Jason DeBord's Rock Subculture Journal

Notes & Words 2019: Benefit For UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland at Fox Theater (feat. Ryan Tedder & Drew Brown from OneRepublic) | Oakland, California | 4/27/2019

“This next song is the first song that we put out… that anybody really cared about.  Ironically, I was making a joke on MySpace earlier, but this is the song that we put onto MySpace back when it was a thing [laughs/cheers].  Yeah.  Just put the Millennial tag on us right now.  We did break on social media, it is true.  But it can be used for good regardless.”  Ryan Tedder, in preface to the hit OneRepublic song, “Apologize”.  A highlight of the 10th Anniversary of the annual Notes & Words: Benefit For UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland event that took place at Fox Theater Oakland on Saturday, April 27th. As per tradition, it featured both writers and musicians on stage, this year with Ryan Tedder & Drew Brown of OneRepublic, Jazz Mafia, Katy Stephan, and the Oakland School for the Arts handling the “notes” side of the show and Oscar winner, Helen Hunt, and Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Andrew Sean Greer, joining the stage with one of the key creative forces behind the event, Kelly Corrigan, taking care of the “words” side of the programming.  Notes & Words is an annual benefit concert created to support the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, which provides the highest quality medical care to children throughout California.  They announced that in the last 9 years, they’ve raised $12,150,000 with this event!  I have heard that this year’s event on Saturday raised more than $3 million dollars.

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The Cure, OneRepublic, Suede and Others to Headline Teenage Cancer Trust’s Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London

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Teenage Cancer Trust, who “lead the world in the care of young people with cancer”, in partnership with The Body Shop, is holding their 2014 concert series at The Royal Albert Hall at the end of March in London.  This year, headliners include Ed Sheeran (March 24th), an evening of comedy featuring Micky Flanagan and John Bishop as hosted by Jason Manford (March 25th), Paolo Nutini (March 26th), OneRepublic (March 27th), The Cure (March 28th and March 29th), and Suede (March 30).  This year marks the 35th anniversary of The Cure’s debut album, Three Imaginary Boys, and they are expected to put out three hour sets each night for these special shows. [Read more…]

The Rock Subculture Journal 2013 Year In Review (Top 10 Live Music Concerts, Top 10 Albums, Top 100 Songs, and more…)

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As with last year’s 2012 Year In Review, reflecting on the many shows attended in 2013 and trying to make some sense of it all was a challenge.  Having attended nearly 100 events, which usually includes at least one supporting act and a headliner, as well as one 10-day festival and many multi-artist shows, I saw literally hundreds of sets.  Miraculously, I can probably count on one hand the number that were “bad”, and the majority were awesome in one or more ways.   Still, I feel it is important to highlight the best of the best of the best, in an attempt to celebrate an amazing year of music.  You can also check out my Top 100 Concert Photos of 2013 in that separate article.

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The Top 50 Best Songs of 2013 (So Far…) – A Rock Subculture Journal Editorial

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This feature is really born out of my own music playlists…  I thought I would take my latest current playlist and break it down to music that was published in 2013 and limit it to 50 songs.  Also, the songs have to be off of albums that came out in 2013 (not singles released in 2013 for albums that debuted in 2012).  My only other restriction was limiting it to no more than one song per artist.  Oh, and no covers…  Included is a lot of music that I enjoy that likely include artists that some readers have never heard of, so hopefully this will result in some people finding new music and new artists.  The songs are not ranked in an order of preference, but more in a flowing, playlist style.  In any event, 2013 is a great year for new music… [Read more…]

OneRepublic at Mountain Winery | Saratoga, California | 9/8/2013 (Concert Review)

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“Tonight what you see is a very, very, very stripped, stripped version of what it is that we do on a nightly basis…”  OneRepublic’s show at Mountain Winery in Saratoga Sunday night was one of those very rare shows that surprised me (in a good way) on all counts.  It was my first time seeing the band live, who are touring their latest studio album, Native (more on that later, also in a good way).  Since it was such a different show from the norm, I can’t really account for what is different, though I suspect it was much more acoustic-driven than their typical set, though both approaches certainly do justice to their material.  One thing that was apparent is that the group is made up of musicians at heart, and perfectionists in recreating their music on stage in a very real way.  Their crew quite masterfully swapped out instruments (large on small) on stage in-between each song, helping to create a very memorable night that was a tapestry of the great music that OneRepublic has created.  They sounded phenomenal and their identity as a band certainly came through in a variety of ways, especially their relationships with each other and boundless energy on stage.  The experience definitely made me a bigger fan and my curiosity is definitely piqued and interested in checking out the other kind of show that they referenced as different from this one, which felt quite intimate and special.

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