Duran Duran, Metric, Clean Bandit deliver top Life is Beautiful day two sets

Duran Duran, Metric, Clean Bandit deliver top Life is Beautiful day two sets
Mark E. Ortega
GrimyGoods.com
September 28, 2015

Day two of Life is Beautiful was the most jam-packed day of the downtown Las Vegas festival schedule-wise. It makes sense. People that drove in from LA or flew in from elsewhere get to enjoy a full day’s worth of music whereas the other two days are sometimes eaten up by traveling to and from home.

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BottleRock Napa begins with literal black eye, ends on high note

BottleRock Napa begins with literal black eye, ends on high note
Mark E. Ortega
GrimyGoods.com
June 4, 2015

Of all the festivals I’ve covered in May (Shaky Knees in Atlanta, HangoutFest in Gulf Shores, Sasquatch at The Gorge), BottleRock Napa Valley’s was the one I was most intrigued to discover what the demographic would be. Napa is bougie wine country, and BottleRock was being pitched as a family festival, so I didn’t know what to expect.

It was also the least-likely place I expected to get sucker-punched in the eye, which made it all the more surprising when that happened following Cage the Elephant’s awesome performance mid-day on the main stage. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

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Ten Best Live Cover Songs of 2014

Ten Best Live Cover Songs of 2014
Mark E. Ortega
GrimyGoods.com
December 1, 2014

Having been fortunate enough to see around 100 concerts in 2014, not to mention a good number of music festivals, I had the opportunity to see some musicians pull out some pretty bad ass covers during their live sets. After much deliberation, I’ve broken down my Top 10 for the year, which was no easy feat.

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Made In America Los Angeles reviewed: The good, the bad, and the fugly

Made In America Los Angeles reviewed: The good, the bad, and the fugly
Mark E. Ortega
GrimyGoods.com
September 4, 2014


This past weekend marked the inaugural Made In America festival in Los Angeles. Though this festival has been running the past few years in Philadelphia, the promoters undertook a huge effort in running one in the heart of downtown LA, with City Hall serving as the backdrop to a main stage that would showcase the likes of Kanye West, Imagine Dragons, John Mayer, Kendrick Lamar, Iggy Azalea, and a number of others from a wide range of genres.

As is the case with any first-year festival, there were always going to be growing pains. Couple that with the fact that it was run simultaneously with the festival in Philadelphia, and problems were gonna be aplenty.

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