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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Spinning Platters Picks Six: Albums That Were Pulled Before Release

In the year 2001, I was working at a Wherehouse Music in the Financial District of San Francisco, CA. During this time period, we received regular visits from representatives from major record labels who would drop off advance CD’s of the upcoming new releases. Mid-Summer, we got a record called In Search Of… by a band called N*E*R*D. This was a side project of popular producers The Neptunes, with Neptune Pharrell Williams handling all of the lead vocals. Yes, there was a time when people didn’t know who Pharrell Willams was! Continue reading “Spinning Platters Picks Six: Albums That Were Pulled Before Release”

Film Feature: Sundance Film Festival Spotlights #3

Sundance 2015 Spotlights: Six Documentary Films

Spinning Platters completes its coverage of the 2015 Sundance Film Festival with this third and final Spotlights post, focusing on six documentaries that screened at the Park City fest. Keep your eye out for many of these as they are widely released this coming year, and use our handy Sundance Viewing Priority Level (VPL) Guide to help you decide if they are worth your time:

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Show Review: The Vaselines, The Dum Dum Girls at Great American Music Hall, 10/20/10

The Vaselines are a band from a very different musical era. They are a hard-to-define band from a period of time when it was difficult to find bands that you couldn’t easily market to people. They didn’t really do punk rock, they don’t really do folk music, they aren’t a new wave band, they are merely themselves. They put out a few ep’s in the 80’s, and were supposed to fade away into obscurity. That was, of course, until a young man managed to come across some imports in his local record store, became entranced by them, and ended up covering not 1, not 2, but 3 of their songs with a little rock trio that became one of the most influential bands of all time.

They officially broke up in 1990, but played a few shows in the early 90’s supporting Nirvana in Europe. Then, in 2008, they decided to reunite at the urging of another influential band from the 90’s. This time it was Belle & Sebastian urging this band back into the limelight. After all, their blend of girl group, twee, punk and lyrics that would make Luther Campbell blush is something the world will finally be ready for. And, at the Great American Music Hall, we experienced what that band sounds like today.

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New Release Round Up, 11/3/09 – 38 Instant Album Reviews

Someone needs to build this guy a Wikipedia page.
Someone needs to build this guy a Wikipedia page.

Pouria is in Korea for the next couple of weeks.  He’s been studying the Pimsleur Korean tapes to prepare himself for this trip, so when I asked him if he was going to have time to do his new release column before he left, he muttered something in Korean that I’m assuming was a polite no. As a reaction, I decided to write the longest New Release Round Up yet!  And glad I did, because buried near the bottom is my favorite album of the week. Continue reading “New Release Round Up, 11/3/09 — 38 Instant Album Reviews”