Film Review: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Raps and riffs its way to gold, but far from platinum.

Conner is 4 real.
Conner is 4 real.

10+ years ago, “Lazy Sunday” took the internet by storm and injected the Berkeley-based comedy musical trio, The Lonely Island, into the mainstream. Since then, they’ve been responsible for countless popular SNL Digital Shorts and a handful of award-winning comedy albums. Now, their first feature-length film, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, hits theaters and brings along their superb blend of awesomely crude but catchy pop music, satirical humor, and over-the-top random ridiculousness. Popstar is great at poking fun at the pop music industry, and delivers some really raunchy humor and fantastically clever music, yet fails more often than not to produce worthy punchlines or climaxes to major scenes.

Continue reading “Film Review: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

‘Tis the Season to be Winning: The Ultimate Holiday Giveaway Guide

Okay, I promise you I’ll never consider pursuing a career as a copywriter with the headline above but I just can’t help myself; some of the premiere products and services in the music tech space are giving back to the community in a generous way this Holiday season and I’ve decided to round up some of the key promotions happening in cyberspace at the moment. ‘Tis better to give than receive, of course, but winning is still a whole lot of fun when prizes of this caliber are up for grabs.

Keep reading to find out how to win an unlimited subscription on Rdio for one year, a trip to the 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards, and a $100 gift card from Threadless.

Continue reading “‘Tis the Season to be Winning: The Ultimate Holiday Giveaway Guide”

Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 2/24/10-3/2/10

Four nights of four fences with the Kronos Quartet
Four Nights, Four Fences, One Quartet. Nice.

There’s more to life than Noise Pop. Not much more, so these week’s list is going to be a bit shorter than usual, but there is still plenty to do that isn’t with the masses.

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New Release Round Up, 9/29/09 – 34 Instant Album Reviews

Pouria said "use the Ghostface Killah cover because it's the best." I think it represents his journey through Lala.
Edtior's note: Pouria said "use the Ghostface Killah cover because it's the best." I think it represents his journey through Lala for this week.

This week had some particularly bad, boring albums. Eventually when I got to some good music I stopped wondering why I do this column. Continue reading “New Release Round Up, 9/29/09 — 34 Instant Album Reviews”