Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
With FYF going on down in LA this weekend, we’re getting a decent spillover of excellent shows up here in the Bay Area. Though not quite at Fauxchella levels, it’s nice to have a Faux Your Festival going on right now. And since your regular host for this column, Dakin Hardwick, will be enjoying himself at the real thing, I’ll be guiding you through your options for our fake version. Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 8/30/12 – 9/5/12”
Waiting in line for the doors to open at Bottom of the Hill last night I knew it would be a nostalgic evening. Ten years ago I came to the same place, early and excited, to find a printed paper sign saying that Desaparacidos would not be performing, that instead Conor Oberst would be performing a solo acoustic show. That show was great, though it was hindered by the fact that Conor Oberst had played the same show as Bright Eyes earlier that year at Great American Music Hall and that anyone going to see Desaparecidos at Bottom of the Hill should have been expecting a night of feverish music and aggression not intense sadness and introspection. As I walked inside I just hoped my dreams of ten years ago would not be destroyed. Continue reading “Show Review: Desaparecidos with The Velvet Teen at Bottom of the Hill, 8/28/12”
starring: Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke
written by: Nick Cave
directed by: John Hillcoat
MPAA: Rated R for strong bloody violence, language and some sexuality/nudity
It’s time for another beautiful week of rock & roll! LA’s FYF Fest is bringing a bunch of really special gigs to SF, starting this week Desaparecido’s first ever show in SF! It’s going to be a good Late Summer.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 8/23/12 — 8/29/12”
My baby was stolen. Like the Lindbergh baby in the night* my beautiful 15 year old silver Honda CRV was removed from her place on the streets by some unnamed hooligan. We had many memories, me and that car. I learned to drive with her, I took up her up and down the coast of California, and I’m pretty sure I lost my virginity in that car (sorry Mom and Dad! Teenagers ya know?) (Also lets just gloss over the “pretty sure” portion of that sentence). So when I discovered on Sunday she was gone, it was with great sadness that I started my last day of Outside Lands. And then! If that wasn’t enough I was forced to take the N all the way from the Mission to Golden Gate Park! Yuck! (No seriously, yuck, I was so close to people that I almost lost my Muni virginity. Ya know what I’m saying!? Ok.) Silver beauty, it goes without saying, I miss you desperately.
I wandered around the park grumpy, glaring at every faux Ray-Ban, neon wearing fiend. “You don’t know my pain, neon wearing fiend!” I was secretly yelling. I was nobody’s friend.
Continue reading “Outside Lands Diary, Sunday, August 12th, 2012: Jack in the Woods”
San Francisco’s annual Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival is always tasked with the enormous duty of being the “other” huge festival of California, and the designation is both a blessing and a curse. On the low end, it has to try and come up with acts that Coachella somehow didn’t have the foresight to book ages earlier, or at leasts acts that will stand up as decent competition, and with tickets to the Indio festival now going onsale a year in advance, they’ve got to get their contenders up and available as soon as possible — usually right before Coachella kicks off. On the high end, the climate is, on the whole, much more pleasant, the acts tend to stick to more large crowd-pleasers and new discoveries, and the fine folks putting on Outside Lands spend many months listening to the irritations and complaints about Coachella to use as a salvo against their festival’s possible shortcomings. The result is that by Sunday afternoon, most of the 65,000+ fans that came out to Golden Gate Park got their fairer shares of mindblowing performances and raucous partying behind them, and were ready for the big finish that would wind down the end of the chilly August weekend.
Continue reading “Show Review: San Francisco’s 2012 Outside Lands Festival, Day 3”
I am amazed by the amount of the amount of dust that I’m still finding in places after Outside Lands this year… Yes, it was good fun, but it’s time to enjoy some music indoors, over concrete. And, well, we’ve got a wonderful week of excellent music on our docket.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 8/16/12 – 8/22/12”
starring: Jordin Sparks, Carmen Ejogo, Tika Sumpter, Whitney Houston, Mike Epps, Derek Luke, Omari Hardwick
written by: Mara Brock Akil
directed by: Salim Akil
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content involving domestic abuse and drug material, and for some violence, language and smoking
Additional contributions to this article by Dakin Hardwick. All photos by Jonathan Pirro except where noted.
Saturday dawns with nary a clue that the fog and mist are clearing, and the massive greenery of Golden Gate Park continues to beckon to those who would walk onto its already-heavily-trodden surface, tickets in hand and heads held high. The second day of the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival is upon us, and like many of the other Saturdays of the annual San Francisco festival, it’s filled with some of the biggest, wildest acts, especially those that came to close the night. While the first signs of exhaustion are beginning to set in, those alert enough to pry themselves from slumber and scurry into the park at the hour of 11:00am were greeted by yet more feverishly addictive bursts of musical creativity. After the desiderata of strong coffee and a host of breakfast options that lay lazily along the fields, the several-thousand-strong mass began its trek from side to side, taking in another chapter of the chilly yet invigorating musical thunderstorm within.
Continue reading “Show Review: San Francisco’s 2012 Outside Lands Festival, Day 2”
Additional contributions to this article by Dakin Hardwick. All photos by Jonathan Pirro except where noted.
Summer is always slow and somewhat sporadic to come to the Bay Area, and with it comes a mostly dry spell of live music, with many large groups heading overseas for massive festivals and international tours, while California and the rest of the country relax and find other ways to enjoy themselves in whatever sun decides to creep over the land. The city of San Francisco is even more prone to aberrant weather and happenings, especially since right in the middle of August is the colossal technicolor monstrosity that is the annual Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival. In 2012, the festival enters its fifth year of existence, and a crowd of 65,000 fans plowed into the historic Golden Gate Park each day of the surprisingly chilly and foggy weekend, which was relatively unexpected based on the forecasts from earlier in the week. However, with tickets sold out and a number of huge bands set to take the 4 stages across the three-day weekend, even dreary weather couldn’t dull the enthusiasm of the sprawling, voracious crowd that clambered into the park, and raised voices, fists, and flags in unison for over 10 hours of music each day.
Continue reading “Show Review: San Francisco’s 2012 Outside Lands Festival, Day 1”