a nice article here. Latoya talks about her lack of airplay and a mention of a performance she did either today or recently as well as a mention of an upcoming play she is doing that her mother is involved in.
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/16/PKG4LF6S621.DTL&type=music --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON CALLING
Lee Hildebrand
Sunday, October 16, 2005
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People of all ages, many in family groups, gather around the stage in the center of Hilltop Mall. Others look down from the second floor or stand along the spiral ramp connecting the Richmond shopping center's two levels. Everyone's here to take in a Saturday afternoon promotional appearance by 2004 "American Idol" contestant LaToya London.
The audience, with its wide racial variety, mirrors that of the popular Fox reality television show, as well as those who turned out last summer at arenas around the country to see season winner Fantasia Barrino, along with London and three other runners-up, on the "American Idol Live" tour.
"I lived in Richmond for five years, right off Hilltop Drive," London, 26, who grew up in Oakland, tells the hometown crowd before performing six tunes from her debut CD, "Love & Life," accompanied by three harmony singers and a recorded band. Four are ballads of the type that made London an "American Idol" favorite and made her loss in last season's final rounds one of the most controversial in the program's four-year history.
Wearing a gold see-though sleeveless blouse, jeans, a gold belt and gold open-toed shoes, her short black hair fashionably teased, London displays the vocal power and polish and the poised movements that are her trademarks. She sticks around after the free 30-minute concert to sign autographs for the hundreds who wait patiently in line.
"I feel like my music will speak for itself, and if it's not played on the radio, hopefully it'll still sell albums," London says in a dressing room before the performance. With the release of "Love & Life" by Peak Records, a Southern California label with a roster that includes veteran soul singers Regina Belle, Mikki Howard and Phil Perry, along with a number of smooth-jazz instrumentalists, London is finding herself confronted with the reality of contemporary radio programming, where audience demographics are far narrower than those of "American Idol" and shopping malls. Many of the tracks on London's CD are power ballads, and she is well aware that her friend Fantasia's power ballad "I Believe" received virtually no radio play, even though it was the biggest-selling single of 2004.
"It could be a political thing as far as why things don't get played on the radio," she says. "It could be a thing of, 'That's not hot now. What's hot is people getting crunk.' "
In the Bay Area, "Quiet Storm" station KBLX has been playing the ballad "Every Part of Me" from London's CD. "They play it every day, all day," she says. "I feel that the mature audience is definitely my audience, but then there are some young people out there who really respect the music as well. We'll see what happens."
She is frustrated, however, that top-rated San Francisco urban station KMEL has not played any songs from her CD. "We've been trying and trying to talk to the program director," she complains. "You would think they would just support you because you're from the Bay Area, whether they like it or not. There are songs they play all day that people don't like, for whatever reason. I don't know what it is, but it's really a sad situation when your own hometown doesn't support you."
London was born in San Francisco, but she claims Oakland as home.
"We lived in Oakland, but my mom wanted to have me at a San Francisco hospital," she says. "They drove across the bridge and had me."
London remained in Oakland until 1998, when she moved in with her father in Richmond. She relocated to Southern California in 2003 to attend the Musicians Institute in Hollywood and has lived alone in the Los Angeles area since her divorce in April from her husband of two years.
London began singing in public at age 7, sitting in with DNZ, an Oakland Top 40 band that featured her aunt, Zorina London. LaToya also sang in the choir at Allen Temple Baptist Church and with the Oakland Youth Chorus. She started performing professionally after high school, in such Bay Area bands as Park Place (with whom she made her debut recording as a lead vocalist in 2002 on four tracks of a CD titled "The Invisible Man"), All Star Jukebox and Dick Bright's SRO.
"On a personal level, she couldn't have been nicer, easier to get along with," says violinist Bright, in whose 19-member orchestra she appeared at private corporate parties throughout the United States from 2001 to 2003. "LaToya has the kind of voice in the style of a Whitney Houston. It's extremely well modulated and incredibly smooth. And she has great intonation, which is kind of a lost art with all the studio trickery. The hardest thing to do is sing well live, and she sounded great live. She showed that on 'American Idol.'
"A big part of my show is choreography, and she also moved really well," Bright adds. "It wasn't like she had been to dance school for years. She's a natural -- all around."
Three of the songs on London's "Love & Life" were produced by Narada Michael Walden, the Marin County hitmaker for whom London had written songs and sung demos earlier in her career.
"(Walden) has a team of producers that worked in the studio, and I would write songs to whatever beats they would have," she says. One of her songs, she recalls, was submitted to Destiny's Child, but the group didn't bite.
Even though she got voted off "American Idol" last year, London expresses no negative feelings about her participation in the show.
"We knew we could get signed by somebody or do it ourselves and use that Internet fan base that we had," she says. "We all looked at it positively. Really, I can't speak for anyone else, but that's what I saw from other people and their actions. For me, that's how I felt -- definitely. I got a lot of exposure, and I'm going to continue to make my dream come true."
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LATOYA LONDON will perform five songs as a member of the cast of "The Life and Times on Old Navy Road," a musical theater production co-written by her mother, Vivian Morse, at 6 p.m. Oct. 29 at Scottish Rite Center, 1547 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. $20-$50. (510) 691-8999, (866) 468-3399,
www.ticketweb.com.
Lee Hildebrand is a freelance writer.