Ann Magnuson's new CD and live show this weekend

Avant-garde Renaissance woman Ann Magnuson--she of Bongwater, Paper Magazine, the New Wave Vaudeville Show, and assorted other film, theater, and writing projects--will perform her latest CD, Pretty Songs & Ugly Stories, this Friday, April 13 and Saturday, April 14 at the Steve Allen Theater in Los Angeles. Tickets are $15 and Ann will be backed by her full band. If you can't make the show, the CD, Ann's first full-length release in a decade, is available from her Web site and CD Baby. Described as "baroque pop," the tracks I've sampled sound like a wonderful Dadaist trip through the cabarets of Weimar Berlin, a decadent 1930s burlesque club, 70s glam orgies, 80s downtown NYC, and the hyperreal Los Angeles of today. All at once. Here's what Ann says about the live show (photo by Rocky Schenck):

'Pretty Songs & Ugly Stories' aims to take everyone on a musical journey from Seduction to Infatuation to Disassociative Hallucination to Surreal Self-Realization. Navigating the ecstatic High Highs and the traumatic Low Lows, our communal roller coaster eventually reaches Heaven - which resembles a Chinese happy worker poster from the Cultural Revolution as directed by Vincent Minnelli! Then we reach our final glam-rock destination where all irony and cynicism is washed away and we become one with the poetic idyll that awaits us all on the other side of the looking glass. In other words, let me entertain you!"

Link to the Steve Allen Theater, Link to Ann Magnuson's Web site, Link to Ann's Paper Magazine blog L.A. Woman (Thanks, David Hershkovits!)

Previously on BB:
• Ann Magnuson and John Dillinger's Johnson Link