OF the many great shows your humble blogger attended last year, one of the very finest was a performance by Bambi Kino, a kind of indie-rock supergroup formed to pay tribute to the Beatles ragged, rockabilly-loving years in Hamburg.The show, at Echo Park's Taix, was full of so much energy and musical invention (Guided by Voices' guitarist Doug Gillard was especially inspired that night) it made … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2011
Elizabeth Taylor’s vs. The Hayes Code
THE writer M.G. Lord, a longtime friend of The Misread City, has a wonderful, counter-intuitive piece on Elizabeth Taylor, especially the films Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Butterfield 8, in the brand-new issue of The Hollywood Reporter. For your humble blogger -- who belongs to a generation for whom Taylor was best-known for big hair and serial divorces -- the piece was an eye opener.The … [Read more...]
Novelist Jonathan Kellerman
AFTER many years as a child psychologist, and more than a decade of rejection slips for his literary endeavors, Jonathan Kellerman discovered a Ross MacDonald novel at a going-out-of-business sale.Photo by Blake LittleThat was about 30 years ago, and this week, Kellerman publishes the latest in his series of Alex Delaware crime thrillers. This one, Mystery, starts with the leveling of an old hotel … [Read more...]
Elizabeth Taylor in Big Sur
IT'S hardly a great movie, and it seems quite square and timid in its embrace of what we now know as "the '60s" -- art, bohemia, individualism. But I'll never forget Elizabeth Taylor's role in The Sandpiper and those great shots of the Big Sur Coast -- perhaps this blog's favorite West Coast locale.Liz plays a free-spirited singled mother, with raffish friends, and nearly bursts out every … [Read more...]
Remembering Jazz Guitarist Lenny Breau
COULD one of the most inventive and technically gifted jazz guitarist of the last half century be an obscure Canadian raised by country musicians? That's what I often think listening to the mighty Lenny Breau. Readers of this blog know that we try to uncover West Coast culture overlooked by the rest of the nation's media and critical establishment, and Breau was an overlooked West Coast artist par … [Read more...]
LA Band Spain, and a Celebrity Fan
THE other night I was lucky enough to catch a short, hypnotic set by Spain, the Los Angeles "slowcore" band that's now back together and starting to appear in low-key shows around town. (The last time I saw them they played at tiny but wonderful Origami Vinyl in Echo Park.)In any case, the show itself was both completely gripping and without any surprising jolts: Mellow songs with a brooding … [Read more...]
Long Beach Opera on the Edge
WHEN you do what I do, you hear a lot of arts advocates and administrators talk about "reaching out," finding "new audiences," "making connections," and so on, and it gets tiresome. In part that's because it seems so calculated, in part because it usually means watering down programming to make it safer and more familiar.LBO's next opera: Philip Glass's "Akhnaten"But Andreas Mitisek, the Austrian … [Read more...]
Pianist Jeremy Denk Replaces Martha Argerich
Out: ArgerichTHE raven-haired Argentine pianist Martha Argerich is legendary both for her impassioned playing of Chopin, Brahms and Liszt as well as for her tendency to cancel appearances. Sad to say, she's done it again, canceling next weekend's Los Angeles Philharmonic appearances with Gustavio Dudamel conducting.The good news: She is being replaced by one of the world's most intriguing emerging … [Read more...]
Eric Puchner and the California Dream
HERE at The Misread City, we try to capture what makes Los Angeles and the West Coast distinct, and aim to look at the way the existing clichés – sun, vapidity, bottomless riches -- both inform and distort our lives here. I can’t think of a better example of this kind of thing than the new essay by Eric Puchner, an Angeleno short story writer and novelis. His new piece in the March GQ, “Schemes of … [Read more...]
Green Shoots: Highland Park
IN this dismal economy, with the state unemployment rate still around 12 and 1/2 percent, any opening is worth applauding. So it's high time for The Misread City to note the recent opening of Schodorf's Luncheonette, a small but proud sandwich place run by the couple behind Cafe de Leche. (I'm especially fond of their Italian: Reviews here.)The 'hood has sharpened up a bit from these daysIt's part … [Read more...]