Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
This is a really full week. There are multiple nights where I am trying really hard to figure out how to be in two places at once… Has anyone invented an easy way to clone oneself?
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 6/17/10-6/23/10”
The 34th annual Frameline LGBT Film Festival, which remains the largest of its kind in the world, will take place in San Francisco from June 17-27. Packed into those eleven days will be hundreds of narrative films, documentaries, and shorts covering nearly every conceivable angle of the LGBT experience from just about every corner of the globe. After the jump, Spinning Platters helps you narrow it all down by picking three films from each of four main categories.
We speak of SXSW a lot on this site, only because it truly is the best musical bargain out there. You travel from venue to venue seeing bands that you know & love in intimate settings, and you also get to uncover greatness. Sometimes, though, you can get so caught up in the magic of the experience overall, that you may find that the band you learned to love so much in Austin under Shiner-induced ear goggles, isn’t so dreamy in the foggy splendor of San Francisco. Woods were that band for me in Austin, and I was kind of worried that they wouldn’t do it for me here. I’ve started accumulating some of their recordings, and although they are good, they just seem so different from what I remember. But, on this hotter than normal June evening, I forced myself out of my apartment, where I was enjoying lemonade under the fan with my cat (she didn’t get any lemonade, but I did put her tuna on fridge for a bit before serving her dinner. She quite liked that), and forced myself over to Slim’s.
Continue reading “Show Review: Woods, Kurt Vile, The Art Museums at Slim’s, 6/11/10”
Summer is starting to kick in to gear, and the shows are starting to push in to high gear… Keep an eye on the space so you can get a better idea as to which shows you should be going to, and which shows will be super-boring loads of crap.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 6/10/10-6/16/10”
Last night, supermodel/singer/rock-n-roll wife Karen Elson kicked off the opening night of her very first tour with a sold-out concert at Café Du Nord. When I learned that the show was sold out, I was intrigued. Why was the interest in Ms. Elson already so piqued? After all, she has but a single album to her name, The Ghost Who Walks (Third Man), which was produced by Elson’s husband, Jack White, and just came out on May 25. The buzz has been modestly positive, if not hyperbolic.
So who were all these fans and looky-loos? Were they committed White Stripes fans whose enthusiasm for the group extends even to its spouses? Or was it a decidedly stranger subculture of model-turned-singer fetishists resentful that Tyra Banks’ “Shake Your Body” and Naomi Campbell’s Baby Woman never took off stateside? Or maybe, like me, they were just your garden variety redheaded-girl-singer fans.
Continue reading “Show Review: Karen Elson at Café Du Nord, 6/8”
AR Rahman is a celebrated composer and pop songwriter. He is most famous for composing the Oscar winning score to 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, but also has more than 50 films to his credit. He is about to embark on his biggest world tour ever, opening June 11th at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island, New York, and playing at the Oracle Arena in Oakland on June 26th. He took a few minutes out his busy schedule to talk with us about the tour, his feelings about his current wave of success, and how he juggles so many projects at once.
It’s truly a pity that James Murphy, the man behind LCD Soundsystem and the legendary DFA record label, which has released all of the band’s material including their 2002 hit breakthrough single, “Losing My Edge,” has decided to pull the plug on what is inarguably one of the coolest, most transcendent musical outfits to emerge in the past decade.
Just as Jerry Seinfeld and the cast bowed out at their peak after a nine-year run with their hit television show, Seinfeld, Murphy has decided to call it quits after the same amount of time when fan interest is at its most fervent, dedicated level. Continue reading “Show Review: LCD Soundsystem at The Fillmore, 6/3/10”
The Uptown Nightclub is one of the great hidden treasures of Oakland. They have grown to become the go-to venue for punk rock in the Bay Area, but on this hot & sticky Friday night, they have really outdone themselves. They managed to snag The Buzzcocks, one of the most successful and influential UK bands of the late 70’s, for a rare stateside appearance. The last time they played in the Bay Area, they played the much larger and higher profile Fillmore in San Francisco. This show was special for another reason, because they played their first two records beginning to end.
Continue reading “Show Review: The Buzzcocks with The Dollyrots at The Uptown Nightclub, 6/4/10”
Blown away. That is how the night ended for me. Unfortunately the night didn’t start out that way. I was tired from partying too much on Friday and then taking an epically long hike on Saturday. I wanted to sleep and wasn’t sure if a show was the best thing to be attending in my sleepy daze. Fortunately The Soft Pack came on and gave me a bit of an energy boost. Continue reading “Show Review: Matt & Kim with Golden Filter and The Soft Pack at The Mezzanine, 6/5/10”
Somewhere during this show, this genre became dead to me. I don’t even know what you call the genre (besides “typical” indie rock), but I’ll try to describe it. A bunch of dudes wearing clothes they bought at thrift stores (or are meant to look like they bought them at thrift stores in Brooklyn) play mid-tempo numbers, and then occasionally the songs build to a giant crescendo where they all scream into their microphones together to let you know that this song is intense, man. It now feels a bit fake to me. Continue reading “Show Review: Local Natives with Suckers at Bottom of the Hill, 6/3/2010”