Mae Ryan/KPCC with archival photo by Gary Leonard

Police quell looters and fires near 924 S Vermont Ave in Koreatown on April 29th, 1992. Few Koreans received help from the city in rebuilding their stores after the riots.

Here's a unique point of view: while working on our upcoming special on the LA Riots' 20th anniversary I noticed a smattering of stories from last August, as the London riots winded down. The Telegraph's Niles Gardiner looked back on 1992 riots almost wistfully, believe it or not.

During the Los Angeles riots in 1992, many store owners in the south central part of the city defended their property against marauding gangs with their own weapons, and succeeded in protecting their livelihoods and thousands of jobs that depended on them. 

In the UK, Gardiner said, store owners didn't have guns. They were powerless. He quickly concludes: 

If they had the right to bear arms and defend their stores with force, it would have been a very different story, and brutal looters would have met firm resistance.

Gardiner wasn't the only columnist to make this observation. Joy McCann, writing on something called Conservative Commune enthusiastically cites Gardiner's piece. And Instapundit agreed, too.

In 1992, a riot happened in Los Angeles. In 2011, a riot happened in London. According to Gardiner and co., that's more than enough similarity to warrant a side-by-side comparison of how citizens responded. Never mind that the incidents were 19 years apart, the causes different, that the looting was far from indiscriminate. Or that the cities have nothing much in common other than, well, being cities. The Los Angeles riots killed 53, which is over ten times as deadly as London--1992 cost LA five times as much, too.

McCann makes a particularly bold claim:

It’s true: the Korean grocers whose businesses were closest to the flash points used large bags of rice as sandbags, and barricaded their businesses. They took up positions in front and on the roofs, with rifles.

Zheem/Flickr (cc by nd)

Richard Thompson performing in Sausalito in September 2008

Richard Thompson might be your favorite guitarist ever. He's good enough. Or he might be one of those people you discover after hours of wiki-digging and slowly realize he's left his mark on nearly every album and artist you hold near and dear to your heart--and without him popular music today would be too empty to imagine. 

He's an English guitarist and singer with a penchant for berets. He's had a solo career, of course, and Thompson's songs have been covered by Elvis Costello, REM, Sleater Kinney, Loudon Wainwright III, to name a few. He also played guitar in Fairport Convention - arguably the most iconic British Folk band of all time. Performing in a duo with his then wife Linda, the two released five solid albums ending the marriage in 1982 with the heartbreaking Shoot out the Lights. Think of Rumours if the band set aside the hard stuff for a simple bottle of whiskey. 

Luckily, Thompson still performs today. This weekend he'll debut material from his upcoming album, Interviews with Ghosts at two shows. First on Saturday at the Idyllwild Arts Academy and again in Hollywood on Sunday. Both of the performances are in collaboration with the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra and feature other music from John Cage, Chen Yi and Steve Reich. If you don't mind the drive, the Saturday show in Idyllwild is free, otherwise Sunday's will run you $10 to $20. Go to either, and you'll return home glad you went.

Kevin Ferguson/KPCC

This extremely early effort of an extremely young Joan Baez was one of those haunting influences on my grade school years. Somebody was always putting it on the turntable to the point I internalized the melodies and words, but the effect it had on me went far beyond "enjoyment of music."

Joan Baez, Volume 2, consists of folk songs. There are murder ballads, and songs of betrayal, suspicion and abandonment. Hearing this as a third grader was like getting an early education about adult life, or more precisely, about death and dying. For example, a young woman pleads, "Oh mother, oh mother, go dig my grave." She dies of sorrow because Sweet William, whom she spurned, died of grief.

Things are bleak, and Baez's silver voice has just the chilling touch to deliver it straight, with no irony and no theatrics. (These Irish-Scots ballads are really good at rendering sad stories without sentimentalism on the one hand, nor Grand Guignol-style excess on the other.) As a small town kid, though, it was like getting a premature dose of Jean-Paul Sartre's "existential nausea." Eventually I had to run outside when the music filled our living room.

I hadn't heard this version of "Barbara Allen" for decades. When the record skipped, I used my finger to steady the tone arm and by song's end I found my eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. It's a ghastly sad tale, and the most beautiful example of the singer's voice I have heard.

Smart Destinations/Flickr

The Autry National Center

If you’re an avid hiker like me, you’ve hiked at Runyon Canyon, off Hollywood Boulevard. They always have a tiny snack station with a couple bottles of water and some fruit. Are you kidding? A banana? I just had a long and strenuous hike.

(The snack station at Runyon Canyon. Credit: JC Olivera/Flickr)

Luckily for us, The Autry National Center at Griffith Park will be hosting The Autry Farmers Market starting Saturday, April 28 from 8am to noon. After you finish your hike around the Griffith Observatory, you can head down to the Autry Museum and munch on some local and organic foods from Underwood Family Farms, Homeboy Bakery, Avila & Sons Farms, and about 13 other vendors. There will also be a wide selection of freshly prepared foods by Heirloom LA, Global Soul, and the Crepe Kitchen.

After you’ve satisfied your hunger, why not walk it off by taking a visit to the Autry Museum? Exercise, eat lunch, and relax with art and history all in one trip!

Kevin Ferguson

Pure Gabby by Gabby Pahinui

Hearing Gabby Pahinui for the first time was, for me, like a hot Summer’s day acquiescing to the cool breeze of evening. Gabby “Pops” Pahinui (named “Gabby” from an early gig wearing gabardine pant uniforms) is indisputably the most important Slack Key guitarist ever, though Gabby acknowledges his teacher Herman Keawe as the greatest. The style is called Slack Key due to the loosening of certain guitar strings so the result is a pleasant chord when openly strummed. And while there is no dissonance associated with the style, I find the results thoroughly engaging, unlike some other exercises in 100% consonant (“happy”) music.

Given Gabby’s eventual fame among world music enthusiasts, and his influence on younger Hawaiian musicians, it is strange to think that Pahinui went through long spells of obscurity, during the days when slicker pop prevailed and more traditional Hawaiian forms fell by the wayside.

Pure Gabby was recorded during one of those dry spells. In 1961, Dave Guard, one of the founders of The Kingston Trio, was fortunate to be able to realize his dream of capturing Gabby Pahinui’s guitar and voice in a simple acoustic setting, with just string bass and ukulele accompaniment. Unfortunately, he was not able to convince a major label to release it. Eighteen years later, Hula Records distributed the album, which includes a bonus disc with an interview between Dave and Gabby.

Gabby Pahinui’s career finally took wings once again, during what has been called the Second Hawaiian Renaissance. Along with his talented friends, sons, and young bucks like Peter Moon and Ry Cooder, he recorded as The Gabby Band. We are now blessed—not only with many fine Gabby Pahinui records—but with a proliferation of Slack Key recording artists.

Gabby’s 91^st birthday would have been this Earth Day, April 22. The song above is Hi’ilawe, the celebrated waterfall of Waipi’o Valley. It chronicles a girl from Puna who visits a boy in the Valley, but cannot take the gossip among his relatives nor the chatter of the birds and runs back to her family. Note how Gabby gives the sound of her running home at the end.

Mahalo, Pops.