EXCLUSIVE STORIES

It’s rare these days for me to go to a show and remain impressed, engaged and enthusiastic throughout every single set.  So I was quite pleasantly surprised by the recent Blitzen Trapper and Mirah show, which gave me a solid four hours of awesome live music.

The Dinobot premieres their first video "Never Gonna Get it" at Westminster

I sat down with Kurt Ballou, guitar mastermind of Converge and recording guru of Godcity Studio, before their show Oct. 10 in Denver. He had a lot to say. We got to talking about high school bands, solar powered cars and of course, the new Converge album.

Sister Spit is a touring troop of queer literary performance artists. SS was in part founded by Michelle Tea, one of San Francisco’s more distinguished and prolific queer writers. This all-female punky fan of writers first started trekking across the globe in the 90s, and have recently regrouped as Sister Spit: The Next Generation to tour across Europe and the U.S., including a stop in Salt Lake City at the Sponge Bar.

On October 2-3, Salt Lake City was fortunate enough to host a stop of the first annual Bicycle Film Festival. Featuring films to satisfy every style of cyclist out there, the festival screenings ranged from bmx shorts to full-length mountain bike documentaries.

I can think of no greater feat than a Christmas/Holiday album helping to get you in the mood for the forthcoming holidays in October.  If ever a modern artist was suited for recording a holiday/seasonal album, it must be Tori Amos. 

From acoustic to electric distortion, Mt. Eerie has subtle ways of bringing surprises. Tonight he brought the rain, the comfort of the Kilby fire pit and high hopes of hearing some live snippets from his recent release, Wind’s Poem.

Salt Lake City’s Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company opened it’s 2009/2010 season with Equilibrium, a collection of pieces which ran at the Jeanne Wagner Theater from September 24th – 26th.   If the rest of the season rises to the caliber of the performances I saw at the Saturday night performance, this will be an exciting season.

Bridge Nine Records has done an excellent job of expanding its roster to further reaches of hardcore over the past few years, and even though this tour didn't necessarily feature the style of music that the label has come to be known for, it was an excellent lineup that reflects the the risks the label has been taking in challenging the traditional hardcore aesthetic.

Initially, this seemed like a strange bill of bands, but in hindsight it offered Dethklok the chance to showcase some talented, lesser-known bands, and allowed those talented, lesser-known bands to lend even more credibility to the metal mythos of Dethklok.

Disney’s interpretation of Alice In Wonderful added enough fluff to make the twisted story easy to swallow for generations to come. Matthew Ivan Bennett, who wrote the Radio Hour adaptation, had something else in mind—something much more twisted, more graphic, and much more intense. 

Aimee Mannʼs music is comforting, melodic, beautiful and despite the unfortunate and incorrect critical tag line of it being “depressing,” (I would have chosen “realistic” if I wrote reviews back in those days) very uplifting. I was extremely excited about seeing her live for the first time, in a new venue (the great new The State Room), and especially in such an intimate setting: The State Room boasts a capacity of 300.