By CHARLES ANDREWS
RAINS, POURS
Get out your calendars and credit cards, if you don’t want to miss out on a week packed with such cool things to do and see, and hear. What a great city for the arts. So glad I moved here 40+ years ago.
SANTA MONICA BOOK RELEASES!!
How exciting, how wonderful! Unless you are a City Council member not named Lana, in which case your philosophy and voting record tells us you care as much about our remarkable, unique history, known to many worldwide, as you do about yesterday’s newspaper. But for those of us who do love this city, these two books are a cause for celebration.
RICHARD ORTON is a repository of local history, and he has been dispersing it for years in his newsletter, now collected into two volumes that will make you an absolute expert on SM. What he doesn’t already know, he researches meticulously, with results that often surprise and delight him, too. Publishing these himself was quite an enterprise, and they would be very expensive (470 pages total) to sell, so he is donating sets to libraries so everyone can become an expert.
He will have a reception and Q&A this Saturday, 3/7, from 1 to 4 at the Santa Monica History Museum, downstairs at our main library (enter from 7th Street). If you really want to have this unique history close at hand, he can be persuaded to sell a limited number of copies. Refreshments just might be served.
PETER ALAN LESSER moved here from back East just a couple of years ago, but as a lifelong music guy and author, he immediately saw what needed to be done: a history of our world-famous live music venue and instrument store McCabe’s, 60 years old with 50 years of concerts, all top quality, many historic and mind-blowing. He has already had signings all over LA, but here is one coming up (with live music!), with another at the end of May. I’ll keep you posted.
Small World Books, Venice, tomorrow, Thurs 3/4, 5-7 p.m., with Fred Sokolow playing and telling tales.
Next Thurs, 3/10, 7-10 p.m., he will be featured on the Wildwood Flower Radio Hour on KXLU -FM, a creation of our own peachy Mike Bone. Who will be in blue overalls, y’all.
WHAT ELSE?
What are these City Council members willing to sacrifice for yet more unneeded, unaffordable housing, denser and taller? DAN HALL, CAROLINE TOROSIS, NATALYA ZERNITSKAYA, JESSE ZWICK voted to drop exclusive negotiations with a ridiculously qualified entertainment business group, throwing that site open for “other possibilities.” Will they do that at our airport, too? Great big housing developments at our proposed Great Park? That ideology seems to guide their decisions much more than what is good for and wanted by their constituents. Who does this benefit?
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
Tonight! – BILL FRISELL TRIO – There’s no predicting a Bill Frisell performance except that it will likely blow your mind. The New York Times hit it neatly: “Frisell has had a lot of practice putting high concept into a humble package. Long hailed as one of the most distinctive and original improvising guitarists of our time, he has also earned a reputation for teasing out thematic connections with his music…There’s a reason that Jazz at Lincoln Center had him program a series called Roots of Americana.” Wed, Thurs, 7, 9:30 p.m., Blue Note LA, Hollywood, $38-55.
BEETHOVEN 6 – It may be called “Pastoral,” but the naughty Beethoven kicks ass even in the still of the outdoors, that Ludwig proclaimed, “No man can love the countryside as I love it.” He goes for the emotion it evokes rather than painting a pretty picture. And then Dudamel takes us into the anguished depths of hell with an LA Phil commission from Thomas Ades, “Dante, Part 1.” Another thinking person’s music expertise from our genius music director. Give him back, New York! Thurs, Sat 7 p.m., Fri 11 a.m., Sun 2 p.m., Walt Disney Concert Hall, LA, $146-390.
“HONOUR” – The first theatrical presentation at the new, beautiful Ruskin Group Theatre at the airport, just a couple of doors down from the old location, knocks it out of the park. Small in scale with only four characters, I loved the writing, which takes a fairly common family situation and touches on issues much larger. It is running for a while, so I will go into more detail later, but I can tell you that it is Ruskin top-notch, from the provocative writing to the four superb actors. Thurs, Fri, Sat 8 p.m., Sun 2 p.m., Ruskin Group Theatre, SM Airport, $20-45.
GLASS “AKHNATEN,” LA OPERA – I have been anticipating this one for a long time. It promises to be spectacular and memorable on every level. One performance this Sunday, the rest the following weeks. I will write more about it next week, hopefully from personal experience, but like you should grab tickets now. Sat 7:30 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, LA, $84-415.
HOT CLUB OF LOS ANGELES – The HCOLA don’t claim to play note-for-note Django, but they are the spot-on purveyors of his spirit, and I think if he were to walk into the Cinema Bar on a Monday night and sit in with them, they would all be smiling big. Just be sure to call me if that happens. Mondays 9 p.m., Cinema Bar, Culver City, always no cover.
RECOMMENDED:
TOLEDO DIAMOND – Who’s been showing up even longer than the Hot Club, with a very different but also virtuosic show? His decades-long Sunday night residency at Santa Monica’s Harvelle’s, the oldest blues bar in LA (almost a century!), is the stuff of myth. Toledo choreographs a truly unique show, a blend of ‘50s hipster jazz and his dancing dames and a most modern smokin’ hot band that gets better all the time. Toledo is perhaps the longest-running proof that Santa Monica is a City of the Arts. Sun 9 p.m., Harvelle’s, Santa Monica, $13.
TV RECOMMENDATIONS:
“THE DAILY SHOW” – Mon – Thurs 11 p.m., COMEDY CENTRAL.
“HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU” – Sat 9 p.m., CNN.
‘“DARK WINDS” – I don’t understand how this was passed by for awards consideration. Based on the very popular series of murder mysteries by Tony Hillerman, set on the Navajo Reservation, his daughter Anne took up the series after he died and added a female police officer, and her novels have all hit the NY Times bestseller lists. Four years ago, Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin began producing shows that combined some novels by both Hillermans, and the results have been spectacular. Stunning NM scenery, great stories integrating Native American spiritual beliefs (sometimes metaphysically scary), superb soundtrack, and a phenomenal cast of nearly all Indigenous Peoples. The fourth season started this past Sunday on AMC and also airs on AMC+. The previous three seasons are available on Netflix, and I seriously recommend you binge-watch them all first. You will thank me. Sundays 9 p.m., AMC, AMC+.
COMING ATTRACTIONS (also recommended): BILL FRISELL TRIO, Blue Note LA, 3/4, 5; “HONOUR,” Ruskin Group Theatre, 3/5-8, 12-15, 19-22; DUDAMEL, “Dante,” BEETHOVEN 6, Disney Hall, 3/5, 6, 8; SANTA CECILIA, Fonda, 3/6; BOBBY WATSON QUARTET, Jazz Bakery/Nat Holden, 3/7; TAMIR HENDELMAN-JOHN CLAYTON DUO, Sam First, 3/7; “HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU,” CNN Sat 9 p.m., 3/7, 14, 21, 28; GLASS “AKHNATEN,” LA OPERA, 3/8, 11, 14, 19, 21, 22; ANNE HILLERMAN’S “DARK WINDS,” Season 4, AMC/+, 3/8, 15, 22, 29, 4/4; TOLEDO DIAMOND, Harvelle’s Santa Monica, 3/8, 15, 22, 29; CHARLIE HUNTER TRIO, Blue Note LA, 3/9; HOT CLUB OF LOS ANGELES, Cinema Bar, 3/9, 16, 23, 30; THE BAD PLUS POTTER TABORN, Blue Note LA, 3/10, 11; NINE INCH NAILS, Honda Center, 3/10; PUCCINI “TURANDOT,” Pacific Opera Project, Aratani Theatre, 3/14, 15, 22; MADELEINE PEYROUX, Blue Note LA, 3/17, 18; “VERTIGO” in concert, Disney Hall, 3/21; NICK LOWE, Bellwether, 3/27;
DOWN THE ROAD (also recommended): UCLA-USC College Night, Sam First, 4/1; ST. PAUL & THE BROKEN BONES, Belasco, 4/3; FRED HERSCH TRIO, Jazz Bakery, 4/11; DAVID BYRNE, Santa Barbara Bowl, 4/14; SAMARA JOY, Blue Note LA, 4/15, 16; VERDI “FALSTAFF,” LA OPERA, 4/18, 26, 30, 5/2, 6, 10; TAKE 6, Blue Note LA, 4/30-5/3; STANLEY CLARKE’S SANTA MONICA INTERNATIONAL JAZZ FESTIVAL, BroadStage, 5/1-9; MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO, Blue Note LA, 5/4, 5; LA SANTA CECILIA, Fonda Theatre, 5/7; MOZART “THE MAGIC FLUTE,” LA OPERA, 5/30, 6/6, 11, 14, 17, 21.
Charles Andrews has listened to a lot of music of all kinds, including more than 3,500 live shows. He has lived in Santa Monica for 40 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or hate mail to: therealmrmusic@gmail.com.
