Post by David Lewis

Recently reunited post rock/mathrock/whatever pioneers Polvo (above) graced the Echoplex stage Sunday night in a show presented by the F Yeah Fest. Playing a long (nearly two hour) set of their challenging, extremely tight, mostly instrumental music made for a long -- but rewarding -- night. The quartet sounded as good as they did in their prime -- a decade ago -- and they had a hard time leaving the stage ("No one has to work tomorrow, right?" joked frontman Ash Bowie). A new album is rumored to be in the works, and if the crowd's enthusiasm Sunday was any indication, it will be warmly received.

Openers Trans Am are no slouches themselves when it comes to post rock noise, although their songs have more of an electronic influence than Polvo's guitar-driven rock. Vocals were minimal, and largely synnthesized, allowing the singer/keyboard player to chow down on some chips during their set.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Matt Kivel

The Glass Candy set was a tale of two shows. If you were up close and crammed into the throbbing stageside pit, the dance beats and tightly-wound synth refrains were all too much to deal with -- boogie fever overtook the entire crowd. Friends of mine came back sweating and sucking for air, claiming they had "seen god" and danced to his sweet funk. The other experience was my own -- casually observing beside the well-lit merch table, jotting down notes and generally feeling bored with what I gleaned to be an average set of mid-tempo disco.

But I give my friends the benefit of the doubt on this one. I should have been down there, sweating alongside them, fixing my eyes on the nodding heads and Ginger Green's emerald tube top. I'm off my high horse -- the ecstatic looks that concertgoers gave one another after the set were enough. Glass Candy rocked the f&%ing house.

Post by Sammy JC

Inside the spacious Echoplex, fresh-faced highschoolers, tattooed punks, neon t-shirted hipsters and local Latinos all mixed and mingled together. Like a visual census of the alternative youth of East Hollywood, there was a rare sense of community and ease as the stagehands set up the gear for hardcore punk legends Negative Approach.

Before the band launched into their jackhammer sonic assault, frontman John Brannon remarked, "It only took us 27 years to get here," noting this as the Detroit band's first West Coast appearance. Even with such abrasive music, the room was large enough that fans at the stage could crowd surf and mosh while those in the back continued to socialize and drink as if immune to the mayhem up ahead. F Yeah Fest founder Sean Carlson himself even stood by the lip of the stage to help the flailing stream of crowd surfers off and on. The songs were short, Brannon struck menacing poses and contorted his face and the kids ate it up. Though abrasive and outwardly inaccessible, Negative Approach is such a powerful band with so much presence that they handily won over people who simply had never seen a hardcore performance before. They devirginized the casual observers and Brannon was just mesmerizing.

Check out our interview with Negative Approach's John Brannon.

(Photo by Olivia Hermaratanatorn)

Post by Sammy JC

Abe Vigoda played a set of highly inventive songs with rollicking rhythms, echo- drenched guitars, dub-thick bass lines and yelping dual vocals that put their sound somewhere between Sonic Youth, Talking Heads and calypso music. However, the jam-packed audience never let their hipster-selves get too lost in the danceable grooves and instead, remained polite and patient even when one of the guitar players took a few minutes to change a broken string.

Coupled with the sweet smell of bar-b-q wafting in from the back of the club, the band socialized with friends between numbers and kept the mood loose and carefree. Fixtures of the LA scene, much of the F Yeah Fest would play out as a celebration of Abe Vigoda and other Smell-based bands like No Age and Mika Miko whose recent success seems to have taken the whole community by surprise.

Photo by Dan Monick

Post by David Lewis

Most bands interact with the crowd to form a "we're all together" bond. Some bands stage-dive and let the crowd hold them up, passing them around the venue on a sea of fans' hands. Monotonix tops them all, by playing while crowd surfing. At their late-night Echo performance, the Israeli trio skipped playing on the stage (too pedestrian), opting instead to perform with their instruments set up in the middle of the crowd. It made for difficult viewing, but an electrifying performance.

Before long, singer Ami Shalev was being passed over the heads of the packed crowd, singing all the while. Likewise, guitarist Yonatan Gat was raised up high in the air by a groups of fans, while hammering out sloppy arena-style solos. The coup de grace came when various audience members hoisted seated drummer Haggai Fershtman up high, along with multiple pieces of his drumkit (hi-hat, snare drum). He then played more than just a few bars while seemingly floating in thin air. The music itself, though somewhat of a moot point, was non-stop garage rock, chock full of Zeppelinish riffs.

Best of all was the fact that they pulled off all of these maneuvers with out cordless equipment. Meaning that there was still a length of cord, originating from the amp on stage, snaking through the audience even after Gat had been passed right out the exit. They then proceeded to play outside the venue for the brief remainder of their set.

Photos by Bryce Frees.

Post by Andrew Barker

Considering the band is comprised of only two people, it's simply astounding how much noise No Age is capable of generating. Waves of noise, looped and layered over each other, bubbling over with low hypnotic patterns and building to epic catharses, all the while never dipping below the red. And yet you don't even notice just how loud they are until you step out into the street afterward and notice the painful ringing in your ears, so perfectly controlled and oddly soothing is their deeply original, brilliantly crafted brand of beautiful chaos.

Delivering the headlining set of Saturday's F Yeah Festival, the L.A. duo justified the substantial attention they've been receiving of late, making for a perfect closer to a day filled with excitement, energy and experimentation.

Whereas the band's recordings can often hew too closely to the same formula (a gentle, syncopated instrumental suite followed by a bone-rattling blast of blissed-out noise pop, or vice-versa), here they let the songs stretch, drag and bleed into one another as needed, reinventing a number of them entirely. Guitarist Randy Randall climbed the amps and covered every square foot of the stage like the bastard son of Kevin Shields and Angus Young, while drummer/singer Dean Spunt proved an engaging, watchable frontman, despite being seated for most of the performance.

It was also a perfectly structured show, beginning on a loose, improvisatory note, then slowly ratcheting up the energy to the mid-set one-two punch of "Brain Burners" and "Eraser" (the latter of which would be a top 10 hit in a slightly skewed parallel universe), cooling down a bit to the dreamy "Ripped Knees," then ending on an explosive, feedback drenched cover of the Misfits' "Night of the Living Dead" that likely left anyone within 10 feet of the speakers with permanent hearing damage.

For all the obvious attention that No Age put into the instrumental side of their music, Spunt's vocals can often seem an afterthought, and are frequently buried so far down in the live mix that they might as well be -- hopefully this is an area the band will continue to fine tune and develop. As it is, No Age still have more potential than any new band in recent memory.

Photo by Bryce Frees.

Check out the Set List's video interview with No Age's Randy Randall.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Andrew Barker

Brooklyn alterna-dance duo Matt and Kim were on some serious happy drugs Saturday night, with keyboard player/singer Matt frequently jumping up from his seat and cutting himself off mid-song, too eager to get to the next one, and perpetually smiling drummer Kim bobbing her head with a maniacal intensity. The crowd responded in kind, becoming an ebullient, throbbing mass, even prompting this reporter to attempt his first crowd surf since a Descendents concert in 1996 (semi-successfully).

Photo by Bryce Frees.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by David Lewis

Toronto hardcore iconoclasts Fucked Up (a name somewhat appropriate for this particular festival) have been building a significant buzz over the last few years due to their reputedly raucous live shows and their willingness to experiment on record (unexpected instrumentation, pop sounds, epic-length songs, guest vocalists). Raucous their F yeah set was, but it was short on experimentation and stuck rigidly to traditional, but relentlessly entertaining, hardcore punk.

The sweaty crowd was packed in tight and it was clear from the outset that they came to fuck things up: Many audience members started moshing a split-second before the band even began, anticipating a large, savage pit. Fucked Up frontman, a 300-pound dude named Damian Abraham, was intimidating but surprisingly charming, funny and self-deprecating. He spent half of his time interacting with the crowd, offering audience members the mic and stage-diving in equal measure. Likewise, the band seemed to have a strong sense of humor often missing from the hardcore scene, even playing a few bars of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Having three guitars allowed the sextet to create an endless stream of speedy, distorted crunch, but in the spacious Echoplex, the specific riffs melted away, leaving a deafening wall of white noise.

They're obviously informed by the early days of hardcore (including Negative Approach, who played immediately after them), but Fucked Up push the envelope musically and are significantly more populist and accessible than some of their peers. The F Yeah Fest in general is the same way: Look to the early days of DIY punk, but mix in new elements and invite everybody to contribute in some way.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Andrew Barker

Playing in the early evening at the Echo, Bay Area duo Two Gallants' blend of vintage folk melodies, blues riffs and sea shanties should have been a welcome respite from the steady hardcore that dominated the afternoon. They certainly exhibited good taste in the styles they chose to emulate, and it's encouraging to see a roots band dig back further into the blues/folk vault than the simple Mississippi Delta/Woody Guthrie diet that sustains most retro-minded rockers.

But Two Gallants just simply didn't swing, despite a style that demands it. Perhaps it was the strange lack of chemistry between the two men (a drummer and guitarist/singer), or their sour-faced lack of enthusiasm performing, or the fact that their singer sounds far more like Geddy Lee than Leadbelly, but there was something uncomfortably amiss about the whole performance.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by David Lewis

Vancouver's Ladyhawk* suffered one of the day's few major technical glitches. As a result, they took to the stage about 15 minutes late, but vocalist Duffy Driediger passed the time by riffing on Canada, U.S. vs. Canadian money (someone in the crowd gave him a Canadian $5 bill), and, hilariously, the awkwardness that follows when a fellow male compliments his well-groomed beard (it was pretty handsome, to be honest). He later kept the comedy vibe going by jokingly yelling "Yeah Ladyhawk! Worst band ever!" between songs.

Decked out in vintage tees (including the Grateful Dead and Elvis) and vintage sneakers, Ladyhawk is also most comfortable drawing their music from the past. Echoes of Neil Young creep into their largely late '80s-early '90s-inspired (think Dinosaur Jr., Replacements, even Built to Spill) arsenal of rootsy, guitar-driven indie rock. At the 3/4-full Echo they got jammy in a welcomed, My Morning Jacket kind of way, but their final song (for which the drummer and guitarist swapped instruments) was jammy in a bad way. They also played the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated," which was itself rather sedated.

*Not to be confused with buzzy New Zealand electro-poppers Ladyhawke (like the Matthew Broderick film), who will be gracing the Echo's stage in October.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Matt Kivel

The first day of the F Yeah Fest in Echo Park proudly displayed a veritable all star team of bands from Los Angeles' vibrant counterculture. Hipsters and teenagers decked out in florescent t-shirts and wide-rimmed spectacles engulfed the three block stretch of Sunset Blvd between Glendale Blvd and Echo Park Ave, within which which the Echo and Echoplex venues reside.

Festivities kicked off at around 3: 30 PM and for the most part, early concerts enjoyed moderate attendance. The Mae Shi proved to be an exception. Fans packed into the Echoplex at around 4: 15 PM to catch a glimpse of the band's spastic punk rock -- a refreshingly unpretentious blend of seemingly incongruous musical sub-genres. Some of the songs employ long, avant-garde freak outs and Kraut-flavored improvisations while others borrow unashamedly from early 90s mainstream FM radio with epic hooks and gleeful crowd-bating chants.

Band members propelled themselves across the stage and the lead vocalists screamed and shouted in tandem, echoing each other's refrains and hammering home the choruses. The Mae Shi set was galvanizing in the best of ways, revving up the crowd and uniting concertgoers from different ends of the musical spectrum. Hardcore and punk fans pumped fists with pop-lovers and ska fans alike -- that sort of unity among fans regardless of musical preference continued throughout the night and made for a celebratory concert experience.

Photo by Faith Crawford

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Matt Kivel

A large portion of this week's Set List content has been devoted to a dynamic, locally-run Los Angeles festival called the F Yeah Fest. Each year, the promoters and festival operators generously give their money, time and effort to the maintenance and  independence  of the  F Yeah brand -- often receiving little  to no recompense for their tireless work. So it saddens me to report that those same, well-meaning festival volunteers were attacked outside of Radiohead's Hollywood Bowl performance Monday night.

The harrowing scene is depicted vividly in Randall Roberts' report for the LA Weekly.

Basically, F Yeah Fest  founder Sean Carlson, promoter Phil Hoelting  and  filmmaker Robert Reich were  allegedly stationed outside of the Bowl Monday night, distributing flyers for the weekend festival when they caught site of a grizzly altercation between Bowl security and a concertgoer. Reich -- who was filming the scene  for an upcoming F Yeah documentary -- captured much of the action on camera. What followed was a disturbing chase down Highland Blvd, in which Carlson and Reich were physically attacked by security guards. The tape was confiscated and the young men were left bruised and bewildered -- Carlson's cell phone and keys were stolen.

A sad situation to say the least. If any Set List readers witnessed this event, please leave your account in the comments section.

The first list of artists confirmed for the the 28th annual CMJ Music Marathon in New York has been released and it immediately sounds like an improvement on last year's festival. Booked to perform are:  3OH!3, A Place To Bury Strangers, AIDS Wolf, An Albatross, Ane Brun, Anna Ternheim, Annuals, Beach House, Broken Social Scene, Cool Kids, Crystal Castles, Cut Off Your Hands, Deerhoof, Del McCoury Band, Delta Spirit, Donavon Frankenreiter, Envy On The Coast, Gang Gang Dance, Lee “Scratch” Perry, IRAN, Jay Reatard, Japanese Motors, Juliana Hatfield, Jupiter One, Lykke Li, Margot And The Nuclear So And So’s, Minus The Bear, Roisin Murphy, The Dears, The Takeover UK, They Might Be Giants, The Virgins and Yo Majesty.
CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival will take place Oct. 21-25 across New York City.
The Film Festival will have its first ever Cineminis Competition for short narrative and documentary films. 

Sam Moore will perform a tribute to the late Isaac Hayes at the Sunset Junction Festival on Aug. 23.
Most of Moore's hits in the 1960s with his partner Dave were penned by Hayes and Dave Porter; Hayes often produced the duo and backed then on piano.
Moore will perform on the Hoover Stage at 9:30 p.m. on the 23rd, the slot for which Hayes was booked.

Sunset Junction, one of the more popular outdoor music festivals in L.A. will be headlined by Cold War Kids, the Black Keys and a slew of R&B performers from the '60s and '70s.
Event takes place Aug. 23 and 24 in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles on two stages, one on Sunset Boulevard between Fountain and Sanborn and another on Santa Monica Boulevard between Hoover and Sanborn.
The 28th annual street fair will also feature the reunited Beachwood Sparks and Broken Social Scene. Among the R&B greats on the bills are Isaac Hayes, who led Brooklyn festival last month, Billy Paul, Jeffrey Osborne, Stephanie Mills and Jeane Carne.
Admission will be $15 in advance and $20 day of show. Schedule is after the jump.

Monterey Jazz Festival Records has come up with six titles for its second round of releases of concert recordings.The releases are slated for Aug. 5.
Four are year-specific recordings: Art Blakey and the Giants of Jazz/1972; Shirley Horn/1994; Tito Puente & His Orchestra/1977; and Jimmy Witherspoon featuring Robben Ford/1972. Two “best of” recordings are Dave Brubeck "50 Years of Dave Brubeck: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-2007" and Cal Tjader "The Best of Cal Tjader, Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-1980."
Interesting tidbits: The  Blakey album includes Thelonious Monk on piano; among the performers with Brubeck are, of course, Paul Desmond on alto but also Gerry Mulligan on baritone saxophone; Puente performs with a 15-piece orchestra; and the Witherspoon disc includes a bonus track with Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster from 1959.
At the 51st Monterey Jazz Fest in September, the Cuban flutist and singer Orlando “Maraca” Valle is slated to record a CD with special guests David Sánchez, Miguel Zenón, Ed Simon, Murray Low, John Benitez, Giovanni Hidalgo, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and the Monterey Jazz Festival Chamber Orchestra.

Considered one of the finest festivals in all of Europe, Italia Wave Love Festival will settle in at the Tuscan seaside town of Livorno, about 200 kilometers from its former home in Arrezo, from July 16 to 19.Last year was held in Florence.
The bands we have heard of: the Chemical Brothers, the Verve, Gnarls Barkley, Wombats, the Ting Tings, Konono No. 1.
The Italians: Sud Sound System, Elio e le Storie Tese,  Linea 77, Sergent Garcia, Tricarico, Bugo, Pivot, Stereo Total, Ralf, Radici nel cemento, Paolo Benvegnù, Carlo Lucarelli, il Vernacoliere, Paolo Migone, rock lessons.
International acts:  Vanessa de Mata from Brasil,John de Leo, Saba from Somalia, Freshlyground from South Africa, Deti Picasso from Russia. Then there's the whole dance scene  in the Elettrowave section.
Here's where they get crazy: The day starts at 10 a.m. on the Wake up Stage (there's a Psycho Stage in the afternoons) with  bands that won a national contest.
Mainstage concerts are presented in the A. Picchi Football Stadium.
A four-day pass is all of 40 euros, or about 60 bucks.

A tip of the hat to the 40th anniversary of the protests that shut down the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, Richie Havens will perform "Freedom" at the fest's opening ceremonies of the 61st edition on Wednesday.
Havens, whose marathon performance of "Freedom"' was one of the glorious moments at Woodstock 39 years ago, released his  27th album, "Nobody Left to Crown," in Europe in February. Announcement of a  U.S. release date and label is expected soon. Havens has U.S. dates into next year scheduled after the jump.

The musical breeding ground that gave the world the Doors, Love, Guns N' Rose, Buffalo Springfield and too many hair bands to count will be celebrated during a three-day festival in June.
The Sunset Strip Music Festival will be held June 26-28 and take place in the Strip's current clubs  the Viper Room, Roxy, Whisky, House of Blues, Cat and Key Club.
An opening night party will take place June 26 at the House of Blues, hosted by Mark McGrath. Event will pay tribute to the Godfathers of the Sunset Strip - specifically the club owners Lou Adler, Mario Maglieri and Elmer Valentine.CNN''s Larry King will interview the three "godfathers"on June 28 at new London West Hollywood Hotel.
Updates on the bands playing on the Friday and Saturday night bills will be posted on the event's MySpace page.

Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show will this weekend celebrate the New Orleans music festival Ponderosa Stomp, being held April 29 and 30 at the Crescent City's House of Blues.
Dr. Ira "Dr. Ike" Padnos curated the lineup but it looks like he invaded my closet and asked which artists had special meaning to me. For example:
? & The Mysterians (my favorite record ever, "96 Tears")
Dr. John (the performer at the club on my first date with my future wife)
Eddie Bo (the performer at a N'awlins club where we were celebrating our first anniversary)
Ronnie Spector (top 3 in my list of favorite female singers)
13th Floor Elevators ("Nuggets," anyone?)
Roy Head (As a fan of songs with "hey" chants, is there anything better than "Treat Her Right"?)

Is it possible the L.A.-based Cambodian-American rock band Dengue Fever has become the ultimate festival band?
The act announced their summer tour today and it includes 19 festival gigs. That's staggering by anyone's standards.

May
10 Santa Monica Festival, Clover Park, Santa Monica, Calif..
14 Sasquatch Music Festival @ The Gorge, George, Wash. (Main Stage)
27 Borderline, London, England
30 Tong Tong Festival Pasar Malem Besar, The Hague, The Netherlands

June
1 Wychwood Festival @ Cheltenham Racecourse, Gloucestershire, England
7 Amoeba Music in-store, Berkeley (day)
7 DAWN ‘08, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco (evening)
14 Juneteenth Celebration @ M.L.K Park, Long Beach
21 Make Music Pasadena
27 Hove Festival, Arendal, Norway
28 Respect Music Festival, Prague, Czech Republic
29 Glastonbury Festival, Q Magazine Stage, Somerset, England

July
3 Roskilde Festival, Roskilde, Denmark
5 Summer Stage in Central Park, New York (w/ Rashid Taha)
6 Black Cat, Washington, D.C.
7 Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia
8 Iron Horse, Northampton, Mass.
09 Museum of Fine Arts, Calderwood Courtyard, Boston
11 Empty Bottle, Chicago
12 La Fete de Marquis at Central Park, Madison, Wisc.
18 Larmertree Festival, Salisbury, England
19 Lovebox London Weekender, London, England
26 WOMAD Festival, Charleton Park, Wiltshire, England
27 WOMAD Festival, Charleton Park, Wiltshire, England

August
6 Oya Festival, Oslo, Norway
8 Way Out West, Goteborg, Sweden (Debut)
9 Summer Sundae Weekender, Leicester, England
16 Beautiful Days, Devon, England
21 Festival Musicas Do mar, Povoa do Varzim, Portugal

Gotham's Downtown Music Gallery has hipped us to one of the coolest festivals on the planet for avant-garde music, Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville in Quebec, which will celebrate its 25th Anniversary May 15-19.
Event's grand finale is the world premiere of Art Bears Songbook, a revisiting of the music made by
Fred Frith and Chris Cutler in the late 1970s/early '80s after disbanding Henry Cow. Frith and Cutler will be joined by Jewlia Eisenberg, Carla Kihlstedt, Zeena Parkins and Kristin Slipp.
Among the other shows is Frith’s brand new rock band Cosa Brava; John Zorn's the Dreamers, which features Cyro Baptista, Joey Baron, Trevor Dunn and Marc Ribot; Roscoe Mitchell's double quartet the Note Factory; and Elliott Sharp playing his  8-string electroacoustic guitarbass in a solo setting.
Festival will also include the premiere of turntablist Martin Tétreault performing with guitarist René Lussier and fellow turntablist Otomo Yoshihide.
Long ago, Frith, Zorn and Baron were in a band together called Naked City.

Another festival announces its lineup and once again music fans need to hunt through the second, third and fourth billed to figure out how the Austin City Limits Music Festival will  distinguish itself from other gatherings when it takes over the Texas capital's Zilker Park  Sept. 26-28.
The acts providing a little something we are not seeing elsewhere: Beck, who only has three bookings this summer; Manu Chao; John Fogerty; David  Byrne; Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band; Gillian Welch; and  Roky Erickson.
Headliners Foo Fighters and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss will add the ACL dates to North American tours.
Others on the bill are the Raconteurs, the Mars Volta, Gnarls Barkley, N.E.R.D.,  Tegan and Sara, Iron & Wine, G. Love & Special Sauce,  Neko Case, Band of Horses, The Swell Season, Silversun Pickups, Gogol  Bordello, Gillian Welch, The Black Keys, Against Me!, Sharon Jones &  the Dap Kings, Hot Chip, Vampire Weekend, Slightly Stoopid, Duffy and others.
Three-day passes are available for $170 at the ACL website.

Steve Miller will participate in an “I Create Music” interview as part of ASCAP's third annual  songwriters expo April 10 at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel.
The ASCAP “I Create Music” Expo is part of a week of events that bring together  songwriters, composers, music publishers and industry leaders.
Events include the 13th annual ASCAP Foundation/Disney Musical Theater Workshop; Stephen Schwartz getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; and the 25th annual ASCAP Pop Music Awards honoring  Miller and Lionel Richie.
Jackson Browne has already been announced as an interview subject.

There are plenty of U.S. music festivals to choose from this summer, and now Canada has entered the fray with the inaugural Pemberton Festival, which is set for July 25-27 in Pemberton, B.C. (roughly two hours from Vancouver). The scheduled headliners are Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Jay-Z, Nine Inch Nails and Coldplay.

The rest of the line-up is well-rounded: My Morning Jacket, the Tragically Hip, Interpol, Metric, Buck 65, Black Mountain, Flaming Lips, Death Cab For Cutie, Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Sia, Fiery Furnaces, Mates of State, MSTRKRFT, Chromeo, The Airborne Toxic Event, Grand Ole Party, The Crystal Method, DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist and more.

For the seventh year, AFI will hold its Music Documentary Series throughout L.A. running April 2 to May 7.
On the slate are five new films: Scott Hicks's film on Philip Glass, "Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts," which opens the fest April 2 at Arclight Hollywood; Stephen Walker's piece on senior citizens performing punk and soul tunes in "Young@Heart" (April 7, Arclight Sherman Oaks); David Hausen's untitled doc on the Red Hot Chili Peppers (April 9, Arclight Hollywood); "Joy Division" by Grant Gee (April 23, Arclight Hollywood); and Andy Garcia's pic on the Cuban bassist and bandleader Cachao, "Cachao: Uno Mas" (April 30, Arclight Hollywood).
All films are followed by Q&As.
Also on the schedule: "Help! (April 14, Sherman Oaks); "Peter Tosh: Stepping Razor: Red X" (April 16, Hollywood); "Neil Young: Heart of Gold" (April 21,Sherman Oaks);"Purple Rain" (April 28,Sherman Oaks); and D.A. Pennebaker's "Don't Look Back" (May 7,Skirball Cultural center)

Radiohead will headline two nights of the first  All Points West Music & Arts Festival and Jack Johnson gets to go on last before the fans start clogging the New Jersey Turnpike.
It's an unprecedented feat, this double booking of a headliner at a festival. The undercard is not as inspiring as the one these promoters put together for Coachella, but it does include the youngster Duffy, who will either be embraced or discarded for her Amy Winehouse-Soulsville sound by then.
The other acts playing Liberty State Park in New Jersey: Underworld, Kings of Leon, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Cat Power, the Roots, New Pornographers, Youssou N'Dour, Animal Collective, Andrew Bird, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Metric, CSS, Girl Talk, Chromeo, The Go! Team, Amadou & Mariam, The Black Angels, Sia, the Felice Brothers, K'Naan, Jason Isbell, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Alberta Cross, the Virgins, Black Kids, Mates of State,  Forro in the Dark, Nicole Atkins, Juana Molina, Little Brother, Rogue Wave, Neil Halstead and Your Vegas.
Single day passes are $89; three-day passes are $258.  Tix go on sale Feb. 29.

Bonnaroo has announced its lineup and we have a very basic breakdown of the bill.
HEADLINERS: Pearl Jam, Metallica, Kanye West, Jack Johnson
NON-HEADLINER REASONS TO MAKE THE TRIP: Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Levon Helm, Iron & Wine, Broken Social Scene, Edgar Meyer playing bluegrass, Solomon Burke, Jose Gonzalez, Nicole Atkins, Jakob Dylan
ALSO PLAYING COACHELLA: Jack Johnson, Raconteurs, Deat Cab for Cutie, My Morning Jacket, Tegan & Sara, Gogol Bordello, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, M.I.A., Black Kids, Vampire Weekend
GREAT IDEA: Larry Campbell with Phil Lesh; Sam Bush with Bela Fleck and band
GREAT BOOKING THAT DOES NOT FIT WITH THE REST: Orchestra Baobab
CURIOUS BOOKING THAT DOES NOT FIT: Against Me!
LINE ON POSTER THAT READS LIKE AN OLD FILLMORE BILL: Allman Brothers Band, Raconteurs, Willie Nelson, Death Cab for Cutie
ACTS THAT PROBABLY NEVER THOUGHT THEY'D PLAY A FIELD IN RURAL TENNESSEE: Solomon Burke, Lupe Fiasco, MGMT, Broken Social Scene, Sharon Jones

Watched a bit of "Rust Never Sleeps" over the weekend, marveling at how thin and clean-cut Neil Young looked on that 1978 tour.
It's a distant cry from the latest film from Bernard Shakey - that's Young's film alias - who also directed "Rust": That film was about a performance, "Deja Vu" is about the people attending the performance.
In one of the first reviews since "Deja Vu" closed the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Variety is calling it "an aud-friendly, activist musical." 
Neil, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash were on hand at Sundance, where Young and Nash sang with Hisle and Stills said he is healthy following cancer surgery.
Neil told told USA Today "The idea of the whole project was just to stimulate debate." He told the Sundance Channel the film is indeed about the audience.

Days after the organizers of Coachella announced plans for a three-day music festival where concert-goers can stare at the backside of the Statue of Liberty, the Vineland festival has been delayed a year.
Instead of having competing fests on the week of Aug. 8-10 - and forcing the people living between Princeton and New Brunswick which side they are on - the Vineland, N.J., fest is being moved to early summer 2009.
co-producers Festival Republic and C3 Presents say the move is due to "the overall festival traffic in the northeast and big bands touring through this area at the same time," but never once mention Radiohead in their release.
Co-producers say they did not want to force music fans to choose between three events on the same weekend.

The All Points West Music & Arts Festival willl be held  Aug. 8, 9 and 10, 2008 at Liberty State Park in New Jersey.  Festival’s name is inspired by Ellis Island and the N.J. Central Railroad terminal located on the festival site. Lineup will be announced in the next few weeks. Their fresh website is just getting launched.
Coachella tickets go on sale Jan. 25: $269 for three days; $90 for one. General admission camping: $55 per person.

The Rolling Stones will be attending the Berlin Film Festval with Martin Scorsese where their concert movie “Shine a Light” will open the fest on Feb.7. Fest director Dieter Kosslick said “Martin Scorsese has captured the pure essence of an iconic band on the big screen.”

"World Without Love" is: a) a Sundance entry about a poverty-stricken Romania couple attempting to start a new life in Marrakesh; b) a reality show featuring freshly divorced women from Orange County; or c) the song you overheard three months ago emanating from the idling SUV parked outside a kids' soccer field. There is no film by that name in this year's Sundance fest and no TV schedule has a show by that moniker. But it is highly likely that the reunited Peter & Gordon will perform the tune on Jan. 22 at Sundance's  Music Cafe.
Peter Asher and Gordon Waller, who had a No. 1 hit with the Paul McCartney-penned tune in 1964, re-formed in 2005 after a 37-year absence and have been making sporadic appearances. The duo has nine dates so far on their calendar this year. (For the last 30-odd years, Asher's day job has been record producer; Gordon has stuck with performing).
Rest of the music lineup for Sundance, Jan. 17-27 in Park City, Utah, is more on the modern side.
AM, Ingrid Michaelson, Jessica Hoop, Sea Wolf, Paddy Casey, Eef Barzelay, Pat Monahan, Artists
from the film Slingshot Hip Hop, Ben's Brother, Sondre Lerche, Patti Smith, Charlotte Sometimes,
Jessie Baylin, Dusty Rhodes and the River Band, Butch Walker, Tim Finn, Josh Hisle,
Everest, Missy Higgins, Meiko, Will Dailey, Brett Dennen and Johnny Lloyd Rollins & The All Nighters will appear at ASCAP's Music Cafe.
BMI, a founding sponsor of the Sundance Composers Lab, will present BMI Snowball, featuring the Aggrolites and Nick Urata from DeVotchKa.
Gold Streets, Ha Ha Tonka and Meridian West play at Music on Main on Jan. 24.
DJ Spooky will headline at New Frontier on Main along with Sundance Institute Composers Lab alum Shahzad Ali Ismaily.
Music-oriented films in fest include "Anvil! The Story of Anvil," "CSNY Deja Vu," "The Drummer," "The Guitar," "Patti Smith: Dream of Life," "U2 3D" and "Young@Heart."
Elsewhere, speculation has begun on who might be performing at March's SXSW Music Festival.
Peter and Gordon - back in the day:

  It doesn't matter if it's a film festival or a music festival, there's always a stuffed goodie bag to greet an atendee's arrival. As usual, one has to wonder: How much of this stuff is useful? What does this tell us about the confab we're about to step into? I already had PJ Olsson's show on my list of acts to check out, but the inclusion of an ad in the bag reaffirms some belief I have that certain acts have a company behind them,  CBS Records in this case, that wants their acts to stand out. Well, without making too many judgments, CMJ attendees now have in their possession:

6 compilation CDs (New Zealand, OurStage, Austin, Severe Records, Filter and CMJ being the providers)
5 postcards/pamphlets for online services
4 handbills for showcases
4 cards enabling free donloads including one for Mark Ronson's remix of Bob Dylan's "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)"
3 maps
3 production serves postcards
2 coupons (clothes and bowling)
2 postcards for actual musicians performing at CMJ
2 ads for films
2 educational brocures
1 Zune ad
1 insurance brochure
1 menu for a pizza joint
1 bookmark advertising R. Crumb's "Heroes of Blues, Jazz and Country"
1 cable TV show ad
and, what else? - a single condom.

The annual CMJ Music Marathon begins Tuesday and lower Manhattan will be invaded for five days by countless indie bands and artists looking to connect with the people  - labels, promoters, advertising execs, music supervisors - who will make their day job s a thing of the past.
It's an overwhelming lineup of about 1,000 acts - about 25% of those who apply to perform - and in general, the fest is floating under the radar: No keynote speech; Spoon and M.I.A. are the biggest names on the bills; and there's a real shortage of bands teetering on breakthrough. Sub Pop's Band of Horses may just be that one special band in the crowd.
The New York Times provided a rather short guide to the acts its critics deemed worthy of checking out; perhaps there's a statement between the lines there - a lot of these acts are not quite ready to blossom beyond a regional level. SXSW, the Austin, Texas, music festival held every March, can at least boast that the bands playing there will be discussed and written about over the course of the next year. That is probably not the case at CMJ, but there are plenty of interesting acts in New York this week, among them:
recent Columbia Records signing MGMT; New Zealand's Liam Finn, the son of Neil whose debut will be released in January;bilingual Canadian rockers We are Wolves; the mesmerizing Danish avant-jazz pop band Slaraffenland, singer-songwriter St Vincent (pictured); Portland, Oregon's world folk music amalgamters Old Time Relijun; and the U.S. debut of Astralwerks band Air Traffic

Documentaries on Public Enemy, Sigur Ros and the comedians Patton Oswalt and David Cross will be screened at the AFI Film Festival at the Arclight in Hollywood.
"Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome" will make its world premiere and "Sigur Ros – Heima Dir" and "Heckler" will screen during the fest's run of Nov. 1-11.

ASCAP is assisting Fuel TV with the music presentation of the 2007 Swerve Festival.
Line-up fr the Sept. 29 and 30 event features We Are Scientists,the Black Angels, DeVotchKa, Brazil's Bonde Do Role,  Foreign Born, Illinois, Oh No! Oh My!, Snowden and Thee More Shallows.
Festival will be held  at Barnsdall Art Park, the Vista Theatre and the Echoplex in L.A.

Blaming "a disturbed person or one of Nixon's retired dirty tricksters" for spreading rumors about a cancellation, Sunday's Summer of Love celebration is still taking place at Speedway Meadows in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
Moby Grape will still be reuniting, Country Joe will be counting, and musicians associated with San Francisco back when Jerry Garcia could have run for mayor and won will be on hand.

It's near impossible to keep track of Jimi Hendrix live albums, but if you have to have one, "Live at Monterey" is the winner. Some of us never tire of the way he says "Bob Dylan,"  jokingly refers to Dylan's grandmother being in the front row or has a field day with "Like a Rolling Stone."
Experience Hendrix/Geffen/UMe will release the Jimi Hendrix Experience Live at Monterey on DVD, CD and  LP on Oct. 16.
Here's the trivia:
Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding performed at the Monterey International Pop Festival on June 18, 1967.
Paul McCartney was on the festival board and insisted that Hendrix be invited.
Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones introduced the band.
Hendrix played on the last day of the three-day fest, following the Grateful Dead and preceding the fest closer the Mamas and the Papas.
D.A. Pennebaker and his crew shot the show on 16mm;  Wally Heider recorded it on eight track.
Beyond the performance of the band’s set, The Jimi Hendrix Experience Live At Monterey offers numerous bonus features.
One DVD bonus features is called A Second Look, which  allows the viewer to switch between multiple, previously unseen camera angles.
DVD will include "American Landing," a new documentary that includes previously unreleased interviews with Mitchell,Redding and Hendrix, plus "Music, Love and Flowers," a look at the Monterey International Pop Festival with co-founder Lou Adler.
Simon and Schuster’s Atria will release the book "Jimi Hendrix: An Illustrated Experience" this fall. Book is authored by Janie Hendrix and John McDermott.

The Faint will headline the second annual Neighborhood Music Festival on Sept. 29 at L.A.'s Exposition Park. Designed to showcase emerging indie artists, the lineup includes Mickey Avalon, Spank Rock, DJ AM, Steve Aoki, Crystal Castles, A-Trak, Kid Sister, Flosstradamus, Shit Disco, Amanda Blank, Santo Gold, Aaron LaCrate, Guns 'N' Bombs, Them Jeans, Royal Rumble, Young Americans, Funeral Party, Brother Reade, Andre Legacy, Dirt Nasty, Lucky I am, Squeak E Clean and DJ Sin. Steve Aoki of DIM MAK Records and Meelo Solis of Stake Productions organize the event. Tickets are either $80 for VIP or $40 for general admission and on sale at www.TicketWeb.com.