Numbers played an integral part at last Monday’s Ratatat concert at the Henry Fonda theatre. One sole orange foam finger sporting the Ratatat insignia was used to full effect by Despot, a Queens-based rapper, who was able to get the restless opening droves of Ratatat fans on his side via his grimy break-neck beats. Built on a wall of sound, as extended intros and outros flooded out the high-end décor of the venue, which only then circulated through the ear...
For about 10 years, Mice Parade have been dipping their toes in the waters of experimental indie-electronic music, always coming out with something new and fresh, or this time, with the self-titled Mice Parade, something comforting. The brains behind the operation point to a New Yorker named Adam Pierce. He started off the band as solo project, releasing a single called “My Funny Friend Scott” in 1998, which eventually led him to the full-length debut entitled The True Meaning of...
One of the original ideas that got kicked around during the early days of Ground Control was that of a concert calendar; one that was customizable by region and was viewable in actual calendar format, as opposed to the unwieldy–yet still convenient–lists of shows like Pollstar. Here's the problem: we didn't really know how to implement it, and so it fell by the wayside in favor of things we could do with decent levels of kick-assery, like live coverage, streaming...
San Francisco has its share of crazy shows and exclusive one-off nights where some band has wandered into town and set-up shop down in someone's basement and rocked it all secret and exclusive style. People set up shows outside the above-ground train station and get unplugged and booted within seconds. That said, it's still not every day that you get the chance to see five Japanese girls get up onstage at a regular venue and play a mixture of Bow...
The curtain rose Friday night for the first of two sold-out shows at the Henry Fonda Music Box with TV on the Radio drumming on logs, drummers strumming and the sweetest rendition of “Tonight” sounding brilliantly across the hall. The scene epitomized the essence of the band remarkably. That is to say that TV on the Radio is one of the most soulful, unconventional bands to come along in a while. This was already apparent when I first encountered them...
As my buddy said in a reply to this news, “Now there’s a welcome piece of news that made my year. Now we can relive the summer of 92 with two new Danzig albums. Let’s find an outdoor weightroom we can heckle people from.” It’s true, those days included a lot of Danzig and working out for our football summer camp. So, if you’re at all like us, you will be happy to hear that on May 29th, evilive will...
Philadelphia's Man Man are going on tour tour, and adding to the two-two punch is the fact that lead singer Honus Honus will stalk the same stage as Modest Mouse's equally enigmatic Isaac "Cut Cut" Brock. Ridiculous repetitions aside, the band will spend some time on the road by themselves before hooking up with MM. Look for plenty of stage antics, and listen out for new music from their as yet untitled album album (sorry, couldn't resist) Tour Dates: Apr...
In case you didn't realize it, summer is fast approaching. Some of you in the northeast are calling bullshit right now, but I swear it's the truth. Want proof? Everyone's announcing the line-ups for the plethora of summer festivals soon to be coming your way. So here's the line-up for the one festival that's not absolutely guaranteed to be Death Valley hot: Sasquatch! in the lovely green state of Washington. Not only is it going to be green over Memorial...
Let's all hop in the wayback machine to 2002, when a little movie called Spider-Man made us believe that Tobey Maguire was an action hero and that Kirsten Dunst was an attractive redhead. Let us also shake our collective fists at that movie, for subjecting us to that damn song "Hero" all summer. Ugh, Nickelback. All Music Guide says it so well: "it's a disappointment that the soundtrack to Spider-Man is so calculated, pitched directly at the nü-metal/rap-rock/post-grunge crowd with...
Fresh off a week’s worth of showcases in Austin for the annual South by Southwest music conference, The Fratellis showed up at the Troubadour locked, loaded and ready for action. Having caught half of one of their electric sets and a full acoustic set in Austin I already had a good idea what was on the agenda for the evening, and that would be a tight set of the ol’ rock ‘n’ roll. They would not disappoint. They tore into...