Pop & Hiss

As Los Angeles musician Alberto Lopez told it in a Highland Park cafe last week, his great uncle’s name was Juan and he was an influential jazz arranger best known for his work starting in the 1930s.

To succeed in the American music business, though, early on he, like many others, felt compelled to make a concession.

On Thursday night at the Hollywood Bowl, Tom Petty, reflecting on the 40th anniversary of his time with the Heartbreakers, told the story of how he first met his lifelong lead guitarist Mike Campbell.

Around 1970, some guy Petty barely knew gave him a lift to a house in a sketchy part of their hometown of Gainesville, Fla., to meet the aspirant musician.

“Can you pull over,” Jhené Aiko asks her driver before hopping out of the black Suburban, instructing me to take her place in the backseat.

It’s a hot August afternoon and we are riding along the Pacific Coast Highway to a destination only she knows while listening to her new album, “Trip.”

Open Mike Eagle, “Brick Body Kids Still Daydream” (Mello Music). The Culver City-based rapper, writer and verbal bon vivant is on a roll right now, what with the release of this epic rap concept album and work on the forthcoming Comedy Central series “The New Negroes.”

The artist, born Michael Eagle in Chicago, sets his new album in that city’s since-demolished Robert Taylor Homes public housing project.

To a person standing on the street, little distinguishes the pair of sleek, green-gray structures that make up Live Nation’s headquarters in Beverly Hills. But Heather Parry says that there’s definitely a difference between the two buildings — and that her office is in the good one.

Harry Styles appeared to have lost control over the top end of his vocal range Wednesday at the Greek Theatre, where this 23-year-old heartthrob from the boy band One Direction played the second date of his first tour as a solo act.

Had he gotten sick since launching the tour the night before in San Francisco? Perhaps he’d overdone it at the after-party.