Gaiman and Palmer: the alt power couple

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer kick-start their tour – latimes.com.

The paper made a mistake; the tour is not sold out. I’m trying to get out of trick or treating myself to see the Coraline author and Dresden Doll at the Wilshire Ebell.

Björk transforms ‘Biophilia’ into a transmedia experience – latimes.com

Bjork is always a treat to interview, and not just because of the Icelandic way she rolls her R’s, which is a song in itself. She’s earnest, inquisitive, unpredictable. I caught up with her again a few weeks ago to talk about Biophilia. To call it an album is just part of the picture. Here, at last, is the story.

 

Björk transforms ‘Biophilia’ into a transmedia experience – latimes.com.

Feral Cat Day

Every day these two sweethearts take their spot on the old Red Line stairs behind our house. They sleep curled around each other, protective, comforting, the sole remaining siblings of a litter of six. They’re beautiful, inspiring in their devotion to each other and to their mother — who is always nearby. And sadly they’re completely wild. They’re the feral cat litter we didn’t manage to trap this summer. So every day for six months, I just hope to see them, that the raccoons — or whoever got their brothers and sisters — hasn’t gotten them.

It’s Feral Cat Day. If you, like me, have a nearby cat colony, don’t just feed them. Try to catch and spay or neuter. Kittens like these are a joy — until you hear them getting eaten by a raccoon. Or you see one skinny ragged mother getting chased by all the neighborhood toms for her nth litter of the year. Or you hear their fights every night.

Kim Minus Thurston Equals Sad

Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore have been on my mind, ever since I read Vanity Fair‘s latest trainwreck rerun story about Courtney Love yesterday. I’ll never forget running into Mr. and Mrs. Sonic Youth on Prince Street on the day news of Kurt Cobain’s death hit. “I’m so sorry,” I mumbled, as we stopped on a corner, because I knew they were friends.

“We’re not surprised by his death,” Kim said. We’d all been expecting Kurt to die any day, so wasted was his living. “It was just the way he died, the violence.”

I nodded. I didn’t really know what to say about such an ugly, intimate, yet public loss. It was a raw, vulnerable day for a rock critic to catch indie rock’s ultimate power couple, the coolest people on the planet. Other people would have hugged, cried. But we nodded, shared a moment of silence, then went on our ways.

Fowley on Rock-Hall Snub

Kim Fowley and Sandy West (Runaways drummer)

How unfair is it that Joan Jett got nominated for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame before her first band, the Runaways, did? I’ve been debating this question with a few people in the weeks since this year’s ballot was announced, including with some folks who have a personal stake in the business. Most are disappointed by but sanguine about the Hall’s avoidance of a band that never did garner respect, let alone record sales. Even those with personal reasons to resent the erstwhile Ms. Larkin toast her success.