Music

"There was a terrible rumor throughout Europe that started back in the 1960s," explained David Martinon, the consul general of France in Los Angeles, during a Champagne reception in a posh Beverly Hills backyard. "While we were looked at as a country that excelled in art, literature, fashion and movies, it was also believed that France didn't know how to rock. We're here to change all of that." Martinon's solution is the first Ooh La L.A!, a three-day festival of French pop music happening at the Music Box @ Fonda on Sept.

Nocturnes Five Stories of Music and Nightfall Kazuo Ishiguro Alfred A. Knopf: 222 pp., $25 Although Kazuo Ishiguro has spent much of his career writing about small events in the lives of modest people, there is nothing modest about his accomplishments. His immaculate prose is unassuming to the point of near-invisibility, like a lake whose still surface belies the turbulent currents beneath. And he has mastered the art of creating characters whose statements mean more than they say. The butler Stevens from his 1989 novel "The Remains of the Day" is still the paradigmatic Ishiguro figure: the quiet, repressed man who shows a certain interest -- but not too keen an interest -- in those around him, and whose own emotions are considerably more dramatic and unsettled than he realizes.

Perhaps some credit should go to the Oscar-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" for the near-capacity crowd on hand for the India Calling! event Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl. A grand panoply of traditional and modern music, dance, art and cuisine, the evening highlighted India's seemingly limitless aesthetic varieties. The Ravi Shankar Centre Ensemble's performance presented the classical and folk elements of India's fertile musical legacy using intriguing hybridized forms.

Don't tell brothers Wayne and Gary Johnson the CD business is dead or that the brick-and-mortar record store has gone the way of the five-and-dime. Or go ahead. Tell them. They'll just smile. That's because they run Rockaway Records in Silver Lake, one of the longest-surviving independent record stores in Los Angeles. It has successfully been trading since 1979 in various forms of music technology pronounced dead or dying in most other corners of the ailing music industry. "I feel more confident than ever," Wayne Johnson said during an interview in the back office lined with memorabilia that reflects his lifelong love of the Beach Boys and their music.

Juliet, Naked A Novel Nick Hornby Riverhead: 406 pp., $25.95 Tucker Crowe, the reclusive singer-songwriter of "Juliet, Naked," inspires a cadre of obsessive fans who parse his every lyric and musical move. He's like Bob Dylan, but not as genius, nor as prolific -- he dropped out of music decades ago, after a devastatingly brilliant heartbreak album. Which would make him more like Richard Thompson. Or maybe . . . . This is just the kind of music trivia discussion you might expect in a Nick Hornby novel.

Strutting into Westwood's W Hotel in a tight purple dress, matching pumps and isn't-she-somebody-famous? sunglasses, Nelly Furtado is the very model of a modern pop princess. The burly bodyguards, the anxious makeup assistant, the aura of casual conspicuousness -- it's all there. But a few minutes later, seated poolside and sipping chamomile tea after swapping her high heels for slippers, Furtado is as sensible as her footwear. Bubbling with sly humor, thoughtful observations and emotional frankness, she lays out the back story to her new album, "Mi Plan" (My Plan)

In a surprise union of two quintessentially American composers from different eras, one the 1960s mastermind of "Good Vibrations," the other the Jazz Age creator of "Rhapsody in Blue," former Beach Boy Brian Wilson has been authorized by the estate of George Gershwin to complete unfinished songs Gershwin left behind when he died in 1937. He plans to finish and record at least two such pieces on an album of Gershwin music he hopes to release next year. The Gershwin-Wilson project may strike some as an odd coupling: one New York musician famous for sophisticated 1920s and '30s pop songs including " 'S Wonderful" and "Someone to Watch Over Me" as well as such expansive, classically minded compositions as "Rhapsody"; the other the driving force behind Southern California beach culture hits such as "Surfin' U.S.A.

Hope Sandoval prefers the darkness. It's how she feels comfortable onstage, with the lights down low, freeing the singer from the distraction of all those strangers watching from the audience. "I just hide and sing," she explains. Sometimes, she hides a little too well. After a September performance in San Francisco, four fans demanded a refund because they couldn't see her, as if unconvinced that Sandoval had been there at all. "It's so ridiculous," she says, more puzzled than annoyed.

Marley Shelton's Madeleine, the young gallerist in "(Untitled)" who comes between two brothers in the contemporary arts and music scene of New York, is full of surprises. Madeleine appears a tightly wrapped package: She's a sexy femme fatale with reined-back hair ("Hitchcock blond," Shelton says) and black vinyl, a shark swimming through artist-infested waters. She's obsessed with appearances, with her bizarre haute couture and fashion-only glasses, but sees deeply into the work.

Google Inc. started out 13 years ago as a simple search engine, but it has grown into a behemoth that has shaken up dozens of industries, including computers and cellphones. On Wednesday, it jumped into the music industry. The Mountain View, Calif., Internet giant unveiled a music search feature that lets users play millions of songs for free with an option to buy or rent them from several online music stores. Although not a direct threat to Apple Inc.'s hugely popular iTunes store, the new feature is expected to bolster the music services that compete with iTunes.