Orange County Blog

In case you hadn't figured it out by now, the last time you missed Mayer Hawthorne and the County in the velvet, red belly of the Continental Room back in February, you REALLY missed out. Sharp-dressed, Motown seeping from every pour of his wiry pale frame, Hawthorne and his band delivered some serious grown-and-sexy soul vibes that made a lasting impression on any throw back junkie in the audience.

But it's okay, you might feel like an idiot now, but here's a great opportunity to redeem yourself. The band will be back at The Continental Room tonight for a full set of blaring horns, crooning harmonies and relentless rhythm. He's got plenty of songs streaming right now on his Myspace if you're interested (of course you are).

After completing an extensive tour of Europe alongside his label captain Peanut Butter Wolf (Stones Throw Records), Hawthorne is sure to come back to his OC stomping grounds in peak condition. Still don't know who I'm talking about? Try tuning into BBC radio sometime. Thanks to big name Brits like Mark Ronson endorsing Hawthorne's sound over the airwaves, he's become quite a hit across the pond with songs like "Just Aint' Gonna Work Out" and "Maybe So Maybe No".

With much of his music recorded entirely on his own (every instrument, every vocal) Hawthorne's prowess to recreate that golden Motor City sounds he grew up listening to in his home town of Michigan is only surpassed by his ability to make it fresh again. Check him out tonight at 9 p.m. for FREE! Trust me, you don't want to miss this again.
 

With only minutes to go until the afternoon sun leaks through my bedroom windows, I should probably be doing something productive like getting ready for work, finishing up an article or at least mowing the lawn or something. But I'm not, it's my day off. And luckily, it couldn't have come at a better time.

A few months ago, after some light pestering on my part, my aunt agreed to loan me her 1968 Fisher turntable covered in dust. It was one of the first things she bought when she moved to her house in Alhambra where she's lived for decades.

Since bringing it home, this thing has seen some major action as I drop the needle on it at least 2-3 albums a day when I have the time. But today, it's all about Marvin Gaye. Had he been alive today, he would have turned 70 years-old this morning. Somehow I've always found his birthday easy to remember. Probably because it is the day after his tragic death on April fools day, 1984. And as a self-proclaimed Motown music hound, there are some stats any respectable fan just has to know.

One thing I know right now is that I have every Marvin record I own lined up and ready to go for my thoroughly lazy day around the house. Right now I'm pretty much just hanging out here talking to you as the cymbal crash of Flyin' High (In the Friendly Sky) creeps through the cluttered corners of my work room and Gaye's soft falsetto travels in smoke rings out the back window. This is gonna be a good day. Thanks Marvin. Happy birthday.

One of the other things I think I might do is unearth my copy of the 2006 DVD "The Real Thing: In Performance 1964-1981". If you've got a chance to check out the video excerpt below, I suggest you do. It's got some really great rare performances on there.

Colleague Matt Coker recently tipped me off to a cameo appearance I kinda-sorta make in Deja Vu, the new documentary flick about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's 2006 Freedom of Speech tour of America, when the foursome hit the road in support of Neil Young's politically pointed Living With War album.

I'm not actually seen in the movie (god forbid), but I'm heard, which is where the kinda-sorta comes in. About 22 minutes into it, as you watch sweeping helicopter shots of downtown Los Angeles and the Hollywood sign, a voice-over reads a few lines from my review of the show (which actually went down in Irvine, not LA), that I penned on a freelance gig for the LA Times (you can watch the excerpt below, shot directly off the TV because I have lousy DVD editing software):

"Freedom isn’t free, the slogan goes, and no kidding—speech alone can set you back $251.50 . . . the famed quartet wasn’t advocating complete freedom of speech, though—just the kind they agreed with."

The narrator puts a strong, snarly emphasis on the word "they", making me totally seem like I hated the show, the tour, the album, and everything about it. Which I didn't. I liked the show, mostly, as evidenced by this paragraph that appeared a couple grafs later (You can read the full review right here):

"It was quite a kick during “Wooden Ships,” for example, to see the normally staid Nash caught up in the foreboding whirl of one of Young’s song-ending feedback orgies, the kind that he perfected with his sometime backing band Crazy Horse—and then Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young together, jamming in a tight circle, guitars screeching, wailing and shredding as if they were in a Sonic Youth tribute band. Young usually puts a lot of work into his shows, and this night was no exception, but his three cohorts haven’t been made to sweat this much on a stage in years—decades, maybe."

But it's that first mean pullquote which gets all the cinematic love and makes me sound like a total hippie-hating dickhead Republican asshole, which, as a proud veteran of 27 Grateful Dead shows, I feign great offense in. Who can I punish for this slander upon my good name, sputter-sputter?!?!?

Neil Young himself, turns out, since he directed the doc under his Bernard Shakey nom de plume. Wow—that's actually pretty cool! I envision Neil (I can call him Neil; he knows me) putting Deja Vu together, wrestling in an editing bay over where exactly to put "the Rich Kane blurb," my name rolling out past his wrinkly lips (just beneath his nose, where the cocaine booger was excised out of in The Last Waltz!). Rock critics tend to have an inflated sense of importance already, since they get to interview their heroes, but not all of them can piss one of their heroes off so much that they respond by taking a critic's words and spinning them out of context. I rule!

This makes me forgive Neil for getting sick back in 1991 during the Ragged Glory tour, which caused postponement of his LA Sports Arena show, which (long story short) was partially responsible for me getting beaten up and robbed at a Fullerton gas station . . .

Anyway, the clip:

Freelancer Ben Westhoff (you may recognize the name from "The Efron Scandal") posted this provocative list on our sister paper Pitch Weekly's blog. We reprint it here because this is a time of giving (said the atheist).

By BEN WESTHOFF

1. Worst Album: Arcade Fire, Neon Bible

This cerebral garbage entertained about 100 people, none of whom didn’t either live in Canada or work as a music critic. Speaking of critics, it’s hard to agree with Sasha Frere-Jones about anything, but he was right that Arcade Fire lacks soul. This is true in both the musical and metaphysical senses.


2. Worst Single: Bow Wow & Omarion, “Girlfriend”

Worse than Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” and much worse than ‘N Sync’s “Girlfriend,” this slow, pandering drivel is the kind of thing that makes you wish Bow was still a pup and Omarion was still with B2K.


3. Worst Wu-Tang Clan Song: “Sunlight.”

Wu’s new album is amazing, and I support RZA’s production on it, but on “Sunlight” he falls off the deep end. And as you play all day like the grasshopper who work and toil like armies of ants carrying stones of soil, he chants in a series of run-on sentences, building a home for themselves and storing food. At night we praise Allah and adore the moon in sync like the flow of the Nile, the growth of a child. Cool!


4. Worst Concert: White Williams

White Williams tries his hardest to avoid melody in his songs, and in his concerts he tries his hardest to avoid playing music. This was the case, at least, at his December 10 show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, in which Williams’ inane, hipster banter dominated the set. During long pauses between songs, we were treated to views of (what I believe was) his MySpace page.


5. Worst Year-End Critic's List: The Onion A.V. Club

Topped, of course, by Arcade Fire, the A.V. Club’s best 25 albums of the year list also featured past-their-prime bands like Wilco and Modest Mouse. I do agree with some of the choices, like Band of Horses and Amy Winehouse, but the main problem is that it includes not a single hip-hop album. An online commenter called “Murk” put it best: “You guys are almost as eclectic as Time magazine!”

6. Worst Idolator Feature: Worst Album Cover Of The Year Tournament

It seems that whenever Idolator isn’t bashing Village Voice Media papers for shoddy music writing or dishing out shoddy music writing of its own, it is subjecting us to this never-ending “Worst Album Cover Of The Year Tournament.” It's not at all funny (Vice magazine has been doing this to greater effect for years), but I mainly hate it because they've been subjecting us to it -- and its preliminaries -- since fucking February.


7. Worst Genre: Indie Rock

It’s been fun, guys (well, no not really), but it’s time for indie rock to go gently into that good night. Irony, self-consciousness, and beard-stroking aren’t what we need in our music – that’s what we have the McSweeney’s franchise for.