With so many musicians and local venues to choose from, here are the Winged Post’s suggestions for some popular concerts coming to the Bay Area this fall.

Sep. 19: Greek Theatre – Mad Decent Block Party

Mad Decent Block Party emerged in 2008 as an annual event started by Diplo-founded record company Mad Decent, thrown for the local Philadelphia community. Focused around promoting new and local acts, Mad Decent Block Party quickly grew from a small annual event to a cross-continental tour drawing hundreds of thousands of fans. This year’s EDM-centric lineup at the Greek Theatre includes Dillon Francis, Flosstradamus, STRFKR, and Diplo, among others.

Sep. 20: Fox Theatre – Interpol

After releasing their fifth album, El Pintor following a four year hiatus, NYC-based post-punk revival band Interpol is embarking on its first global tour in three years. In addition to its Oakland show, the band will also head to Vancouver, Boston, Dallas, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, and other major cities. The album has received positive reviews from both critics and fans, with Rolling Stone calling El Pintor “perhaps their [the band’s] best effort since 2004’s Antics.”

Sep. 22+23: SAP Center – Katy Perry with Tegan and Sara

International superstar and 11-time Grammy-nominated singer Katy Perry kicked off the North American leg of her highly anticipated Prismatic World Tour on June 22.  The 46-city tour will visit the SAP Center in San Jose on September 22 and 23. She will be touring in support of her album Prism, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and remains in the Top Ten three months after its release.  The platinum album has given Perry her popular hit “Roar”, while “Dark Horse” just became her thirteenth top ten hit on The Billboard Hot 100. Tegan and Sara, the Canadian indie pop twin duo, are her opening act for this leg of the tour.

Sep. 27: Warfield – Wu Tang Clan

Emerging in 1993, the Staten Island, NY-based Wu Tang Clan proved to be the most revolutionary rap groups of the mid-’90s. Turning the standard concept of a hip-hop crew inside out, Wu Tang Clan was assembled as a loose congregation of nine MCs. Instead of releasing one album after another, the group overtook the record industry in the most profitable fashion—the idea was to establish the Wu Tang as a force with its debut album and then spin off into as many side projects as possible. All of Wu Tang’s various solo projects elaborated on the theme the group had laid out on its 1993 debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). The group is currently working on two albums, The Wu – Once Upon A Time In Shaolin and A Better Tomorrow, the former being limited to only one copy, which will be exhibited and later sold to the highest bidder.
Sep. 28: Fox Theatre – Sam Smith

UK-based singer-songwriter Sam Smith’s performance on one of 2012’s biggest tracks, Disclosure’s “Latch” launched him to fame in October 2012. Smith then debuted his track “Lay Me Down” as the lead single from his debut studio album, In the Lonely Hour, which amassed positive reviews from fans and critics. Smith has described the album as “a diary of a lonely 21-year-old.” Broods, an indie/electro-pop New Zealand duo, is opening for Smith.

Oct. 2+3: Greek Theatre – Lorde

Grammy award-winning singer Lorde will return to the Bay Area during another round of touring in support of her immensely popular debut album Pure Heroine,that debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200 chart. . Following a world tour earlier this year, the seventeen-year-old announced a new string of North American tour dates beginning in Sept. 2014. While performing at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, she will be joined by Canadian electronic/indie pop band Majical Cloudz.
This piece was originally published in the pages of the Winged Post on August 29, 2014.