June 25, 2008 5:07pm
We bid adieu to George Michael in our last installment of Afternoon Tea before his show tonight at the Forum. A few parting quotes from Ann Powers’ interview:
ON STAYING IN THE CLOSET FOR MANY YEARS
“It was very painful thing to have to keep quiet about, because my dignity really suffered for it. But I was living for my mother. I finally told her, because [former lover] Anselmo had died; it was the year I would have told her anyway, because combination therapy [the drug regime to combat AIDS] began then. I could have told her then, without her spending every day of her life worrying.
June 25, 2008 12:29pm
How do you make a Stone Temple Pilot spitting mad? As your humble correspondent found out the hard way during an interview last month with the multiplatinum-selling ’90s grunge group, one very effective way is to ask frontman Scott Weiland about going to jail.
June 24, 2008 5:25pm
Everyday around 4:30 or 5 p.m., we’ll be releasing a quote from Ann Powers’ interview with George Michael in preparation for his performance Wednesday at the Forum.
ON WHY STRAIGHT MEN MIGHT HATE HIM
“Now that I am relatively confident as a sexual being, I kind of understand the jealousy and nastiness [directed at him in the 1980s, especially by journalists]. At the time, because I was not confident at all, I didn’t quite get that they would look at me and think I’d had just a little bit too much good luck.
June 24, 2008 2:42pm
I caught up with Chris Martin of Coldplay the day after he dropped $400 on vinyl at Amoeba Records. Naturally, I asked him what was in the stack. “I walked out with, let’s see, some live Paul Simon, some Rammstein, some Talking Heads and some John Williams, some Jay-Z, all of it on vinyl …” Wait, Chris, did you say Rammstein? “Yeah, I love Rammstein, are you kidding?” Sure, of course, my bad: The guy who sings “Yellow” adores German industrial metal. That makes total sense.
June 23, 2008 4:57pm
Everyday around 4:30 or 5 p.m., we’ll be releasing a quote from Ann Powers’ interview with George Michael in preparation for his performance Wednesday at the Forum.
ON RADIOHEAD
“Thom Yorke has been nasty about me. “OK Computer” is a classic pop album, disguised and disguised and disguised, but there’s not ability to disguise those melodies.
June 20, 2008 4:48pm
Everyday around 4:30 or 5 p.m., we’ll be releasing a quote from Ann Powers’ interview with George Michael in preparation for his performance Wednesday at the Forum.
ON ‘ELI STONE’
“The ‘Eli Stone’ thing for me is very confusing. Initially it was just this 13-week period and I found it almost impossible to say no to it, just because it was so complimentary to place that much music of mine in it.
June 19, 2008 4:58pm
Everyday around 4:30 or 5 p.m., we’ll be releasing a quote from Ann Powers’ interview with George Michael in preparation for his performance Wednesday at the Forum. This first one ain’t for wallflowers:
ON SEX
“But I honestly believe that orgasm is the closest we come to God, whether there’s love or not. It’s a glimpse of the divine. And we content ourselves with that happening every once in a while. If that thirty or forty seconds of absolute oblivion were something we could tap into any time we wanted, what would life be? In some ways, is that not what drugs are about? Is that quite often not why drugs and sex become synonymous?
June 19, 2008 2:35pm
American music is African music. From blues to R&B to disco to electronica to bluegrass, every strain of American music can trace its DNA back to ideas rooted in the African American and African traditions, from the rhythms and melodies to the instruments themselves. Jayme Stone and Mansa Sissoko’s new collaborative album, “Africa to Appalachia,” brings that shared history to light in deft arrangements of Stone’s banjo and Sissoko’s kora playing.
June 19, 2008 11:57am
Two turntables and a full drum kit.
That’s the lean artillery deployed by the team of DJ AM and Travis Barker, who will bring their beat happening to the Roxy for a three-show residency starting Wednesday and continuing July 30 and Aug. 27.
June 18, 2008 4:59pm
L.A. Philharmonic senior program manager Johanna Rees has two majestic spaces with which to work — the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall — and she consistently books bands that make the most of it. Joanna Newsom, DeVotchKa and Grizzly Bear have all transformed Disney Hall; performances from Arcade Fire, Os Mutantes and Bright Eyes at the Bowl left audiences buzzing for weeks.
