Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
Your stare was holding
Ripped jeans, skin was showing
Hot night, wind was blowing
Where you think you’re going, baby?
Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy
But here’s my number, so call me maybe
It’s hard to look right, at you baby
But here’s my number, so call me maybe
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 12/13/12-12/19/12”
Hipster crooner, How to Dress Well, returned to San Francisco, bringing his dueling mics and perfect pitched falsetto to the Rickshaw Stop on a rainy Wednesday night. Despite the drizzly weather, hundreds of people packed the Rickshaw to hear the Chicago native sing his way through an hour long set of experimental R&B pulled from this year’s exceptional Total Loss as well as 2010’s Love Remains.
Continue reading “Show Review: How To Dress Well, Seatraffic, Beacon at Rickshaw Stop, 12/5/12”
Live 105 has managed to put together, once again, a fantastic line up for their annual holiday spectacular. So much so, that they had to split it into two days. One day was a bit more “new wave” oriented, and another day was purely guitar driven. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to check out the first night, the “guitar” night. It was, surprisingly, one of the most interesting and diverse arena rock shows I’ve ever been to, filed with a wide array of guitar music, from acoustic folk to earnest, working class punk, all the way to classic blues rock. I don’t know how they are going to one up this one:
Continue reading “Show Review: Live 105’s Not So Silent Night at Oracle Arena, 12/7/12”
I know that December tends to be a time to purchase gifts for friends and family members. But Shopping kind of sucks. Instead, go to a show?
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 12/6/12-12/12/12”
Deep Sea Diver is the current project from Jessica Dobson, who was first introduced to me via Beck. She was the guitar player on the Modern Guilt Tour, which may have been the last time I felt Beck truly enjoyed playing music. She had some pretty huge shows to fill in that band, and she did filled them quite nicely. In the five years since I last saw her play with Beck, she joined The Shins and also had been recording songs that she wrote as this project. Earlier this year, she put out an excellent record called History Speaks, which as an amazing full length that was well worth the half a decade wait it took for it to come out. I was quite excited to see how she managed to pull it if live on the cold Tuesday night.
As November rains its way into December, the Bay Area does its part in the War on Christmas with the onset of our annual secular holiday concert season. Relive that scene in My So-Called Life where Rayanne went flyering drunk in the school parking lot when Toad the Wet Sprocket play not one but two full-length album shows. And also: THE BOSS. All this and more after the jump.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 11/29/12-12/5/12”
They said it couldn’t be done: a movie version of Yann Martel’s bestselling novel Life of Pi, an intensely visual parable that consists almost entirely of a teenaged Indian boy named Pi lost at sea on a tiny rowboat with a wild tiger as his only companion? Bah, said some. Blergh, exclaimed others. Bloop, said NeNe Leakes. But clearly the naysayers hadn’t considered the possibility that Ang Lee, the Oscar-winning 58-year-old director of such contemporary classics as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain, would consider taking the helm. But take it he did, choosing the spiritual allegory as his follow-up to the modestly received Taking Woodstock.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: Ang Lee on “Life of Pi””
As a human being, expanded your horizons is vital to ones’ own well being. Sometimes you need to jump into something completely blind. Sometimes, you just need to experience music that’s outside of your comfort zone. These experiences are vital to human life. That need is what brought me to La Peña Cultural Center on this drizzly November Thanksgiving Eve. I went into this show knowing one thing: Ana Tijoux is a Chilean born rapper that had a song in an episode of Breaking Bad. And that’s all I needed to know.
Continue reading “Show Review: An Evening With Ana Tijoux at La Peña Cultural Center, 11/21/12”
Did you really think I’d live you hanging on Thanksgiving day? Of course not… If Henry Rollins is working on Thanksgiving, then I am, too!
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 11/22/12-11/28/12”
Right at the beginning of the new millennium, sudden bursts of musical creativity formed a genre-bending confluence as post-rock, alternative, and indie rock collided together, and a wave of bands sprung forth, each carving out its own unique path as the new century was brightly birthed. New terms such as “post-hardcore”, a modern definition of “emo”, and even heavier concoctions such as “metalcore” came clawing their way into existence, each with a collection of bands that took these sounds and made them their own. In the few short years that we transitioned into a new century, groups rose and fell, and new beings were born from their ashes. Ten years later, two of these acts found themselves on the road together, and fans that had their music playing on CD-changer stereos and the first waves of MP3 players flocked to catch their heroes continuing their journey, ten years later: the Omaha indie quartet known as Cursive, and the groovy, funkily-experimental Seattle five-piece called Minus The Bear.