Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
Stuffed and Unstrung is an improv show put on by the Henson Alternative using 80 Henson puppets and six performers. This sentence makes it sound good and intriguing, but actually watching it is like an explosion of joy in your brain. When I left the theater Thursday night, with tears in my eyes from laughter and an added spring in my step, I said to my friend “We should watch it again!” Continue reading “Theatre Review: Stuffed and Unstrung by Henson Alternative at Curran Theater, 8/18/11”
60,000 is an extremely large number, especially when you’re speaking in terms of human beings. The largest amphitheater in the Bay Area, the Shoreline in Mountain View, holds around 30,000 with its lawn fully filled, and most shows that can completely fill it to the brim are multi-platinum megastars, or great music festivals that last all day. It therefore isn’t too surprising that nearly all 3 days of the 2011 Outside Lands Festival were sold out, both with single-day and three-day tickets; still, 60,000 people per day is a pretty staggering number. By the time Sunday rolled around, and the denizens of the festival had been dragged through cold, fog, heat, sun, and likely several hundred thousand watts of amplified music, it was stunning to see that the park was still packed to the gills; while most people didn’t trickle in until the mid-afternoon hours, there was enough sunlight out to see Golden Gate Park filled from end to end with a flood of musicgoers.
But what about the people who made it in the morning?
Continue reading “San Francisco’s 2011 Outside Lands Festival, Day 3”
(Want to skip to Day 2? Or maybe Day 3?)
Let’s get one thing straight, right off the bat: There’s always going to be rivalry between Northern California’s concert scene and Southern California’s concert scene. We’re always looking for reasons to stay up here and not go down there. Never mind any of the usual excuses people give for not going to Coachella in April: it’s far away, it’s hot, it’s got a different crowd, the scene is too (insert choice phrase here); it’s just not “us”. So, while we’re happy for things like Fauxchella to keep us from having to go down to Indio around the cusp of summertime, there’s always that infectious festival vibe that pulls us in somehow. However, mere moments after remarks begrudging the Coachella 2011 lineup — which looked remarkably like our 2010 Outside Lands and Treasure Island lineups — the 2011 Outside Lands lineup popped up, and this time, it was clear that we had gotten things right. Back to 3 days, back with some of the biggest acts in music to date, and loaded with a bunch of new treasures to discover, Outside Lands was going to be bigger this year than ever.
That being said: This is a long entry, because it was a long weekend. We’ve got a collection of highlights that we wanted to share with our readers, because it’s impossible to fit everything in. Hope you can keep up!
Continue reading “San Francisco’s 2011 Outside Lands Festival, Day 1”
Saturday Night’s show at the Hemlock was a reunion of sorts. Most people there probably didn’t realize that each band was a new project of a former member of the queercore band BoySkout. What that gave the audience was a varied show with seasoned musicians that somehow fit together just right. Continue reading “Show Review: Schande / Silent Pictures / Bam! Bam! at Hemlock, 7/30/11”
There’s a commonly-held mindset that says you cannot take ska music seriously. From a simple outside perspective, this makes sense; it’s generally very bouncy, positive-sounding music, and the horns just accentuate the level of joy, or perhaps the level of unseriousness. For what is entailed in a ska song, however, it’s remarkably rude to call it simple or childish; with 3 or 4 additional players that accompany a full band, one that’s usually churning out rapid-fire punk riffs, and with all of the members running around onstage, it’s definitely not a simple feat. The energy of the music, for those who do listen and follow it, is infectious and riotous in its intensity, and whether the lyrics are heartfelt and yearning, or slovenly and self-deprecating, wildly energetic audiences will still fill large auditoriums to see the spectacle, and chant and stamp to every word. Such was the case on Friday night, when the Regency Ballroom of San Francisco played host to two titans of the genre: the New Jersey septet Streetlight Manifesto, and the Huntington Beach veterans known as Reel Big Fish.
This evening with Sondre Lerche and friends reminded me about why I go to shows. The right performer can take their music and twist it just the right amount to bring you something new and dynamic with their live show. Sondre Lerche, with his sweet pop/rock sounds on record will rock the hell out of you live; jumping around and playing his guitar hard. It is unexpected and quite punk rock of him. Add to that a great accompanying band and his intricate melodies and you get a show to remember. Continue reading “Show Review: Sondre Lerche with Nightlands and Kishi Bashi at Great American Music Hall, 6/28/11”
Keren Ann and opener Chris Garneau put on a dreamily beautiful, strikingly intimate show at Yoshi’s SF last night. Keren Ann is touring behind her latest album, 101, which finds the French chanteuse exploring electronic textures rather than the spare, heartrending acoustics with which she has become associated; the album, with its more aggressive tone and dashes of lyrical violence, inspired the New York Times to stupidly dub it “gangsta folk”. But don’t run for your ghetto blasters just yet, because if last night’s show was any indication, Keren Ann won’t be abandoning her chansons and acoustic guitar any time soon.
Continue reading “Show Review: Keren Ann with Chris Garneau at Yoshi’s SF, 6/21/2011”
As an electronic musician, you have an unbelievable amount of competition, especially in 2011. With beats, synths and other manipulatibles being so easy to create these days with readily-available software, nearly anyone with a decently-powered computer and speedy fingers can enter the genre; with enough samples, knowledge of audio processing, and exposure, it’s easy to go from being locked in one’s basement to shaking the walls of clubs worldwide. The question is, however, why should all of the hundreds of thousands — perhaps of millions — of electronica fans come to see YOU, and not someone else? For Simon Posford, the cerebrum major behind the London-based psytrance project known as Shpongle, it has usually involved a brilliant mix of jagged synths and sweeping world instruments; this time around, however, he brought the Shpongletron, a stage and light show guaranteed to cement his place as one of the best electronic acts to see today.
The Detroit Cobras and Girl In A Coma played a sold-out show to a party-seeking crowd at The Independent on Friday night. And that crowd came to the right place, as the femme-fronted combination of GIAC’s sweaty Texas rock and the Cobras’ swaggering garage soul made for one hell of a Friday night party.
Continue reading “Show Review: The Detroit Cobras with Girl In A Coma at The Independent, 6/10/2011”
This is the first time I can remember Club BFD being better than original BFD. First off, there’s the lineup which has more melody in four bands than there’d be in 11 hours on Sunday. Then there’s the Mezzanine, which welcomes its visitors with a high-res screen featuring sharp animations about tonight’s show and future events. At “real BFD,” there’s a static monitor. And in a club that holds somewhere in the 1000-person range, there’s a multi-camera shoot being projected on walls throughout the venue; at big BFD, there were no screens inside the amphitheater at all. I’m not even going to discuss the drink price competition. So the Mezzanine is all class, we know that. But how were the bands? Continue reading “Show Review: Club BFD with Surfer Blood, Innerpartysystem, The Vaccines and Geographer at Mezzanine, 6/4/2011”