July 2009 Archives

What a night.

Last Saturday, the Normandie Casino in Gardena got a sustained jolt it probably hadn't experienced in thirty years-- earthquakes notwithstanding--when the Bus Boys took the stage and rocked out before an appreciative crowd that included fans who've followed he Boys since their debut in the early 1980s. Head Bus Boy Brian O'Neal played some pyrotechnic keyboards, and his fellow band members lent sizzling guitar, drum and additional vocals to a lineup of tunes that were at once classic and indefinable. Back in the day, the Bus Boys got lots of attention--some of it negative--for being a black band that called itself rock, when rock itself is of course a derivative of black music. But that's always been part of the band's tongue-in-cheek attitude towards itself and its would-be critics. Call their style whatever you want, what people got last Saturday was straight-up blues, r & b, funk, ballads, boogie-woogie, church-aisle dancing, wry humor, a bit of reggae and a lot of social commentary where you didn't expect it. It was a complex and consummate performance that certainly gave rock music something to shoot for.

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11:30, Monday: It figures. The Senate's intro to Sonia Sotomayor's testimony is a frank face-off over the issue that's rarely spoken about but has cast a giant shadow over the judicial system, and the Supreme Court in particular, for decades. That issue is race and identity and how it dictates judge's views on legal and social matters.

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"Renaissance man" is one of the most shopworn phrases around, to say nothing of the most overworked notion in American culture. Ditto for "new beginning," "starting over," and "reinvention." But when the cliché truly fits, you might as well wear it--and top it off with a newsboy cap.

Roberto Arturo Fucci did exactly that on Sunday night at the reception of his first solo art show at The Talking Stick coffeehouse/café on Lincoln Boulevard in Venice. He was nattily dressed in blue and gray for the occasion, a switch from his usual artist-y duds of jeans or khakis and sneakers. On stage, he surveyed with clear satisfaction the café walls that were lined with more than thirty of his abstract paintings, intensely detailed, lively works that recall Kandinsky and Klee--"colorist," in art lingo-- but that project Fucci's own restless energy. "You like my hat?" he said in his gravelly voice, removing the cap and waving it at the appreciative crowd. "Not bad, eh?"

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9 a.m.:In the Michael Jackson memorial warm-up show on MSNBC, broadcasters blather over a screen split between Forest Lawn, where a private funeral service is happening, and Staples Center, where nothing is happening at all. Somebody comments on how nice and sunny it is downtown, how typically L.A. that is, which annoys me - it's still overcast in my neck of the woods, miles from the beach. Where's a split screen when you really need one?

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