Bands Music

The Board in O.C. festival on May 6 will play to a sellout crowd of 10,000 fans, making it the biggest rock show ever to focus on bands that have sprung from Orange County's punk-alternative movement. However, Board in O.C. is no longer happening in O.C. Originally planned for an athletic field at UC Irvine, the 10-hour festival has been moved to a Los Angeles County site, the Olympic Velodrome on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson.

Of all the bands that emerged from Seattle's so-called grunge scene in the early 1990s - think of the moody, flannel-clad likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains - none was harder to pin down than Soundgarden. Brutish but thoughtful, muscular yet deeply melodic, the group's music resisted easy classification, just as frontman Chris Cornell seemed to defy attempts to parse his densely allusive lyrics. Even the band's biggest hit, "Black Hole Sun," which cracked the top 10 of Billboard's pop-radio chart in 1994, remains a mystery from its opening couplet on: "In my eyes, indisposed / In disguises no one knows.

An Alhambra composer whose music is played by marching bands throughout the world, Ervin H. Kleffman, has died at 95. Kleffman, who taught music lessons until last February, died April 2 at a San Gabriel convalescent home. He is best known for his marching band compositions, including "Salute to Peace" and "China Clipper," which are played regularly by students throughout the country and by military and civic bands in Europe, Latin America and the Far East.

Redd Kross' Jeff McDonald has a simple rule when it comes to lyric writing: "If it doesn't give me a stomachache, I like it. " Turn that sentence into a math equation and one reaches the following conclusion: The co-founder of Redd Kross, a group that's long been a staple of L.A.'s underground rock scene, has composed at least 10 songs in 15 years that don't didn't induce nausea. "Researching the Blues," released this month on North Carolina indie Merge Records, sees McDonald, 49, re-anchoring the band he formed with his younger brother, Steven, 45. The two have been playing together since they were budding middle-school punk rockers in suburban Hawthorne, offering a more adolescent and humorous take on the genre than their harder-edged mentors Black Flag.

Back in the 1950s, in Pacoima's barrio, one of my many childhood fantasies involved starting up a rock-and-roll band. My aggregation had no name, but in my imagination it had everything else needed to duplicate the hits of those days: electric and acoustic guitars, a set of drums and plenty of saxophones.

Most Beatles fans remember the last Sunday in June of 1967 as a special occasion. As many as 400 million people around the world watched the satellite-beamed, BBC broadcast of the Beatles, a symphony orchestra and assorted family and friends performing "All You Need Is Love" in the Olympic Sound Studios in London. The crowd will be somewhat smaller when local radio personality Norman Flint stages his "Beatles Brunch Live!" on the last Sunday in June of 1991.

Nelson Hatt, 51, a latter-day big band trumpeter who played for films, television, recordings and commercials. A native of San Antonio, Hatt graduated from Rice University, where he studied bio-acoustic music. But he quickly switched to trumpet and in 1969 established himself as a professional musician and private teacher in the Houston area. Hatt specialized in music from the heyday of big bands, playing the works of Woody Herman, Harry James, Buddy Rich and Glenn Miller.

It only took three songs from the Phil Collins Big Band at the Greek Theatre Monday night before the first plaintive call came from the crowd. "Sing, Phil, sing!" Followed by a grumbling response from another part of the audience. "He ain't gonna sing, man. He's just gonna play drums." Which was pretty much what happened at a concert in which the Genesis drummer and hit songwriter indulged his long-standing love of big-band music.

It has been more than 20 years since guitarist and songwriter Carlos Santana left this thriving border city to find fame and fortune as the leader of a major rock band in the United States. The three members of Mercado Negro (Black Market) would like to be the next major rock act to come out of Tijuana. "Music is in our heart," said 24-year-old drummer and band leader Jesus Hernandez. "We are young. We like rock 'n' roll. We really feel that music."

It seems that whenever a band is on hiatus these days, one or more of the members will form a splinter group. In the wake of Banyan (Porno for Pyros' Stephen Perkins) and Three Fish (Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament) comes Tuatara, a collective starring R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck. The band's recent debut album, "Breaking the Ethers," is packed with eccentric instruments and jazzy grooves, but rarely feels self-indulgent.

No one's ever called music impresario April Williams lazy. She began booking and producing music in the upstairs room at Vitello's restaurant in Studio City at the end of 2009. It's now one of the most coveted jazz spots - for musicians and listeners alike - in Southern California. On April 18, she breaks new ground with a spring music series at the Federal, in the heart of the NoHo Arts District near a Metro Rail station. She could hardly inaugurate her new enterprise more auspiciously: Williams has tapped Bob Sheppard, one of the preeminent West Coast jazz saxophonist stylists and busiest recording session players in the Hollywood studios.

Like many things about the British band the xx, the chorus of their single "VCR" sounds small but feels enormous. Over a handspun bit of girl-group guitar pop and brittle drum machines, vocalists Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft plan a big night for a teenage couple. "Watch things on VCRs with me and talk about big love," they sing, in a glancing way that feels like hands pulling closer across a couch on a date. It's a gentle scene, but it doesn't seem like one to them. In fact, "I think we're superstars," they boast to each other.

Danny Sugerman, who as a teenager followed his fascination with the classic 1960s rock band the Doors into the group's inner circle, where he found a surrogate father in singer Jim Morrison, as well as a lifelong calling, died Wednesday at his Los Angeles home of lung cancer. He was 50. Sugerman was 12 when he was taken to a Doors concert at Cal State Long Beach, where he was immediately swept up in Morrison's charisma.

The extraordinary global reach of jazz was on full display Friday in the performance of the Zawinul Syndicate at Catalina Bar & Grill. Start with the group's leader, Viennese-born keyboardist Josef Zawinul, composer of one of the theme songs of the soul-jazz era, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," as well as the Weather Report hit "Birdland."

Cafe Tacuba, the revered and vaguely mysterious alt-Latino band, has made just four full-length albums since it was founded 13 years ago by design students in Mexico City. It now seems astounding that this quirky quartet could compress such a rich and varied body of work into a handful of releases. The band's frequently raucous -- and sometimes riveting -- concert Friday at the Hollywood Palladium provided a sampler of its respected repertoire, plus several new songs.

If the British rock band Coldplay were a movie, it would likely be co-billed someday in revival theaters with "You Can Count on Me." Like that warm and convincing film about a brother and sister's struggle to support each other, Coldplay's music speaks of life in ways that carry the poetry of truth.

At three assemblies Friday, students at Pacoima Middle School were given advice about appreciating this country's cultural diversity and resisting the temptations of drugs and gangs. But these were not typical middle school assemblies: The messenger was the pop band JoGray, and the advice came between sets in a raucous concert that had students shrieking with delight and teachers heading to the back of the room to cover their ears.

Danny Sugerman, who as a teenager followed his fascination with the classic 1960s rock band the Doors into the group's inner circle, where he found a surrogate father in singer Jim Morrison, as well as a lifelong calling, died Wednesday at his Los Angeles home of lung cancer. He was 50. Sugerman was 12 when he was taken to a Doors concert at Cal State Long Beach, where he was immediately swept up in Morrison's charisma.

Like many public radio stations operating out of college campuses, Cal State Northridge's KCSN-FM (88.5) features programming mostly appealing to a, well, postgraduate demographic. So it's probably a good thing that the station is adding a show with proven appeal to a younger audience. What's joining the station's lineup of National Public Radio news, classical music and weekend Americana sounds?

It only took three songs from the Phil Collins Big Band at the Greek Theatre Monday night before the first plaintive call came from the crowd. "Sing, Phil, sing!" Followed by a grumbling response from another part of the audience. "He ain't gonna sing, man. He's just gonna play drums." Which was pretty much what happened at a concert in which the Genesis drummer and hit songwriter indulged his long-standing love of big-band music.