Mike Gordon is missing. Ever since his buddy Trey informed us of Gordo’s supposed one-year hiatus from playing during his interview at the Y, Cactus has been noticebaly incommunicado. Yet we haven’t heard anything from Cactus himself, so HT opened the case to find our favorite afromulletted bassist.

We started our search in February during Black History Month:

Cactus isn’t just a fan of social activism. He’s also been known to support political activists as well. See if you can find Cactus on this Obama rope line:

If you’ve seen Mike, let us know. “Where’s Cactus?” won’t rest until Gordo returns to the stage for a rock gig.

As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden. –Chance the Gardner

The first time I saw the movie Being There I recoiled in surprised horror at my ignorance of white funk. You mean there’s more out there than 1997 Phish bootlegs, Average White Band and some facets of Edgar Winter? Then I heard Brazilian musician Eumir Deodato tear up a version of Also Sprach Zarathustra in one scene that the popular rock band Phish had been playing the whole time, and I jumped right into his whole awesome cheesyfunk catalog. Well, I just came across this clip of Deodato and The Heritage Orchestra throwing down on ASZ, and I had to share with the class:

• As we mentioned before it was officially announced, Stevie Winwood and Eric Clapton will finish their unfinished business at Slow Hand’s Crossroads Guitar Festival this summer. Kudos bar to Clapton: First Cream, now a bit of ye olde Blind Faith. We’re diggin’ it, and we’re also diggin’ this Under My Thumb from Hyde Park in 1969.
• Pete Townshend’s launching a festival called Atticfest with his girlfriend Rachel Fuller, host of In The Attic. About six weeks ago I downloaded the Attic Jam compilation from iTunes and posted a great video of The Fratellis playing with Petey. Today, let’s circle ’round and watch a live version of The Fratellis’ Got Ma Nuts From A Hippy.
• A Beck medley? I’ll take it. You should, too.
• Elton John celebrated his 60th birthday at Madison Square Garden this week, where Robin Williams came out with Whoopi Goldberg (hey, does she kinda look like Vlad Guerrero from afar?) to do some shtick. And, whoa, Willie Clinton was there, too. But to truly celebrate the man, let’s look back at a rousing rendition of my favorite Elton tune, a fantastically under-appreciated song: Here’s Razor Face from the BBC Studios in 1971.
• Lastly, check out this nine-year-old drummer’s stunning tribute to Boston lead singer Brad Delp. I don’t approve of a kid that young playing a song with Foreplay in the title, and the Red Sawx gear makes me want to kick him in the shins, but his drumming is strong to quite strong. Rock on, li’l man.

No nine-year-old kids were abducted in the making of this post.

If you’ve been following the harrowing immigration saga of the male half of the most impressive acoustic thrash metal guitar duo on the planet, we’re happy to report Rodrigo Sanchez has been cleared for entry into the United States. I guess my wire-cutter and ten-gallon jug of water won’t be necessary after all.

Here’s the latest piece of news from the duo’s website:

Rodrigo Sanchez, half of the ATO Recording artists Rodrigo Y Gabriela, has successfully procured his Entertainment Working Visa from the American Embassy in Mexico City on Friday March 23, 2007. Mr. Sanchez is officially clear to continue Rodrigo Y Gabriela’s highly-anticipated U.S. tour beginning on April 14 in Los Angeles, CA. The band will also perform live on The Jimmy Kimmel Show on April 13.

And the band played on…Good to know this tour will proceed as planned. Read on for some cool Rodrigo Y Gabriela videos and the full spring tour dates.

One of Canada’s finest exports is returning to these United States.

Legendary rock trio Rush today announced a monstrous 62-show, five-month Snakes & Arrows World Tour that’ll take them through North America and Europe, with tickets for most shows going on sale later this week.

I’m excited to hit one of these shows, just to see Geddy Lee and Neil Peart in person and on stage before I die (well, actually, before they die). Relatedly, outside of big Rush fans, is guitarist Alex Lifeson the most unknown third member of a rock trio in the history of music? I vote yes, but I’ll open it up for discussion.

It’s nice to see Geddy Lee get time away from ESPN’s Baseball Tonight studio for this tour. Read on for the full tour dates, which follow after the jump…

Gene Ween isn’t dead, even though he finished Friday night’s show at the Gramercy Theater by eulogizing himself in an awkwardly funny version of Gener’s Gone. The gentleman who entered life as Aaron Freeman played an entertaining 80-minute set that featured forgotten album tracks, a cover of Space Oddity, and a few Ween classics. Ween‘s principal singer was even joined at parts of the show by his band’s bass player “Diamond” Dave Dreiwitz and drummer Claude Coleman.

Read on for a full review, some more photos and a couple of videos from Friday’s fantastic show at the Gramercy Theater in New York…

It was Friday afternoon, and all of the sudden the impact of a long work week had me doubting my decision to spend my weekend seeing multiple concerts. The moment I entered the Gramercy Theater that night, though, I realized why I made those plans to see music in the first place.

After two great shows from Gene Ween and Tea Leaf Green, I’m feeling refreshed and ready for another week. Sometimes seeing music is just what you need, even when you least expect it. With that said, check out some great links from around the Interwebs and let the music start off your week:

• Arcade Fire will be playing David Bowie’s Highline Festival
• One of the more unique covers of Coldplay’s Fix You
• The New Pornographers are recording a new album
• The Lefsetz Letter takes a look at why road bands don’t sell records
• Stream the North Mississippi Allstars World Cafe appearance
• Popmatters looks at the most overrated and underrated drummers
• New podcasts from STS9 and Everyday Companion
• Brooklyn Vegan’s 2007 NYC Summer Concert preview
• The sad fallout from Brad Delp’s suicide
• Whatever happened to Prince’s Revolution?
• Neddy is back with shows of the week
• Paul Kanter is getting sued by his former Jefferson Airplane bandmates
• Perhaps Lars Ulrich doesn’t suck: Metallica has offered up a classic show from 1986 for free
• Darryl Smyers of the Dallas Observer goes for the jugular in his critique of Widespread Panic
• A preview of tonight’s SCI/TLG show in Vail

Did you see any interesting shows this weekend? Let us know below…

This week, to celebrate the Allmans’ annual Beacon run, we have just a single track. This meaty Mountain Jam, clocking in at thirty nine minutes, is the end of a high summer show in Charlotte that has some ups and downs in performance. But this song distills what’s best from a loose attitude into a truly interesting exploration.

Particularly noteworthy are the “Birldand” and “Afro Blue” themes that frame a long jungle trance bout of drums/bass segment. The latter is a crazed interpretation that drives the whole jam home — Derek grabs that lead without a half second’s pause and just runs with it. It’s jazzy, spacey and a whole lot of fun. Enjoy!

• Click here to download the ABB 8/9/03 Mountain Jam

It was tough getting back into the real-life groove this week after the amazing time I had in Florida at Langerado, and this weekend can’t come soon enough. Let’s hope Friday flies by — these links will help kill some time:

• Better late than never: Rhino will re-issue Traveling Wilbury albums
• The Police, Smashing Pumpkins, and the Beastie Boys are headlining this summer’s Virgin Music Festival
• Check out this post and the all the comments for about 100 different arrangements of the Super Mario Brothers theme song
• The Lee Boys: Sacred Steel
• Double J Jesse Jarnow answers your concerns about why Taylor Hicks is a jamband
• Congrats to Neil Young for hitting Number Six on the billboard charts this week
• Idolator suggests 30 songs for Guitar Hero III
• SuperDee alerts us to the trailer for PGroove’s appearance on The Stage
• Some news clippings from Grateful Dead News
• The Beatles’ album covers: starring Legos
• XM to celebrate 420 for a week
• After a long layoff, The Mother Hips are back

I’m off to see Gene Ween tonight and Tea Leaf Green tomorrow. What does the weekend hold for y’all? Let’s hear it below…

See that speck of light down there, like 10 football fields away? That’s legendary Brazilian songwriting guitarist Gilberto Gil. In 1969, the military government arrested Gil and a singer compatriot for anti-state activities and subsequently exiled them from their native country. Today, Gil’s the nation’s Minister of Culture.

Gilberto Gil is a series of hiccups, yelps and whistles. The Minister uses his mouth better than any fat chick with low self-esteem I’ve ever seen. The Tropacalia movement leader played Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night and brought the entire Brazilian community out to see him play and sing and skat (I’d estimate that 80 percent of the audience spoke that cute style of broken English). And while we couldn’t see his face clearly from our seats, Gil put on quite an entertaining show.

As for a setlist, covers included When I’m Sixty-Four, Three Little Birds, No Woman No Cry, and Can’t Find My Way Home in the encore, while originals included a whole bunch of shit in Portuguese. Here’s a snippet of his Beatles tribute:

I strenuously recommend you all pick up his 1971 album that kicks off with Nega (Photograph Blues). Here’s an iPod-ready download of that tune as a bonus for seeing this lazy, bare bones recap to completion.

One of the best screenwriters of his generation is teaming up with one of the best songwriters of that same generation for an interesting collaborative effort. EW.com is reporting some strangely awesome news that surely marks the first and only time we’ll ever mention anything eligible for a Tony Award:

The Great White Way will never be the same: In an exclusive interview, Wayne Coyne, lead singer of the Flaming Lips, told EW.com that the psych-rock band will team up with acclaimed TV writer and show creator Aaron Sorkin to turn the group’s 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots into a Broadway musical.

Just a guess here, but based on prior track record, the part of Yoshimi will be brilliantly portrayed by either Bradley Whitford or Joshua Malina.

(Thanks to our main man Coach for the heads up on this one…)

From 1976 to 1981, The Muppet Show entertained both children and their parents with a humorous blend of skits and physical comedy. Each week Jim Henson’s show would feature a special guest star as the host, and many times these stars were plucked straight from the music industry.

This week’s edition of The B List features 10 must-watch musically themed videos from The Muppet Show that we know you’ll enjoy. Read on for some great clips featuring Buddy Rich and Animal’s drum duel, Alice Cooper inspiring some scary muppets, Steve Martin and his banjo, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Simon and more…

Friend of HT Eliot Glazer has tremendously terrible taste in music. But he’s an adroit wordsmith, and he’s gonna try to convince us that the bad is really good.

I read Stereogum. I read Pitchfork. I even dabble through Spin and Rolling Stone from time to time. But even as a trained musician, I refuse to consider myself any kind of authority on music.

Granted, I’ve always harbored moderately good musical taste, relying on the talents of artists whose work usually finds success among critics and college students (hello, cred!). Naturally, I would mention my surprisingly short DMB phase in high school with an air of exasperation here, although I can’t begin to imagine the amount of hate mail under which I’d find myself buried.

But for every Cat Power, Flaming Lips, and Nick Drake listed under the Artists on my iPod is an Alicia Bridges, Babyface, and at least one American Idol contestant, and not even necessarily a winner. It’s sad but true: I love bad music. I crave it. And I want you to love it with me.

Read on for the rest of Eliot’s first installment of “I Love Bad Music”…

Not unusual, the Grand Isle of Manhattan played host to three unique shows that my friends and I spread out across the city to catch: Scotty reviewed the Allmans already, I’ll get to Gilberto Gil later, and my good pals Hal and John caught up-and-coming indie powerhouse Explosions in the Sky at Webster Hall.

Read on for some initial reactions and adjective-laden thoughts about the show…

Over the years there has been one constant in rock and roll: terrible band names.

Hell, one of my faves, Umphrey’s McGee, has one of the worst band names ever. The tie that binds this week’s Grousing entries together is the lack of an interesting moniker. Some of these bands didn’t even try and just used the name of the player(s). But while KVMW, The Ryan Montbleau Band, Apollo Sunshine, and BAD II suffer from uncreative naming, their music absolutely blows my mind.

Kimock, Vega, Molo, and White 03/17/07 (FLAC, 320kbps MP3):

Steve Kimock, Bobby Vega, Alan Hertz, and Ray White did a few tours in 1998 and 1999 as the creatively titled KVHW. The band mostly played unique versions of Kimock and Frank Zappa tunes, as well as other covers. Kimock had been playing the same songs with Zero and his own band for years, and it was really nice to see him play a slew of material that was new to him. As with all of Kimock’s bands, KVHW ended in a trainwreck when Ray White was kicked out of the band.

This past weekend KVHW reformed with “Mountain” John Molo (The Range, Phil and Friends) replacing Alan Hertz on drums. The two gigs flew far below my radar, so I was pretty shocked when I saw setlists for these gigs on Jambands.com boxscore section. I also saw that nugs.net made official recordings of both gigs available, so I took the plunge and bought 3/17/07.

Simply put, KVMW is fucking amazing. They played the most out-of-the-box versions of the Dead’s Wharf Rat, Spring Water, Zappa’s Willie The Pimp, and much more. It would be a tragedy if this band didn’t play more gigs. If this is what the first weekend of gigs sounds like, just imagine what this group would sound like with a few tours under their belt. Read on for more Grousing downloads…

Apparently Spring Training in March isn’t exclusive to Florida and Arizona.

I made the seven-block trek to see the Allman Brothers Band‘s first gig of 2007 at the Beacon Theater. The annual run is really one of the few long-lasting traditions we have left in our scene, though I’m curious to watch what happens when the Beacon closes for renovations next year. I thought the show last night could go one of two ways: We could get the scorching opener with a ton of bustouts, or they could play a straightforward warmup jobber. Unfortunately the latter happened, as the Allman’s spent the night getting into playing shape.

I try to see a couple of ABB shows a year, and I’ve never really left saying “These guys are getting old.” But these guys are getting old. Jaimoe looked pained at times and didn’t add too much to the sound. Gregg Allman’s voice sounded great, but he didn’t contribute to the improvisations. And speaking of improv, there wasn’t too much group improvisation at all. Tons of solos, yes, but there were few moments of true improvisation where the group contributed to the whole sound instead of one guy ripping a solo. At the beginning of Jessica, the rest of the band added brilliant soundscapes and layers as Derek Trucks started his solo, reminding me of what these musicians are capable of. But as Derek progressed it once again turned into a game of who could play the most notes.

The second set’s opener of Midnight Rider was of the most disappointing re-workings of a song I’ve ever heard. What the fuck was that? How can you take one of the best riffs ever written out of that song? Weak sauce. I don’t mean to completely bash the show, and I’m usually a big fluffer, so I’ll admit the night did have moments. Besides Jessica, the other highlights were Stormy Monday, which featured twin creative heady solos from the guitar players and the bass playing of Oteil Burbridge. Oteil holds it down and even showed his drumming skillz during drumz. The encore was the fun pairing of Into The Mystic and One Way Out.

Overall, the song selection just wasn’t what I personally was looking for. I had a good enough time at the show but I left unsatisfied. There are still 179 shows left at the Beacon this year, so I’m sure once the special guests start appearing the band and the crowd will both start feeling it.

I: Hot ‘Lanta, Don’t Keep Me Wondering, Trouble No More, Firing Line, Stormy Monday, Maydell, Instrumental Illness

II: Midnight Rider (GAF Version), Hoochie Coochie Man, End of The Line, Just Before The Bullets Fly, Statesboro Blues, Leave My Blues At Home> JaBuMa(Oteil on drums, Butch on Tympani) > Leave My Blues At Home, Jessica

Encore: Into The Mystic, One Way Out

The band wasn’t the only subdued factor at the show — once again the Beacon balcony let me down. …