For Los Angeles...

A running thread of links to support, read up on, and donate to folks affected by the fires. Plus music for LA. Sending love, strength and perseverance to all my friends and loved ones out there

Being 3000 miles away from a disaster that many of your friends and loved ones are experiencing means, to me, shutting TF up with aimless sermons, and doing what you can to raise funds for the affected, and supply awareness/information for those who want to be know what’s going on outside the usual (but increasingly unreliable) media/social channels.

This post includes and will update with links to resources, places, organizations and GoFundMe’s that you can donate to, with a special focus on musicians and musickers. Every little bit helps.

It includes things to read from inside Los Angeles—dispatches from friends, great writers and observers, poets who’ve become journalists, anyone bringing something informed and new—plus the occasional smart piece from outside. There are also cautionary tales. Because this nation is more broadly than ever defined by scammers, it’s important to be aware that all claims of charity for LA fire relief are.

Lastly, there is a running tally of albums/releases and local (#BklynSounds) events raising money for victims of the Los Angeles fires. Please buy and attend! I will be updating this section regularly, promoting it in each week’s “Bklyn Sounds” column. If you know of any compilations or NYC area event, please holler to DadaStrainBklyn@gmail.com

DONATE: Two key resource lists for air of all sorts have been put together by LA Fire Mutual Aid Resources and Mutual Aid LA Network. Go here for everything from spaces that need help and spaces that have help, to donation centers and donation types needed.

DONATE/READ: An old music-industry friend of mine who lives in Los Angeles (real friend, my family stays at their home when in LA) performed an absolutely incredible service at the beginning of the fires, creating a spreadsheet of music people they knew who were affected. For me, this was how I knew the fires were bad, seeing other friends here, who lived on completely opposite ends of the city, learning that they were losing it all. Here is the spreadsheet, still being updated and featuring hundreds of GoFundMe’s for folks in the LA music community. And here’s a Billboard article published last week about it, How a Widely Shared Spreadsheet Helped Raise $13 Million (and Counting) for L.A.’s Music Industry Wildfire Victims. Infinite kudos to the person, who has chosen to remain anonymous.

DONATE: Among the great social tragedies of the LA fires is the destruction the Eaton Fire let loose on Altadena, which includes one of the oldest Black communities in the Los Angeles area. (Read up on the part that housing discrimination and red-lining played in creating this community.) This is one reason that the special GoFundMe List For Displaced Black Families in Altadena matters so much. This is about saving a historically Black neighborhood from the gentrified rebuilding that usually follows such crises.

DONATE: Related. Many of the folks in Altadena’s affected community were retired musicians. The Black Music Action Coalition, which was founded five years ago to tackle the music industry’s systemic racism, has launched Black Music Action Coalition Fund 100% of the donations going to relief efforts. More broadly, MusiCares, the charitable arm of the Recording Academy has set up its own Los Angeles Fire Relief Effort To Support Music Professionals. Also, the folks at Jazz Is Dead posted an excellent list of Resources For Musicians Impacted By Fires.

DONATE: One Voice is a community group founded in the early 1980s by Cal State Northridge professors, and has been a leading holiday food drive group in the Valley ever since. Its One Voice Fire Relief is utilizing the nonprofit’s donation infrastructure to raise money for relief efforts.

READ: Harmony Holiday is one of my favorite critical writers and poets working right now. She is also a lifelong Angeleno, and identifies deeply with the city. You should already be a subscriber to her essential Black Music and Black Muses newsletter. And her reports from the first nights of the fire and the evacuation are exceptional visceral reads from inside the city.

READ: There are, in my opinion, fewer and fewer reasons to read the New York Times, but among the remaining is the climate reporting and writing of David Wallace-Wells. His “What Does the Palisades Disaster Mean for LA’s Future?” [gift link] is not just a sober analysis of what I am regarding as Los Angeles’ 9/11, it brings in the words of one of the city’s great journalists, Mike Davis, to discuss the social politics of the city’s ecology. There’s also an extensive coverage reading list.

READ: Of course there are sc*mb*gs taking advantage of the situation in Los Angeles, and not all of them are local landlords jacking housing prices. Last week, the excellent local NYC newsletter The City published “A Times Square Billboard Seeks Aid for LA Fire Victims. Is It for Real?,” a story about a 27 year-old tech “disruptor” utilizing this moment to raise his profile. He calls himself “mini elon.” Please safeguard yourself against these people.

READ: To get specific about how catastrophic the fires around Los Angeles have been for the city’s music community, The Guardian’s Kate Mishkin has written a story that gets granular and speaks to folks. “Los Angeles musicians lost homes, studios and instruments: ‘A part of you is gone’”

READ: Meghan Daum’s “The LA Fires Taught Me How To Accept Help” [gift link] is a lovely read about the different psychologies of withstanding tragedy, of traumas such as “adjacent loss” and of survivor’s guilt, and of the comfort provided in being able to help others: “‘Please, please let us help,’ one neighbor said, crying. ‘You must understand that we are asking this of you. This is for us as much as it is for you. Do not push us away.’” I’ve never read anything like it, but I instantly understood it.

BUY: Music compilations raising money for Los Angeles started popping pretty quickly after the scale of the disaster became apparent. There are already a bunch of great ones out there. NPR Music’s “Viking’s Choice” columnist, Lars Gotrich has a running thread over at his Bluesky.

SHOWS: This will be an ongoing list of all local NYC-area shows to benefit the various organizations and nonprofits working to help folks affected by the Los Angeles fires.

• Wed 1/22: JP Saxe & Friends @ Bowery Ballroom - Grammy nominated Canadian singer-songwriter is playing a massive undercard at Bowery Ballroom. Bring your TikTokers. All proceeds going to Mutual Aid LA.

• Thurs 1/23: “NYC For LA” @ Music Hall of Williamsburg - The first of numerous local-NYC-rock-bands/artists bills for LA, this one’s filled with a lot of people’s choices for “next big thing.” (I personally quite like The Thing.) All profits go directly to The California Fire Foundation Wildlife Disaster Relief Fund.

• Thurs 1/23: DJs for Baby2Baby @ Mood Ring - Baby2Baby is a Culver City/Baldwin Hills nonprofit that serves children living in poverty, and everyone on tonight’s excellent DJ bill (Recreational DJ + Bodega Bruja + Honey Bun + Devoye) at one of the best dance clubs in Bushwick (NOTE: a queer space) is donating their proceeds to the org.

• Fri 1/24: “A Benefit For Musicians Impacted By The LA Fires” @ Selva - A new music-bar/art-gallery hosts a benefit for the MusiCares LA Fire fund, with a quartet of DJ sets, including one by doom-invoker King Woman, and veteran darkwave/vapourwave lord, Pictureplane. (Unsurprisingly, co-produced by the Saint Vitus folks, who are dearly missed.)

• Sun 1/26: “LA Fires Benefit Show” @ Cassette - A night of solo performances by Palehound, Marem Ladson and Beck Zehans (Goo).

• Sun 1/26 - Wed 1/29: “I ❤️ LA” @ Bowery Electric // Mon 1/27 - Wed 1/29: “I ❤️ LA” @ Berlin // Mon 1/27 & Wed 1/29: “I ❤️ LA” @ Heaven Can Wait - This one’s driven by a trio of live Manhattan venues devoting a few days programming to LA benefits. LOts of great artists across the nine nights/bills. Tuesday at Berlin is curated by the mighty Liz Pelly.

• Fri 1/31: “Year of the Snake: LA Fire Relief Fundraiser”@ Mood Ring - Leave it Club Melody and PTP to get political. Their stacked DJ night at Mood Ring is to benefit the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, which is setting up a scholarship fund for incarcerated firefighters, and the California Community Foundation’s Wildfire Recovery Fund.

• Sat 2/1: “Bayonet Records presents An LA Fire Benefit” @ Trans-Pecos - An all-ages, all-local indie heroes benefit, headlined by a secret-ish live set by Frankie Cosmos, DJ’ing by Beach Fossils, live music by Benét and others.

• Tues 2/4: “Cynosure presents 2 Nights fundraising for Los Angeles: LOVE FOR L.A.” @ Heaven Can Wait - Cynosure Mag organizes a VERY-local artist bill. “Proceeds will be utilized to send a massive shipment of donated clothing / goods out west.”

• Fri 2/7: “Bandcamp x MusicCares: Bandcamp ❤️ Los Angeles Fundraiser” - NOT A LIVE EVENT BUT…! A Bandcamp Friday to benefit the LA music community. “From midnight to midnight PST, 100% of Bandcamp’s proceeds will be donated to MusiCares.”

• Wed 2/12: “Cynosure presents 2 Nights fundraising for Los Angeles: LOVE FOR L.A.” @ Heaven Can Wait - The second of two Cynosure Mag-organized VERY-local artist bills. “Proceeds will be utilized to send a massive shipment of donated clothing / goods out west.”

• Sun 2/16: “Body Hack: LA Fire Relief Fundraiser” @ Earthly Delights - Body Hack is a “Happy Hour+Afterparty for trans people, nonbinary cuties, & the squirrels that love us,” The Lot Radio and Nowadays residents. They’ve assembled a killer DJ line-up (Loka b2b Lechuga Zafiro, 8ulentina b2b Dj Haram, DJPT b2b Sevyn Love + Lil Zé) as a benefit for “Black families who lost homes in LA fires.”

• Wed 2/19: “MadloveLA” @ Crown Hill Theater - Organized as “a tribute to Madlib [ed. the great LA producer who lost his Altadena home and his Smithsonian-worthy record collection in the blaze] & benefit show - giving flowers and raising funds for Altadena fire relief.” An absolutely stacked line-up of great DJs, friends and community folks. Big-up Spinna and crew.

• Thurs 2/20: “Good Room + SOS music present: A Fundraiser for LA Fire Relief” @ Good Room - A coming together of great current generation of NYC DJs—including The Carry Nation, Eli Escobar, beewack, JDH and others—to benefit MusiCares and Philozoia Sanctuary.

More Soon…