Author: Alan Ralph

Concert Photographer + Concert Stagehand + Concert Security + Concert reviewer since 2003... and with Spinning Platters since the beginning!

Show Review: Motley Crue & Def Leppard & Poison, Oracle Park, 09/07/2022

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

So, what is there really to do in retirement? Move to an over-55 community in Florida and play golf, shuffleboard, and pickleball until death?  KISS has been retired since their Farewell Tour in 2001, right? Wrong!  Ozzy Osbourne‘s No More Tours farewell tour was 30 years ago, yet he just put out another new record! Eagles, Foreigner, Fleetwood Mac, and many other legacy classic rock bands never even bothered to retire and just keep going with the same hit song setlists.  For all those mere mortals who are not lifelong rock stars, retirement might be something to look forward to after working a desk job or whatever for 40 years, but for Vince Neil (61), Mick Mars (71), Nikki Sixx (63), and Tommy Lee (59) of Mötley Crüe, their retirement in 2015 was definitely not the right choice.

Mötley Crüe’s first tour since then was actually announced nearly 3 years ago and was supposed to happen in 2020… and then 2021… and now in 2022, with Def Leppard, Poison, and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, The Stadium Tour finally happened!  What better way to say We’re Back than to jump straight into stadiums as if there was never a cessation of touring agreement that they signed in January 2014…

Show Review: Cavalera Conspiracy “Beneath / Arise”, Great American Music Hall, 06/17/2022

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

It seems like every band these days is doing anniversary and album anniversary tours.  Maybe the band has been around 10, 25, 50 years?  Maybe their most popular album has been around long enough for their fans (or the music press in general) to consider it a classic record?  Most generally wait for a milestone year, 10 at least, before doing it, and it always seems to be on the 5- or 10- year increment.  

Max and Iggor Cavalera founded Sepultura in 1984. The 40th anniversary of that band is coming up in 2024, although both have not been in it since 1996 and 2006, respectively (only the bass player is a near-original member). The Cavalera’s may not be able to tour using the name Sepultura, but they can still celebrate the early albums that they took part in writing and recording.  Despite the odd number of years since they were released (33 and 31 years), Cavalera Conspiracy decided to go against the grain and tour exclusively on these two albums!

Show Review: Memorial Day Weekend Takeover of Chicago with Deftones and more

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

According to Wikipedia, a mashup is “a creative work, usually in a form of a song, created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, typically by superimposing the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another, changing the tempo and key where necessary”.  If Spinning Platters were to mashup the genres of music (as opposed to song) seen during our Memorial Day Weekend in Chicago, a new genre mashup of alt-progressive-technical-death-metal-hardcore-pop-punk would have to be created.

What started out as a photo pass for alt-metal giants Deftones and progressive-metal masters Gojira turned into an entire weekend of photographing concerts, with each of the three shows being musical opposites of the others!

Show Review: Fozzy (Chris Jericho), Great American Music Hall, 05/08/2022

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

The floor and stage of Great American Music Hall is not really large enough to turn into a wrestling ring and arena, so lucky for those in attendance this Mother’s Day, former WWF and current AEW professional wrestler Chris Jericho was fronting his metal band Fozzy here tonight and not jumping off the top rope!

Show Review: John 5 & The Creatures, DNA Lounge, 04/20/2022

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

It’s interesting when successful musicians branch out on their own solo projects.  Maybe they have too much creative energy that doesn’t flow with their band and need to expand on it, or maybe they just have free time between recording and tour cycles to do their own thing.  Whatever the case may be, the best moment to see these performers live is not with their marquee name bands, one hundred yards away in some stadium… no, the best time is when they are on their solo tours!  Paul Stanley of KISS once performed at The Fillmore to 800 people.  Joe Perry of Aerosmith also performed at The Fillmore in front of only 400 people.  When John 5 is not performing to thousands of people with Rob Zombie, he very often makes solo records, tours with his own solo project called John 5 & The Creatures, and when in San Francisco, always comes back to the intimate DNA Lounge.

Show Review: Shinedown, The Warfield, 01/26/2022

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

Live hard rock music seems difficult to come by within the city limits of San Francisco.  Music fans here seem to mainly gravitate to EDM, thrash metal, or anything that resembles the types of artists that play at Outside Lands (indie / alternative) or Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.  Therefore, it is not impossible to believe that a hard rock band who has sold 10 million albums worldwide (and were recently named #1 on Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Mainstream Rock Artists Chart) has not performed in San Francisco city proper in 10 years (since March 2012).  On January 26, 2022, multi-platinum rock band Shinedown decided to finally visit us once again, this time with the very first show of their 2022 tour cycle at The Warfield in support of their upcoming new album, Planet Zero! 

Show Review: 50 Years of The Residents, Castro Theatre, 09/17/2021

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

In mid-July, legendary art-rockers The Residents announced the “Dog Stab!” tour, a 22-date run around the US to commemorate the 50th anniversary of their first live performance (in 1971!).  A month later, they cancelled all except for three California shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz “due to continued concerns about the spread of Covid-19 cases from the Delta variant”.  The show in San Francisco also served as the reopening of the historic Castro Theatre, which has been closed since March 2020, and Spinning Platters was invited to attend!  

Show Review: Megadeth + Lamb of God + Trivium + Hatebreed, Concord Pavilion, 09/02/2021

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

‘Metal Tour of the Year.’ Quite a bold statement. The concert t-shirts even say it. On September 2, Megadeth, Lamb of God, Trivium, and Hatebreed descended on the sleepy East Bay city of Concord to wreak some havoc and let everyone else know that they intend to hold onto their self-proclaimed tour title!

Show Review: Green Day + Fall Out Boy + Weezer = Hella Mega @ Oracle Park, San Francisco, 8/27/2021

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

Oracle Park, home to the San Francisco Giants, historically does not host many concerts outside of the regular baseball season (and certainly not the post-season lately either!). Since 2013, there has been an average of six concerts per year, and a few of them are usually tied to corporations like the annual Genentech Gives Back or convention attendee parties for Salesforce.com’s DreamForce and Oracle’s OpenWorld.  In fact, the last concert to be held here was 21 months ago for DreamForce (UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital benefit).  Leave it to East Bay’s own Green Day to stage the first Hella Mega sized concert at Oracle Park since the world shut down early last year!

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Show Review: Rise Against + Descendents, Masonic Auditorium, San Francisco, 8/22/2021

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

The first show of the final week of Rise Against‘s Nowhere Generation tour was also the first show at the Masonic Auditorium in 543 days (since February 27, 2020)!  Many precautions were taken, both by the band and by the venue, to ensure that this day would happen.  Proof of vaccination or vaccine cards were required and checked upon entry, band crew and local stagehands were masked, an audience mask policy was also in effect (although at least half were unmasked, even as they entered the building), the bar and merchandise appeared to be mostly cashless with contactless point-of-sale card readers, and even the ticketing happened through a mobile phone app (although we scored a real one!).

Continue reading “Show Review: Rise Against + Descendents, Masonic Auditorium, San Francisco, 8/22/2021”