Downbeast - music blog

Happy New Year/New Decade, everyone! I am thankful for life on planet Earth and wish you all peace and happiness in 2010 and beyond!

So what's happening?? Here is some news, as well as some long-overdue clarification on tidbits mentioned here ages ago. Write this down in your copybooks!

A memorial for the late trumpeter/vocalist Stacy Rowles, who died last October from complications following a car accident, will be held this Sunday, January 10 in the auditorium of the Musicians Union Local 47 (817 Vine St, Hollywood, CA, 818-986-8733).

The ever-growing list of musicians slated to perform includes David Angel, Joe LaBarbera, Pete & Linda Christlieb, Gary Foster, Sandy Graham, Marty Harris, Karen Hernandez, Kendall Kay, Dave Koonse, Paul Kriebich, Sydney Lehman, Mike Melvoin, Roger Neumann, Darek Oles, Brian O'Rourke, Mike Peak, Charlie & Sandi Shoemaker, Linda Small, VR & Putter Smith and Jimmy Spencer. The memorial begins at 11am and goes until around 4pm. Donations will be accepted to further the effort to archive the musical legacy of the Rowles family. There will also be a food and beverage buffet. From the invite: "We'll be serving tri-tip and chicken with beer, wine and softer things at the bar. If you make a dish you are proud of, you are welcome to bring a taste for the table. One of the rules of the house when Stacy entertained was 'nobody leaves hungry', and we never did!" (Thanks to blog bud Doug Ramsey for the forward.)

Greg Burk's Live Picks of the Week (Jan. 8-14)
Brick Wahl's Live Picks of the Week (Jan. 7-13)
L.A. New Music Live Picks

We realize our Blogroll is a bit outdated. Here's some new offerings to help turn the tide:

Guitarist Tom McNalley, a longtime Crypto pal and collaborator who has been down to Haiti several times to help people there before the earthquake/aftershock, has written his thoughts on the crisis for The Huffington Post: "8 Things to Keep in Mind About Haiti".

McNalley and his trio will play the Museum of Neon Art on Friday, Feb. 5 at 8pm.

Greg Burk's Live Picks of the Week (Jan. 22-28)
Don Heckman's Live Picks of the Week (Jan. 19-24)
Brick Wahl's Live Picks of the Week (Jan. 20-27)
Los Angeles New Music Events (Jan. 21-June 3)

REST IN TEMPO
Paul Bryant
Bobby Charles
Dannie Flesher
George McCabe
Kate McGarrigle
Willie Mitchell
Theodore DeReese Pendergrass, Sr.
Jay Reatard
Lhasa de Sela
Ed Thigpen
Jimmy Wyble

Last September, the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS) mounted its 10th Anniversary Concert in numerous locations over L.A. for a 12-hour period. Just posted is undoubtedy one of the day's highlights, "Tributaries: Dedicated to the Memory of Rod Poole," a 26-minute microtonal mood piece with contributive solos by Jessica Catron, Nels Cline, Michael Intriere and Jim McAuley.

Don Heckman's Live Music Picks of the Week (Jan 25-31)
Brick Wahl's Live Music Picks of the Week (Jan. 27-Feb. 3)
L.A. New Music Events

The concept of duality has been a defining characteristic of guitarist Nels Cline since he first emerged in the late 1970s. On one hand, there's the harmonically sophisticated, compositionally rich Nels, who contributed to jazz recordings by everyone from Tim Berne to Vinny Golia to Julius Hemphill. On the other, there's the more extreme, visceral Nels, who brought unbridled power and reckless abandon to the post-punk, alternative rock of Mike Watt, Thurston Moore, and The Geraldine Fibbers. Thirty years on, Cline continues to explore this dichotomy, whether it's in his role as lead guitarist for famed rockers Wilco or with The Nels Cline Singers, his flagship group for the last ten years.

[Photo via Peak]

Initiate, the Singers' fourth release and Cline's seventh as a leader for Cryptogramophone, approaches the concept of Yin and Yang with a series of firsts for both the group and its intrepid leader, slyly dubbed by Jazz Times as "The World's Most Dangerous Guitarist." Initiate, in a beautifully designed, six-panel digipak featuring Simon Norfolk's gorgeous photographs of the world's largest machine (the Large Hadron Collider at CERN) is Cline's first double album and, with its second disc culled from a September 2009 performance at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco, the Singers' first live album.