For the ECONOMIST: TALK about the music industry these days is fairly grim. More people may be listening to more music than ever before, but no one seems to know how to make money out of the business. So what can be done about it? This was the question before the entrepreneurs and developers who [...]
The new SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco, a swank 700-seat concert hall with stadium seating and tall ceilings, begs the question: is it more important that live jazz be intimate or sound good? The San Francisco nonprofit group SFJAZZ, which has been hosting jazz events at various venues in the city since the 80s, and [...]
For the SF WEEKLY: Electronic dance music, when paired with live instrumentation, can have disastrous results: a tenor sax player, wearing Tevas, soloing endlessly over a pre-programmed keyboard pattern; a live drummer struggling to stay in sync with looped beats; a confused audience. But joined onstage at the Warfield on Friday by brass, woodwinds, string [...]
Boots Riley talked with me about politics, and vented about how the biz shortchanges idiosyncratic bands like the Coup. The INTERVIEW appears on motherjones.com, and appeared in the November/December 2007 issue of Mother Jones Magazine.
Some musicians call it East Bay thrash core, others call it punk or hardcore. Livermore area teens who play and listen to loud, aggressive, fast music don’t much care what you call it. They’re not trying to create a big music scene. For many of them, the music and its accompanying lifestyle are about being [...]
