My two favorite live performances of 2024 were Mon Laferte at Festival La Onda (BottleRock’s sister festival) and Jalen Ngonda at The Swedish American Music Hall. This year both played BottleRock 2025, but I didn’t get to see either.
I went to BottleRock Friday to once again see the Queen of latin musical dramas, Mon Laferte, but she had to postpone her show until Saturday. I couldn’t stay because I had a flight out to Detroit the next day for Movement. Fortunately, Friday still had six more musicians I’ve wanted to see or see again. Namely another Queen in a whole different realm, Remi Wolf.
Remi’s music hits at the heart between the relationship with my partner Liz and I. Both Remi’s live performance in person and in her song, “Liz”. I remember hearing it for the first time. The chorus was such a perfect anthem for my Liz. Soon after, I realized the rest of the lyrics told a much messier story. It’s a train wreck from the start. The chorus is the only positive part and not really even to “Liz”. We love it.
Remi’s live shows have been equally dramatic circumstances, in good times and great, but her music makes for a beautiful, complimentary backdrop. I saw her at Outside Lands, The Regency Ballroom, SXSW, and now BottleRock. Each has been distinct and memorable. Take a look at a few shots I got at BottleRock for a glimpse into her fun. More importantly, listen to her music with our playlist below.
Mill Valley Music Festival has been a go-to for its intimate charm and consistent selection of soul. 2025 marked its fifth year running and my fourth time going. My top three shows have been Thee Sacred Souls in 2024, La Doña in 2022, and Durand Jones in 2023, but they had some hefty competition this year.
Sunday was packed with soul— Thee Sinseers & Monoponics with their retro style, Sister Nancy with her dancehall reggae, and Nile Rodgers hit melody after hit melody with Chic and beyond. Still, the weekend’s best performance came the day before.
It took 13 years to hear Gary Clark Jr from when I first posted about him. It was well worth the wait. His voice topped the weekend, and his guitar playing rivaled Nile’s. Watch my favorite song from his set below, particularly starting @ 3:44!
10 years at SXSW. Technically 2020 shut down and 2021 was online, but 10 years I’ve been enjoying a city filled with live music more dense, diverse, and good than anywhere in the world.
This was the first time I went to weekend one, which is the main attraction for the conference. It was informative. I got to see Ben Stiller talk Severance – the best show in the past 10 years – and something dear to my professional heart, Paramount CTO Phil Wiser talk LLMs for movie recommendations.
2025 was still all about the music showcase. For six years I’ve gone through every musician playing SXSW (usually around 1,000) and filtered it down to a manageable amount (usually around 5-10%) for a playlist to guide my schedule.
The debate over whether a musician’s legacy lies in an album or a single is more contentious than ever as music shortens and singles dominate the internet. While both clearly play a role (like all good things), I lean toward the single. The album is too rare for me. I’ll take it a step further, it’s not just the single, but more specifically a moment within the song that defines the musician. Ideally more than one moment. It’s what makes a good beat a great song. The highs and lows.
This year we started a playlist of Daily Goodies to highlight that moment and match it to a video for Instagram and TikTok. Our 2024 Music of the Year playlist features over 200 defining moments. Yes, that’s too much, but we tried too hard this year and distillation is harder.
Daily Goodies is like no other playlist we’ve made before. Every other playlist has been static with very little updates, but this list updates at least a few times a week. Ideally daily. We also clip the best moment of each song, cut a video to match, and upload to Instagram and TikTok. Follow along.
Jalen Ngonda played a sold-out show at The Swedish American Hall in San Francisco this September. You can tell his voice is more than a 70’s soul knockoff in his recordings alone, but it’s nothing like hearing him live 10 feet away.
Not even one of my favorite musicians over the past 5 years, Aaron Frazer, who had the song at my wedding’s first dance, could showcase live like Ngonda. I saw Frazer a week before, and while his catalog runs deep with fresh new soul, Ngonda’s live performance is best of the year, beside Mon Laferte at Bottle Rock. Ngonda still needs work on building his catalog and moving more into his own sound, but give him 5 years and he’ll be on top.
More than any musician before him, I heard more people tell me Spotify recommended Jalen Ngonda to them. If that’s not an potential sign of major success than take it from me. While I was a part of his Spotify recommended season late last year, I realized I reposted his song “Don’t You Remember” on SoundCloud 5 years ago. Bite it, Spotify recs.
I remember the first time I heard Aaron Frazer. With Durand Jones & The (rest of the) Indications at Outside Lands in 2018. Durand and his band were one of the most memorable sets of the 8 years I’ve been to OSL. Most memorable was hearing a high pitched vocalist in the band but took me a good 3 songs to figure out who it was. The drummer in the back, Aaron Frazer.
Now he is very much in front. Touring his second solo album, Into the Blue. What I hadn’t heard in his tracks online, but was very apparent that night at The Independent is that his falsetto isn’t half of what he’s got. Check out the first video on the Instagram embed below. It’s the best glimpse on camera I’ve got in hearing him in a different light, but I’m sure it’s just one small step in his much bigger plan. His catalog of singles is already stacked, imagine in 50 years.
Also, I didn’t realize how much swag he had, but with a voice like that.
Festival La Onda was BottleRock’s first run at a second weekend that was all latin music, new & old. Not dissimilar from Coachella’s third weekend, Stagecoach. And reminds me a lot of Lost in Riddim too. Each of these California festivals bring together the top performing musicians from a culture around the world, whether in country, afrobeats or latin music.
The first day of La Onda with my friends on Saturday was a good time, but my solo trip Sunday introduced me to 3 musicians I’ll be feeling through music for the rest of my life, particularly Mon Laferte. I went into her show with casual expectations. I liked one of her songs. It was near the top of my “Songs to see at Festival La Onda“, and was approved by my partner. I had no idea how impactful she would be live and in catalog.
My jaw still drops thinking about the feeling I’ll remember from hearing her for the first time live. It was like I was listening to music I’ve heard for years. Song after song, hit after hit. Ballads better at storytelling than most movies. And I don’t speak Spanish.
I’ve binged her 8 studio albums and the many live iterations on Spotify for the past 72 hours when I’ve been awake. It’s a lot of music. I’ve only narrowed it to just under a hundred, but a few more months and I’ll distill it down with much more discernment. Follow my progress in the Spotify playlist below.
She’s made me want to write. I never like to write. It’s been especially hard to write, let alone think, about anything other than war. But she made me feel something deep at La Onda and with so much more of her entire catalog. Something words can never and music can only do.
BottleRock 2024 was my third visit to the music festival in Napa. The first year in 2017, my partner and I heard Charles Bradley sing, which brought us to tears. The second year in 2021, we saw Jon Batiste play a charismatic set, which the crowd reflected back. Six months later, he won Album of the Year at the Grammys. So my third year had a lot to live up to and it did times 2 with the main headliners on Saturday, Kali Uchis and Pearl Jam. But the two had the same set times.
I had never been this conflicted with overlapping sets at a festival. I had seen Kali Uchis 5 times already, but Pearl Jam never. Plus, Pearl Jam was my second favorite band in high school (Smashing Pumpkins), but Kali was my first fav in 2018. And her new album, Orquídeas, is my favorite album of the year by far so far. I was so conflicted I did an Instagram poll (40% Kali, 60% Pearl Jam), which of course made me more conflicted. So I decided to go to both.
Pearl Jam started first at 7:45. That gave me about 30 minutes with them before I had to head to Kali Uchis for her 8:30 set. The funnest part of most festivals is swerving through the crowd dancing in moments with others along the way. Most of us don’t do it enough. I ended up leaving Kali Uchis after “Loner” and caught Pearl Jam close that night with an even better stroll through the crowds right before.
I love to compare and contrast everything, especially when others don’t. Pearl Jam topped Kali Uchis this time live, but they had twenty years of anticipation from me. However, of the 5 other shows I had previously seen of Kali, Pearl Jam’s set didn’t top a single one. I distinctly remember the first show I saw of hers in 2017. I had never heard such a majority of the crowd sing back every lyric to her. I’m sure Pearl Jam had a similar reaction a few years after they started playing, but I couldn’t witness because I was 8.
If that wasn’t controversial enough, Kali Uchis has a better catalog than Pearl Jam and she isn’t close to past her prime. Here are a few of my favorites from her.
Performing live looks so hard to me. I see a lot of musicians give so much and the crowd can be so tough, especially me. I’d be worse than 99% of them. I may just be projecting, but rarely do I see someone as present on stage and in the crowd as Josh Lane, lead singer of Thee Sacred Souls. I don’t think I’ve seen someone work a camera so well since Rema at Lost in Riddim.
I first saw Thee Sacred Souls at SXSW and then Hardly Strictly Bluegress in 2023 and now Mill Valley Music Festival in 2024. Josh has only gotten better at making his performance interactive, tangible, and not the standard call & feedback. See a perfect example below with his performance of “Running Away” while running around the crowd.