mike watt – Spinning Platters

Album Review: Big Walnuts Yonder: Big Walnuts Yonder

What happens when four musicians record an album in three days? Well, as luck would have it, something amazing happens. At least, that’s the case for the debut release of Big Walnuts Yonder. Though they prefer to consider themselves an anti-supergroup—in that they consciously rebel against the cliche of bringing their known sounds to the group—when your band consists of Mike Watt (Minutemen, The Stooges), Nels Cline (Wilco, Nels Cline Singers), Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) and Nick Reinhart (Tera Melos), it is hard to resist slapping the “supergroup” label on them, but be warned, because this band is no mere supergroup, and they are full of surprises.

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Festival: DRILL LA – Day 02 @ The Echo and Echoplex (Los Angeles)

The musical explosion continues!

If the opening night of DRILL was a taste of things to come, Day 2 was a build up to the inevitable explosion that appears to be in store for Saturday’s closing night. With use of the entire building, fans and festival goers had a plethora of choices on either stage. The stairs leading between the venues provided a nice amount of passive exercise as we would either hike up to The Echo or bolt down to Echoplex to catch whichever bands met our fancy. For my part, I ended up spending most of my night downstairs at Echoplex, but I did catch the first two acts at The Echo.

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Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 9/11/14-9/17/14

Yes. This band is playing a the same festival as Limp Bizkit in Sac this weekend.

Thursday, September 11th Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 9/11/14-9/17/14”

Show Review: Kelly Clarkson with Carolina Liar at The Event Center at San Jose State University, 3/27/12

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to interview legendary bassist Mike Watt. We spoke about a lot of things, including many of his musical projects. As any good journalist does, I made sure to ask him about his sessions working with Kelly Clarkson on her underrated 2007 release My December. His response was great. He said, “Working on the record was a lot of fun. They gave me a lot of freedom to experiment in the studio, and Kelly was very sweet. She had a great voice and learned to sing in the church. Somebody told me that she also won a game show or something. I get asked about this a lot. Is she famous?” It was in interesting response. This is one of the most famous singers to emerge from the last decade, yet to the people that she worked with, one would never be the wiser. This humility could be either good or bad for a live performance. Luckily, I had the opportunity to make a rare journey into San Jose to see her play live. I was hoping it was worth the journey. Continue reading “Show Review: Kelly Clarkson with Carolina Liar at The Event Center at San Jose State University, 3/27/12”

Spinning Platters Weekly Guide To Bay Area Concerts: August 11th-17th

More live music in your region… And you thought there was nothing to do…

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