Author Archives: Kiran Puri

For an enterprising artist such as Erin McKeown, an album of obscure swing covers rotating around playfully sinful motifs was just the next step in an 11-year career of spunk, smarts and ingenuity. With a free performance at Amoeba Records in Hollywood on Thursday and a full set at the Hotel Cafe on Cahuenga Boulevard […]

The little white boxes popping out of students’ messenger bags and backpacks, keeping them company between classes and at the gym, prove that the iPod has revolutionized music as we know it. But the fight over digital music is far from over. On Jan. 2, a lawsuit was filed accusing Apple of creating a monopoly […]

Willie Nelson “Songbird” LOS HIGHWAY RECORDS Some say old dogs can’t learn new tricks, and Willie Nelson proves with his new album, “Songbird,” that they’re probably right. But no one says anything about what comes of combining a bit of new with the old. Bringing the raw bluesy rock out of one of the most […]

Forget costume shopping and candy stocking. UCLA Live has bookended this weekend with enough idiosyncrasy for both body and soul to set the stage for this Halloween. Pere Ubu are draftsmen of hard-edged, experimental garage rock, which the band refers to as “avant-garage.” Diamanda Galas reigns as arguably the queen of goth rock. And they’re […]

“Jamaica Farewell” Wednesday, Oct. 18 Santa Monica Playhouse With a Jamaican accent but sans dreadlocks or dark skin, Debra Ehrhardt danced, ran in place, flirted, and even broke a couple of laws as she recounted her journey from Jamaica to the United States. Ehrhardt told her story on stage at the Santa Monica Playhouse on […]

Despite how beautiful and sophisticated film scores can be sometimes, there is only one orchestra in the world solely dedicated to performing them live, and it is based in UCLA. The Hollywood Symphony Orchestra will be performing an array of film scores on Saturday in Royce Hall with a 60-person chorus. The orchestra came together […]

New York City music club The Bottom Line opened its doors in 1974 with a jam session between Dr. John, Stevie Wonder and Johnny Winters. Twenty-nine years later, the club’s landowners at New York University deemed it “undervalued real estate” and The Bottom Line, which has hosted luminaries from nearly every genre of music, was […]