by
Avi Salem on December 28, 2018
In remembrance of San Jose’s Aaron Anaya, who tragically passed away in a DUI crash in November, local and out-of-town acts will be paying tribute to his life and legacy at this special fundraiser show and celebration. Many of the groups performing were friends of Anaya, who was also a musician, and…
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The Limos will always have a spot in the hometown hall of fame, and not only because they’ve put out a number of truly great songs. The guys also throw awesome parties. The alt-electronic duo’s annual XXXMas Fckfest at The Ritz is not to be missed. This year the show is masquerading…
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by
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
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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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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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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Avi Salem on November 14, 2018
Robert Toher is something of a musical voyager. For nearly two decades he’s navigated the perimeters of the musical landscape, from playing in punk bands as a teen in the late ’90s to his central role in the genre-bending bands Apse and ERAAS in the 2000s and 2010s. Similarly, Toher’s musical stylings…
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Tad Malone on November 8, 2018
Originally formed in Seattle by Jared Warren and Coady Willis, stoner metal wunderkinds Big Business have been dredging up sludgy riffs and propulsive drums since 2004. With a style that is sometimes proggy, sometimes melodic and always heavy, Big Business have been shoring up their sound for more than a decade, and…
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Mike Huguenor on October 31, 2018
Just a few years ago, Kennedy Ashlyn was one half of the up-and-coming goth pop act Them Are Us Too, a group formed when both members were students at UCSC. The duo began touring on summer vacations, and before long had signed with influential goth and experimental label Dais Records. For such…
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Bill Kopp on October 31, 2018
High-concept cover bands succeed when they breathe new life into something old and familiar. Dread Zeppelin started doing it in the 1990s, with its Elvis impersonator meets reggae band take on Led Zeppelin’s catalog. Today Mac Sabbath takes the form to its most bizarre extreme: exploring the proto-doom and heavy metal of…
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