The National played a set at the Hollywood Bowl on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 that made their signature subjects -- self-reproach, uncertainty, despair -- turn sublime. The Brooklyn-based band made themselves at home headlining the...

Sade's show at Honda Center in Anaheim August 30, 2011 was such a triumph of visual and sonic beauty, I started to wonder if pure gorgeousness could fix the economy or make political...

U2 ended their final show at Angel Stadium with words from Springsteen's "Jungleland" read as a coda to their own "Moment of Surrender" and a eulogy for sax magician Clarence Clemons. It was a night of insistent...

Justice delayed in LA has become injustice finally remedied in Cleveland for two of American music's essential voices. LA native Darlene Love and one-time LA resident Wanda Jackson have taken their rightful places as inductees in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jackson...

Prince's ambitious concert residency at the Los Angeles Forum offered a packed house a gorgeous evening of "real music by real musicians" on Thursday night, April 21. No lipsyncing allowed. Prince's guitar virtuosity, sweet vocals, fantastic funk, and...

Eighties New Romanticists Duran Duran started their 2011 push to promote their new album All You Need Is Now with a well-received appearance at SXSW. After Austin, the world: their March 23rd concert from the exotic...

You can feel the sand between your toes and the sunscreen on your nose when Bethany Cosentino sings any song off of Best Coast's 2010 smash album Crazy for You. The surf sound melts into girl group giddiness with an unpretentious, garage-derived approach that is perfect spiritual uplift for this...

Henry Rollins stalks the earth. Tibet. Uganda. Mongolia. North Korea. The Costco in Burbank. He pounced onto the stage at LA's Largo to demonstrate relentless curiosity about the world and concern for it as he performed the first in a series of...

With her brand-spanking-new Jack White-produced album, The Party Ain't Over and the fun performances supporting it, Wanda Jackson, 73, is making her case not for mere rock and roll relevance in 2011, she's cementing her status as royalty. She's still...

Before they composed the soundtrack to Disney's TRON Legacy (in theaters Friday, Dec. 17, 2010), the gentlemen of Daft Punk changed popular music forever. Categories like House, Electronica, Alt Dance don't begin to describe the wit and buoyancy of their soundscapes. Or...

The personal essay can move readers like nothing else. At Traveler's Bookcase on West 3rd in West Hollywood I got to hear four essayists read their work aloud. Prior to this I've never been at a reading where four writers in a...

CocoRosie's exquisite songs prove ravishingly entertaining live. An evening with the band is fantastic fun, the songwriting Casady sisters blend hip-hop beats, tuneful 1920s sentimentality, and opera with evocations of a poetical otherworld, delivered by their two contrasting voices. Sierra Casady was the...

The Tallest Man on Earth is the appellation Americana's finest Swedish singer-songwriter-guitarist has chosen in hopes of attracting your attention. His name is actually Kristian Matsson and this not-so-tall 27-year-old is the most astonishing folk artist to appear in perhaps a decade. He and his guitars are playing many more...

Las Vegas Hilton, August 15, 2010

The handsome singer, GQ UK's Man of the Year 2008, who makes his audience go weak in the knees, stepped modestly to the microphone and started the show with a lilting, serious song about spending time...

House of Blues, San Diego, July 19, 2010

Ralph Ellison famously wrote that blues "are the only consistent art in the United States
 which constantly remind us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go."

And Mae West recommended that, "those who are easily...