NICOLE RECOMMENDS:
TONIGHT! -- REGGIE WATTS & KAREN (Watts cannot be pigeonholed, and true to form, Karen is not someone in his band, that is the name of his band. Bandleader and announcer for The Late Late Show with James Corden, winner of the Andy Kaufman Comedy Award, and consummate solo performer with innumerable rave reviews, his shows are a unique and completely improvised blend of vocals, beatboxing, looping pedals, comedy, confusion and beyond) Thurs 9 p.m., Teragram Ballroom, DTLA, $20-$25.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
PHAST PHREDDIE & THEE PRECISIONS - REUNION!!! (seminal ‘70s LA band disbanded in ‘85, crawls now from the grave, marking repackaging of their long hard-to-get EP and CD combined, founder Fred Patterson, a music/scene polymath, played punk bills with his not-punk horn-driven jump blues-jazz-R&B sound that foreshadowed massive swing dance craze a decade later, just flew in from NYC, original bass player Don Snowden, from Spain! he a 20-year music journalist for the LA Times, co-wrote a bio on Willie Dixon, just released a translation of a bio on tango great Carlos Gardel, they’ve been rehearsing like crazy, this should be not only landmark but a really good show) Sat 8 p.m., Joe’s American Bar & Grill, Burbank, $15-$20.
RECOMMENDED:
ENGLISH BEAT (the Beat had two great lead singers who continued on to front General Public, sadly toaster Ranking Roger passed nearly one year ago but he had long split with Dave Wakeling and they formed rival Beat bands at times, other times reunited, but so many of the familiar songs featured Wakeling’s voice that when you see him and any other three or four top notch musicians backing brilliantly, it sounds spot on like the EB or GP, because of That Voice, and I‘ve never seen a show of his, and I‘ve seen many, where the crowd wasn’t hopping and grinning nonstop and repeating oh yeah! THAT song, I LOVE that song!) Fri 9 p.m., The Rose, Pasadena, $28-$38
MARCUS KING BAND (here’s another terrific band become a personal favorite that I discovered through Cal State Northridge radio station 88.5, there’s funky electric keyboards and a horn section and leader King plays a mean axe and sings gravel-throat like a vet blues rocker three times his age of 20 so don’t try to buy him a drink, you could get the bar in trouble -- ha!) Fri 8 p.m., Fonda Theatre, Hwd, $25.
REFLECTIONS IN A D’BACK’S EYE (is a play about the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson that wounded then-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, but centers around the 9-year-old girl who was killed who loved to play baseball, the killer played Coltrane albums and this play continues themes in Deanne Stillman’s work which explore America's shadowlands and ask, how can we return to "a love supreme," she’s also written LA Times bestsellers and teaches at UC Riverside) Fri, Sat 8:30 p.m., Highways Performance Space, SM, $15-$20.
BENNIE MAUPIN ENSEMBLE (well hallelujah, multi-woodwindist sax etc Headhunters, Bitches Brew Bennie’s back in town, last time I saw him at the JB it had been many years and afterwards I was regretting those many years, you should see him every chance you get, he is remarkable, a venerable maestro, with a quintet this night that includes one of my favorite bass players, Derek Oles) Sat 8 p.m., Jazz Bakery, SM, $30-$35.
LA OPERA - EURYDICE (classical music and opera both recognize the need to groom the next generation and we are fortunate in La to have several credible organizations doing just that, with high-quality modern productions, now LA Opera goes after the old Eurydice tale, young bride dies of snakebite on her wedding night, descends to underworld, meets up with Pop but gets a chance to rejoin Land of the Living and husband Orpheus but this time it’s told from the woman’s POV, the NY Times said, "If contemporary opera has a rising wunderkind, then Aucoin has to be it," partnering with playwright Sarah Ruhl, a world premier) Sat 7:30 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, DTLA, $49-$284.
JACARANDA - PAX AMERICANA I & II (they’re doing it again, offering two concerts in one day/evening with a dinner break in between, so you can really get your fill of Jacaranda’s classical music adventures designed to awaken curiosity and discovery, composers Danny Elfman, Charles Ives, Phillip Glass with words by Allen Ginsberg, stellar players, a conductor even, an alternative Super Bowl Sunday with no commercials, no concussions, no corporations) Sun 4:30 p.m., 7 p.m., First Presbytrerian Church of SM, $20-$45, both concerts $70.
WYNONNA & CACTUS (yeah, that Wynonna! and Cactus is her drummer, producer, and oh yeah, her husband, he looks tough, is he prickly?) Tues 8 p.m., McCabe’s, SM, $75.
WESTERNER, MANUEL THE BAND (both these bands are excellent, Westerner rocks out, great songs, trip hop space rock, charismatic tall singer Cooper Bombadil jumps and kicks a lot, his three mates all shred, Manuel a six-piece more complex in sounds and tempos, wide-ranging with pedal steel and horn section, another stand-out lead singer-guitar man in Manuel Grajeda, addictive, together? -- you’ll have a great night!) next Thurs 8:30 p.m., Harvelle’s, $10.
PACIFIC OPERA PROJECT Presents PUCCINI’S Gianni Schicchi, RAVEL’S L’Enfant et Les Sortilèges (as always, POP promises wonderful, and often weirdly wonderful, as they link Puccini’s only comic opera with Ravel’s The Child and the Spells, bringing to life right there on the stage a mule, a princess, frogs, a dead body, singing chairs, a bat, a math teacher, in total 84 costumed characters, some cohabiting both one-act operas, sounds like another POP home run), Sat 7 p.m., Sun 3 p.m., Occidental College, Highland Park, $15-$60.
BJARNASON & ÓLAFSSON (two of the biggest stars of the LA Phil’s 2017 Reykjavík Festival, conductor/composer Daníel Bjarnason and pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, co-curate a smörgåsbord of musical bon mots from the icy island confines of Iceland, a musical hotbed from 330,000 people but what do you do when the northern winds keep you indoors for months at a time, you write, music and books, Iceland excels in both and this should be really interesting, other Scandanavian composers as well and dang cheap too, for magnificent Disney Hall) Tues 8 p.m., Disney Hall, DTLA, $20-$64.
COMING ATTRACTIONS: LA OPERA - EURYDICE 2/1-23, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, DTLA; WEIMAR VARIATIONS, WORKERS CHORUS - LA MASTER CHORALE 2/7, 9 outside Disney Hall, WEIMAR REPUBLIC - Weill’s Violin Concerto, more inside Disney Hall, DTLA; THE WORLD IS MY HOME - THE LIFE OF PAUL ROBESON 2/9, Santa Monica Playhouse; BLACK RABBIT ROSE: Musik! Fantasie! Revolution! A Weimar Cabaret 2/11, Disney Hall DTLA; MAVIS STAPLES 2/13, The Soraya, CSUN; Weimar Nightfall: THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS 2/13-16, Disney Hall, DTLA; NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALL STARS 2/13, Teragram Ballroom, DTLA; DWEEZIL ZAPPA “Hot Rats Live!” 2/14, The Rose, Pasadena, 2/15, The Canyon Agoura Hills, 2/16, The Canyon Montclair; ENGLISH BEAT 2/15, The Canyon Santa Clarita; LONNIE LISTON SMITH 2/23, Lodge Room, Highland Park; MARIA MULDAUR 2/27, McCabe’s, SM.
Charles Andrews has listened to a lot of music of all kinds, including more than 2,000 live shows. He has lived in Santa Monica for 34 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at therealmrmusic@gmail.com
