Pearl Jam – Spinning Platters

Festival Preview: BottleRock Napa Valley 2024

Happy New Year, live music lovers! BottleRock Napa Valley has announced the lineup for this year’s festival, and as usual, it’s got me looking forward to the summer!

It may seem like there’s a long time between the lineup announcement this morning and the festival itself, but I know from experience that the rest of the winter and the spring will both fly by, and before you know it, it’ll be time to gather at Napa Valley Expo once more.

After many years of speculation, Pearl Jam will indeed (finally!) headline the BRNV stage, as will Stevie Nicks, Ed Sheeran, and Maná. Headliners aside, I may be most excited to see Megan Thee Stallion, but also Cold War Kids, Queens of the Stone Age, Norah Jones, Dominic Fike, St. Vincent, The Offspring, Nelly, Bebe Rexha, Stephen Sanchez, Cannons, Holly Humberstone, The Record Company, Royal Otis, The Moss, and Mondo Cozmo.

As always, you can plan on finding amazing food, wine, beer, and cocktails to pair with your festival weekend. Trust me – you don’t want to miss this one!

You can find my 2024 BottleRock Napa Valley Preview playlist here, so you can listen along and get excited! Don’t have tickets? Don’t worry, you can get yours here. I’ll see you in Napa this summer!

Record Store Day 2023 – My Guide to the Most and Least Essential Releases

For as long as I can remember, independent record stores across the world have celebrated Record Store Day. At first a small initiative to get people to shop at their local record stores, it’s now an excuse for thousands of people to join hours-long queues at record shops across the world to buy one (or several) of the several hundred special releases made for that day that will only ever be sold in stores, and for which pre-orders are not allowed to be taken. As the list of releases has grown, the quality of those releases has diverged. While some of the announced records are long-awaited reissues of rare and important material, others are obvious cash grabs meant to appeal to the completist nature of a certain type of collector. Now, I’ll sort some of these in buckets for you, starting with the most essential and ending with the least essential.

I’ve focused on the U.S. list for this post as this is where we are and will be waiting in line.
Continue reading “Record Store Day 2023 — My Guide to the Most and Least Essential Releases”

Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 11/20/13-11/26/13

Monday Night at Brick & Mortar Music Hall

Part of this fantastic week of music includes show presented by yours truly… Come join us for Social Studies, Ash Reiter, and The She’s at Brick & Mortar Music Hall on the 25th! You can win tickets, too, if you enter here by November 22nd at 6 PM!

Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 11/20/13-11/26/13”

Who Needs New Music? My top albums of 1998!

“What’s wrong Chazzy Black, you look sad?”

“I don’t know Linux, I know we have all this great music that came out in 2011 (Spinning Platters Top Ten Albums of 2011), but I’m just not happy. I like dreamy guitars, sad depressing themes, and booty shaking grooves and all that, but I’m just not sure it means anything anymore. All these albums are derivative…”

“Chazzy Black you’re the only person I know that can take a wonderful thing like the music of 2011 and turn it into a problem.”

“Isn’t there anyone that can tell me what music is all about?!

“Sure Chazzy Black I can tell you what music is all about”

“Time Machine Please…”

“And there was my favorite music of 1998…”

Continue reading “Who Needs New Music? My top albums of 1998!”

Outside Lands Festival Diary: Part 2 — Friday, 8/28/09

You know how when you have a little cold and you take cold medicine, and when the medicine finally kicks in, your cold breaks? And you get really sweaty? Now what if you were taking cold medicine on a hot day at a sunny music festival? You’d be having my day. So for me, and surely for many others, Friday at Outside Lands was a fun, sweaty time. Continue reading “Outside Lands Festival Diary: Part 2 — Friday, 8/28/09”

Outside Lands Festival Lineup Analysis

Outside Lands Festivalgoers dancing to Manu Chao last year...

They released the initial line-up for this year’s Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival, and if you haven’t already seen it on the 20,000 other sites that are posting it, here it is…
Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Beastie Boys, Incubus, Black Eyed Peas, MIA, Jason Mraz, Ween, Band Of Horses, TV On The Radio, The Dead Weather, Atmosphere, The Mars Volta, Thievery Corporation, Modest Mouse, Tom Jones, Silversun Pickups, Robert Randolph & The Family Band, The National, Q-Tip, Brett Dennen, Built To Spill, Mastodon, Raphael Saadiq, Calexico, Os Mutantes, Midnite, JJ Grey & Mofro, Kinky, Deerhunter, Lila Downs, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Ave, The Dodos, Betty Lavette, Dengue Fever, Heartless Bastards, The Dirtbombs, Lenka, Akron/Family, John Vanderslice, Matt & Kim, Portugal. The Man, The Morning Benders, The Duke Spirit, Zee Avi, Blind Pilot, Sambada, Ryan Bingham, West Indian Girl, Extra Golden…

Now, I think it looks pretty good, and I can discuss all the bands at length if you wish, but I am a bit more worried about all of the things that can go wrong with this show. Continue reading “Outside Lands Festival Lineup Analysis”