Spinning Platters Interview: David Owen, Janet Varney, and Cole Stratton: Founders of SF Sketchfest

Cole Stratton, Janet Varney, David Owen. Not Pictured: Burritos (Photo By: Jakub Moser)

In 2002, three Bay Area comics organized a festival featuring some of their favorite local sketch groups. They dubbed it Sketchfest, and it was a success. The next year, comedy legend Fred Willard joined the event, and every year subsequent year, the event became bigger and bigger. This year’s festival has grown to 2 1/2 weeks long, and features the biggest line up yet, featuring the likes of Eddie Izzard, Amy Poehler, Wil Wheaton, Barry Bostwick, and scores of other people so famous that even your grandparents know who they are. (You may need to ask your grandparents who Barry Bostwick is)

SpinningPlatters had the opportunity to chat with founders David Owen, Janet Varney, and Cole Stratton about the evolution of the festival, the struggles of putting it on every year, where to grab a burrito, and a whole ton of hypothetical situations that were good fun to ask. Be sure to go to SFSketchfest.com to check out the line-up and purchase tickets.

Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: David Owen, Janet Varney, and Cole Stratton: Founders of SF Sketchfest”

Who Needs New Music? My top albums of 1998!

I miss Netscape sometimes...

“What’s wrong Chazzy Black, you look sad?”

“I don’t know Linux, I know we have all this great music that came out in 2011 (Spinning Platters Top Ten Albums of 2011), but I’m just not happy.  I like dreamy guitars, sad depressing themes, and booty shaking grooves and all that, but I’m just not sure it means anything anymore.  All these albums are derivative…”

“Chazzy Black you’re the only person I know that can take a wonderful thing like the music of 2011 and turn it into a problem.”

“Isn’t there anyone that can tell me what music is all about?!

“Sure Chazzy Black I can tell you what music is all about”

“Time Machine Please…”

“And there was my favorite music of 1998…”

Continue reading “Who Needs New Music? My top albums of 1998!”

Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 1/5/12-1/11/12

Opening for Grass Widow at Uptown

It’s the first “weekly show list” of the year, and this is another wonderful and eclectic week for fans of music in the bay area!

Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 1/5/12-1/11/12”

Show Review: Portlandia the Tour with Thao & Mirah at Mezzanine, 12/30/11

Carrie Brownstein might be the hardest working person in show business. Not only has she, within about a year, assembled one of the most explosive and critically acclaimed new bands in rock music, she is the star of the highest rated program on IFC, the sketch comedy series “Portlandia.” Now she’s managed to squeeze some time out of her busy schedule to piece together a Portlandia stage show, alongside her costar on the program, Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen. All of this getting done, of course, before they unleash a new season of Portlandia. And then, her band Wild Flag will be launching a big Spring tour; and then, she will probably write two or three books, make a movie, and cure cancer all before June.

Continue reading “Show Review: Portlandia the Tour with Thao & Mirah at Mezzanine, 12/30/11”

Spinning Platters Presents The Official List of the Top 10 Albums of 2011

Finished 11th, but I really like it.

 While other magazines, blogs and newspapers release their Best Albums of the Year super early, obviously before they’ve even heard some of the albums on their list, we wait until the last possible minute, sharing dozens of nominations with each other while participating in an overly complicated voting process that leads to a Top 10 that looks completely different from anyone else’s. It’s rewarding and fun, and we always find room for small albums that usually get ignored. One person’s favorite gets a real chance to get heard in our system as it becomes the favorite of many. So know, dear reader, that the albums you’re about to see listed have passed a multi-level test of quality. And now, I end my introduction by asking you to click the more tag and see our Official List of the Top 10 Albums of 2011.

Continue reading “Spinning Platters Presents The Official List of the Top 10 Albums of 2011”

The Spinning Platters Guide to the Best Films of 2011

Welcome to our list of the best films of 2011! I’m Jason LeRoy, the film editor of this fine website, and I’ll be your guide to the most excellent cinema this year had to offer. I have to say, this is a pretty exciting moment for me. While I’ve been writing about film in one form or another since 1995, 2011 is the first year I’ve managed to see just about everything. It is with no small amount of consideration (or afternoons and evenings spent slumped over in theaters around town) that I’ve compiled this list. So look after the jump for my top 10 films of the year, some honorable mentions, and a handful of staff-pick rebuttals for Best Film of 2011. And especially since this year was uncommonly lacking in unifying critical favorites, please leave your own picks in the comments below.

Continue reading “The Spinning Platters Guide to the Best Films of 2011”

Spinning Platters Picks Six: Ways To Spend New Year’s Eve In The Bay Area

For some silly reason, we’ve all decided that we need to spend the change over of the year in “party” mode. We count down til midnight, then pick somebody to make out with when the clock strikes 12. Well, I’m a firm believer in any excuse to go to a show, as well as any excuse to make out with somebody, so here’s a list of the best six shows to spend your New Year’s Eve with.

Continue reading “Spinning Platters Picks Six: Ways To Spend New Year’s Eve In The Bay Area”

Show Review: Matthew Sweet at Yoshi’s – SF, 12/27/11

Comedian Greg Behrendt does a bit about the “grown up rock show.” A show where everyone is over 25, the band only plays hits, and the show is over in time for you to get home and watch Law & Order. No openers, no new material. It seems that the trend that’s been brewing for the last 5 years or so of playing a classic album front to back was inspired by this concept. The Matthew Sweet show at Yoshi’s, featuring Girlfriend in it’s entirety, definitely felt like this. There were few people in the crowd under the age of 30. Everyone showed up on time, a show that started at 8 PM on the nose, and ended shortly after 9:30. And it was beautiful.

Continue reading “Show Review: Matthew Sweet at Yoshi’s — SF, 12/27/11”

Show Review: Infected Mushroom with Dyloot, Dissølv and Liam Shy at the Fillmore, 12/23/2011

Amit Duvdevani conducts the crowd at the Fillmore
Amit Duvdevani conducts the crowd at the Fillmore

When you’re an internationally-successful musical act that bends and shapes a genre as complex and intricate as psytrance, how do you keep your work from becoming stagnant, in this ever-shifting world of electronic music with its seemingly endless count of subgenres? You’ve got a lot of competition in the field as 2011 draws to a close. There are the arena-filling behemoths like Tiësto and deadmau5, whose light and projection show rivals that of a second-world country’s first celebration of independence. There are the up-and-coming acts, who manage to pack a dancefloor with just a simple mixer and/or MIDI pad and a laptop chock full of cutting edge software and samples. To break the mold of the constant onslaught of knob twiddlers and fader pushers, it becomes necessary to add a human element and violently active energy to your stage show. It therefore should come as no surprise that Israeli psytrance heavyweights Infected Mushroom decided to move out from behind the keyboards and up to the front of the stage a few years back, and their November appearance at the Fillmore proved that their dynamite performance energy hasn’t dwindled in the slightest — if anything, it’s gotten even wilder than before.

Continue reading “Show Review: Infected Mushroom with Dyloot, Dissølv and Liam Shy at the Fillmore, 12/23/2011”

Film Reviews: “War Horse” / “The Adventures of Tintin”

Sarah Jessica Parker and Jeremy Irvine in WAR HORSE

War Horse

starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, Tom Hiddleston, David Kross, David Thewlis

written by: Lee Hall and Richard Curtis

directed by: Steven Spielberg

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of war violence.

The Adventures of Tintin

starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost

written by: Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish

directed by: Steven Spielberg

MPAA: Rated PG for adventure action violence, some drunkenness and brief smoking.

Continue reading “Film Reviews: “War Horse” / “The Adventures of Tintin””