In support of her latest release, Is Your Love Big Enough? (Nonesuch), British singer/songwriter Lianne La Havas charmed an Amoeba audience with just her voice and a 1964 Danelectro Silvertone guitar. Given the warehouse sized building that is Amoeba Hollywood, Lianne did a superb job of creating an intimate feel for her performance. She played semi-acoustic versions of new songs including, "No Room For Doubt,"  "Age" and "Forget."  La Havas proudly declared on stage, "It's always been a dream of mine to make a record and for it to be sold in this store and to play in this store. I think it's probably the best shop in the world."  Yes, it is Ms. La Havas! We at Amoeba throuroughly enjoyed the tunes and are happy to be a part of your dreams. Thank you! 

Lianne La Havas is back in Los Angeles March 19 & 20th to play The El Rey Theatre. Make sure to catch her as she will be backed by a full band! You can purchase tickets for this show and many others at Amoeba Hollywood. For those of you in the Bay Area, you can catch Lianne at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. The tour will also roll through the Pacific Northwest with stops in Portland and Seattle.    

A record number of people came to celebrate Amoeba Hollywood’s annual Fat Tuesday celebration. This year saw The Dirty Dozen Brass Band perform live and lead the annual Second Line Parade down the aisles of Amoeba.

The band brought New Orleans cheer to the store, getting the family-friendly audience dancing in the aisles with their influential funk-infused jazz style. Some attendees showed up in Mardi Gras costume, including a quartet of girls in white dresses spattered with fake blood — maybe it’s a True Blood thing, I’m not sure.

While homemade floats, masks and beads floated around the audience, the extraordinary musicianship on display wasn’t lost on the audience. A sax solo introduced the band’s second song, breaking out into a drum solo before returning to the song and drawing huge applause. They got the audience clapping to what I thought was a standup bass but was actually DDBB’s tuba player playing a rubbery bassline. They thanked the audience and Amoeba as they capped off 36 years as a band before leading everyone through a parade while playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” up and down the aisles.

Amoeba is distributing The Congo Square Project Foundation: Sacred Ground Vols. 1 and 2, the first two of six planned volumes tracing the development of New Orleans music, with all proceeds of the sale benefiting New Orleans relief efforts. Additionally, a portion of all proceeds for the day (including sales on Amoeba.com) went to Tipitina’s Foundation, which seeks to preserve Louisiana and New Orleans’ musical heritage, and New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic, which is dedicated to providing affordable healthcare to New Orleans musicians. A total of $3,000 was donated from Amoeba's revenue Feb. 12, adding to the $1,400 raised through a charity auction held at Amoeba Hollywood Feb. 2 ($700 was raised from auction sales, with a $700 match from Amoeba), for a combined total of $4,400 sent to the two charities.

English singer/songwriter Ellie Goulding performed at Amoeba Hollywood back in October, just a few days after her sophomore album, Halcyon (Interscope Records), was released. It was one of only a handful of performances she did during release week, and her fans turned out in full force. The line to get into her in-store performance followed the side of Amoeba along Ivar Blvd, wrapping around the block. For those unable to attend the show, it was also webcast live on Amoeba.com.

We just posted a video of Ellie Goulding's stunning, stripped down version of her single, "Anything Could Happen," from the in-store:

This in-store performance was Ms. Goulding's second at Amoeba. She performed at Amoeba San Francisco back in April 2011. At that point, she was just beginning her US promotion for her debut album, Lights (Interscope Records), which was released in March 2010 in the UK and had already reached number one there. That SF in-store was truly special and she decided to release it as an EP, Live at Amoeba San Francisco (Interscope Records).

Robert DeLong taught a master class in how to construct electronic music live, on the fly, during his performance at Amoeba Hollywood Feb. 5.

He began by building layered vocal loops and electronic drum beats before singing along to a bass-heavy programmed backbeat. DeLong demonstrated his strongest points early on: his high energy and ability to combine densely layered EDM songs with the feel of a live rock band.

The songs hit hard — I felt like my skull was rattling from the bass. DeLong made up for his just so-so voice by manipulating it when necessary and singing earnestly as well, taking the Ben Gibbard heart-on-sleeve approach. “Global Concepts” best exemplified his Postal Service meets Skrillex approach to making music, combining visceral dance music with emotional delivery.

The busyness of DeLong’s music only occasionally got the best of him when his vocals would fail to rise to the occasion while he inexplicably played a maraca egg at the same time, for instance, or when the mic would drop out, perhaps overloaded with effect. The best part of the show by far was when he ditched the singing and electronic instruments to do their thing on their own while he played live drums along to the backing music. That was the moment when he did indeed make everyone “fucking dance,” as “Global Concepts” claims. Side note: Besides the novelty value of his playing drums in a one-man band setting, DeLong’s a pretty great drummer.

On Saturday, February 2 we kicked off "New Orleans Month" at Amoeba Hollywood with a rockin' auction hosted by the inimitable and charming Billy Calhoun. Billy's soothing and unflappable style not only inspired some major bidding, but he deftly and seamlessly dropped some science on all the onlookers about New Orleans and the two foundations we were focusing on (New Orleans Musicians Clinic and Tipitina's Foundation), as well as what we are doing on Amoeba.com and how long we have been doing the charity auctions. People learned a lot while they had fun bidding on really cool items. More than a few customers mentioned that they didn't realize we do these auctions every month, and that they learned a lot from all that Billy had to say. Billy educated folks on our Vinyl Vaults and Louis Armstrong digital restoration, as well as the exclusive release of the Congo Square Project which is an amazing collection of music available only on Amoeba.com.

We had several bidding wars, and Billy effortlessly kept the momentum going and kept people engaged. Here are some of the highlights for today's auction---one of the highest generating auctions we have had in a long while. Way to go Billy!!