Michael Uhlenkott:
Monitor was formed in 1978 with Jeff Rankin as drummer. He was replaced by Keith in 1979. Monitor's last show was in 1982. Here are some of the other bands Keith was in: a country bar band (can't remember the name), Billy Wisdom, Buffy’s Ghost, Clay Allison (pre-Opal), Debt of Nature, Green on Red, The Hesitations, Hyena, Johanna Went, Miranda Lee Richards, Opal, The Tikis.
Listen to the audio player for much more, including Juan's hand-picked Romans song that highlight's Mitchell's ability.
Is this Tiny Tim's final album? New Burger Records cassette orchestrates Tiny's home tape
It's a perfect storm of anachronisms. Burger Records, the Fullerton label, just released an album from the early 1970s ... of Tinpan Alley songs ... on cassette ... recorded in the early 1970s ... by Tiny Tim.
It's called "Tiny Tim's America," and its heart is an eerie tour of obscure music Tiny Tim recorded on a cheap cassette recorder in his hotel room. "Most of these tunes," Tiny says on the tape, "You have probably never heard before." It's by musical pioneers, he says, recorded "anywhere from about 1902 to 1915 or 16." Then, before he strikes the first chord on his ukulele: "These are not imitations, but spirits as I feel they are living in me."
The tape eventually made its way to Justin Martell, author of Tiny's exhaustive biography, "Eternal Troubadour: The Improbable Life of Tiny Tim," who says the tape is "an assortment of songs popularized by Tiny's favorite artists from that era -- you know, Henry Burr, Billy Murray, Ada Jones, Irving Kaufman, Charles Harrison. He runs the gamut from hapa haole Hawaiian songs like "O' Brien Is Tryin' To Learn to Talk Hawaiian" to love ballads to ethnic songs," like "The Leader Of The German Band" ... some of which are not exactly polite today.
CHECK OUT the source material - UCSB has archived 10,000 wax cylinders
Tiny's old producer, Richard Barone, and Tiny's cousin, Eddie Rabin, added orchestration to make an album Martell told me he's pretty sure Tiny would have liked. (It came out first on vinyl, on Martell's Ship To Shore PhonoCo.)
Martell won't reveal who gave him the tape. But when he heard it for the first time? "I thought it was amazing, because there were some songs that I'd heard him do elsewhere, but this tape was very unique because it contained a lot of songs that I hadn't heard him do on live shows or on other demo tapes ... completely unique to this tape. Tiny is also in really fine voice; I think he sounds great."
LISTEN: Chris Greenspon reports on Burger Records' and the unlikely cassette resurgence
Tiny Tim was certainly a weird dude. He was married (twice) on national TV. He liked to wear Depends. He wrote and performed a highly offensive song about AIDS. But he was an astounding musicologist. "And it's important to recognize,' Martell says, "that in the pre-Internet age, Tiny Tim was almost a walking encyclopedia of this type of music. He had all of this information in his head about these songs that probably otherwise would have been forgotten."
Listen to the audio player for much more of my interview with Justin Martell, and to hear some of the original cassette that he helped turn into what might be Tiny Tim's final album.
Off-Ramp Recommendation: Dark Nights returns to L.A. Live
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If there isn’t a game at Staples Center, and there are no concerts booked at the Novo or Microsoft Theater on a Friday evening, that can only mean one thing: it’s time for another Downtown Dark Night at L.A. Live.
It’s a rare occasion for L.A. Live venues to not have a single event scheduled, especially on a Friday evening. When that happens it calls for a celebration – happy hour style.
This Friday, about a dozen restaurants at L.A. Live will be serving up food and drinks from a specialty $5 menu all night long.
Start with dessert by filling up a froyo cup to the brim at Red Mango. Grab some grub at Cleo’s if you're feeling modern Mediterranean cuisine. Then go barhopping and sip specialty Dark Night priced cocktails at Wolfgang Puck, Rosa Mexicano, and Rock’N Fish.
Other food options using the Dark Nights menu include The Mixing Room, Smash Burger, and Live Basil Pizza.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgPh6V10kPM&index=5&list=PLx0KVCx1fwt3ixmxPJrj1Ehlpiki8CSwX
Once you satisfy your inner foodie, visit the L.A. Live quad for an array of free entertainment, including local bands, dance groups, and DJ’s.
It wouldn’t be a party without jugglers, contortionists, and stilt walkers. But the main attraction and staple of the event are the local artists who are invited to paint murals in the heart of L.A. Live.
Downtown Dark Nights runs 6 p.m. to midnight on May 19th at L.A. Live. The event is free, but bring cash for happy hour food and booze at select locations.
NBC4: Did kids camp owner and a state agency collude to whitewash contamination risk?
Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with NBC4 investigative reporter Joel Grover about the latest installment of LA's Nuclear Secret, an 8-part series on chemical and nuclear contamination from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley.
"It seemed not really a technical analysis but rather a piece of propaganda to provide cover for the operators of the camp," said Dan Hirsch, Director of UC Santa Cruz's Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy. "They ignore large amounts of data that show contamination." -- LA's Nuclear Secret
NBC4's Joel Grover has spent the last couple years looking into the ramifications of one of the most troubling stories in LA's history: the near meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in 1959 and the way industry and government covered up the extent of the contamination.
The latest installment in the series looks at communication between the California Department of Toxic Substance Control and the Brandeis Bardin Institute, which runs Camp Alonim, a very popular kids' camp near the field lab.
Grover says, "We filed a public records request for all email communication between the owners of the camp and the DTSC, and what we got back was email correspondence, the camp saying 'we're going through a PR crisis because of the NBC reports; we need you to make a statement that our camp is safe.' It's highly unusual for a state agency to give cover to a private landowner."
Watch Part 8 of LA's Nuclear Secret
Grover sites sources within the DTSC who say the agency routinely massages data, and scientists who say a recent white paper giving the all-clear to the camp is rife with problems, including false claims and outdated safety standards.
Why would American Jewish University, which owns the institute and the camp, be so worried? Grover says it goes back to 1995, when the institute settled a lawsuit with field lab owner Boeing, and in exchange agreed to indemnify Boeing. "So if anyone were to turn around and sue the camp," Grover says, "claiming contamination made my kid sick, the camp is on the hook for those lawsuits."