Americana

Now entering its 16th year, the Skirball Cultural Center's Sunset Concert series has been a reliable source for intriguing sounds from around the globe (and a pretty great way to wait out the Thursday evening 405 commute). The series opens July 26 with a concert from Congolese singer Samba Mapangala & Orchestra Virunga, a summer-ready ensemble centered around upbeat vocal harmonies and bright guitar that appeared at last year's WOMAD Festival in Britain. With roots closer to home, the six-piece, L.A. - based band La Santa Cecilia will also perform on Aug.  23, bringing a mix of Brazilian music, Afro-Cuban rhythms and flourishes of jazz and rock.

Long-time rival shopping centers Americana at Brand and the Glendale Galleria are tying the knot with splashy new improvements on Brand Boulevard in downtown Glendale. The changes come as the side-by-side malls usher in new premium tenants - Nordstrom moving from the Galleria to the Americana in September and Bloomingdale's opening just down the street in the Galleria in November. Los Angeles real estate developer Rick Caruso, who owns the Americana and a portion of the Galleria, announced $60 million in improvements to the Americana focused on linking the Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's stores under construction at the two malls.

Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso wants to expand his Americana at Brand shopping center in Glendale by taking over two adjacent properties, including a hotel. In a letter to the city's redevelopment agency released Monday, Caruso declared his interest in taking over the Golden Key Hotel and a vacant retail building at the southern edge of the Americana. He hopes to buy the properties from their owners but might ask the city to acquire them by eminent domain and sell them to him. "My hope is that we can just sit down and figure out a right price on a private basis and not make it a public process," Caruso said in an interview.

This post has been updated. See note below for details. The Grand Ole Echo weekly series of free all-ages concerts by Americana and country bands gets off to its eighth season on April 14 with the Americans, Phoebe Bridges and La Route playing from 5:30 to 9 p.m. The first concert will be held at the Echoplex, below the Echo, but in succeeding weeks the afternoon music and barbecue event will move back upstairs to its traditional home...

Long-time rival shopping centers Americana at Brand and the Glendale Galleria are tying the knot with splashy new improvements on Brand Boulevard in downtown Glendale. The changes come as the side-by-side malls usher in new premium tenants - Nordstrom moving from the Galleria to the Americana in September and Bloomingdale's opening just down the street in the Galleria in November. Los Angeles real estate developer Rick Caruso, who owns the Americana and a portion of the Galleria, announced $60 million in improvements to the Americana focused on linking the Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's stores under construction at the two malls.

The international order that emerged after World War II has rightly been termed the Pax Americana; it's a Washington-led arrangement that has maintained political stability and promoted an open global economic system. Today, however, the Pax Americana is withering, thanks to what the National Intelligence Council in a recent report described as a "global shift in relative wealth and economic power without precedent in modern history" -- a shift that has accelerated enormously as a result of the economic crisis of 2007-2009.

Some folks collect stamps, others prefer matchbooks, but the only hobby that ever interested former Gardena City Councilman Chuck Nader was buying a barn and filling it with vintage Americana. He waited 30 years for that red-and-white barn in the middle of Gardena to go on sale, and when it did, 15 years ago, he grabbed it and filled it with country and western and other American nostalgia and created his own museum.

When life as a museum curator grew hectic, Stacey Vanden Heuvel used to ward off the world by closing her office door. Now, she props it open all day, keeping watch when visitors linger by a display case of rare Indian moccasins. She listens for the sound of wrenching metal and breaking glass--noises she wishes she had heard a year ago. During visiting hours on Aug.

After issuing their first album in nine years earlier this summer, the well-reviewed "Americana," Neil Young and Crazy Horse appear to be on a creative rampage. The band announced Tuesday it will release another new record, the double-CD "Psychedelic Pill," on Oct. 30. "Americana," as its name implied, served up a rustic slab of reinterpreted, old-timey classics such as Woody Guthrie's “This Land is Your Land,” Stephen Foster's “Oh Susannah,"  “Tom Dooley” and "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain” (under the title "Jesus Chariot")

Like fellow Brits Kate Moss and Sienna Miller before her, model and TV host Alexa Chung is known as much for her enviable personal style as she is for her professional accomplishments. And her penchant for boyish, effortless-looking getups makes her a fitting collaborator for Madewell, a brand steeped in classic casual clothes tweaked slightly for the trendy set. The British beauty has teamed up with the niche fashion retailer for a capsule collection launching Saturday in all Madewell stores.

This big, florid, cartoony face of mine is handsomer than handsome. Master barber Jose Rojas looks it over trying to determine an entry point to its magnificent terrain. Initially, there appears to be some termite damage near the right cheek, and he thinks maybe a meteor once landed near one of the eyebrows that the attending surgeon, using the latest car fender repair techniques, filled with Bondo. Other than that, the face is flawless. "Good genes," I say, reading his mind.

Visual art with a pop-cultural bent (or is it pop culture with a visual art bent?) has turned into a running theme on the Los Angeles scene. The latest is “American Icons,” a photography show that not only focuses on pop cultural heroes, but will take place starting Thursday in that most populist of venues, the outdoor commons of a shopping mall - the Americana at Brand in Glendale. Daniel Miller, who owns Duncan Miller Gallery, says he first conceived of the exhibition of 21 images of star performers and a boxing great, Muhammad Ali, as a regular show for his usual space on Venice Boulevard.

Will the mayor of the Grove run for mayor of Los Angeles? With the deadline for entering next year's contest to replace Antonio Villaraigosa only weeks away, billionaire mall developer Rick Caruso is closing in on a decision. The shopping center mogul has flirted with the idea for years, but interest in his intentions has intensified after another potential front-runner from outside City Hall, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, announced he was staying out. Caruso has been conferring with a team of political consultants and recently told a magazine that "the timing is very right.

After issuing their first album in nine years earlier this summer, the well-reviewed "Americana," Neil Young and Crazy Horse appear to be on a creative rampage. The band announced Tuesday it will release another new record, the double-CD "Psychedelic Pill," on Oct. 30. "Americana," as its name implied, served up a rustic slab of reinterpreted, old-timey classics such as Woody Guthrie's “This Land is Your Land,” Stephen Foster's “Oh Susannah,"  “Tom Dooley” and "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain” (under the title "Jesus Chariot")

In the role that won him an Emmy Award for best actor in a comedy series, William Windom played John Monroe, a writer-cartoonist for a New York magazine who harnessed an active fantasy life to escape the doldrums of his middle-class Connecticut existence. Based on the work of American humorist James Thurber, "My World and Welcome to It" survived only one season on NBC. But for Windom, the program marked the start of a long-term relationship with Thurber's whimsical Americana. The actor subsequently developed a one-man show based on Thurber's writings that he toured across the United States.

In 1962, Doc Watson and some of his musician neighbors set out from their home in the Blue Ridge Mountains on the journey of a lifetime, to perform at the Ash Grove folk club in Los Angeles. "I remember the first trip we did," Watson said in a 2008 interview. "We borrowed a little station wagon from the late Clarence Ashley's son and drove to California and back, and I remember thinking, 'Lord, what a big old country this is.' I was a mountaineer, just a country boy. I'd never been nowhere like that before.

Recently, I had the good fortune to visit Los Angeles. My trip included a visit to Melrose Avenue and Spike Lee's store (among others). I am writing now in response to "X Marks the Spot of Controversy Over Spike Lee's Store" (Nov. 6) and specifically to the persons who expressed a note of disapproval over the location of the shop on Melrose. Melrose Avenue is a slice of contemporary Americana and unlike other locations in Los Angeles (and other cities) where "ethnicity" is capitalized upon, Melrose makes no excuses.

Congratulations to the Santa Cruz district attorney and the Teamsters union for their success against the Pillsbury Co. If a company wants to leave the United States and the decent, livable union wage to go to Mexico and pay its workers 59 cents per hour without health insurance, then it should not wrap its products in Americana to gain sales and deceive the American public. CREIG E. MILLER Westminster

Now entering its 16th year, the Skirball Cultural Center's Sunset Concert series has been a reliable source for intriguing sounds from around the globe (and a pretty great way to wait out the Thursday evening 405 commute). The series opens July 26 with a concert from Congolese singer Samba Mapangala & Orchestra Virunga, a summer-ready ensemble centered around upbeat vocal harmonies and bright guitar that appeared at last year's WOMAD Festival in Britain. With roots closer to home, the six-piece, L.A. - based band La Santa Cecilia will also perform on Aug.  23, bringing a mix of Brazilian music, Afro-Cuban rhythms and flourishes of jazz and rock.

Shepard Fairey has a prominent new canvas - or 11. The street artist has teamed up with Neil Young to create the artwork for the rocker's new album with Crazy Horse, "Americana," the band's first release in nine years. Fairey isn't just tagging the cover - he's creating an original painting for each track on the album. The artwork will be for sale at a one-day private exhibition at Santa Monica's Perry Rubenstein Gallery on June 1 and is expected to be on display for the masses in upcoming music videos and the staging of Young's "Americana" tour.