Just a reminder that the presale for Wilco’s show at the McCarren Pool in Williamsburg begins this morning at 10 AM. Jeff Tweedy and Co. haven’t played NYC in over a year, so we expect that the band’s allotment of tickets will go fast.
Of course we also expected Death Cab For Cutie’s gig at the pool to sell out quickly, and that hasn’t happened. Be sure to sign up for Wilco’s ticketing service before 10 AM, so you’re all set to go when the presale starts.
Now that we’ve enjoyed that clip of Wilco playing I’m Trying To Break Your Heart from an appearance on Rockpalast in 2002, let’s all get our precious ducats.
The writers over at Pitchfork usually play it really cool, but you can almost hear Amy Phillips orgasm as she lays out the lineup for the first All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in New York. ATP New York, which will be held at Kutshers Country Club in Monticello on September 19-21, features My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai, Low, The Drones and Fuck Buttons among an assorted cast of indie bands.
But what really set Phillips into convulsions was the news that the Meat Puppets (Meat Puppets II), Built To Spill (Perfect From Now On), Thurston Moore (Psychic Hearts) and Tortoise (Millions Now Living Will Never Die) will each play one of their classic albums from start to finish. It doesn’t get better than that for P4K.
As great as the hipster bloggerati thinks the music will be, we’re impressed with the setup of this festival. Concertgoers can choose to stay in a reasonably priced room on site at Kutshers. For instance, you can book a room with a double bed and a single bed for $450. That’s just $150 per person if you split it with two of your buddies. Plus you get to roam the expansive grounds, which are straight out of a scene in Dirty Dancing. No wonder Amy Phillips got so excited.
Let’s see what else is happening this week:
The Weight fills us in on the story behind ZZ Top’s curious name
A final delay?: Guns N’ Roses negotiates the release of Chinese Democracy
Musicians pay tribute to Danny Federici tonight at the Stone Pony
Austin’s Stubb’s BBQ, Asheville’s The Orange Peel and NYC’s Bowery Ballroom head Rolling Stone’s list of the best rock clubs in America
Can I Kick It?: Rock The Bells gets A Tribe Called Quest to reunite
Finally, we’ve found detailed reports from two of the most anticipated tours of the Spring. The Raconteurs came, saw and owned the crowd in Seattle last night according to the folks at Reverb. Meanwhile, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss kicked off the Raising Sand tour with a chill-inducing set on Saturday night.
Between iClips and the AT&T Blue Room you never have to leave your residence to check out most of the best festivals this summer. For instance, AT&T is offering a webcast of Coachella this weekend live from the Empire Polo Fields in Indio. We’re still awaiting a broadcast schedule, but AT&T’s site promises artists like Autolux, Chromeo, Datarock, DeVotchKa, Architecture in Helsinki, Hot Chip, Animal Collective, Shout Out Louds, Sia, VHS or Beta, Slightly Stoopid and many others.
Well, I need to make a major correction in regards to the You Enjoy Myself Cover Wars. It appeared that The Benevento/Russo duo (w/ Mike Gordon) had it in the bag, and I declared them the winner in a move reminiscent of Dewey Defeats Truman. I’ve sent ScottyB down to The Duo headquarters to forcibly remove the CW trophy from their mantle and have it delivered to Tim Palmieri, the real (err, current?) winner of the YEM Cover Wars.
What I really like about writing this once a week is how fast some of these blogs can show up in Google Search, very often you’ll find this column on the first page of some Google Search terms. People are discovering it everyday and for that reason, voting never closes.
So that was two weeks ago, last week we had the Making Flippy Floppy Edition, and Umphrey’s McGee currently has over 75% of the voting, so we’ll call that one for UM…but as we’ve seen, voting is never final.
Moving on, I’ve selected The Who as the artist for this week’s cover wars and we are taking a look at perhaps the most well-known song off the Rock Opera Tommy, Pinball Wizard. The playlist below has got five renditions of the tune about our beloved deaf, dumb and blind pinball champion. If you are only getting 30-second clips of the songs, you must first register or login to Imeem.
Read on for the tale of the tape on this week’s competitors…
After spending three weeks on the road Widespread Panic finally returns to their home state of Georgia tonight, where they are scheduled to play the first of two sold out gigs at the Johnny Mercer Theater in Savannah. Most of the reviews from this tour have been glowing, and we’re not surprised to hear that Jimmy Herring has really grown into his role as the main soloist in the band.
While many bands in the scene struggle to write a decent ballad, Widespread Panic’s repertoire is full of beautiful slow tunes that build to a crescendo. Jack, a song the band started playing almost 20 years ago, hits on nearly every emotion in only six short minutes. Our favorite YouTube uploader, TDunski, recently uploaded a video of Widespread playing Jack in Chicago on April 12 that features crispy audio from WXRT’s radio simulcast of the show. Let’s take a look:
Earlier today, the Grateful Dead announced that they are holding a press conference on Thursday afternoon at 2PM EDT. They didn’t mention what they will be talking about at the press conference, so we thought we’d ask our readers if they had any inside info or guesses at to what the band will be announcing.
One thing of interest is that the announcement clearly refers to the “Grateful Dead.” Not Phil and Friends, not the Other Ones and not The Dead. Now we can’t imagine that the band would trot out the Grateful Dead name to announce a reunion, so perhaps Rhino finally convinced the band to sell subscriptions to the vault. We will all find out by watching the simulcast of the press conference over at iClips on Thursday, but let us know your guess by leaving a comment below…
I’ve probably had about ten or 15 friends who’ve been lucky enough to catch a Zappa Plays Zappa show, and each one of them came back raving about what an incredible show Dweezil and his band put on. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the show in person, now you can enjoy ZPZ at home. Next Tuesday, Razor and Tie Entertainment will release the long-awaited Zappa Plays Zappa DVD.
The Zappa Plays Zappa DVD collection combines two concerts from 2006, where the band presented a collection of Frank Zappa’s rock-oriented compositions from the 1960s through the 1980s. Dweezil hand-selected the tracks himself, and the DVDs feature over three hours of performances. A limited edition fanpack will also be available which features the two-DVD set and three CDs containing the entire audio content, totaling 270 minutes.
You can pick up your copy of the DVDs from your favorite retailer, but as part of the Everybody Wins When We Plug Something And In Return They Offer Us Free Shit To Give Away we’ve got three copies of the Zappa Plays Zappa DVD set up for grabs. Just follow the rules below:
To enter the contest leave a comment below telling us about your favorite Zappa album in 50 words or less
Your comment must be left by 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday May 11
Don’t be greedy, only one entry per person
Three winners will be selected at random from entries that follow the rule
Winners receive a copy of ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA on DVD
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t get Bjork and doubt that I ever will, but her latest video Wanderlust is absolutely stunning to watch. This thing clocks in at over seven and a half minutes long, so block off some time in your busy schedule and give it a watch. Check it out with either the sound on or off, it’s worth it.
There’s a 3D version of this video out there, but since I doubt that most people had a pair of those red and blue lensed specs lying around I thought I’d offer it up to you in standard 2D mode….
There has been lots of buzz about The Replacements lately thanks to Rhino’s new reissues of the band’s first four discs. Wes Orshoski recently interviewed both singer Paul Westerberg and bassist Tommy Stinson for a revealing Billboard magazine profile. Among other things, Westerberg and Stinson discuss how close they came to reuniting for festival season.
Both former members of the ‘Mats seem open to the idea of a reunion, if the timing and circumstances are right. That’s a big switch from the past when the guys were 100% opposed to any possible reunion. So I’m saying there’s a chance.
There’s also a chance we’ll dump a shit load of links on you:
Seattle’s Fleet Foxes have quickly become the royalty of a sub-sub genre
Van Halen returned to the stage at golfer Tiger Woods’ Tiger Jam XI
As always Uncle Neddy keeps you up to date on the shows of the week
Finally, most people thought Tom Petty was crazy for reforming Mudcrutch after nearly 35 years. But after reading the excellent Mudcrutch profile in the New York Times, Petty’s decision makes more sense. Sometimes artists need to be challenged, and you can’t find a bigger challenge than reforming your original band.
Just to balance out last Stormy Monday’s Singer/Songwriter Mix, this week we’re headed entirely in the opposite direction with a dubby, bass and percussion heavy improv mix, opening with a piece by master bassist and producer Bill Laswell.
In the late ’90s, just as Miles Davis’s ’70s fusion was finally getting its due for both its bravery and its experimental musicality, Laswell put out a four song “reconstruction”, as he calls it, rather than “remix”, of Miles’s music from 1969-1974 called Panthalassa. It’s a stellar record with the best elements of world dub and gritty fusion-funk seamlessly melded- it‘s also a bit more listenable than the source material, for those faint of heart. Here we have a collage called Black Satin > What If > Agharta Prelude Dub.
Keeping with the percussion mindset, next is a roughly nine minute sample of the Rhythm Devils at the closing of Winterland with Lee Oskar sitting on harmonica for an amazing moment of spontaneous improvisation that’s way ahead of its time. And finishing out this week’s mix is old school STS9 with a spacey version of Equinox from the Seasons double disc live set. Chill out and enjoy!
