Show Reviews – Spinning Platters

Show Review: Re-TROS, Liars, and Flacid Mojo at The Novo (DTLA), 04-04-2024

I think the last time I saw a show in the LA Live complex in Downtown Los Angeles was when Steven Wilson was touring Hand.Cannot.Erase. It’s a surreal place. High end chain restaurants, shops, and live concert venues all pieced together in a way to showcase itself as a gathering center for food, art, and media, but really it just comes off as an attempt at a capitalist utopia. The Novo is the current iteration of what used to be Club Nokia, the more affordable venue in the complex, especially when compared to The Crypto Arena or the Staples Center. It was still Club Nokia when I saw Steven Wilson, Mindless Self Indulgence, Reel Big Fish, and a number of other bands back in the early 2010s. Nowadays, it is home primarily to hip-hop and pop artists, as a bartender shared with me, so it was going to be a very different night and a different crowd than usual as Re-TROS, Liars, and Flaccid Mojo took the place over.

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Show Review: Sleater-Kinney, Palehound, and Rachel Dispenza at The Belasco, 03-29-2024

It’s been a while since I got to see Sleater-Kinney. I was fortunate enough to score some tickets to the acclaimed and mostly sold-out return tour of No New Cities To Love, and let me tell you that it was a hell of an experience to watch the band back in action as if they hadn’t disappeared for ten years following 2005s The Woods. So, with great pleasure, I threw my camera bag over my shoulder and made my way to Downtown LA, The Belasco Theater, my concert home away from home to watch one of the coolest bands ever.

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Show Review: Sleater-Kinney, Palehound, Rachel Dispenza at The Regency, 3/28/24

There really are few events as glorious and cathartic as a Sleater-Kinney concert. I recently attended a Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band show, and that was close. (Oddly enough, I probably would’ve never paid to see The Boss if not for Sleater-Kinney covering “This Promised Land” in the early 00s). From my first show, when my boss at the time convinced me to go with him to see them on The Hot Rock tour in 1999, the power and dynamics of that show became a permanent part of my life. That’s when they became “my band,” and for the last 25 years, this band has been the primary thing that has helped me navigate my life. And just over 300 months later, here I am, 44 years old, seeing my favorite band again, and nothing could be better. Continue reading “Show Review: Sleater-Kinney, Palehound, Rachel Dispenza at The Regency, 3/28/24”

Show Review: Go Ahead and Die, Bodybox, Deep Within, Hyper Psychic at Boomtown Brewery (DTLA) 03-19-2024

It’s been quite some time since I’ve covered a show at a venue for the first time. I feel like I’ve been pretty much living at the Belasco, for example, so getting an address for a different venue is always a nice change of pace, especially when it’s somewhere I’ve never been. Boomtown Brewery has been kicking in DTLA north of the arts district for a while now, but they recently started a show booking partnership with The Knitting Factory, which hopefully will bear more fruit for future shows! So I left work half an hour early to brave the even rush hour traffic across town for an evening of hardcore metal music–shocking, I know–and some tasty beer.

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Show Review: UADA at Neck of the Woods, March 24, 2024

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @AlanHasPicks

You know what’s missing at Spinning Platters? Black Metal. There’s just a lack of content related to the most extreme subgenre of metal music.

There are even several bands considered influential to this genre, including Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Emperor, Satyricon and Gorgoroth. The most famous of these bands is definitely Mayhem, where members killed other members, committed suicide, and burned churches… ah, the good ole’ 1990’s!

While the vast majority of the subject matter here is geared more towards fans of Outside Lands than fans of Mayhem, Spinning Platters still employs a few brave souls who will immerse themselves in the mosh pits and get their eardrums pulverized, all in the name of reporting back about the glorious screaming vocals, remarkably incredible fast guitar riffs and blast-beat drumming, as well as maybe a count on the number of non-black clothing (HA!) and inverted crosses seen, and all typically without even having to stock up on corpse paint…

Fortunately for Neck of the Woods, black metal bands these days typically don’t burn down anything or commit murder anymore!

Continue reading “Show Review: UADA at Neck of the Woods, March 24, 2024”

Show Review: Mclusky, Suzie True, and Conan Neutron and the Secret Friends at The Echoplex, 03-04-2024

“This one’s for you Susan.”

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a show at the Echoplex. When I first moved to Los Angeles, it quickly became a favorite venue for a wide array of bands, and I covered a lot of fun gigs there. Somewhere along the line, I stopped making it to as many, and I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe I was just working too much, and I was too exhausted even to try, or maybe I just wasn’t seeing the bands that I wanted to see getting booked there. So what a hell of a time to go back to see one of my all-time favorites, Mclusky, tear the fucker apart!

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KMDFM celebrates 40 years of kickin’ ass in Atlanta with start of LET GO tour

With hands thrown in the air and fists slapping the sky, fans of all ages bobbed along, banging heads to the “ultra heavy beat” at the Masquerade in Atlanta on March 6, 2024.

KMFDM opened its 40th anniversary tour with the first track off the 2022 release, Hyëna.

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Show Review: K.Flay with Cam Kahin at The Independent, 3/27/24

We, the music nerds of Spinning Platters, love K.Flay (aka Kristine Flaherty). So much so that after I submitted Mono as one of my top 3 albums of 2023, she not only made the final top ten (as voted by all of us), but she won the whole damn thing! Despite all of this, I had only seen her perform twice: once opening for Imagine Dragons and once at a LoveLoud festival in Salt Lake City. So when I saw that she was going to be playing back-to-back shows at a tiny SF venue, I jumped at the chance to finally see K. Flay headline a show! Continue reading “Show Review: K.Flay with Cam Kahin at The Independent, 3/27/24”

Show Review: Jamila Woods with Madison McFerrin at August Hall, 2/4/24

(Photos by Dakin Hardwick)

I am a new fan of Jamila Woods, having just discovered her through Spinning Platters’ intense and wonderful Album of the Year process, and I’m so glad I did. Jamila Woods is an amazing writer, and her music fills the soul. On the stormiest Sunday California has seen in a long time, I trekked through the almost deserted streets of San Francisco in the hopes that music would take away the wet and soggy feelings I’d had all weekend. Continue reading “Show Review: Jamila Woods with Madison McFerrin at August Hall, 2/4/24”

SF Sketchfest Review: Bracing The Elements: Avatar The Last Airbender Podcast Live at The Great Star Theater, 1/28/24

There is something about the cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender, almost twenty years old now, that was always unusual. Aside from being coined the first American Anime, it was nothing like any other cartoon on Nickelodeon or any other station for that matter. Taking place in a completely fictional world made up of societies and lands corresponding to the four main elements: Earth, Fire, Air, and Water, the story was a continuous adventure full of growth that built to a huge climax at the end of three seasons. But the most startling aspect of this story, for something supposedly targeted at kids, was that it was rampant with extremely adult themes, such as war, genocide, loss, and conflict. But at no point was the plot relegated to hopelessness. There was an idea of balance woven into the fabric of the story’s DNA. Countering all the negative hardships the characters have to live through, there was a cornucopia of warm moments popping up and bursting in the episodes, full of love, hope, friendship, laughter, caring for your fellow person, and fighting for what is right. Continue reading “SF Sketchfest Review: Bracing The Elements: Avatar The Last Airbender Podcast Live at The Great Star Theater, 1/28/24”