janelle monae – Spinning Platters

Outside Lands 2023: 22 Instant Set Reviews

Happy 15th Birthday, Outside Lands! I’ve been to 13 out of 15, which are pretty good odds if you ask me! And despite this being the “year of the throwing stuff at bands,” this may have been the kindest, friendliest Outside Lands yet! I don’t think I’ve had more lovely conversations with strangers in three days at any other point in my life. Folks were consistently watching out for each other on the ground, working together to get medical attention for folks quickly, even at the risk of losing their spot, sharing food and water, and all around being grade-A music fans. I had the most amazing Creole Garlic Noodles of my life. I had the worst vegan experiment of my life- a veggie lamb slider (I won’t tag the restaurant here). I had plenty of Rocko’s Ice Cream Tacos because Outside Lands isn’t complete without at least 1 taco a day.

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Outside Lands Daily Lineups HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED!

August seems so much closer in the last week than it has been… It might be the fact that our three months of ACTUAL WINTER have finally drifted away, and the sun has revealed itself. Although if you are a real San Franciscan, you are most excited about Karl The Fog returning in August, which makes Outside Lands consistently the most comfortable music festival in America.

But I digress… Single Day lineups have been announced, so you can kinda start planning? It looks pretty likely that we are gonna get Janelle Monae warming up the crowd for Kendrick Lamar, which is basically gonna cause my brain to implode. We also see Orville Peck and Trixie Mattel playing on the same day, so keep your fingers crossed that this happens! Will they try to find a way to combine Fake Fruit and Venus & The Flytraps for the most uncomfortable concoction for Gastromagic on Sunday? I certainly hope soo…

Single Day GA, GA+, VIP, and Golden Gate Club passes are on sale Wednesday, April 19th at 10 am at sfoutsidelands.com!

OUTSIDE LANDS 2023 LINE UP ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!

Christmas came really early this year! We’ve got the full lineup for Outside Lands 2023 six whole weeks earlier than last year!!!! And they did very well, as usual. Topping the bill is Kendrick Lamar, making his first trip to the bay since the amazing Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers came out, as well as the first Foo Fighters set since the passing of Taylor Hawkins and ODESZA, making them the first electronic act to close out Lands End. Other Spinning Platters favorites include Megan Thee Stallion (Yes. This is the act I’m most excited to see), Janelle Monae, The 1975, Maggie Rogers, Lil Yachty, Interpol, Father John Misty, Orville Peck, ALVVAYS, beabadoobee, Soccer Mommy, Shaquille O’Neal (!), and my favorite current Bay Area band, Fake Fruit!

I’ve already started studying for our annual “Top 10 from the bottom half” of the poster, but don’t miss your shot to buy tickets! 3 DAY GA, GA+, VIP, and Golden Gate Club tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10am.

Outside Lands 2023 Lineup Continue reading “OUTSIDE LANDS 2023 LINE UP ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!”

Film Feature: Highs and Lows from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival

The 2020 Sundance Film Festival concluded this weekend with Festival jurors bestowing prizes upon 28 of the 128 films shown during the ten-day Fest. All the winners can be found here, but, as I did last year, below I present my own highlights — good and bad — and let you know which films you should SEE or SKIP, should any of these be widely released at some point.

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BottleRock Napa Valley 2020 Preview

It’s January, and that means: festival announcement time, ladies and gents! This year, Napa Valley’s favorite festival (that’s Bottle Rock Napa Valley, if you didn’t already know) welcomes back headliners Red Hot Chili Peppers (yessss!), as well as BRNV-first-timers Stevie Nicks and Dave Matthews Band. In addition to those three huge acts, I’ll be trying to squeeze every drop of live music fun as possible into my weekend; I have so many other sets I want to try to catch! Personally, I’m most looking forward to seeing Maggie Rogers, Of Monsters and Men, Foals, Local Natives, Finneas, Caamp, The Band CAMINO, the freaking Village People (!!), Absofacto, Atlas Genius, Eliza & the Delusionals, and always brilliant and fantastically talented The Alive, among still many others. Who are you most excited to see this year?

Here’s my preview playlist featuring aforementioned faves. Enjoy and I’ll see you in my hometown this Memorial Day weekend at BottleRock Napa Valley!

Listen to BRNV2020 Playlist!

BottleRock ticket info: 3-Day Tickets are sold out, but single day passes go on sale tomorrow (1/9/20) at 10am PST).

Spinning Platters’ Top 50 Records from our First Decade: 1-10!

The appropriate 10th anniversary gift is tin. So, um, here’s a pile of tin?

…And we’ve reached the finish line! Here are the top 10 records of the first decade of Spinning Platters, as voted on by our editorial team. Enjoy! Looking to see where we started? Here’s 31-50 and here’s 11-30 Continue reading “Spinning Platters’ Top 50 Records from our First Decade: 1-10!”

Spinning Platters’ Top 50 Records from our First Decade: 31-50

Our very first photo posted was too small an image of Marnie Stern & I. I stand by the importance of this image.

The very first article posted to Spinning Platters was March 25th, 2009. It was a diary of the first few days of my second visit to SXSW. You can read that here, and even look at a picture of me 29 year old me with Marnie Stern.

That means this little music blog that has evolved into a music, film, theater, and comedy blog, and has been around for more than a decade at this point. So, in order to commemorate this time, I reached out to every person that has ever contributed to the site to pull together a top 50 records of the first ten years of Spinning Platters. That would be between March 2009 and March 2019.

Not everyone got back to me. I even got a couple, “I don’t remember doing this” emails from people that only contributed a couple of articles. However, this is definitely a list that represents the tastes of everyone that has been part of this thing. Since 50 records is a lot to take in at once, I’m just going to give you 31-50 today. Only without any words about the record at all, just a video from that album. Coming soon will be 11-30 with more commentary, and 1-10 with even more commentary will be coming your way before Christmas. So without further adieu, here’s your list!

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Spinning Platters’ Top 10 Albums of 2018

By The Spinning Platters Editorial Staff

It’s that time of year again… That time when you’ve read every other music site’s Album of The Year list, and have hated all of them because you haven’t seen the best one yet! We have an incredibly diverse group of records… Some you’ve seen on other lists, some you haven’t, and some you’ve likely never heard of before clicking on this post!

So, without further adieu, on with our list:

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Outside Lands 2018: 27 Instant Gig Reviews

Ate a lot of food. Got a lot of steps. But it was mostly Janet Jackson.

All photos by Dakin Hardwick unless otherwise noted

Outside Lands reached its 11th birthday this year. I’ve been to ten of those eleven installments. This year, the folks booking the festival decided it was time to take some risks… They added an extra stage for acoustic sets and magic, called “Cocktail Magic.” They added a whole pot awareness area (not that folks at a music festival need to be *more* aware of weed). Continue reading “Outside Lands 2018: 27 Instant Gig Reviews”

Film Review: Hidden Figures

Hidden figures brought to light in inspiring new film

Katherine (Taraji P. Henson) performs a calculation that will help NASA successfully launch manned capsules into space.

2016 hasn’t exactly been a stellar year in a lot of ways, but in terms of film, it’s been an exceptional year for girl power movies. This is a year in which we saw a brave 13-year-old stand strong against centuries of male-dominated tradition in The Eagle Huntress, a 14-year-old chess prodigy overcome tremendous odds in Queen of Katwe, and now, in Theodore Melfi’s new film Hidden Figures, we witness a trio of African-American women contribute to national success despite facing rampant and demoralizing sexism and racism in the segregated south of the early 1960s. There has never been a better time to be inspired at the movies.
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