Aug. 2: Ravi Coltrane Quartet @ Catalina’s....Aug 2-11: New Original Works Festival @ REDCAT....Aug. 3: John Beasley @ Vibrato....Matt Slocum, Josh Nelson & Darek Oles @ The Blue Whale....Aug. 4: Mandrill @ Ford Amphitheatre....Cosmic Oscar: The Music of Oscar Brown, Jr. w/ Dwight Trible & Friends @ Boston Court....Aug. 5: Ernie Watts Quartet @ Levitt Pavilion....Open Gate Theatre Presents The George McMullen Trio & Andrew Pask....Aug. 9: Made in L.A. Presents Anthony Valadez & Chicano Batman @ Hammer Museum....Aug. 11: Colin Woodford, Otto Ehling, Adam Ratner, Carter Wallace w/ vocalist Katie Campbell @ Boston Court.... 2nd Annual Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute closing concert @ UCLA Herb Alpert School Of Music....Aug. 12: The Los Angeles Electric 8 @ LACMA....Don Littleton, Reggie Carson & Randall Willis @ Alva's Showroom....Aug. 13: Grandaddy @ The Henry Fonda Theater....Aug. 15: Kimya Dawson @ The Smell....Aug. 16: FILM SCREENING: Bad Brains: Band in D.C. @ The Silent Movie Theatre....Aug. 18: The Jeff Gauthier Goatette @ Boston Court....Mike Watt & The Missing Men @ The Redwood Bar....Aug. 19: The Gerald Wilson Orchestra @ Catalina’s....Double M Jazz Salon Presents The Michael Session Sextet (to attend this limited-seating event, email Mimi Melnick at mimimelnick25@gmail.com).... The Bombastic Meatbeats (w/ Chad Smith of the RH Chili Peppers) @ The Baked Potato....Aug. 23: Christian McBride Quartet @ Catalina’s....Aug 24: Double Naught Spy Car @ TAIX....FILM SCREENING: Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest @ Pershing Square....Aug 25: Alejandro Escovedo / Jesse Malin @ The Mint....Tom Chiu & Scott Cazan (playing the music of John Cage and Conlon Nancarrow) at Beyond Baroque....Mid-Summer Water Dreams, a collaboration between pianist Motoko Honda & video artist Jesse Gilbert @ Mariko's Piano Studio (this is a limited-seating concert in Lake Balboa; to attend, contact Mariko Iwasaki at umariko@sbcglobal.net ....SASSAS presents: Tape Music @ The Schindler House....Aug. 28: That Out Stuff: Directions in Los Angeles Jazz w/ Kamasi Washington, Brandon Coleman, Miles Mosely & more @ The Echo....The Tempest Presents: G.E. Stinson's halfmonk, Naama Kates & Anthony Shadduck's Jazz Freedom Quartet @ Society Art Gallery....Aug. 29: Concrete Blonde @ The Troubadour....Celebrating Peace with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Marcus Miller, Zakier Hussain, Dave Holland & Carlos Santana @ The Hollywood Bowl....Aug. 31: Terry Bozzio/Alex Acuna percussion duo @ The Baked Potato.
SPOTLIGHTUNMISSABLE
FE(A)STS
As we gear up for the anticipated Fall music festivals like FYF & Angel City Jazz (both of which announced their lineups recently), we realized, Why wait? In just about every corner of L.A. proper one can find something that piques the need to see a multitude of musicians under one big late-summer umbrella. This week and next sees the concluding chapters of REDCAT’s annual New Original Works Fest, which features the latest dance, music, theatre and multimedia projects from various CalArts wunderkinds. The Jazz Bakery’s Moveable Feast offers a mini-Summer Festival at Pasadena’s Boston Court Theatre: the three shows include Cosmic Oscar, where vocal shaman Dwight Trible and his Cosmic Band pay tribute to the late Chicago composer, poet and activist Oscar Brown, Jr. and the concluding night with The Jeff Gauthier Goatette, one of L.A.’s best – if informally gigging – ensembles made up of the crème of the second generation of L.A.’s creative jazz/improvised music scene, including David Witham, Andrew Pask, Scott Walton, Alex Cline and the estimable, electronically treated violin of Gauthier himself. Starting August 11, the annual Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute stages a concert to close out its weeklong composers’ workshop with a little woodsheddin’: wild up, a 24-member experimental orchestra conducted by Christopher Rountree that will play selections from JCOI mentor-composers like George Lewis, Anne La Baron, Nicole Mitchell and Alvin Singleton. Anyone with missed the SASSAS’s Welcome Inn Time Machine motel musical installation last year missed out on a memorable auditory experience; but no fear, they will turn yet another SoCal edifice into one large resonating chamber with its SASSAS Presents: Tape Music installation at West Hollywood’s Schindler House. Fours separate rooms will house rotating musical performances based around compositions recorded on reel-to-reel tape that include recent offerings from John Weise and Bill Basinski as well as classic works from Pauline Oliveros and Mike Kelley & Jim Shaw. Of particular interest to the Beast will be selections from the much-missed Malibu experimental label Organ of Corti/The Cortical Foundation.
SPOTLIGHTMANDRILL @ The Ford Amphitheatre (8/04)
A monkey? A C-List Marvel supervillain? A gay biker bar? All those, plus a Latin-heavy funk combo from Bed-Stuy New York. Mandrill has benefited from the breath of life given to its mostly forgotten music from the big names in hip hop (Missy Elliott, Eminem, Kanye West, Black-Eyed Peas) who have sampled their stew of funk, jazz fusion and Panamanian polyrhythms. Led by the brothas Wilson (Carlos, Ric and Lou), Mandrill was sort of the lost link between The Chambers Brothers, The Meters and Santana. Although they did release a fine album or two (1972’s Mandrill Is, 1973’s Composite Truth, 1974’s Mandrilland), they were mostly a singles band, with great bottom-groove, horn-heavy workouts like “Git It All," "Mango Meat," "Hang Loose" and "The Ape Is High” (“…and so am I!”) Their instrumental power was diluted somewhat by the late 70s, when they moved to L.A., switched from Polydor to Arista and leaned more towards disco infernos and creamy-smoov love ballads -- although even "Too Late," a minor r&B hit from 1978 isn’t bad. Pick up the 1997 two disc anthology Fencewalk for a more comprehensive overview of this still-kickin' combo from the days of smiley faces, hanging terrariums and pukka shells.
SPOTLIGHTGRANDADDY @ Henry Fonda Theater (8/11)
The Beast is all about making bold, somewhat reckless statements like the following: Grandaddy may be the most quietly influential band of the late ‘90s/early ‘00s. Of course, this could be the nostalgic rush of hearing of their current “reunion” tour – this was a band we’d thought had drifted away into the mists forever – celebrating the 20th anniversary of their unlikely formation and the deluxe reissue of their millennial masterpiece The Sophtware Slump. While Radiohead was busy being alienated and thinking they were turning into human androids, Grandaddy went the other direction, carving out a neo-psychedelic, Wall-E-esque vision of an organic world mixed with the outmoded detritus of modern life. And it wasn't an ominous vision at all: in Grandaddy's music, the natural world reclaims technology, blowing sand into hard drives, covering USB ports in ants, wrapping vines and spider webs around damaged digital interfaces. Along with counterparts like Sparklehorse and Jim White, the 'Daddy mixed folkie Americana with outmoded analog keyboards -- the sound of technological decay being replaced by environmental rebirth, making gorgeous music that could have been made by a cyborg in dirty overalls and a seed cap, which explains leader Jason Lytle’s onstage fashion sense. I mean, they are from Modesto...
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