Bands

Ronnie James Dio, a legendary heavy metal singer who replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath and also was lead singer for the bands Rainbow and Dio, has died. He was 67. Dio died Sunday, according to a statement on his website by Wendy Dio, his wife and manager. Maureen O'Connor, a Los Angeles publicist, said Dio died in Los Angeles. No cause was given, but Dio had said last summer that he was suffering from stomach cancer. "Today my heart is broken," Wendy Dio wrote. "Many, many friends and family were able to say their private goodbyes before he peacefully passed away."

When Jaime Martin del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu opened their Bell restaurant 15 years ago, some customers wondered if they knew how to cook. Accustomed to Mexican food laden with sour cream, melted cheddar cheese and mild salsa that has long been served up in the Los Angeles area, patrons balked at eating La Casita Mexicana's enchiladas covered in pumpkin seed mole, cotija cheese and red onions. Many of the doubters, to the restaurateurs' surprise, were Mexican American. Regional Mexican cooking isn't a tough sell anymore.

The makers of the game system that brought the Beatles to a younger generation of fans and has popularized any number of other veteran acts now hopes to do the same thing for up and coming artists. Rock Band Network, which went public on Wednesday, introduces a platform that allows bands to format and upload their own recordings into the network's music store, where users can -- if they like what they sample -- download them onto their own consoles and get fully interactive with them.

One of the brothers behind the 1-800-GET-THIN ad campaign for weight-loss surgery faces the possible revocation of his medical license in a misconduct case filed by state regulators. The Medical Board of California accused Michael Omidi of "repeated acts of negligence" in treating two women, one who sought corrective breast surgery and a second who sought weight-loss surgery. The board alleged that Omidi provided "substandard care" in the treatment of the first woman and that his staff gave "inaccurate or misleading information" about the second woman's health, saying she had sleep apnea even though she had not been previously diagnosed with the disorder.

Vevo, an online music video start-up, is pressing play on its latest product — a Facebook app that lets bands and musicians showcase their music, sell albums and merchandise, live stream concerts and collect mail addresses from their fans, among other things. The New York company, jointly owned by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, is the latest player to dive into the crowded do-it-yourself market for apps and services for musicians. Digital start-ups such as ReverbNation, RootMusic, Bandcamp, Topspin and Songkick, as well as established giants such as Live Nation Entertainment, are rushing to be the online broker between bands and fans on Facebook and other digital platforms.

Somewhere lost in the shuffle of the NEA debates and arguments over what art the government should fund and even if the government should fund art, is the following fact: The Bush Administration, while cutting the overall military budget, has upped the budget for 91 military bands from $194.1 million to $195.2 million. These 91 bands receive $20 million more than the entire NEA budget. These 91 bands are actually getting an increase in budget while bases that have provided the economic backbone for many areas are closed.

The real reason bands like Billy & the Beaters, Jack Mack & the Heart Attack and other bands of equal caliber are ignored by the record companies is so simple and stupid that nobody wants to admit it ("Bar Bands Make the Rounds," by Don Snowden, Sept. 21): No matter that the type of music played by these bands is very popular all over the country in almost every bar in the country, the simple truth is the people who hold the power at the record labels just don't like this kind of music.

Re: "Students March to Beat the Bands," Nov. 10. It is always enlightening to read about the great things teenagers are doing, but sadly programs like marching band are the first to feel the sting of budget cuts. The article mentions the opportunity for middle school students to look up to older musicians. Unfortunately, it is the programs in the feeder schools that get cut first. Having a background in music myself, I understand the importance of these feeder programs. It should be mentioned that this budget struggle is constant and vital to the continuance of the great bands that the Los Angeles area is so lucky to have.

On a sun-drenched USC field, under orders, they stand in a torture drill like unflinching flamingos. Then comes the running of laps while toting pounds of polished brass. Nearby, perched on a platform 20 feet above the lawn, their leader, Arthur Bartner, flies into overdrive, arms waving, hips boomeranging, voice exploding into a microphone: We are in this thing together! We've got one or two guys out there who are not with the program! I'm just not going to accept that! Everyone, again!

(This story has been corrected. Please see note at bottom for details.) Converse Rubber Tracks, the musical/marketing concept that the shoe company launched in 2011 with a full-service recording studio in Brooklyn, is coming to Los Angeles in the form of a pop-up studio, and the first roster of bands chosen to participate has been announced. The studio will be popping up at Swing House Rehearsal Studios in Hollywood and will offer no-strings-attached music-making time for young bands and solo artists, who are invited to record a song that will be distributed via Converse's Rubber Tracks website, but which the artists retain the ownership rights to. Those selected for this installment are Holladay, Nola Darling, Rocky Business, Marz Lovejoy, Vince Staples, Def Sound and Coultrain.

Jeff Hanneman Founding member of metal band Slayer Jeff Hanneman, 49, a guitarist and founding member of the thrash metal band Slayer whose career was irrevocably changed after a spider bite, died Thursday of liver failure at a Los Angeles hospital, according to spokeswoman Heidi Robinson-Fitzgerald. Hanneman was born Jan. 31, 1964, in Oakland and co-founded the speed metal pioneers in Huntington Park in the early 1980s. He and Kerry King played screaming guitars, vocalist Tom Araya played bass and Dave Lombardo played drums (Paul Bostaph later replaced Lombardo)

Charles McKay makes a detailed spreadsheet of the authors he wants to hear during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, typing in his first and second choices and getting tickets ahead of time. Jerry Oborn, from San Diego, said she goes about it another way: "I just wander around. " But McKay and Oborn both said they finish the festival the same way - with a long list of new books to read. "It takes us months to get through all these books by authors who inspired us," said McKay, who lives in the South Bay. McKay and Oborn were among the 150,000 people expected to attend The Times' 18th annual book festival, being held this weekend at USC. In clear, hot weather Saturday, visitors listened to poetry, watched cooking sessions, danced to local bands and shopped at dozens of makeshift bookstores.

Today, 19 months after her death, we may finally have a good idea of what killed Paula Rojeski. According to a lawsuit and public autopsy records, the causes included her doing business with the 1-800-GET-THIN folks and the slicing of her aorta during weight-loss surgery at one of their affiliated surgical centers. There was also regulatory indifference on a truly majestic scale. Rojeski, 55, died Sept. 8, 2011, shortly after surgery to implant a Lap-Band at Valley Surgical Center in West Hills, which her family's lawyer says is affiliated with 1-800-GET-THIN and the two brothers behind it, Julian and Michael Omidi.

A surgeon cut an Orange County woman's aorta during Lap-Band weight-loss surgery in 2011 and an anesthesiologist failed to detect her hemorrhaging, events that led to her death, according to a Los Angeles County Coroner's autopsy report. The report found that the injury and the failure to respond adequately during laparoscopic surgery at Valley Surgical Center in West Hills constituted "an extreme deviation from the standard of care" on the part of the doctors. Shortly after surgery, Paula Rojeski, 55, of Ladera Ranch went into cardiac arrest and was rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Defeat doesn't come easy to the brash rock 'n' rollers in the Hives. But a Swedish court may have just one-upped them with a multimillion-dollar ruling in a strange case of management malpractice, according to the BBC and Radio Sweden.   The ruling orders the Hives to pay 18.5 million Swedish kronor (around $3 million U.S.) to another popular Swedish band, the pop-rock group the Cardigans. The two acts, along with several others, ran their band's finances out of a bookkeeping company based in Malmo, Sweden, called Tambourine Studios.

Meat Loaf has cited illness for the cancellation of another concert during his "Last at Bat" tour. The 65-year-old rocker pulled out of a Nottingham concert at Capital FM Arena during the farewell tour just 30 minutes before doors were scheduled to open Sunday, the Associated Press reported . The concert was the fifth of eight shows lined up for Britain on the tour that kicked off April 5. The performance was " postponed due...

Marc Rose and Med Abrous, owners of Hollywood's the Spare Room bar, like to support L.A. artists and high-minded causes. The Echo Park band Spirit Vine enjoys getting outside its Eastside comfort zone once in a while. And Paul Beahan, owner of the L.A. indie record label Manimal, just loves "freakin' people out. " Fine, you say. But what's any of this got to do with bowling, male facial hair or testicular cancer prevention? Glad you asked. This month, those mix-and-match imperatives are rubbing shoulders in the "Manimal for Movember" live-music benefit at the Spare Room, the neo-Gilded Age gaming parlor and cocktail lounge that threw open its doors in January 2011 on the mezzanine level of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Local bands will be given the chance to kick off Kenny Chesney's 2008 Poets and Pirates Tour throughout the country this summer in "The Next Big Star" competition. Select Hard Rock Cafe locations will host a battle of the bands where local artists can compete for the chance to perform as the opening act in the artist's respective market. Each competition will be evaluated by a panel of four judges for the ultimate prize -- $25,000 cash and the opportunity to audition for RCA Records Vice President, A&R, Renee Bell.

During a between-song break during their first-ever live performance at Coachella on Saturday night, singer Ben Gibbard introduced the unit he co-founded with Jimmy Tamborello as "an imaginary band called the Postal Service. " He was acknowledging the group's unlikely rise, but the reaction to its music was very real, whether delivered by a make-believe band or a platinum artist.  Ten years ago the two made what they thought would be a one-off side project. Gibbard was taking a break from his day job in Death Cab for Cutie, and Tamborello was looking to further examine a sound he'd forged as Dntel with the underground hit "The Dream of Evan and Chan.

Showtime was only minutes away at the Glass House in Pomona on a recent Saturday night as Michael Quercio, Danny Benair, and Louis Gutierrez, three original members of the Los Angeles psychedelic pop quartet the Three O'Clock, prepared for their first live show together in 28 years. With the exception of the band's frontman Quercio, who at 50 has maintained the boyish looks that made him a local heartthrob in the 1980s, the rest of the band bore little resemblance to their musical personas of old - a reality they were willing to joke about.