We’re very excited to announce that our new weekly club No Culture starts tonight!

No Culture will happen every Wednesday at the Echo in Echo Park.

No Culture will feature the best in local and international DJs and dance acts, and we’ll have a cast of rotating residents including Guns ‘n’ Bombs, Acid Girls, Goddollars, CLASSIXX, Cosmic Kids, and Royal Rumble, with help from MFG Productions and photos by thecobrasnake.com.

Tonight’s guest will be Free Blood, whose debut album will be coming out this year on Rong/DFA.
Upcoming guests include JD Twitch from the legendary club Optimo on Jan 21 and Tim Sweeney from Beats in Space/DFA on Feb 4.

See you tonight!

No Culture
Every Wednesday at the Echo
1822 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

No Culture: http://www.myspace.com/wehavenoculture
Echo Park Records: http://www.myspace.com/wehavenoculture
Guns ‘n’ Bombs: http://www.myspace.com/gunsnbombs
Acid Girls: http://www.myspace.com/acid_girls
Goddollars: http://www.myspace.com/goddollars
CLASSIXX: http://www.myspace.com/classixxmusic
Cosmic Kids: http://www.myspace.com/cosmickiddjs
Royal Rumble: http://www.myspace.com/theroyalrumble
The Cobrasnake: http://www.thecobrasnake.com
MFG Productions: http://www.mfgproductions.com
The Echo: http://www.attheecho.com
Free Blood: http://www.myspace.com/freeblood
JD Twitch: http://www.myspace.com/optimoespacio
Tim Sweeney: http://www.myspace.com/beatsinspace

The Lotus Garden @ Echo Park ~ 2-8PM ~  Games and activities for the whole family plus live bands, DJs, and much much more!

Recently Kime Buzzelli, an artist and the visionary behind Show Pony in Echo Park, was diagnosed with a huge tumor. Her insurance company will only pay for 1/2 of the extremely expensive surgery. Her friends are working together to help her out…

more info at: http://themoldydoily.typepad.com

When I heard that the members of Foreign Born had a psychedelic Afrobeat side project with Hebrew chants and a rotating cast of anywhere from 8-20 members (including one of the dudes from We Are Scientists!), the caution flag immediately went up. But every once in a while something that could easily be horrible turns out pretty great, and so it was that during my first time seeing Fool’s Gold I found myself leaning over to a friend and saying “This shit’s actually pretty good.”

While all the members sing throughout their set, it’s Luke Top and Matt Popieluch who handle most of the vocal duty, with the former spewing Torah passages and the latter supplying his supreme harmonies. While this is a band tailor-made for Echo Park BBQs and Laurel Canyon cool aid tests, tonight they step onto the tiny stage at Three Clubs in Hollywood for a free show at 10PM.

The first time I saw Foreign Born I thought they were some A&R asshole’s wettest dream: four handsome twenty-something white dudes playing ’80s-influenced modern rock. That was back in June of ’05, when their “In The Remote Woods” EP had just come out on StarTime Intl and they – along with a couple of other LA acts like the Adored and the Blood Arm – seemed ready to break out. I wound up going back to Spaceland every Monday that month during their residency, and each week the club was packed to capacity, with kids pumping their fists and suits nervously eyeing their competitors at the bar. Backed by a handmade lighting system that was triggered by pedals their bassist orchestrated, their music was widescreen, revealing, and passionate, and while their appearance suggested preppy Los Feliz kids, they were highly unique. Then, a funny thing happened: Foreign Born didn’t blow up.

I always assumed that this was the kind of music Nic Harcourt would get a boner for, and that after the Brits jumped onto the bandwagon, Foreign Born would be up and away, opening for the White Stripes and playing festivals in Portugal. Instead, bands like Cold War Kids blew past them, and FB seemed resigned to doing half-assed gigs (like their show at the Hammer when they performed as a three-piece) and playing set lists that played up to the nickname their detractors called them: Four and Boring.

In the last few weeks, however, it seems like a fire has finally been lit under their asses. When the Rapture headlined at the Mayan last month, FB was there as support, displaying the driving foot tappers that got them noticed way back when, and this week they’re featured on MySpace’s music section, just got a slot on the first episode of the new show from the dude who did “The OC,” and even Pitchfork gave them a nice review, accurately proclaiming them to be “full of vast, powerful tunes.” Today their debut album, “On the Wing Now,” finally gets released on Dim Mak, and tonight the band celebrates with a free show at the Echo with Eastern European women’s choir Nevenka and lush droners In Waves.

Download: Union Hall by Foreign Born mp3

The Good Foot is one of those clubs, like Make-Up and Root Down (back when it was at Gabah) before it and Dub Club now, that is such a clusterfuck of LA ideas and ideals that it goes beyond any concept of nightclubbing and ventures into the realm of a family reunion – if you had really cool, really diverse relatives. DJ Dennis is a master of wax, and the last time I saw him spin he went from !!! to James Brown to Outkast and no one flinched. Too often with funk and soul nights the concept of both the deejays and dancers is disgustingly myopic, and the focus is on the clothes or the scooters or whatever genre the DJ should be spinning; I was at a bar in San Francisco a couple of summers ago when a mod stormed out of the club because they were playing too wide an array of sounds, but before he split he shouted in frustration “I thought this was a Northern Soul club!” At the Good Foot, the crowd is mixed with Bong Leach locals and people crusing down the 710, packed with punks and greasers, cholos and drunks, mods and rockers.

Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of the albums put out by the Numero Group, who are suddenly vying with Soul Jazz as the preeminent reissue label, but it’s “Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up” that’s been getting the most play. The mix of calypso, funk, rock, reggae and disco is beautiful to hear, sometimes in the same song, and while I haven’t heard of these tracks being spun at the Good Foot, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. Check out Lord Rhaburn’s “Disco Connection,” watch a clip of James Brown, and then meet me at Que Sera tonight, and try to find a way not to feel the funk.

Download: Disco Connection mp3

Imagine if Mandy Moore/Hilary Duff/Jessica Simpson made her LA debut not at some slick club in Hollywood but at a mall in Thousand Oaks (actually, probably one of them did), and she wasn’t some polished blond teenager, but a homely brunette in her thirties. And imagine if one of the members of Hot Chip, or Ratatat, or Junior Boys, became more well known for his pop project than his real band. Combine these two fruity ideas, throw some Spanish into the blender, and the smoothie you’ll get is María Daniela Y Su Sonido Lasser, and what’s happening tonight in Montebello.

Mexico has always had its fair share of shit pop and bubblegum rock, but like Sweden, it’s also been a fountain of deliriously catchy, amazingly goofy music. Now, current acts like Faca and Jessy Bulbo (her “Maldito” was the “Cannonball” of this genre) mix disposable lyrics with bouncy backing and wind up with a legion of fans much younger than the artists themselves. The highlight of this scene though is María Daniela, a project started by Emilio Acevedo of Titán, the legendary Mexican electronic group whose albums got released Stateside by the late, great LA labels Grand Royal and Emperor Norton. Acevedo, during Titán’s turn-of-the-century hiatus, created a project called Sonido Lasser Drakar, and after asking his friend María Daniela Azipiazu to sing on a track, María Daniela Y Su Sonido Lasser was born.

Their cheeky covers of songs by Daniela Romo and Aerolíneas Federales have won the group fame, but it’s original songs like “Miedo” and “Chicle de Menta” that have resulted in their 25K+ friends on MiEspacio and gigs at Six Flags México. But what I like most about Maria Daniela (and for that matter Faca and Jessy Bulbo), is that the music and the personalities all seem very approachable. When I added Jessy Bulbo on MySpace, she responded with a comment in Spanish along the lines of “Now that you’re my friend, my friends are your friends, and we can all be friends.” Sure, it might be an asinine example of the transitive property, but it’s nice to have musicians seem like they could be your friends, rather than people like Britney Spears, who has always seemed like a fake (did anyone believe her when she said she was a virgin?).

So I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that María Daniela Y Su Sonido Lasser would be making their LA debut at an all-ages spot in Montebello, and that the presale would be at a pizza joint in Monterey Park. Those tickets are already sold-out, but there will be some available at the door, starting at 7PM. LA hasn’t seen a third-world frenzy like this since M.I.A.’s engagement at the Echoplex, but for some reason I have the feeling that the Times and Weekly won’t be there to document it.

Download: Miedo by María Daniela Y Su Sonido Lasser

Lee Hazlewood might have been born in Oklahoma, lived in Sweden, and died in Nevada, but like a lot of modern American music figures, he spent a considerable and important period in LA. Although his most famous work was for Nancy Sinatra, his production influenced other LA transplants like Phil Spector and Gram Parsons, and his style was mined by both groups shitty (like the Eagles, who latched onto his pioneering country rock boogie) and artists spectacular (both Marvin Gaye’s break-up masterpiece “Here, My Dear” and Bob Dylan’s “Blood On the Tracks” can be easily credited to Hazlewood’s “Requiem For An Almost Lady”). In recent years Hazlewood’s music was devoured by a new generation of fans, as contemporary musicians had varying degrees of success in tributes to Hazlewood (Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley did a strong version of “A Cheat,” but Primal Scream and Kate Moss’ dancey cover of “Some Velvet Morning is fucking atrocious), and many films have either featured his music (to powerful effect in “Morvern Callar”) or strangely neglected it (“Little Miss Sunshine” was named after a Hazlewood tune but its soundtrack had none of his work). After’s Hazlewood’s passing this weekend, his family released a statement that ended with a quote from his song “My Autumn’s Done Come,” but I thought first of his song “If It’s Monday Morning,” with its poignant and striking verse.

Download If It’s Monday Morning mp3

Tonight is a loud reminder that if you love live music, then you should live in LA. At the Echo, as part of Outfest , Becky Diamond unleashes the love with Lavender Diamond, and at the Troubadour, there’s a monster of a bill with the charming War Paint, the intriguing Moonrats, and the first solo gig from Alex Ebert of Ima Robot, whose solo music is wildly different than his regular gig – think Baxter Dury or Bryan Ferry. But tonight’s real highlight is the record release party for the Prix at El Cid. Their new EP, “St. Domino,” is getting airplay on Indie and even KROQ, and Kevin Bronson just did a nice profile on them for Buzz Bands. I like the new tunes a lot, but the track “The Chevalier” is the one that really sticks, with a cheeky French breakdown and a bouncy melody that suggests Belle and Sebastian.

The Chevalier mp3

I know very little about Atlanta’s Black Lips, but everything I’ve heard makes me like them a lot: ridiculous live shows, a boys-in-the-band tour schedule, and a fun energy that’s missing from most bands today. But drinking your piss onstage will only get you so far, and the “flower punk” music of Black Lips is excellent, packed with Nuggets-style riffs that combine ringing melodies with a punky backing. Their last full-length, Los Valientes Del Mundo Nuevo, captures a show they set up in Tijuana that had no cover and free Tecate and tequila, and they’ve just released a new 45 in England called “Cold Hands.” Their last LA show was talked about for weeks, so don’t miss them tonight at Amoeba at 6pm. The group also recently contributed a cover of the Tamrons’ “Wild Man” to the Fader’s 7 inch series (limited to 500 copies and distributed to “top DJs, artists and influencers,” which somehow I am). For the first EPR blog for TACO, we thought we’d give you something kind of special, so before Filip headed off to Australia last week, I had him convert the vinyl into an MP3. Sounds like the Twilight Zone.

Wildman by The Black Lips mp3