Red Hot Chili Peppers perform at BottleRock Napa Valley at the Napa Valley Expo on May 28 2023. Nate McKinley/STAFF. NAPA —The final day of a music festival often starts with relaxed vibes. Attendees at BottleRock on Sunday laid out blankets and took advantage of the mild weather. Many…

Rachel Goodman’s favorite shows of 2022 include Wu-Tang Clan, LCD Soundsystem, Bikini Kill, Girl Talk, The House of Love, Trace Mountains, The Airborne Toxic Event and The War On Drugs. I was convinced I didn’t see many shows this year, but looking back I was dead wrong! So after…

Choose your dystopia. I’ve mentioned it before, but for the past couple years I’ve waited until the last minute to write these columns because the news moves too fast. Every time I write ahead, something catastrophic happens before they run and I look like a complete jerk for ignoring…

Under that moniker DJ Shadow, Joshua Paul Davis in 1996 gave sample-based music one of its first hit albums with Endtroducing. He transcended the established norms of ‘90s hip-hop by incorporating elements of ambient music, electronica and “sampledelia.” Davis found more common ground with U.K. trip-hop than West Coast G-funk—which might…

Radiohead. STAFF file photo. Usually this column is the top five songs of each year. Sometimes, in an especially good year, I bend that and make it the top 10. This week has nine. The reasons for this are threefold: First, the longlist has 23 songs on it and…