https://SpinningPlatters.com/show-review-kylie-minogue-fox-oakland/

Forgettable pop music with a huge arena-size stage production on a theater stage! She descended onto the stage from the stage rafters standing on a giant skull... she had more than a few floor-to-ceiling movable LED walls, coupled with 3 non-moving, hanging, LED screens... she even had lasers! Did I mention that she descended onto the stage standing on a giant skull... and all of this, while supposedly actually singing!

Forgettable pop music meets Cirque du Soleil. This was all about the show -- acrobats, clowns, contortionists, magicians, and an amazing huge stage with 360-degree video screen that took 150 people hours to put together (or so I heard). Britney herself was the least interesting part as she seemed to make little effort to lip-sync along to her mediocre songs.

KISS spare no expense on their show, but as amazing as it may be, anyone who has seen them before is not seeing anything new... this is the most predictable stage production on Earth!

http://SpinningPlatters.com/show-review-gogol-bordello-fox-oakland/

Arena rock band in a 1,400 capacity venue... can't really ever go wrong with that! I really only know Weezer from their songs from the radio, but they do put on a fun live show. This being the 2nd time seeing them live in a 37-day time frame, I kind of knew what to expect, but this show wasn't entirely for me... I had forfeited going to see Alice Cooper on this same night... but for a very good reason. There was a birthday that night and the birthday recipient had no idea we were going to Weezer, not until a full minute after walking into the front door of the venue... SURPRISE! (she would not have liked Alice Cooper anyway)

How can you NOT enjoy a GWAR show?? They dress up like creatures from Antarctica (because if you haven't heard, that's where they are from), they behead Obama, they dismember Michael Jackson who is touching a disfigured baby inappropriately, and they cut open and disfigure other Inter-galactic creatures, all the while spraying down their yearning audience with a colorful array of fake blood and other similar liquids!

I saw NOFX a total of 7 times in 2009. While the individual members of NOFX are not great musicians and each show was generally the same -- with the one exception of their 25th Anniversary show, where former members of NOFX played some songs from their era of the band -- there is something extremely fun to watch about a band that (1) openly admits that they do copious amounts of drugs before hitting the stage, (2) says they are going to suck live, (3) jokes about Jews and Mexicans (Fat Mike is Jewish, El Hefe is Mexican), (4) tells dirty jokes to the 7-year-old kids in the crowd, and (5) openly berates their audience. I may not be singing the words of most of their songs (after 7 shows, I do actually know some of the words by now!), NOFX is definitely a fun time indeed!

This band sells out arenas and stadiums worldwide... how cool is it to see them in two little venues that holds 600 people each?! They played their new album 21st Century Breakdown in it's entirety, followed by over an hour of their 'hits'. A $20 membership to the Green Day fanclub was all it took to get in... seriously! Will you ever see Green Day in-your-face like this for only $20? Yeah right... when Green Day came back 5 months later on their arena tour, Ticketmaster's service charge on their tickets was probably $20!

In August was the real 21st Century Breakdown show: the stage production, the lights, the pyro... it was exactly what you would expect from an arena show, yet Green Day still made it spontaneous and fun by having audience members on stage, singing, playing guitar, jumping around, or even just for a quick stagedive off the catwalk.

Metallica played a benefit show in their backyard at a venue that seats 1,960 people. Yes, I said seats... not that anyone was actually using them, although there was no room for any mosh pits!. Each member of the band even drove their own car to the gig. When was the last time you saw all the members of Metallica drive their own car to their own show, park in the same lot as their fans, and walk past these same fans to get to the venue's backstage door?

After already seeing the Death Magnetic tour three times in 2008 (Cow Palace rehearsal, Fresno, Oakland), I will say that I am no longer a fan of their 'in-the-round' stage... well, this show was a stripped-down, bare-bones, end-stage show... no flying coffins, no fire, no pyro, just Metallica doing better than what they do best... and the greatest thing about it was that all four members of Metallica were facing the same way for the entire show!

A couple of months later... there was one more Death Magnetic show to see. Even if the setlist and top-notch show production (lasers, pyro, flying coffins, fire) was still a bit predictable, and even though the four members would always be off on some distant part of their huge stage and rarely together... it's still Metallica!