Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts: 12/3/15-12/9/15

Playing this Friday at Gilman!
Playing this Friday at Gilman!

This week around the San Francisco Bay Area: Love! Honey! Medicine! Class war! Typos! Beards! And a moonlighting winemaker.

Let’s preview the week’s upcoming shows, shall we?
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts: 12/3/15-12/9/15”

Show Review: An Evening with Pink Martini featuring Storm Large at the Paramount Theatre, 11/20/2011

Storm Large fills in brilliantly for China Forbes
Storm Large fills in brilliantly for China Forbes

It’s very easy to get lost in the concert scene with a want to see the greatest technological innovation in stage design or the wildest antics ever displayed by an up-and-coming act — so much so that the music, quite sadly, sometimes gets lost in the struggle. Venues are built with impressive sound systems that make the foundations shudder and quake, and incredible arrays of lights, lasers and smoke work in tandem to paint a dazzling dreamscape over the faces of the musicians onstage — and that’s not taking into account any props they may, themselves, throw in for an extra layer of excitement. While it’s probably more common to forego a want of musical satisfaction in the face of a bombastic display of utter chaos that takes us to another world, it is important to find those special acts who take the stage with a minimum amount of fancy arrangements and eye candy, instead devoting their attention to their elegant sound that rings gloriously about the ears like a breezy summer susurrus rather than a blistering sirocco. To these expert talents, we look to the Portland collective known as Pink Martini to bring us back to a world of music so often heard in our daily lives that it seems impossible to fully appreciate it on a stage, or in a tremendous theater like the Paramount in Oakland — and they rise to the challenge magnificently, particularly with frontlady Storm Large taking a new place at the helm.

Continue reading “Show Review: An Evening with Pink Martini featuring Storm Large at the Paramount Theatre, 11/20/2011”

Show Review: Morrissey at The Paramount Theater, 12/02/2009

Moz Points
Shirt number one

Alternate titles for this post are:

What, no shirt?

and

The View From the Back of the Balcony

So, tonight I saw Morrissey for somewhere between the 15th and the 20th time. I lost count during the 2007 tour when I followed him around California and saw almost all the shows he played there, plus two in Reno. Continue reading “Show Review: Morrissey at The Paramount Theater, 12/02/2009”

Show Review: Tori Amos at the Paramount Theatre, 7/13/09

What was Tori's surprise?  Read on.  (Thanks to Jon for the setlist photo.)
What was Tori's surprise? Read on. (Thanks to Jon for the setlist photo.)

I’m not going to sugar coat this, because there really isn’t much that could have been sweeter than this adventure, which was entirely one of the most awesome experiences I’ve ever had, concert or otherwise.

Oh, where to begin… Continue reading “Show Review: Tori Amos at the Paramount Theatre, 7/13/09”