Author Archives: Joe Gall

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Gallery Music Welcome to the OK Go Show

by Mike Bucher and Joe Gall
May 10, 2010 - 11:18 am

Grammy award winning Chicago quartet OK Go got the crowd pumping last Sunday at East Rutherford, New Jersey’s Bamboozle Festival.  In a typically colorful set, lead singer Damian Kulash and the boys mixed fresh gems from their new album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky with classics like Here It Goes Again, aka “the treadmill dance song,” as most people know it.

It was hard to take your eyes of guitar player Andy Ross’s candy apple red 2 piece and bass player Tim Nordwind’s pink button up but concertgoers were kept on their toes by a constant stream of crowd surfers that peppered the crowd like croutons on your salad.

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Featured Gallery Music Weezer-Nation Rises Up

by Mike Bucher and Joe Gall
May 7, 2010 - 9:35 am

Weezer was in full effect Sunday night as the long-standing rock institution headlined New Jersey’s Bamboozle festival.  The event [Bamboozle] marked the beginning of the east coast summer festival season and attracted over 60,000 concertgoers with over 100 bands.

You wouldn’t know it by the high energy, edge of your seat, romp the band put it on, but front-man, songwriter-savant Rivers Cuomo recently recovered from fractured ribs and an injured back sustained in a tour bus accident last December.  Enjoying his new-found health, Cuomo was 100% and so was the band’s Mega-Set which featured a surprise medley of MGMT’s “Kids” and Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.”  In an ironic / surreal moment, Andrew and Ben (MGMT), watched from the crowd as the rock legends played their song to the captive audience.

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Gallery Music MUTEMATH + Bamboozle = Lazer Gun Key-tar Madness

by Mike Bucher and Joe Gall
May 7, 2010 - 9:28 am

The first time I saw MUTEMATH perform [at a festival in St. Petersburg Florida] it was 110 degrees with 100% humidity.  I vividly recall, and will probably never forget, drummer Darren King, finishing the final downbeat of a mesmerizing set, rushing side stage, and puking like day one of high school football hell week.  Without a doubt, MUTEMATH goes big, a reputation that has earned them a Grammy nomination and an Alternative Press review as “the #1 band you need to see live before you die.”

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Gallery Music If it Ain’t Brogue, Don’t Fix It: Glasgow’s TWIN ATLANTIC

by Mike Bucher and Joe Gall
May 6, 2010 - 4:48 pm

Hailing from Glasgow Scotland, 4-piece Alternative Rock Outfit Twin Atlantic made quite a splash at this year’s Bamboozled Festival.  The boys got the Aquarium Stage rocking as they murdered the mid-day 2:15 slot.  Read the full story →

Music Ghostly International’s 10th Anni-insani-versary!

by Dustin Downing, Ryan Patrick Hooper, and Joe Gall
June 5, 2009 - 3:20 pm

Ghostly International

Words by Ryan Patrick Hooper, photos by Dustin Downing, Additional photos by Joe Gall

For the past ten years, Detroit’s Movement festival has been notoriously fond of after parties. Whether they be of the renegade rave, abandoned factory sort or the most official, posh push-pop you can come by, the entire city becomes blanketed in non-stop nightlife until the sun comes up and the festival grounds once again reopen. Saturday was no exception as the Magic Stick (regularly voted in the top ten best venues in the country by Rolling Stone and Paste, home to the oldest bowling alley in the country) in Midtown Detroit welcomed nationally renowned electronic label Ghostly International’s 10-Year Anniversary to a packed house after tearing apart the Red Bull Music Academy stage earlier that day with the likes of The Sight Below, Lusine, Kate Simko and Ryan Elliott.

“It has been ten years of the festival, and it’s our ten-year anniversary,” points Sam Valenti, owner and founder of Ghostly International, hours before the showcase at the Stick backstage in the green room.  “It’s fun to run into friends that Ghostly has had for six, seven years all day at Movement.” And with Ghostly International Tycho by his side, it’s easy to see just what Valenti is getting at. “It’s exciting to be back where it all started over ten years ago,” adds Tycho. “To be right in the middle of it all…”
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Music Landstrumm Lands

by Joe Gall and Ryan Patrick Hooper
June 5, 2009 - 3:20 pm

Neil Landstrumm Photo Gallery

It’s not like we love Neil Landstrumm — it’s like the man lives inside of our ear drums, pounding out his innovative, hybrid cocktail of dub and grime powered auditory awesomeness. His Sunday set at Movement ’09 was certainly no exception. Although the poor dude was set up to the side of the stage, he made up for his lack of strategic positioning that lives in the world kick snare, kick snare — but stands tall in an ocean of imitators who chase his sound but continually fall flat. When you’ve been it for as long as Landstrumm has, you’ll run it into that … but you’ll also learn how to run directly over it, reverse and repeat a few times until you stand adjacent to only your own legacy and a long line of DJ road kill. For what seemed like an eternity (but was probably closer to an hour if we settle down and face the facts), Landstrumm transformed his daytime set into a time bending performance that turned the audience into midnight marauders of the sexist sort, Landstrumm’s often space age slugtone beats unleashing some of the weirdest, most sensual dance moves we’ve seen in quite sometime.

Words by Ryan Patrick Hooper, photos by Joe Gall

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Event Music Sweet and Sticky: Bassnectar Delivers the Juice

by Ryan Patrick Hooper and Joe Gall
June 5, 2009 - 3:08 pm

Bassnectar at Red Bull Music Academy

Whether you were grinding along with the heaps of patrons in the audience, sacrificing your drinks to the Gods above in the VIP lounge or planted on boxes of gear backstage, everyone was smothered in a sticky, relentless coating of thundering bass as Bassnectar closed the Red Bull Music Academy stage on Monday night. Unleashing his Whip-It brand bass lines (imagine those adolescent wah-wahs magnified by a million) and eclectic dub step to new wave mash up style and you’ve got a good reason why the majority of the independent vendors were shut down as the sun set and the more hair than flare DJ took to the stage — who would want to miss it? But Bassnectar’s set wasn’t without complication as Lorin Ashton, the California-based multi-instrumentalist behind the name, is quick to point out.

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Music The Rhythm & Wisdom of Afrika Bambaataa

by Ryan Patrick Hooper and Joe Gall
June 5, 2009 - 3:08 pm

Africa Bambaataa Interview

A wise man once said, “The biggest crime when [Afrika] Bambaataa plays is not to dance.” Actually, King Kurmanji, the international spokesperson for the Zulu Nation and Bambaataa’s right hand man, said that a few hours before Bambaataa’s set on the Red Bull Music Academy stage on Monday afternoon in a hotel lobby when he was actually on the right hand side of Bambaataa, firmly planted in a rather comfy chair. “When you dance, you lose your stresses and your worries,” continues Kurmanji. “You wash that negativity away when you release it, breathe it and move that behind.” Heavy words that are certainly not to be taken lightly — just like the political persona that Bambaataa encompasses in his large frame, and just like the cameo-packed performance he brought to the stage. “We just don’t want any wallflowers,” coolly adds Bambaataa.

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Music VJ Culture Mixes the Movies in My Mind

by Ryan Patrick Hooper, Dustin Downing, and Joe Gall
June 3, 2009 - 11:33 am

VJ Culture Video Jockey

As the sun shined through the massive square windows of a downtown Detroit hotel on Memorial Day, Grant Davis, aka VJ Culture,  is picking his way through a “delicious” vegetarian meatloaf. In the true nature of his role as one of the most sought after video jockeys in the game, he is quick to use nutritional visuals to describe (somewhat abstractly) how his job works. “The broccoli connects the wires to the meatloaf, which is the screen,” laughs Davis, “and here is me” — pointing to the mashed potatoes with his fork — “feeling a little mashed after last night.”

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Music The Human Nature of RJD2

by Ryan Patrick Hooper and Joe Gall
June 2, 2009 - 10:20 am

RJD2

Everyone and their furry boots were ready for RJD2 on Sunday afternoon as the sun began to set on the second day of Movement ’09. With a stack of records cleanly categorized behind the turntable traditionalist, RJD2 quickly shuffled through his funk, soul and lightly rock ‘n’ rollified collection of tracks — pulling heavily from fan favorite albums Deadringer and Since We Last Spoke — smoothly worked up the crowd with his charismatic microphone moxy. “So, what do you guys want to do now?” jokingly inquired RJD2 halfway through his set. “Should we just go home?” And, like sweaty clockwork, the droves of funk frenzied fans declared, “No!” in what seemed like perfect unison. “Let’s get to work then,” quipped the man with the plan before mashing up The Cars’ classic Let The Good Times Roll with his own hip-hop influenced creation of distorted guitars and bouncing beats.

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