Audio Recordings

One woman hid inside the salon's facial room while the gunman fired. Another took shelter behind a car. Others locked themselves in bathrooms. All were caught in a chaotic scene detailed in seven 911 audio recordings released Monday by the Seal Beach Police Department. The calls were placed after a gunman, later identified as Scott Dekraai, opened fire Wednesday at Salon Meritage, killing eight people and seriously wounding a ninth. Police believe Dekraai, 42, was seeking revenge in a custody battle with his ex-wife, 48-year-old stylist Michelle Fournier, over their 8-year-old son. Fournier was among those killed.

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.

"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.

Twenty-five years after the all-star recording of "We Are the World" became a signature moment in celebrity altruism and pop-music history, a new collective of stars came together Monday at the same Hollywood recording studio to record a new version for Haiti earthquake relief. Just as Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan descended on the A&M Studios on La Brea to sing for famine relief in Africa, Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Kanye West and Keith Urban turned up at the same soundstage (now called Henson Recording Studios)

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 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.

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.