What are you thinking FYF fest, do you want to compete with Glastonbury or Coachella? … you were this cool DIY fest and now you are all grown up and so big. How much did you pay Kanye? More than Frank Ocean? I would like to know, as I was amazed to see that 2-day tickets were still available a few days before the festival,… which didn’t sell out?
The FYF fest takes itself very seriously and the logistics are now those of a big and professional festival, something I regret, and not only because I was camera-free during the whole day, but also because the festival seems to have make a complete U-turn against some of its first core values. In the first years, it had a very local and familial feeling, I miss the days when the festival was held at the very dusty LA State Historic Park when the biggest names were Panda Bear, Thee Oh Sees, Broken Social Scene, Descendants or OFF!… Now we have to deal with Kanye West crowds, and some of the fun is gone.
Ariel is a goofy individual who makes magic, his songs are musical collages with abrupt accelerations or changes of rhythms, washed out pop harmonies with a myriad of voices going in all directions, weird noises, freak-out moments and monster-like vocals.
This event contains adult themes, distressing imagery, extended use of strobe lighting, smoke effects and swearing. The following items are strictly prohibited: knives, spraycans, illegal drugs, and lawyers from the Walt Disney corporation,
I have seen Ariel Pink a few times but his concert on the Santa Monica pier this Thursday was probably his best ever, and his most triumphant one as the pier was packed to the beach… He didn’t look too weird for once, his outfit was not too eccentric despite the black girlie corsage, but I have seen him wearing a turquoise dress with purple spiky high heels, so this one was quite conservative for Pink. He even had his natural blonde hair and he was good and weird all-set long, screaming, meowing and crooning, making everyone dance and sing.
‘FYF Fest’s 12th year kicks off this Saturday at the L.A. Memorial Sports Arena & Exposition Park. Kanye West will now headline Saturday night’s Main Stage. Frank Ocean has decided on his own terms to cancel his appearance.’
Then I started thinking about the phrase ‘Star Wars’ recontextualized against that painting — it was beautiful and jarring. The album has nothing to do with Star Wars. It just makes me feel good. It makes me feel limitless and like there’s still possibilities and still surprise in the world, you know?
Once again, Mac Demarco is playing at the FYF Fest this year,…I have seen him a few times and his popularity has never ceased to grow. Young girls and boys love him ,smoking through his set or crowd surfing in the middle of a song, there is something a bit iconic about his carefree, super laid-back attitude, something that reflects youth with a bit of that fuck you attitude, wrapped into a very easy going ambiance. Here are a few reviews I wrote when I saw DeMarco at FYF 2013, Burgerama 2014 and FYF 2014.. I can’t believe how many times I actually saw that guy:
‘His mansion in Beckenham has been demolished, for instance, and I’m unlikely to have a fling with Mick Jagger,’ he admitted. ‘However, it is possible to engage with and get a feel for his experiences without immersing oneself to a dangerous extent.’
‘There’s something about wandering the world over,’ said Laura in an interview, ‘that makes you realize how similar we all are – everyone searching for something, so often the same thing: love. It may sound trite, but it’s true. Love – or the lack of it – is the thing we all have in common. It can destroy us. It can break us open and let the light in. And it’s also the thing that can make us sing.’
They have been declared emerging band of the week by Obey Clothing Propaganda, ‘Cry For Me’, a song they have posted on Soundcloud (produced by Doug Boehm who worked with Girls, Tokyo Police Club, Christopher Owens) got more than 800,000 listenings, they got some local support from KROQ’s Locals Only Show, they had an LA residency at the Bootleg last June, and have booked a national tour with The Neighbourhood in the fall… So there’s no doubt they are a hot new band of the moment while they formed only a year ago.
so I climbed on the stage, and found a good spot just behind the musicians, observing the incessant crowd surfing, thrilled by the experience and their dark-wave punk sound. It was the perfect ending for this Echo Park Rising, which was attended by 10,000 people according to the news, a really impressive number for a neighborhood festival, free for all, with no big stars or big names, just local bands, but a ton of them celebrating the rich diversity of Echo Park.
Things got weird with Man or Astro-Man?, tender with Dengue Fever and wilder with Hanni El Khatib. Birth Defects put the stage on fire, Three Common invited everyone to join them on stage, and Corners’ set was a crowd surfing party… I wanted the festival to last at least a week, I was just getting in the rhythm after these three days! See you next year…
Second day at Echo Park Rising, and still the same problem with an overwhelming choice of bands to see…. I still didn’t have a strategy and I randomly picked a few places, trying to concentrate on the main stage at the end of the day, but having this constant fear of missing out feeling! I think I even attended a FOMO festival in the past, and that should be the appellation for all of them.
Each year, I get the impression that Echo Park Rising is growing by amazing proportions! The free festival now spreads over three days with hundreds, yes hundreds, of bands playing in a dozen of different locations. How do you cover such an event? You don’t, because you can’t… on Friday I did count about 80 musical acts playing at the Echo, Echoplex, inside and outside the Taix restaurant, at Lot 1, Origami Vinyl,… I am not delusional, I can’t cover such an event by myself, so instead of trying to run a marathon I would never be able to finish, I decided to concentrate on a few bands playing on Liberty Street Main stage, at the Echo and the Echoplex, all located in the same area of Sunset boulevard.
METZ is another band playing at the FYF Fest this year. I have seen them several times but I want to catch them again as their shows are always an empowering experience with the ghost of Nirvana floating above their explosive sound. I saw them for the first time in 2012 at the Echo and this was my experience at the time:
All night-long, her weird howls soared and crashed into intimate whispers of a vulnerable beauty, then rose again into a wall of thunder over wobbling keys and shuffling drums. Even the slower tunes such as ‘Gemini’ or ‘Dunes’ were intense, and she held the audience at the tip of each of her screams, while making strong facial expressions, sweeping the sweat from her eyebrows between songs.
Alabama Shakes were fantastic last night, I could only see Brittany Howard from where I was, and I feel sorry for the rest of her excellent band but that’s all I needed to see. She was a force, a fury, commanding the stage like a rock star, and the public was responding to each of her howls with cheers and claps with cheers and claps in a way I have rarely witnessed at a concert.
‘We hooked up in private with Sean to record some parts in an undisclosed ex-air raid shelter in south Yorkshire, in the north of England. Sean took the recorded parts away back to his studio in NYC, added his own thing and deconstructed the track – we were blown away by what he brought to it, Sean’s such a talented musician.’
‘I’d say something like, ‘It describes a ribbon of light on the horizon. Can you do that?’ He’d say, ‘Got it’. He’d send me an e-mail of some music he’d written, and it would be some primeval, unusual thing. The sort of neurosis within his music certainly has elucidated elements of the compulsive repetition of the play,’
The song brings some nostalgia for Donna Summers’ ‘She Works Hard For The Money’, with a modern twist, combining soul and an energetic dance over some infectious beats. weareTheBigBang was listed in Music Connection Magazine as ‘one of the best-unsigned bands to see live’, which can be easily understood from the video below, a playful mini-movie directed by Emmanuel Fordjour.
‘It started with the chorus,’ she explained to DJ Zane Lowe, ‘ I was driving by the beach a lot. This was probably one of the last ones on the record…Even with the harmonies, it almost sounded monotone. But with the beat, it has this trap influence.’
Marchelle had dropped a bit of her murder ballad attitude, but she was still super hot, with her impeccable blonde brushing, black leather fringe jacket and high heels western boots, and her so-called ‘Junkyard country’ turned to be a bit more hopeful and less dark than last time, with gospelic back-up vocals
Savages is one of the numerous bands playing at FYF Fest in 2 weeks. I don’t know if I will have the opportunity to see them, there are about 60 bands to catch in 2 day, but the all-female band left a strong impression on me when I had the chance to catch attend their show at the El Rey, two years ago… These girls were dark, aggressive, and a bit authoritarian? They actually scared me a bit…
Since the FYF fest is approaching, let’s revisit a few acts that I have seen before and may see again during this very busy weekend… Dinosaur Jr. is playing at one point and I may catch their set, the set times are not published yet, and if they play at the same time than Jesus and Mary Chain, Thee Of Sees or Metz for example, the choice is gonna be hard to make…
Dwight Yoakam gave us quite an arena show on Saturday night, with a long set of honky-tonk and rock songs, putting some rhinestone in country, literally, as his denim vest was decorated with a sparkling music notes on the back and each member of his band was shining in black sparkling vests.
The first thing they mentioned was Billy Zoom’s absence because of his cancer treatment, ‘He’s gonna be good,’ said John Doe with a firm confidence. Jessie Dayton, a regular in the John Doe Band, was filling in for Zoom and the band sounded as authentic as ever. They were selling some ‘Support Billy Zoom’ shirts to help him get on his feet again but the mood of the show was definitively optimistic as they were browsing their large catalogue of punk anthems.
The whole show seemed like a repetitive explosion of rainbows, with multicolor lights reverberating in the fog, giving us some kaleidoscopic visions and the tie-dye ambiance of the 70’s, but at the same time there was nothing nostalgic in Tame Impala’s show, it was as modern as it was electronic, and the vocals were so deep in the mix you couldn’t discern them from the rest of the expanding and layered sound
I stumbled on this story and it took me a while before realizing it was not a joke…. Is Ryan
Every year, Australia rocks the pier at Santa Monica during their Twilight Concert Series, and this year DMA’s and Ben Browing were representing their country in the most eclectic way.
‘It’s about the hubris of a man who sees himself, undoubtedly, as a Marquee Man, above that of even Brando or Sinatra. He has blind ambition and confidence in his looks and aptitude.’
‘I feel like I wasn’t ready to be friends with [West] until I felt like he had some sort of respect for me, and he wasn’t ready to be friends with me until he had some sort of respect for me—so it was the same issue, and we both reached the same place at the same time.
I became friends with Jay Z, and I think it was important, for Jay Z, for Kanye and I to get along. . . . And then Kanye and I both reached a place where he would say really nice things about my music and what I’ve accomplished, and I could ask him how his kid’s doing.’
It is a strange thing, you never know what you are going to stumble on when you walk on
What? After making so much noise about his Tidal streaming service, TechTimes is reporting that he is reporting he is planning an exit strategy? Is it a rumor or is the rapper giving up? Wow that would be Jay Z’s first failure? Actually with his Made in America festival cancelled downtown LA this year, it would be his second failure!
Ratatat is a band apart in this very crowded music world, they are not purely making electronic music, more rockelectronic, though they were part of Hard festival, among many more purely electronic to EDM acts… But the two guys seemed totally carefree about this, they sure are on their own road and have a sound of their own as they were about to demonstrate it to the crowd which was insanely sweating because the air conditioning system of the studio had just broken off.
‘With the chemistry going on, that’s just a magical moment. With a DJ or the EDM thing, they don’t get it. It’s a completely different thing – the youth is always supposed to piss off the elders. The youth will always find a way to make sure that their parents don’t like their music. To me, EDM, dance music and DJ culture is just following in this path that we’ve been in forever.’
Jam in the Van will feature ‘The RADD Zone,’ an interactive lounge designed to engage with artists and guests in promoting road safety & responsible drinking at Lennon Studios. Artists will support RADD’s message of responsible drinking with on-camera shout outs and via social media, and according to their Facebook page, there will be performances by The Soft White Sixties, Midnight North, Valley Queen, Love and the Zealous and more!
‘‘I’d be biased to think that the community of Geminis is the most consistently in tune with what their spirit is telling them to do or why they have breath in their lungs. But I do think that creative Geminis—Tupac, Biggie, Prince, Miles Davis, all being Geminis—have, throughout history, been really in tune with those things.’
The Jayhawks write giant hooks that intertwine with your memory cells forever. Take some of their most famous anthems that they played yesterday night, songs like ‘Blue’ or ‘Save It For A Rainy Day’, the vocal harmonies are to die for, and the melodies reveal a deep pop sensibility and sound as the love children of Neil Young, The Byrds and Elton John. The Jayhawks’ sound seems much older than the band really is, and this is a good thing in my book… But you have to wonder, how could they have been making this kind of music mid-90s when grunge was all the rage?
Contrarily to common belief, if you read informed reports about Cobain, the shotgun blast had resulted in very little visible damage, there was no blood or tissue splatter which are typical in most shotgun blasts to the head, there was curiously no exit wound, and if you have seen Cobain’s death scene pictures circulating on the internet in the past, they were false. Cobain was fingerprinted for identification as a matter of procedure, not for necessity, as it was falsely reported in the press. People who saw the body recognized him immediately and the lack of damage is one of the numerous aberrations of the case
I rarely go to these Pershing Square concerts and now I remember why, they have a 5-feet sign at the entrance with all the ‘no’ rules… No camera no video, no food, no drink… no fun!
Little Richard’s influence is certainly there during ‘It Shook Me Up’ or ‘Everybody’s Talking ‘Bout The All-American’ for example, with some excited pounding keys, a droning bass and McPherson’s bright howl, but there is much more than influences, he sees his brand of rockabilly as a new punk form, it’s aggressive and fast, he jumps all over the place as he jumps all over decades of music history and this new-old sound becomes truly his.
And she reminded us that she wrote, released, and produced her album ‘because I am an independent artist’ she announced, with a don’t-mess-with-Texas attitude, although she is a Nashville girl! And in a few seconds, she gave us the essence of any good western country song, which is always about heartbreaks, taking too many pills, and cheating… ‘all the good things in life!’ she added.
‘I get threats constantly—all female musicians do. People want to, like, rape and kill you. It’s, like, part of the job. One time I was backstage at a show, and there was this random guy in my dressing room, and he just grabbed me and started making out with me, and I was like, Ah!, and pushed him off. Then he went, ‘Ha! I kiss-raped you’ and left.’
‘He didn’t sail across the Atlantic in an ocean liner or a yellow submarine. He didn’t come in on a third-class ticket looking for a job in Hell’s Kitchen. He didn’t climb up out of steerage with all his potatoes in a single suitcase. But John Lennon was an immigrant all the same.’
The track is an electronic ride through geology with a female whisper… it could be a dance number performed at festivals — although it is quite smooth and dreamy and too abstract to be totally dance oriented — but the DJ had another idea. He teamed up with Christopher Thockler for ‘Solid Gold’ a video featuring 60 rocks from 15 different countries around the world.
He may be a New York transplant, but his great sensibility fits very well with Los Angeles landscapes. With songs such as ‘Encino’, ‘Miracle Mile’, his work is obviously imbued with the city of angels, that he described in an interview as ‘a garden surrounded by mountains on one side and ocean on the other’… ‘a mind-numbing, flat suburban wasteland where the weather never changes and time stands still’.
‘We asked Edie Parker to designed a duo of hip-hop-themed clutches, just for us,’ says the description and of course they are sold for the modest sum of $1,695 each.
If there’s a Mount Rushmore of rock ’n’ roll, Keith’s face is surely on it. He has always represented the soul of rock music — for all of the light and dark shades that implies. To my relief, Keith Richards turned out to be a real man — full of humor, knowledge and wisdom. That’s the real Keith we’ve worked to capture in our film and I’m honored to bring it to a global audience via Netflix.’
People have gone overboard with song interpretations and I will start with the worst example of all, Charles Manson. The infamous rockstar wannabe was convinced that the Beatles’ White Album was as prophetic as the Bible, he would often quote ‘The Beatles and the Bible’ and considered the fab four as the ‘four angels’ as in Revelation 9
