January 22, 2018. Slayer announced their “farewell” tour. After over 35 years of yelling “Die By the Sword”, singer and bass player Tom Araya wants to scream no more. As much as the fans would want Slayer to keep performing forever, Tom and the only other original member, guitar player Kerry King, deserve to go out on top and begin collecting their 401k. Gary Holt, the 2nd guitar player, will always have his primary band Exodus, and certainly bands will be lining up for drummer Paul Bostaph’s services once he becomes available again. In the meanwhile, though, according to a press release issued the morning after The. Final. U.S. Slayer. Show., this “farewell” tour still has another year to go!
It’s been a good bit of time since I’ve made it out to a show at one of my favorite venues in Los Angeles: Echoplex. While the lightning has never been the greatest for photography, the atmosphere and sound mixes have always made up for it and I’ve consistently had the most fun at pretty much every show I’ve seen behind their doors. Though, I’ll definitely admit that it’s sometimes hard to decipher their door times from show starting times and in this case I misread and ended up arriving FAR earlier than I ever have, but that’s just me griping. Even being in line about an hour and a half before opening couldn’t wreck my spirits. I was about to thrust myself into the noisiest room in Los Angeles. I was about to see Boris and the Melvins.
Ate a lot of food. Got a lot of steps. But it was mostly Janet Jackson.
All photos by Dakin Hardwick unless otherwise noted
Outside Lands reached its 11th birthday this year. I’ve been to ten of those eleven installments. This year, the folks booking the festival decided it was time to take some risks… They added an extra stage for acoustic sets and magic, called “Cocktail Magic.” They added a whole pot awareness area (not that folks at a music festival need to be *more* aware of weed). Continue reading “Outside Lands 2018: 27 Instant Gig Reviews”
Cross this off my bucket list: I’ve loved Peter Cetera for as long as I can remember.
Like many children of the 80s, I still harbor a strong sentimental attachment to some of the tunes that might make others groan. Before I was old enough to start developing musical tastes of my own, my mom raised me on a steady diet of light rock, less talk. (No, you just sang the KOIT jingle in your head!) I think my personal trifecta from those days is (in no particular order): Billy Joel, Lionel Richie (with The Commodores and solo), and Peter Cetera (with Chicago but especially solo). At least for me, there is something about the music I loved as a kid that can have the power to invoke a true sense of joy that can be hard to find anywhere else.
Last month, my mom won a pair of tickets to see REO Speedwagon and Chicago, and she asked me to go with her. I thought it would be a blast, but I admit I was disappointed at the prospect of seeing Chicago sans Cetera. Between sets, I decided I should look to see if he was touring on his own. Much to my delight, not only was he currently touring, but I found tickets that were a mere two weeks away, in San Jose. Before I could buy them, though, Chicago took the stage, and I put my phone away to enjoy what turned out to be a truly fantastic performance.
The next day, I returned to my ticketing site of choice to buy tickets, and discovered I’d overlooked a second date the night before: this one was a month away, rather than two weeks, and I’d have to schlep out to the Sacramento area in the dead of the summer, but instead of just being Cetera solo, it also boasted Richard Marx on the bill. Though this is an artist my mother enjoys as much as I do, he wasn’t an heirloom: Richard Marx is an artist I learned to love all on my own, from the late 80s on. I bought tickets in a matter of moments and then started counting down the days until I could get myself out to Thunder Valley Casino on Friday the 13th (of July). Continue reading “Show Review: Peter Cetera with Richard Marx at Thunder Valley Casino Amphitheatre, 7/13/18”
Amelia Meath & Nick Sanborn. All photos by Dakin Hardwick.
At first glance, the pairing of jazz experimentalist Kamasi Washington and electro-pop hitmakers Sylvan Esso seemed like a really odd mix. However, when Washington and his band took the stage, it didn’t take long for the audience to warm up to his impressive brand of hard, heavy, funk and hip hop infused jazz. Before the first song was over, a significant percentage of the audience was up and dancing. Hard. Continue reading “Show Review: Sylvan Esso, Kamasi Washington at The Greek Theater — UC Berkeley, 7/12/18”
Cafe du Nord has been back for about a year, and I still hadn’t been to a show there. So, I played a little bit of show roulette. I decided to check out something, anything, just to see what the space has become. Lucky for me, Boston’s Bent Knee was playing the night I decided to drop in. A band I’ve been meaning to check out, too! So, my night has been confirmed. Continue reading “Show Review: Bent Knee, Gatherers at Cafe du Nord, 6/23/18”
Ernie Halter (L) and Tony Lucca (R) at Neck of the Woods
Ernie Halter and Tony Lucca are “brothers from other mothers” who have “toured a shit-ton together over the years.” While Lucca is originally from Pontiac, Michigan, he and Halter (a native of SoCal) both lived in the LA area for years. Now, however, they have both moved to Nashville, where they’re close enough to babysit each other’s kids when the need arises. This, while great for their families, is not so great for me, as it means I get to see much less of them than when they were a mere 6-hour drive and toured California much more frequently. They recently graced the upstairs stage at Neck of the Woods on Thursday, 5/17, and because it had already been over a year since the last time I’d been able to catch Lucca in my actual neck of the woods, I got there with my proverbial bells on. Continue reading “Show Review: Tony Lucca and Ernie Halter at Neck of the Woods, 5/17/18”
Hardcore, Anarcho, Crust, Street, Pop: Five ways to describe various aspects of punk rock music — and that’s just five — of which I’ve happily run around in circle pits, been pressed against sweaty beer spilling individuals, and genuinely rocked my head off to in my life thus far.
For myself and a great number of friends who grew up in the ‘90s, punk provided a sense of community in a rural hippie town that was otherwise obsessed with reggae and country music — figure that out — where you could go 6 miles north where horses have the right of way or 10 miles south where meth seems to be lurking around every corner. It gave us an outlet for our anger and disillusionment in our supposedly sleepy little town in the Lost Coast. It should come as no surprise that by high school I was listening to heavy doses of Subhumans, Leftover Crack, Bad Religion, and Crass.
It often feels like a number of artists these days are playing up the waves of nostalgia for their music. So many bands that have been laying dormant have been coming out of the woodwork with reunion tours, new albums, and renewed activity, enough so that my lovely editor had made mention in passing to me that most of the bands at festivals were made up of 50 year olds. Personally, I don’t really care. I like music, and if a band I like gets back together or does something new, I’m all for it. So when I first heard that Peter Hook had formed his own band in 2008 and started playing Joy Division songs I was pretty much all for it. I love Joy Division. I lamented that Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu’s live Joy Division cover shows were so far out of reach and further lamented missing out on Hook’s shows, but it’s looking like 2018 is just starting to turn into MY year for concerts!Continue reading “Show Review: Peter Hook and the Light, El Ten Eleven at The Wiltern 5/18/18”
Steven Wilson is easily one of the most prolific recording artists of the last couple of decades. At the same time he was the main creative force behind Porcupine Tree, he also managed a number of side projects like Blackfield, No-Man, and Storm Corrosion, as well as remixing numerous classics by Yes, King Crimson, XTC, and others. After Porcupine Tree was put on an indefinite hiatus—there is still yet to be any official “end” of the band—Wilson’s solo career has flourished even further, defying genre expectations of the “progressive rock” scene in favor of creating honest artistic expression. His latest work, To The Bone, continues to push forward towards the art of “pop” even further than his last release, while still maintaining a melancholic edge that has been a theme of his work for quite some time. The North American leg of the To The Bone tour is coming to an end and I caught his Los Angeles performance at the historic Wiltern in Korea Town.
