Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dry and synthetic to wet and gushy), rhythm tracks can be tempo-tweaked with an upward toggle to change a Timbaland beat into a Chromeo one. Add some T-Pain-esque pitch-correction vocals to your between
Americans who still think of Latin music as mariachi bands and gyrating Ricky Martins and Shakiras might want to lend a closer ear to the genre. This country's Hispanic population isn't just growing, it's growing more diverse. More and more unique musical styles are being gobbled up, and that should come as good news to alternative gringos hoping to spruce up their castellano. This year's Latin-music highlights come from all over the Spanish-speaking map. We'll start in the farthest geographic
Sgt. Pepper's Dueling Piano Cafe, 7 p.m.Nightly, house pianists Ron, Ryan and Patty take your requests (please,
somebody suggest "Bohemian Rhapsody") and rib the audience while you
drink, sing and chow down. Being roasted by a pianist is a singular
experience--176 keys, hundreds of possible songs and a full bar spells
plenty of controlled mayhem.The Pike, 99 S. Pine Ave., Long Beach, CA; 562-432-8325Kimera Restaurant's world class beer tasting Wednesdays, 5:30 p.m.For $14, not only will you ge
Am deep in the vaults for an upcoming...something, when I stumbled across an ad in the then-Santa Ana Register for the 1969 Orange County Fair. The theme for that year? "Fiesta of Fun," with its logo a clown wearing a sombrero that read, "¡Vamos Amigos!" (upside-down exclamation point in the original!). The theme was picked to celebrate California's bicentennial in the wasichu world, and the text for the ad boasted that the fair would feature mariachi bands strolling around the fairgrounds to g
