Pop Quiz: Mika

Pop Quiz: Mika

Aidin Vaziri | Mika was born in Beirut, schooled in Paris and raised in London. All that moving around must have done the 23-year-old singer some good, considering that his heavily orchestrated debut CD, "Life in Cartoon Motion," is floating on top of the British album charts, while the hit "Grace Kelly" recently ruled the singles charts for five weeks straight. That might be the only thing straight about the singer who is alternately described as the sneaker-clad disciple of Freddie Mercury and all the Scissor Sisters rolled up into one. Up next? Oh, just a little thing called America.

Mika
Q: What was it like growing up in your house?
A: It was fun -- very eclectic, very loud, very flammable, very noisy, lots of visitors, lots of hangers-on, lots of food and lots of attitude. It was as equally enlightening as it was dysfunctional, and that's the way I liked it.
Q: It sounds like you might have had a trapeze in your living room once or twice.
A: We didn't, but it was filled with rolls of material and paintings and stuff like that. We used to rent a flat in our house to a Russian art dealer, and he would pay us with paintings. It was that kind of family.
Q: The best review I read of your song "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)" said it sounds like the ultimate bachelorette party anthem.
A: I love that.
Q: Have you ever considered working at Chippendales?
A: No, I'm far too scrawny. But our show is veering toward that. My guitarist, we did a show in Glasgow yesterday, and he was wearing a kilt. I went and lifted up his kilt and he was wearing boxers. We got booed by literally about a thousand people. So he stands there in front of all these people and takes off his boxers. He mooned 2,000 people. They went mental.
Q: Are all your shows that good?

The Last of The Independents

The Last of The Independents

Fighting To Stay Independent - How Bay Area record shops still hang on despite online sales, illegal downloads: When Tower Records went under last year, few people were surprised. With online sales and illegal downloads on the rise, neighborhood music retailers of all sizes have felt the squeeze. Take into account added pressure from the big-box stores and rising rents, and many of the Bay Area's independent record shops -- if not already gone -- are endangered. Meet some of the survivors and find out what's keeping them alive. Click here.

Review: Macy Gray

Review: Macy Gray

Macy Gray 'Big': Aidin Vaziri | "What Idiot Let Macy Gray Record Another Album?" That was the headline that recently set ablaze an online music industry forum, inspiring countless insiders to weigh in on the sheer absurdity of giving the gawky soul singer another go around. It was hard to blame the bean counters -- Gray's previous album, 2003's "The Trouble With Being Myself," sold dismally, while her circus-like public antics and underwhelming taste in material did little to win back the fans that were initially charmed by her slow-burning breakthrough single, "I Try." But only a fool would ignore her now. With nothing to lose, the R&B singer shines on her first album in four years, a lively set that sees her collaborating with the Black Eyed Peas, Justin Timberlake and Natalie Cole -- and finally putting that whale of a voice to decent use.

Pop Quiz: Paolo Nutini

Pop Quiz: Paolo Nutini

Aidin Vaziri | Talk about the perfect package. Paolo Nutini not only has a great rock 'n' roll name, he's half Italian, half Scottish and all soul. At 20, the genetically blessed singer-songwriter has already played with Ben E. King, his personal hero, and supported the Rolling Stones. There's also his premiere album, "These Streets," a hit in the United Kingdom and creeping into the United States with spirited, soulful singles such as "Jenny Don't Be Hasty" and "Last Request."

Paolo Nutini
Q: You started playing guitar only three years ago. Do you have any advice on how I can get onstage with the Stones and have girls screaming at me everywhere I go by 2010?
A: I don't know how much of a challenge that's going to be. I first started to play guitar when I was about 17, so, yeah, about three years ago. But I was singing and writing lyrics and faking my way around the chords until then. Obviously, it might be different for you.
Q: Do you think you're gifted?
A: Touched. When I was young, a pelican landed on me -- and there are never any pelicans where I grew up.
Q: A whole pelican landed on you?
A: A whole pelican. Ever since then, they named me Pelican Boy, which totally ruined my whole primary school years. But people say because of the pelican, he gave me an old soul. That's the theory.
Q: So basically I just need to find myself a pelican.
A: If you want to play before the Stones and get all the girls, you need at least two pelicans.
Q: Wait, why do I need two pelicans when you just had one?
A: You need one for a backup. Pelicans are touchy things.

Review: Modest Mouse

Review: Modest Mouse

Modest Mouse 'We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank': Aidin Vaziri | Drunken cowboys, fake Jamaicans and lonely astronauts. These are the kinds of characters that have occupied Modest Mouse's songs for 14 years. But on the band's fifth proper album there's an entirely different presence looming among the spiky verses and sea-chantey choruses: former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. No matter how many photographs you see of the lineup, the dapper British gent with the fringe haircut still looks out of place standing among a bunch of flannel-clad lumberjacks from rural Issaquah, Wash. It's too bad that the striking visual incongruity doesn't carry over to the music because, on first listen, it's easy to get the impression that "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank" is the sound of Modest Mouse operating on autopilot. The bouncy, existential hit "Float On" may have helped 2004's "Good News for People That Love Bad News" go mainstream, but on the evidence of the new material, it's clearly not a place where the group intends to stay. Lead single "Dashboard" swells with disco strings and a jittery guitar line but gives way to the usual course of twisted melodies, dense arrangements and the off-kilter lyrics of singer Isaac Brock (left). There are a few genuine pop moments to be found at the halfway mark, with tracks like "Missed the Boat" and "Little Motel," but, well, let's just say the rest is not a total return to Modest Mouse's early indie days but impenetrable enough to keep the producers of "The O.C." at arm's length when they get around to compiling the soundtrack for their next television pilot.

Summer Reunion Tours

Summer Reunion Tours

How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?: Never can say goodbye. Sorry may be the hardest word, but goodbye is too good a word, gal. You say goodbye, I say hello... Looking ahead to the summer concert season, here's an incomplete guide to the comings, the goings, the coming-backs and going-agains (maybe) in the pop scene this season and beyond.



THE POLICE
No one ever expected to see Sting back together with guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland -- least of all the trio's front man, who at the Los Angeles news conference announcing this summer's reunion shows declared that taking part in the tour made him "certifiably insane."

GENESIS
Although Peter Gabriel hasn't ruled out rejoining the band, this summer's reunion by Genesis so far promises only the most commercially successful edition of the band -- drummer-vocalist Phil Collins, bassist-guitarist Mike Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks.

SMASHING PUMPKINS
The second or third most popular '90s alt-rock band is back with a new album and tour with just Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. Founding guitarist James Iha and bassist D'Arcy Wretzky are MIA.

VAN HALEN
Just last month, plans for Van Halen's much-anticipated reunion tour with original singer David Lee Roth evaporated, the fourth time the band and Roth have tried to get back together.

THE STOOGES
Iggy Pop and company (with bassist Mike Watt sitting in for the late Dave Alexander) is back with a tour and a new album, "The Weirdness," the group's first since 1973's "Raw Power."

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
So far, the Los Angeles rap-rock act is committed to doing only four dates, but its headline appearance at Coachella helped sell out the festival three months in advance.

JACKSON 5
Jermaine Jackson announced plans for a new Jackson 5 album and world tour, and Michael Jackson, who will appear on two tracks on the album, is said to be thinking about joining in.

Pop Quiz: The Zombies

Pop Quiz: The Zombies

Aidin Vaziri | The Zombies wrote some of the era-defining songs of the past century, including "She's Not There" and "Time of the Season." Too bad the British group, led by singer Colin Blunstone and arranger Rod Argent, broke up just weeks before it released its "Pet Sounds"-rivaling 1968 classic, "Odessey and Oracle." Four decades later, the two men are back at it with a new CD/DVD set, "Live at the Bloomsbury Theater, London," and a reunion tour.

Colin Bluntstone of The Zombies
Q: Does being back on the road feel like the old days -- same drugs, same groupies, same flared trousers?
A: Not quite. I don't think the Zombies ever saw any drugs, let alone took any drugs. We came from the country, and I don't remember seeing any drugs at all in the '60s.
Q: Who exactly were you hanging out with in 1968?
A: We worked with most of the British bands. We worked a lot with the Searchers because we had the same manager. Never worked with the Beatles. Only did a TV show with the Rolling Stones.
Q: Well, it sounds like you have a lot of catching up to do.
A: Being on the road now, one thing you have to do is pace yourself. There's not much partying going on.
Q: That's funny because every time they show drugged-out hippies from the '60s on TV, guess what song they play?
A: For a lot of people "Time of the Season" kind of represents that period. But it was recorded before all that happened. I don't think we were really part of the movement that it became synonymous with. It's a shame.

Review: Arcade Fire, Ennio Morricone

Review: Arcade Fire, Ennio Morricone

Arcade Fire 'Neon Bible': Aidin Vaziri | "Set my spirit free," Win Butler demands on "My Body Is a Cage," the closing track of Arcade Fire's second album. It might sound as if the Montreal indie-rock band's leader is playing to type. His stage-sagging group's 2004 premiere CD, "Funeral," was all about death, death, death. And yet on "Neon Bible," this is one of only a few times Butler even contemplates the afterlife. Like the cacophonous music that now clangs with military drums and parade fanfare, the songwriter's focus has shifted to politics and thoughts of, well, staying alive. "Don't wanna fight in a holy war," he howls on "Windowsill." Who can blame him? When you're capable of turning out music with this much conviction (plus a dash of '80s melodrama) life's too good.

Various Artists 'We All Love Ennio Morricone': Aidin Vaziri | What kind of tribute is this? The cover is an eyesore. The list of contributors looks as if it were pulled from a hat. And the whole thing opens with Celine Dion. She is the last candidate anyone should have considered to honor Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who is best known for his unforgettable scores of films such as "The Mission" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," and who, on Feb. 25, received an honorary Oscar. The thrill of seeing Bruce Springsteen, Andrea Bocelli and Metallica sit side by side is lost after hearing them take on the lofty material. The Boss is lost in an ocean of strings on the instrumental "Once Upon a Time in the West," while Chris Botti and Roger Waters simply fall by the wayside. It's never a good sign when the guest of honor has to get off his throne and step in to get things back on course. Here, Morricone performs three of the tracks himself.

Live Review: Snow Patrol

Live Review: Snow Patrol

Mind your backs, Coldplay. You have some competition: Aidin Vaziri | Gary Lightbody must fantasize about being the lead singer of Metallica. A lot. With his head jerking violently, guitar flailing about and legs splayed wide, you would never guess that his actual band, Snow Patrol, is best known for sensible midtempo ballads used as soundtracks for boring prime-time dramas like "Grey's Anatomy" and "One Tree Hill." But for all his awesome rock-star poses, Lightbody and the rest of the Scottish-Irish quintet still seem to be coming to grips with the arenas their music so effortlessly fills.

Lightbody's idea of between-song comedy -- at a sold-out Bill Graham Civic Auditorium on Thursday -- meant dedicating a love song to Damian Kulash, singer of opening band OK Go, and breaking down Irish stereotypes as such: "We don't bring horses on elevators." The stage set, which consisted primarily of three panels of widely spaced Christmas lights, felt a bit like Coldplay minus a billion dollars. And when the singer pulled a girl up from the audience to sing backing vocals on "Set the Fire to the Third Bar" and knelt at her feet, he was veering dangerously close to Clay Aiken territory.

Consider Snow Patrol a work in progress. Starting out as a shambolic indie act more than a decade ago, the band took years to stumble onto a more emotive and commercially viable sound with its third album, 2003's "Final Straw." But it was last year's "Eyes Open" that really marked its arrival, becoming Britain's best-selling album of 2006, inching toward platinum sales in the United States and launching the heavily downloaded hit "Chasing Cars."

Playing in front of its biggest American audience to date, what the band lacked in grace it made up for with goose bumps. Mixing starry-eyed melodies with emotional storm clouds (typical lyric: "Please just save me from this darkness"), lighter-waving songs like "Open Your Eyes" and, er, "Shut Your Eyes" seemed slightly interchangeable, yes, but at the same time evoked the wide-screen grandeur of classic U2. Each one felt massive, in spite of Lightbody's heavy-metal spasms. The group's confidence in the material allowed it to toss off "Chasing Cars" midway through the set without fear of clearing the room.

If anything, the show felt like a celebration: The dance moves, the bad jokes and the sound of 7,000 voices singing back the words, "If I lay here, if I just lay here/ Would you lie with me and just forget the world." This is what is called progress. Chris Martin better stop making babies and get back to work. He's got competition.