Treasure Island Music Festival
Treasure Island – San Francisco, CA
10/15 to 10/16/11

San Francisco’s island by the sea will host the fifth annual Treasure Island Music Festival in October. This year’s lineup includes Australian synth rock duo Empire of the Sun and indie pop veterans Death Cab For Cutie. Local SF acts Thee Oh Sees and Weekend will also play the festival’s second day dedicated to rock music. Committed to organizing an environmentally responsible festival, organizers Noise Pop and Another Planet Entertainment will continue their efforts toward providing zero emissions transportation, using recyclable materials and offering composting services for all event-related waste. →

Libros Schmibros Teams up with the Hammer
The Hammer Museum – Santa Monica, CA
Ongoing – 10/9/11

The Hammer Museum’s Public Engagement program will bring an artist project by David Kipen—an interpretation of Libros Schmibros, his hybrid lending library and used bookshop in Boyle Heights—to Westwood from August 27 to October 9, 2011. Libros Schmibros will be set up in the Hammer Museum’s lobby gallery. Kipen, former Director of Literature for the National Endowment of the Arts and a past book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, established Libros Schmibros in July 2010 with his collection of roughly seven thousand books, in response to the lack of accessibility to books in his Boyle Heights community. →

Gaslamp Killer, Photo via LA Weekly

13th Annual Neighborhood Music Festival
On Colorado Blvd. (between Argus & Eagle Rock Blvd.)
10/1/11

Eagle Rock’s music festival has arrived with the first weeks of autumn. And it certainly is a welcome sight since earlier this summer, the Sunset Festival had imploded into a promotional fiasco that never came into fruition.  Eagle Rock’s beloved neighborhood event is officially in its 13th year and we highly encourage folks and families to come out, support independent music and the local musicians we love and grew up with. The stages will be curated by our favorite independent music collective, Dublab as well as the talented folks over at Low End Theory. →

Solo Exhibition by José Parlá
OHWOW Gallery – LA, CA
Ongoing thru 10/27/11

OHWOW is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by José Parlá, titled Character Gestures. Comprised of paintings, mono-transfers and installations, this exhibition builds on the artist’s earlier work that dealt with the concept of psychogeography and depicted distressed architectural surfaces layered with calligraphic text. While he continues to broach the idea of how we experience urban landscapes and the visual language of mark making, the shift within Character Gestures stems from a deeper engagement with process and abstraction. →

Saxophone Legend, Sonny Rollins’ Intimate Performance
Royce Hall – Santa Monica, CA
9/22/11

Jazz legend and saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins performs Thursday, September 22 at UCLA Live’s Royce Hall in one of only three West Coast stops on his current world tour, launching the 2011-12 season with one of the most accomplished composers and performers in jazz history. →

Mali Artists, Amadou & Mariam, Fight Hunger ‘Round the World
The award-winning musicians are the first The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Ambassadors dedicated to raising awareness among the European public of the scourge of global hunger and efforts to tackle it by WFP and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department (ECHO). →

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Al Green – “I’ve Never Found A Girl” (mp3)

Each week I rip a song from vinyl and post it up here. This week’s song is “I’ve Never Found A Girl (Who Loves Me Like You Do)” by Al Green.

A Major Solo Exhibition by Erlea Maneros Zabala
REDCAT Theatre – LA, CA
9/16 thru 11/6/11

REDCAT commences its 2011–12 season of contemporary art with the presentation of Erlea Maneros Zabala.

For her first major solo exhibition in the United States, the Los Angeles-based artist examines the relationship between archival images and their material context. →

The Stepkids
El Rey Theatre – Los Angeles, CA
9/15/11

Emerging Connecticut three-piece, The Stepkids, is an act that all of you absolutely must-see. They brought the El Rey down with so much intensity but remained subdued and dream-like in their rhythms. I, being one so far removed from the era of when funk and psychedelia were king, managed to be catapulted into the furthest reaches of the ether and onto a different planet. →

Cinespia Presents Argento’s Beautiful Giallo
Hollywood Forever Cemetery – Hollywood, CA
09/16/11

For one of their last weekends the Cinespia folks present the classic supernatural horror film by master Italian filmmaker Dario Argento. Suspiria is a personal favorite of mine in Argento’s stunning oeuvre of 70′s giallos and features a haunting soundtrack by his trusty musical collaborators, Goblin. The film’s popularity is touted by not only Italian horror fans, but universally by cinephiles and cineastes for its bold and beautiful color imagery and lighting effects.  Its popularity is further evidenced when RJD2 sampled the film’s theme song in his track, “Weatherpeople.” →