Let's welcome Veronica de la Mora to SFist, as she shares her concert-going wisdom with us on a regular basis. Veronica attends several shows per week, so keep up to date with the week's best shows happening throughout the Bay Area!
A little bit about us... We grew up in South Central Los Angeles and moved to the Bay Area in the early 90s. We love music and going to concerts. The most fun we have is turning people on to a band they haven't listened to before and going to shows with them.
We're still reeling from some amazing shows the past couple of weeks: Chilly Gonzalez at the Hotel Utah, Bear In Heaven at the Independent, Garbage at the El Rey (in Los Angeles), PULP at Radio City Music Hall, The Horrors at Bimbo's 365 Club, PULP at the Warfield, Refused at the Warfield. Our mini-Coachella tour ended with seeing M83 at the Fillmore this past Monday. We sacrificed seeing Madness at the Warfield and the Buzzcocks at the Uptown to see PULP play at their last stop before Coachella last week. We need to clone ourselves so that we can attend more shows...someone is working on that, right?
Let's see some shows!
Thursday, April 26th
Happy baby Friday! Start the weekend with a dance party at the Rickshaw Stop, as Popscene presents the Knocks (a NY based producer/DJ duo). Their popular songs are "Magic" and "All We Got" but we're really loving this cover they did of M83's "Midnight City" (you aren't sick of this song yet — just check it out already).
Friday, April 27th
When is the cloning machine going to be ready? We want to be at all of these:
Maná comes to Oakland with their sold out Drama y Luz tour. We're a huge Latin pop fan and have never seen these guys. After spying a few setlists online, we see that they have been opening some of their shows with our favorite song of theirs.
The Skatalites at the Uptown featuring a rare performance by legendary vocalist Norma Fraser. Get your Rock Steady on!
Opeth, Mastodon, Ghost at The Fox Theater in Oakland. Ok, so this isn't really our pick. Our mister happens to dig this stuff and we're willing to go along and check things out that we're not super familiar with. That being said, we're curious about seeing a performance by Mastodon. We didn't know we had an inner-metalhead.
Coldplay, Metronomy, The Pierces at HP Pavilion. Coldplay is Coldplay. They'll put on a great show. Everyone will sing along to "Yellow" and go home happy. Metronomy has had a few stops at smaller venues in the bay area so it's great to see them sharing the bill.
San Francisco darlings, Loquat, showcase their new record, We Could Be Arsonists, at the Independent. Loquat played SXSW this year and lead singer Kylee Swenson Gordon got to perform "Just Like Honey" alongside Jesus and Mary Chain.
Saturday, April 28th
DJ Shadow, another Bay Area alumnus (ok, Davis), shows off his skills for us at the Regency.
Monday, April 30th
Tennis at the Independent. Heavily influenced by Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, this husband and wife duo caught my ears when I watched some footage of them from SXSW. We highly recommend listening to their music before reading about their story (you'll thank us later). This event is sold out but maybe you know someone that knows someone.
Tuesday, May 1st
Yo La Tengo at SFMOMA. This one's also sold out but maybe you can get in touch with that person who knows someone again.
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green presents the world premiere of his "live documentary" on Buckminster Fuller. This is a live collaboration with Yo La Tengo as Green discusses/narrates projects Fuller proposed for the Bay Area, including a gargantuan floating tetrahedral city in the middle of the Bay, and explores his utopian vision of radical change through a "design revolution."
Wednesday, May 2nd
Ty Segall and White Fence at the Independent with Shannon and the Clams and The Mallard. The 60s seem to be a theme this week. The duo of Ty Segall and White Fence as well as Shannon and the Clams! You can't go to this show and not have fun.
Lastly, we have to mention this awesome event happening at MOCA (yep, it's not a concert, and it's not in San Francisco). Mike D of the Beastie Boys curates Transmission LA at MOCA thru May 6th. A 17 day festival that features art, concerts, and more. There are some ticketed portions to the event so do a little planning. Definitely worth the drive to Los Angeles.
