Coachella weekend (or should I say “weekends”) is a virtual local holiday for the serious live music fan, drawing thousands of excited concert-goers to the sunny polo fields of Indio.
This year, cheers of “The Stone Roses!” “Phoenix!” “Jurassic 5!” and “The Postal Service!!” could be heard across the internet once the lineup was announced, and you’d have to be a musical Scrooge not to …

Don & Phil Everly, despite being Rock & Roll Hall of Famers, probably aren’t at the top of your Spotify playlists.  If you have any of their songs in your iTunes library, it’s likely one of the half-dozen songs that have reached the upper echelon of our cultural literacy through daily spins on oldies radio stations.  But through the 60s and early 70s, they …

The end of the year is always the time when us music fans reflect back on the year that was.
But, greedy listeners that we are, we can’t help but to look forward to promised records on the horizon from some of our favorite artists. And while there are always the pipe dreams that might finally come to pass (new releases from My Bloody …

When we created our digital submission system MALCOLM earlier this year, we knew that it would be a great way for people to share their music with the KCRW’s music department.  What we didn’t quite know is how popular it would prove to be!  To date, over 3,200 tracks have been submitted to us.
Slowly but surely, we’ve been making our way though and some …

When it comes to sports, I’m a dedicated basketball fan.  I mean, c’mon, I’m a Hoosier by birth and attended UCLA for college, both places hotbeds for hoops!  What else could I be?
Admittedly, I’m no good at it myself, but I enjoy watching it, particularly the NBA. Believe it or not, I’ve been a longtime LA Clippers fan, well before the Blake Griffin/Chris Paul/Lob …

As impossible as it may sound, I sometime get my fill of music.
Working daily in the KCRW Music Library, listening to all the new submissions, cataloging the new additions, refiling the older records – every once in a while I’ll need to cleanse the palate! Besides blissful silence, one of my regular go-to palate cleansers is sports talk radio, and my favorite show to …

Like Athena bursting full-grown from the head of Zeus, a wide range of interesting pop music has spawned from the Greek isles, from prolific, gazillion-selling chanteuse Nana Mouskouri, to spacey, progressive rock keyboardist Vangelis, to Athens-raised single/songwriter Alexi Murdoch.
The latest example of Greek rock coming to our non-hellenic shores is the new project from producer Andy Dragazis.
Best known for his work in the band …

One of the great pleasures of filling in on “Morning Becomes Eclectic”, as I did a couple of Thursdays ago, is that I get to share some of my favorite hidden gems that are normally only heard on my Sunday night show.
This time around, the selection that seemed to garner the most attention (based on the various Twitter and Facebook responses) was “Lightning Bolt” …

From DJ Eric J Lawrence:
My job as KCRW Music Librarian is already pretty much the best job in the world. But then it gets even more awesome when I get to host some of my favorite celebrities when they come by the station as part of our Guest DJ Project!
Today, I got to meet and talk music with basketball legend Chris Webber, who was …

From Eric J Lawrence:
As KCRW’s Music Librarian, I’m responsible for collecting and assessing the flood of musical submissions that come to the station.
Over the 12 years I’ve held the position, I’ve seen it all: submissions in elaborate packages, complete with glossy photos, pages of testimonials and even hand-drawn envelopes; a blank, burned CD with no info whatsoever; vinyl, both as 12” and 7”s, sometimes …