Dave Grohl – Spinning Platters

Abroad in Toronto: Dropkick Murphys, Hanabie., Hatebreed, Carcass, and more!

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

Occasionally, the dedicated staff of Spinning Platters gets the opportunity to watch, photograph, and/or review shows from outside of our comfortable Bay Area confines. A few previous trips have included Chicago, Dallas, and Las Vegas, to cover Deftones, Gojira, New Found Glory, Suffocation, Lamb of God, Killswitch Engage, Mercyful Fate, Kreator, and August Burns Red. This time around, one of Spinning Platters’ two resident metalheads was somehow allowed into Canada eh and spent the week in the 416, where we saw Jinjer, Hanabie., Born of Osiris, Scream, Dropkick Murphys, Pennywise, Hatebreed, Carcass, Harm’s Way, and Crypta!

(Korn + Gojira, Benighted + Cognitive, Gatecreeper + Frozen Soul, Galactic Empire + Powerglove were also here during our week-long stay but was not able to attend any of these for various reasons, but mostly due to them being on the same night as another show!)

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Show Review: Foo Fighters + L7 at Toyota Pavilion in Concord

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @AlanHasPicks

Having not been to Toyota Pavilion in Concord at all during this 2024 season, Spinning Platters made the long journey twice in four days (see also Megadeth + Mudvayne)! It really is a trek too… from our satellite penthouse office in San Francisco, there’s a thirty-minute MUNI bus followed by a fifty-minute BART ride followed by a twenty-minute Pavilion shuttle, and traveling back after any show typically takes even longer. All that said, it certainly is worth it to be able to bring these shows to life to the readers with our photos and words… it just takes longer to travel than some of these bands’ headlining sets are!

Except for Foo Fighters…

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Single of the Week: “Rabbit” by Kills Birds

I’ll be frank with you… I’m not specifically a fan of Dave Grohl. I love Nirvana, don’t get me wrong, but I find the Foo Fighters to be, well, boring. So I found it hard to force myself to listen to Kills Birds, a little band from LA that Grohl has been championing, down to inviting them to record in his personal recording studio. So, I bit my tongue and put on “Rabbit,” expecting to hate it. Instead, I fell in love! This song is so heavy and claustrophobic and intense and it’s just plain fucking great. And, yes, the f-word is necessary. Do you love Savages and X-Ray Spex? Do you not know what I’m talking about there, but love loud? This is a track for you!

“Rabbit” can be enjoyed in all of the usual places. And, if you want more, their sophomore album Married is due out on November 12th and can be preordered/presaved now so you don’t forget in November. Especially since this is likely to be your first Thanksgiving with family this decade, and something loud will be nice to escape into after that tension. Looking for more catharsis? Make sure you get vaccinated so you can enjoy their fall tour with Sleigh Bells!

Film Review: Sound City

Dave Grohl, director of the new documentary Sound City.

Directed By: David Grohl

Written By: Mark Monroe

Starring: Trent Reznor, Tom Petty, Mick Fleetwood, and a cast of musical legends

The movie ‘Sound City’ started as a movie about a location but evolved into the raw internal disclosure of the emotional soul of a musician and the music industry. It allows a peek into the behind the scenes non-glamorous side of an album recording, opening insight to the controversy of analog verses digital methods.

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Show Review: Them Crooked Vultures with Mini Mansions at The Fox Oakland

There have been a few “supergroups” that came and went in the last few years, many formed from the remnants of the grunge generation looking to try out new sounds, such as Army Of Anyone (the members of Stone Temple Pilots headed by Richard Patrick of Filter), Audioslave (the members of Rage Against The Machine headed by Chris Cornell of Soundgarden), or Velvet Revolver (Scott Weiland of the aforementioned STP fronting the remaining members of Guns N’ Roses). While all of the records are excellent in theory, in execution they don’t always live up to the names of the musicians writing the music on the records. The kind of supergroup that is likely to TRULY break the mold is one spanning multiple generations of music. In the case of Them Crooked Vultures, it’s three generations: the stoner-groove-rock of the 2000’s, the solid, angry blues-grunge of the 90’s, and the arena-level rock-n’-roll of the ’70s. Of course, these three genres would make sense, given that Them Crooked Vultures is composed of Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age / Kyuss), Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters / Nirvana), and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin).

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