When a band calling itself Day Maker played at last month’s So Long San Jose Skate event, band members didn’t announce who they were, or that it was their first show together in seven years—or that their real name was Strata. In fact, they’d told just a small handful of friends that…
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Tony Contini on June 11, 2014
Some bands’ sounds are fueled by past loves and worldly turmoil, others by pizza and beer. Joan and the Rivers are an experimental three-piece rock band from San Jose—and a trio of kindred spirits.
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Skate-punk wasn’t just another hyphenate subgenre of good, old early ’80s punk rock; it was made by skaters, for skaters. In fact, San Jose’s the Faction, who formed in 1983 as part of the first wave of skate-punk, boasted one of the most famous professional skaters in the world as their bass…
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Richard Faulk on April 2, 2014
It’s a new album and a new start for Dee Dee Penny and her brainchild the Dum Dum Girls. Though it’s fair to say that each of her three albums has been its own departure, 2010’s I Will Be introduced the band as a more than competent low-fi act that understood its…
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Richard Faulk on March 24, 2014
For 29 years, the Reverend Horton Heat has been the go-to band for rabble-rousing Southern rock that has both feet planted firmly in the sounds of the 1950s.
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Jason Stollsteimer was never known to be a tortured artist. His old band, the Von Bondies, were a fun rock & roll band, part of the early 2000s garage-rock revival alongside the Strokes and the White Stripes. But toward the end of the decade, as they fizzled out, he focused on a…
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Richard Faulk on August 20, 2013
This summer, San Francisco’s venerable club New Wave City turned 21. By this reporter’s reckoning, it means that New Wave has lingered three times longer than the actual musical phenomenon. And that’s A-OK: Like the psychedelic era, which also refuses to die, the music underground circa 1977 to 1984 is vital enough…
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Considering singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s impressive track record, it shouldn’t be difficult for him to build an audience with his latest project, Zavalaz, even though it sounds so different from his previous bands, At the Drive-In (post-hardcore) and Mars Volta (prog-metal).
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Local post-punk rockers the Trims are set to release a new EP, Delete You After, this Friday with a release party at the Blank Club.
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San Francisco’s Li Xi finds an odd place between worlds. They mix vintage 60s synthesizers and modern electronics, as well as an obvious love for superbly strange pop music from the past and sonically sophisticated indie rock.
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