Results tagged “phillyistplaylist”

Tonight The Trocadero is treating you to three acts sure to rock your soul and your socks.

311 has always been a band that puts on a fantastic, high-energy show and tomorrow night's sold-out performance at The Borgata should prove to be no exception. This Phillyist was a fan of 311 when Grassroots came out and their sound has evolved so fluidly, keeping us interested ever since. This new fall tour seems to stem off the most recent summer tour, promoting their newest album, Uplifter.

Today we were supposed to share with you, dear readers, an interview with guitarist Jade Puget. However, Jade's quotes were rather unfortunately sacrificed to the recordings gods (thanks a lot technology), so we're not able to recount everything we got to talk about, but we can give you some small nuggets of info along with our take on AFI's new album, Crash Love.

The world famous Mannheim Steamroller is giving what we are calling a "Christmas sneak peek" concert at the Academy of Music this Saturday, November 14th. As this is their 25th anniversary tour, the world famous instrumental group is bringing out the big guns and getting ready to rock your Christmas Tree sweater right off. Featuring both their incredibly popular Christmas music and a pretty impressive multi-media show, Mannheim Steamroller, or as we friends of the group like to call them, "Steam," offers a great way to kick off the beginning of that seemingly endless, but nonetheless magical, two month run up to Christmas awesomeness.

The last time Bob Dylan went on tour in these parts, a police officer thought he was homeless and charged him with loitering. And judging from the reviews of his 47th album Christmas in the Heart, the icon's latest sound just might resemble a panhandler's plaintive tunes.

We've been waiting for this tour since the "Very Last" Reggie and the Full Effect show at the TLA in September of 2008. Back then The Get Up Kids reunion and Someting to Write Home About 10th Anniversary Live DVD was just a rumbling on the internet. Fortunately, a rumor fueled by James Dewees is a reliable one indeed. The Get Up Kids' keyboard player and Reggie founder dropped hints all along his tour that a reunion would be upcoming, and all but confirmed it during the encore at the TLA.

Ralph Covert, from Disney's Ralph's World, is coming to Philadelphia on November 8th at the World Café Live and I'm hoping he's bringing Pickles.

       

Somewhere in the midst of the Phillies giving us one coronary after another, we lost track of the fact that we went to the Factory a couple Saturdays ago to check out a couple of our favorite live acts, Paramore (MySpace) and Paper Route (MySpace). It's not that the show was forgettable; we just get a little crazy around Phillies playoff time.

Tomorrow night, the husband and wife jazz team Herb Alpert and Lani Hall will perform songs from their new album, Anything Goes, at the Annenberg Center. Herb Alpert is a trumpet-playing legend: an eight-time Grammy® winner, bandleader of the Tijuana Brass and co-founder of A&M records. Among the friends of Phillyist with longer memories, Herb is famous for his 1965 album Whipped Cream, the cover of which displayed a rather attractive woman wearing nothing but. This time around, however, Herb is performing with his wife, Lani Hall, a Grammy® winning vocalist since the 1960s—we expect both musicians to be fully clothed. They are playing in Philadelphia for one night only.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if my dad was a militant slam poet who used eardrum shattering electronic beats and industrial hip-hop to communicate his message of individualism, anti-conformity and transcending the shackles of racism that have affected him so deeply.

Really, so your plan was to spend your night off in between World Series games at home, resting your liver and your wallet? Well think again, because there is a tour rolling into Philly on Friday that takes crazy to a whole new level. Tell your checking account that everything will be okay, but trust us: Saul Williams is definitely worth going into overdraft for.

Hang on, baseball fans. This week, the city's spotlight belongs on the Spectrum, where it will shine for four nights on the men of Pearl Jam and the fans who kept the venue in business for over 55 years.

The first time I heard these words, I was in a nightclub in North London. My first reaction was, "Europeans really do listen to some weird shit...and I dig it." At the time, I had no clue that what I was hearing wasn't really European at all, but decidedly American, as these were the opening lines of "Danger! High Voltage" by Detroit rockers Electric Six (MySpace). That was the beginning of a four-month long borderline obsession with the disco-funk-pop-rock outfit responsible for such catchy, politically incorrect numbers as "Gay Bar" and "Infected Girls."

We have a confession. Let's just get it out there, because the truth will set us free, right. We're not 16-year-old angsty girls, and yet we still find Paramore (MySpace) inexplicably compelling and listenable. There, we said it. We feel much better now.

If you don't know singer/songwriter Erin McCarley's music, you should. Like, right now. You can start by listening to her full album on MySpace, and then coming to see her this Sunday, October 11, at World Cafe Live. Tickets are $13, which is a helluva bargain. (Her album, Love, Save the Empty, is only her first. Give her a year or two to really catch on, and tickets prices are going to skyrocket.)

Beth Ditto is busy. In addition to helming a band and starting a clothing line, the zaftig lead singer of Gossip (MySpace) recently (and bravely) dropped trou for the cover of UK-based LOVE magazine, giving pride and delight to fierce fat girls everywhere. In addition, she and the band have just kicked off a US tour in support of their latest album, Music for Men, cut with the aid of infamous producer Rick Rubin.

We've lamented—frequently—the craptastic acoustics at the Electric Factory. The warehouse venue has made even some of our favorite acts, who we know are great live performers—The Honorary Title being the most notable example—pretty much unlistenable. Could someone, anyone, conquer the cavernous, metallic echo chamber that is the Factory?

With a name like Princeton (Myspace), I formulated a vision of a young band from my great homeland of East Coast, New Jersey (Philadelphia Metro Area, naturally), breaking out onto the indie rock scene. And so I was slightly disappointed to find out that my completely baseless guess as to the band's name origin couldn't have possibly been more wrong. Sure enough, twin brothers Jesse and Matt Kivel named their band after the place where they spent most of their childhood. Unfortunately, that place isn't crawling with ivy and preppy college students (or fortunately maybe, depending on your opinion). These boys mean Princeton Street, Santa Monica. As in California. West Coast, Pacific Ocean, sand, sun, surf—all that nonsense. But I'm not going to hold that against them as their first full-length album is pretty damn cool.

Looking to kick off your weekend with a bang? A headbang, that is. Well, you'll have a prime opportunity to get a jump on your self-induced weekend migraine when the hardDrive Live Tour hits the Troc tomorrow night. HardDrive Live is the inaugural national tour from syndicated hard rock radio show—wait for it—hardDrive. And for its first foray into a live concert tour, hardDrive has packed in some top-notch acts.

It's been three years since Regina Spektor (MySpace) first charmed the world with her vocal stylings on her breakout single "Fidelity." For years, she'd been building an audience under the radar with her superb musicianship and eclectic sound, but that song really put her on the national map, at least for a brief time. Could she keep people's attention, or at least regain it after the buzz of "Fidelity" died down a bit?

Canadian musicians The Weakerthans are one of the few bands (actually, the only one we have found so far) that can tug so effectively at your heartstrings while singing from the perspective of a cat.

What's that you say? Phillyist really digs Rhett Miller (MySpace), frontman of the Old 97's? No! Why would you say that?

Let's face it: Phillyist is never going to stop encouraging you to check out Matt Duke (MySpace). He's one of our favorite performers, and a local, so we're just going to keep plugging his shows until the world—or at least the entire City of Brotherly Love—takes notice. Philadelphia gets its next opportunity to embrace Duke on Sunday night, when he'll be playing an acoustic set at World Cafe Live in support of his recent release, the songs on the acoustic EP take on a totally new life with Duke's stripped-down reinterpretations. Especially poignant are the acoustic versions of "The Father, the Son, and the Harlot's Ghost" and "Walk It Off," which are both notably different than their full-band incarnations.

              

We went into the Saturday Night Rebel Rockers show at the Borgata a couple weeks ago—we know, this is long overdue—with a little bit of trepidation. After all, we were really going primarily, if not exclusively, because we're big Counting Crows (MySpace) fans. We were less than familiar with Michael Franti & Spearhead (MySpace), and the one time this Phillyist saw Augustana (MySpace), I was a little...underwhelmed. All told, we thought we'd really rather have just seen a Counting Crows headlining show, but we figured we'd take what we could get—a mishmash of the three bands playing together, swapping members, each individual band (in no particular order) playing its own songs at times. There had been some good buzz on this uniquely-formatted tour, so maybe it was our curiosity getting the best of us, but we weren't really prepared to love the show.

If the Bangles have often been the soundtrack for lovers' endless summer nights, with gently melancholic songs like "You Don't Love Me" and "Thought I Knew You", Matthew Sweet has scored the backdrop of many a breakup.

            

It's sort of easy to see why Chevelle is oft mistaken for a Christian band. And by "see," we literally mean . The band consists of three wholesome, clean-cut, good-looking, All-American boys—nay, brothers—who just happen to know how to play the rock-n-roll. The music, however, bared no real resemblance to what's generally expected of "Christian Rock." Now, we know we're stereotyping (give us a break, the our knowledge of Christian rock is sort of limited to the horrific spectacle that is Creed and the surprisingly cool Jars of Clay), but there wasn't anything especially glorifying or redemptive about Chevelle's songs. No, in fact lyrically and musically, we'd say it's more gnarled and brooding. Gnarled and brooding being a good thing. Radio staples "The Red," and "Send the Pain Below" were aptly performed live.

Bummed LA and NY got final Nine Inch Nails shows, but Philadelphia was left out? We have just the good news to cure your blues. Them Crooked Vultures, better known as "Dave Grohl's New Supergroup," released a very select few US tour dates this week and oh, look at that—lucky us, Philly is on the list! While Gothamist and LAist were turning mighty green (no shows for them as of right now) we were busy cherry picking the online presale this morning. After forty full minutes of severe Ticketmaster password failure we finally managed to our golden ticket into what promises to be an epic Electric Factory event.

Anyone who clicked here thinking they were getting info on some reunion of Jim Carrey, David Alan Grier and the Wayans Brothers (the older and funny ones, not the younger and stupid ones), click away now. We're here to talk about rock. Furious, hard, guitar-shredding rock.

A day after the legendary Flaming Lips grace the Festival Pier, WMMR brings in the hard rock for Jaxon's Low Dough Rock Show. Okay, there really isn't any correlation, we just really like the Flaming Lips. But we also like Chicago trio Chevelle (Myspace), playing on Sunday with Staind, Shinedown, and Halestorm (PA's own slightly heavier version of Paramore).

About a year ago—the last time we saw Counting Crows (MySpace)—we lamented the too-short sets Counting Crows play on their frequent co-headlining tours. (Last summer was with Maroon 5, but this Phillyist has also seen them on double-bills with Live and The Goo Goo Dolls.) The band has too much strong material, and they're too excellent of performers, to play only for a little over an hour.