Radio Free Silver Lake

Band Spotlight: Why I Love Pizza!

by Octavius

On Saturday night, I went out to a house party (AKA Porchfest) to see Pizza! and Big Whup.  I heard this house used to be called the "Girl house", cuz there was once a time when all the girls living in this house were dating all the boys that were living in another house. Big Whup are some guys from Pizza! and some of the girls from the house. It's somebody's birthday, and I don't know her name, although we said Hi to each other..... One thing I do know is that I've become more obsessed with Pizza! as every month passes.

Back when they were called The New Motherfuckers, I wasn't incredibly impressed. They were a lot like a lot of other noisy loud bratty kids that come through KXLU. But THEN.....  I kept hearing about their new band Pizza!. 

The L.A. Show Low Down (Or "You Were Burning Like a City of Electric Light...")

by Brad Roberts

Last week was a great time to go out at night and feast on the many musical pleasures available in Los Angeles. You could choose from national acts as diverse as P.J. Harvey or Dan Hick and His Hot Licks to local bands like Manhattan Murder Mystery or Seasons giving multiple shows. 

I had the one-two-three punch of Tommy Santee Klaws and Cave Country and Slings, one night, Gliss in a blistering performance of tracks from their phenomenal new CD, Devotion Implosion, the next, followed by an inspiring set by Chad VanGaalen the last night. All three shows were transportive.

This week promises to provide ample stimulation as well. Both Fol Chen and The Parson Red Heads have landed opening sets at The Troubadour and Pinback make a surprise vist to USC.

Let's take a closer look at this week's shows in L.A....

Meet the New RFSL Staff

by Joe Fielder

Change is, like, in the air or something... After five years in LA and three of them on this site, I'm hitting the road for a new video game project out in Boston, but will continue on as managing editor and correspondent.

I've had an amazing time in LA -- largely because of the fantastic music scene here and all the great people I've met through it -- and I hope to visit frequently and be back at some point in the future.

Enough about me, here's a look at the new staff and what they'll each be doing:

Interview: The Making of Gooseberries

by Joe Fielder

LA-based music photographer Sterling Andrews' Gooseberries -- a collection of 11x11 portraits of great local (or "local-ish") bands like The Silversun Pickups, Great Northern, Earlimart, The Happy Hollows, Afternoons, Rademacher, The Henry Clay People, Rogue Wave, The Pity Party, Death to Anders, Le Switch, and One Trick Pony w/ a DVD of time-lapse videos, interviews, and still images, in gatefold LP packaging -- is coming out quite soon. 

We asked her a few questions about what went into putting it together.

But first? A trailer.

Festival Report: SXSW In Retrospect

by Rachel Ballard

It's taken many nights of sleep in my own bed and many giant cups of coffee for me to sit down and begin to recount my hectic, noisy, sunny, reverb-filled days in Austin.  Here it goes:

Wednesday, Day 1

I had big plans for Wednesday.  My flight from L.A. was set to arrive around 2:30 p.m., and I thought this would allow plenty of time to head to the Spaceland Party for Cut Off Your Hands, or maybe hit the Forcefield PR or Little Radio parties.  So much good music in such a small area.  I couldn't wait to get out there.  I even ran into Foreign Born's Ariel at LAX, and we chatted a bit on our layover at the Las Vegas airport.  I was psyched.  However, there was a slight change of plans.  Southwest Airlines oversold one of their flights (surprise!) and asked me if I would be rerouted to Austin for a $400 voucher.  I complied (it's so hard to say no to money in my pocket), and instead I arrived in Austin 3 hours later.  No Cut Off Your Hands or Bowerbirds for me. 

It was going to be a one-show evening, and that show was the 4AD showcase, featuring Anni Rossi, M. Ward, Department Of Eagles, St. Vincent, and Camera Obscura.  I took the bus from the airport to the Central Presbyterian Church downtown (a mere $0.75), and arrived at the church just in time to watch Department Of Eagles and St. Vincent soundcheck.  Based on those one-song runs, I couldn't wait for the show.  

On the Road to SXSW w/ Death To Anders -- The End

by Staff

Over the last week, photographer Zoe-Ruth Erwin sent us photos and notes as she toured with LA's Death to Anders on their way to SXSW in Austin, Texas and back again. This time, singer/bass player Nick Ceglio sent a tour diary to accompany her last group of pictures.

Nick writes, "Quite a successful ten days on the road. SXSW was more than any of us could have ever expected. I must admit, the best part about the whole Austin experience had nothing to do with the shows we played.

Photographer Profile: Zoe-Ruth Erwin

by Joe Fielder

Local music photographer Zoe-Ruth Erwin recently sent us a series of photo diaries as she toured with Death to Anders down to SXSW, so we checked in with her with a few questions about how she got started and why she does what she does (so well).

 

How did you start taking photos? And doing music photography?

 

The way the whole obsession of photography started for me was extremely unconventional and, in fact, had very little to do with an inherent interest in photography. About two years ago, I had a dream about a woman named Laurie, who had been like a second mother to me between the ages of ten and fifteen. I hadn't spoken with her in several years and, as a result of the dream, felt compelled to call her and see how she was doing. However, when I finally got her on the phone, she informed me that she had terminal cancer which she had been battling for five years or so, and that she only had a couple of months to live.

 

After hanging up the phone, I sobbed uncontrollably for hours. My makeup was smeared all over my face and clothes. My eyes were ten-feet thick. It looked as though someone had beaten the living shit out of me. After three or four hours, this strange calm came over me. And, for no reason at all, I had this strange urge to pick up a camera and photograph my face just as it was. I wanted to know and remember exactly what primal emotional pain really looked like.

Mark Your Calendar: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart at Spaceland IN LESS THAN A WEEK!

by Marion Hodges

I'll be honest, I'm not quite sure that I will believe that this show is anything other than a very clever April Fool's Day joke until I am standing as close to Spaceland's stage as possible, watching the show actually unfold.  Allow me to explain.  It seems as though a good deal of attention has been paid to this band lately due to their very strong full length for the incomparable Slumberland label.  However, I've been enamored with them since reading a brief description on the equally incomparable Three Imaginary Girls website sometime in the spring of 2007. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart sounded unbelievably exciting, all noisy guitars, boy/girl vocal harmonies/vocal overlaps, and impossibly fast rhythms that could leave you out of breathe even if you were not moving (though how could you hear these songs and not want to move?)  They were one of several such bands I discovered that year that employed those particular elements of great pop songs, and they quickly became one of my favorites.

Album Review: Virginia Reed "She Is The Horse"

By Whitney Hawke

If Virginia Reed's debut album, She Is The Horse, were a cocktail it would be the delicious swill in the depths of a Jim and Coke. It's unpolished and gritty. It's raw and real. It accomplishes exactly what that last slurp of whiskey has in mind -- it hits the fuckin' spot.

Virginia Reed is the solo project of Keith Hendriksen -- a relatively unknown Hollywood troubadour whose distinctly lo-fi recordings tiptoe the line between catchy indie-rock and sweetly unrefined folk. But this isn't folk fit for bales of hay and barnyards, it's folk for the smokey venues and dim-lit lounges of urban cores. It's less Norman Rockwell -- more Upton Sinclair.

Virginia Reed chucks the standard acoustic-drums-strings format of folk out the window, and replaces it with a hodgepodge of multi-tracked vocals, noise machine sound effects, and a brashly strummed guitar. She Is the Horse covers a lot of ground on the musical spectrum by mixing experimental noise with classic folk. "Loveless Junkies," the second song off She Is The Horse, features exceptional double-tracked vocals -- as one line sails high and melodic, the other hangs low -- emerging from the mysterious hollows of Hendriksen's voice with a modest boom.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Heard of Elephants: New Frontiers, this Friday, March 27.

By Joel Robinson

Join Heard of Elephants this Friday at The Unknown Theater for their event New Frontiers, with musical performances by Pride of Kenya, The Nocturnes, and Voice on Tape.  They have been kind enough to offer RFSL a pair of tix to give away providing entry to the 10:30 happening.

Heard of Elephants is a Los Angeles based music:art collective. The goal of the group is to push boundaries of creative expression while producing forward-thinking media and presenting it all through accessible forms and environments.