Of Montreal @ The Regency Center Ballroom - Friday, November 21st

Of Montreal needs to be seen to be believed. I saw them last year at GAMH and had a great time. I'd love to see them again. This time they're playing at the Regency Center Ballroom. I've been there once before for a show and it's a very cool space, even if they did have technical difficulties (hopefully a one-time thing).

Let me know if you'd like to join me and I'll get tix!

Band Shell Music Summit with Mos Def - Saturday, October 18th

Mos Def will be headlining this FREE music festival at the Golden Gate Park Band Shell (which I think is newly re-opened). It goes from 10am-6pm this Saturday. Looks like fun and the weather should be great. Even though it's free you have to fill out some information here to get a 'ticket'. I did it already and it's painless.

Let me know if you'd like to join me!

P.S. Thanks Anne for the heads-up :-)

Aimee Mann's Christmas Show - Sunday, December 7th

I went to this show last year and it was great! Here's the info. Tix go on sale this Friday, so let me know if you want to go.

She & Him @ Bimbo's - Monday, November 3rd

She & Him are going to be be playing at Bimbo's on 11/3. Tix are going on sale Thursday morning. Let me know if you'd like to join me and I'll get tix.

Le Switch @ Hotel Utah - Sunday, August 31st

My cousin Leslie just saw Le Switch in LA and said they were great. I listened to them on Myspace and they sound really cool. Don't let the Sunday night show at Hotel Utah scare you, Monday is Labor Day! Let me know if you'd like to join me.

the Botticellis @ Cafe du Nord - Sunday, August 10th

Just read about this band and listened to a few tunes on myspace and I they sound pretty cool. Let me know if you'd like to join me for the show at Cafe du Nord Sunday night and I'll get tix. It's only $10!!!

Here's what I read about them on GenArt:

Thursday, August 7, 2008
Surf's Up
Four beach boys and a girl embrace '60s pop and make retro feel shiny and new.

Oftentimes, when you read a band's adorable how-we-met story it just plain isn't true. Either a reporter gets the facts wrong or something is passed along, telephone-style, through the music blogosphere until it barely resembles what really went down. So when I got the chance to interview Alexi Glickman of the local indie rock sensation of the moment, The Botticellis, there was one thing I had to ask: Did he and bandmate Zack Ehrlich really meet playing Suzuki violin duets back in kindergarten? Because how crazy cute is that?

As it turns out, it's all true. "I think my first memory of Zack is his sweet brontosaurus t-shirt," Glickman tells me. "Needless to say we were both devastated when it came out that the brontosaur didn't actually exist..." Devastation aside, the pair went on to form an instrumental duo and began to write their own music. "We had a pretty funny approach to the guitar having come from violin," he explains. "Instead of learning chords and strumming we just wrote these little melodies and arpeggios to accompany them."

Flash forward to today, and the friends are part of a quintet with a Bright Eyes-produced debut album, Old Home Movies, that critics are going ga-ga over, comparing the Botticellis' lush, nostalgia inducing-sound to wide array of heavy hitters like the Beach Boys, Big Star and the Shins: "Burton (guitar, keys, analogue delay) and I are pretty obsessed with coaxing vibe out of vintage gear. I think that's something that people respond to in our music. People have called our sound cinematic before, too. Blythe (vocals) studied film in undergrad and when we're writing together she talks about sounds as if they were something visual."

While many of the album's tracks speak of regret, as a band, there aren't too many things that the Botticellis would change right now. "I guess we all wish it hadn't taken quite as long to make the first record," he says. "But I think we learned a lot of things that are making it easier and more fun to do album number two."

Catch the Botticellis this Sunday night at Cafe Du Nord; purchase advance tickets here.

- Caroline Stanley

Slow Food Rocks - Saturday, August 30th

Slow Food Nation is having a music fest August 30 & 31. Saturday, August 30th features Gnarls Barkley and The New Pornographers. Single day tix are $59 if you buy them before 7/10, they go on sale tomorrow at 9am.

I try to never miss the New Pornographers, they are great in concert. Let me know if you'd like to join me!