Death Angel Slim’s December 16, 2016 All photos by Raymond Ahner. Traditions make the holidays special. They are what we look forward to and often are the occasions which reconnect us to friends and family during the holidays. One San Francisco holiday tradition that is trending up for festive bay area rockers is the annual ‘Another Death Angel Christmas’ show. The festival coordinated by and featuring Bay Area OG thrashers Death Angel is hosted at Slim’s, another of San Francisco’s musical icons, and has grown year to year (now encompassing two days). This year the gathering is celebrating its 3rd…
Author: Mark Paniagua
Mark Paniagua
Mark Paniagua is a bay area native who grew up on the SF music scene as a musician and sound engineer. Playing local clubs since the late 80's in bands such as Ringchildren, Sorrow Town Choir, and Fuzzbucket, Mark is an accomplished bassist and vocalist. He has also played and performed in a number of rock musical productions with Buzz Skycastle crew, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Pink Floyd's The Wall, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Abigail the Rock Opera.
Stevie Nicks and The Pretenders SAP Center, San Jose December 14, 2016 All photos by Raymond Ahner. During the holidays you can never be sure what you are going to unwrap from under the tree, especially when pulling presents from the live music tree here in the Bay Area. Case in point, on a Wednesday night at the SAP center in San Jose, a filled arena was treated to the unlikely duo Stevie Nicks and The Pretenders. Stevie Nicks Sure there are similarities. Stevie Nicks and Chrissie Hynde are both rock and roll hall of famers that were inducted with…
Helmet The Independent December 4, 2016 All photos by Raymond Ahner. Many a class has been cut in the name of hard rock, drinking, and smoking, but The Independent in the Haight served as a nexus for all of the above for everyone in attendance this past Sunday night, as the house was packed to witness the post-punk theory of Helmet. Helmet Led by guitarist/vocalist Paige Hamilton (who founded the band in New York in 1989), Helmet was at the spearhead of the alternative metal movement that eventually exploded into the grunge sound that reigned supreme in the early 90’s.…
K. Flay Great American Music Hall October 27, 2016 Thursday night the Great American Music Hall was exploding with fresh faces in modern music. Along with the burgeoning young bands also came loads of fresh faced music fans to sellout GAMH for an all-ages show featuring the ascending star of K.Flay. K.Flay K.Flay (Kristine Flaherty) is a Bay Area transplant, finding her way west from Illinois to pursue higher education at Stanford. Little did she know that higher education for her would be spelled M-U-S-I-C, and would eventually land her alongside the likes of Santigold, Snoop Dogg, and Awolnation, be…
Sleep The Warfield October 21, 2016 All photos by Raymond Ahner. Sleep, the extremely influential and incredibly heavy band hailing from San Jose, induced a communal state of transcendental meditation for a crowded house of rockers at the Warfield Theater on Friday night. Founding members Al Cisneros (bass/vocals) and Matt Pike (guitars), were joined by drummer Jason Roeder (Neurosis), as Sleep awoke from its hibernation to blow away the Market Street venue with truckloads of heavy handed riffage and gargantuan volume. Underground guitar hero Matt Pike, taking a brief break from his High on Fire tour, joined Cisneros in reaching…
Clutch with Zakk Sabbath and Kyng Regency Ballroom October 16, 2016 All photos by Raymond Ahner. Riff rock is alive and doing very well if this past Sunday at the Regency Ballroom is any indication. Loud, pulsing, hard charging, drive real fast rock that rattles your teeth and puts a buzz in your brain. That’s what the crowd was served in huge portions, and it was Clutch and their head banging associates Zakk Sabbath and Kyng that were delivering the goods. Clutch, the quartet from Maryland that puts the northeastern stamp of hard rock firmly on the forehead of anyone…
The Heavy Mezzanine September 27, 2016 All photos by Jon Bauer. British band The Heavy (Bath, England) swooped through San Francisco last Tuesday playing an energetic set at Mezzanine in support of their most recent release Hurt & the Merciless (Counter Records 2016). The Heavy Stitching together thick neo-soul rhythms to R&B funk and delivering it in an overdriven garage rock package, The Heavy has a vibe that is altogether fresh and familiar. Walking onstage to a spookily spoken background soundscape that would be at home in a 60’s sci-fi movie, vocalist Kelvin Swaby and his mates leaned into the…
Die Antwoord….Now what was the Question? Bill Graham Civic Auditorium September 21, 2016 All photos by Jeff Spirer What was the coolest band to see to celebrate the last day of summer 2016 in San Francisco? The answer is literally Die Antwoord. Led by the dynamic duo of rappers Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er (from Cape Town, South Africa), Die Antwoord present one of the most perplexing and exciting acts to hit popular music in recent memory, and this past Wednesday they brought their strobing cavalcade of musical oddities to the Civic Auditorium. Revealing that you are into Die Antwoord instantly…
Tedeschi Trucks Band Fox Theater, Oakland Sept 8, 2016 All photos by Jeff Spirer The immensely talented Tedeschi Trucks Band (TTB) set up camp in Oakland on a Thursday night for the first of two nights of revelry that transformed the vibe of the Fox Theater from a mid-sized concert venue to a more intimate blues bar. The formation of Tedeschi Trucks Band came about in 2010 when founders Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks decided to extend their personal partnership (they married in 2001) into an official musical venture. The pair had crossed paths frequently since meeting in 1999 when…
Grace Jones Lands at the Greek Aug 27, 2015 By Mark Paniagua All photos by Jeff Spirer. Grace Jones descended upon the Greek Theater in Berkeley on Saturday night, landing her space craft long enough to leave a diverse and jovial crowd spellbound in a way that only an inter-stellar superstar like her could. Making a one-off weekend stop in the U.S. (this Bay Area date and the FYF Festival in L.A. were her only appearances in the States before bopping back to Europe), she was loudly welcomed to the venerable Greek by a crowd that was not only represented…
Guns N’ Roses AT&T Park August 9, 2016 All photos by Katarina Benzova. Patience is a virtue. That old saying has never met a more appropriate application than in the case of the mercurial and transcendent band Guns N’Roses. On a Tuesday night at AT&T Park, patience was rewarded as G N’R appeared in San Francisco sporting the star studded duo of front man Axl Rose and axe-slinger extraordinaire Slash for the first time in over 20 years. The anticipation has been building for decades. GN’R, having skyrocketed from the LA Strip scene to superstardom on the strength of their…
Snarky Puppy SFJAZZ Center August 4, 2016 In today’s ubiquitous, always-on society, it’s pretty tough to keep anything ‘underground.’ Despite being a Grammy-winning band of musical savants with thousands of fans, and millions of YouTube hits, Snarky Puppy is the biggest ‘underground’ band going. Formed in 2005 by band leader/bassist Michael League at North Texas University, Snarky Puppy (SP) is a rotating collective of master musicians (aka ‘the Fam’) who lace together moments of brilliance in their live performances. That brilliance was on display recently at the impressive SFJAZZ Center, with SP playing a series of shows for their rabid…
Peter Gabriel and Sting SAP Center, San Jose July 14, 2016 Throwing conventional concert presentation out the window, Peter Gabriel and Sting brought their Rock Paper Scissors Tour to the jam-packed SAP Center in San Jose. This unique tour breaks the mold of typical concerts. There is no opener or headliner, only a fabulous rock show put on by two true innovators of rock music. For Rock Paper Scissors, Gabriel and Sting share the stage simultaneously, trading off songs and bands. Logistically it is a deft demonstration of stage management and it went largely un-noticed by the capacity crowd Thursday…
Fishbone The Independent December 19, 2015 All photos by Jeff Spirer. Fishbone, the fantastic, iconic, neurotic, schizophrenic, and immensely influential band from southern California took over The Independent in San Francisco on a cold Saturday night with an energetic performance that reinforced their reputation as a remarkable live act, and tested the stamina of their fans. The band has persevered through a revolving door of lineup changes (20 members and counting), legal issues, band in-fighting, and record label changes. However at the core, their leaders (singer/sax player Angelo Moore and bassist extraordinaire John Norwood Fisher) keep pushing forward. Though they…
Scorpions SAP Center, San Jose October 1, 2015 All photos by Raymond Ahner. It has been a true time machine of hard rock this past week. And Thursday night the Teutonic terrors known better as Germany’s rock juggernaut the Scorpions effortlessly flipped the switches and levers to transport the rapt SAP Center audience of 17,000 strong back and forth through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and to the present. Between the Scorpions show and the epic AC/DC show a few days earlier in San Francisco, it is clear that the bands that laid the foundation of hard rock/metal throne are loathe…
It is amazing to think of any band lasting 50 years, especially one that is still making new music and influencing new fans and musicians worldwide, while playing large arena and stadium venues. And no, I am not talking about the Rolling Stones or The Who. The Scorpions, Germany’s hard rocking legends, charged through the Bay Area in 2015 doing all of the aforementioned; bringing their 50th Anniversary party to the SAP Center in San Jose. I had the opportunity to visit with Matthias Jabs, the longtime guitarist of the Scorpions to ask him about the evolution of the band,…