Recent articles written by Ben

Bottle Rock 2015 Artist Spotlight – The Brothers Comatose
Here in San Francisco everyone knows someone who’s got some sort of tech business stuff happening right now. Meetings are being made with venture capitalists in warehouse lofts, people are blogging about clouds acquiring other clouds, and the minimum-est of viable products are being made by dudes* trying to get...

FYF 2014 – A Photographic Retrospective
“Wow them in the end, and you got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you’ve got a hit.” Maybe quoting the movie Adaptation doesn’t seem particularly relevant to a retrospective on the 2014 version of FYF, but ask anyone who was there...

DEVO @ The Wiltern – 6.29.14
Ed. Note: Apologies to all you spuds out there for being lax on getting the DEVO snaps up and atom but the cross-continental call of American Rock and Roll Freedom did a number on our nerdist tunnel vision. Here they are then, the documents from El Jefe’s daze at the...

Sharon Van Etten @ El Rey – 6.28.14
Ed. Note: There is a timelessness to the sound of Sharon Van Etten that is both emphatic and devastating. A soulful, sensual and sorrowful candor played out a in big band (not in the swing sense, just fulsome) context as opposed to the bare armed oppression of the solo sirens...

Those Darlins @ The Echo – 11.7.13
Ed. Note: Rumor has it that the ragged band of Nashville unfuckwithables we call Those Darlins have mellowed slightly in the years and days since their eponymous debut turned our office into a frothing twang of lolling rapscallions but nuts to that. The girls and boys that make the band...

Tristen @ Hotel Cafe – 10.18.13
Ed. Note: The last time we saw Tristen we were shucking oysters and sipping champagne in a hotel grotto on the outskirts of Austin. The Arcade Fire was there however, sadly, Charles and Lemon were not. Those two, we’re told, were off slowly but surely imploding in a desperate bid...

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Fonda – 6-9-13
Pics and Words by Ben Irwin Sunday was the penultimate show of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ six-show residency at the Fonda Hollywood. In this type of situation one would expect all the whispers leading up to the show to revolve around which songs Tom would play that none of...