“Power” Play

All this talk in the news about government intervention in business got me thinking: why, in our free market economy, do we pretty much only have one choice for electricity? Arthur Arent’s “Power” asks this question – and answers it too. “Power” premiered in New York in 1937 and was one of the Federal Theatre [...]

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The Piano Doctor

Kurt’s brother David Andersen is one of the top piano technicians in Southern California — he’s also an accomplished rock n’ roller (and a total ringer for The Dude from “The Big Lebowski” ). Kurt visited him at home in Malibu and at work on the pianos of some leading lights in jazz and film [...]

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Janelle Monáe at SXSW

The SXSW music festival in Austin has an absurd number of bands play every year — this time it was up to 1900. So to find the gems, needless to say, is challenging — and wonderfully refreshing if you succeed. I saw the amazingly inventive soul/funk singer Janelle Monáe play at a [...]

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Guaranteed to improve your Monday

Yale Graphic design grad student Ely Kim conducts a 1-man dance off to his 100 fave songs. You won’t hear more than a few bars of each, but you will want watch all 100 (and marvel at all the great art school interiors from printshops to bathroom stalls). Best of all, guests at your future [...]

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A day in the country

I am not on the payroll of the California Travel & Tourism Commission, I swear. But as if the weather in general were not splendidly un-wintery enough, here’s some of what I encountered a couple of hours west and north of Los Angeles, by aiming for Santa Barbara and then more or less aimlessly wandering. [...]

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New BLK JKS song! “Banna Ba Modimo”

When Studio 360 recently caught up with the up-and-coming BLK JKS in Los Angeles we stumbled onto a bit of a musical scoop. Hanging out “back-stage” with the South African band before their show at the LA Natural History Museum, we were fortunate enough to hear a brand new unreleased song from their forthcoming [...]

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City of angels

When I visited Johannesberg a few years ago, I was startled by how much, townships aside, it reminded me of southern California — the topography, the sunniness, the freeways, the shiny Americanism in general. So the other day when I interviewed the delightful founders of the cool South African rock band BLK JKS, Mpumi [...]

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“Undercurrents” Win us Over

Ok, so a lot of us no longer have the dispensable income to indulge in a trip to the theater or the ballet. But whether we were seeking it or not, last month at the Winter Garden, the dance troupe Third Rail Projects brought art to us — or at least to the Wallstreeters, nannies, [...]

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