Spinning Platters – Page 235 – Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds

10 Quick Questions with Dawson Ludwig: Marketing Director for Noise Pop

The only time a Dave Matthews Band picture will be featured in a Noise Pop Preview

Noise Pop is having it’s 20th birthday this year, and it’s bigger than ever! What started out as a small, one night mini-festival at The Kennel Club (now The Independent), has evolved into a week long event that takes over nearly every venue in San Francisco. In addition, it’s organizers have also created Treasure Island Music Festival (aka The Best Music Fest in America in my opinion) and opened do415, a site to help music fans find shows. SpinningPlatters got the opportunity to talk with Noise Pop’s Marketing Director, Dawson Ludwig, to learn a bit about this year’s festival and his own evolution as a music listener.

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Album Review: The Hot Toddies – Bottoms Up EP

Bottoms Up

In a previous life I was a KSCU DJ, and we’d received an advance of this EP, which had three of the five tracks. So the good news is I really know some of these songs. The bad news is that it still isn’t a full-length.

For those of you just joining us, the Hot Toddies are an Oakland band that continues the Bay Area’s history of girl group garage indie rock. I’ve been fortunate to see bands such as the Kirby Grips, Minipop, Brilliant Colors, She Mob, Run for Cover Lovers, the Reaction, Apogee Sound Club, Persephone’s Bees, … I’m just showing off now. That’s what people in their 30s do when speaking to people in their 20s. If I’m going to be older than you, I might as well be pretentious about it. Continue reading “Album Review: The Hot Toddies — Bottoms Up EP”

Highlights from SF Music Hack Day, 2013

This was the 4th time Music Hack Day visited San Francisco. — Music Hack Day visited San Francisco for the 4th time since 2009.

This past weekend, close to 200 music tech enthusiasts packed the lofty office space of TokBox, in the SOMA district, to build the future of music apps at SF Music Hack Day.

Participants were given 24 hours and 19 different APIs to pick and choose from including the likes of Mashery, Spotify, Rdio, Twilio, and Gracenote (who just opened their APIs and SDKs to developers for the very first time on Saturday, the 16th).

The results came in the form of some truly inspiring hacks that were creative, entertaining, and might even change the future musical landscape for the better. While covering all 60 demos that were slotted into 2-minute time frames would be exhausting and, ultimately, counterproductive, I do recommend you check out all of the project proposals on the Hacker League page.

In the meantime, here are 6 hacks I enjoyed for their ingenuity, usefulness, or both.

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Film Review: Safe Haven

Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough frolic in SAFE HAVEN

starring: Julianne Hough, Josh Duhamel, David Lyons, Cobie Smulders

screenplay: Leslie Bohem and Dana Stevens

directed by: Lasse Hallström

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving threatening behavior, and for violence and sexuality.

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Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 2/14/13-2/20/13

We’ve got a really fun week for shows! Not only do you have some fine Valentine’s Day options, but you also still have two more days to enter our Hives Prize Pack contest before they play in San Jose with Pink!

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SF Sketchfest Review: SEX aka Weiners and Boobs at Marine’s Memorial Theater, 2/8/13

The year was 1998. The State, MTV’s highly influential sketch comedy show had just gotten the axe. Three cast members: Joe Lo Truglio, Michael Showalter, and David Wain were asked to if they had a play they could do for a theater festival in New York. They were given a week to write, cast, and rehearse it. The name came first: SEX aka Weiners and Boobs. Because if you are going to title something, that’s about as good as a title can get. Fast forward 15 years, and the good people of Sketchfest managed to put together nearly all of the original cast for an encore performance of this fine piece of theater.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert on Beautiful Creatures [VIDEO]

Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert in BEAUTIFUL CREATURES

On paper, Beautiful Creatures may look like just another film adaptation of a bestselling YA series about a supernatural romance. Alden Ehrenreich stars as Ethan, a restless high schooler in podunk Gatlin, South Carolina, who yearns to break free from the oppressive small-mindedness and cultural atrophy of his hometown. Ethan is charming enough to seem like a standard-issue popular guy, but in private his tastes lean toward the cerebral (he is a voracious reader of banned books) and he dreams of the day he’ll leave Gatlin for good. Ethan’s thirst for something different is what attracts him to new girl Lena (Alice Englert), the quiet and witchy-looking descendent of one of Gatlin’s most notorious families. Lena is immediately targeted as a dangerous freak by the town’s many gossipy Bible-thumpers, and while Ethan rushes to defend her from their attacks, it turns out that Lena does present a very real threat: she comes from a family of Casters (read: Southern witches), and on her rapidly-approaching 16th birthday, she will be “claimed” for either good or evil – with potentially catastrophic consequences.

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SF Sketchfest Review: Garfunkel & Oates, Dragon Boy Suede at Rickshaw Stop, 2/10/13

Garfunkel & Oates have played Sketchfest twice before. In 2011, they were part of Chris Hardwick’s (No Relation) Music Night as one of several acts performing. In 2012, they opened for the great Reggie Watts at Mezzanine. Tonight, however, we got to experience them play their own headlining set. It meant that every single person in the crowd was their just for G & O. And, considering this show sold out several weeks in advance, it only proved that the good folks of San Francisco were quite thirsty to see these wonderful woman play a full set.

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Sketchfest Review: The Doug Benson Movie Interruptions: Twilight at the Castro Theatre, 2/9/2013

Can you think of any way to spend a Saturday afternoon that’s more fun than in a crowded Castro Theatre with everyone’s favorite stoner and funny man Doug Benson making snide and silly comments over some of pop culture’s most fun (and fun to trash) films? I couldn’t either. Announce that, among films like Anaconda, Catwoman, and The Notebook, he planned to also poke fun at the hilariously and fabulously terrible Twilight, and I was putting my shoes on. Throw in that he was bringing in big comedy guns Greg Behrendt, Patton Oswalt, Michael Ian Black, and Zach Galifianakis, and I’m the first one to arrive. (Well, not really…it’s really hard to find parking in the Castro. I actually missed the introduction and had to sit on the floor. But I digress.) Continue reading “Sketchfest Review: The Doug Benson Movie Interruptions: Twilight at the Castro Theatre, 2/9/2013”

Show Review: fun., Andrew McMahon at The Fox Theater – Oakland, 2/7/13

This would be my fourth time seeing fun. within the last twelve months. The first time was in the parking lot of a record store in Austin, TX. That show only featured the core of the band: vocalist Nate Reuss, keyboardist Andrew Dost and guitar player Jack Antonoff. It was 2 o clock in the afternoon in the baking hot sun, and the crowd was simply mad for them. I knew from that moment that this band had the right balance of sincerity and showmanship to make it big. It was a rare moment when I wanted to get to see a band play the big rooms. Shortly after this show, “We Are Young” became a monsterous hit, and their full band, electric club tour that was booked at tiny clubs turned into the hottest ticket in town. Tonight, a short 11 months after that first time in the record store parking lot, I got to see this band do the “full big room” show. And, by golly, the succeeded at it.

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