Tag: slideshow

Snoopzilla and Dam Funk “7 Days Of Funk” Record Release Party | Los Angeles Exchange | 12/10/13

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[Note: The video I took of the event is, unfortunately, unusable, so you’ll have to make do with video clips I found online.]

Snoop’s record release parties are always a good time. There are always big names in the building, and a special performance set by Snoop of a mix of new tracks and classic hits. The record release party for Snoop and Dâm-Funk‘s “7 Days Of Funk“? A mini music festival of funkedified proportions. There were a lot of artists billed for the event, but I wasn’t expecting each to perform their own 30-35 minute set, and all of that music made for one motha-funkin evening of music.

Steve Arrington (who rendered side artist vocals on a couple tracks off of the album) was the lead vocalist of Slave and did a short set of some of his well known hits like “Just A Touch Of Love“.

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Egyptian Lover, one of the original DJ’s who rocked the mic during his live sets in the clubs back in the day, then took the stage armed with his Roland TR-808 and turned the crowd up … way up. Perhaps the highlight of his set was when he got the entire crowd to ravenously chant “8-0-mutha fuckin-8” for over a minute. He was, by the way, one of the original innovators of producing funky, hip-hop beats on the 808 back in the 80s.

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Dam-Funk then took the stage to perform a short set of his solo material, proving to the crowd that he is a capable torch bearer for So-Cal Funk.

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After Dam-Funk’s set is when things got dicey. Apparently, there were a few technical malfunctions that threw a wrench into an otherwise great start. Though, some may focus on criticizing the venue’s apparently poor house crew, I thought that that the technical difficulties were actually a blessing in disguise.

Saving the day, if only for a couple songs, Bootsy Collins, took a working mic and performed a couple of Funkadelic songs over instrumental recordings, engaging the audience and having the audience sing for him. I heard through the grapevine (second hand, mind you) that Bootsy wasn’t scheduled to a perform, but was supposed to be main acts hype-man. Backing track or not, being able to see Bootsy Perform “(Not Just) Knee Deep” was an immense pleasure.

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Flea, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, got on stage to slap his bass guitar, but it would appear that his performance was a casualty of the poor technical setup as his playing was inaudible. A disappointment, sure, but his being there was a strong co-sign of the funkiness of the album.

Once it seemed that things had been sorted on the technical front, Snoop and Dam Funk performed several tracks off their collaborative effort.

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It was a weeknight, and I had an early morning call, so I had to depart the party early, but I heard that after Snoop and Dam Funk performed a handful of selections off the album, the party kept going with Snoop DJing for those who didn’t have a curfew till way past closing time.

As Snoop and Booty’s have preached, it “Ain’t No Party Like A Snoop Party”. Chuuch.

Unfortunately, the Flickr slideshow below is not currently available on mobile devices. If you are on a mobile device, please click THIS LINK to get redirected to the set of photos.

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Laura Mvula | The Orpheum Theatre | 10/31/13

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Earlier this year, I hit a little bit of a rough patch. It was one of those times when life just didn’t seem to go my way. My loving dog of 13 years, Samson, passed away while I was out of state, I was having some personal issues I was dealing with, and the icing on the proverbial cake was that a show I had planned on attending months in advance was rescheduled such that I couldn’t attend.

The show that I missed was Laura Mvula at the Bootleg Theater in April. If you’ve been following my blog this year, you probably saw my first post about her music back in January. I followed that post up with additional posts in February and March because I was so excited by her sophisticated sound. As fate would have it, Laura Mvula ended up scheduling another show in Los Angeles, which was a breathtaking performance at the El Rey Theatre in September. It appeared as if the music gods were throwing me a bone.

I had purchased tickets for Iron & Wine back in June, and at that time there was no opening act listed. It was almost an afterthought, since I had been wanting to see Iron & Wine live for years. About a week or two before the Halloween Eve concert, Laura Mvula posted on Facebook that she would be opening for Iron & Wine on a series of west coast dates. Needless to say, I was enthralled. At this point, I thought the music gods were serving me a t-bone.

I barely got there in time for the first song of her set. Watching her perform in the beautiful and historic Orpheum Theatre was truly a musical blessing. The fashionably late arriving Los Angeles crowd steadily filed in to their seats during her set, and I could only think to myself that they were fools to miss out on her glorious music. Their loss.

She bantered with the crowd and mentioned that her favorite song was “Let Me Fall” (which, ironically, wasn’t on her debut album)  and her second favorite song was “Flying Without You”. She performed a subdued version of “She” which sent shivers down my spine. After she sang the title track off her debut album, “Sing To The Moon”, and having heard that she had just recently lost out on the prestigious Mercury Prize, I yelled out from my seat, “You deserved the Mercury!”  She giggled and said, “That’s funny.” Really though … she should have won that award.

Though her set was obviously shorter than her concert at the El Rey, it was still filled with the deep musicality and unabashed emotion that makes her music so appealing to me. I eagerly anticipate her sophomore album, and the next time she’s back in the United States to perform for her fans.

Setlist (written down by me during her performance):

  1. “Like the Morning Dew”
  2. “Let Me Fall”
  3. “Flying Without You”
  4. “She”
  5. “Sing to the Moon”
  6. “Father father”
  7. “Green Garden”
  8. “That’s Alright”

Unfortunately, the Flickr slideshow below is not currently available on mobile devices. If you are on a mobile device, please click THIS LINK to get redirected to the set of photos. To see the amazing pictures I took of her at the El Rey, please click here to see that blog entry (trust me, some of the pictures taken were amazing).

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Jacco Gardner | Culture Collide | 10/11/13

Click here to check out the other bands that I saw perform at Culture Collide 2013

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I take music reviews with a grain of salt. I do my best to avoid reading them until I’ve already developed my own opinion about the music myself, but when trying to learn about music that I’ve never heard about before, it’s tough not to read an article or two…

When I looked for information about Jacco Gardner, I stumbled on the Pitchfork.com review of Jacco Gardner’s latest release “Cabinet of Curiosities”. In that article, Pitchfork states:

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Being compared to such musical luminaries ranging from Brian Wilson to Love is nothing to scoff at. I only listened to a few tracks available on youtube, and decided that I would reserve judgement until I saw him perform live.

Jacco Gardner's setlist.
Jacco Gardner’s setlist.

Gracing the stage at the Echo Park United Methodist Church, he and his full band wistfully played set that was filled with all of those elements that made that Pitchfork reviewer recall the musical, psychedelic pop stylings of Brian Wilson and Love. His arrangements were more complex than I would have expected from a young man in his mid twenties, and his performance was that of a subdued and mature veteran.

I loved his sound. His audience loved his sound. I purchased his LP, and his music sounds incredible on vinyl. It may be tough finding large audiences to fall into his music, but I, for one, am very interested in seeing where he takes it. You can too by following his Facebook account.

Unfortunately, the Flickr slideshow below is not currently available on mobile devices. If you are on a mobile device, please click THIS LINK to get redirected to the set of photos.

Click here to check out the other bands that I saw perform at Culture Collide 2013

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Medicine | Culture Collide | 10/11/13

Click here to check out the other bands that I saw perform at Culture Collide 2013

Brad Laner of Medicine.
Brad Laner of Medicine.

Shoegazing is a sub genre of alternative rock that emerged from the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. As per its entry on Wikipedia, “The British music press—particularly NME and Melody Maker—named this style shoegazing because the musicians in these bands stood relatively still during live performances in a detached, introspective, non-confrontational state, hence the idea that they were gazing at their shoes.” One of the biggest UK acts to arise from this musical movement, was My Bloody Valentine (a band that I opted not to see at 2013’s FYF Festival). Pitchfork Media has hailed Medicine as the closest thing to being an American answer to My Bloody Valentine. I had to check them out.

Medicine founder, Brad Laner, is perhaps one of the most accomplished Los Angeles musicians in the indie rock scene. Having played on more than 300 albums,  he has worked with the likes of Brian Eno, Savage Republic and Rick Rubin. After over a decade of the band being on hiatus, band members Laner, singer  Beth Thompson and drummer Jim Goodall recorded and released the highly regarded album “To The Happy Few” earlier this year.

To be honest, I wasn’t all too familiar with Medicine’s catalog of music. Truth be told, growing up, I wan’t that big of a fan of the “genre” of shoegazing. It was only somewhat recently when I started to get into M83‘s music that I started to look into the genre. But where M83 is more pop-synth rock, Medicine’s brand of shoegazing is massively more psychedelic rock with silky vocals and wall of expert guitar playing and driving drums. It was a great set, and I have money that this set was much more entertaining than the My Bloody Valentine set at FYF Festival, which I heard was plagued with technical difficulties. US-1 : UK-0.

Unfortunately, the Flickr slideshow below is not currently available on mobile devices. If you are on a mobile device, please click THIS LINK to get redirected to the set of photos.

Click here to check out the other bands that I saw perform at Culture Collide 2013

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Iza | Culture Collide | 10/10/13

Click here to check out the other bands that I saw perform at Culture Collide 2013

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Earlier this year (2013), Snoop threw up some beats he had cobbled together onto his Soundcloud account, giving other musicians on Soundcloud the opportunity to record melodies and lyrics on top of them for fun. It so happened that an amazingly unique vocalist from Poland caught Snoop’s ear. Her name was Iza Lach p/k/a “Iza” and Snoop decided to scoop up this hidden jewel of a talent before anybody else could releasing several EPs executed produced by Snoop (as Berhane Sound System) and released under Snoop’s wife’s imprint label “Boss Lady Entertainment”.

When I heard the tracks she had recorded, I got excited. Like, being a kid and finding the toy in the cereal box kind of excited. Iza’s voice and vocal technique is so unique that I couldn’t really compare it to anything that I’ve heard before … and I listen to a lot of music. Maybe a souled out Portishead with a Sade vibe? I don’t know. All I know was that I wanted to hear more.

When management told me that she would be performing in Los Angeles, I knew that I had to buy a ticket. She performed three sets at Culture Collide, but unfortunately I was only able to attend her first one on Thursday as I was already attending a friend’s wedding on the Saturday she was scheduled to perform twice.

The performance I attended was in a small lounge of a restaurant, and it couldn’t have been a more perfect setting to watch her perform live for the first time. Backed by a full band (drums, guitar, bass and Iza playing keys), the music filled the intimate setting, drowning out the drunken chatter of the guys hitting on girls at the bar.

Iza's setlist at the first of three of her scheduled performances at Culture Collide.
Iza’s setlist at the first of three of her scheduled performances at Culture Collide.

She played songs that I was familiar with, and also sang some songs that I didn’t remember hearing before. But the part of the performance that really impressed me was when Iza shed her coy and seductive sound and rocked out the refrain of a song. It was unexpected, but pleasantly surprising. I loved it.

I probably would have loved watching her performance that was scheduled in the church venue, but c’est la vie. One can only hope that she gets to perform in Los Angeles sooner rather than later.

To check out some of Iza’s music, check out her Bandcamp page. Support independent music!

Unfortunately, the Flickr slideshow below is not currently available on mobile devices. If you are on a mobile device, please click THIS LINK to get redirected to the set of photos.

Click here to check out the other bands that I saw perform at Culture Collide 2013

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