Roxy

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)

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - To meet Gilbert Stuart's "George Washington," Norman Rockwell's "Rosie the Riveter," Andy Warhol's "Dolly Parton" and hundreds of other artworks less famous and more subtle, first fly to XNA. That's right, Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport. Then drive 20 miles north, through farmland, forest and suburbs, to the home of the planet's largest retailer. That's right, Bentonville. On Central Avenue, if it's autumn, you'll probably roll past 100-year-old houses under a dense canopy of fall colors.

Winona Ryder is the best thing about "Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael" (Paramount, no list price, PG-13). Once again a young-miss misfit dressed in black, Ryder plays Dinky Bossetti. Dinky wouldn't draw a second glance on Melrose Avenue but gets ridiculed in her small town of Clyde, Ohio. An adoptee, she draws hope from the possibility that Ms. Carmichael--who once fled the same burg and now is returning a semi-celebrity--may be her long-lost real mom.

Forget about 3-D. One D, singer-songwriter David Baerwald, was all it took Wednesday at the Roxy to give an arresting musical portrait of the cracks in Los Angeles' social sidewalk. Supporting his solo debut album, "Bedtime Stories," Baerwald matched the level he and ex-partner David Ricketts attained as David + David on the same stage in 1986, when their songs took on a dimension only hinted at in the duo's lone album, the fine "Boomtown."

At last, a Madonna for people who don't dance. In her Los Angeles debut at the Roxy on Thursday, touted newcomer Sophie B. Hawkins molded several pop-music archetypes into her unique persona, but the one that came out on top was the Ambitious Blonde, full of erotic charge and with severe tendencies toward self-glorification. This is one case where the ambition should be a little more bland.

"Chicago" (Epic/Sony Music Soundtrax) *** The visual razzle-dazzle and structural fluidity of the new movie "Chicago" are surprising, because the John Kander and Fred Ebb musical had previously seemed a very proscenium-centric show, especially in its popular 1996 incarnation. Nor were there many indications in Rob Marshall's 1992 staging of the show for Long Beach Civic Light Opera that, a decade later, he would direct a glitteringly re-imagined film version.

Randy Jackson was slouched in a chair in a nondescript office in a Westside rehearsal hall. His body was there but his mind was miles away. The young singer-songwriter, the latest of the Jackson clan to do a solo album--"Randy & the Gypsys," on A&M Records--had just finished rehearsing with his band in preparation for tonight's show at the Roxy--the group's official debut. A study in preoccupation, Jackson was staring at the ceiling, at his shoes, at the table, at the walls.

Pop music titan Lou Adler, credited with many '60s and '70s hits--and now a dad to a toddler and an infant--has turned his attention to music for the younger set, with his Ode 2 Kids record label and last summer's two-day children's music performance extravaganza at Knott's Berry Farm. On Dec. 3, Adler and Parachute Express, a star attraction in the children's music field, will co-present Parachute's first "unplugged" concert, at the Roxy, Adler's 400-seat Hollywood club.

The British band Echobelly is joyriding the so-called "new new wave," a movement in England that has revived the lurching, pogo-perfect riff and brought fame to Wire-worshipers like Elastica. At the Roxy on Wednesday, the band was even more deviant and disarming than it is on "On," its current album of jagged sugar-pop. The charismatic singer Sonya Aurora Madan, playing the sweet seductress, had the room bopping to songs that stormed straight through life's darkest corners.

It was a special treat to see Natalie Cole in an intimate setting like the Roxy. Intimate was the operative word on Saturday, since the club was crammed so tight with fans that one patron was heard to grumble, "The fire marshal should get a look at this." Cole herself was in fine fettle, looking trim and comely in a black fringed mini-dress and fishnet stockings.