Sara Lov makes sweet music sound sweeter
World-traveler Sara Lov plays softly, sounds pretty, and has some serious chops to back it all up.
Find out for yourself why Sara Lov is the new Joni Mitchell. She starts her residency at LA’s Spaceland Tues Jan 6th.
See clubspaceland.com for scheduling info. Or see myspace.com/saralov to find out more about the girl of the hour herself.
Watch it- “Breaking Upwards” hits theatres 2009
Breaking Upwards is our gen’s love story. Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?
Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein star, co-wrote, co-produced, co-inhabited, and real life co-boyfriend/girlfriended this film about a couple who after 4 years together, decides to initiate a painfully complicated and drawn out separation. Beautifully shot, resounding with uncomfortable truth.
Check out the trailer, news, photos and updates at Breaking Upwards.com. Also, become a fan at Breaking Upwards Facebook page.
The Bird and The Bee- Free Mp3 download
The Bird and The Bee get cheery and stuff your stockings with a free mp3 holiday download.
‘Tis the season of giving, so in the spirit The Bird and The Bee are offering a free holiday song to their fans. “12 Days of Christmas” is currently available as a free MP3 download through their website thebirdandthebee.com. The song will also be KCRW’s “Today’s Top Tune” on December 25, and will be streamed all day on kcrw.org
Whispertown 2000-Fri Dec 20th LA
Go see Whispertown 2000 and a slew of others Dec 20th in LA
Relax Bar in Hollywood, 5511 Hollywood Blvd, 90027, myspace.com/relaxbar
Happy Holidays from The Whispertown 2000 and Friends! w/ Silver Darling, Tod Adrian Wisenbaker, Heather Porcaro and The Heartstring Symphony, and The Belle Brigade!!
The Growlers @ Zero Film Festival
Come for the music, stay for a flick. The Zero Film Festival in Los Angeles can boast the most hardcore coverage of the least known genre: The No-Budget Indies. Get hypnotized by the Mongolian landscape with Robin Noorda’s Shivering Beauty and stay for a raging lineup including John Webster Johns, Glasser, Arabia, and our favorite weirdos The Growlers. Go to Zero Film Festival for more info
Wanderlust - Alex Kopps makes a pitt stop
Alex Kopps insists he’s not a nomad, but then again, he’s also in denial about being called a surfer. A nomad is a person who keeps on moving, usually in the search of some seasonal supply. Whether Kopps’s path is tracing a source of waves, artistic inspiration, or both, he doesn’t seem to stay in one place long—all the while producing work that could be the fantastic result of a creative collaboration between Wes Anderson and Jeff Spicoli.
Though Kopps has a home and studio in West Oakland, he doesn’t have a phone and sends elusive emails from undisclosed locations with messages like, “i live out of a bike now… eating lavender blossoms and recycled paper.”
Depending on who you ask, Alex Kopps could be a filmmaker, a painter, a surfboard designer, a graffiti artist, a writer of fictional histories (see gothicdolphins.blogspot.com), a teacher, an animator, a researcher… the list goes on. And he could be creating these paintings, surfboards, stories or cartoons anywhere from Oakland to Australia. Oh, and he might be working under a pseudonym. Suffice to say, he’s a tough person to pin on a map, figuratively and physically.
I first encountered Alex Kopps via vacadelmar.com, another surfing mammal who posted a link to the trailer for Kopps’ film, Displacement. The trailer is a mesmerizing vignette that brings portholes and Polaroids to mind, like a symphony shot through a salty lens.
The title refers to the film’s subject: a special breed of surfboards born in the 60s when kneeboarder George Greenough combined qualities of long and shortboards to create a round-bottomed surfboard to sit lower in a wave instead on top of it. Displacement boards have a discerning design element and sub-cultural stigma that makes them perfect subject matter for a self-described “closeted” surfer like Kopps. The film has taken him and partner Steve Krajewski to remote locations in Australia and secret spots in mainland Mexico.
Kopps roams creative media the way he roves the globe, taking the best of each mode or place to complement the next. To raise funds for Displacement he auctioned his paintings, compositions of elements that are at once organic and precise, such as spirograph-like shapes that look like they could appear under a microscope. Friends like artist Barry McGee and mad surf scientist George Greenough himself also contributed pieces, motivating Kopps to focus on finishing the film for “everyone who was in the auction and the people who ride the boards.”
Today, Alex cites his Bay Area base as evidence he’s made surfing secondary to other pursuits. As he says, “nobody moves to San Francisco to be a surfer.” Mind you, this was over a phone call made from a store in Ventura, as he watched waves through a window.
It seems that what Kopps strives to separate himself from is a dated stereotype of surf culture, of what he calls the “endless sunsets and slow motion” of retro movies and monotonous “campfire vibe” that comes from too much time staring at the horizon. But if Alex Kopps has anything to say about it, this generation of modern medium-hopping grid-skipping surf culture will be nothing to be ashamed of.
Little Runaway - Christina Dietz steals the show
High school couldn’t hold 18-year-old songbird Christina Dietz.
By Cristina Black
It’s not easy to get Christina Dietz on the phone. You have to time the call right, lest your ring get lost in the ceaseless sounds of her guitar practice, vocal exercises, and songwriting sessions. After all, the teenage troubadour spends at least seven hours a day on these activities, the amount of time that most people her age spend going to class.
But Dietz has lofty goals—“I want to sing like Ella Fitzgerald,” she declares when, at last, she takes a break—so she can’t spend her days on ordinary teenage activities. “I love Billie Holiday and Fiona Apple,” she continues, “all these great women singers, and I want to be on par with them.”
She seems to be well on her way. Her latest self-released album, Jailbird, is full of uncommonly mature tunes about adventure and romance. Ominous yet whimsical, Dietz’s songs delve into the concerns of wayward dreamers who fall in love too easily, like the narrators on “Let’s Just Kiss” and “Love in the Dark.” Whether they’re upbeat numbers or yearning ballads, her songs benefit greatly from her sultry voice: a smoky, sweet instrument that calls to mind jazz crooners of bygone days. Accompanied almost entirely by her own careful guitar work, the album is raw and technically imperfect, but wildly expressive and so rich with romance, it’s hard to believe it was made by a gal who’s barely reached voting age.
But it makes sense when you get to know her. A dark beauty with jet-black hair, snow-white skin and big eyes adorned with long eyelashes, which she is inclined to bat onstage, Dietz is a born showgirl. She figured that out when, at 14, she suddenly turned a bit of junior high poetry into a three-string guitar song. “I came downstairs and played it for my dad,” she recalls, admitting she was a “total bubble gum punk” at the time. “I can’t even tell you what the lyrics were,” she giggles. “It’s too embarrassing.” Before long, Dietz was writing songs she wasn’t shy about sharing, and somehow, that wasn’t cool enough at her school. “People were terrible to me,” she says of her time at San Clemente High, near where she grew up in Southern California. “I really didn’t fit in, and that’s how I knew it was time to take it on the road.”
So that’s what she did, busking everywhere from Venice Beach to Paris and Monument, Colorado, where she now lives with her parents (though she says moving back to Orange County is an immediate priority). Supported morally and financially by her father and manager, Carl Dietz, who has five other daughters, she graduated early via an independent study program and threw herself into music, “I never really looked back,” she says. “And I don’t feel like I’m missing out, because people in school are just partying or whatever. I could never find people my age I connected with.”
Instead, she found friendship with more mature folks. One such grownup is Hurley marketing rep Jodie Hillyard, who discovered Dietz playing at “the loop,” a park overlooking the ocean in San Clemente. Hillyard immediately signed Dietz up to be a Hurley Girl, providing clothes, promotion and performance opportunities that have helped expand her fan base. “High school couldn’t even handle her,” says Hillyard, “she’s just so far beyond that.” Another important adult ally is rock legend Jackson Browne. He too discovered Dietz when she was busking, this time in Venice Beach. “I didn’t even know who he was,” she confesses. “The other people watching had to clue me in.” Since then, the two have been pen pals and musical friends, sharing ideas about guitar tunings and songwriting.
While her elders offer advice and mentorship, Dietz draws much of her inspiration from travel, mainly to Europe, where she has spent weeks at a time bopping around, playing on the streets and meeting interesting characters in cafés and on trains. Several songs on Jailbird benefited from her continental adventures, including the sassy ‘Berlin Baby,” whose protagonist hops into bed with seven different men (“She’s a total skank!” says Dietz) and the mysterious, minor-key “Lullaby Liebchen.” Dietz’s prolific songwriting pace is partially the result of her obsession with the process. Though the self-proclaimed dork is tempted to go to college to study philosophy and writing, she realizes music demands her unwavering focus right now. “I take it really seriously,” she says. “Because I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Jenny Lewis and her stellar new album
FOAM: Your new solo album is called Acid Tongue and the cover art is an LSD blotter. Are you into psychedelics?
Jenny Lewis: No, I’m too nervous for that. I have had one psychedelic experience, but it was when I was 14. I wasn’t dosed, although I told my parents that I was. They knew something was up.
FOAM: You must have had so many crazy experiences growing up in L.A. Is that why you write about Angeleno culture so much?
JL: I have. Like acting when I was a child, doing commercials, waiting in line at clubs, getting stuck in traffic, breathing in the smog, living next to a car dealership, all of these images go into my songs. I’m so inspired by L.A.
FOAM: Since you’ve been on both sides, which industry is more evil, film or music?
JL: They’re about the same: pretty bad. Music is less daunting because you have a little bit more control of the product, whereas if you’re an actress you’re at the mercy of the other people working on the film.
FOAM: Isn’t it scarier making a record though? I mean—it’s all on you!
JL: Sure it is! But it’s also very liberating. If the music sucks then you finally realize it’s you that sucks.
FOAM: Well, that’s certainly not the case with you. And you have amazing musical friends like M. Ward, Elvis Costello and your boyfriend Jonathan Rice on this record, so that must make you feel a bit more secure.
JL: It doesn’t necessarily make me feel more secure, but collaborating is one of the true joys of playing music. I feel really good about this record, the way we all hit it off. We tracked it so quickly, live in the studio, so I didn’t have time to freak out.
FOAM: Any idea what you’ll be wearing when you take these new songs out on the road? You’ve definitely become a fashion icon…
JL: I think I’ll do it “come as you are” this time, but who knows? Maybe halfway through the tour I’ll revert back to gold sequins or something. I love gaudiness onstage, not so much in real life.
FOAM: Do you ever look out in the audience and see a bunch of Jenny Lewises?
JL: Yeah, but it’s usually me from the previous year. It’s really touching though, even if they can’t keep up with me.
FoamMagazine.com
PiperGirls.com
GirlsLearnToRide.com