Does MOCA Need New Leadership?
MOCA's Geffen Contemporary is leased from the City for $1 a year | Photo by pink_fish13 via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr
MOCA's grim financial outlook is no secret, and although there has been public mobilization to help raise the profile of the museum's plight and show whoever will pay attention that Angelenos want their art, some see the changes that need to come as being more fundamental.
This weekend's LA Times featured an opinion piece by Tim Rutten, calling for officials from the City of Los Angeles to step in and for MOCA's board and top execs to be replaced. Calling the museum "one of the essential windows on the restless, searching, cosmopolitan creativity of this city's 21st century spirit," Rutten says that because MOCA's Geffen Contemporary sits on land leased from the City ("for $1 a year" no less) and that the City brokered the deal for their Grand Avenue facility, Los Angeles proper "has played a crucial role in MOCA since its inception 30 years ago." - LAisth (more after the image jump)
Xu Xu Fang || Listen
With slow waves of hushed sounds and swirling psychedelia, Xu Xu Fang’s new CD, The Mourning Son, rolls in like a fog and wraps your head in clouds. “Things are just okay,” a disembodied, world-weary voice intones amid the squalling guitars, spectral synths and formally decisive piano chords of “These Days.” It’s grand and dreamy stuff, followed by the similarly otherworldly title track, which chimes with a Velvety gloom. Band leader and producer Bobby Tamkin used to drum in the Warlocks, but Xu Xu Fang is a much more intriguing project. Unlike the Bore-locks, Xu Xu Fang are able to transform their funereal tempos into something truly mysterious and uniquely memorable. The pace picks up just a little on “Good Times,” whose shadowy groove and breathy singing belie its sunny title. - LA Weekly
with:
Winter Flowers || Listen
Exitmusic
Corridor
8:30pm / FREE / 21+
LOCAL NATIVES
Silverlake Lounge
more Natives:
Bicylists Plan Civil Disobedience at Griffith Park Tonight
It's been an issue for some years now. The LADWP Festival of Lights--a holiday light show where people in cars drive slowly along Crystal Springs Dr. in Griffith Park viewing the displays--has been car-oriented since the beginning.
Cyclists have contended that they should get the right to bicycle through the festival just like cars. After all, California Vehicle Code says that they have the same rights and responsibilities as cars on the roads.
That hasn't worked and it has been a bitter battle for a couple years now. Councilman Tom LaBonge and the LADWP have bended little for cyclists, deeming one night, the first night of the festival, to be bike night. However, the cyclists, in order to have the festival be car-free--an obvious route to take a festival that claims to be green--did help succeed in getting the city to do two weeks of dedicated pedestrian nights.
In a phone interview about the festival with LADWP's Kim Hughes last September, she told LAist that safety is the number one reason why bicyclists cannot ride on car nights, but also that Crystal Springs Drive is a private road and as far as she understood, state law would not apply forcing the city to allow bicycle riding. Plus, this is a special event on a private road, which further blurs the line on what the bottom line is.- LAist
Tonight's protest, dubbed The Festival of RIGHTS, was announced in an e-mail to LaBonge and the press last night. Participating cyclists will meet at the Mulholland Fountain and ride at 7 p.m.
Photo by nesoxochi via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr
Jack H. Skirball Screening Series
Joan Jonas: Reading Culture through Dante and Aby Warburg
Los Angeles Theatrical Premieres
"True to her form of translating the language of video (editing, montage) into performance and passing performance through the lens of video, Jonas's newest work is a sophisticated, layered, and at times exhaustingly complex reflection on diverse cultural source material." Artforum
Joan Jonas has been producing video and performance art for more than 30 years, and this evening appears in person alongside two recent works. Interpreting the literature of two seemingly very different writers — epic poet Dante Alighieri and art historian Aby Warburg — Jonas uncovers their hidden poetic and philosophical similarities. Footage of a forest, a European performance, and New York at night comprise Reading Dante, inspired by The Divine Comedy. The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things is a visual reflection on Aby Warburg's 1923 lecture regarding the Pueblo Indian snake ritual. By drawing from literary sources, both works move past being visual stagings of the written word, and become texts in their own right.
– Tanja Lade
M. Ward announces tour and pre-sale tickets
Singer-songwriter and modern-day troubadour M. Ward announces plans to hit the road this winter and bring audiences on both sides of the Atlantic tracks from his highly-anticipated release, Hold Time (February 17th, Merge Records). Amidst producing and arranging Zooey Deschanel's indie pop gems and being the "Him" of She & Him'scritically-acclaimed Volu
Fans will have the opportunity to purchase tickets in advance. Pre-sale for the US shows begins Tuesday, December 9 and ends Thursday, December 11. Tickets for all shows in the US, UK, and EU will go on-sale to the public beginning Friday, December 12.
Password for pre-sale: holdtime
For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit www.mwardmusic.com
M. Ward tour dates in full:
Wednesday, February 18 Boston, MA @ Somerville Theater
Thursday, February 19 New York, NY @ The Apollo Theatre
Friday, February 20 Philadelphia, PA @ Trocadero Theatre
Saturday, February 21 Washington, DC @ Sixth and I Synagogue
Wednesday February 25 London, UK @ Borderline
Thursday February 26 Paris, FR @ Café de la Danse
Friday, February 27 Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
Wednesday March 4 Los Angeles, CA @ Music Box at Fonda
Thursday, March 5 San Francisco, CA @ Palace of Fine Arts
Friday, March 6 Seattle, WA @ Showbox At The Market
Saturday, March 7 Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater
THE MOVIES / RADEMACHER / VIBE SLAYER / …the Movies were, more than anything celebrating being the Movies—a ferociously talented live act bathed in a synthy haze of weary sleaze and winking, knowing lyrics, while simultaneously echoing the Bunnymen and remaining firmly, wildly original… Their set was an impassioned, alternately subdued and unhinged performance, as James whirled around the stage in a wild-eyed fever between bassist Jessica Gelt’s sinewy, rhythmic sway and the ambient wash of keyboardist Brian Cleary, demanding that audience members kiss to win copies of the new LP, furiously running in place, and riding the mic stand—once again proving that he is one of the funniest and most dynamic singers in the L.A. music scene (the man can croon, too). The Movies’ show spun between two poles: songs like the melodic, synth-stung “Get Your Macho Out” and the slow-motion whirlpool of “Creation Lake” were a down-tempo counterpoint to the warped snarl of “Autograph” and the glistening stutter-cool of “If I Had the Cash,” with the reeling keyboard intro and propulsive, howled choruses of “Missed Opportunities” unifying both ends of the band’s spectrum before falling into “When I Was in Nam”’s sleep-drawled slow groove of Caucasoid funk. - Web In Front with: 8:30pm / FREE SHOW / 21+
SARAH NEGAHDARI / DJ DAVE NEWTON
Spaceland
Rademacher
Vibeslayer
Sarah Negahdari (from Happy Hollows)
DJ Dave Newton
¡¡¡ MARK YOUR CALENDARS !!!
Screening: THE WRESTLER
LACMA
December 12 | 7:30 pm | Bing Theater
Mickey Rourke stars as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a onetime superstar of the mat. Now battered and estranged from his daughter (Wood), he ekes out a living getting beaten bloody in high school gyms and community centers around New Jersey as part of a tight-knit community of wrestling buffs. But when a violent heart attack and invasive surgery forces him into retirement, his sense of identity starts to slip away. He begins to evaluate the state of his lonesome life and his relationship with an exotic dancer (Tomei). Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, the film is nominated for Male Lead and Best Feature at the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards. "A triumph from start to finish... Rourke gives the kind of performance that caps, redefines and reinvents careers." –Scott Foundas, LA Weekly. Special guest: Director Darren Aronofsky.
*No one under 18 admitted. This film is rated R by the MPAA for violence, sexuality/nudity, language and some drug use.
View full schedule of films. >>
December is list-making season. And for us music journalists, it is a time to look back on scores of albums, reflect upon the music and recapitulate our favorites. But this year, just like the last, we took this opportunity to flip that tradition upside down, asking the artists that influenced us what influenced them. The prompt was not limited to albums that came out in 2008. Black Keys - Attack And Release The Western States Motel - "Oh World" -- Robert Francis might write the songs of an old soul, but he is still just 21 — and maybe feeling it, when it comes to his next step musically. “Thing are kinda moving slower than I want them to,” he says. It was back in August 2007 when his critically lauded debut, “One by One,” was released on local imprint Aeronaut Records, earning comparisons to the likes of Jeff Buckley, M. Ward and Conor Oberst. After assembling a live band and touring behind the album, he got to work on another. “I started a second record with the idea it would come out on Aeronaut too,” he says. “Then all these [bigger] labels got interested.” It’s premature to talk about a signing, his management says, but while the business [click to continue... This spirit is less palpable in the imagery, however, than in the materials themselves, which look as though they could have been gathered by the very characters Reid is assembling. Old photographs, discarded bits of linoleum and cardboard, toothpicks, strips of satin, velvet, corduroy and upholstery — all are fragments drawn from the world at large, once the fabric of another picture, another story. Every surface exudes a sense of history. Collage is a widely practiced and seldom dazzling genre, but Reid approaches it with a rare degree of concentration and sensitivity, assembling and manipulating her materials with the same care that she shows in choosing them. The works range from letter-size to poster-size, and Reid is equally adept at either end of the scale. The smaller compositions are tight, intimate and jewel-like; the larger, assuredly expansive and monumental. No inch of surface area is squandered or overlooked. The fastidiousness with which Reid treats these once discarded materials invests them with a kind of opulence that seems an extension of her reverence for her subjects. Whether by choice or necessity, her vagabonds have set about living life by their own systems of value. In Friday's paper, look for reviews of David McDonald, Annie Wharton and Jason David at Jail Gallery; Lillian Bassman at Peter Fetterman; and Peter Sudar at Mihai Nicodim. -- Holly Myers [Keyboardist-singer Morgan Kibby resumes her tour diary as M83 embarks on the U.S. leg of its tour. Previous diaries here.]
The Western States Motel's Top Ten of 2008
Picture via the Western States Motel's Myspace
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
Blitzen Trapper - Furr
TV On The Radio - Dear Science
Ratatat - LP3
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Self Titled Reissue
Brightblack Morning Light - Motion To Rejoin
Happy Hollows - Imaginary EP
Dr. Dog - Fate
Tobacco - Fucked Up Friends
This last year LAist's Molly Bergen not only saw the band perform, but interviewed them as well.
Maeghan Reid
Chung King Project
Maeghan Reid’s solo debut at Chung King Project — one of the strongest in recent memory — revolves around the figure of the drifter, the gypsy, the nomad or the outsider. Solitary silhouettes roam her collages with walking sticks in hand and bags slung over their shoulders. Small groups gather in makeshift camps; buildings loom in vast isolation, on the peaks of hills or surrounded by plains. There is a prevailing sense of both alienation and freedom, exclusion and liberation.
new SMASHING PUMPKINS video
Produced by our good friend Miss Megan Duffy!
G.L.O.W.
KCRW Music Director Jason Bentley's Top 10 Albums of '08
1. M83 - Saturday's = Youth (Mute)
2. Santogold - Santogold (Downtown)
3. Jamie Lidell - Jim (Warp Records)
4. Adele - 19 (XL Recordings/Colombia)
5. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (XL Recordings)
6. Juana Molina - Un Dia (Domino)
7. Little Dragon - Little Dragon (Peacefrog)
8. The Black Ghosts - The Black Ghosts (IAMSOUND Records)
9. Portishead - Third (Mercury Records)
10. Jazzanova - Of All the Things (Verve)
NEW CHAPTER FROM MORGAN KIBBY!
M83: Back in the USA, big in the Big Apple
Dear Friends and Family,
Just a small note to let you know that I am writing a tour blog for the next three months while I am traveling and playing with M83 throughout Europe and the US. The blog will be hosted by Kevin Bronson who was a senior music writer and editor for the LA Times. I am thrilled and honored that he asked me to do this. Should you have the time and the inclination to check it out, the link is as follows:
BUZZ BANDS
I hope this email finds you all healthy and happy, and hopefully i will see you while I'm on the road.
Lots of love,
Morgan
Barragan's mixes it up for Echo Park hipsters
It's Wednesday night at Barragan's and, as usual, packs of twentysomethings jam into the shoebox-sized bar, the dark-paneled restaurant booths, the upstairs banquet room and rooftop patio. They shout to be heard over the throbbing sounds coming from a D.J. spinning records as weary waitresses and bus boys bring free nachos. But the big draw at this Echo Park Mexican restaurant on Wednesday is not the music or the food. It's the $2.50 margaritas. On a good "Margarita Wednesday" the restaurant pours about 1,500 drinks... (read more after the jump).
Help the Fire Victims
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is encouraging residents and businesses to help support the hundreds of displaced families due to the Sayre Fire by donating to the Red Cross of Greater Los Angeles, the organizations that is acting as the lead agency on shelter management and the current relief effort.
"Overnight, hundreds of families have found themselves homeless and relying on the care of their community," Villaraigosa said. "Just ten days before Thanksgiving, I encourage all Angelenos and businesses to come to their neighbor's aid and pitch in what they can." They are accepting cash donations and in-kind gifts.
Looking to do more? Help the community-at-large in other ways: check out the latest PhiLAnthropist column.
Here's some video I shot of Soko the other night
Industry Insiders: Alexis Rivera, Pied Piper
How did you got your start in Los Angeles, and how did you became such a heavy in Echo Park?
Read the BlackBook article
Echo Park Named One of Top 10 Great Neighborhoods
And when you hear that, you might find yourself asking which Realtor came up with that ranking. Luckily, this time there is some creditability behind the designation: the American Planning Association. They "singled out Echo Park because of its breathtaking topography set in the hills above downtown, historic architecture, pedestrian-oriented streets and stairways, and engaged residents who, over the years, have gone to great lengths to protect and preserve their community," according to an APA release (add: their website has more info and history on why EP was chosen) .... more after you click on the image!
SUBMIT YOUR PICTURES!!!
THE MAE-SHI @ Spaceland
THE MOVIES @ Spaceland
DENGUE FEVER @ Viper Room
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