Thursday night, The Roxy was packed with fans sliding as close to the curtain as possible, fighting tooth and nail for front row status. As I waited for Nikka Costa to take the stage, I flashed back to when I saw her perform in 2005 when she toured with Lenny Kravitz in support of her album “Can’tneverdidnothin.” She put on quite a show then and I expected nothing less, six years later, from the feisty singer. Nikka knows how to work over an audience. She has to; music is in her blood. She is, after all, the daughter of renowned arranger/producer Don Costa, and more importantly the goddaughter of ‘”Ol’ Blue Eyes” himself, aka Frank Sinatra.
Art/Design Featured Gallery Art in the Thick of Hollywood: Open Daybook at LACE
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions aka LACE – a nonprofit organization encouraging innovation, has been around since the ’70s and found its current Hollywood Walk of Fame home in the mid-1990s. It’s an unlikely site for an art institution: surrounded by “dancer” shoe stores, tourist traps and nightclubs, LACE seems a little out of place, but that’s the genius of it. Because of this prominent yet peculiar location, the space draws colorful crowds and exposes art to a wider arena than the gallery circuit can.
Music Dropkick Murphys Are ‘Going Out In Style’
Dropkick Murphys will release their seventh full-length studio album, Going Out In Style, March 1, 2011 on their own Born & Bred Records (ILG). Produced by Ted Hutt, Going Out In Style features the group’s signature blend of punk rock energy, folk soul, Irish spirit and American rock ‘n roll on tracks like “Memorial Day” (streaming now at www.RollingStone.com), “Going Out In Style,” “The Hardest Mile,” “Cruel,” “Climbing A Chair To Bed,” and a rousing rendition of “Peg O’ My Heart” with guest vocals by Bruce Springsteen.
Film Fridays Film Fridays: Dark Knight Villains: Good or Bad?, Plus A New Dark Knight Short Film, and Liam Neeson Returns to Star Wars
Holy Batsh*t! It’s been a busy week in the comic book-to-movie world: this week, director Christopher Nolan announced who would play his villains in The Dark Knight Rises. One of them isn’t surprising (Catwoman), but the other (Bane) seems mildly insane. It’s not that Bane is a terrible choice, it’s just…kinda unsettling. If Nolan had picked The Riddler, I’m sure a lot of us would feel safer — but face it, The Riddler ain’t much to work with.
In other Batman news, a short film called “The Rat” is getting some decent buzz. It’s set in the Nolanverse, right after Batman puts the Joker away in The Dark Knight. Life has apparently become extremely boring for some Gotham City Detectives.
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Music Mandy’s Music Mail 1/21/11
Some awesome sauce happenings in the music world this week; one of those wonderful weeks where there was so much great stuff, it was hard to narrow down which ones to post. So, let’s get to it, eh?
I love, love, love She & Him (confession: I also have a total girl crush on Zooey Deschanel and kind of… sort of… okay totally want to be her BFF (clarification: NOT in a creepy Single White Female sort of way though). She’s absolutely gorgeous, makes awesome films (500 Days of Summer; Elf (don’t lie, you know you loved it); The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy) awesome retro-inspired music, wears the cutest clothes and just comes across as one of those people who’s just… cool, you know?). Anyway, so as I was saying, err, writing rather – I love She & Him. Miss Deschanel and M. Ward do some fine work indeed; there was a time in my life – what seems like many moons ago now – where I swear they wrote a particular song just for me. It literally depicted exactly how I felt at the time and ever since then I have completely loved these two. Check out their adorable, “retro-futuristic” video for the song “Don’t Look Back” directed by Jeremy Konner.
interview The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos
Two years ago, Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor were commiserating over burritos about the sorry state of the global economy, when they decided it would probably be best to shift the topic to something a bit less depressing. As fate would have it, their respective roommates had both come home with snippets of prose from Mark Twain, William Faulkner and Herman Melville tattooed on their bodies. One year later, Talmadge and Taylor are the proud parents of a beautiful, 192-page book full of literary tattoos and the equally colorful stories behind how they came about. Entitled The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos From Bookworms Worldwide, the book documents what they viewed as a growing trend in body art: a natural progression from text on the page to text on the body. (Check out a trailer for the book here, then pick up your own copy at Amazon.) We had a digital sit-down with Eva to talk about some of her favorite pieces, as well as get the inside scoop on her next book, which you could very well be a part of.
Music Hello Seahorse! Serves America A Dose of Mexican Indie Rock
Watch out America! Hello Seahorse! is coming from Mexico and bringing with them a sound so unique that you won’t know what hit you. Whether you speak Spanish or not, the dreamy instrumentals accompanied by singer Lo Blondo’s theatrical vocals, are sure to win you over. I caught the band’s recent stop in Los Angeles at the El Rey on Saturday, three dates into their 2011 tour plan for breaking out of Mexico and expanding into the States. Prior to show time, Hello Seahorse’s Bonnz!, Oro de Neta, and Joe poured me a glass of Spanish wine and told me tales of their journey from Mexico to the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Art/Design Featured Graffiti Artist MadC Bombs a 350-Foot-Long Wall
If you travel by rail between Berlin and Halle, Germany, and pay attention to the passing landscape, you will eventually set eyes on a 350-foot-long graffiti mural (obligatory football field metric: two and a third). It’s a series of detailed scenes: a laboratory overrun by rats, a shipping port under dark clouds, galleons fighting through rough waters and a giant octopus, and a cityscape at sunset. The graffiti name of the artist, MadC, is ubiquitous.
Music Girls in a ChinaShop: Deniz Kurtel
New Year. New Music. New Favorites. ChinaShop handpicks the Women to Watch in 2011. Don’t sleep…
Gallery Music Check Yo Ponytail 2 Brings Out the Dancer in You
Last week, the Echoplex was rocked by a new installment of Check Yo Ponytail 2, a cross-genre 18+ club night dedicated to all things new, edgy and danceable. On the roster: Terminal Twilight, Teengirl Fantasy, Pictureplane, and DJ sets by that Killing Spree collective you might have heard of around town. With such an eclectic lineup of everything from coldwave to neo-rave [that really was not meant to rhyme, and I apologize] we knew it was going to be an interesting night, and we were not disappointed.




















