Weatherman Jeff Masters of Weather Underground will discuss what's causing the high temperatures in California as the East Coast prepares for another polar vortex. We'll review new music albums including one featuring acts from around the world re-interpreting Bob Dylan. Also, Fronteras Desk reports on a Phoenix development that would bridge the gap between rich and poor. Finally, photographer Henry Diltz shows how to keep rockin' into his seventies.
California drought and the polar vortex: 'New normal' by 2030?
A second polar vortex is bearing down on the eastern United States in almost as many weeks and is expected to stick around until the end of the month.
Meanwhile here in Southern California, residents are grappling with what it means to be back in an official drought and wondering why it is so hot...in January.
Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for the Weather Underground, joins Take Two to explain our weird weather.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
On why it is so hot here in California in January:
"Our weather is controlled by the jet stream, which is that band of high altitude winds that blows west to east across North America. The jet stream acts as the boundary between warm air to the south and cold air to the north.
Normally when it’s over California blowing through the center of the country you get sort of average conditions. But what’s happened is the jet now has this unusually far northward penetrating bulge over the western U.S. and a compensating dip over the eastern U.S. So it’s cold over the eastern U.S. and very warm over the western U.S."
On whether or not this weather is a surprise since climate change scientists have predicted it:
"Not really. We are in the midst of a 14-year mega drought in the Southwest including California."
On if this is the worst drought ever:
"It’s certainly a top three drought going back over 130 years. Mega droughts occur in the Southwest U.S. naturally every 400 or so years. It has happened before, it will happen again, it seems to be happening now."
On if this is the new normal:
"If we look at climate models they say this will be the new normal about in the year 2030 and it will be considered a very, very wet year by the year 2100.
"We’re talking Sahara desert levels of moisture by the end of the century and it’s going to be really hard to maintain our agriculture and cities with that kind of moisture."
Los Angeles artist brings immigrant labor into focus
Inside his West Hollywood apartment, artist Ramiro Gomez paints freestyle on a large scrap of cardboard.
“I do like the fact that I’m not planning it out,” Gomez, 27, said. “I’m just literally going with it."
A life-sized image quickly emerges of a brown-skinned man with a mustache and shadows for eyes.
This figure of a domestic worker is one of many Gomez has painted over the last several years — pool cleaners, nannies, the people who make many an affluent L.A. household hum.
“We look at them as just a worker but beyond that they have so much more to offer,” Gomez said. “They’re much more than a gardener. They have friends, families and loved ones.”
He added: “I’m trying to ask you look into them a little more.”
Gomez knows the subject. His parents are blue-collar Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. as teenagers. Mother Maria Elena is a school custodian, and his father, Ramiro Gomez, Sr., drives a truck for Costco.
A talented soccer player growing up in San Bernardino, Gomez thought he was headed for a career as a professional athlete. But given his affliction with the bleeding disorder hemophilia, he struggled with constant injuries and long recoveries.
He tried his hand at art school – he had always been talented – but it wasn’t the right fit, and he dropped out. In the same year, his beloved grandmother died. The confident, composed young man began to feel untethered.
“I wasn’t getting anything out of my life at that point,” Gomez said. “I was just so lost.”
His partner, a film editor, told him about a family in the Hollywood Hills that needed a live-in nanny for their baby twins. Gomez, who's always liked children and used to coach youth soccer, agreed to take the job. Little did he know it would change him as an artist.
Investigative series examines operation and regulation of casino bus lines
With the recent local tour bus crashes that have killed two and injured dozens, there are many questions surrounding how these vehicles operate and how they are regulated on the state and federal level.
KPCC Business Reporter Ben Bergman and KPCC Investigative Producer Karen Foshay joined Take Two to discuss their upcoming series on these buses.
The series begins Wednesday, January 22.
Album cover photographer Henry Diltz still rockin' into his 70s
Henry Diltz's photos have graced hundreds of album covers, from James Taylor's pensive gaze on Sweet Baby James to The Eagles dressed as outlaws for their album Desperado. The California Report's Diane Bock brings us this profile of the photographer who is still behind the lens, nearly 50 years on.
It’s opening night of an exhibition featuring the work of photographer Henry Diltz at the Morrison Hotel Gallery. It is located just off the Sunset Strip, in the lobby of the Sunset Marquis Hotel. The crowd jostles for space in front of instantly recognizable photographs of Jim Morrison, Keith Richards and Neil Young.
Diana Levinson grew up in nearby Hollywood in the 1970s. “I can smell the era. Incense, leather, suede fringe," she said, smiling. "Henry did capture every essence of these rock 'n' rollers, and then some.”
In the middle of the crowd, the 75-year-old Diltz, a partner in the gallery, is busy talking with fans of his work and signing copies of his book of black-and-white photos, titled "Unpainted Faces."
“I went to college to be a psychologist,” Diltz said. “Before that, I wanted to be a zookeeper. And then I became a musician, and that segued into photography. So you can’t plan those things, you know.” He laughs.
In the early '60s, when folk music was all the rage, Diltz was a member of a group called the Modern Folk Quartet. He sang and played the banjo. He picked up his first camera while on tour with the band.
Diltz tells the story: “I took pictures on the road, and when we got back to L.A. we developed the film and it was slide film, and I said, 'Oh, let's have a slideshow.' And all my friends came, and we projected these pictures on the wall, and it was mind-blowing! It was, 'God, I can't even believe the pictures shimmering there on the wall!' And I thought, 'Man I've got to take more of these, so we can have more slideshows.'”
Diltz was living in Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon, home to many of the musicians in the burgeoning Southern California folk-rock scene. He began to photograph his friends and neighbors: Mama Cass, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne.
Diltz recalled the time fondly. “It was such a magic atmosphere there. Totally out in the country, with coyotes and owls and raccoons, you know, and a distant guitar playing.”
In 1969, Diltz, working in partnership with art director Gary Burden, photographed his friends David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash on the porch of an old bungalow in West Hollywood. That image was used on the cover of their self-titled debut album, which went on to sell more than 4 million copies.
“An English musician once told me, he said, 'I don’t know how many hours we stared at those guys sitting on that couch, trying to figure out what it felt like to be in California.' "
The album covers by Diltz and Burden evoked an intimate, casual aesthetic, a big departure from the usual stiff studio shots of the time. Part of their method was to get out of town and away from distractions. They’d go to places like Big Sur or the Mojave Desert.
“They weren’t just photo sessions,” Diltz said. “We actually went somewhere, and did something, and kind of had a good time. Stuff happened, you know?”
Stuff was happening, and Diltz experienced the era with an all-access pass. He was the official photographer at Woodstock and at the Monterey Pop Festival. He also spent some time in Hollywood on the set of the television show "The Monkees."
“I can’t remember who introduced us. He just started to hang out on the set in those early days of Monkeedom,” said actor Micky Dolenz, drummer and vocalist for the band. “In those days especially, photographers would stage moments. Hey, be funny, be zany, you know? And he just captured moments.”
“I sit down very quietly and wait until they're not looking at me anymore, and then I can take the pictures of what's going on,” Diltz explained. “So sometimes I say I think of myself as the Jane Goodall of rock 'n" roll photography!”
He recently returned from photographing Ringo Starr in Las Vegas. Diltz is also the subject of an upcoming documentary. He continues to shoot album covers and perform with old friends from the Modern Folk Quartet. And he always keeps a small Canon camera in his pocket.
Scientists to test kelp for radioactivity from Fukushima nuclear plant
We're going off shore for this next story - deep into kelp forests.
These are canopies of seaweed that provide habitat to dozens of fish, urchins, sharks and crabs.
You'll find them up and down the west coast.
Starting this year, scientists will test the kelp forests for signs of radioactivity.
It's predicted to reach our shores this year from the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.
Professor Steven Manley teaches biology at Cal State Long Beach and he's heading up this project - called Kelp Watch.
Saving the coral reefs
Climate change has been hard on the areas of the ocean that house coral reefs. All over the world reefs and some areas are experiencing huge die-offs.
Now scientists are looking for new ways to preserve them.
Mary Hagedorn is a marine biologist with the Smithsonian Institution, and she has pioneered a method for saving coral reefs.
San Francisco's smallest gallery invites patrons to take a peek
The San Francisco art scene is pretty huge, but in the Mission District there's one gallery that is decidedly smaller. So small that it can't actually host visitors. The collection can only be viewed in one pretty unusual manner. Reporter Aaron Mendelson has the story.
Among the art galleries in San Francisco’s Mission District, Savernack Street is different. It’s a few blocks from the main thoroughfares, features just one piece of art per month and doesn’t allow patrons to come inside. At Savernack Street, visitors can view the art only through a peephole.
That peephole is at the center of a light green door. The door sits on a quiet stretch of 24th Street, right next to Highway 101, and it can be easy to miss. To peer inside, passers-by flip on a light switch next to the door.
“When we see peepholes on doors, we assume that they’re going in the other direction,” said Carrie Katz, who owns and curates the gallery. She says her gallery attracts the attention of people walking their dogs, or coming and going from a nearby hospital. Those viewers “have either the thrill or anxiety of being a voyeur,” she says.
A recent Savernack Street exhibit featured a work by photographer Jo Babcock. At the opening on a sunny Saturday afternoon, people chatted on the street in front of the gallery. They sipped tea, snacked on pretzels and took turns looking in at Babcock’s installation.
His exhibit recalls photography darkrooms, with a red light, ticking black timer and the sounds of bubbling water. Babcock calls it "a little tribute to all those hours that photographers have spent in the darkroom.”
Javier Vera came to see Babcock’s art but found himself frustrated by the gallery. “I was expecting an open gallery you can go inside and see some of (Babcock’s) work exposed, just as in any other gallery," he said. "I never expected it to be a peephole.” Vera was surprised that the exhibition opening was on a sidewalk.
Katz said that reactions like Vera’s are part of the point. She designed the gallery to provoke a range of responses. Savernack Street is as much a piece of art as the installations inside. The gallery’s name refers to Savernake Road in London—there is no Savernack Street in San Francisco.
To understand the gallery, it helps to go behind the peephole. Visitors to the gallery have no idea what’s inside the building, beyond what they can see from the peephole.
Before the Babcock exhibit, Katz stood behind the green door getting ready. She gestured toward the exhibit and said, “We are looking at what nobody else can see, except for me, the curator and the artists who do the exhibit.”
This hallway is the only part of the building that Katz rents. The darkroom exhibit is mounted on the inside of the door, right on the other side of the peephole. It’s about 1 foot by 1 foot, and just a foot deep. Earlier exhibits have been even smaller. One by Lee Hunter looked like a huge installation from the peephole, but Katz could pick it up in one hand.
This hallway is all Katz can afford, she said. For her, it’s “a practical issue about how much square footage in San Francisco costs right now.” The cost of living forced Katz to get creative with the size of her gallery, and make a statement about San Francisco’s high rents along the way.
In San Francisco’s rental market, the nation’s most expensive, Katz said, “You have to be resourceful to find unused spaces and unusual spaces.”
She plans to continue with monthly exhibitions at Savernack Street. But Katz is already planning her next gallery, and it’s even smaller. How small? The new gallery is inside a wristwatch.
Phoenix development would bridge rich, poor
There’s a movement afoot to bring new money into urban areas all over the country. And surprisingly Phoenix, Arizona, is a part of that movement. The city has long been famous for its suburban sprawl.
But now plans are moving ahead to link high-rise downtown with a neighboring Latino barrio that wealthy developers have ignored for the better part of a hundred years. From the Fronteras Desk, Peter O’Dowd reports.
Tuesday Reviewsday: Bob Dylan covers, The Haden Triplets, Jarabe de Palo and Los Lonely Boys
Today is the day for Tuesday Reviewsday! This week we are joined by music critic Steve Hochman and Justino Aguila from Billboard Latin.
Steve's Picks:
Album: From Another World: A Tribute to Bob Dylan
Release Date: Feb. 11
Songs: “All Along the Watchtower” by Eliades Ochoa; “Blowin’ In the Wind” by Kek Lang
For ages, Bob Dylan has been reworking classic songs in concert and singing indecipherably to the point that even some of his most ardent fans sometimes have no idea what he’s playing. Well, not to give him any ideas, but check out this tribute. Thirteen acts from all over the world re-interpret Dylan songs in the folk and traditional styles of their cultures, and nearly entirely in their native languages, and the results are stunning.
But odds are that you wouldn’t be able to identify most of these songs, at least not right off the bat. They’re not covers, they’re transformations. Take the opening track, “All Along the Watchtower,” performed by Cuban singer-guitarist Eliades Ochoa. It’s nothing like Dylan — let alone the familiar Jimi Hendrix version. What it is like is, well, Eliades Ochoa, the veteran son artist who gained a global profile via his role in the Buena Vista Social Club.
And that’s the way it is throughout the album, conceived and produced by French world music producer Alain Weber. From Bengali duo Purna Das Baul & Bapi Das Baul (a nearly unrecognizable “Mr. Tambourine Man”) to Hungarian Rom group Kek Lang (a much more identifiable “Blowin’ In the Wind,” though sung in Romany with a lively traditional scat vocal part in the middle) to the Macedonian brass band Kocani Orkestar (turning the rhythms of “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” inside out) to Egypt’s Musicians of the Nile (“Tangled Up In Blue” echoing through the Valley of the Kings), every performance is true to its locale, catching the spirit of Dylan with no thoughts at all to imitation. You have to wonder if some of these musicians had ever even heard of Bob Dylan before this.
And the pairing of artists and songs are not arbitrary. Weber shows depth of purpose giving “With God On Our Side” to Lhamo Dukpa, a Tibetan Buddhist from Bhutan, and Jewish-born Dylan’s Christian-period “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” to Muslim singer Sayfi Mohamed Tahar from Algeria, tying together the three Abrahamic religions. And there’s a wry poignance to hearing Salah Aghili’s version of “Every Grain of Sand,” another from Dylan-as-Christian, in the ancient classical styles of the Iranian deserts, the words of the American folk poet here replaced by those of 13th century Sufi poet Rumi. Totally worth deciphering.
Artist: The Haden Triplets
Album: Self-Titled
Release Date: Feb. 3
Songs: “Memories of Mother and Dad” and “My Baby’s Gone”
The recent passing of Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers put a spotlight on harmonizing siblings. And here are not two, but three sisters — triplets — affirming the maxim that no voices can blend like those that share DNA. Petra, Rachel and Tanya Haden — daughters of jazz bass master Charlie Haden — are familiar to L.A. music fans. Petra and Rachel were in the ‘90s band That Dog, and Petra has made acclaimed albums of music by the Who and from movie scores using just layers of her own voice for vocal and instrumental parts alike. This, though, is the first time the three have made an album together.
The Everly analogy isn’t merely convenient, as those brothers and Haden papa Charlie got their performing starts on family radio shows drawing on southern gospel and country-folk. It’s that repertoire that forms the core of the Triplets’ album. And under the watch of producer Ry Cooder, they did this old radio style, the three gathered around one mic, singing live. For all that, it’s never “vintage,” even on the most vintage-rooted material, such as the gospel-tinged lament “Memories of Mother and Dad.” Here Cooder keeps a light touch, but even when he is more forward, such as on the proto-country “My Baby’s Gone,” it’s still all about that mic in the middle with the sisters around it.
It’s not all grim by any means. There are winks aplenty in the oldie “Single Girl, Married Girl” and the short, apiologic love-‘em-and-leave-‘em stinger “Billy Bee” — well, it is kinda sad, but the joy wins out as the three dart around each other through the harmonies, triplets at play.
Justino's Picks:
Artist: Jarabe de Palo
Album: Somos
Release Date: Feb. 18; iTunes pre-sale Jan. 21
Songs: “Somos” and “Hoy no soy yo”
Spain’s Jarabe de Palo have been making music since the mid-‘90s. The Latin rock band returns with their latest project, “Somos” (We Are), their second project on the Los Angeles-based Nacional Records label. One of the group’s founding members, Pau Dones, writes the songs that have resonated with people around the globe. Jarabe is best known “La Flaca” (The Skinny One) early when the band debuted in 1996. The song became a commercial success and was recently covered by Colombian singer/songwriter Juanes and Santana.
On the current album, “Somos,” really stands out for it’s funky opening with a great guitar intro along with punchy lyrics that speak about humanity presented here in an empowering way. In “Hoy no soy yo” (Today I’m Not Myself) the tempo slows down in a song that poetically illustrates the search for something deeper while feeling a little lost.
The Latin Grammy-winning group, with a total of 13 career nominations, has really created something special here in compositions that shine with strong musical narratives that show the band’s growth. In this album they collaborate with several artists including Ximena Sariñana. Previously, they have also worked with Celia Cruz, Chrissie Hynde and Luciano Pavarotti. Look for them on tour in 2014.
Artist: Los Lonely Boys
Album: Revelation
Release Date: Jan. 21
Songs: “Don’t Walk Away” and “There’s Always Tomorrow”
They’ve been called the “American Chicano rock power trio,” but Los Lonely Boys are really just a rock band that plays hearty music that’s universal, catchy and smooth. In some ways the band blurs the genre because they don’t necessarily perform in one kind of theme. They’ve been described as a band that performs ‘Texican’ music, and that really fits them as well.
Los Lonely Boys, founded by brothers Henry, Jojo and Ringo Garza, were first noticed in the ‘90s out of Nashville. Earlier in their career they recorded “I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love” with Carlos Santana. Their critically acclaimed song “Heaven” got them noticed even more—in 2005 the song won a Grammy Award for best pop performance by a duo or group with vocal.
This new project features songs influenced by rock, pop and also music that has Texan roots. “Don’t Walk Away” is a smooth pop song that’s radio friendly and “There’s Always Tomorrow” has a very strong pop core. While the songs are mostly in English, the band has been known to infuse their compositions with lyrics in Spanish, or Spanglish. Los Lonely Boys begin touring this week in Hawaii and in February they’ll be in Los Angeles at the Troubadour.