setlist – Page 21 – Spinning Platters

Show Review: The Dresden Dolls with Pomplamoose at The Warfield, 12/31/2010

Forget what you thought you knew about how to celebrate for the beginning of a new year. Forget what you thought could happen with two Bostonians, a collective of YouTube musicians, a pile of balloons, two cannons of confetti, and two thousand lovers of punk cabaret. If you were not one of the aforementioned fans that filled San Francisco’s Warfield Theater to nigh-overflowing to see the triumphant Bay Area return of the Dresden Dolls, you missed one of the greatest shows in the band’s career, and one of the best shows of 2010, and, quite likely, 2011 as well.

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Show Review: X-Mas with X (An Evening With) and Ray Manzarek at Slim’s, 12/28/2010

John Doe of X and Ray Manzarek of The Doors

As 2010 comes to a glorious end, it’s once again that time of year for annual traditions. While the New Years’ Eve shows will be gigantic and exciting, and the late November / early December weeks are filled with last-minute surprise gigs, it’s good to have a few things that can always be counted on to keep up that holiday spirit. Of course, this is not to say that said traditions can’t be spiced up with a few new flavors added to the recipe, and the Los Angeles punk quartet known as X returned to Slim’s this year to prove it.

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Show Review: Live 105 Not So Silent Night with Smashing Pumpkins, My Chemical Romance, Phoenix, The Black Keys and Broken Bells at HP Pavillion 12/10/10

MCR_fullbandpose — My Chemical Romance poses for the cameras

Not So Silent Night really lived up to its name this year. It was loud and booming in the half empty HP Pavillion in San Jose. Unfortunately this made for some pretty bad sound, especially from the back of the room. Why it was so empty I have no idea as the line up of Broken Bells, The Black Keys, Phoenix and My Chemical Romance seemed like they could draw a crowd (yes I’m leaving Smashing Pumpkins out on purpose). Or was this a case of just too many disparate bands? Continue reading “Show Review: Live 105 Not So Silent Night with Smashing Pumpkins, My Chemical Romance, Phoenix, The Black Keys and Broken Bells at HP Pavillion 12/10/10”

Show Review: Peter Hook and The Light performing Unknown Pleasures at The Mezzanine, 12/10/2010

2010 has been a year for a different kind of performance: the full-album gig. While not necessarily filled with the same wonder and anticipation that your more common setlist will contain, a full-album set guarantees the kind of rapt excitement that comes with knowing that your favorite songs from that record will all be played, and the surprises at the end of the set become that much more exciting. There have been a few artists who selected the albums that truly defined their careers — Weezer performed their classics, the Blue Album and Pinkerton, and Roger Waters recreated The Wall with modernized visuals and ideas, capturing much of the same excitement and wonder that had accompanied the album upon its release in 1979. In the case of Peter Hook, co-founder and bass guitarist of the seminal post-punk masters Joy Division and New Order, Friday night’s performance at the Mezzanine was truly the best time and place for a full performance of Unknown Pleasures, the album that began Joy Division’s career, and the only record to be released before the death of their singer, Ian Curtis, in 1980.

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Show Review: Wild Flag with Grass Widow and Royal Baths at Bottom of the Hill, 11/18/2010

Mary Timony, Janet Weiss, and Carrie Brownstein of Wild Flag. All photos by Christopher Rogers.

WOW.

Wild Flag, the much-buzzed new supergroup featuring Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, Mary Timony of Helium, Janet Weiss of S-K and Quasi, and Rebecca Cole of The Minders, made their Bay Area debut last night. And what a debut it was.

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Show Review: A Perfect Circle performing eMOTIVe at The Fillmore, 11/18/2010

As massive undertakings go, a tour focused around three-show residencies, full-album sets, and no-opener-just-what-you-paid-to-see performances is pretty high up on the list. The ante is upped even further when the third night of said shows is focused on an album entirely comprised of cover songs — most of which, according to the band tonight, had never been played live before. The thousand-plus fans that showed up to witness A Perfect Circle perform these songs at the final night of their Fillmore residency reacted to such a statement with awe and applause — while all good things must, eventually, come to an end, the precision and care that the band emphasized in tonight’s show helped their stay come to a brilliant conclusion, and the crowd was all the more excited to witness it.

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Show Review: A Perfect Circle performing Thirteenth Step at The Fillmore, 11/17/2010

The average passerby outside The Fillmore this evening might have been puzzled at the sight that met their eyes. Several hundred people — maybe around a thousand at the most — all lined up next to the post office? There’s no big tour bus, no semi full of stage gear, parked out in front of the famous club. The more keen-eyed observers — specifically, those who might have happened by this location yesterday — might also have spotted a great deal of people from the night before this one. What would possibly draw so many people back again? It’s still two hours before the doors open, but the devoted fans of A Perfect Circle don’t mind the wait; tonight marks the second of the band’s 3-night album-performance residency at the Fillmore, with their sophomore effort Thirteenth Step taking center stage for the evening that was to follow.

As singer Maynard James Keenan would say later on that night, the message of excitement that ran through the crowd was a simple one: “Welcome to Night Two.”

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Show Review: Nitzer Ebb with //TENSE// at The Mezzanine, 11/11/2010

When it comes to the category of music known as “industrial rock”, there are a wide variety of definitions and interpretations. One constant seems to be an influx of heavy analog synth pulses, machine-gun-precise drumbeats, snarled vocals, and a collection of black-clad, morose musicians, often pounding away at keys or writhing to the underworld rhythms. Being that industrial bands often share these similarities, it is reasonable that one could go to an industrial show with little prior knowledge of the main group, and still enjoy themselves as they were mostly certain of what the evening would be like. With the Essex EBM trio of Nitzer Ebb, however, the darkness and somber attitudes are shrugged off, in favor of a minimalist but wildly energetic performance that got even the moodiest rivetheads in the audience up on their feet and defying gravity in favor of the industrial masters’ performance.

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Show Review: Marnie Stern, Grass Widow at The New Parish, 11/4/10

Marnie Stern us the kind of performer that people are desperate to describe in a single sentence. They usually toss together the name of a well known riot grrl band of some sort (Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill, etc) with a highly skilled male musician (Eddie Van Halen, Robert Fripp, Les Claypool, etc). Although I understand how quick comparisons like this make it easy to market a musician, I feel that Ms. Stern is much greater than that. Her influences are widely varied, and her skill is incomparable.

The surprisingly small crowd on a surprisingly warm November night that came out to see her last night at The New Parish got to experience an impressive show of musical heroic, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

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Show Review: Two Days with Florence & The Machine

louder than sirens, louder than bells (photo by Anna Garcia)

In the past two years, a number of new artists have suddenly sprung out of the woodwork of obscurity and made headlines and huge sales numbers with their debut records. The staying power of these acts is often questionable; the general musical mood of the public at large shifts so quickly, so often, that it is even more difficult than ever to ensure that one is not lost in the tide. In the wake of diminishing record sales, a band must tour to really gain their followers, and must, at every single show, captivate and amaze their audience, leaving no doubt of their staying power within their minds.

For someone like Florence Welch, this is absolutely no contest. She has a voice that can move mountains.

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