Los Angeles Informer

Aussie Gotye beaten by Rihanna to best video award at the MTV Video Music … She then made her way into the pit at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and launched into her hit "We Found Love" as she weaved through the crowd, touching hands with dozens of fans. But One Direction, the heartthrob [...]

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Beats headphone maker buys MOG music service LOS ANGELES — Upscale headphone maker Beats Electronics is buying MOG, a music subscription service that has struggled to compete with rivals such as Rhapsody and Spotify. Beats is the parent company of the "Beats by Dr. Dre" line of headphones. Read more on Lexington Herald Leader

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Three decades as a punk-rock icon has dulled Keith Morris’ classic revenge-of-the-nerds wrath, but not much. “I have a little Napoleonic complex,” admits the aptly compact singer, his unfaltering gaze framed by run-amok dreadlocks as we chat over chicken kebab in a Hollywood strip mall, “h…

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fri 5/4 Claude VonStroke, Justin Martin, Worthy AVALON In “The Whistler,” one of Claude VonStroke’s best-known tracks, the San Francisco–based DJ/producer juxtaposes a repeated grunt with a whistle that could only come …

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Upon her 2005 death from lung cancer, Esther Wong’s place in the city’s rock lore was solidified by a Los Angeles Times obituary that called the 88-year-old mastermind behind Madame Wong’s in Chinatown the “Godmother of punk.” The phrase quickly spread throughout the Internet, and the ti…

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fri 4/27 Esperanza Spalding FONDA THEATER The folks behind the Grammy Awards get it right in their choice for Best New Artist about once every 10 years, which also is how often a performer like Esperanza Spalding comes along …

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Parked outside the Growlers’ Costa Mesa complex is a full-size gray school bus with California Church Teen Choir crudely spray-painted on the side. It’s a joke, of course. The crew of friends and hangers-on that often accompanies the beach-goth four-piece on this makeshift tour bus, boug…

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fri 4/20 Lemonade THE ECHO Members of the same Internet-enabled semiscene that has given us Tanlines, Delorean and Teengirl Fantasy, these former San Franciscans (now living in New York) live up to their name, pumping out swe…

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Ashley Huizenga is a fiercely intellectual singer and performance artist, who has a hard time keeping her clothes on. Tonight, at a Valentine’s Day show at Cheetahs strip club in Hollywood, she saunters onstage in a thong and a red bra, draped in a piece of white, translucent fabric, which she sl…

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fri 4/6 Kitty, Daisy & Lewis EL REY THEATRE These U.K. early-rock kids put out a self-titled debut over here in 2009, which earned them a left-field opening slot with Coldplay and not much else. (Unless we’re counting a perma…

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Throughout the ’90s, nobody knew much of anything about Inglewood five-piece Despise You, who helped pioneer a breakneck style of hardcore punk called powerviolence. Rumor had it they were cholo gangbangers hiding out from the law. “Everyone was asking, ‘Who are these guys? Why don’t they ever to…

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fri 3/30 Mike Watt, RF7, Carnage Asada, Barrio Tiger REDWOOD BAR & GRILL There’s a little something for everybody at tonight’s sonic smorgasbord, a birthday celebration for longtime local soundman Dirty Ed. Led by former Hang…

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See Also: More from our interview over at West Coast Sound, “Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Is One Meandering Interview.” Omar Rodriguez-Lopez wears the same thing every day: t…

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fri 3/23 Funk-a-Palooza GIBSON AMPHITHEATRE Funk never needs a reason to celebrate. It is celebration — the original musical holiday, the Grand Palooza, if you will. Funk encourages us to forget Uncle Sam and h…

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fri 3/16 Memoryhouse, Sister Crayon BOOTLEG THEATER If Memoryhouse’s music inspires words like cinematic and visual, that’s probably not an accident. The Ontario, Canada–based duo combines a photograph…

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