Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
Sitting at a table alone with two strange boys, I toyed with my drink, waiting for my friend who fell asleep to show up. I saw a girl on the dance floor throw her cell phone on the floor, pick it up, then storm off leaving her two friends with stupefied looks on their faces. Boy trouble! Don’t I know it.
Which is where I was at when I first heard The Drums on KALX last week. Continue reading “Show Review: The Drums at 330 Ritch (Popscene), 11/12/2009”
Just arrived from South Korea on November 14th and had not slept for over 30 hours; I was ripe for covering a concert. I headed to San Francisco from my East Bay hamlet, hoping not to fall asleep at the wheel. Continue reading “Show Review: The Mountain Goats with Final Fantasy at The Fillmore, 11/14/2009”
Somewhere in Los Angeles today, They Might Be Giants are playing a show at which they’ll play Flood in its entirety. Shows where bands play the entire album are a bit boring because you know exactly what’s coming next, and most of the fun of a band like They Might Be Giants is wondering just what the heck will be played next. While you can see from the above set list photo that there’s no question what’s going to happen next, I like the element of surprise. Continue reading “Show Review: They Might Be Giants with Guggenheim Grotto at The Fillmore, 11/13/09”
There was a lot more competition for the top posts of the week this week. Bands that start with the letter P have positively proven to be particularly popular posts at Spinning Platters. I don’t know why that is, but because of this, we’re hoping you’ll come back to read our reviews of Pountain Goats, Pem Crooked Vultures, and the Piery Purances. But now for this week’s top 5. Continue reading “Week in Review: Top 5 Posts from Nov 6 — Nov 12”
A noise-rock show is a different sort of animal than most musical performances that one usually attends: it’s mostly improvisational, there usually isn’t a wild light show, the performers hardly ever (if ever) look at the audience, and it’s about ten times louder than the last Muse concert you went to, even when you stood next to the P.A. and forgot your earplugs. It’s also likely that you will not be able to predict the level of fanaticism that will be inspired by even the slightest change in the steamroller of sound that is the band’s performance; the crowd could just as easily metamorphose into a frenzied circle pit as it could remain stock-still in silent contemplation of the wall of noise barreling through them. For Fuck Buttons, it ran the full gamut: loud, soft, crazed and quiet, and it was beautiful and destructive chaos all at once. Continue reading “Show Review: Fuck Buttons with Growing and Chen Santa Maria at Bottom Of The Hill, 11/13/09”
The Electric Six burst onto the scene in 2003 with my personal favorite album of the year, Fire. I wrote back then:
Here it is, the greatest walking album ever created, and it is a concept album. The concept is dancing while on fire. It equates dancing with war, nuclear war in fact. The orders are given by a dance commander in the song of the same title that contains the lyric “It would be awesome if we could dance-uh.” Every song on here is incredibly fun and silly and danceable and singable and just downright brilliant. This is just quality disco rock and roll, and well … it is without precedent. I have never heard an album quite like this, and hope I don’t ever hear another like it. I don’t want this band to try and do this concept again. It would be like The Who doing Tommy 2.
Six years later, without anything remotely resembling follow-up success (even though their album I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being the Master has one of the all-time great titles), the band is still filling up the Independent on a Thursday night with their brand of cocky dance rock. Continue reading “Show Review: Electric Six, The Gay Blades & Millions of Brazilians at The Independent, 11/12/09”
The Used’s set began with an intro video of footage from past tours mixed with stock footage of planes taking off, cars passing by, and scenery changing as if shot from a window of a car. I am not sure most of the fans knew what to think of this semi-heartfelt intro. Backed by a piano and some strings, it seemed like it, as well as most everything with this set could have been better. When the video ended, the entire band just walked on stage. It was kind of anticlimactic for such a drawn out intro. Continue reading “Show Review: The Used with The Almost at The Warfield 11/11/09”
Leaving early is both what I did, and what the subjects of our conversation did. Join us as we discuss what happens when a lead singer leaves a band. Do they get better? Worse? Stay the same? As always, you can subscribe by pressing the giant button with headphones on it, or you can listen below. Continue reading “Spinning Platters Podcast Episode 8 — Leaving Early”
I’m back, the weekly search for original and pithy comments continues. The holidays are coming and it’s time to drag myself away from my new Droid phone (where’s the LaLa app guys ?) and toil through the mass of holiday music to find the true gems of the week. There was really no huge standout for me this week. I loved the first track on the Switchfoot album and was quite pleasantly surprised by the late day discoveries of Dead To Me and For Against. If I am forced to choose then I will pick The Fountain by Echo and The Bunnymen with them getting the nod based on their historical relevance to me personally. Continue reading “New Release Round Up, 11/10/09 — 31 Instant Album Reviews”
More things to do in the Bay Area. All of them good. The greatest band ever is playing the Warfield on Friday, but here are better things to do.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide To Bay Area Concerts: November 11th-November 17th”