Sound

As its title implies, "IV" is the fourth studio album from this long-running Los Angeles punk band. But that total comes with an asterisk: Following "III" in 2008, the Bronx effected an unlikely transition and released two records - both excellent - as Mariachi El Bronx, an honest-to- Dios mariachi outfit complete with brass and guitarrón . Now the group has shed the charro suits and returned to its original sound with 12 serrated hard-core jams...

MINNEAPOLIS - With police officers and troopers in uniform arrayed behind him, President Obama on Monday pitched his proposals to curtail gun violence with an appeal for "common sense" and bipartisanship, even as he downplayed the prospects for key parts of his plan. Speaking to law enforcement officials at a Minneapolis police facility, Obama said he saw a consensus emerging on Capitol Hill in favor of expanding background checks to all gun buyers, one of three core proposals in the plan he unveiled after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December.

“Rick Springfield, you have a song that people recognize after three frigging notes. Congratulations, Rick frigging Springfield,” Dave Grohl said on Thursday to his colleague in a new band celebrating the former Van Nuys recording studio Sound City. Springfield, for his part, looked tickled to be onstage at a sold-out Hollywood Palladium hearing praise from the Foo Fighters frontman seconds into his own 1981 hit “Jessie's Girl.” Grohl's friendly jibe - a mix of jealousy and bonhomie in the dark arts of rock hitmaking - showed the point of his entire Sound City Players project.

Thanks to this year's Oscar nominees for sound editing and sound mixing, filmgoers got an earful of the 38th U.S. Congress, so-called Mandingo fighting and James Bond's Aston Martin DB5. Sound editors design, collect or create the sounds heard in a film; sound mixers blend the elements of dialogue, sound effects and score into a movie's finished soundtrack. We talk to a few about what got them excited about their films. Sound mixer Gary Rydstrom, nominated with Andy Nelson and Ronald Judkins for "Lincoln": "I love the House of Representatives scenes.

High-spirited, emotional and funny, "Sound City" is, of all things, a mash note to a machine. Not just any machine, however, but one that helped change the face of rock 'n' roll. That piece of equipment, the Neve 8028 sound board, was the crown jewel of Sound City in Van Nuys, a complete dump of a recording studio whose unkempt ambience and warehouse complex location didn't stop it from turning out more than 100 gold and platinum records, including epochal work by Neil Young, Tom Petty, Pat Benatar, Cheap Trick, Rage Against the Machine, Fleetwood Mac and Nine Inch Nails.

Scientists have found a new way to study spider webs that literally shines a light on arachnid technology like never before. Using light-scattering technology previously used for studying proteins, collagens and muscle fibers, researchers at Arizona State University measured the strength, elasticity and stiffness of spider webs. Scientists hope what they learn can help them develop new technologies for everyday life. Researchers collected silk from a garden spider, western black widow, orb-weaver spider and green lynx spider.

President Obama admits in a soon-to-be released article in the New Republic that it would be a tough decision to let a son play football. The father of two daughters also said that football will probably become a less violent game in the future out of concern for player safety. "I'm a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football," Obama told the New Republic. “I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence.

PARK CITY, Utah -- Muscle Shoals, Ala., has been at the heart of popular music for decades, a melting pot for the cross-currents of rock-and-roll, R&B, country and soul. Artists such as Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Allman Brothers Band, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Bobbie Gentry and countless others have recorded there. The new documentary "Muscle Shoals," which has its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, takes a look at this distinctly American place.

The NBA's All-Star reserves were announced Thursday, meaning there was a gripe session for every celebration. Emotions ran the gamut in Oakland, where the Golden State Warriors trumpeted David Lee as their first All-Star since Latrell Sprewell in 1997 while lamenting that Stephen Curry was excluded despite averaging 20.9 points per game as the league's eighth-leading scorer. "He is an All-Star," Coach Mark Jackson told reporters. "The thing I talk about is he stands for everything that's right.

As Los Angeles voters face the possibility of as many as three medical marijuana initiatives on the May ballot, several mayoral candidates have begun to outline their own plans to deal with the proliferation of pot dispensaries - an issue that has ensnared the City Council in countless legal tangles. At a mayoral forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters last week, four of the five leading candidates argued for paring back the hundreds of pot dispensaries around the city. But Councilman Eric Garcetti said his first goal would be to persuade the federal government to reclassify marijuana as a medicine: "I will advocate that as mayor," he said.