To their credit, Pitchfork compiled a more-or-less well done 25 worst album covers of the year list, but they're remiss in not recognizing the power of a well done album cover. Rather than complain, we're taking matters into our own hands and making a list of our own. If RIAA doomsayers are to be believed, the great sun of the era of the tangible album is being eclipsed by filesharing, iTunes, and the menacing iPod. Art should be more important today than ever, if for no other reason than to giv
When it's the opening day of the Orange County Fair, you have plenty of time in traffic — an hour, in fact, just to get from Santa Ana to the fairgrounds — to realize just how poorly the 55 is designed. Immediately after some major road feeds into it, forcing a mass slowing as a new torrent of cars merges inward, yet another major road feeds into it, and just as soon as that's integrated, another still. Even when the freeway's just about to end, there are still major roads feeding in, and if
Coco B's, Gran Ronde, Brookline
At Detroit Bar
February 8, 2008
Better than: Accordion lessons with Weird Al Yancovic.
Download: On and On by Gran Ronde.
About 30 minutes after parking myself at stool at Detroit Bar, I had downed a Whiskey Sour, a Vodka Cranberry and a glass of Guinness. Usually these types of random anecdotes would go nowhere in regular conversation. This time, it actually summed up the evening's performances.
Coco B’s was first up, as people trickled out of the cold and
What if you threw an all-day festival dedicated to "Weird Al" Yankovic, and "Weird Al" Yankovic was a no show? Visitors to Al Fest 2009--which is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 1, at the Holiday Inn in Costa Mesa--will find out. Buried far below the "attractions" listed in the press release announcing "'Weird Al' Yankovic Fans Invade Orange County August 1" is this:Yankovic (who is not scheduled to attend AL FEST) has reigned for three
decades as the most successful musical com
If you didn't manage to get tickets to the MJ memorial at Staples Center tomorrow, fear not: you can probably still book a flight to Des Moines for the Iowa State Fair in August, when Jackson will be immortalized in butter. For ten days, the dairy King of Pop will stand next to the fair's traditional butter cow. Sculptor Sarah Pratt chose to portray the singer's famous moonwalk pose as a nod to the 40th anniversary of the moon landings this summer. Two years after that momentous event, the
