Originally posted June 19th, 2013
By Michael Konik
Aside from the usual side-effects of hypnotic music — tapping toes, pumping heads, swaying shoulders — one of the interesting results of listening to the Cambodian Space Project is the onset of what feels vaguely like a psychoactive hallucination. They’ve got a delightful weirdness factor (at least to unseasoned Western ears). You feel transported. But where? Angkor Wat? The 1960s? Thanks to front-lady Srey Channthy’s captivating voice — part feline mewl, part tuneful warble — CSP’s music, which they call “space rock” is as fun to hear as to dance.
Finland’s Don Johnson Big Band is an ironically named collective of modern hip-hop artists. They’re not big and they’ve got nothing to do with the former star of “Miami Vice,” but they are a band. A funky one. With percussion and a flute-and-sax man. They’re extremely groovy and unabashedly weird — klezmer gangsta rap, anyone? The best reason to see the DJBB live is their sensational front-man, the wickedly talented Tommy Lindberg, who you could fairly call “the Finnish Eminem.” But that doesn’t do him justice. He’s a superstar. If you can’t seem them live, check out their killin’ recordings (“Fiesta” is the latest) or watch Tommy and his crew on the Helsinki Metro: Ripping it Up.
Originally posted March 12th, 2013
By Michael Konik
The show is billed as “stories of Dinah Washington, Queen of the Blues.” And it is. But I Wanna Be Loved, which features all of Dinah’s hits, could just as easily be billed as “An Evening with Barbara Morrison.” L.A.’s Queen of Jazz & Blues is now confined to an electric wheelchair after diabetes-related operations. The scooter might as well be a throne. Barbara Morrison is a genuine American treasure, one of the living links to the era of Ella, Billie, and Ms. Dinah W. The show, which features a sensational 18-piece big band under the direction of cool cat John Stephens, runs through the end of the month at Queen Barbara’s namesake performing arts center, in Leimert Park. Go. Enjoy. Witness a living legend, a master, demonstrate the art of singing and performing.
Originally posted August 19th, 2012
By Michael Konik
Lately we’ve been immersing ourselves in stand-up comedy and feeling altogether good about it. You can be addicted to a lot worse things than endorphins.
Much of the past year in Los Angeles has been spent closely observing comedians doing their thing: ranting, rambling, telling jokes, riffing, raving, singing songs, reading from a script, making it up on the spot, playing it safe, taking risks. Being funny. Being very funny. Or not. But always trying to find the magic, searching for that moment or that thing that connects us all – most of us, anyway; the ones who get it – in a sense of real delight and shared understanding, similar to the way we communally react to live music or to a brilliant actor telling the truth.
Originally posted August 14th, 2011
By Michael Konik
We’ve previously discussed how poor programming choices on jazz radio are unintentionally sabotaging the medium’s noble mission to “keep jazz alive.” But terrestrial radio, an increasingly irrelevant distribution channel in the age of the Internet and satellites, isn’t the only culprit in our music’s alleged “death.” Some of jazz’s most effective assassins are the people who care most: the professional musicians.
In an age when fewer folks than ever are willing to pay for recorded music, the only way for a full-time jazz recording artist to earn a living is by touring, giving concerts, putting on shows, performing – being a performing artist.
Performing Artist: It’s a two-word job description. The majority of accomplished jazz musicians have no problem with the second part, the artistry thing. They’ve committed their life to learning and mastering a transcendent and mysterious magic replete with its own language, codes, and . . . → Read More: Jazz is Dead, Part 2: Performing Artists
Originally posted July 23rd, 2011
By Michael Konik
Since the 1970s, for as long as I’ve been aware of the music commonly known as “jazz,” various authorities, mavens, and aficionados have been declaring it dead or soon-to-be-deceased. “Jazz is dead.” “Jazz is dying.” “Jazz is going extinct.”
If this is so, the suffering patient has been enduring a kind of decades-long hospice care that would bankrupt Medicaid. While it’s true that jazz record sales comprise a comically small percentage of the (withering) recording industry and an even smaller slice of the radio market, and live music venues calling themselves jazz clubs close more frequently than sales of foreclosed homes, the music itself is gloriously alive.
Thanks to college jazz programs, the advent of cheap recording technology, and an irrepressible need for members of a free society to express themselves individually and collectively, there are more artists than ever creating modern American music rooted in . . . → Read More: (K)Jazz is Dead
Originally posted September 19th, 2010
By Michael Konik
A celebrity with a record label announced recently that she had signed a talented teenager to a recording contract; album due out soon! The adolescent lad joins another teenager on the Celebrity’s label. She specializes in discovering post-pubescent stars-to-be-made; indeed, this Celebrity, Ellen DeGeneres, discovered the Filipina belter Charice Pempengco, now known as Charice, which is a lot easier to say and a lot less Filipino and therefore easier to sell to the producer’s of Glee, for whom the teenaged singing champ permitted the use of Botox on her not-yet-old-enough-to-vote-or-drink face.
Kids these days! Man, do they ever have talent! Not a day passes without someone’s home video going viral, forwarded around the globe by folks who are deeply impressed by a precocious youngster doing something that seems way beyond her years.
One of the hottest acts in the jazz-pop world right now is a 17-year-old . . . → Read More: Blame it On the Youths
Originally posted August 22nd, 2010
By Michael Konik
Most of the people I’ve not met who recognize my name “know” me as a book writer, or as that guy who used to be on television blabbering about poker. A smaller subset might know me as the producer and proprietor of jazz records, or even as a former jazz vocalist.
Those are all cool associations. But none of them fully address what it is I really aspire to be.
For a several years I’ve had a secret. In a few weeks it will be completely out, a matter of the cultural record, and I’ll no longer be able to hide the truth: What I enjoy doing most is writing lyrics to music.
It comes naturally and easily to me, with none of the labor or anxiety one associates with the blocked and tortured artist. I don’t mean that writing lyrics is easy, exactly. I mean that composing . . . → Read More: A Secret I’ve Been Keeping
Los Angeles is lousy with talent. Just as the plethora of beautiful men and women on the streets (and in the stores, and everywhere else) start to blend into the palm-lined boulevards, it’s easy to become immune to the charms of so many funny, clever, quick-witted people. When you see theater or hear music or comedy in this city you expect excellence — or at least what passes for it in a society whose cultural norms make folks like Adam Sandler and Chris Rock the emperors of entertainment. LA is home to a thriving live-performance scene; there’s not a day of the week when an intrepid ticket buyer can’t find stellar talent doing their thing on small stages in every precinct of town.
Improv Olympic West, the LA-branch of the Chicago-based institution — Second City also has an emerging presence here in Hollywood — is . . . → Read More: Ode to “Opening Night: The Improvised Musical”
Originally posted March 7th, 2010
By Michael Konik
Before 1909, when technology changed everything, performing artists earned a living by performing. The only way to sell talent was to traipse it around the countryside and throughout the theatrical circuit. Packaging a voice on phonograph recordings, distributing the disc through retail channels, and marketing the product as a valuable commodity was a radical and culture-altering innovation.
Now technology is changing everything again. Thanks to digital downloads and file sharing, we’re returning to the pre-phonograph model. For most recording artists — and probably for all recording artists within a decade — the only way to monetize talent is to become a full-time performing artist.
Paying for recorded music is rapidly becoming an obsolete, 20th Century concept. Replicating and distributing sounds has never been easier or cheaper. But, with apologies to Vegas “tribute” acts, replicating a live performance is impossible. Purloined concert tapes and bootleg videos can offer only . . . → Read More: The End is Near!…for Selling Recorded Music
“I welcome that debate.” — President Barack Obama, reacting to the disclosure of a secret domestic surveillance program operating under his watch.
“I welcome that debate,” I said to my wife. She had just discovered that I’d been having — actually, that I am currently having and intend to continue having — an affair with one of the hot flexible chicks in my yoga class.
Some bitter friend of my wife’s knows the girl I’ve…
We’re like every other patriotic American: when our beloved country is under attack, as it is at this very moment and every other moment of every day, we’re delighted to sacrifice our constitutional rights.
Whatever gets the job done, that’s our view. And if beating Islamic terrorists means being spied…
The time we’re living in is being called the Technology Revolution. It’s given us personal computers and cell phones and devices that, we all agree, make our lives altogether better. Everything is more efficient, more connected. Things can be ordered to appear at your door, getting lost in your car is…
Luckily for Barack Obama, news of improper shenanigans at the IRS stole attention from the week’s biggest story: that the President’s Justice Department had secretly seized call information from at least 20 phone lines belonging to Associated Press reporters, including personal cell phones and the main switchboard of the AP’s…
News comes from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that a disastrous fire swept through a garment factory there, killing eight people. A factory fire in November killed more than 100.
The garment industry in Bangladesh is euphemistically called “loosely regulated,” so, regrettably, these things (fires and so forth) tend…
Aside from the usual side-effects of hypnotic music — tapping toes, pumping heads, swaying shoulders — one of the interesting results of listening to the Cambodian Space Project is the onset of what feels vaguely like a psychoactive hallucination. They’ve got a delightful weirdness factor (at least to unseasoned Western ears). You feel transported. But [...]
