SuicideGirls snagged a pair of tickets for the much tweeted about one-off collaboration between Duran Duran and filmmaker David Lynch at The Mayan in DLTA on Wednesday night. The event, which was also being broadcast live via YouTube and Vevo, was part of the ongoing Unstaged concert series from American Express, which has previously featured Arcade Fire, Sugarland, and John Legend & The Roots.
This Sunday (Mar 27th) our very special in-studio guests will be Cali rockers Drive A. The quartet will be talking about their new album, World in Shambles, and the upcoming Revolt Tour, which hits the road on April 6.
Since I was old enough to legally get a job, I’ve been working for record stores, comic book shops, publishers, and magazines. If people didn’t pay for entertainment content, it’s unlikely that I would have had any of those jobs. Jobs which pay my rent, buy my beer, and allow me to support other artists. And as a current music producer, I sometimes fear the online culture of free has made it almost impossible for me to earn a living recording independent bands.
This Sunday (Mar 20th) our very special in-studio guest will be Jonathan Bates of Mellowdrone, and, more recently, Big Black Delta. Jon is also a sometime collaborator with M83 vocalist Morgan Kibby. The two have worked on the M83 remix of Daft Punk’s “Fall” (from the Tron soundtrack), as well as on tracks for Morgan’s solo project, White Sea.
REVOLUTIONS came to the People’s Republic of Los Angeles on Saturday night, with the opening of an exhibition of album cover-inspired art from Shepard Fairey.
The decidedly anti-elitist celebration, held at Robert Berman’s C2 Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, was free – as were the Singha beers, which were being liberally distributed to the packed assembly.
The party spilled out into the parking lot, where a sound system and stage had been set up. Dan The Automator and Fairey took turns spinning tunes from their laptops, but the show was stolen by Metalachi, a mariachi band that plays heavy metal classics.
On paper mariachi metal sounds so wrong, but live it was so fucking right. Who knew that songs culled from the catalogs of AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Dio and Judas Priest would sound so damn good topped with a sombrero, Mexican style.
“You pour in a fourth chemical, and it bubbles really violently, and then…”
– David J
While so many music icons seem to fade away without dignity or creative energy to speak of, David J has plenty of both, and he doesn’t look to fade away any time soon. David is best known as the bassist for the influential British bands Bauhaus and Love and Rockets. But with Bauhaus coming to a well-publicized end (their final album, Going Away White, came out this month), David is setting off in a new direction.
It was the summer of 1976 in Los Angeles and The Ramones were playing second bill to the Flamin’ Groovies at The Roxy. Across the pond, The Sex Pistols were still months away from achieving everlasting infamy by calling their host a “fucking rotter” while live on British TV. Meanwhile, in a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot off Third Street in LA’s Fairfax District, an 11-year-old Marc Canter caught his fellow classmate, Saul Hudson (a.k.a. a just about teenage Slash of Guns N’ Roses), suspiciously eyeballing Canter’s mini-bike parked outside. In those days there was a lot of bike stealing. “I was one of the thieves, I know, ” Slash laughs. ”It’s quite possible I was thinking about taking off with it because I used to be like that back then. Anyhow, that’s how [Marc and I] met and weve been friends ever since.”
