Another gorgeous weekend’s in the works, a blast of breezy sunshine pushing out the stormclouds that threatened our Friday post-work jaunt to South Street Seaport for a date with Sam Champion (and, for others, Ra Ra Riot).

The coolest venue in the city played host to one of the coolest bands in the area, and when you’re staring at tall ships and big buildings and painted skies and Pizzeria Uno, you know you’ve just the kicked the weekend off right. Now let’s all hit reverse and check out a sample of The Week That Was here at Hidden Track:

• Wanna win some ducats to the 10,000 Lakes Festival?
• Rage Against The Slot Machine: Ragin’ at Vegoose
• Van Halen goes all MegaPowers on us, set to explode
• It’s go time for Trey Anastasio’s Horseshoe Curve
• The kids are alright: Good times at the School of Rock Festival
• Where’s Mickey? And the 10 best singing drummers are…
• Pics from Cleveland: Ben Harper and Little Feat in town
• Download the Hammerstein show from Wilco’s latest tour
• And don’t forget to scan the Pullin’ ‘Tubes video archives

And now it’s time for sustenance…dinner’s gettin’ chilly, sirs and madams.

Take a break from the heat, and head inside to check out these performances:

Friday (all times Eastern)

• Former Smiths lead singer Morrissey returns to the Late Show with David Letterman [CBS 11:35 PM]
• Check out Coldplay’s set from the 2006 Isle of Wight Festival [Mojo 10:00 PM]
• The Unplugged series is back with Bon Jovi’s first appearance on the series [VH-1 Classic 12:00 AM]

Saturday

• Eric Clapton discusses his influences and early work on Standing at the Crossroads [Ovation 12:00 PM]
• Check out the best of Johnny Cash at the Montreux Jazz Festival [Ovation 7:00 PM]
• The Song Remains The Same features great clips from Led Zeppelin’s 1973 concert at MSG [VH-1 Classic 9:00 PM]

Sunday

• Elton John, Roger Hodgson and Rod Stewart are among the performers at the Concert For Diana [VH-1 Classic 12:00 PM]
• Sundance has started showing Neil Young’s underrated 2004 rock opera Greendale  [Sundance 1:35 PM]
• Blondie’s appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test is featured on BBC Crown Jewels [VH-1 Classic 10:00 PM]

We’ve written extensively on the upcoming 10,000 Lakes Festival, one of the few surviving jamband-centric music events left in the live music scene.

Now, with an assist from our friend AJ at WFOV‘s Sharin’ In The Groove radio show (which airs every Wednesday night from 6-10 Eastern), we’re offering two lucky people the opportunity to each win a pair of tickets to this summer’s installment.

So if you’re on the fence but don’t have the money for ducats, or if you’re already going but searching for them, today’s your lucky day. All we ask is that you write in with a comment below, explaining in 10 words or less why you deserve the golden tickets to the festival. And no, that’s not a typo, we really want your answer in 10 words. Be serious, be offbeat, be Shirley, just be. Let us know why you should win the tickets to see this cool lineup from July 18th-21st.

Seriously, don’t miss your chance to see WookieFoot and Cosmic Fingertrap. Check back next Friday, when we’ll announce the two winners here…

• Previously on Hidden Track: 10KLF Gets a Little Less Red; More Good Shit Comin’ to 10KLF; and 10KLF: 3 AM Eternal in Minnesota

It’s Uncle Neddy’s mix tape time, so let’s all gather ’round the campfire and listen to what our main man has in store for us this week…

Ain’t New York City just the center of the live music universe? Don’t roll your eyes at me. We’ve got another stellar weekend of music in the big city, so here’s a little preview of *some* of what’s going down in the tri-state area on Friday and Saturday — which ones will you be at? Get out there and try something new. I’ve added two bonus tracks to cover the big free show on the 4th. Be independent!

01 Running Away — The Polyphonic Spree: The Fragile Army (released 6/26)
02 Black-Hearted Boy — The Fiery Furnaces: 30 June 2006
03 Etienne D’aout — Malajube: Daytrotter Session
04 Far East Medley — Béla Fleck & The Flecktones: Live Art
05 Meryl Loves to Dance — The Bad Plus: 19 March 2007 (new song)
06 Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues — Bob Dylan: Live 1966
B1 Balloon Maker — Midlake: Bamnan And Slivercork
B2 My Rights Versus Yours — The New Pornographers: Challengers (releases 8/21)

• Click here to download this week’s edition of the Friday Mix Tape

The newly reunited Smashing Pumpkins have given the Live Music Archive permission to store their live shows, and they’ve reiterated that taping is allowed at all of their concerts. In the five days since Saturday’s decision, 55 Pumpkins shows have been uploaded to the LMArchive. Largehearted Boy has done a nice job of compiling the best of what’s been upped thus far. I’d love to see more bands follow their lead ::cough:: Pearl Jam, Phish, Neil Young ::cough::

While you line up and wait for the iPhone, here’s the best of the rest for you:

• Will Prince be the special guest at Live Earth next week?
• RatDog line changes: Steve Kimock in for the temporarily ill Mark Karan 
• The NY Times reviews Wilco’s recent Hammerstein Ballroom concert
• A full transcript of Larry King’s interview with Yoko Ono, Olivia Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney — Cheboygan, you’re on!
• Robert Plant denies rumors of a Led Zep reunion
• Who does a better job with Uncle Pen: Goldie Hawn or Phish?
• The Mooney Suzuki stopped by the Relix offices for some Cold Turkey
• Disco Biscuits‘ Aron Magner sits for an interview with the New Times
• The Slip are trying to overcome the jamband label
• What approach will Arcade Fire take towards their new album?
• Bonnie Raitt sat in with Bruce Hornsby and Ricky Skaggs on Tuesday
• The Beastie Boys have updated their Flickr feed will all sorts of new photos
• Kiss is releasing the second Kissology compilation
• Record labels are turning to their old stars to sell new records [via Music For Grownups]

Have any interesting plans this weekend? Make us jealous with a comment…

Here’s a tip for bands that want my ticket money: If you’ve got a B3 in your band, I’ll probably love your shit. In fact, I tend to categorize those people that don’t enjoy a screaming organ in the mix as Communist sympathizers.

I don’t profess to know much about the Big Organ Trio, but based on a few videos I just stumbled upon on a popular video-sharing site, I dig. I dig. They seem to me like a child conceived on the road with the recent Medeski Martin & Wood and Greyboy Allstars tour. Bernie Bauer and Brett McConnell provide an excellent rhythm (though McConnell’s drumming does over-untz untz on occasion), and Mike Mangan’s skills on the B3 are damn serious — kid can play backwards. Here’s a self-released promo video, and some others follow below:

• Big Organ Trio playing Road Rage on July 30, 2006
• Big Organ Trio’s great, unique take on Dark Star/LA Woman
• Big Organ Trio on Lonnie Smith’s Play It Back

With Eddie Van Halen reportedly embracing sobriety, the Van Halen reunion rumors are once again bubbling up to the surface. If that happens, the Van Halen brood may be going up against two former members of the ol’ band who are staging a reunion of their own. Sammy Hagar and ousted bassist Michael Anthony are kicking off a huge 60-city, cross-country tour in October.

The show will begin with Micheal Anthony’s Mad Anthony Express playing a set of early Van Halen rockers. Hagar’s Los Tres Gusanos will follow by performing I Can’t Drive 55 and other gems from his solo days. Finally, Anthony and Hagar will team up to lead The Other Half through all of the Van Halen hits that Sammy sang. The only date that has been announced so far is the July 12th, 2008 tour closer at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Live Daily is reporting that all of the tour dates will be posted on Hagar’s website shortly. We anxiously await…

I can’t wait to hear what Eddie and Alex have to say about The Other Half. Eddie has always taken all of the credit for Van Halen’s success, and he can’t be happy that someone else is trying to profit off of the VH experience. Hopefully this news will light a fire under his ass and lead to the David Lee Roth/Van Halen reunion/shitshow that we’ve all been waiting for. Eddie’s son/bass player Wolfie just turned 16, so he can drop out of school on a whim. Let’s do this!

Leave us a comment below to let us know if you have any interest in either of these tours…we’re envisioning reluctant interest.

• Previously on Hidden Track: Runnin’ With the Devil: Part 2; The B List: 2nd Generation Rockers

In the interest of providing some quality filler for youse this morning, we’ve scoured the SugarMegs archive for as many shows celebrating anniversaries today as we could find. So check the list below (and, also, check yourself before you wreck yourself) and see what strikes your fancy, then go ahead and stream the ever-loving shit out of it. There’s something for everyone, unless you’re deaf.

• Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young — 6/28/70 — Los Angeles, California
• Donovan — 6/28/70 — Bath Festival
• Grateful Dead — 6/28/76 — Chicago, Illinois
• Lowell George — 6/28/79 — Washington DC
• The Phish from Vermont — 6/28/95 — Jones Beach, NY
• The Black Crowes — 6/28/98 — Seabright, New Jersey
• My Morning Jacket — 6/28/05 — Montreal, Quebec
• Leo Kottke/Mike Gordon — 6/28/05 — Tempe, Arizona
• Mark Knopfler/Emmylou Harris — 6/28/06 — Universal City, CA
• GRAB Quartet — 6/28/06 — Raleigh, North Carolina

That Phish show linked here was my first show…dang, weird to think it’s been 12 years since the first time I laid eyes and ears on those goofy bastards.

Scotty B took hold of the Pullin’ ‘Tubes reins yesterday and successfully steered us towards a brilliant clip of Bob Marley playing privately for some reporters in his hotel room. So I’ll piggyback that video with this one below of Jimmy Cliff belting out his signature hit live in 1975 — I defy anyone to watch this version of The Harder They Come and not wanna sit seaside with a spliff and the one you love, even if the spliff is actually the one you love most.

• Jimmy Cliff performing The Harder They Come in 1975
• Jimmy Cliff performing the soulful Many Rivers To Cross

Everyone’s favorite brooding alt-country, not-really-alt-country rock band just finished a two-night run in two New York boroughs, playing before capacity crowds in Manhattan on Monday and Brooklyn on Tuesday. Reviews flew fast and furious into our inbox, with scores of our friends stepping all over each other to praise the name of Wilco best and brightest. People like ‘em, apparently.

Unfortunately we missed both shows, but the good folks over at NYC Taper upped it for download pretty quickly after the performance. So in lieu of any larger reviews, we recommend streaming or downloading the concert and formulating your own thoughts on the quality of the show. We’ll catch you next time, Wilco.

• Click here to download the 6/25/07 Wilco at Hammerstein show
• And click here to read Neddy’s review of the Warsaw show

We’ve got some good and some bad news about a couple of long-awaited archival releases: The always-awesome Simon and Garfunkel are finally releasing a compilation of their best performances from 1969 – cleverly titled Live 1969 — on September 18th. The bad news comes from the Neil Young camp, which announced that the Archives box set has been delayed until February. This isn’t the first time the supposed eight-CD/four-DVD box set has been delayed, so don’t hold your breath for that February release date either.

• Paul McCartney is playing another “secret” show tonight at Amoeba Records in Los Angeles
• Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah have planned a slew of fall tour dates
• Aerosmith returned to the UK for the first time in nine years for a set that included Run D.M.C. sitting in on Walk This Way
• Nine unreleased Stephen Malkmus live tracks
• Jefitoblog presents an Idiot’s Guide to Dire Straits
• The Black Crowes are headlining the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival
• Soundaboard kicks down a crispy Rush concert from 1996
• Cracked looks at the 25 most ridiculous band names
• Rock Music Daily caught the Derek Trucks Band show in Vancouver
• Weezer is back with a new album
• The newly taper-friendly Smashing Pumpkins debut more new material
• A few of the Beastie Boys’ “gala events” have been announced
• Indie bands have many options for selling music on the ‘net
• Ace’s friends, Negative Ken, play tonight at Arlene’s Grocery in NY

So what stories and links have kept you busy so far this week? Share with the rest of the class by leaving a comment below…

The Rage Reunion rolls on: The third-annual Vegoose Festival has announced Rage Against The Machine will co-headline this year’s Halloween weekend in Vegas. The festival’s promoters, Superfly Presents and A.C. Entertainment, have declined to officially name any other acts on the bill until July. Interestingly, Rage will also co-headline the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans that same weekend.

The full lineup is yet to be released, but after today’s Rage-as-headliner announcement, we gotta ask: Has Superfly forsaken the hippie jambands that built their festivals? First Bonnaroo, now Vegoose? Just today a Las Vegas television station listed the other headliners as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Killers, and the Dave Matthews Band, none of which exactly brings the Birkenstocks running (maybe DMB, if this were Vegoose ’95).

Now that the record industry has tanked, both indie and mainstream acts have jumped at the big money that large festivals offer them. Jamband-heavy festivals like Wakarusa and Gathering of the Vibes aren’t huge money makers, while the more varied Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Coachella festivals are swimming in dough — Bonnaroo made $17 million fucking dollars this year with a less noodle-y lineup.

Perhaps the problem stems from the fact that the “festival season” has expanded from three sun-drenched months to the entire year. Both Vegoose and New Orleans’ Voodoo Music Experience take place in October, a month that used to feature bands touring colleges, theaters and arenas by themselves. We are smack dab in the middle of the traditional touring season, and many music fans don’t have enough disposable income to see concerts and begin paying for a late October trip to Las Vegas.

Since Bonnaroo began in 2002, live music fans have seen festivals added in nearly every month of the year. Pick any month and you can name a big festivals that has a hold on the month: There are simply too many festivals, and we wouldn’t be surprised if some of them tank as we move forward. With so many festivals and only a finite number of acts, these festies are running out of creative lineup ideas. There’s only so much Franti and Keller a traveling audience can take.

Hey, we’ll always have Langerado.

Whenever I imagine what Bob Marley’s hotel room must have looked like during one of his tours, all I can think about are wild parties with giant clouds of pot smoke everywhere. Thanks to YouTube we finally get a look inside one of Bob’s hotel rooms. While there aren’t bongs and naked women everywhere, you gotta love the Rasta flag hanging behind a clearly stoned Marley.

Bob invited a few journalists up to his room for an interview and a rare solo acoustic performance on September 20th, 1980. Marley played nearly all of his live shows with a backing band, but he was just as comfortable with only an acoustic guitar. Check out this amazing video of Bob playing a bittersweet version of Redemption Song recorded less than eight months before his death.

• Bob plays Comin’ In From The Cold during the same interview
• Marley and the Wailers rock an electric Natural Mystic

Former 70 Volt Parade lead singer Trey Anastasio has confirmed he’ll be releasing a new album entitled the Horsehoe Curve on July 24th. As we previously reported, Horsehoe Curve is an all-instrumental album featuring Trey’s incredible dectet.

Those hoping to hear songs written post-rehab will be disappointed: Most of the material on the album was written in the early 2000s, and this album was planned for release long before Trey’s current legal difficulties. Those who pre-order Horseshoe Curve will receive the Lucius Beebe EP which will include three live versions of songs from the album and two live tracks from Seis De Mayo featuring John Medeski and Jon Fishman.

This year marks the first summer in 16 years that Big Red will not be touring, but hopefully Big Red will come out of hiding to promote the new album. Currently an appearance on NBC’s Live From The Peacock Room is the only gig we can find on Anastasio’s schedule.

The full press release for the album follows after the jump…

Turnout at this weekend’s School of Rock Festival in Asbury Park was a little less than stellar. But while the three-day event was short on people, it was the short people that stole the show. The kids really are alright.

Sure, the festival featured big-timers like Ween, the Benevento/Russo Duo, Sam Champion, a late-night Bustle In Your Hedgerow set and plenty of others, but the kids from Paul Green’s School of Rock that descended upon the Dirty Jerz blew everyone away. If only we were half as cool and half as talented as these kids at that age…

We drove down to the Land of Springsteen for a Saturday > Sunday boardwalk excursion, a taste of the rock with a hint of the beach. As with just about everything they promote, Rocks Off and Paul Green put together an incredibly memorable and special event for the kid rockers, the cool parents, and the non-aligned revelers. The quality and caliber of the entire, well-run festival experience was only matched by the quality and caliber of the musical experience.

We arrived on the grounds as the Benevento/Russo Duo hit the stage, the first time I’ve seen them play since their Fifth Anniversary show at the Knitting Factory days after Christmas. The Duo plays rarely these days, and just like any indulgence, it tastes so much better when you space things out. Benevento seems as inspired as I’ve seen him in some time, and it’s always a treat to see Russo at the kit playing Duo tunes. After watching him anchor a number of different (and fantastic) bands, you sometimes forget how truly amazing he is on his own fucking songs.

Read on after the jump for more of our fanboy rundown of Saturday’s festivities, as well as pictures and a few videos from the event…