The best in classic and up-and-coming rock hit Bay Area stages this week. Plus food trucks galore.
Tuesday: Smashing Pumpkins and Marilyn Manson at Concord Pavilion
The best part about this tour was the press conference that happened before (these need to be more of a thing). Everything you ever needed to know about Billy Corgan and Marilyn Manson is captured in this hour-long chat, which is well worth a watch if you have an hour of free time and you wear a lot of dark flannel.
Wednesday: Boz Scaggs at Mountain Winery
Boz Scaggs chose wisely when navigating an artistic path, summoning pop, R&B, disco and all things Saturday night when first crafting his breakthrough album Silk Degrees in 1976. The San Francisco living legend has shown incredible lasting power, now five decades into a still-sprawling career. The former Steve Miller Band guitarist just put out yet another instant-classic blues album, A Fool To Care, recorded in four days in Nashville, already a resident atop the Billboard blues chart. Unreal.
Wednesday: Calexico at the Fillmore
If you haven’t spent a lazy summer afternoon with Calexico’s 2003 universally beloved album Feast of Wire, please fix that immediately. And if you have, make sure to update yourself on the Tex-Mex-folk band’s discography — Calexico has a new wondrous album out, Edge of the Sun, and it’s earning praise from all over. The A.V. Club captures the general sentiment around the album succinctly: “Edge Of The Sun picks up where Feast Of Wire left off, and though it fails to blaze a new path, it livens up an old one.”
Saturday: Death Cab for Cutie at the Greek
Death Cab for Cutie has been around for 18 years, and that’s just depressing, but also kind of beautiful. Ben Gibbard and company’s latest album, Kintsugi, seems to reflect that sentiment — sad, gut wrenching songs abound, but beauty hides just around the corner of every hook and bridge. The album is DCFC’s first without longtime producer Chris Walla (and Gibbard's first since his well-publicized divorce from Zooey Deschanel), and it doesn’t take much to pick up on the sad-sucker-picking-himself-back-up themes. It results in some of the band's most poignant work since the seminal 2001 cut Transatlanticism.
Saturday: Phono Del Sol Music Festival at Potrero del Sol Park
Perhaps San Francisco’s most charming, intimate festival returns for another desperately anticipated installment. The lineup, as usual, is a glimpse into the future of indie rock: Sonny and the Sunsets, Tanlines, King Tuff, Generationals, Verité, Mas Ysa are all names every casual music fan will be familiar with in five years. Plus food trucks galore. Plus summer. Get there.
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