Jonathan Pirro – Page 10 – Spinning Platters

Show Review: Electric Six with Kitten and Mark Mallman at the Independent, 10/6/2011

Improper dancing in the middle of the street

What makes a good show a really, really good show? The answer will vary depending upon whom you ask. For some, it’s when a mind-boggling array of lights, smoke, lasers and confetti is packed onstage at a shopping-mall-sized rock arena, with the platinum-selling act of the week destroying the eardrums of the next few towns over. For others, it’s not quite on the same scale, but it involves a display of incredible musicianship that is unequaled in measure. Hardcore concertgoers may tell you that a great show involves any collection of bands, anywhere, no matter how small or unlit their stage might be, who spends every waking moment of the show in brisk and uninterrupted movement, careening with jackhammer-like intensity around each other, knocking instruments and cables to and fro, barely caring whether or not the notes are as precise as on their pristine studio recordings. The final category of a great show involves any of the above, plus an automatic guarantee of fun based on the artist playing, and the memorability and masterful pop craft of their always-catchy and witty performances. While perhaps without the overzealous cacophony and synesthesia of the first category, Thursday night’s show at the Independent managed to stuff all of the other aforementioned definitions into their 500-person club — along with a near sell-out crowd that was there to see Electric Six, the Detroit-based purveyors of the ultimate party rock freakshow.

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Show Review: The World/Inferno Friendship Society with The Phenomenauts and Locksley at the Rickshaw Stop, 10/3/2011

Let us now speak of brave men, who lived their lives just as they would have it

It’s safe to say, in this day and age, that defining what constitutes “punk” music is irrationally difficult. Classicists will tell you that it means 3-4 chords, lightning-fast drums, a general disregard for playing instruments BESIDES drums with extreme skill, and lyrics focused on dissent, disturbance, and general disquiet with the way things are. Others will claim that it’s more the attitude that matters than the instrumentation; the DIY aesthetic, the “we’re angry and we’re here to let you know what’s wrong with the world” message, and the desire to rebel against any manner of what constitutes the norm. The latter argument usually bears more weight; too often are to be found multi-platinum-selling artists playing their same recycled chords, in the aforementioned classic formula, with no specifically diligent message — only an intent to be a product that is easy to swallow, and thus, sell. Bands such as the World/Inferno Friendship Society are better examples of the image that punk music has so deftly stood for over the years, shifted into a medium of instrumentation and songwriting that borrows from so many genres and walks of life that, while they could not be called “punk rock” in the classic 70’s musical style, they possess the attitude and energy in spades — after all, how often do you hear jazz and klezmer music so furious that it breeds explosive mosh pits?

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Show Review: Ladytron with SONOIO and Polaris At Noon at the Regency Ballroom, 9/25/2011

Make free of the cities where time stands still

I have often said that electronic music concerts are the best example of an experience that can go one of two ways: either the dull setting of a single DJ with a mild array of lights and unreasonably loud walls of bass that do more to rattle your teeth than to provide enjoyable percussion, or a full-on experience — from either one man with a table covered in expensive gear, or an entire band centered around synths, drum machines, or other instruments of the digital age — with a dazzling visual accompaniment. It also helps, of course, if you have more to bring to the table than simple a throbbing house beat and a simple-yet-evolving methodology to your melody and rhythm; adding traditional or untraditional rock instruments, as well as an aesthetic that blends them with the sweeping pulses that make up the backbone of your sound, is a sure-fire way to something refreshing and undoubtedly successful. Such is the case with the Liverpool music collective known as Ladytron, who also up the scale every time they play by bringing an eclectic set of opening acts — guaranteeing an exciting show every time.

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Show Review: Peter Hook and The Light performing Closer at The Mezzanine, 09/17/2011

Father and son join for a furious wall of sound

It is frequently said that when you have a formula that works, it is safe to stick with it, but only to the point where you continue to be successful, and not past the point where you’ve entered a realm of dangerous repetition. In 2010 I stated that a popular trend was for a band to go on tour and, as their setlist, play one or more of their classic albums from start to finish. Some acts, such as the Melvins or A Perfect Circle, took up this concept and played multiple albums over multiple nights, and it was a true test of stamina for their fans to make it out for two or three nights in a row to see the entire collection of songs from their catalogue. However, when bassist Peter Hook and his band The Light returned to the Mezzanine in San Francisco to perform Joy Division’s posthumous classic Closer in its entirety, it was quite clear that a nearly-one-year-long wait was a brilliant decision, as it brought a new collection of energetic fans, an explosive performance from Hook and his band, and the reminder that the power and majesty of Joy Division’s music is still fiercely present over 30 years after the release of their final record.

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San Francisco’s 2011 Outside Lands Festival, Day 3

The crowd in unified fist-pumping for Major Lazer

60,000 is an extremely large number, especially when you’re speaking in terms of human beings. The largest amphitheater in the Bay Area, the Shoreline in Mountain View, holds around 30,000 with its lawn fully filled, and most shows that can completely fill it to the brim are multi-platinum megastars, or great music festivals that last all day. It therefore isn’t too surprising that nearly all 3 days of the 2011 Outside Lands Festival were sold out, both with single-day and three-day tickets; still, 60,000 people per day is a pretty staggering number. By the time Sunday rolled around, and the denizens of the festival had been dragged through cold, fog, heat, sun, and likely several hundred thousand watts of amplified music, it was stunning to see that the park was still packed to the gills; while most people didn’t trickle in until the mid-afternoon hours, there was enough sunlight out to see Golden Gate Park filled from end to end with a flood of musicgoers.

But what about the people who made it in the morning?

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San Francisco’s 2011 Outside Lands Festival, Day 2

Can you tell that you're in San Francisco yet?

(For our coverage of Day 1, here’s a link! Or maybe Day 3?)

It makes sense that for a weekend, Saturday is the most popular day. It’s the middle point; you had a night off before and a day off afterwards, so there’s no reason not to go wild and throw a big party. It therefore makes perfect sense, for a weekend-long musical, to host some of your biggest acts on the second day. The fine folks at Outside Lands rose to this challenge magnificently, and in addition to the heavyweights on the Land’s End stage that kept the Polo Field occupied for most of the day, some excellent surprises were thrown in for those who decided to venture out into the smaller and SLIGHTLY less-packed areas of Golden Gate Park.

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San Francisco’s 2011 Outside Lands Festival, Day 1

(Want to skip to Day 2? Or maybe Day 3?)

Let’s get one thing straight, right off the bat: There’s always going to be rivalry between Northern California’s concert scene and Southern California’s concert scene. We’re always looking for reasons to stay up here and not go down there. Never mind any of the usual excuses people give for not going to Coachella in April: it’s far away, it’s hot, it’s got a different crowd, the scene is too (insert choice phrase here); it’s just not “us”. So, while we’re happy for things like Fauxchella to keep us from having to go down to Indio around the cusp of summertime, there’s always that infectious festival vibe that pulls us in somehow. However, mere moments after remarks begrudging the Coachella 2011 lineup — which looked remarkably like our 2010 Outside Lands and Treasure Island lineups — the 2011 Outside Lands lineup popped up, and this time, it was clear that we had gotten things right. Back to 3 days, back with some of the biggest acts in music to date, and loaded with a bunch of new treasures to discover, Outside Lands was going to be bigger this year than ever.

That being said: This is a long entry, because it was a long weekend. We’ve got a collection of highlights that we wanted to share with our readers, because it’s impossible to fit everything in. Hope you can keep up!

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Show Review: Styx with Yes at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, 8/3/2011

The definition of “arena rock” has changed shape a great deal in this modern era of music. While it’s mostly connected to which genres of music or artists can sell enough seats to fill an amphitheater with up to 22,000 people, it is also evocative of a time when a band’s show and stage set were so extravagant, flamboyant, and over-the-top that only a massive stadium could even hope to provide ample real estate for the performance. Thus, it is always quite amazing to see both of these factors fall into place, especially when the bands in question are of a somewhat-bygone era. This isn’t the 1970s, or the 1980s, but you would never have been aware that time had passed since that era, judging from the explosive response that greeted the two biggest acts of the Shoreline Amphitheatre’s KIHNCERT 2011: Chicago rockers Styx and English progressive godfathers Yes.

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Show Review: Reel Big Fish with Streetlight Manifesto, The Maxies and Rodeo Ruby Love at the Regency Ballroom, 7/15/2011

There’s a commonly-held mindset that says you cannot take ska music seriously. From a simple outside perspective, this makes sense; it’s generally very bouncy, positive-sounding music, and the horns just accentuate the level of joy, or perhaps the level of unseriousness. For what is entailed in a ska song, however, it’s remarkably rude to call it simple or childish; with 3 or 4 additional players that accompany a full band, one that’s usually churning out rapid-fire punk riffs, and with all of the members running around onstage, it’s definitely not a simple feat. The energy of the music, for those who do listen and follow it, is infectious and riotous in its intensity, and whether the lyrics are heartfelt and yearning, or slovenly and self-deprecating, wildly energetic audiences will still fill large auditoriums to see the spectacle, and chant and stamp to every word. Such was the case on Friday night, when the Regency Ballroom of San Francisco played host to two titans of the genre: the New Jersey septet Streetlight Manifesto, and the Huntington Beach veterans known as Reel Big Fish.

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Show Review: The Shpongletron Experience Tour featuring Shpongle, Random Rab and an-ten-nae at The Fillmore, 6/17/2011

As an electronic musician, you have an unbelievable amount of competition, especially in 2011. With beats, synths and other manipulatibles being so easy to create these days with readily-available software, nearly anyone with a decently-powered computer and speedy fingers can enter the genre; with enough samples, knowledge of audio processing, and exposure, it’s easy to go from being locked in one’s basement to shaking the walls of clubs worldwide. The question is, however, why should all of the hundreds of thousands — perhaps of millions — of electronica fans come to see YOU, and not someone else? For Simon Posford, the cerebrum major behind the London-based psytrance project known as Shpongle, it has usually involved a brilliant mix of jagged synths and sweeping world instruments; this time around, however, he brought the Shpongletron, a stage and light show guaranteed to cement his place as one of the best electronic acts to see today.

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