R.I.P. Whitney Houston

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Whitney Houston, the era-defining superstar who was the first woman to have an album debut at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, died Saturday afternoon, according to the AP. Houston was 48.

Houston's body was found in the fourth floor of her room at the Beverly Hilton hotel, according to AP. She was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. Saturday. Houston's publicist, Kristen Foster, said the cause of death was unknown.

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We're baaaaack!

​Super bummed when the crazysweet electronica festival and dance party in S.F.'s Civic Center -- otherwise known as LovEvolution -- was canceled last year?

Us, too. But the bummer is over. LovEvolution will be coming to the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on Saturday, Sept. 24, just outside the Oracle Arena. The Glitch Mob will be headlining; hit the jump for the rest of the lovely details.

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​[Story updated 3/8/12]

The alcohol permit for S.F. music venue Slim's was suspended for 10 days last week due to a long-running battle with the club's neighbors over noise complaints -- a battle venue part-owner Dawn Holliday hopes will end soon.

The club was barred from serving alcohol from Tuesday, March 15, until this Friday, when it will host a show by Irish group the Saw Doctors.

Over the weekend, the club held booze-free performances of bands from middle and high schools, storing away all the alcohol it would normally have made money serving.

The license suspension relates to a spat between Slim's and the club's neighbors, who began complaining in 2007 that the venue was violating the no-noise policy of its liquor license. Though the complaints originated with Juniper Street residents Jodi and Kirby Watson, Holliday says a neighbor in their building, Jeanmarie Guenot, calls police regularly, sometimes daily, to complain about noise from the club.

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BBC News is no stranger to confusing headlines ("Turkey scarf mars anniversary" comes to mind), but this one caught our attention for reasons beyond the usual funny abbreviations and crash blossoms: "Lightning Bolt Kills TV Giraffe." Could it be true? Well, no, not the way you're thinking.

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Without any further ado, the full line up for San Francisco's own Outside Lands Music Festival, presented in a very endearing video format brought to by The Eclectic Method.

The lineup is not too shabby. Who we're most excited about? Kings of Leon, The Strokes, My Morning Jacket, Gogol Bordello, Cat Power, Wolfmother, and (especially) Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

Here's the full list:

Kings of Leon
Further feat Phil Lesh and Bob Weir
The Strokes
My Morning Jacket
Phoenix
Social Distortion
Al Green
Gogol Bordello
Nas & Damien "Jr. Gong" Marley
The Levon Helm Band
Cat Power
Empire of the Sun
Wolfmother
Bassnectar
Chromeo
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
The Temper Trap
Pretty Lights
Janelle Moná e
Amos Lee
The Devil Makes Three
Tokyo Police Club
Beats Antique
Rebirth Brass Band
Wild Beasts
Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars
Daniel Lanois' Black Dub
The Budos Band
Aterciopelados
Garage A Trois
Mayer Hawthorne & The Country
Langhorne Slim
The Pimps of Joytime
People Under the Stairs
Electric Six
Vieux Farka Touré
Dawes
Nneka
The Soft Pack
The Whigs
Little Wings

Outside Lands Golden Gate Park
August 14th through 15th
Tickets $125 2-Day



Follow us on Twitter at @sfshookdown and @sfweekly.

​On Monday, the David and Goliath of concert ticket promotion and sales -- Live Nation and Ticketmaster -- joined forces to become Live Nation Entertainment, a music industry behemoth that promises to force other music labels and promoters to rejigger their business plans to accommodate. The U.S. Department of Justice approved the merger after nearly a year of discussions about how to prevent the industry giant from monopolizing the concert ticketing and promoting business.

When Live Nation and Ticketmaster announced the merger last February, smaller competing promoters, including the Bay Area's own Another Planet Entertainment (exclusive promoters for The Greek, The Independent, and The Fox), protested that the merger would undoubtedly drive competition out of business, ultimately putting concertgoers at risk of getting completely bilked (yes, even more than we are already). Live Nation disagreed, and a congressional hearing later, the DOJ has finally approved a merger agreement that they hope will take care of that little potential monopoly problem.

According to representatives for the DOJ, the final agreement includes stipulations that will replace whatever competition might be lost in the merger. Included in the stipulations: Ticketmaster will have to license its ticket-selling software to a competitor, Anschutz Entertainment Group (also known as AEG or Goldenvoice, exclusive promoters for The Warfield), and required that Live Nation Entertainment refrain from retaliating against venues that use competing ticket vendors. In addition, Live Nation has agreed to sell its subsidiary ticket seller, Paciolan. 

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Tom Dougherty

​Fellow SF Weekly reporter Joe Eskenazi followed up on the story I broke Nov. 16 about problems DJs and partygoers were having with the SFPD seizing laptops and DJ equipment. This morning, Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jennifer Granick represented a DJ and a partygoer from a SOMA Halloween party (Justin Credible and Matthew Higgins) in a hearing with the SFPD and both finally got their computers back, after a month of them being held for no apparent reason.

Joe reports:

Following a hearing at San Francisco Superior Court today, however, two more aggrieved party-goers had their purloined computers handed back to them. Justin Credible and Matthew Higgins -- both of whom were featured in Maerz' original story -- received what their lawyer referred to as "their illegally seized laptops."

"This is great news, and a real relief to the pair who have been without their machines for a month," continued attorney Jennifer Grannick of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Both DJs had been at an underground Halloween party; Credible told SF Weekly she hadn't even been using her laptop to play music when the party was raided but was instructed to remove it from her bag and hand it over nevertheless.

Granick noted that, at today's hearing, the police department's attorney admitted that no charges were ever going to be filed against either DJ -- yet the laptops were still seized. "San Francisco law currently requires after-hours parties with live DJs to get a permit, and failure to do so can be punished as a misdemeanor," continued Granick. "But DJing an unpermitted party is not a crime, and certainly not one for which one's laptop could be forfeited."

Check out Joe's full piece on today's hearing over at our sister blog, The Snitch.