This was my 14th consecutive Coachella, and 17th if you count the short-lived cruise and the two years I went both weekends, but first with Rolling Stone. I teamed up with shutterbug Andy Keilen (that’s his shot of Kamasi Washington above) and writer Steve Appleford to tackle the best fest in the west. Half of the entries on this list are mine. Can you guess which ones without looking at the tags below? Make sure to keep scrolling downward on the article itself.
This one’s, ahem, a Labour of Love if you will (shout out UB40). It went live a few days after my D’Angelo review, and I was too embarrassed to post these two side by side. Four months later, I’m into it. Like so many lefty caucasians raised in 420-friendly families, I ingested a lot of reggae as a yout’ and, for a brief high school moment, thought I’d found saviors in 311 and Sublime. I still bump a lot of Jamaican roots, but the time has come to give dap to the odd phenomena of blond dreadlocks and fake patois (shout out Das Racist), plus the restless audio hybridizing of the ’90s. This list goes back to the very birth of white reggae in 1965, and ends in 2014 with that most irie and unexpected of recent hits, “Rude.” Peep it on SPIN.* Continue reading
Posting this nearly a month late because it’s taken that long to recover. HARD Haunted Mansion, Los Angeles’ premier Halloween (don’t-call-it-a) rave found yours truly crawling through the catacombs of the historic Shrine Auditorium with photographer Erik Voake on a quest for some truly exclusive content for SPIN. Diametrically opposed to the common sense of all involved, we were allowed into the artists’ dressing rooms to witness pre- and post-game rituals, most of which involved copious amounts of booze (duh). The article appears as a photo gallery on SPIN.com, so here it is indexed for easy access:
Low End Theory's Nobody and Nocando are Bomb Zobies, or Naw & Nopes.
A brand new week begins. Here are the last one’s leftovers. Hella free tunez.
* “The song is called ‘FWUH 16,’ or ‘Fuck What You Heard’ and you’ve gotta have it. If Nocando’s raw verses don’t do it for you, we’re sure Nobody’s funky shuffling beat will.”
(all stories via West Coast Sound, via L.A. Weekly)
Major Lazer gets collaborative.
Quick bloggy bits from around the L.A. underground (and up). Share ’em.
(all stories via West Coast Sound, via L.A. Weekly)
* M.I.A. guests with Diplo, her one-time lover and longtime producer, on his’ new EP as Major Lazer, while Thom Yorke remixes “Jump Up.”
Chris Writes Things 