Tag: ventura music hall
Glass Beams at Ventura Music Hall: Desert in a Bottle
Rob Shepyer
August 28, 2025
This has been a psychedelic week for me, still feeling the afterglow of seeing Pigs x7, so before I could enter this new trip closer to home, I needed to sober up off the lingering sonic buzz. I wanted to clear out the leftover distortion rattling in my head so I could step into the Ventura Music Hall with ears and mind ready to feel the pure, authentic high off the sound of Glass Beams. related: Pigs x7 Launch North American Tour At Lodge Room Glass Beams plays in the tradition of distorting and disrupting traditional, exotic world music into modernized, minimalist psychedelia. Their music doesn’t need to shout, roar, or crash like a doom riff to get you there; it works in repetition, mood, and layering. It works in space. They aren’t the first to attempt this blend and they won’t be the last, but at the moment, they feel like the only band making traditional world music vibrations consumable for folks interested in dancing on clouds, instead of just headbanging in basements. Shows like this are rare in Ventura, though they strike a nerve in both artist and audience that no other city quite can. Ventura has always
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How to Humanize an Alien: Parliament Funkadelic at Ventura Music Hall
Rob Shepyer
May 5, 2025
Thanks to Ventura Music Hall and George Clinton, Parliament Funkadelic was up until Monday, a bucket list band that needed to get checked off my list if I was really to consider myself a music junkie. Now, in a totally changed state of mind since seeing them perform classic songs like “Flashlight”, “Atomic Dog”, “We Got The Funk”, and more, I’ve been feeling this strange sense of nostalgia for a time I didn’t even exist in. That time I’m so fondly recalling through videos, images, and oral tradition was the seventies. At the time, pop culture was more colorful, vivid, imaginative, and real. Forced to create practical magic and effects if artists wanted to make concerts feel out of this world, groups like Parliament Funkadelic constructed UFOs that would land on stage and release a cavalcade of alien crazies upon the audience, all dressed and sounding completely unique from one another to create a funk jam session akin to stream of consciousness power poetry. It was in the seventies, back when a heavily dreaded George Clinton produced acid-inspired rollercoaster rides that ranged from metallic to soulful to downright religious, that Clinton and his band were at their peak-alieness. Today, as
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Pentagram- Doom Ages Like Fine Wine At Ventura Music Hall
Rob Shepyer
February 21, 2025
Something about old age injects more gravitas into a doom metal musician’s art. Perhaps its being closer to the great beyond, that dark place from which inspiration comes from that we all join at the end of our days. Perhaps something about graying hair and wrinkled skin makes the purveyor of doom metal all the more convincing to an audience. Doom metal, is of course a genre about bleakness and sorrow. A long life devoted to that style of music must have experienced everything the world has to offer, so to come away with singing “doom to world” instead of “Joy to world” gives fans the assurance that this artist is the real deal, and they’re not just playing a character in a gimmick. Then of course, there’s pace. Doom metal is slow metal. Slowness and sloth are what some equate with growing old. Dragging your feet, letting time pass you by because it makes no difference. All these ideas are second nature to doom metal’s mournful verses and tones. Bobby Liebling and the boys in Pentagram have been around since the inception of doom metal. Playing this genre of music before it had a name. To them, it was
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Tonic Truth and Collective Consciousness: Kim Gordon at Ventura Music Hall
Rob Shepyer
April 6, 2024
In her latest reinvention, Kim Gordon deepened her trip hop digs and redefined her signature noise rock stylings into a pure avalanche of disruption to pull our eyes out of our phones, whether to pay attention or escape into a headbang, so we may listen to what she has to say. This was my 2nd time seeing Kim Gordon live, my sole-previous experience was witnessing her headline Mosswood Meltdown 2022. Since then, she’s released The Collective the most defining album of her solo career and the Ventura Music Hall was the perfect place to perform. The venue is a uniquely chill hanger, resting in a uniquely chill slice of California. A true gem of the 805, it’s one of the best places to see a band for its great sound quality, acoustics, bar, kitchen and staff. Blessed by a painting of The Last Supper featuring the cast of The Big Lebowski in the darkened right corner of the room, every show is innately intimate at Ventura Music Hall. related content: Glorious Leader, Kim John Kill: Mosswood Meltdown 2022 The first track on the Collective, “BYE BYE”, was both Kimlet’s opener and closer for this tour. The song is a farewell
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