Before you fasten your seat belts for another three-day festival at Golden Park this weekend at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, check out this revealing report on where our Outside Lands dollars end up. The report also tells how increased rental fees in SF Parks such as Golden Gate Parks are rising fast, at the expense of smaller, more niche events. It also makes you think about the impact these events have on GGP neighbors, most of whom don’t see a dime of compensation for the use of their streets and sidewalks. Whether you sympathize with NIMBY types or not, it’s good food for thought, and a reminder to be respectful of your gracious Richmond district hosts.
Sermon over; party on...
Tuesday: Pixies at The Masonic
Let’s play a little game of Catching Up on Modern Times With a Teenager Stuck in the ‘90s: First, The Masonic is now a recently-renovated, music-first venue — at long last. Second, other music venues are finally trying to stop fans from ruining shows with cellphones (turns out, people can’t be trusted with technology in public; oh, and Zack Morris’ massive cell phone caught on big, btw.). Lastly, the Pixies finally have a new album out for the first time in 20 years. 20 years! Sadly, Kim Deal isn’t in the band anymore, and some people don’t think it’s really the Pixies without her. But hell, we wouldn’t miss a Pixies cover band play songs from Doolittle, so we’re not complaining (too much). Welcome to 2014!
Thursday: Thievery Corporation at Fox Theater
I’d like to think Thievery Corporation would get some credit if the world’s borders were ever considered an antiquated relic. Trying to place their sound, like you might with 2000-era NYC rock or early '90s LA hip-hop, is near to impossible. Thievery Corporation songs traverse countries, oceans, and continents in a matter of minutes, leaving listeners wanderlusting for more.
Thursday: K.Flay at Rickshaw Stop
Stanford product K.Flay, known to friends and family as Kristine Flaherty, finds herself somewhere in between hip-hop and pop-darling-in-the-making. She serves as a reminder that hard-to-classify music often doesn’t mix with the realities of the major label. In an interview with Straight, K.Flay details her divorce with the major label world: “When I first signed to RCA, I was sort of excited and shocked that it was happening...But over the next couple of years, it really started to feel like that game you play when you’re a little kid—the one where you put your nose on a bat and then spin around and try to walk. From a creative standpoint, there were a lot of different ideas about the direction of the project. Initially, my—for lack of a better term—selling point was the fact that I was between all these different genres; I was seen as a little bit of this, a little bit of that. That became a real problem among the infrastructure of a commercially driven bureaucracy.”
That’s fine, because it’s 2014 and K.Flay can still speak directly to her still-growing audience. Her 2014 album Life as a Dog is easily her most assured and inspired to date.
Thursday and Friday: Lorde at Greek Theatre
Well that was fast. New Zealand pop star-gone-international Lorde has enjoyed a dizzying rise to the top of the pop music hierarchy at on 17 years. But age is merely a (staggering) number in the narrative of Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, whose voice is immediately engaging, commanding even.
Sunday: Bombay Bicycle Club at The Warfield
Bombay Bicycle Club’s thrilling, sprawling 2014 masterpiece So Long, See You Tomorrow is starting to earn plaudits from Big Plaudit. The album landed on the Mercury Prize shortlist, which goes to the best album by a UK artist or group (one look at past winners offers a quick clue about the prestige of this award). There’s some resemblance to 2012 Mercury Prize winners Alt-J, but Bombay Bicycle Club tend to go for the jugular a bit more, which bodes well for their live set.
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