The original lineup consisted of Young the Giant, Bush, Florence + the Machine, Mumford & Sons, and Jane’s Addiction. Unfortunately, due to a family emergency, Jane’s Addiction was forced to cancel, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth of many in attendance.

At the last minute, Green Day was booked by the hosting radio station, Live 105, ultimately saving the concert.

I personally was looking forward to Young the Giant; however, their performance seemed underwhelming compared to the other acts who followed them. I’m pretty sure this was because of the small audience at the Oracle Arena present while they performed. I love Young the Giant; I just wished they had performed later on in the night.

To my surprise, Bush was very well liked. I didn’t know who Bush was going into the concert, but I came to really enjoy their music as the night progressed. Their popularity seemed to grow as more people began to trickle into the arena.

Florence + the Machine was one of the big stars of the night. The minute she came on stage, there was an instant moment of deafening cheers. The girls in front of me seemed to be crying and upon regaining some composure, started singing and dancing. Despite this distraction, Florence + the Machine was amazing. She sang her well-known songs like “Dog Days Are Over,” which really seemed to get the crowd going.

Mumford & Sons, in my opinion, stole the show. It seemed as if they received the biggest round of applause and most cheering out of all the acts. Their popularity was widespread because of their performance at the Bridge School Benefit Concert just about a month ago, and also because people just love them! This British band sang their most popular song, “The Cave,” and performed many new songs which will appear on their upcoming album. This resulted in many standing ovations and so much cheering that I could barely hear by the end of the night.

Green Day closed the show and made the concert an even better experience than it already was. Billy Joe Armstrong made the end of the night very amusing and exciting for everyone by combining his sense of humor with amazing songs from their old and new albums.

The only unfortunate part of the night was the karaoke in between the bands’ performances. To say it nicely, all of the people, except for the first lady, were terrible. I wanted to curl up in a ball and scream to make it stop, but of course I just cringed at the noise of people trying to belt out songs by Muse and various other bands.

Not So Silent Night 2011 was a fantastic concert that no one should have missed. Be sure to go out and buy your tickets for next year’s concert!

On Sunday, Trans-Siberian Orchestra performed in San Jose’s HP Pavilion, just one stop of many for their 2011 Winter Tour.

The band is comprised of roughly 15 members, backed by a guest eight-person string orchestra (this weekend from TSO’s San Jose portion). The group includes a set of sexy female vocalists (think the sensuality of the Pussycat Dolls with 60% more skin covered and 160% more class), two keyboardists, and a couple hair-flipping guitarists with locks to compete with Rapunzel’s.

The band mixes stringed instruments with electric guitars to perform rock-style music, but with a twist: they only play Christmas music, classic songs we have all heard (Carol of the Bells, Little Drummer Boy, etc.).

“Since Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s inception, the band was intended to be a work in progress, constantly morphing and changing to push the boundaries of music,” TSO’s producer Paul O’Neill states in the program. He refers to the band’s genre as “rock opera:” a hybrid between theater productions and a typical music concert.

The show’s performance was riveting, but not to a point where it overwhelmed the music itself. In fact, the band’s rock versions of the classic Christmas tunes were integrated so seamlessly with the rest of the production that it was difficult to tell where the theater ended and the songs began.

Between every few songs, African-American storyteller Phillip Brandon would take the stage with a booming voice, reciting parts of a poetic speech. This Sunday’s story was one of an owner of a bar who used the cash earned from selling alcohol to support a child without parents or a home.

“In movies and Broadway shows, the picture on the screen or stage set…puts you in the place the writer desires…but in Rock Theater, the projector is the human voice…[his] screen is the human mind,” explained O’Neill. “It is the hardest screen to project on, but if you can accomplish it, the emotional impact is staggering.”

And to say they “accomplished it” would be an understatement. Audience members in the pavilion were seen dancing, laughing, and crying throughout 2 ½ hour show.

Needless to say, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra succeeded in filling the venue with Christmas spirit along with concern for those in need this Christmas season.

To see more, visit http://trans-siberian.com/.

The album was due to debut right after 2008’s Viva La Vida Or Death And All Of His Friends, but was delayed because of Viva La Vida’s widespread success. In Viva La Vida, a taste of the futuristic Japanese lovers can be heard with “Lovers in Japan.” This album is centered around another couple in Japan forced to fight for their love in a dystopian world, creating a foundation for a futuristic technical soundtrack. The title Mylo Xyloto comes from a surreal Frida Kahlo painting that inspired lead singer Chris Martin to follow his visions of a fictional world where his music could follow. The infamous Brian Eno produced this record, giving it the exact credibility it deserves.

The overall effect of the music is over-produced, but provides a new technical style that blends well with Coldplay’s pre-established style. The songs work to provide a much-needed balance from the optimistic instrumental fragments to pop-based lengthier songs, most of which are a refreshing blend of more dance-friendly Coldplay music that has yet to be heard on such a wide scale.

Every song on the album works well together to provide transitions between the other songs, but independently, they work just as well with each song having its own unique style. The short instrumental riffs in between longer songs such as “A Hopeful Transmission” and “M.M.I.X” are overly optimistic, thus cliché. Johnny Buckland’s guitar riffs can be heard in songs such as “Hurts Like Heaven” where his ever-welcome edgy style helps remind the listener of the original Coldplay identity. “Heaven” is definitely one of its best songs with a well-balanced optimistic theme, fast-paced beats, and Buckland’s chords. Similar to “Princess In China,” featuring Rihanna, both have a pop-based style that leave the listener enticed and repeating the lyrics long after the song has ended.

The signature songs have a futuristic layer to them that allow for the traditional Coldplay style to show through the futuristic mechanical rhythms.  Martin’s signature vocals are well-accompanied by Buckland’s guitar riffs, although again, extremes are a common theme for this album.  Although both musicians have a talent for their areas, Martin is exceedingly cliché with his increasingly optimistic high-pitched “oohs” and “ahhs” that last several notes. Buckland, although talented, unfortunately loses the purpose of his instrumental plucks as  the themes become over-emphasized with confusing chords.

Once the forty-four minutes and four seconds of the album have ended, the optimistic feeling of the dance-focused tunes and catchy lyrics dances around in your head. Coldplay’s efforts are noticeably different than preceding albums, but it provides a refreshing change of pace as the band explores different styles. In the future, Coldplay may want to find a more focused direction for their album, because although they receive credit for venturing outside traditional styles, Coldplay’s earlier albums are a perfect fit.

Awkward fitting-theme? Yes. Overly-computerized? Yes. Unnecessarily pop-ish? A tad. But is it entertaining? Certainly. Overall, the album has a surprisingly different sound that is daringly original, venturing outside of Coldplay’s traditional approach with the same beautiful composition.

Secondly, it’s a great concert.

Yet while the lineup included an appealing mixture of old and new and various styles that drew a wide crowd, the enormity of the Shoreline Amphitheater left the majority of the audience unable to appreciate the music.

Shoreline can fit about 22,000 people, and it was full for this concert. The solid masses of people were intimidating and from where we sat, we could barely see the stage.

Still, the music was worth it, looking at the lineup. Here’s what we thought of the bands:

Allison: Neil Young helped found the fundraiser and performs every year. His set was anticlimactic, then he wrapped up the night with an encore.

Sara: Mumford and Sons was pleasantly predictable. They played well and sounded good live, but they didn’t shock us with any unforeseen talent. We arrived thinking they were a good band but not a great one, and left that way as well.

Allison: Eddie Vedder was even better than expected; although we were the only ones we knew that were excited for him, by the end of the set we’d converted a few people. Santana was crazy on guitar, an exuberant performance.

Sara: We entered the concert with fairly low expectations of Dave Matthews, and true to our premonitions, we spent the majority of his forty-five minute performance more preoccupied with preventing people from stepping on our heads than with the music.

Despite the impressive lineup, the concert fell somewhat flat. Yet the music was still enjoyable and the experience lovely.

“Time Above the Earth” is a welcome contrast to the usual funky rhythms and pounding drums so well attributed to The Kooks. Orchestral strings back the entire song and a large tribal drum adds accents. The Kooks are known for their catchy and repetitive choruses, but this song is also different in the respect that the lyrics have no chorus, and the song follows a verse-after-verse design. The new strings do not detract from the poetic quality of the lyrics so well known to The Kooks: “The motion of your hair, well that could take me anywhere.”

The title song, “Junk of the Heart (Happy),” retains the bright sounding rhythm guitar heard in earlier songs such as “Naïve” and “Ooh La,” and adds new elements of synthesized drum and backing tracks. Most importantly, it still keeps my foot tapping. The pre-chorus repeats, “See I notice nothing makes you shatter, no, no. You’re a lover of the wild and a joker of the heart.”

“F**k the World Off” most closely resembles The Kooks’ earlier work. Luke Pritchard’s lovable British accent works perfectly with the bright guitar tones. There is also a musical break for a subtle guitar solo, something The Kooks have done in previous songs.

The Kooks have begun to expand their repertoire by not only adding synthetic tracks, but also pounding piano chords to their music as well. The closing track demonstrates this by meshing piano tracks over pounding drum beats.

This new album demonstrates the range that The Kooks are capable of. “Petulia” features fingerpicking on an acoustic guitar fit for car ride on a summer day. It is the more melancholy of the new tracks with beautiful vocals: “Petulia, let’s make a wish, for a heart undone, a love without a sound. Like a heartbeat, moving through me.” Unlike other songs, the chorus of “Runaway” sounds like something out of a techno club. During the chorus, the guitar cuts out, leaving a techno bass line and a drum kit easy to fist-pump to.

Junk of the Heart definitely has a new feel, but I think it is important for a band to continue progressing and to be open to new influences. Their album shows that they are incorporating new types of music into their well-established musical genre. The Kooks have their own revolutionary style, but there is a new quality in this album. The Kooks leave us with one last lyric that sums up the new changes: “No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

The Kooks are a self-declared pop band, but their style is more accurately described as a product of the British Invasion movement. The original members, Luke Pritchard, Paul Garred, and Haris Rafferty, formed the band when they attended the Brighton Institute of Modern Music in 2003.  They named their band after the David Bowie song, “Kooks.” They spent three months together while they gained a strong fan base before signing with Virgin Records. The current members are now Pritchard (lead vocals), Garred (drums), Hugh Harris (lead guitar), and Peter Denton (bass).

The Kooks went on to record three full-length albums, Inside In/Inside Out, Konk, and most recently, Junk of the Heart. They won Best UK and Ireland at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2006 and the hit song, “She Moves in Her Own Way,” was nominated for The Brit Awards. Their second album, Konk, reached number one album and gold status and their most popular songs are “Naïve” and “She Moves in Her Own Way.”

The Kooks have listed their influences as Thin Lizzy, The Police, and The Libertines, along with other artists of the BritPop movement. They have also been compared to the Arctic Monkeys throughout their career, and there have been many cases of friendly and not-so-friendly competition between the two bands. Pritchard reportedly kicked the lead singer of the Arctic Monkeys in the face after he unplugged Pritchard’s guitar in the middle of a joint performance.

I was not in a people mood. On the shuttle over, crowded with twenty-somethings who were seemingly going just because they thought it was the cool thing to do (according to the girl across from me) I just wanted to get to the stage, enjoy the music, and ignore everyone else.

Yet as soon as I walked in, the atmosphere changed. Everyone was polite and generous. When someone bumped into me, they actually apologized. When someone smoked pot, they offered me some. (Of course, there are always rude people, but the glares and comments from everyone around made them know they were doing something wrong.)

I was able to walk basically straight up to the front – either I grabbed onto the jacket of some tall guy pushing his way up or people just let me through. Everyone was very relaxed. Until the music started.

With two stages, each starting when the other stopped, there was very little lag time between sets and if you were motivated you could see every band. Another point for Treasure Island; at many music festivals, you are only able to see a fraction of the bands because they all play at the same time.

Saturday is designated as the “electro” day, with “indie” bands reserved for Sunday. This means fewer hipsters (though of course they were still present in high numbers) and almost all people who actually like the bands. Everyone around me had seen the bands more than once, so I actually felt like the least dedicated. (I don’t spend the majority of my time listening to dance music. But the bands play a good concert.)

Cut Copy, an Australian 80s-revival done well, was amazingly high energy (and my personal favorite). They were jumping all around the stage, the crowd was jumping with them, and on top their music actually had substance. This was their last US show promoting their most recent album, Zonoscope.

Chromeo, a Canadian electro-pop duo, was similarly energetic and probably the most hyped, other than the headliner. Lead singer David Macklovitch seemed to love the spotlight, blowing kisses at girls and striking ridiculous poses, all the while making sure the photographers could get a good angle.

Dizzee Rascal played some new material not yet released, managing to get people dancing despite their early set time. (I may or may not have seen them having their own party in an almost broken-down bus as I left.) The full lineup: http://www.treasureislandfestival.com/2011/

On the whole, it was well organized, with smooth transportation, a clean venue (though admittedly shadowed by empty army buildings with broken windows and pealing paint), and decent food. And the music was great.

So maybe festivals can work, if you take loud music, quality bands, and a small sampling of nice people. Treasure Island certainly manages to make it work.

The festival is a FREE annual event held in the park sponsored by a generous millionaire who invites bands from all walks of life to glut themselves upon stages scattered throughout the park. As stated in the title, this festival is hardly strictly bluegrass, so expect some oddities.

A few that fit this category among the list of bands I skimmed were MC Hammer (who runs the children’s show and makes the festival quite child friendly), Buckethead (more on that later), Dark Star Orchestra, DeVotchKa and Broken Social Scene (a Canadian band). To accommodate the absolutely massive number of artists present, (grand total: 102) there are five different stages scattered within walking distance of one another, in a section of the park (Porch, Banjo, Arrow, Rooster, Star, and Towers of Gold Stages).

Here’s how my trip panned out. As luck would have it, the festival happened to fall on SAT weekend, so after getting that experience out of the way (in the same manner as an exorcism), a few other friends and I took the train down to SF to complete the purge. After a quick meal at Safeway we hopped aboard the Muni (the city’s bus system). But, as you may have noticed, bolded in the paragraph above, the festival is FREE! This means that not only can you come, but your great aunt Sally, that asthmatic phelmmy man sitting next to you on the bus, and all the crazies in San Francisco (not to mention the ones that were already at the park to begin with) can attend as well. Because of the masses of people, what would have been a 20 minute ride became an hour long. Finally, we got off and walked the rest of the way to the park just to get feeling back in our legs.

The first thing I noticed was the bike racks, long corridors of gleaming silver jam packed with bikes extending far as the eye could see. Bikes locked vertically, horizontally, above, below, and when there was no more space, locked hanging in  nearby trees. It was quite surreal, walking by this forest of bikes, shining cannonades camouflaged beneath leafy canopies as if they had climbed there on their own accord, like something out of a bike ad in an outdoor magazine. Clearly this was not the first time, because nearby signs read, “Bikes locked to trees will be cut down.” But the sheer number of these wheeled interlopers rendered such promises impossible.

As fate would have it, the exact moment we arrived at the stages, one of my friends had to leave, spending five hours traveling around and never seeing a band onstage. We pushed our way through massive crowds as far as we could get to the front to see Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thiele, one of the best mandolin players in the world. Quite a good blend of fiddle, standup base, banjo, guitar and mandolin and some good, bluesy bluegrass songs.

I left early to get a spot in the crowd for Buckethead, who finally appeared after an entire 45 minute delay without a supporting band, reduced to playing guitar solos over drum machines. Needless to say, it was a disappointment. The only redeeming quality was that at the top of the hill, there were a few guys who had set up slack lines (mini-tightropes) for people to play on.

Attendees were from all demographics (did I mention it was FREE?); hipsters, junkies, families, and many locals. The stench of weed was overpowering, mixed with cigarette smoke. People were openly carrying around bongs and taking hits, while a few feet over, parents were lifting small kids into the air to see the performers. The whole scenario was quite comical.

Getting home was worse, as all the stages let out at the same time, and it took another three hours to catch an overstuffed bus back to the train station and get home. Moral of the story? Biking is usually the fastest way to get around San Francisco, certainly on such a crowded day. Small wonder there were miles of bike racks at the park. Commuting to San Francisco will never be fun, but at least you can stop it from being painful.

This is a great festival and you shouldn’t let crowds discourage you, especially since it’s FREE. There are some of the best bluegrass (and non-bluegrass) bands in the country, so go out and listen to them!

For more info and a full list of bands, checkout http://www.strictlybluegrass.com.

The Script, headed by lead singer Danny O’Donoghue performed at the Fox Theatre in Oakland Friday night, on what was their third trip to the Bay Area in the past year.

Hot Chelle Rae opened the show and performed their hit song Tonight Tonight as well as some songs from their upcoming album. Who knows, maybe these guys will be super famous one day?

After a buildup of flashing lights, drums, and guitars, O’Donoghue came out and launched into You Won’t Feel a Thing, a song from their most recent album Science and Faith.

This was my second time seeing The Script (I saw them back in May) and seeing them again was definitely worth it. While some bands sound worse live, The Script sounds even better in person, and O’Donoghue is a phenomenal performer and entertainer.

They played lesser-known but still fantastic songs like Before the Worst, Dead Man Walking, and We Cry as well as more popular songs like The Man Who Can’t Be Moved and the current radio hit Nothing, which had most of the audience singing along.

One of the great things about the Fox Theatre is that people can buy floor tickets and be within twenty feet of the stage for a fraction of the cost of floor seats at bigger venues. And smaller venues are so much better anyway; I can’t imagine The Script playing in a huge arena like HP Pavilion.

The smaller venue allowed for a better connection with O’Donoghue, who would sit on the stage and let the fans sing into the microphone, and enabled one of the band’s drummers to take a picture of the crowd for The Script’s Twitter.

And, of course, since they’re from Ireland, the band members shamelessly drank beers while on stage.

The final songs of the night were, unsurprisingly, The Script’s most famous ones: Breakeven and For the First Time. I found myself wishing that they’d continue to play more of their songs, but clearly that was not to be. I guess I’ll have to wait until the next time The Script comes to town. It probably won’t be very long.

Justin Vernon, the lead singer and creator of Bon Iver, seemed truly shocked to be cheered by such a large and enthusiastic crowd. An endearing lack of loquaciousness and confidence lent a simplicity and relatability to his onstage persona.

Instead of talking, they just played beautiful music. Vernon managed to keep the intimate, personal quality of his music alive even while performing to a crowd of thousands.

The music seemed ethereal, floating above the packed auditorium and spreading across the crowd as they sang along to the encores.

The Greek is an amazing venue; I highly recommended it. The outdoor atmosphere, with stars above and trees around, meshed nicely with the naturalistic music. The acoustics are great; we could hear every catcall from across the Theatre.

Vernon produced his first album primarily alone, but is now trying to work on a more group-focused music. The band is currently eight members, crowding the stage.

Bon Iver considers San Francisco one of its first starting points and has a special fondness for the fans there, who attend every concert. So hopefully, they’ll be back in town soon.

Joe Jonas, best known for being a “bubble gum” pop star and Disney Channel child actor has a fan-base predominately of middle school girls and their forty-something year-old mothers who make an awkward attempt at being enthusiastic. In contrast, Jay Sean is a rapper and beat boxer with a few songs on the top forty charts, but probably not on the radar of most of the concertgoers that night. The warm-up act, JoJo, seemed to draw a crowd of her own, composed mostly of exuberant gay men, turning the first part of the show into a giant sing-along.

The whole night brought back fond memories of being a star-struck middle school girl who fell in love with the Jonas Brothers. Mom, if you’re reading this, I now understand the pain you had to go through when you took me to the JoBros concert in 6^th grade.

Although it was a great excuse to go to the City on a school night, the concert as a whole was disconnected: too many genres and an odd assortment of fans in the crowd. The venue also felt outdated and very empty, due to the small amount of people who attended.

Overall, an average concert.