Happy August everybody. We’ve  updated our Bay Area Concert Calendar for your viewing pleasure.

It’s a relatively quiet month (with the glaring exception of the first annual Outside Lands Festival), but there are some highlights:

• 8/05 - Dolly Parton - The self-proclaimed Backwoods Barbie, is playing the Greek Theatre - if you only know her for her physical excesses, do yourself a favor and check out her amazing music
• 8/14 - Biz Markie - Hip-hop’s clown prince is playing at the Independent under the name “The Diabolical Biz Markie”
• 8/23 - Ryan Adams - If the Outside Lands fest isn’t your thing, you can check out SD-favorite (and indie’s clown prince)
• 8/26 - Ice Cube - Before he decided to cash in and make family-friendly movies, Cube was one of the sharpest (and most feared) MCs on the planet. He plays the Fillmore
• 8/28-29 - Lee “Scratch” Perry - Reggae’s mad scientist is playing two nights at the Independent in support of his new Andrew W.K.-produced album, Repentance

Have we forgotten anything? Drop us a line and we’ll be happy to add it.

MP3s:

P.S. The Stranger Dance headquarters is relocating to the scenic Nopa neighborhood this weekend, so this will likely be the last post of the week. We’ll be back at full steam by Monday. Enjoy the weekend.

Here’s one for the weekend. Everyone loves a good mixtape, and everyone loves a good cover song, so here’s a mix I made of some of my favorite cover tunes.

The mix spans a good deal of genres (R&B, country, reggae, folk, bluegrass) and artists - from relative unknowns (Clem Snide) to legends (Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Townes van Zandt).

It zig-zags a little, from an acoustic Sublime cover of Marley, to Reverend Al covering the Fab Four (worth it just to hear a band member yell “Shut up, Al Green” in the beginning) and breaks quite a few of my rules for making mixes along the way.

This is definitely a mix, so feel free to download everything and listen to it as such, or just pick and choose. Enjoy. (more…)

2007 started off fairly slowly, but ended up as a very strong year for indie music. I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing, but a lot of my favorite releases came from an extended indie family (I’m fairly sure that Leslie Feist has dated, toured with or lived with almost every one), and more surprisingly, not a single hip-hop or electronic artist made my list this year.

With the advent of iTunes, I feel like music has returned to a singles-based model, but was pleasantly surprised to find more true albums (not collections of random songs) come out in ‘07.

Without further ado, here are my picks for the best of 2007:

(more…)