Tag: San Francisco

Show Review: John 5 & The Creatures, DNA Lounge, 04/20/2022

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

It’s interesting when successful musicians branch out on their own solo projects.  Maybe they have too much creative energy that doesn’t flow with their band and need to expand on it, or maybe they just have free time between recording and tour cycles to do their own thing.  Whatever the case may be, the best moment to see these performers live is not with their marquee name bands, one hundred yards away in some stadium… no, the best time is when they are on their solo tours!  Paul Stanley of KISS once performed at The Fillmore to 800 people.  Joe Perry of Aerosmith also performed at The Fillmore in front of only 400 people.  When John 5 is not performing to thousands of people with Rob Zombie, he very often makes solo records, tours with his own solo project called John 5 & The Creatures, and when in San Francisco, always comes back to the intimate DNA Lounge.

Film Feature: 65th SFFILM Festival Preview Spotlight #1

The 65th SFFilm Festival will take place April 21 – May 1, 2022, with screenings at various venues around the Bay Area. This year, the festival program features over 130 film from 56 countries, so there are plenty of options for everyone.

We’ll bring you spotlight coverage of many of the films leading up to and during the Festival. Here’s a look at five features and a short to get things started — get your tickets before they sell out!

1.) THE EXILES
(USA, Taiwan, France, China, 2021. 96 min)

A fascinating documentary that spotlights legendary Chinese documentarian Christine Choy (Who Killed Vincent Chin?) as an avenue into revisiting the massacre at Tiananmen Square and three high profile exiled dissidents. Produced by Steven Soderbergh and winner of this year’s Sundance Documentary Grand Jury Prize, The Exiles takes an honest look at the active erasure of history, and exemplifies the power of documentary filmmaking to preserve memories, events, and movements.

Screenings (click here for tickets):
– Sat., April 23rd, 3:00pm at the Victoria Theatre
– Sun., April 24th, 2:00pm at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive

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Show Review: John Mayer with Yebba at Chase Center, 3/18/2022

Holy hell, it’s been a while. It’s been more than two years, in fact, since I last saw a show. For a music nerd like me who considers live music vital to her mental health, that’s saying a lot. But as things slowly seem to be moving closer and closer to what we considered “normal” pre-pandemic, I’ve been missing the whole concert experience more and more. Fortunately, the arrival of John Mayer‘s Sob Rock Tour at San Francisco’s Chase Center arrived just in time – last Friday night, to be exact… Continue reading “Show Review: John Mayer with Yebba at Chase Center, 3/18/2022”

Show Review: Shinedown, The Warfield, 01/26/2022

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

Live hard rock music seems difficult to come by within the city limits of San Francisco.  Music fans here seem to mainly gravitate to EDM, thrash metal, or anything that resembles the types of artists that play at Outside Lands (indie / alternative) or Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.  Therefore, it is not impossible to believe that a hard rock band who has sold 10 million albums worldwide (and were recently named #1 on Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Mainstream Rock Artists Chart) has not performed in San Francisco city proper in 10 years (since March 2012).  On January 26, 2022, multi-platinum rock band Shinedown decided to finally visit us once again, this time with the very first show of their 2022 tour cycle at The Warfield in support of their upcoming new album, Planet Zero! 

Show Review: 50 Years of The Residents, Castro Theatre, 09/17/2021

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

In mid-July, legendary art-rockers The Residents announced the “Dog Stab!” tour, a 22-date run around the US to commemorate the 50th anniversary of their first live performance (in 1971!).  A month later, they cancelled all except for three California shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz “due to continued concerns about the spread of Covid-19 cases from the Delta variant”.  The show in San Francisco also served as the reopening of the historic Castro Theatre, which has been closed since March 2020, and Spinning Platters was invited to attend!  

Show Review: Megadeth + Lamb of God + Trivium + Hatebreed, Concord Pavilion, 09/02/2021

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

‘Metal Tour of the Year.’ Quite a bold statement. The concert t-shirts even say it. On September 2, Megadeth, Lamb of God, Trivium, and Hatebreed descended on the sleepy East Bay city of Concord to wreak some havoc and let everyone else know that they intend to hold onto their self-proclaimed tour title!

Show Review: Green Day + Fall Out Boy + Weezer = Hella Mega @ Oracle Park, San Francisco, 8/27/2021

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

Oracle Park, home to the San Francisco Giants, historically does not host many concerts outside of the regular baseball season (and certainly not the post-season lately either!). Since 2013, there has been an average of six concerts per year, and a few of them are usually tied to corporations like the annual Genentech Gives Back or convention attendee parties for Salesforce.com’s DreamForce and Oracle’s OpenWorld.  In fact, the last concert to be held here was 21 months ago for DreamForce (UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital benefit).  Leave it to East Bay’s own Green Day to stage the first Hella Mega sized concert at Oracle Park since the world shut down early last year!

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Show Review: Rise Against + Descendents, Masonic Auditorium, San Francisco, 8/22/2021

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF

The first show of the final week of Rise Against‘s Nowhere Generation tour was also the first show at the Masonic Auditorium in 543 days (since February 27, 2020)!  Many precautions were taken, both by the band and by the venue, to ensure that this day would happen.  Proof of vaccination or vaccine cards were required and checked upon entry, band crew and local stagehands were masked, an audience mask policy was also in effect (although at least half were unmasked, even as they entered the building), the bar and merchandise appeared to be mostly cashless with contactless point-of-sale card readers, and even the ticketing happened through a mobile phone app (although we scored a real one!).

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Webstream Review: Death Angel “The Bastard Tracks”, 5/29/2021

“The Bastard Tracks”. B-Sides. The meat of the record. Songs not usually on the live set. Deep cuts. Tracks the diehard fans know. 

Death Angel created this web stream to dig “deep into [their] catalog to perform older favorites, newer classics and songs that have never been performed live before” with multiple interview segments containing the stories behind the songs and “a glimpse into the collective minds and souls of Death Angel.”

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Podcast Review: City in Exile

Podcast fiends, here’s your new addiction.

Brendan O’Loughlin recently launched the inaugural episode of his podcast titled, City in Exile. It’s a document of the ever-evolving cultural capital of California, San Francisco, and more specifically, it’s  O’Loughlin’s love letter to the city he grew up with. San Francisco is also my favorite city in the country and watching it evolve, and seemingly devolve, from the place I used to escape to in my youth has been both mystifying and depressing, but those of us who pay close attention recognize that all things change and we find ways to recapture those ephemeral bits that made us fall in love with the city as it continues to change.

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