THERE'S a new collection of journals by the great actor and storyteller Spalding Gray, with a tribute event tonight at the Laemmle Sunset 5. (More detail here.)Soon after Gray's 2004 disappearance -- it was eventually deemed a suicide -- I spoke to several theater and performance figures who walk in Gray's footsteps. I wrote:With his mix of despair, humor, preppy shirts and New England dryness, he … [Read more...]
Archives for 2011
Kenny Burrell and the Jazz Guitar
RECENTLY I had the pleasure to walk down memory lane with one of my musical heroes, who marked his 80th birthday over the summer and is still going strong.Here is my story on jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell, who will mark that milestone with a concert on Saturday Nov. 12. Burrell's playing is a very elegant and disciplined take on the blues.Burrell told me a lot of interesting stuff -- including that … [Read more...]
Wild Flag at the Troubadour
THERE was so much buzz about Wild Flag – the indie super group made up of members of Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Quasi and the Minders – that the question going into Thursday night’s show at the Troubadour, the second of two packed Los Angeles shows, was whether this would be a good night of indie rock, or something transcendent.The answer turned out to be, a little of both.The Portland/DC four piece … [Read more...]
Philip Glass With the New York Philharmonic
COMPOSER Philip Glass is making his debut this week at the New York Philharmonic. Yes, you heard that right. Let's move on -- it's awkward for everyone involved. But he's glad to be there now.Glass's appearance is with his own ensemble and the orchestra itself, playing behind Godfrey Reggio's film Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, the score for which may be the composer's best-known work. (I … [Read more...]
Digital Parasites
THE Internet has brought us lots of good things; it's also put an enormous number of people out of work, especially members of the creative class who've been turned into underpaid, unstable content providers. Information, after all, wants to be free."It's tempting to believe that the devaluation of creativity we've seen over the last decade was somehow inevitable," writes former Billboard editor … [Read more...]
The Roots of Christine Ebersole
YOU'VE got to be in awe of an actress who can portray both Little Edie and Big Edie from Grey Gardens. Winning a Tony for the feat is not likely easy, either.I spoke recently to Christine Ebersole, the actress and singer who's done everything from Tootsie to Saturday Night Live to Noel Coward. That piece, part of my Influences series for the LA Times Culture Monster page, is here.I should not … [Read more...]
Novelist Neal Stephenson
ONE of the smartest, as well as the toughest, writers I've ever encountered in Neal Stephenson, who is somewhere between a cyberpunk writer, a science-fiction novelist and a cultural historian.I met Stephenson, who has a new novel out, in his hometown of Seattle just before the publication of Anathem. HERE is my interview with the author of Snow Crash and The Baroque Triology.One of Anathem's … [Read more...]
The Hell of Freelancing – or is it Purgatory?
FOR some people, going it alone is a blast, and lucrative as well. Advocates of the "free agent nation" see it casual, flexible, energetic -- a way to tap into your real talent and potential.Free agent Reggie JacksonThey say we've moved beyond the stodgy, gray-flannel-suited Organization Man of mid-century, who was all about conformity and corporate loyalty.But for many writers, artists, musicians … [Read more...]
Catalina’s Jazz Club at 25
SOMETIMES culture works in strange ways. Twenty-five years ago this month, Catalina Popescu, who had emigrated to LA from an authoritarian Romania, a country without an especially rich jazz tradition, met the horn player Buddy Collette, and within a week had opened a jazz club.A quarter century later, Catalina's on Sunset is still open. With the demise of the beloved Jazz Bakery (soon to rise … [Read more...]
Introducing Pacific Standard Time
IT'S finally happened. After a lot of talk, the postwar art blowout Pacific Standard Time has opened at dozens of museums and spaces across Southern California.Your humble blogger wrote a piece for Los Angeles magazine about the origins, offerings and meaning of the whole thing -- it includes a dozen recommended shows, from the Getty's overview, Crosscurrents, to a show of swimming pool … [Read more...]