Adventures, Entertainment, Music, We Love Music

We Love Music: MoogFest 2010 (Night One)

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all photos by the author except where noted.

Also check out my MoogFest 2010 (Night Two) coverage.
Also check out my MoogFest 2010 (Night Three) coverage.

Last weekend, in scenic Asheville North Carolina, AC Entertainment and Moog Music teamed up to present a revamped and relocated version of the annual MoogFest; a festival celebrating inventor Robert Moog’s massive influence on the world of music. The festival spanned Halloween weekend offering three spectacular nights of music and two days of informative panel discussions and Moog instrument demonstrations. The music schedule offered a perfect blend of sonic innovators, high-energy dance DJs, and envelope pushing Pop acts that showcased the wide-ranging world of electronic music.

The festival took over five music venues in downtown Asheville ranging from a makeshift nightclub in a gallery space, to a dive bar, to the Orange Peel (Asheville’s 9:30 Club equivalent), to the classy Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, all the way up to the cavernous Asheville Civic Center. At times MoogFest felt like two festivals in one; the first, a large-scale non-stop dance party for the party hearty; the second, an equally entertaining but more cerebral music geek nirvana of Moog instrument-fueled performances. The beauty of MoogFest 2010 was watching and listening to these two different worlds of performers and audiences cross-pollinate all weekend long.

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Adventures, Entertainment, Music, We Love Music

We Love Music: Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2010

Coachella Music Festival Banner courtesy of Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.

Everyone knows that sometimes the best way to appreciate where you live is to get away for a little while. It is also true that sometimes the best way for a music critic to reboot his love of music is to attend an awesome music festival without an impending review deadline hanging over his head. This past weekend I did both when I attended the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, California.

This was my third Coachella (2004, 2007*, 2010) and I think it is without a doubt the best music festival in the United States. After a three-legged, 12-hour journey by plane, I made my way into the California desert to enjoy some of the best music on the planet for three days. The weather was beautiful, the music was excellent, and I got the re-charge I was looking for. I decided to write mini-reviews of the bands I caught and to post them here for those who follow my music writing. Keep in mind, I was focused on enjoying the music this weekend without my reviewer’s hat on. So these little reviews are more personal and less detailed write-ups of the bands I saw over this great weekend.

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Adventures, Entertainment, Music

The Five Best Concerts In And Around DC For 2009


courtesy of ‘bormang2’

One of the things that I am most excited about my return to blogging is that I have the opportunity to continue my year-end tradition of recapping the best concerts that I saw in and around the DC area.

For the uninitiated, this is a list of the best performances by musical acts that I saw in 2009 in the DC area. The list is based on individual sets rather than total concert line-ups. I consider any concert that I can drive to and back from in one night to fall within my radius of coverage. I’m keeping the list to 5 shows from now on because I catch great concerts all over the country and think I should only list the local cream of the crop. In other words, these are five DC area shows that can hang with the best shows in the country.
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