We’re headed to Indio – the line-up for Coachella 2023 has been revealed, with Bad Bunny, BLACKPINK and Frank Ocean as headliners. Calvin Harris is at the end of the list, under the title “Returning to the Desert”, meaning he has not yet been given a day but is still receiving top acknowledgement. 

This year’s festival will be on the weekends of April 14-16 and April 21-23, which is the first time in recent memory that the event will not be held on Easter Sunday (which is on April 9th this year). 

The line-up offers an array of talent in various genres, as usual, with Gorillaz, The Chemical Brothers, Blondie, Becky G, Burna Boy, Rosalía, Charlie XCX, Labrinth, boygenius, Underworld and many more. Metro Boomin, Pusha T, Rae Sremmurd and Yung Lean are some of the rap artists that will be performing. 

Frank Ocean is still in the bill, even though he was initially planned for the 2020 edition, which was cancelled due to the pandemic, and then again for 2022 but was left out. He then had a rare early announcement from the festival for his return in 2023 – and here he is.

Bad Bunny and BLACKPINK are the main headliners, with the latter being the first K-pop group to ever headline the festival. They had first been featured in 2019, making them the first all-female K-pop act to be included in the line-up. The immense popularity of K-pop is well-demonstrated by this fact.

Check out the full line-up for Coachella 2023 here:

 

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The women of jazz were celebrated last week, on Nov. 11 to Nov. 13, at the Palm Springs Women’s Jazz Festival. This year marked the 10th anniversary of the festival, where this year’s headliners included Ledisi, Nnenna Freelon, Cyrille Aimee, Lea DeLaria and many others. With an entire lineup as eclectic and impressive as the genre itself, the jazz world was well-represented with talent like DeLaria taking the stage. Popularly known for portraying Big Boo on Orange is the New Black, DeLaria is a long time Jazz performer who took the time to chat with LA Weekly music editor Brett Callwood about the event. 

“I used to sing with my dad who was a jazz pianist, in nightclubs back in the ‘60s,” DeLaria says. “He noticed right away that I was very interested in music and he also saw that I wanted to sing. He taught me how to read music, and he taught me about bebop, swing and all the different styles. He taught me the language, essentially, but the one thing he always said was, ‘Don’t sing like a chick singer.’ He used to say that to me all the time. Sing with gusto, sing with guts. Be musical. I always took that to heart. I always felt like that was, he really gave me the spine that I needed to pursue what I needed to pursue.”

Read the whole story on LA Weekly here.

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Nearly 30 years have passed since the Staten Island-based Hip-Hop dynasty Wu-Tang Clan released its debut album Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). While some might not remember the fall of 1993, in 2022 the relevance of Wu-Tang Clan still remains deeply recognizable in Hip-Hop, contemporary art and internet culture.     

Within its iconic debut, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) sonically blended audio samples from obscure Kung Fu films over gritty, aggressive beats. The album is fueled with intelligent lyrics rich with wit and drenched in a familiar, yet unprecedentedly detailed slang. 

By way of this poetic art form, the voices of nine young men fiercely struck a vein within a global hip-hop community that is still hemorrhaging 29 years later.

Seemingly unaware of the adage that claims Father Time is undefeated, on the evening of Friday, Sept. 30, Wu-Tang arrived at FivePoint Amphitheater in Irvine, Calif. to demonstrate their verbal mastery to eager listeners.  

Wu-Tang Clan performs at FivePoint Amphitheater in Irvine, Calif., on Friday, Sept. 30. (Evan Lancaster/IW)

Co-headlining with Nas and special guest BustaRhymes during the NY State Of Mind Tour, Wu-Tang performed some of the group’s most well-known tracks including Reunited, C.R.E.A.M. and Protect Ya Neck, which RZA claimed to be the first Wu-Tang Clan song ever recorded. 

In terms of members, only one of the group’s nine original members has passed in the years since the group’s first album. Ol’ Dirty Bastard – born Russell Tyrone Jones – affectionately known by his moniker’s acronym O.D.B, passed away in 2004. 

Only to be replaced by none other than the late rapper’s eldest son, Barson Unique Jones, who raps under the moniker Young Dirty Bastard, aka, Y.D.B.  

The sight of thousands of Wu-Tang fans, with outstretched arms proudly displaying the unmistakable “W” logo with their hands, rapping in unison the three-decade-old lyrics, 3,000 miles from the Shaolin soil where the timeless rhymes were first embodied, speaks to the group’s undying longevity. 

It could also be translated into a simple fact; Wu-Tang is forever.

Wu-Tang Clan // (C) Ilja Meefout

While the concept of forever may seem out of reach, in its quest for music immortality, Wu-Tang has been metaphorically etching its well-known “W” emblem into the annals of art and internet history – with the help of the blockchain. 

In a not-so-metaphorical saga that began in 2015, which involves the American federal government, securities fraud, cryptocurrency, and the sale of the most expensive album ever –  Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon A Time In Shaolin – Wu-Tang Clan may now be closer to forever, than ever before.  

Produced in secrecy by RZA and producer Cilvaringz, more than a decade ago, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin is the seventh official Wu-Tang Clan studio album, but was never publicly released. 

Instead, upon its completion, RZA and Cilvaringz opted to only print a single physical copy of the two-disc, 31-track album, which was kept in a hand-carved nickel-silver case, and a manuscript, and certificate of authenticity. 

Once Upon At Time in Shaolin // (C) Ilja Meefout

RZA and Cilvaringz released a joint statement on their website Scluzay/Ezclziv giving some context to their approach, specifically seeking to avoid “mass replication” in an effort to shift attitudes in both the music industry and the contemporary art world:  

“By adopting an approach to music that traces its lineage back through the Enlightenment, the Baroque and the Renaissance, we hope to reawaken age old perceptions of music as truly monumental art. In doing so, we hope to inspire and intensify urgent debates about the future of music, both economically and in how our generation experiences it. We hope to steer those debates toward more radical solutions and provoke questions about the value and perception of music as a work of art in today’s world.”

In 2015, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin was originally purchased for $2 million during a private auction by infamous “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli. A few years later, in 2018, the album was confiscated by the Department of Justice when Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud, after he intentionally raised the price of his AIDS drug Retrophin from $13.00 to $750 per-pill. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was released on September 14.   

As a part of Shkreli’s sentencing, the DOJ ordered Shkreli to forfeit $7.4 million in assets – and eventually used the album as collateral.

Jewel case for Once Upon A Time In Shaolin //(C) Ilja Meefout

In July 2021, the New York State Department of Justice announced that it sold the unreleased album to satisfy Shkreli’s debt. However, the contract of the sale limited the DOJ’s ability to name the buyer at the time of purchase – and price. 

“Through the diligent and persistent efforts of this Office and its law enforcement partners, Shkreli has been held accountable and paid the price for lying and stealing from investors to enrich himself. With today’s sale of this one-of-a-kind album, his payment of the forfeiture is now complete,” U.S. Attorney Kasulis said. 

The story of Once Upon A Time In Shaolin seemingly ends there – until it doesn’t.  

In October 2021, PleasrDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, came forward to announce their $4 million acquisition of Once Upon A Time In Shaolin. With PleasrDAO’s purchase, the album, which was purchased with cryptocurrency, also received a Web3 upgrade – a digital token of ownership – also known as an NFT. 

After the purchase, PleasrDAO, a 75-member group of early Web3 adopters, NFT artists, and digital collectors added a blog post to its website, detailing the mission behind their purchase of this iconic 1-of-1 album.   

Written by Jamis Johnson, PleasrDAO’s Chief Pleasing Officer, the blog post recaps Johnson’s experience of listening to the album for the first time and underscores the importance of this opportunity for both Wu-Tang, its fans and internet culture.  

“Once Upon a Time in Shaolin in many ways is the OG NFT before NFT technology had made its way into the zeitgeist. It was their magnum opus, intended to push boundaries on what music could be as an art form,” Johnson wrote. “We believe the next chapter in the incredible story of this album should be Web 3.0 native. Although we are bound by the legal agreement underpinning this work of art and may not be able to duplicate and share the music digitally, we firmly believe there are ways to share this musical masterpiece with the world.”

In an effort to get a status update from PleasrDAO on what’s next for the album, Irvine Weekly reached out to Peter Scoolidge, an attorney that represented PleasrDAO in the purchase of the album from the federal government.  

“A documentary is currently in the works for this story so we are not able to comment any further on it for the time being,” Scoolidge wrote to Irvine Weekly. 

For now, Wu-Tang fans will have to continue to wait for their chance to hear Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, but Johnson is optimistic it will be around for a while.  

“A lot of things in life are temporary, fleeting, impermanent. But remember this – just like our blockchain, Wu-Tang is forever.”

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It’s been almost exactly five years since Starcrawler was on the cover of L.A. Weekly, heralded at the time as disciples of the Runaways and Ozzy Osbourne, thanks to its striking aesthetic, often theatrical performances, and uncompromising rock ‘n’ roll sound. The earliest version of the band had the ability to shock and confuse audiences, as listeners in a decidedly “unrock” era tried to come to terms with what Starcrawler’s deal was. They’re likely still trying to figure that out.

It’s not that hard. Starcrawler is a typical band story in that it’s about a group of friends finding their sound and then evolving over time. Their oddities, what makes the band atypical, is the subtleties. Frontwoman Arrow de Wilde might remind some people of the likes of Iggy Pop, Wendy O’ Williams, Cherie Currie, Stiv Bators, etc., but she’s very much her own person, her own artist. Like those vocalists, de Wilde is a captivating performer – unpredictable and charismatic, and occasionally shocking. With her naturally lean frame and sneer, she literally looks like she was born into this shit. The archetypal rock star. The rest of the band members are, of course, key to the sound, integral components of what Starcrawler is and has become.

So yeah, it’s been five years and Starcrawler is back on the cover of LA Weekly. It’s been a fruitful half-decade, too, with the band enjoying a steady rise.

“I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m definitely very happy,” de Wilde says via a Zoom interview. “I think we’ve always had goals for ourselves, but I think from the last time we were on that cover, we definitely have made some progress. I remember when we did that, it felt crazy. I mean, it still is, but it was very unexpected for that time.”

The band were promoting the debut album at that time. Since then, they released the Devour You sophomore effort, and now are set to drop their third – She Said. Guitarist Henri Cash says that there’s been a natural progression between records.

“It’s been so many years since we recorded that and, also, we have new members with us,” he says. “My brother [Bill Cash] joined us at the beginning of quarantine and so did our new drummer Seth [Carolina]. We were just playing together a lot during quarantine, just really getting super tight. It was the natural progression of the music that we were making when we were playing together.”

Of course, like most other bands, COVID played havoc with the band’s ability to play together and continue on their current trajectory.

“It was really hard at first, because we’d been on tour for five years and we’d never had more than two weeks at home,” says Cash. “Then all of a sudden, we weren’t seeing each other, which felt super weird because we’re like a family, and we all like to sleep in the same beds on tour and in the car. So it was such a shock to the body that I would just go driving nowhere, just to feel like I was doing something. Then a couple of months in, we started writing songs through Arrow’s window. That’s how it all started.”

They got innovative. Sitting outside of de Wilde’s place, writing and even recording demos through her window. If nothing else, the pandemic forced us to think outside of the box.

“In L.A., it’s very common that all the windows are barred, but there’s one that we were able to put a mic through,” de Wilde says. “He sat out there, and we were very safe and responsible about COVID. It was at the beginning, so we had no idea. For a while that’s how we were doing it – we would just write and record demos through the window. Once we were able to create our pods and all that, we would sit outside and whatever. That’s how it started, which I think is kinda cool. Romeo and Juliet vibes or something.”

When the time came to actually record She Said, they entered Sunset Sound studio with producer Tyler Bates and engineer Robert Carranza.

“They’re both just amazing people, and also felt like family,” says Cash. “Tyler is an exceptional guitar player as well, so it was cool to spend time focusing on that. But he’s also a dad, and so when we looked hungry, he would cook us grilled cheese sandwiches, so that was really cool.”

The album’s theme, they say unexpectedly, is pink.

“I’m actually in between painting a bunch of stuff pink right now, which is a headache,” says Cash. “But our stage set is pink. Even before we wrote most of the songs, we were pretty set on the color tone. When you visualize something like that, it helps put stuff together.”

“We’ve always had a color scheme, but it was loose,” adds de Wilde. “Like now, we’re putting our all into it and making it this world. Before, our color scheme was red and white, but it was kinda loose. Now, each record has its own visual world.”

It’s an interesting approach and one that doesn’t always take the conventional approach. What is pink? That can be subjective.

“For some reason, the name She Said is pink to me,” says de Wilde. “I don’t know if that’s weird. None of the other songs when I was thinking of them sounded that pink. I have a weird thing where certain words and numbers I associate with colors. Four is also pink. I don’t know how to explain it, but to me She Said felt very pink. It was also just the one that we could all agree on.”

However you want to look at it, it’s working out for them. Starcrawler has a sound that is clearly rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s also flexible enough that they can open for artists as diverse as Nick Cave, My Chemical Romance, Jack White, and Porno for Pyros.

“You can’t really pigeonhole our music,” de Wilde says. “We can play with My Chem, Jack White, we just played with Nick Cave, and then I think we could play with Insane Clown Posse. Who knows? We’re all over the board. I think any type of music, not even just rock. I think it would be cool to play with rap artists and stuff. There’s something about our music. There are people who come to our shows who have told me they don’t usually listen to rock, but they like us. Which is cool, and very interesting to me.”

That said, Starcrawler is still a rock ‘n’ roll band, and the members have seen the scene develop since they formed.

“It seems like it’s getting to a better place,” says de Wilde. “When we first started, there weren’t a lot of other bands that I feel like we could play with. Like, I didn’t really know a lot of other rock bands at the time. People viewed rock as this cheesy, ironic thing, which I understand, but I feel like it’s coming back in this new way where kids, younger people, can relate to it, too.”

“Now that there’s a bunch of younger bands playing rock music, it feels like a new thing for a lot of people, especially younger people that before didn’t listen to that genre – it feels like their own, instead of their dad’s music or something,” adds Cash.

That’s what’s so great about Starcrawler – they feel like a fresh, young rock ‘n’ roll band and not a stale, lumpen vehicle for nostalgia. The latest single is an example of that – the excellent “Broken Angels.”

“That one started with Tim [Franco, bass],” says Cash. “It was his brainchild, and it was a lot slower. It was a ‘60s jam. Then I found it, and we made a chorus for it. We didn’t know if it was going to work for Starcrawler, and there was a long time of sitting on it. This could be cool, but it would be a leap. I think once we did it together, it really showed our dynamics as a band. I think that’s something that we’ve grown the most. When a lot of people start playing music, they go really hard or really soft, and it’s hard to find a place in-between. I think we’ve started to develop that. I also think about how Led Zeppelin’s hard songs wouldn’t be as good without the soft ones. We needed to have some of that in there.”

By the time this feature goes to press, Starcrawler will have played their album launch show at the Troubadour. After that, there are plenty more plans.

“We have another single that comes out with the release of the album, and then we’re doing a two-month long tour across America,” says de Wilde. “Then we go to South Korea, and then the Dominican Republic early next year, which will be a first.”

There’s simply no stopping a band that is rocketing, rather than crawling, to the stars.

Starcrawler’s new album She Said is out now. They play the Observatory on Tuesday, October 18.

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The legendary Willie Nelson & Family, along with several other iconic musicians, will be performing at the FivePoint Amphitheater in Irvine on Oct. 16, during the 2022 Outlaw Music Festival.

Tickets are on sale now! Go to https://t.co/XGu667lPe7 @WillieNelson @chrisstapleton @theavettbros @jasonisbell @nrateliff @billystrings @zztop @govtmuleband @brothersosborne @zachlanebryan @steveearle @outsidechild13 @charleycrockett @larkinpoe @warandtreaty @BrittNicx pic.twitter.com/imcIVGuOyW

— Blackbird Presents (@BlackbirdProd) March 25, 2022

Joining Willie Nelson will be his two sons, along with performances by the Avett Brothers, Black Pumas, Larkin Poe and Chris Stapleton. Tickets are currently on sale via LiveNation.

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Porno for Pyros: a beloved band whose music has withstood the test of time for many. L.A. Weekly Music Editor Brett Callwood reminisces on the band’s journey after enjoying their most recent show. “The gig at the Belasco in Downtown L.A. on Thursday night felt much more like an event than a regular concert,” writes Callwood. “In some ways, it recalled the glorious underground celebration that was early Lollapalooza, Jim Rose Circus Sideshow and all.”

“The stage and indeed the crowd was a glorious sea of drag queens and assorted dancers,” he continues. “Men on stilts with oversized guitars. Angels. Devils. The night was dubbed Heaven After Dark, and the MC for the evening told us that it is indeed a little slice of heaven. It certainly felt like that, and that was a much needed feeling in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent horseshit, plus COVID, Trump and everything else. Heaven will do just fine thank you Perry.”

Read more on LAWeekly.com here. 

Porno for Pyros Forever

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Elena Charbila’s journey to becoming Kid Moxie, an L.A.-based cinematic electro-pop artist extraordinaire, is one that is long and storied. Originally from Athens, Greece, Charbilla was a child actor who was familiar with TV work from an early age.

When she started dabbling in music, she played bass in goth and rock bands, and eventually landed bigger gigs backing the likes of Canadian jazz singer Michael Bublé. Having left Greece and starting to establish herself, Charbila made the decision to do her own thing and Kid Moxie was born.

“I just figured, about 10 years ago or so, that I wanted to take control and play my own music,” she says. “My own notes. Write my own scripts, and perform them the way I wanted to. That’s when I started doing my solo stuff.”

Naturally, her sound has evolved. She admits that she cringes when looking back on some of her “homemade, riot grrrl pop.”

“It doesn’t feel right for what I want to be now,” she says. “So I would say now, I do retro-futuristic pop, or cinematic pop. Every song is based on a scene that’s playing in my head. I love soundtracks – that’s what I’m into and what I also do, apart from my pop stuff. But even my pop music is very cinematic. Even if it has words.”

Kid Moxie never lived in Athens as an adult, though she’s aware of strong synthwave and goth scenes in Greece and across Europe. She first moved to San Francisco for school, before settling in Los Angeles.

“I’m so, so in love with the city,” she says. “My new album is about love, sex and L.A. That’s what I like to say, because those are three things that have really shaped me in many ways. I fell in love with L.A. – it was like instant. I love the feeling, even if it’s an illusion, that anything can come true. I live in that space way better than any sort of harsh realism that ‘you cannot do this,’ ‘there’s a limit to this.’” No. This city is like, ‘You can be whoever you want. ‘I feel like everybody comes here to become something different than what they were before, and that’s why I came here – to become closer to myself, actually.”

It wasn’t long after she moved to Los Angeles that Elena Charbila became Kid Moxie.

“When I first moved to L.A., I noticed a bottle of Moxie Cola in the garbage, and the logo was so interesting to me,” she says. “I loved the ‘X’ especially. I was looking for a band name at the time, and I was like, ‘I need to do something that has Moxie in it because it just sounds powerful and badass, and genderless.’ I wanted a name that was genderless, feeling like I was experimenting a lot. I was like, ‘Kid – Kid Moxie,’ it all came together. I didn’t mind people thinking I’m a dude from the name.”

So the foundation was in place, and Kid Moxie was up and running. Still, as much as she loves L.A., she doesn’t yet feel connected with the scene here.

“I don’t really feel part of any music scene, to be honest,” she says. “I feel like I’m in my own little bubble, especially the last few years. I never really felt like I belonged in a collective as much. It was always feeling very individual. It was me, my laptop and the city. But that’s where I felt more like myself, more productive and creative.”

The new album that she mentioned is Better Than Electric, and it was mostly written and recorded in L.A., during the pandemic.

“I did travel to Europe and finished it in Germany with the producer Faderhead – a dark, hardcore electro dude,” she says. “My stuff is very dreamy, and he brought in the bass, the grime and the dirt that sometimes creeps up on the album. Also, the producer Maps on Mute Records from England was attached, produced and helped me with it. But it was mostly done here at my home studio in Downtown LA, looking at the skyline and feeling very Bladerunner-y, especially during the pandemic. That was the vibe.”

The pandemic, she says, affected the timing of the album’s rollout but ended up aiding the creative process somewhat.

“I felt that things were still, and when you’re still, you can go deeper in many ways,” she says. “The stillness helped me personally, with many things, and one of them being exploring the sounds more. Digging further in. What is better than electric? And what does this mean? I still don’t know, by the way. It struck me as a title. I don’t know what this means, but it feels powerful and I’m all about surrealism. Not knowing what things are but knowing how they make you feel. I just held on to that feeling.”

As she says, the themes that tie the album together are love, sex and L.A. A great example of that is new single “On a Sunday Night.”

“Sunday is a little more lonesome than Saturday,” she says. “On a Saturday night, it’s more clubby. On a Sunday night it’s like, who goes out on a Sunday night and what do they do? I’m always obsessed with the notion of a Sunday night for people that don’t have normal 9-5 jobs. It’s the most romantic night in my head, for some reason. And the darkest, in a way. The video is basically part of a trilogy. ‘Better Than Electric’ was love. ‘Shine’ was sex. ‘On a Sunday Night’ is dreams and Los Angeles. I’m playing a chauffeur, picking up passengers in West Hollywood in this old ‘70s Cadillac and giving them the experience they need. It’s a fantasy Uber in Hollywood.”

With the album and singles out, Kid Moxie already has plenty planned for the rest of the year.

“I’m writing the soundtrack for a show called Milky Way, directed by a Greek director who won the Palme D’Or in Canne last year, Vasilis Kekatos,” she says. “I just finished an EP, a synthwave EP of live songs between two girls. Me and NINA, a German synthwave artist. She’s like my German doppelganger. We recorded it in Berlin a few months back and it’s coming out at the end of the year. It’s all about ‘80s, synthwave, retro futuristic goodness, sang by two women, to each other.”

The fun, apparently, never ends.

Kid Moxie’s Better Than Electric album is out now.

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The post The Kid’s Gotta Lotta Moxie appeared first on Irvine Weekly.

While the concert business has not quite returned to pre-pandemic “normal,” it is recently showing serious signs of coming off life support. Fewer tours are being cancelled or postponed and, in turn, the listening public is regaining confidence in purchasing advance tickets or heading out night-of-show.

The pandemic that has so divided us has also, somewhat ironically, heightened our rediscovered joy in togetherness. Because one small silver lining of live music’s lockdown blues is a renewed sense of appreciation for concerts among even (or perhaps especially) the most seasoned fans which, in turn, has infused crowds with a revived sense of community and camaraderie. There’s a palpable sense of how much we’ve missed not just the artists and their music, but also the whole concert ritual and the instinctively human reassurance of being in a room filled with strangers, but strangers with whom we have at least one shared passion.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the traditional music hotbed of Orange County, where venues of all sizes in and around Irvine are enjoying a much-delayed sigh of relief and outpouring of fervor for the visceral and very personal pleasures of live performances.

THE DICKIES

The Observatory, Santa Ana

Friday, July 1 

One of The Dickies’ great charms is the band’s joyously authentic celebration of their comfortable 1970s San Fernando Valley roots. While some first-wave L.A. punkers affected working class or even British personas, this eternally goofy, ultra-caffeinated quintet sang about the waterslides, TV shows, and Disneyland that were their day-to-day realities. Always more pop than punk – and a huge influence on the pop-punk subgenre that emerged concurrently with their 1979 debut, The Incredible Shrinking Dickies – they remain super-talented suburban nerds whose songcraft negates the need for any faux-political posturing or pseudo angst. Founder members Stan Lee (guitar) and eccentric vocalist Leonard Graves Phillips continue as the band’s core, with Phillips losing none of his instantly recognizable, cartoonishly tremulous timbre.

HALSEY

FivePoint Amphitheatre, Irvine

Saturday, July 9

New Jersey songwriter/chanteuse Halsey is following an arc that’s become familiar amongst successful pop artists: reaching a point of utterly intentional commercial comfort where they can afford to start taking risks and putting more of themselves into their music. In Halsey’s case this meant, after her first three pop-EDM albums were huge hits, teaming with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the darker, edgier If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power last year. A concept album exploring the joys and otherwise of pregnancy and motherhood, the almost recklessly ambitious If I Can’t Have Love is not, despite the NiN collab, remotely industrial (unless you count Willy Wonka’s factory). Instead, it’s an eminently listenable collection from an artist who, cognizant of being at a career and creative crossroads, is making a very credible grab for longevity.

Kool & The Gang (Courtesy Pyramid Entertainment Group)

OC FAIR: KOOL & THE GANG, THE FAMILY STONE

Pacific Amphitheatre, Costa Mesa

Friday, July 15

Nearly 60 years into their career and with two original members still aboard, Kool & The Gang’s taut, funk- and jazz-inflected R&B is archetypal county fair fare: sunny, household-name hits like “Celebration,” “Get Down On It,” and “Ladies Night” that most listeners of a certain age can sing along with and are 100% compatible with outdoor summer vibing. At least a dozen strong and still led by bassist Robert “Kool” Bell, Kool & The Gang lives up to its name and, while their heyday was a short-lived collab with Brazilian producer Eumir Deodato at the turn of the 1980s that spawned all of the aforementioned hits, they still bring it, synchronized dance moves ‘n all. The Family Stone is built around founding Sly & The Family Stone saxophonist Jerry Martini and Sly Stone’s daughter Phunne Stone. Their renditions of original Family Stone hits like “Everyday People” and “I Want to Take You Higher” will likely find a receptive audience with OC’s Kool & The Gang fans.

REO Speedwagon (Credit Randee St. Nicholas)

REO SPEEDWAGON, LOVERBOY, STYX

FivePoint Amphitheatre, Irvine

Saturday, July 16

A soft rock, soft-focus fantasy, this triple serving of ultra-anthemic cheese will have phones in the air quicker than a schoolyard brawl. Almost synonymous with guilty-pleasure nostalgia for an entire American generation, the throughline of the night is serious songcraft and virtuoso delivery that formed the soundtrack to millions of fumbling romances, high school ragers, and carefree young lives. REO Speedwagon’s Reagan-era ubiquity is hard to exaggerate, with their Hi Infidelity opus alone spawning cassette classics like “Keep On Loving You” and “Take It On the Run” on its way to becoming the best-selling album of ‘81. Also from Illinois, Styx flirt with more progressive adult-oriented rock, incorporating heftier guitars and the synths that were making themselves heard during the band’s early ‘80s zenith, but always strictly in service to the song. It’s telling that Canada’s Loverboy, a band that has sold more than 20 million albums, is only the opener on this no-filler throwback mega-bill.

ABC

The Coach House Concert Hall, San Juan Capistrano

Saturday, July 16 

Now effectively the solo expression of ultra-suave vocalist Martin Fry, between 1982 and ’85 England’s ABC crafted three of new wave’s most elegantly ambitious and uncompromising albums: The Lexicon of Love, Beauty Stab, and How to Be a … Zillionaire! Polishing the synthesized R&B pop of Roxy Music and David Bowie to a hitherto unimaginable studio sheen, they retained sufficient soul, heart, and sheer melodicism to out-chart and certainly outlast most of their genre-jumping peers. Fry’s wry, sometimes skewering lyricism is sweetened by his deliciously loungey croon, ultra-cultured arrangements, and (at the time) state-of-the-art production. Hailing from a gritty steel city that felt the brunt of Margaret Thatcher’s privatization wrecking ball, he’s a deceptively political artist, too, with Beauty Stab closer “United Kingdom” capturing that grim era with a poignancy that crust punks and protest folkies would kill for.

Maverick City Music (Photo Credit Marah Brown)

MAVERICK CITY MUSIC x KIRK FRANKLIN

FivePoint Amphitheatre, Irvine

Saturday, July 23

In March, award-winning worship collective Maverick City Music and multiple GRAMMY recipient Kirk Franklin teamed up for a collaborative live album called Kingdom Book One. What’s unusual about this new release is its being recorded at a Level 5 security prison in Florida with some 1,300 inmates participating. The idea is to spotlight the injustices, including racial disparities, of mass incarceration in America. Despite only debuting in 2019, Atlanta’s Maverick City Music has already released a string of big-selling albums and EPs, received a GRAMMY nomination, and won a Billboard Music Award for last year’s Maverick City Vol. 3 Part 1. The multi-talented Franklin – a choir director, gospel singer, dancer, songwriter, and author – has won an incredible 16 GRAMMY Awards over the past quarter-century. The ongoing Kingdom Tour has already shattered attendance records for Christian music/Gospel tours, with more than 50,000 fans attending its first four dates.

OC FAIR: THE CURED (tribute to The Cure)

The Hangar, Costa Mesa

Wednesday, July 27

It speaks volumes for The Cure’s popularity and longevity that not only are there acts paying tribute to them the world over, but some of these “clones” have themselves become minor institutions. Take San Diego’s The Cured, who’ve performed hundreds of shows since their 2004 formation, and have even had The Cure’s original drummer, Lol Tolhurst, sit in with them. The Cured stick to their almost-namesake’s 1980s heyday, from the early sparse melodicism of “Boys Don’t Cry” and ultra-atmospheric “A Forest,” to huge later hits like “Lovesong” and “Fascination Street.” They’re a Party City take on their idols, relying on Halloween wigs to achieve a squinting likeness and a little over-the-top on the tortured English accent, but present a musically solid homage. Sadly, this will be the farewell show for founding frontman Zippy, due to the lingering effects of a car accident three years ago. We wish him well.

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Tori Amos is partway through the Ocean to Ocean tour when we speak to her for this interview; finally, the celebrated singer and songwriter can get out on the road and celebrate the album of the same name that was released in October. She’s characteristically chatty and charming when we speak by phone, an easy conversationalist. But she’s also very open about the fact that the past couple of years have been challenging to say the least.

Amos spent the pandemic period in her home in Cornwall, a gorgeous county in the southwest of England. Thankfully, she’s now able to travel and see family, as well as tour.

“Now that the pandemic has lifted, between the tours I popped into the beach house in Florida before it all started – I hadn’t seen my father except one time in the last couple of years,” she says. “So I’m in Cornwall for a good portion of the time, but not for many, many months now.”

There are worse places to be locked down than Cornwall but still, a lockdown is a lockdown. In the UK, they had three over the course of the pandemic.

“On the third one, I thought we handled it as well as we could,” Amos says. “For the first and the second, particularly the first, we were busy. We were at the recording studio so we had a book that came out [Resistance: A Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change, and Courage], we did a virtual book tour, and then we did an EP and put out Christmastide with Decca. So we’ve been pretty busy. And then the insurrection happened. And then the third lockdown had been put in place, and I think it was clear that live music wasn’t going to happen so here we go again. I think a lot of musicians that I’m speaking to are in a similar mental state which is ‘when is this going to shift?’ Our business was one of the businesses that was on its knees. That and live theater. But as you know, the music side of things was one of the last to come back. So it was challenging.”

It was particularly strange for Amos, a North Carolina native and former Los Angeles resident, to watch the January 6 insurrection from the UK.

“The Brits that were phoning in were asking ‘what in the world has happened to your country?’,” she says. “My husband started wearing a t-shirt around the house going ‘Make America Great Britain Again.’ Then he looked at me and said, ‘Wife, your people have lost their way.’ Maybe they need their older brother to come back in, colonize them and teach them what’s what. Oh my goodness. But in a way, this is such teenager behavior. ‘Watch me dad, I’m gonna crash my car. Fuck you, I’ll show you.’ Burn it all down.”

It was the events on January 6, combined with Cornish mythology and the environment, that inspired Ocean to Ocean.

“It’s all of it, and it’s also having to get out even in the wintery Cornish weather – when the gales are blowing and the gusts of wind – it can be ferociously beautiful because it’s so powerful,” Amos says. “I got myself out in it. We’re in the middle of nowhere really, we’re in farm country 20 minutes from the cliffs in northern Cornwall where the weather coming off the Atlantic can be quite something. It was almost a relief to realize that nature wasn’t in lockdown. She was busy, and she was in that time of very dramatic weather. It was humbling. I said, ‘Clearly, you as an energy force are able to deal with a world that’s gone mad and I just need to study from you’ because I’d got into a place of despondency. I didn’t have the tools. Nobody did, really. How do you deal with a pandemic, especially if your livelihood and what you do doesn’t lend itself to Zoom. Not really. So it was about, how do you adapt? That’s when I just sat with nature and started listening. ‘Metal Water Wood’ was the first song to come, to admit that I was just in a place of sadness.”

The album was recorded, produced, mixed and engineered in Cornwall, Los Angeles and Massachusetts, which was challenging but the results are exceptional.

“I think it worked because Matt Chamberlain [drums], Jon Evans [bass], Mark Hawley [guitar] and I, we worked as four directions on this with John Philip Shenale – we added an extra direction with him in there,” Amos says. “JPS I’ve been working with since ‘91. So because we have a history of playing together for so many years and working together, there was a language that we’ve developed. When you have that language, you have it. Yet we weren’t in a room together jamming. So it went from the studio to L.A. to Matt Chamberlain’s studio, then it would come back to us and I’d do a take off my piano and play to him. Then it goes to Jon Evans’ studio, and comes back to us. We’d add stuff and it’d go to JPS, and then it would come back and we’d tie it up. That was the process.”

Ultimately, the album sounds phenomenal. Songs such as the title track and “Spies” are classic Tori Amos – emotionally stirring, near-classical, epic yet organic and utterly beautiful. Under the circumstances, she has excelled.

“Those were the circumstances,” Amos says. “Would it have been different if we’d all been in a room together? Probably? I remember when Matt heard ‘29 Years’ once it was done, and he said ‘reggae, really?’ That’s all he said. Because once he’d played drums on it, he didn’t hear it again until the end. I’m sure he was surprised but after he listened to it for a couple of days, I think he was really thrilled. The choices you make are the choices. When you’re in a room together, it’s a very different conversation than when you’re thousands of miles apart. There was just no time to get it back to people to say, ‘let me change this, let me change that.’ I’ll occasionally get a letter from an introvert going, ‘How’s your pandemic? Mine’s going quite swimmingly.’ The introverts get a little break here. Good for them.”

Now on tour, Amos receives a lot of letters from people concerned about the state of the world. She’s been an effective activist for years, with organizations such as RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network). Naturally, she’s dismayed about the recent moves by the Supreme Court to potentially overturn Roe vs. Wade.

“We’ve been out for several weeks, and the letters that we’re getting from people who are deeply concerned about what’s happening,” she says. “Many of them keep making it clear that this is anti-choice. It’s not pro-life. If this were about pro-life, then where are they after the birth of the kid, these people? This is about anti-choice. This isn’t about them assisting these people with bringing up a kid. Financially and anything else for the next 18 years. Very few people put their money where their mouth is. That’s where I just roll my eyes and say, ‘don’t confuse yourself on what this is about. This is anti-choice, because you’re forcing somebody to have a child, whether they then feel like they don’t want to send the child up for adoption but struggle on and try to do it.’ A lot of people are making it clear to me how they’re seeing it. A lot of people are incredibly concerned about the court and what the court means. This is a real defining moment, I think, in our history, with our justice system.”

Amos will be performing for three nights in Los Angeles at the Orpheum, and she’s relishing the chance to return to her former home.

“I love it,” she says. “I lived there for seven and a half years, when big hair was the thing. I lived in L.A. at a specific time. I was in my twenties – I moved there when I was 21. I was all over the Canyons, in the Valley, and driving my little wannabe Mustang – a baby blue Capri – all over the place. Playing piano bars anywhere I could. I played the Sheraton, the Bonaventure. I even played the Sheraton in Long Beach after Little Earthquakes got rejected. I had to go back to piano bars. I played the Ramada in Beverly Hills. I played it all, my friend.”

People intending on attending all three nights can expect the odd change in the setlist here and there.

“We change a few songs every night,” Amos says. “I’m always moving the set around. I start the same way, because that’s ‘once upon a time’ for each tour. Then you can move anywhere you want to move, pretty much. There might be some that show up more than others, because they’re part of the narrative right now for our time now, that are just working as a pivot. But we’re rewriting the narrative so the journey is different every night, reflecting what we’ve learned that day in that town, which will be L.A. It’s just reading the letters before the show, getting a sense of where people are, taking requests – that’s how I do it.”

Finally, Amos says that the schedule over the next 12 months is open to change. Anything can happen.

“A lot of it is timing,” she says. “Does it work? Because when we’re touring really, other than some interviews, it’s not as if I can just jump into a recording studio somewhere and contribute to something if they have a deadline of three weeks from now. It doesn’t always work time-wise. So I’m open to what happens. I think I’m going to spend some time in the States so I can see my family because I haven’t seen them in such a long time.”

Tori Amos performs at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 15, Thursday, June 16 and Friday, June 17 at the Orpheum, laorpheum.com.

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Matt Halper and Eli Sones are the two men behind L.A.-based electro-pop producer duo Two Friends, and they’ve been best friends since meeting in Los Angeles in 2005, in 7th grade.

“Towards the end of high school, on a random weekend hanging out together, we decided to do a Google search for ‘best music production software’,” they say. “We chose one of the top results from some random forum discussion and bought it (ProTools) and just dove in. Slowly as some of our songs and remixes started to gain some momentum online, we thought it would be smart to learn how to DJ so we could eventually do performances. So we did a similar thing – Googled ‘best DJ software and hardware’ and bought some and dove in. It was always serious, but I’d say right after we graduated college in 2015 is when we were able to really focus ALL our attention on music. ”

The guys describe their sound as “dance-pop,” though add that it’s a blend.

“It usually has a foot in the dance world in terms of structure and energy,” they say. “But we love to incorporate organic live elements and take inspiration from a lot of other genres– within the dance realm, some of our stuff leans a little more alternative/rocky, some more folky/indie, and some more poppy.”

Two Friends are super excited about the current state of electronic music.

“Since we first got into it, we’ve always been excited to be honest,” they say. “Since the barriers to entry are relatively low – so many amazing songs have been made with just a laptop and headphones, no super-fancy equipment– there’s new producers popping up every single day that are doing very creative and innovative things. So far, the energy at our shows in 2022 has been the best we’ve ever experienced in our careers- and hopefully that keeps going up.”

Their latest release is “Wish You Were Hear” (not the Pink Floyd tune).

“Super pumped about this song,” they say. “We’ve actually been playing it at shows on our Adventureland Tour since January, and it was always a highlight even though it was unreleased. It was crazy to see some people even sing along with the lyrics, if they had been to multiple shows or maybe seen snippets on social media. And now to finally have the song out feels great. John K, the singer on it, is so insanely talented and it was a pleasure to work with him. The crazy part- since it was mostly made and recorded during the pandemic, we’ve actually never met John in person, only online, so we cannot wait to do a live version of the song one day soon with him.”

Looking ahead, the duo has plenty planned for the rest of 2022.

“We have more in the pipeline than we ever have before – SO much new music, new Big Bootie mixes, new collaborations, new shows, new live activations… a lot of big things planned that we can’t wait to start rolling out,” they say. “If there was one positive thing to take from the pandemic, it was that it of course gave us way more time in the studio than we’re used to in a normal touring year. So not only did that mean more time to write and to work on a lot of new music, but it also meant more time to get creative in other ways. We’re extremely excited for the rest of 2022 and beyond.”

Two Friends Make Beautiful Music Together: The “Wish You Were Here” single is out now.

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