Top 20 Favorite Shows of 2014

Top 20 Favorite Shows of 2014
Mark E. Ortega
Medium.com
December 27, 2014


Not counting music festivals, I managed to see exactly 100 live concerts in 2014. Previous to this year, I had seen in the ballpark of 25 concerts, I think? I couldn’t have ever expected to see this many shows, but thanks fo relocating to Los Angeles as well as picking up freelance work writing about music, I was able to make it to a shit ton of concerts. In August, I saw live music for seven straight days, something I wanted to do my whole life. I upstaged that by seeing shows 10 straight days in October, and all of a sudden in December, 100 seemed a realistic goal. I hit that mark with the Dec. 20 Saves the Day & Say Anything show at House of Blues on Sunset.

Click here to read about my 20 favorite concerts of 2014...

No better way to experience Mark Kozelek than in SF

No better way to experience Mark Kozelek than in SF

Mark E. Ortega

March 3, 2014

Saturday night, I ventured out to Great American Music Hall in San Francisco to see Mark Kozelek play a show ten blocks from where the former Red House Painters singer lives, according to some of his between song banter that evening.

I had interviewed Kozelek back in 2011 for Queensberry-Rules.com, not so much about music, but about boxing. Kozelek’s spin off from Red House Painters is named Sun Kil Moon, named for the South Korean boxer. On Sun Kil Moon’s first album Ghosts of a Great Highway exists a song “Salvador Sanchez”, named for the legendary Mexican fighter who died tragically at 23 years of age. 

Recommended Album Review: Sun-Kil Moon - Benji

Recommended Album Review: Sun-Kil Moon - Benji
Mark E. Ortega
GrimyGoods.com
February 13, 2014


Sometimes, when in the process of listening to a Mark Kozelek album, you begin to think he would’ve been a great novelist. There might not be a songwriter out there today that is able to wax as elegantly as Kozelek about both the profound and the mundane, usually within just a few lines of each other. It’s on Kozelek’s long running project Sun Kil Moon’s sixth album, Benji that he perhaps accomplishes this best.

Though most of the content of Benji deals with tragedy and sadness, Kozelek eloquently is able to slip in humorous bits here and there that lighten things up. Kozelek somehow fits in Panera Bread in not one, but two songs, and also mentions coming home crying from school as a kid because he was sat next to an albino.

Click here to read the rest...

Famous Fight Fan: Mark Kozelek

Famous Fight Fan: Mark Kozelek
Mark E. Ortega
Queensberry-Rules.com
February 11, 2012

It's not often that boxing appears a central theme in music, but recording artist Mark Kozelek has given the combat sport a starring role in his work since disbanding alternative rock band, Red House Painters, on the eve of the millennium.

 The frontman for a nearly twelve-year stint (which saw their biggest selling U.S. album “Songs for a Blue Guitar” in 1996, as well as contributions on film soundtracks such as that of Cameron Crowe’s “Vanilla Sky”), Kozelek laid the Red House Painters to rest in 2001 in order to focus on his solo career. Two years later, he and the other founding members of RHP resurrected the band under the moniker Sun Kil Moon, inspired by former South Korean two-division world champion and namesake, Sung-Kil Moon. According to Kozelek, he considered Sun Kil Moon a continuation of the Red House Painters but changed its name to pique the interest of critics who got bored with, or stopped paying attention to, SKM’s previous incarnation.

Click here to read the rest...