- Beyond the Listings: November 2009
- Published: Nov 08, 2009
There are plenty of great shows in the Bay Area in November, including some welcome returns by touring bands. Here are a few picks for great shows in the coming month.
- Budget Rock Festival 8 Preview
- Published: Oct 23, 2009
Garage rock groups past and present converge at Thee Parkside, Bottom of the Hill and The Eagle this weekend for the eighth installment of the Budget Rock Festival.
- Beyond the Listings: October 2009
- Published: Oct 06, 2009
Temperatures around the Bay have been dropping, but plenty of good shows in October make it worth venturing out into the cold, including Amy Millan, The Raincoats, the Treasure Island Music Festival, Frisco Freakout and more...
- On Land Festival
- Published: Sep 16, 2009
The On Land Festival is in many ways the exact opposite of the similarly-named Outside Lands Festival, offering a weekend sampling of psych, drone and experimental acts in the more intimate venues of Cafe Du Nord and the Swedish American Hall.
- Beyond the Listings: September 2009
- Published: Sep 07, 2009
Even though the summer festival/touring season has quieted down, September offers a bunch of amazing concerts in the Bay Area. Here are sneak peeks at some of the most enticing.
- Invisible Ocean Festival Preview
- Published: Sep 01, 2009
Deep in the redwoods on a farm near Mendocino isn't probably the first place you'd expect to find a two day independent music festival, but the environment's sure to add a staid ambiance to the Invisible Ocean Festival, taking place on September 5th and 6th.
- Outside Lands' Gems
- Published: Aug 27, 2009
Lower down the card there are some real gems among the 70+ acts performing at Outside Lands over the weekend. If you're headed to the festival, be sure to check out some of these great bands.
- Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival
- Published: Jul 15, 2009
The Thirteenth Annual Mission Creek Music And Arts Festival ("MCMF") kicks off in full today with a variety of performances throughout City venues and performance spaces over the next eleven days.
- The Mother Hips Family Hipnic
- Published: Jul 02, 2009
One tends to get a little suspicious of anything billed as a "new annual tradition," but the First Annual Mother Hips Family Hipnic in Big Sur this weekend, looks like it'd be a welcome alternative to the traditional barrage of patriotic festivities.
- Preview: Battlehooch's Piecechow
- Published: Jun 23, 2009
There may be a chicken-egg debate about whether Battlehooch the identity preceded Battlehooch the band, but I know that the former was definitely what I saw first, as the band's members grabbed the attention of the local music community by attending local shows in packs, dressed in headbands ("Battlerags") emblazoned with the group's name.
- Concert Preview: Sleepy Sun's CD Release Party
- Published: Jun 20, 2009
Fresh off a European tour that saw them playing the All Tomorrow's Parties and Primavera Festivals, San Francisco's Sleepy Sun return home Friday, June 19th to celebrate the release of their debut CD Embrace at the Great American Music Hall.
- San Francisco Popfest 2009
- Published: May 21, 2009
This year marks San Francisco's fifth Popfest featuring a diverse lineup that includes some of the city's latest crop of talented indie artists.
- Thao Nguyen: We Brave Bee Stings And All
- Published: May 02, 2009
As with most of the great rock music in history, emotional strife is central to many of Thao's song-stories, delivered with a unique voice that can project strength and resignation with equal cool.
- Understanding South by Southwest
- Published: Mar 29, 2009
Even if the music industry is collapsing along with the rest of the economy, there remains no shortage of great bands to be heard.
- Vetiver: Tight Knit
- Published: Mar 16, 2009
The Bay Area has been pumping out some truly excellent folk-rock over the past decade, and few bands have excelled in the genre like San Francisco's Vetiver.
- Window Twins: I'm This Tall City
- Published: Feb 26, 2009
A record as disarmingly personal as I'm This Tall City feels like a rare and special creature. The intimate and varied soundscapes that layer the work's nine songs feel like a trip down the rabbit hole into the strange and fascinating musical psyches of its creators, The Window Twins.
- Tiny Telephone's Ten Year Anniversary Party
- Published: Jan 30, 2009
It may just be an admittedly childish love of flashing lights and knob-filled spaceship-looking consoles, but to me there's something truly wonderful about a nice recording studio.
- The Rickshaw Stop Celebrates Its 5th Birthday!
- Published: Jan 02, 2009
In January of 2004, some entrepreneurial folks took a camera studio on Fell Street at Van Ness and transformed it into the Rickshaw Stop, a venue that, in its five years of existence, has become one of the premier music spots in San Francisco.
- Club Chuckles' Five Year Anniversay Blowout
- Published: Dec 12, 2008
Since December 2003, Club Chuckles has hosted an impressive variety of cutting edge local and out-of-town comedians monthly at the Hemlock Tavern. It's a non-traditional venue for comedy, appropriate to showcase some non-traditional acts.
- Frisco Freakout!
- Published: Oct 09, 2008
It's been over forty years since bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service fused psychedelic elements into folk, blues, and rock and roll, creating the "San Francisco Sound" that many still consider the signature identity of Bay Area music.
- Winter's Fall
- Published: Sep 29, 2008
"Indie? Narco-Country?" That's the question posed by Berkeley quartet Winter's Fall on their web site, and it's one that could be asked of a number of the bands dominating alternative music today.
- 20 Minute Loop: Famous People Marry Famous People
- Published: Aug 18, 2008
They've been called "freak pop" and "art rock," but I think of 20 Minute Loop as a Bay Area answer to the New Pornographers, fueled by crunchy guitars and soaring melodies that betray a love of classic power pop and early nineties indie sounds.
- Bay Area Girls Rock Camp: How to Spend a Summer Rock Vacation
- Published: Jul 15, 2008
Aspiring young Bay Area rockers are no longer relegated to bedrooms and basements, with a number of established and emerging groups offering year-round classes and summer camps dedicated to teaching songwriting and music performance far afield of the traditional school orchestras and jazz bands.
- Last of the Blacksmiths: Young Family Song
- Published: Jul 01, 2008
In the mid-1990s, a Houston DJ named DJ Screw gained widespread attention for pioneering a unique style of remixing known as "Chopped and Screwed," in which he would use a turntable to shift an existing rap or R&B song's pitch significantly downward and drastically slow its tempo.
- Jonathan Richman: Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild
- Published: Jun 16, 2008
San Franciscan Jonathan Richman released Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild several months ago to surprisingly little fanfare, but maybe that's the curse that accompanies his artistic longevity.
- The Rose Hill Collective's Volume 2 Release Party
- Published: May 17, 2008
If an artists' collective suggests an insular group of collaborators operating in some isolated or remote universe, that image doesn't capture a number of musicians' collectives currently operating in the San Francisco Bay Area.
- The Dodos: Visiter
- Published: May 06, 2008
For the past several years, guitarist Meric Long and drummer Logan Kroeber -- collectively The Dodos -- have been criss-crossing the country, delivering audiences the propulsive folk-rock sound that has made them one of 2008's most acclaimed bands.
