The name of the group was oddly familiar. A downloaded song from the dial up days carried their name, though the song itself did not originate from their back catalogue. Napster users had a bad habit of mislabelling mp3s.
The 100 Club felt full to bursting, due in no small part to the six year gap between appearances on our shores which had left fans jonesing for a fix over half a decade. The age range of audience attendees would have made a marketing executive plotz: fathers and sons stood shoulder to shoulder proudly sporting band merch which had certainly seen better days.
Sir David Gilmour, guitarist and singer of the legendary band Pink Floyd, played three shows in Los Angeles capping off with a spectacular performance at the Forum on Sunday night. He’s touring to support his latest solo album ”Rattle That Lock” and played seven songs from it during the show. He opened with a new track “5 A.M.” and then played two more off the new album before bringing in the first heavy hitter “Wish You Were Here” from his days with Pink Floyd.
1,2,3,4! Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen & the E Street Band played the middle show of their three-night stay at the LA Sports Arena on St. Patrick’s Day. From the sea of green shirts flooding the arena to the special beer selection of Guinness available for this show only, it was hands down the most memorable St. Pat’s of my life.
Kip Moore exploded into the country scene a few years back with his hit “Somethin’ Bout a Truck,” a song that makes you love it the second you hear it and is so short it leaves you wanting more. That’s a trick most songs and movies could take a lesson from. Leaving the audience satisfied but wanting more, that sums up Kip’s show at House of Blues Anaheim this weekend in the last stop on the USA portion of his tour.
It’s Oscar weekend in Los Angeles, which brings all the celebrities to the yard, not just actors. Elton John, an Oscar winner himself for the Lion King theme, is known to host one of Hollywood’s biggest Oscar after-parties. But give it up for Sir Elton who decided to play a last minute free show in the historic Tower Records parking lot on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood to give a little something to the common folk of Tinseltown.
16 years since the decade ended, 90s nostalgia has now fully engulfed music, fashion, cinema, and art.
I’ve had the privilege of seeing They Might Be Giants perform live in three vastly different settings: a midwestern fair for children in the late 90s, an opera hall in Los Angeles a few years ago, and a small rock club in the university town of Cambridge, England last night. Their diverse catalog of music certainly supports any of those venues, yet the shows remain the same: energetic pop explosions which showcase their fine tuned musicianship and hilarious personalities.
I happens every once in while. There’s a band you remember, and a couple of snippets of songs you recall them recording. Big hits you still hear on the radio 18 years after it was released.
It’s close enough to Halloween, that I can get away with that right? Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefers brought their Caribbean vibe to the Hollywood Bowl last week. Buffett and the Coral Reefers are the whitest haired group of old fogies I’ve ever scene take the stage, they make the average age of the Rolling Stones touring band look like young bucks. Buffett was all smiles though, his biggest complaint was that his previous show in Albuquerque was cold enough he had to put on socks and shoes for the first time on stage in decades.
In the dawn of rock and roll, British youths were on the forefront. If Stanley Kubrick had made an epic about the origins of rock and roll, he could have the early sixties when the monolith, no the stereolith, appeared and evolved mankind’s music tastes into the electric era. In 1964 The Zombies released She’s Not There and it quickly climbed the charts. Their follow up singles never repeated the success in their native England, so they put together the album “Odessey and Oracle” before they split to pursue personal interests.
