It was another busy music weekend for us OC Weekly-ers, but who would want it any other way? We've got slideshows of Millencolin at the House of Blues, Anaheim on Sunday (pictured), photographed by Andrew Youssef, the Galaxy's Saturday reopening shot by Beth Stirnaman and Fever Dragon takin' pics Satuday down at the Coach House with English Beat.
I checked out the SoCal Rock Revolution festival at Sachi's in Long Beach, the previously mentioned reopening of the Galaxy headed up by Frank Doll N the Broken Toys, and Richard Swift and Local Natives over at the Yost Theatre in Santa Ana–and that was all Saturday! Livin' la vida loca, indeed.
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SoCal Rock Revolution seemed like a neat event, but as I wrote on our awesome new Twitter account, was also pretty weird: lots of kids and strippers. That's not some sort of metaphor, there were actual strippers (well, I'm assuming that's what they were-they were dancing on poles, even though they kept their hot pants and bra-shirts on) there. Pretty odd. But I did get to catch Entice, who I blogged about last week and are one of the better hard rock acts in this area. They have an album coming out soon, look out for it.
The first show at the Galaxy in over a month was also my first time there; it's a pretty swell venue, though, even if it's in an odd location (took a while to find it!). The story behind its closing and reopening is rather interesting, look out for this week's Weekly for more on all that. (I wrote the article, so I hope it's interesting, at least.)
The Yost show was my first time seeing either Richard Swift or Local Natives; both are OC expatriates (boo!) and both were excellent (yay!). Some great harmonies with Local Natives, and Richard Swift was generally impressive: powerful piano ballads with hints of (lofty comparison coming!) Tom Waits seeping through. Swift is surely old news to most music fans around here, but I'm glad I got a chance to see him–I'll admit being pretty much completely unfamiliar before Satuday night. And I've said it before, but the Yost's potential is huge. Exciting stuff is happening in Santa Ana, and OC in general. What a time to be alive!
