Hollywood Bowl-minded pop, rock, jazz and country fans have some intriguing choices ahead in the 2011 season being announced Wednesday.
Perhaps tops on the list is an Aug. 17 date in which the music of the acclaimed singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell will presented with a “Jazz at the Bowl” evening under the direction of drummer Brian Blade and featuring jazz musicians still to be announced. In addition, country music queen Dolly Parton is slated to give her first Bowl concerts on July 22 and 23, and Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan makes her concert debut with an orchestra when the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra accompanies her on July 15 and 16.
The pop offerings will also include the usual sampling of international music under the umbrella of the KCRW-FM (89.9) World Festival, this year featuring a Serge Gainsbourg Tribute with Gainsbourg’s longtime collaborator, conductor and composer Jean Claude Vannier and guest singers Beck, Sean lennon, China Forbes and Charlotte Kemp Muhl on Aug. 28.
Other highlights of the world festival include the reunited Japanese electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra, with Big in Japan and Cibo Matto, on June 26; a reggae program with Ziggy Marley, Maytals singer Toots Hibbert and the Mighty Diamonds (July 31); and a soul review led by “American Idol” bandleader Rickey Minor with guests Stevie Wonder, Rocky Dawuni and Ceci Bastida (July 24).
In Phoenix's video for its early single “Too Young,” the French pop-rock band worked at a fish-packing plant. It's a strange scene in itself — these guys were way too good-looking and, in the case of singer Thomas Mars, attached to one too many Coppolas (he has two children with Sofia) to be slinging crates of tuna around a pier. And the band's songs were anything but blue collar — Phoenix's creamy synthesizers and lockstep funk guitar suggested rock music as made by people who know every club doorman in town.
So it's strange to see that Phoenix, of all bands, actually has become a rock act for the working stiff in 2010. You don't sell out the Hollywood Bowl in a vicious live-music economy, as the band did Saturday night, without winning over at least a few folks who might actually hustle the docks by day.
In another era, the Swell Season’s performance of “Falling Slowly” at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday night would have been accompanied by 17,000 Bic lighters glowing in the summer air.
But by that point – nearly three hours into the show, part of KCRW's World Festival -- the masses didn’t need much prompting. On an evening also featuring openers She & Him and the Bird & the Bee, the Swell Season walked onto the stage after the other two male/female duos (and backing bands) had rolled out a red carpet of lush, bouncy songs that filled the Bowl with good spirit.
“Have a glass of Chardonnay for me,” requested the Bird and the Bee singer Inara George as she greeted the crowd, accurately capturing its tastes. Wearing a sparkling flapper’s dress and offering sophsiticated cocktail pop music, George and musical partner Greg Kurstin, accompanied by a seven-piece band, delivered a sound that recalled Burt Bacharach’s adult-oriented songcraft. As well, they played two songs from the Bird and the Bee’s recent tribute album to Hall & Oates—”Sara Smile” and “I Heard It on the Radio”-- which set the crowd into nostalgia mode.
She & Him, the project of actress Zooey Deschanel and guitarist/songwriter M. Ward, offered a catchier fare, one that’s steeped in Brill Building pop and 1970s-era country music. Deschanel proved herself more than merely an actress with a singing hobby; her voice was powerful and confident, especially during the band’s final song, a take on Screaming Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You.”
The Swell Season’s set pushed up the volume from the start. At times Hansard sang so hard it seemed like his eyes might pop out of his head.
One of the highlights, though, was Irglova’s solo turn in front of the mike. Strumming an acoustic guitar, she dedicated a gorgeous, nuanced version of “I Have Loved You Wrong” to the actor Colin Farrell, who presented the Swell Season with their Academy Award at the 2008 ceremony.
The nine-piece band crafted a sound that blended classic ‘60s soul – Hansard’s got a voice to rival Van Morrison’s and Otis Redding’s – with a brand of blue collar rock that suggested Bruce Springsteen. The Boss, in fact, wrote the final song that the Swell Season performed: “Drive All Night.” It perfectly captured what the Swell Season does best: conveying a passionate honesty that cuts through pretense and tackles pure emotion.
-- Randall Roberts
Photos: Glen Hansard, top right, and Marketa Irglova. The Bird and the Bee's Inara George, center, and She & Him's M. Ward, bottom left, with Zooey Deschanel. Credits: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times
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She & Him's "Volume Two" was only released four months ago, but for being a relatively new album, it's one that feels steeped in nostalgia. The light orchestrations bring a genial upbeat touch to even the most heartbreaking of lyrics, and over the course of two albums California natives M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel have gradually brought a sunny, decidedly West Coast-feel to delicately symphonic retro-pop tunes.
"Volume Two" comes with its own love letter to California in "Home," a piano stroll accentuated with handclaps, swooning background vocals, crisp guitar notes and keyboard lushness. It arrives near the end of an album that's full of sweetly nuanced arrangements built around Deschanel's conversationally cheery vocals. A take on NRBQ's forgotten "Ridin' in My Car" is built for a windows-down cruise, and "In the Sun" is a three-minute call-and-response keyboard frolic that wouldn't sound of out place on Disneyland's Main Street.
"My earliest music memories were driving around and being in the back seat of my parents' car and listening to music," Deschanel said. "I feel like I associate music with California and the sun and a particular sort of feeling. It’s something that’s important to me to express when I write music. When we record, California is definitely on our minds."
On Sunday, She & Him will perform for the first time at the Hollywood Bowl, joining a bill that also includes local electro-pop outfit the Bird and the Bee and acoustic romancers the Swell Season. The classic Hollywood venue should suit Deschanel and Ward just fine, as this is music built for a Los Angeles sunset.
To mark the occasion, Deschanel and Ward spoke to Pop & Hiss for a few minutes last week to discuss some of their favorite California songs. Deschanel went with a theme, choosing songs only with California in the title, whereas Ward, who grew up in Ventura County, opted for songs that evoked a certain time and place.
Song: Dick Dale's "Misirlou"
Ward had the surf-rock staple at the top of his list."I picked songs that reminded me of California," Ward said. "It’s a very personal, subjective thing that pick songs that remind you of where you came from."
Dale's arrangement of the Greek pop standard became the artist's signature song. "That Dick Dale song takes me to the beach near where I grew up, near Point Mugu," Ward said. "I don’t know what year that was, but it’s such an incredible song by an incredible guitar player. I hope people still feel like Dick Dale is the heart of surf music. People now are making surf music more modern, and I really hope he’s not forgotten."
Deschanel had Ward stumped with this pick. "I've never heard of him," Ward said of the little-known L.A. native who recorded a light, Beach Boys-influenced pop album in the late '60s. "He’s got a lot of great harmonies," Deschanel said.
"California Home" tracks a homesick cross-country flight back to Los Angeles. "It’s kind of about being away from home, and thinking about California when you’re not in California," Deschanel said. "That’s sort of the theme of my picks."
The music of the Beatles, a summer night and the Hollywood Bowl: a can’t-miss recipe, right?
As things turned out Friday, at the opening of a three-night “Beatles Celebration“ marking roughly the 45th anniversary of the Fab Four’s final Bowl appearances, this stuff isn’t remotely as easy as it may look, or sound.
There was no dearth of sweet memory, evocative melodies, poignant lyrics or variety of stylistic interpretation of the group’s catalog from soloists Patti Austin, Todd Rundgren, Bettye LaVette, Rob Laufer and Brian Stokes Mitchell.
But the music truly came alive only sporadically, primarily in the 2-1/2-hour show’s second half with LaVette’s dynamic, soul-searing set and Rundgren’s appearance that finally acknowledged the fun that was central to what the Beatles were about.
Until then, it was more of a Beatles appreciation than celebration, containing little of the youthful exuberance of the band’s early songs, or the anything-goes experimental glee of its latter years. Too often the songs on the first half approached the “Rockabye Baby” series of albums that transform music of the rock era into soothing children’s lullabies.
People don’t come to the annual Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame and Opening Night concert expecting to hear, say, an entire symphony or a complete set by their favorite pop star. Or at least they shouldn’t by now.
The Hall of Fame concert is supposed to be like a platter of musical hors d’oeuvres, an event that anticipates the diversity of the Bowl season ahead as best it can in a couple of hours. A little something for everyone, while accepting the risk of satisfying no one. Those in the lower boxes dine lavishly on culinary creations from Patina, while others picnic as usual. Fireworks polish off the evening. And it’s all for a good cause, a benefit for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Music Matters music-education programs.
Lately, one notices that there has been some narrowing of the range of the music; it doesn’t fly off in as many directions as in the past. Also, the amount of talk from the stage was tightened Friday night, which made the presentation flow better.
But the streamlining went so far that Brahms’s not-unreasonably-long “Academic Festival” Overture was edited to half its length. Normally, it takes 10 minutes and change to perform the piece; Thomas Wilkins and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra did it in five. The music sounded boomy and canned, like an ancient recording (the sound quality improved later on in the night).
The media are often critical of the concert industry, what with its high ticket prices, unexplained service fees and often an inability to get a decent seat without dealing with the secondary market. But there is one nifty new feature on the Ticketmaster website that deserves some praise, and that's the "interactive seat map." Pictured above as a graphic of the Hollywood Bowl's seating arrangement, the map allows the user to roll over various sections, and see, in real time, how many tickets are still available.
There is, however, a downside, at least if you're a promoter. Those with time on their hands and the know-how to use a calculator (needling journalists are among that lot), can instantly see how many tickets remain unsold for major events hours before they're supposed to go down. Never before has it been so easy to see how concerts are under-performing.
Sad news, then, to learn that approximately 10,000 tickets remain, as of Thursday morning, for Sunday's concert with Yeasayer and Baaba Maal, with, as noted in the screen shot above, sometimes more than 500 available in a single section. With a capacity of around 18,000, it's safe to say there's going to be plenty of room for your picnic basket and cheese spread.
It’s all too easy in the age of “American Idol” to forget just how profoundly powerful music can be in the hands of an absolute master like Peter Gabriel.
The veteran British artist — one of the select few in the pop music world to whom the term “artist” is wholly appropriate — brought his orchestral tour to the Hollywood Bowl on Friday and demonstrated once again his completely inspired command of the medium of live performance.
Theatrics in pop concert tours all too often translate into gratuitous technology that merely occupies the eye while the hits play out. Gabriel’s holistically conceived show weds the expansive musical vocabulary provided by the ensemble dubbed the New Blood Orchestra with images on multiple video screens designed with the same informed creative spark that made him one of the original geniuses of the MTV age.
His nearly three-hour performance was divided into halves: the first devoted to a front-to-back performance in sequence of his “Scratch My Back” album, the second to orchestral reworkings of a dozen songs spanning his 33-year solo career.
Gabriel employs various media not to dazzle for the sake of dazzling, but with the working knowledge of how music, words and images deployed in harmony can open the door to new awareness by simultaneously engaging the senses, the emotions and the spirit.
The “Scratch My Back” album, on which he has offered distinctive takes on favorite songs created by David Bowie, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, the Magnetic Fields, Randy Newman, Arcade Fire and others, has divided fans and critics. Some have found his approach rewardingly fresh, others have groused that the full-bodied orchestral treatments nonetheless lack the rhythmic bite that’s been the hallmark of so much of his own work. In concert, however, it seemed obvious that Gabriel had the live aspect in mind all along.
As on the album, Gabriel opened with Bowie’s “Heroes,” which set the theme of leaving behind the ordinary and entering a different, higher realm, at least for one evening. Where Bowie’s version built with an electro-rock pulse, Gabriel and the orchestra brought a regal sonic swell that embodied Bowie’s idea that “I can be king/And you can be queen…just for one day.”
When "Grease" makes its sing-along debut at the Hollywood Bowl this summer, one of the movie's (pink-haired) stars will be leading the way.
Didi Conn -- who played Frenchy, beauty school dropout and member of the Pink Ladies -- will host the June 26 screening, the Bowl announced Friday. She will emcee a costume parade and other activities culminating in the showing of the 1978 Paramount Pictures version of the Broadway hit about high school love and '50s rock 'n' roll.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn., which oversees programming at the Bowl, also announced it is adding a Sept. 18 concert by French electronic-rock band Phoenix, Brooklyn folk rockers Grizzly Bear and San Francisco's Girls.
The show joins two other non-subscription indie music events recently added to the summer lineup: Vampire Weekend, Beach House and The Very Best will play on Sept. 26 and Pavement, Sonic Youth and No Age on Sept. 30.
Among other new or recent additions to the 2009 season:
The Carpenters, singer Donna Summer and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet will be inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame on opening night June 18. Composer-musician Herb Alpert will be among the presenters.
Todd Rundgren will join the July 11 "A Beatles Celebration" with Patti Austin, Rob Laufer, Bettye LaVette and Brian Stokes Mitchell. (Joe Jackson has withdrawn from the show.)
Taj Mahal will join the July 21 "Jazz at the Bowl" concert with Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin
Soprano Alexia Voulgaridou, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the Los Angeles Children's Chorus have been added to the cast of the Aug. 1 concert version of Bizet's "Carmen," with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Harry Connick Jr.'s Big Band will join the singer and the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Aug. 13 and 14. Connick also will serve as conductor for the evening.
Jason Mraz will join the Aug. 25 Gershwin Across America with Monica Mancini, Bebe Winans, Nancy Wilson and St. Vincent.
On Tuesday night at the Hollywood Bowl, Glenn Frey welcomed Eagles fans to the final show of the band’s three-night stand there with a bit of sly self-deprecation. “We are the ancient ones,” he said. “And this is the Eagles’ assisted-living tour.”
As lines go, it’s a good one, and it drew sympathetic laughs from an audience seemingly packed with well-preserved old-timers from the group’s days on the early-’70s L.A. club scene.
Yet if the joke acknowledged the improbability of the Eagles’ four-decade flight, it didn’t necessarily reflect the reality of the band’s current state: Backed (or perhaps assisted) at the Bowl by a handful of musicians on a variety of instruments, Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit played a three-hour set that emphasized the slickly seductive allure of the Eagles’ music, which presents youth less as a concrete experience than as a state of mind attainable through sex, drugs or any combination thereof.
The Eagles weren’t dispensing hard-won wisdom; they were demonstrating their continued devotion to everything that wisdom typically precludes.
And they were moving far more quickly than senior citizens usually do, zipping through hits such as “Witchy Woman,” “One of These Nights” and “Lyin’ Eyes” with the effortless facility that’s always defined their sound.
“We did everything fast in 1975,” Frey said before the last of those tunes, explaining that he and Henley had written it over two days about the scene at West Hollywood’s Dan Tana’s. Then he dedicated it to his first wife, whose name he helpfully provided: “Plaintiff.”
We just received a tip that reformed indie rock band Pavement, which performs at Coachella on Saturday night, will perform at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday, Sept. 30. The band makes its stateside return Thursday night at the Fox Theater in Pomona before heading to the desert.
Tickets go on sale on May 2 at the Hollywood Bowl box office; additional acts will be announced on Monday.
Updated, April 15, 11:26 a.m.: The Daily Swarm is reporting that Sonic Youth and No Age are also on the bill.
Paul McCartney went without an opening act Wednesday night at the Hollywood Bowl -- unless you count the former Beatle himself, that is.
Playing the second of two sold-out shows this week -- his first at the historic venue since 1993 -- McCartney waited until he was nearly two hours into his marathon set to introduce a sense of the superhuman, a bit of the mystery and wonder that continues to define the Beatles’ brand a half-century on from their formation.
The shift came with “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” which McCartney said he’d never performed on the road until his current tour; on Wednesday he and his four-piece band did it as a spirited ska number (complete with half-time dub breakdown). After that came “Back in the U.S.S.R,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Paperback Writer” and then “A Day in the Life,” each inviting the question that remains impossible to answer despite the depredations of time and countless cover versions: How on earth did regular people write these songs?
Until that point, McCartney was an amiable English guy with a bunch of hits, some more reverentially preserved than others. “Jet” was tart and punchy and “Drive My Car” retained its funky propulsion. But “My Love,” which the singer addressed to “all the lovers in the audience,” was as tired as that dedication, while a dreary rendition of “The Long and Winding Road” sounded like something you’d hear on a PBS telethon. (The sub-Discovery Channel nature footage didn’t help the latter.)
