Trying to explain what música ranchera is to non-Mexicans reminds me of the apocryphal quote attributed to–take your pick–Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington, when someone asked what jazz is. Ranchera ...

Go ahead, call us a bunch of culture-less, lily-white suburbanites with a partiality to flip-flops and right-wing politics. Those kind of labels never cease to amuse us. Because one thing that ...

Just across the street from Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley, in the middle of the city's suburban placidity, exists what's probably the most anomalous collection of street names in Orange County.

Dwight Manley: The Brea King? Illustration by Paul Nagel. Photo by Federico Medina. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, once a young apprentice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and who later ran “Rainbow ...

One of the best parts about buying a physical album (if you still do that sort of thing) is the album cover art. And if you're a metalhead or crusty punker, the more brutal and bloody it is, the ...

Rodney Alcala is a man stuck in a time warp, his flowing silver hair, granny glasses, beige blazer and jeans reminiscent of a creative-writing professor circa 1980, the year he began life behind bars.

In 1952 or 1954 (depending on who’s telling the tale), Bert Grimm bought a business located at 22 Chestnut Place in Long Beach, on the corner of Chestnut and Ocean Boulevard. The small square space on ...

It’s no secret that heavy metal music can be a bit morbid and macabre. Heavy metal artists have never been afraid to musically confront mortality, pain, suffering and other grim topics by creating ...

Three years ago, David Di Sabatino was understandably excited when Larry Norman, “the Father of Christian Rock Music,” e-mailed him to say the film Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher was ...

Little People's Park is a tiny slab of grass near downtown Anaheim, just down the street from police headquarters and two blocks from City Hall. The afternoon of Sunday, July 29 was similar to most ...

“Santa's real. . . . It's the stories that are fake.” —Uncle Bill, grandma's house, Christmas 1957 Ric Erwin, “Singin' Santa,” the most vibrant performing professional Santa Claus I've ever met, is ...

Eric Blair has sacrificed a lot for the music he loves. Probably more than we deserve to know. But whatever Blair’s dedication to music costs him in fame and groupies, he makes up for it in respect ...