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Mike Huguenor on December 5, 2018
One of the best bands to come from indie rock’s late ’90s-early ’00s golden age, Pinback inspired a generation of musicians to stray from chords, distortion and just about every other standard rock trope. When bands like Franz Ferdinand and Yeah Yeah Yeahs went for angularity, Pinback went for the gracefully slanted.…
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Tad Malone on December 5, 2018
What started in 1991 as a small acoustic-only offering by a local radio station has grown over the decades into an alternative rock spectacular. ALT 105’s annual one-day winter show Not So Silent Night features the biggest names in rock and its various sects, and this year’s show at the SAP Center…
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Tad Malone on December 5, 2018
The zany, uptempo style of Louisiana folk music known as Zydeco first emerged from the sweltering swamps of New Orleans—the result of French, German, Spanish, American Indian and Afro-Caribbean co-mingling. The genre has been centuries in the making, and Dwayne “Dopsie” Rubin aims to keep the tradition fluid with his zydeco-fusion band,…
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Nick Veronin on December 5, 2018
No serious examination of the facts will lead a sensible person to conclude that the Trump trolls have a point when they say it’s a “scary time” for straight white men in America today. That doesn’t mean cis dudes don’t face any challenges. Comedian Matt Braunger manages to coax some non-confrontational laughs…
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Tad Malone on December 5, 2018
Like any good tribute band, the Led Zeppelin-aping Zoso can be said to have a schtick—that is, if you can rightly call technical mastery a “schtick.” Performing almost all of the legendary band’s catalogue, from the tightly wound, explosive jams of Led Zeppelin to the maximalist, genre-spanning experimentations of Physical Graffiti and…
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Tad Malone on December 5, 2018
Much like The Nutcracker, Smuin Ballet’s annual production of The Christmas Ballet has become a favorite of the Bay Area Christmas season. Unlike The Nutcracker, however, The Christmas Ballet isn’t constrained by centuries of tradition, animated toy soldiers and dancing rodents. Instead, the local dance company will present a medley of holiday…
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Tad Malone on December 5, 2018
It’s a Christmas tradition. This week, the Northside Theatre Company once again takes on Charles Dickens’ iconic tale about selfishness, regret, time and reconciliation—1843’s A Christmas Carol. Northside’s telling is an adaptation by the theater group’s founder and former managing artistic director, the late Richard T. Orlando. With Orlando’s help, Northside Theatre…
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by
Bill Kopp on December 5, 2018
Since forming in 1980, Hawthorne, California-based Redd Kross have been expertly straddling the link between punk rock and power pop. And at their best, the band have erased the arbitrary line between those styles. Nearly 15 years after ending a lengthy hiatus, the band is still going strong with a tour, a…
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Tad Malone on December 5, 2018
After last year’s successful holiday run, TheatreWorks in partnership with Foothill College is bringing David Sedaris’ classic tale of working as a mall Santa’s grumpy little helper back for a second offering. Born out the writer’s real experiences as a curmudgeonly elf in New York City in the early ’90s, Santaland Diaries’…
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Mike Huguenor on November 28, 2018
Despite its co-opting of the word “creative,” the business models of Silicon Valley work largely in opposition to the artistic process. There is no convenience economy of art. You can’t Doordash creative inspiration, and you can’t Uber your way past its gestation period. With art, doing it right takes time.
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