Show Reviews – Page 37 – Spinning Platters

Photo Set: Phono del Sol Music Festival, 2015

Heartwatch at Phono del Sol — The festival’s darlings came in the form of Heartwatch. They really got the crowd dancing as opposed to lazing on their picnic blankets and set the tone for the rest of the day. Catch them at Outside Lands, coming up next month.

They say it takes a village when it comes to the care and well-being of a child. A playground is also a bonus. Props to the very talented and kind Yoshi Kato for helping with my precocious little daughter while I took moments, here and there, to capture photos of the fifth annual Phono del Sol Music and Food Festival.

Held at Potrero del Sol, known for its skate park and generally idyllic weather (compared to the rest of San Francisco), this afternoon to early evening jaunt featured an eclectic mix of bands and local food trucks. It’s a volunteer-driven affair, so the sound wasn’t the best. Still, that didn’t dampen the mood as many fans gathered, mingled, and danced under the sun this past Saturday afternoon.

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BottleRock Napa Valley 2015 Festival Journal, Day 3

I think Shakespeare might have been seeing into the future of BottleRock when he said “parting is such sweet sorrow.” True story: on the last day of the inaugural festival in 2013, I remember thinking that I was like a kid at summer camp; I wanted to just keep coming back, but I knew that if I showed up the next day, all my friends would be gone and it would just be a big, sad mess that would leave me emotionally scarred. Thankfully, though, after an amazing Day One and a lovely Day Two, I still had a whole final day to see, and this time, my bestie had come to join the fun. Continue reading “BottleRock Napa Valley 2015 Festival Journal, Day 3”

BottleRock Napa Valley 2015 Festival Journal, Day 2

After a smashingly successful day one, I couldn’t wait to see what BottleRock 2015 had in store for me on Day Two. I got a bit of a late start and arrived just in time for Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts. This is one of the things I love most about the typical BRNV lineup: excellent blasts from the past, and you get a chance to see them in a whole new way. (In BRNV years past I’ve been treated to Weezer, Heart, and the Spin Doctors, to name a few.) I overheard someone saying that they thought the Wildabouts were “very STP,” and I can’t say I entirely agree. Sure, it’s been quite a while since I heard much Stone Temple Pilots on the radio (much less even listened to the radio…), but I loved them, and so I remember enough. Weiland and his Wildabouts were fun to watch, sounded great, and Weiland definitely still has the chops, but I think the biggest similarity between the two groups is simply Scott Weiland himself (and perhaps that both fall into the genre of rock).

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BottleRock Napa Valley 2015 Festival Journal, Day 1

Ahhhh, BottleRock. It’s hands-down my favorite time of year. What could be better than waking up to the sounds of fantastic headliners sound-checking from my open bedroom window? (This year, specifically, it happened twice: once with Imagine Dragons, and again with No Doubt. Not bad. Not bad at all.) Anyway, besides the excellent wake-up call, it’s all mild May weather in my gorgeous hometown of Napa, full of the best food, wine, and beer you can find with fantastic bands. I’ve never missed a day of this festival’s three years (and counting), and hope I never have to. Here’s what you missed this year: Continue reading “BottleRock Napa Valley 2015 Festival Journal, Day 1”

Show Review: An Evening with Laibach at The Fillmore, 5/30/2015

Industrial music is best known for a few constants that keep it as resilient as it has been during its several-decade lifespan: machine-driven precision, a dramatic-but-highly-attentive sense of dress, and a sense of dark, churning menace which is never quite as brutal, nor direct as hardcore punk, but punishing all the same in its intensity. As time has passed and the technological world of music has shifted and changed, so, too, has the palate of instrumentation that industrial music uses to craft their tunes, as well as the method of presentation, but the attitude has always remained, allowing acts to return again and again to the stage, still maintaining legions of devoted fans. The Slovenian performance-art-cum-industrial-rock collective known as Laibach are no strangers to these phenomena. As members of a group that operates with a deep sense of groupthink and nihilism, rarely acknowledging individual members or allowing classic pieces to stay stagnant behind the technological trappings of yesteryear, their performances nonetheless bear the same unyielding, unflinching attitude that has kept their music so potent, and 35 years after their inception, they’re still as powerful as ever. Continue reading “Show Review: An Evening with Laibach at The Fillmore, 5/30/2015”

Photo Set: Highlights from BottleRock Napa, 2015

Robert Plant headlined Saturday night and played some of Led Zeppelin's greatest hits alongside some from his collaborations with Jimmy Page. — Robert Plant headlined Saturday night and played some of Led Zeppelin’s greatest hits alongside some from his collaborations with Jimmy Page.

The third annual BottleRock Napa festival was a blast and went smoothly…well, for the most part. The same elements that made the festival so appealing to attend, to begin with, including a generally laid-back, down-to-earth crowd, top-notch food from local high-end establishments, and reasonable lines, made the three-day event well worth the trip (as if there aren’t enough excuses to head to Napa already).

The biggest crowd pleasers were, unsurprisingly, Robert Plant, Snoop Dogg, and No Doubt who had massive crowds singing along to every word of familiar hits from their expansive catalogues. The unexpected highlight came in the form of Silent Disco, a service that provides wireless headphones that stream a band or DJs music. The silence enhances the energy within the crowd and it created a unique, transcendent experience for the participants. Each night people could be found dancing blissfully to sounds only they could hear.

Enough about my experience, here are the photos you want to see.

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SXSW 2015: Cool? Yeah, Cool

Charles Bradley Shows us How it's Done — Charles Bradley Shows us How it’s Done

Chris Farley is my spirit animal. Not in a tears of a clown kind-of-way, or a Patrick Swayze dance-off kind-of-way. But in the way where I would be the perfect sidekick to Chris in “The Chris Farley Show”. I’d agree with him and all his qualifiers – yes, when Sir Paul McCartney was in the Beatles, that was definitely “cool.” I could have taken the show on the road with Chris, maybe even done some local interviews:

“Remember that time that you played Treasure Island. And it was, like, really cold?”

“Remember that time you brought that guy on stage to rap ‘Protect Yo Neck? Yeah. That was cool”. Continue reading “SXSW 2015: Cool? Yeah, Cool”

Show Review: Two Nights with Sleater-Kinney at The Masonic, 5/2/15-5/3/15

The last time Sleater-Kinney played a show in San Francisco, it was a two-night stand at the Great American Music Hall that ran May 2nd and 3rd, 2006. Exactly nine years to the day, they returned to San Francisco, only instead of returning to that intimate, 600-seat club, they played nine blocks away at the newly-restored Masonic Theater. The fact that they put so much care and thought into the tour routing meant that this was going to be a special event; the fact that these shows both sold out in milliseconds proved that San Francisco cared just as much about their return as the band does.

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Show Review: TV On The Radio, Nostalghia at The Fox Theater – Oakland, 3/31/15

TV On The Radio are at an interesting point in their career. The band’s age is such that they are no longer actively buzzed about, yet they don’t stay far enough removed from the music scene to ever be experiencing a “comeback.” A lot of bands can become a little lazy at this point, opting to simply release likable records that don’t really push any boundaries, and serve just as an excuse to tour; TV On The Radio, however, simply have too deep of an imagination to go that direction. As 2014’s Seeds will go down as one of the finest records of their career, the set they played at Oakland’s Fox Theater (their first proper headlining show around here since its release) may go down in history as their finest performance in the Bay Area.
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Show Review: “Gotta Dance!” Great Moments of Dance in Film

On Saturday night, the San Francisco Symphony hosted Gotta Dance!: Great Moments of Dance in Film at Davies Symphony Hall. If the first thing you pictured when hearing this title was Gene Kelly dancing under the giant orchestrated set of Broadway lights or the long, flowing white dress of Cyd Charisse (or the flashy green dress, for that matter), then this was absolutely the show for you. But what do I know? Maybe you were there!

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