Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
I’m not that much of a Grinch when it comes to Christmas, I’m actually a bit of a nerd and enjoy it quite a bit, but even all the Christmas songs start to drive me crazy after a while. So here are my six songs I think it’s ok to like, or that won’t drive you crazy (I hope). Feel free to leave your favorite non-annoying Christmas song suggestions in the comments. Continue reading “Spinning Platters Picks Six: Christmas Songs It’s Okay to Like”
“Does she still look like Janice from The Muppets?” asked a friend when I mentioned I was seeing Rickie Lee Jones at The Fillmore last night. There’s certainly a resemblance, that’s for sure. It’s been 30 years since her chart-topping debut single, “Chuck E’s In Love,” but Jones, 55, is still very much the picture of laid-back, blonde, heavy-lidded California cool. And if she feels slowed down by age, she certainly didn’t show it during her marathon two-and-a-half-hour set.
Continue reading “Show Review: Rickie Lee Jones at The Fillmore, 12/19/09”
Pouria took advantage of my being away, and saved up 50 albums over two weeks of the lowest profile albums in the entire world (with a few exceptions). That means you get FIFTY album reviews in ONE column! Who else can provide you such value? Read on! Continue reading “New Release Round Up for 12/8-12/15 — 50 Instant Album Reviews”
By a show of hands, who has started their holiday shopping…
Nobody? Good. Let’s keep it that way.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide To Bay Area Concerts: December 16th-December 22nd”
Kevin Tong is a favorite among much of the crew here at Spinning Platters. We aggressively shopped his booth when we discovered him at Flatstock last year, and his output is consistently top notch. If you’re still looking for the perfect rock posters to buy the music nerd in your life, you can’t go wrong with Kevin Tong artwork. We asked Kevin if he would answer some questions for us, and he graciously agreed. Read on, and then go visit his site to see more.
Spinning Platters: What was the first work of art you did for money? Continue reading “Gift Guide For Music Nerds: 10 Quick Questions with Kevin Tong”
Have no clue what to do? Has a large green creature come and snagged all the good presents away? Don’t fret because the Spinning Platters elves have present ideas to fill up Santa’s sleigh…
It seems it’s that time of the year when the days in number
seem to fall off the calendar into slumber.
And there is only one thing you could possibly find,
that wouldn’t be on kind people’s minds.
It’s better than socks. It’s better than butter. It’s better than delightful hot cocoa with a candy marshmallow ring.
It rocks so hardly in summer,
maybe even some with a mutter,
and it’s let you go along, allowing you to dance and sing.
It’s pure but complicated, not dirty or replicated.
It’s as tasty as fresh warm bread
even those that are of leaven,
it’s just what you always thought it was, it’s the music of 1997!
Here are the Top 15 most important reasons…or in some cases, non reasons, to buy your loved one, or enemy for that matter (the holidays don’t discriminate) an awesome gift from 1997! Continue reading “Gift Guide For Music Nerds: The Best Records of 1997”
So, this Lady GaGa thing is kind of crazy isn’t it? I mean, this record came out Summer 2008, but it wasn’t until a year later when it seemed that she was everywhere. In a world where there really isn’t any such thing as “mainstream” anymore, there is a possibility that she might be the last big pop star. This was supposed to be a tour where she was playing second fiddle to Kanye West, but for one reason or another (I’d like to think that it’s God’s will) Kanye opted not to travel, giving Lady GaGa the chance at a victory lap.
by The Spinning Platters Staff
The past month at the Spinning Platters offices (everyone telecommutes) was spent passing albums around to try to determine a staff list of the Top 15 Albums of 2009. We chose 15 because we had 15 voters, so maybe everyone would get one of their pet favorites on the list. There was a nomination step, a finalist selection step, a final voting step, some senior staff picks, and then we had a list. No list is perfect (and we recognize that albums are still coming out this year), but ours is not only pretty darned good, it also manages to represent the wide variety of musical tastes among our team here (i.e. some of us hate some of these albums). Now, read and enjoy The Official List of the Top 15 of 2009. Continue reading “Spinning Platters Presents the Official List of the Top 15 Albums of 2009”
Via Coma, or more the idea of Via Coma, has been in the works from some time now. Their EP Bridges seemingly was never going to be officially released because Via Coma is as calculated as they come; there is little that happens in Via Coma that is not painstakingly thought out, mostly to ensure that every step is the right one. Via Coma’s approach to gaining a following might be a little more grass roots in the classic sense, not the web 2.0 sense, by gaining a strong following in their hometown of Lafayette, CA, just outside of San Francisco. Promoting and showcasing their own shows demostrates initiative, yet the biggest struggle that faces Via Coma is making the jump from the burbs into the Big City.
I recently got a hold of Rob Marshall to pick his brain about his band, the Bay Area music scene and the music industry. Take a read and maybe find your way to Viacoma.com to download their debut EP, Bridges.
Spinning Platters: Who is Via Coma? Continue reading “10 Quick Questions with Via Coma”
Evangelista is the latest (and longest) incarnation of the restless musical mind of Carla Bozulich, the extraordinary, genre-busting singer/songwriter whose career dates back over two decades. She was a member of the seminal industrial band Ethyl Meatplow before forming The Geraldine Fibbers, whose tragically brief output consisted of two of the most magnificent albums of the ’90s, Lost Somewhere Between the Earth and My Home (1995) and Butch (1997), before disbanding. It was at this point that Bozulich began veering in a more “experimental” direction, in which she continues to create strange and harrowing new sounds.
There’s just one problem: I’m a die-hard Fibbers fan with no tolerance for so-called “experimental” music. Granted, this is my problem, not hers. But whenever I’ve listened to her post-Fibbers output, whether it be Scarnella, Evangelista, or her full-length reinterpretation of Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger, I’ve longed for even a hint of the torch-twang-punk brilliance of the Fibbers. And so, I walked into her show at the Hemlock last night with resigned pessimism. I was thrilled to finally witness Carla singing live, but was bracing for an hour of free-form noise and distortion. Oh, how I hate being wrong.