Audio Recordings

It took nearly 5 1/2 years to convict David A. Brown in the death of his wife, Linda Marie Brown. February, 1985: Patti Bailey, at the request of her lover and brother-in-law, David A. Brown, takes a gun into the room of her sister, Linda Marie Brown (David's wife) at the Garden Grove home where they all live, intent on killing her. She gets scared and backs out.

Last week's Supreme Court arguments on healthcare were a test case of more than the constitutionality of Obamacare. They also were an experiment in how television (and the Internet) would make use of same-day audio recordings of  the justices' questions. The reaction of The Nine to that treatment could determine whether they someday will welcome television cameras to the court. This wasn't the first time that the press and public could listen to audio recordings of Supreme Court arguments on the day they took place (as opposed to two, three or four days later, the current practice)

Reputed Mafia boss John Gotti said of one potential victim, "He's gotta get whacked," and of another, "He's gonna die because he refused to come in when I called," according to transcripts of FBI tapes released Friday. In one key transcript, Gotti is heard denying involvement in the 1985 slaying of "Big Paul" Castellano, a murder that he is accused of ordering to seize control of the Gambino crime family.

Why do so many of us smirk when a Hollywood movie star picks up a guitar and walks toward a live microphone? Maybe it's because, as songwriter Harlan Howard once said, music is about "three chords and the truth" and, really, an actor's day job is about the closest you can come to lying for a living. The question brought a sage smile to the 61-year-old face of Jeff Bridges, the Oscar winner who this week will release his first major-label album, a 10-song collection from Blue Note/EMI called "Jeff Bridges.

In an exercise sure to start arguments among music lovers, National Public Radio has created its list of the 100 most important American musical works of the century. The list started with 300 songs suggested by a group of producers, artists and experts familiar to NPR. In mid-October, NPR allowed the public to vote on the selection. More than 13,000 listeners cast their votes online and through the mail. A panel of 15 musicians considered the same 300 songs.

The cockpit voice recorder from the Pacific Southwest Airline jetliner that crashed Dec. 7 near Paso Robles indicates that the man who invaded the cockpit fired three shots at the pilot and co-pilot and then, an instant before impact, fired a last shot that may have taken his own life, the FBI revealed Tuesday. The PSA jet went into a steep dive and slammed into a hillside in the rugged coastal backcountry of San Luis Obispo County, killing all 43 aboard. Authorities believe David A.

You can tell a lot about Joni Mitchell's humor and spunk from just the titles of her two recent "best of" albums on Reprise Records. One is "Hits." It contains 15 of her best-known songs--from the wistful "Both Sides Now," which she wrote in 1967 when she was just 23, to the declarative "Help Me," a cornerstone of 1974's "Court and Spark," the album that cemented Mitchell's reputation as one of the most influential and acclaimed writers of the modern pop era. The other collection is "Misses."

The hottest topical record of the Christmas season isn't another hunger-relief song or a catchy remake of a yuletide classic. It's "Dear Mr. Jesus," a gentle lullaby featuring a little girl singing about child abuse. Sample lyric: Dear Mr. Jesus I just had to write to you Something really scared me when I saw it on the news A story about a little girl beaten black and blue . ... Please don't let them hurt your children.

Next time you brush against a car in the grocery store parking lot, it might just break out in song. Well, rap, actually. The Canoga Park inventor of an electronic car alarm system that verbally warns passersby to back off has updated his creation to include a musical message urging would-be thieves to bust a move instead of bust in. Venture too close to a car outfitted with Michael Nykerk's Invisibeam system and a voice from somewhere under the hood lets loose: "Yo!

DWIGHT YOAKAM is not driving the tractor, he's just sitting on it, hunkered all alone under a bright blue sky tinged with a hint of encroaching twilight. Wearing faded overalls and a red Shell trucker cap, he gazes pensively at a sprawling modern ranch house off to his right. Beyond him are fields crosshatched by white picket fences, dotted with oak trees and ringed by shadowy mountains.

"The wonderful thing about making records is something comes out you never expected," explains Ray Davies, who knows of what he speaks. In nearly five decades as leader of one of rock's great bands, the Kinks, and as a solo artist, Davies has been involved with more than 30 LPs, helped innovate the concept album and created classic-rock staples such as "You Really Got Me" and "Lola. " "Ray's one of the greatest pop rock songwriters of all time," says Britt Daniel of acclaimed indie-rockers Spoon.

Whether featuring Pavement, the Pixies or the Police, reunion concerts have become the default when it comes to live music. John Cale's restaging of his classic 1973 album "Paris 1919" ? hitting UCLA's Royce Hall on Thursday ? transcends a mere nostalgia trip, however. For one, "Paris 1919" doesn't have the mainstream consumer awareness of, say, "Zenyatta Mondatta": It remains as challenging a work as it is gorgeous and nuanced. In a 9.5 Pitchfork review of the album's 2006 reissue, critic Matthew Murphy praised the album's "stately, haunted grandeur," concluding, "For better or worse, Cale has never again made another record quite like 'Paris 1919,' at least in part, one suspects, because so many in his audience have since longed for him to do so. " As such, many consider "Paris 1919" the idiosyncratic pinnacle to Cale's thrilling yet perverse career, despite the fact it never topped the charts.

What does Susan Boyle have in common with Taylor Swift, Josh Groban, Shania Twain and the Beatles? The unlikely British talent show winner-turned-pop megastar has delivered the perfect storm of a year-end album with her debut, "I Dreamed a Dream," one that is showing signs of turning into 2009's biggest seller. In doing so, she's following the lead of other acts this decade in releasing fourth-quarter albums that became runaway hits by providing consumers with music that has cross-generational appeal -- making it ideal for gift-giving -- and that draws music fans who still favor CDs over downloads.

The first single and title track from Adam Lambert's soon-to-be-released debut album couldn't be more of an announcement. "For Your Entertainment" strides into the room, snaps its fingers and declares 2010 the year of Our Gorgeously Airbrushed Overlord. With a toy whip in his hand and a glittery gleam in his eye, Glambert croons familiar phrases about making it hot, getting rough and staying in control. Scandinavian hit-maker Dr. Luke wrote and produced the track, and it has that compressed, noisy rock 'n' roll circus sound he's created for others, including Britney, Pink and that other neo-vaudevillian troublemaker, Katy Perry.

The 2009 version of Beatlemania had no screams, no fainting and little hysteria. But there were plenty of smiles on the faces of fans indulging their fondness for the music of the Fab Four as the Beatles: Rock Band and a batch of new and improved CDs of their complete catalog went on sale Wednesday. "I always liked the Beatles," said Theresa Gordon, 48, who trekked from Lake Arrowhead to a Best Buy store in West Los Angeles with her four children, three of whom made a beeline for the Beatles: Rock Band setup and tackled "I Am the Walrus."

A synthesized cellphone melody pulls Jeff Rice from his sleep. De-de da-de-de da-de-de da-de. De-de da-de-de da-de-de da-de. Rice hits the alarm. It's 4:30, still dark. He clicks on his headlamp and dresses in the confines of his tent. The nylon zipper shrieks -- zzzzzzzzzzzpp -- as he opens the flap and steps outside. A few clouds have rolled in. The remaining stars poke through the sky like shards of light. Beyond the cottonwoods, the creek is a steady babble, the crickets nonstop and the bats an occasional tcheee, tcheee, tcheee.

Slain federal drug agent Enrique Camarena told his killers that agents knew the whereabouts of two of Mexico's most powerful drug lords but did not pursue them because they feared for their own lives, according to a tape-recording of Camarena's torture made public Monday. In a chilling transcript of Camarena's ordeal, filed in Los Angeles federal court, the Drug Enforcement Administration agent is heard complaining to his captors that U.S.

Things seem normal at Q Productions, a former body shop turned recording facility near the airport of this South Texas coastal city. Big semis loaded with musical equipment churn up dust in the chalky parking lot. Over the roar of the engines, men yell at each other in Spanish. A tejano band is in the studio, putting final touches on an album of the accordion-based music that dominates the region. In the front office, the phone rings constantly.

White House tapes released Tuesday capture Richard Nixon as a pugnacious second-term president who talks of hammering out an end to the Vietnam War even if he has to "cut off the head" of the South Vietnamese leader, remarks that an abortion might be necessary if a pregnancy involved an interracial couple and appears preoccupied with savaging his political foes. As Nixon was negotiating an end to U.S.

Alt-rock drummer extraordinaire Josh Freese is honoring the promises he made as part of an outlandish marketing campaign he cooked up to promote his new album "Since 1972." One 19-year-old fan from Florida decided that rather than investing $20,000 in a car, he'd prefer to hang out for a week and play miniature golf with the onetime member of Nine Inch Nails, the Vandals and A Perfect Circle.