The death of No Use For A Name lead singer Tony Sly on July 31 left family, friends and fans stunned and grieving. At Sly’s funeral at St. Joseph Cathedral in San Jose, NOFX frontman Fat Mike, head of Sly’s label Fat Wreck Chords, remembered how he’d always been jealous of his…
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For five years running now, Rock the Bells has been the South Bay’s biggest rap show. It’s also the strangest megatour of the 21st century; since its debut in 2004, it’s reinvented itself almost every year, and this one is no exception.
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If his show at Mountain Winery last night taught us anything, it’s that nobody has followed Weird Al’s career like Weird Al.
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San Jose native Derek Jameson is known for songs that fuse hard beats with naked emotion. One of the biggest weaknesses of club music is its tendency toward dehumanized, assembly-line blandness, but Jameson turns this blueprint for mechanization on its head with the passionate sincerity of his lyrics. He has an unusual…
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With Electronic Dance Music still emerging as a genre, Skrillex’s set at Outside Lands last weekend was probably the best free publicity the Identity Festival could ask for going into its return to Shoreline Friday.
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As a member of the iconic South Bay hip-hop group Subcontents, Tape Mastah Steph was an integral part of the emerging underground hip-hop scene in San Jose back in the ’90s. Today, he still is, even though he moved out of California almost a decade ago.
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Jeff Hamilton thinks it’s kind of funny that musical diversity at jazz festivals is getting so much attention in the last few years. He’s been playing them for longer than most of the artists at this year’s Summer Fest—both as bandleader of his own trio and as drummer for jazz legend Oscar…
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Anyone who wonders what hip-hop could possibly have in common with traditional Punjabi music has never heard Ustad Lal Singh Bhatti sing. “He’s the ultimate freestyler,” says rapper Vijay Chattha of his bandmate in the San Francisco hip-hop-funk-jazz group BlackMahal, who perform at Summer Fest in downtown San Jose on Saturday
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When Cajun rock up-and-comer Amanda Shaw belts out a punk cover—say, The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” or a gender-modified take on the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”—it’s not a novelty-type thing, like string-music versions of Metallica. Her versions, especially the Clash song, burn with the same power…
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For millions of people, Prince is an enigmatic musical genius, one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, and perhaps the most celebrated icon of funk in history. To Morris Day, who plays San Jose Jazz’s Summer Fest on Friday, he’s the guy he was stuck in the basement with every night…
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