Amoeba

Each Sunday, Fast Tracks will keep Calendar readers up to date with recent news from the pop music world on artists, their recordings and careers. HEARD of Amoeba Records? No, not the ginormous 40,000-square-foot indie music emporium in Hollywood. We're talking about Amoeba, the record company. Coinciding with this month's closing of the Rhino retail store in Westwood, the Berkeley-based Amoeba mini-chain is launching its own label.

A rare brain illness that spreads in freshwater lakes, rivers and hot springs killed six people in Florida, Texas and Arizona in 2007, the most in more than five years, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Known as primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, or PAM, the infection has struck 121 people in 15 Southern states over the last 71 years, the CDC said. It is caused when Naegleria fowleri goes up the nose to the brain.

Last week, Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals issued a warning to residents: Don't use tap water to rinse your nasal passages. The warning came after a 51-year-old woman in the state died after she was infected with the "brain-eating" amoeba Naegleria fowleri , which enters the body through the nose and sometimes causes devastating meningitis.  Apparently, the amoeba lurked in tap water the woman used in her neti pot, a pitcher-like device...

Grand Teton National Park officials say a deadly species of amoeba has been found in waters along the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway between Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Park. The Naegleria fowleri organism causes amoebic meningitis and almost always kills humans within 10 days of infection. Officials said the amoeba has been found in Huckleberry Hot Springs and Polecat Creek near Flagg Ranch along the parkway.

The band called thenewno2 sounds good --  whether in the deep abyss of headphones or in the open space of the Amoeba Music store in Hollywood, where the group was celebrating the release of its second album, "The Fear of Missing Out" -- as well as band member Dhani Harrison's 34th birthday. The rock, dub, electro, indie and psychedelic sounds coming from the back of the store, behind the rows of CDs, was thick and full from that compact stage. “Thanks for that,” Harrison (of the George Harrison Harrisons)

MUSIC French Passion Francophiles and classic music fans alike will get their fill of Ravel, Debussy and Saint-Saëns at this Hollywood Bowl evening with the L.A. Philharmonic, featuring conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and violinist Martin Chalifour. Hollywood Bowl. 2301 N. Highland Ave. 8 p.m. $1-$129. (323) 850-2000. http://www.hollywoodbowl.com. Admiral Radley Former Grandaddy members Jason Lytle and Aaron Burtch teamed up with Earlimart's Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray to form this new indie rock quartet.

"You have to come out to a record shop to hear a brand-new song," said Elvis Costello, raising an eyebrow and offering up an unreleased gem midway through his set at Amoeba Music in Hollywood Monday night. The statement was patently false -- Costello's performance was streamed live on Amoeba's website -- but it suited the evening's mood and the rock raconteur's new persona.

A killer amoeba that lurks in freshwater lakes and unchlorinated swimming pools, attacking swimmers' brains, has claimed the lives of at least 138 people worldwide over the last two decades, researchers said. The microscopic organism, which prefers bodies of water that reach surface temperatures of at least 95 degrees, first came to light 22 years ago in Australia. Since then, it has claimed 55 lives in the United States, said Dr.

The Great Amoeba Invasion of L.A. was broadcast by KFWB four decades ago, but Chuck Blore remembers it well. After all, he staged it. Blore, the program director in the station's Top 40 music days, got the idea for the gag when he tuned in to KFWB one morning and discovered that his deejay had a case of the blahs. "I called him on the hotline and I said, 'You're on the radio, jerk!

Neil Schield knows the grim state of the music business as well as anyone; last May, he was laid off from a company at the vanguard of digital music distribution. But this month, Schield began an unlikely second act: He opened a brick-and-mortar record store in Echo Park, with racks of tasteful inventory carrying price tags as high as $100 -- all presumed liabilities in an age when "digital" and "free" seem to rule the day.