Independent Music

Flaming Lips fans will need to fire up their turntables if they want to hear the group's new album when it surfaces exclusively on vinyl next month in conjunction with Record Store Day. "The Flaming Lips and Heavy Fwends" is a double-LP set with experimental collaborations between the band and high-profile pals including Coldplay's Chris Martin, Yoko Ono, Nick Cave, Bon Iver, Kesha and others. It will be released only in a vinyl edition created for Record Store Day, the annual promotion of brick-and-mortar independent music retailers, an event that takes place April 21 this year.

Reporting from San Pedro Garza Garcia, Mexico Oakland-bred Raka Rich brought the flow of California hip-hop, in Spanish. Puerto Rico's Davila 666 ignited a wild mosh-pit with its Latin-tinged punk. And all kinds of new Mexican acts — as varied as Juan Cirerol of Mexicali and cumbia-rockers Sonido San Francisco — showed that Mexico's independent music scene just might be at its most dynamic in years. Over 12 hours on Saturday, some 4,500 fans gathered to hear more than 50 international acts at a sonically diverse annual music festival called NRMAL.

This post has been updated. See note at the bottom for details. The center of L.A.'s music gravity shifted eastward long ago, but the iconic rock clubs along the Sunset Strip have generally managed to keep their doors open. That will change this month, as the LA Weekly is reporting that the Key Club will shutter March 15. The venue, which has lately hosted a melange of hip-hop shows, hard rock and grab-bag local sets, doesn't have any shows listed beyond this week. The Weekly cites several sources connected to the club that suggest its days are numbered, and the venue confirmed in a statement from operations manager Ian Shepp that it will close March 15 (the full statement is below)

One of the most enduring and influential artistic collaborations in the latter half of this century has involved Merce Cunningham and John Cage, those apostles of modern dance and modern music. So it does not come as any surprise the Los Angeles Festival's "Cage Celebration" this week includes an appearance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (probably without Cage) at the Japan American Theater on Sunday: the day after Cage's 75th birthday. Cunningham, born in Centralia, Wash.

Stan Ridgway has always been a conscious individualist. Whether as a solo artist, as leader of '80s New Wave hit makers Wall of Voodoo, or as the mad genius behind the industrial mayhem of his current group, Drywall, Ridgway's vision has always been keenly his own, acutely focused in his own skewed fashion. Now Ridgway, who performs Friday at the Coach House, has taken his autonomous ambitions to a new level.

As late Friday night was turning Saturday morning at the Coachella festival, on-again-off-again and currently-on Brit-pop band Blur left festivalgoers with arguably the night's most poignant moment. Hunched over a piano, lead singer Damon Albarn, with his face sometimes so low that his ears seemed in danger of hitting the keys, pounded away at a song's handful of notes. With the same keys struck repeatedly, Blur's “Sing” was less about creating a melody than it was being frozen in time, a slow-moving, heavily atmospheric quest for the meaning of life.

At 34, Mark McGurty has become that modern rarity: a genuinely independent composer. Not a member of any society or association, not affiliated with any organization or cradled on any campus, McGurty has made a way with his music and a well-practiced musical jack-of-all-tradesmanship. Tonight, McGurty is presenting a concert of his music at the Santa Monica Art Museum. Typically, he has been involved in everything from finding theater lights and an acoustical shell to renting the chairs.

Nov. 14 will be the 100th birthday of Aaron Copland. And although the celebratory year is still young, it is already in full swing in Copland's hometown. The New York Philharmonic got a jump on the party and performed the majority of Copland's orchestral music in a series of concerts in the fall.

Behind the wheel of his bright red Ferrari Modena, Fabio "Estefano" Salgado is having a flash of road rage under a ferocious Florida sun. The hot record producer and songwriter is trying to weave past an indecisive driver in a beat-up Corvette that is drifting toward the side of the road. Salgado shifts gears to pull ahead. But the Corvette suddenly moves back into his path, forcing him to hit the brakes.

Not even the legendary 76 trombones are a match for 75 rock bands. In a concert that shapes up as possibly the biggest parade of grass-roots talent the Orange County music scene has ever witnessed, 75 bands, most of them new or emerging local acts, are scheduled to blare today from six stages on the grounds of Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. The 12-hour marathon, which gets underway at 12:30 p.m., is dubbed Independent's Day '94.