A panoramic look at the Jam Cellars Stage field at the Red Hot Chili Peppers play "Dani California" Sunday at the BottleRock festival in Napa.
NAPA — The Red Hot Chili Peppers played "The Getaway," the title track from their upcoming studio album, for a live audience for the first time Sunday at BottleRock Napa Valley.
The Los Angeles alternative and funk rock band rattled off numerous hits in a 100-minute set that featured numerous jams and interludes.
Here a complete list of what the band played Sunday at BottleRock:
Setlist Can't Stop Dani California Snow ((Hey Oh)) Dark Necessities Nobody Weird Like Me The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie Otherside Right on Time The Getaway Under the Bridge Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder song) Californication By the Way
Ritzy Bryan of The Joy Formidable performs Saturday at the BottleRock Napa Valley festival. Bryan finished the band's set by ripping off her sunglasses, jumping into the drum kit and hurling her guitar on stage in the finale of the group's showstopper, "Whirring." (Robinson Kuntz/Daily Republic photo)
NAPA — Florence + The Machine wrapped itself around the BottleRock Napa Valley festival like a warm blanket Saturday night.
Lead singer Florence Welch twirled, danced and ran through the crowd barefoot as she and the machine delivered fan favorites such as "Cosmic Love," "Shake it Out" and "Dog Days Are Over." She encouraged the crowd to love each other and, during "Dog Days," hug each other and touch each others' faces.
Here's what the band played in its headlining set Saturday, as well as the sets from Death Cab for Cutie, The Pharcyde and The Joy Formidable, according to my notes and a little help from Setlist.fm:
Florence + The Machine
Setlist What the Water Gave Me Ship to Wreck Bird Song Intro Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up) Shake it Out Delilah Sweet Nothing How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful Cosmic Love Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Neil Young song) Mother Queen of Peace Spectrum You’ve Got the Love (The Source song) Dog Days Are Over
Encore What Kind of Man Drumming Song
Death Cab for Cutie
Setlist The New Year Crooked Teeth Why’d You Want to Live Here Black Sun The Ghosts of Beverly Drive Title and Registration Little Wanderer A Movie-Script Ending What Sarah Said I Will Possess Your Heart El Dorado You Are a Tourist Doors Unlocked and Open Soul Meets Body Cath … Marching Bands of Manhattan
The Pharcyde
Setlist Hey You Y? Devil Music Drop Ya Mama Still Got Love Illusions One Time for Dilla, Man (For J-Dilla) Otha Fish Pack the Pipe / Jammin’ (Bob Marley song) Oh S— [Unknown] Runnin’ Passin’ Me By
The Joy Formidable
Setlist Cradle Little Blimp Passerby This Ladder Is Ours The Last Thing on My Mind The Greatest Light Is the Greatest Shade Radio of Lips Whirring
Updated 5/29/16 at 10:08 a.m.
Updated 5/29/16 at 11:20 p.m.
NAPA — Here's the setlist for Stevie Wonder's performance Friday at the BottleRock Napa Valley festival, according to my notes.
In the sampler set, Wonder told the crowd to refer to him as "DJ Chick Chick Boom" as he played the studio recordings of songs from musical luminaries who have died in 2016, including Prince, Eagles, Natalie Cole and Earth, Wind and Fire.
It's possible there were others after Superstition as there was still a little time left before the festival's noise curfew:
Setlist
Give Up the Funk (Parliament song) [Spoken, as intro to ... ] >
Did I Hear You Say You Love Me
Master Blaster (Jammin’)
Higher Ground
Sir Duke
I Wish
Saturn
Overjoyed
If You Really Love Me
Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours
Living for the City >
I Want to Hold Your Hand (The Beatles song)
My Cherie Amour >
The Letter (The Box Tops song)
DJ Chick Chick Boom sampler set
Kiss (Prince song)
When Doves Cry (Prince song)
That’s the Way of the World (Earth, Wind and Fire song)
This Will Be (Natalie Cole song)
Hotel California (Eagles song)
Fame (David Bowie song)
Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons performs at the BottleRock Napa Valley festival in 2015. The Napa music, wine and food festival returns for its fourth installment Friday through Sunday. (Robinson Kuntz/Daily Republic photo)
FAIRFIELD — Known for its convergence of music, wine and food, BottleRock Napa Valley seeks to double down on all three this weekend during the festival’s fourth installment.
A beefed-up lineup for its culinary stage features world-class chefs cooking with celebrities, including “Hell’s Kitchen” star Gordon Ramsay, Food Network host Tyler Florence, “Man v. Food” host Adam Richman and “Iron Chef” Masaharu Morimoto, with a side of athletes, celebrities, other chefs and more.
Last year, overstuffed crowds packed the small stage, leading promoter Dave Graham and his Latitude 38 partners to reassess, expanding its roster and redrawing the festival map for a bigger viewing area.
“This was just one of those ideas that you have and you think, ‘Well, this could work or this could bomb. Best case scenario, if it works, we’ll be OK’ and, fortunately slash unfortunately, we got it wrong,” Graham said with a laugh. “Demand was much greater than we anticipated. We figured that we’re going to need a bigger boat. So we built a bigger boat this year and we’ve raised the bar in terms of who will be on that stage.”
The sold-out festival, which runs Friday through Sunday at the Napa Valley Exposition, brings Michigan soul legend Stevie Wonder, English art pop rockers Florence + The Machine and Los Angeles alternative rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers to Napa along with more than 70 other artists.
Musicians will participate in making dishes, including Keith Jeffery (photo below), singer and guitarist for the Australian pop rock band Atlas Genius, best known for the hits “Stockholm” and “Trojans.” Jeffery, a vegan for the past five years, is looking forward to showing off his culinary skills.
“I think my biggest passion with food, as a vegan, is finding ways of recreating things that, basically, taste the same as what a meat-eater would want it to taste like, therefore eliminating the excuse that, ‘I can’t go vegan because I’m going to miss so-and-so-food,’ ” Jeffery said.
It’s a stage that fans also can view from an improved VIP area, Graham said. A raised deck will allow VIP ticketholders to see both the main stage and the culinary stage. Other VIP upgrades include an improved roster of musicians playing the VIP lounge, more than doubling the number of on-stage suites and building a doubledecker skydeck for the main stage. Also, the festival’s exclusive platinum lounge is adjacent to the main stage.
For those with general admission tickets, the main stage will look different this year, too. Latitude 38 has increased the size of the main stage as well as added larger video monitors.
The 2016 installment also marks the return of after shows for the first time since the inaugural BottleRock in 2013. This year’s after shows include appearances by Gogol Bordello, Rodrigo y Gabriela and Foo Fighters side project Chevy Metal and more.
Graham is proud of the lineup inside the festival grounds, too. Joining Gogol Bordello, Rod and Gab, Atlas Genius, Wonder, Florence and the Chili Peppers are Death Cab for Cutie, The Lumineers, Lenny Kravitz, Ziggy Marley, Buddy Guy, The Joy Formidable, The Pharcyde, Walk the Moon, Grouplove and many more.
“We feel like it is a world-class, eclectic mix,” Graham said. “There’s something there for everyone from your classic Red Hot Chili Peppers to your big-time indie rock bands like Florence + The Machine and Death Cab for Cutie to your iconic artists like Buddy Guy and Ziggy Marley and then some of the best up-and-comers around from Nothing But Thieves to The Struts, who could very well be the next Chili Peppers.”
Graham said, for him, although the bottom line matters, he will know the festival is a success when it has delivered on the promises of the lineup card, the food, the wine and the experience of coming to the Napa Valley.
“When I see someone walking around with a smile on their face and a big glass of wine and, call it a big Morimoto rib, or some piece of food that is indicative of or comes from a local restaurant, a Napa restaurant, that’s stuff’s fun for us to see,” Graham said. “Or the crowds going nuts. … I can’t wait to hear and see people watching Gogol Bordello, screaming ‘(Start Wearing) Purple.’ ”
All days of the festival are sold out for the first time in BottleRock history. For more information, visit BottleRockNapa.com.
Gordon Ramsay photo courtesy Dave Pullig
Keith Jeffery photo courtesy Alexa Stickler
Bottom crowd photo from 2015 BottleRock by Robinson Kuntz for Daily Republic
Beyoncé performs at Pavilhão Atlântico in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2009. The New York-based R&B and pop star released her sixth album, Lemonade, last month. (Courtesy photo/José Goulão)
What defines an album has moved beyond the constraints of its format.
It’s nothing new, really, to connect visuals to an album or even a movie.
Yet something about Beyonce’s latest project, Lemonade, which arrived via a one-hour film on HBO, delves deep into infidelity and relationships in a way that feels bold, intimate and fresh.
Lemonade — named, I assume, after the adage about turning lemons into a sweet drink — fills a popular narrative about break-up albums and records about marital trouble. There’s something romantic, if you’ll pardon that word in this instance, about the narrative of such albums. It parallels the American dream – Anyone who works hard and pays their dues can vault over even the highest obstacles.
People identify with wanting to turn tears, sadness and a broken heart into something better. In the case of Lemonade, it’s about martial issues, but it’s also a concept album and a video musical. It redefines not just break-up albums, but gives a window into where albums and music might go.
For Lemonade, Beyoncé frames the entire record and companion film of same name around an affair.
Whether an affair between Jay Z and Beyoncé is real or imagined is irrelevant. I found myself thinking of the words of piano rocker Ben Folds, who once said nothing is against the rules in creativity.
“If I feel that I want to write in first person and completely make it up, then I’m going to do it,” Folds said. “And I realize that it’s a powerful, uh — The ‘I’ in songwriting is powerful because people tap into the celebrity of it. … (People say,) ‘The guy that’s singing that actually did that.’ ”
Throughout the picture, voiceover serves as the connective tissue between songs. The interstitial moments give it the feeling of a musical, pushing the story forward between bursts of song. Through those snippets of voiceover, some of which cribbed from Kenya-born poet Warsan Shire, Beyoncé's narrator moves through 11 self-decided stages of recovery from cheating.
“With every tear came redemption and my torturer became my remedy,” her character says in the final chapter’s voiceover.
“Formation,” the song which caused an outcry in February after its performance at halftime of Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, closes the record. After Bey's character moves through the stages of grief, loss and rediscovery, “Formation” reads as a powerful closing statement. The first verse, in which she states where she comes from and talks about her body, reads as pride and confidence after a record of heartbreak, pain and rising out of the ashes.
It also sounds like a record only Beyoncé could have made. Her film and the narrator she portrays brings the project into full view in a way the music alone could not. By showing couples at different ages as well as her own home movies and making nods toward her parents’ 2011 divorce, Beyoncé’s Lemonade film either feels like a piercing self-examination.
Video is a field she’s dabbled in before. Her surprise, self-titled 2013 album sold with an accompanying music video for each song. She’s not breaking new ground here, but the idea of such an immersive experience is an area she can afford to explore more easily than others.
Musicians on film and video is nothing new. The Beatles were the subjects of A Hard Day’s Night more than 50 years ago. Elvis Presley starred in movies. Music videos help promote sales. Kanye West made a short film for the music video for “Runaway” in 2010 and even “Weird Al” Yankovic rolled out his last album, 2014's Mandatory Fun, with a series of music videos.
But what Beyonce’s done is use video not just as a marketing tool, but as an essential part of the experience and understanding of the record. It’s impossible to uncouple the film from the music.
She’s testing the boundaries of what an album can be while simultaneously delivering her most insightful and personal work yet.
The project’s title might be referencing turning lemons into lemonade, but it’s hard to think Queen Bey isn’t trying to do the same for the music industry, too.
Music, music, music Nick DeCicco writes For Those About to Rock, a music blog for the Daily Republic. After trying and failing to play multiple instruments, Nick realized he should combine his love of words and music and use it to mock those who can play much, much better than him. And he does. He's attended hundreds of concerts, has a CD collection numbering into the thousands, crossed the Atlantic to see shows, and is a two-time record store employee. He lives in Solano County, with his two iPods and two CD players.
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