I’m sorry for the lack of posts today, but I’ve been getting crushed lately at my real job. Hopefully we’ll return to a normal posting schedule next week. For now here’s a rundown of what you need to know this afternoon:
The creators of the Yacht Rock viral videos that pay homage to the likes of Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald are taking the show on the road. Series’ co-creators JD Ryznar and Hunter Stair will screen the episodes at selected dates before a live audience in New York, Minneapolis, Detroit and Muskegon, Michigan. Or you can just watch them on YouTube.
The Raconteurs blew the roof off a sold-out 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. last night. Thankfully you can stream the show for yourself over at NPR Music. Jack White and the boys return to the 9:30 tonight to do it all over again.
Sam Roberts Band, a group that Some Dude featured in his Better Than Noodling column, topped the Canadian charts this week with their newly released album. Love at the End of the World sold 9,000 copies beating out the likes of Madonna, Three Doors Down and Death Cab For Cutie. 9,000 albums, aye? God bless our neighbors to the north.
We’ve just passed the four year anniversary of Trey Anastasio’s infamous letter to the fans declaring Phish was done, but according to a post on Rolling Stone’s blog this morning the band may be back together by the time we reach the fifth anniversary. The magazine’s Brian Hiatt spoke to Big Red last Wednesday and the guitarist dropped some “heavy hints” that the band is getting back together:
“When Phish broke up, I made some comment about how I’m not gonna go around playing ‘You Enjoy Myself’ for the rest of my life,” Anastasio said with a laugh. “And it’s so funny because Fish and Mike and Page have been talking to each other a lot lately and now — it’s not that I can’t believe that I said that, but its symbolic of how much I lost my mind or how much I lost my bearings or something. Because at this point in time I would give my left nut to play that song five times in a row every day until I die. I certainly thought about that while I was in jail.”
Well, we’d give our right nut to hear him play Y.E.M. over and over again, so that works out. But seriously after that love fest at the Jammys everyone in that room knew those guys would play together again. You just can’t end an incredible career on a low note such as Coventry. Anastasio caused a lot of bad feelings among his fans when he wrote that letter and then self-destructed at Coventry and Whitehall. It will be interesting to see what a clean and sober Trey has to say about those fateful events, and if the band can regain the spark that was clearly missing towards the end.
If Phish gets back together, and plays at a high level, how often would you go see them? After you’re finished malnourishing your dog, and booking flights and hotel rooms, let us know how you feel about a possible Phish reunion.
Billy Corgan reformed the Smashing Pumpkins last year for an extremely successful album and tour, but didn’t invite original bass player D’arcy Wretzky or original six-stringer James “Don’t Call Me Jimmy” Iha to join in on the fun. Now comes the long-expected announcement that the Pumpkins will celebrate their 20th anniversary with a handful of shows in August and September.
Billy Corgan told Billboard.com in March the group would hit Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, among other locales, and that guests will appear at some of the anniversary gigs. While the Pumpkins have always been about Billy’s lyrics and music, we hope he doesn’t forget about Wretzky or Iha’s major contributions to the band’s sound. Time heals all wounds or something, so let ‘em play!
R.E.M. kicks off their tour in Vancouver with a few bust outs
If you thought Jamband Fans were obsessive compulsive stat geeks, we’ve found a group of dudes who take it to the next level. A few extremely zealous record collectors have spent the last ten years working on The Whitburn Project in an effort to preserve and share high quality recordings of every popular song since 1890′s. Be sure to download this ridiculously complete spreadsheet they’ve come up with to track the chart progress of the tunes they’re collecting.
Both Jam on the River and Summer Camp seem to have gone off without any major hitches this weekend in Philadelphia and Chillicothe respectively. You can check out videos and reviews from Summer Camp over at the Peoria Journal Star’s website, while Brooklyn Vegan shares a full page of amazing photos from Jam on the River.
The Fab Faux will celebrate their 10th Anniversary together with a special concert at Radio City Music Hall on September 20. With Conan O’Brien taking Jimmy Vivino out west for the Tonight Show we’re afraid Fab Faux gigs will become extremely rare, so be sure to catch ‘em while ya can.
Keyboardist Butch Taylor quit the Dave Matthews Band just three days before the start of their Summer Tour. The band announced the news on their website without divulging any details on Taylor’s sudden departure.
We got a pleasant surprise in our inbox this afternoon when we received another track from Trey Anastasio’s Original Boardwalk Style courtesy of the good folks at Phish Inc. At first I wasn’t thrilled with the song selection, Shine, but this version’s pretty freaking good. The horns add so much to this song, from the beautiful intro to the bouncy line that accompanies Trey’s short but sweet solo.
But don’t take my word for it, get your Shine on this sunny Tuesday afternoon:
[Photo by Jeff Kravitz]
“Original Boardwalk Style” will be released on Rubber Jungle Records on June 10th, 2008. It will be available as CD and Vinyl and as digital audio downloads in both MP3 and FLAC formats. Pre-orders are available now via Trey’s online store at Trey.com and at Livephish.com.
Proceeds from this album will benefit the Seven Below Artist Initiative established by Trey to foster artistic development and support arts education in the state of Vermont. The program offers residencies for visual artists at The Barn, a uniquely restored property on 65 acres in Vermont. The residencies are designed to provide artists with a peaceful, inspiring, and supportive living and working experience.
Through a partnership with Burlington City Arts, Seven Below is open to artists at any stage of their career and working in various visual arts media. For more information about the program, including how to make a direct contribution, please visit www.trey.com/nonprofit.
Good Afternoon. I hope all of our readers had a fantastic long weekend and as we ease back into a shortened work week, I thought I’d supply some good ‘ol American Rock & Roll this week for the Cover Wars. So let’s take a look at the works of The Allman Brothers Band.
As you may have read last week, I’m diving into greatest hits and compilation discs to make life a little easier and I am continuing that this week with a few alterations. The release A Decade Of Hits (1969 – 1979) features 16 tracks off of five ABB releases. Well, this Cover Wars is going to feature 14 of those tracks off four of those albums. Don’t blame me for being a slacker, blame the thousands of bands out there who have yet to cover either Wasted Words or Crazy Love. It’s possible that I missed them, if I did PLEASE point me in the direction of some covers of these tunes.
As always, you must register/login to Imeem to listen to these tracks in their entirety (If you’re only getting 30 seconds, you’re not logged in).
That’s the audio for 12 of the tracks, we’ve got YouTube’s for two others, so READ ON after the jump for: The voting, the videos, my short write-ups on the tracks and the results from last week’s entry featuring the singles of The Police (Spoiler Alert: We’ve got another addition to the CW Hall of Fame)
We got the thrill of a lifetime yesterday when legendary rocker Alice Cooper gave Hidden Track a shout out on his nationally syndicated radio show, Nights With Alice Cooper. The shock-rocker quoted our review of Bryan Scary & The Shredding Tears as part of his intro for a track off of Flight of the Knife.
It’s nice to know someone’s reading our rag. Here’s audio:
Could that three day weekend have possibly gone any faster? Hopefully y’all had as much fun as we did. Now we’ll just count down the days until July 4th.
Let’s start off the week with a belated edition of Hors D’Oeuvres:
Pitchfork offers their 2008 Summer Music Festival guide
Finally, iClips did a fantastic job webcasting most of the performances from Summer Camp, so we’re excited that they’ll also be broadcasting live from Mountain Jam on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Is it the weekend yet?
Another fantastic season of Austin City Limits comes to a close this weekend with a performance by R.E.M. recorded during SXSW in March. They’ll play a buncha songs from Accelerate with the occasional classic thrown in.
Friday [all times Eastern]:
Iconoclasts: Eddie Vedder and Laird Hamilton [Sundance 6:00PM]
Documentary: The Who – Amazing Journey [Sundance 10:00PM]
Jimmy Kimmel Live: Neil Diamond [ABC Midnight]
Saturday:
Loaded: Weezer [Fuse 2:30PM]
Austin City Limits: R.E.M. [PBS Check Local Listings]
Saturday Night Live (repeat): Gnarls Barkley [NBC 11:30PM]
Sunday:
Classic Albums: Metallica’s Black Album [VH1 Classic 6:00PM]
HDNet Concert Series: Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals [9:15PM]
iClips, one of the newest players in the video streaming of live music events, will be bringing us full sets from Summer Camp in Chillicothe IL all weekend long. 5 sets of moe., 3 sets of Umphrey’s McGee, 2 sets from Lotus and 18 other bands and DJs.
iClips even makes it possible to do things you couldn’t do in attendance, like catch all of The Flaming Lips and The New Pornographers without missing a minute of headliners moe. and UM. If you’re looking to experience some live music without the traffic jams, cicadas or w00kies…hook a laptop up to a large television, or simply blast the audio through an open window to the BBQ in your backyard.
As we mentioned earlier this week, the hot trend over the last few years among indie-rock acts has been performing a classic album from their catalog live. Most of these have been one-off performances at the a festival. Well, original indie-rockers Built To Spill are looking to change that trend when they hit the road as they plan on indulging the audience with a full-on performance of their 1997 release Perfect From The Now On – with an encore filled with career spanning material.
If you prefer to just listen to full albums on your iPod instead, then maybe one of these recently announced tours will be for you…
Finally, late last year a mysterious band calling themselves the Foxboro Hot Tubs dropped a free EP online named Stop Drop And Roll!!! Rumors swirled that the guys behind the ’60s garage-rock sounding band were none other then the punker-rockers Green Day. Well Billie Joe Armstrong and the boys are in the midst of a quickie intimate club tour with the act. Tickets for each show will only run your 20 bucks in cash and are available day of show with a two ticket limit.
Instead of dwelling on the ever increasing price of gas, the war and everything else wrong with our country or the rest of the world we thought it would be nice to take a breather from all the bad vibes and have some fun.
So this week we’re going to take a look at a few celebrities that are endorsing or aligning themselves with presidential candidates and hopefully get a laugh or two in the process. Welcome to the first round of Political Celebrity Death Match 2008.
I’ve gathered some research on celebrities and who they endorse; now they must battle it out Celebrity Death Match style in your imagination! The best part is that you, the HT reader, get to decide the winner! This week we have a tag team match up pairing pianists/composers with action heroes for the three remaining candidates. READ ON to cast your vote for Round 1 of P.C. Death Match…
We’re quickly approaching the midpoint of 2008, and I’m starting to think about the best concerts I’ve seen so far this year. Picking the top two shows is easy as the second and third installments of Paul Simon’s Love In Hard Times were such incredible musical experiences that satisfied all of my senses.
As a special treat for the holiday weekend I’ve put a mix together of my favorite performances from those two shows. We begin with David Byrne’s “I’ll make you think I wrote this tune” version of I Know What I Know before we move on to phenomenal Brazilian singer Luciana Souza’s brilliant take on Can’t Run But. Amos Lee delivers Peace Like A River, while Gillian Welch teams with Paul Simon and David Rawlings for a gorgeous Sounds of Silence.
My mom’s gonna love Josh Groban’s duet with Simon on Bridge Over Troubled Water, but I loved it too. Olu Dara offers a completely different interpretation of Slip Slidin’ Away, yet Grizzly Bear’s Mother and Child Reunion takes the prize for the most unique cover of the residency. We finish with my permagrin moment: Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo performing the spine-tingling Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.
When you’ve got as many bands playing on as many stages as they’ve got at this year’s Bonnaroo there are sure to be some conflicts. Some of the doozies revealed in the just released schedule for ‘Roo ’08 include 2 Super Jams vs. MMJ vs. tDB vs. Tiesto late night on Friday and B.B. King vs. Ben Folds vs. Zappa Plays Zappa vs. Levon vs. Iron & Wine vs. Little Feat on Saturday afternoon.
Are there any conflicts that particularly piss you off? Let us know by leaving a comment below. We’ve got a few other stories to tell you about this morning:
David Byrne drank too much and fell off of his bike
Rolling Stone selects Sam Champion as May’s Breaking Artist of the Month
The Joker of Coventry fame, rediscovers his love for STS9
The Raconteurs, Justice and Vampire Weekend lead the charge of the indie brigade at SF’s Treasure Island Music Festival in September
Phil Collins and the Genesis boys discuss Peter Gabriel and their live DVD
Radiohead tops TRRTS!’ list of the current Top 50 Muxtape Bands
Will the Smashing Pumpkins play their 20th Anniversary gigs in Chicago?
Finally, our fluffing hearts were filled with joy to see that Trey Anastasio, the former lead singer of Phish, was sentenced to three years on probation Wednesday after a felony guilty plea he entered last year was vacated in Washington County Court. Big Red graduates from the Washington County Drug Treatment Court on June 18, after passing all of the drug tests thrown at him over the past 17 months.
Sometimes the only Birds of a Feather are found when one looks in a mirror. Sometimes, you’re IT in your little world, and keeping others from that fact comes with a price. Certainly, paying someone to find out things about your long, forgotten past, and then killing people who find out about the events in that very past sounds downright insane. Yet, that’s exactly what Orson Welles does in this week’s Hidden Flick, Mr. Arkadin a.k.a Confidential Report.
The eternal enfant terrible of the cinema wrote, directed and played the title role of the mysterious and eccentric billionaire (are there any other kinds?) who is trying to hide a shady past from his innocent adult daughter still wallowing in the fantasy that her father’s huge mound of cash was accumulated by good old fashioned hard labor. Nope, the man is downright filthy, corrupt and evil and she’ll find out eventually—or so he fears.
Welles, as he did so often in his directorial escapades, created a landmark visual and audio experience—truly a work of complete cinema—with bizarre camera set-ups, voice-overs in which he sometimes plays multiple characters, shadowy tricks of the light, buildings as medieval gothic playgrounds, towering figures hidden by masks (often Welles in the title role as the extremely wealthy man with a secret), and, as always, wonderfully strange actors playing characters you’d only find in a…well…Welles’ flick. READ ON for more about Welles’ Mr. Arkadin…
iClips even makes it possible to do things you couldn’t do in attendance, like catch all of The Flaming Lips and The New Pornographers without missing a minute of headliners moe. and UM. If you’re looking to experience some live music without the traffic jams, cicadas or w00kies…hook a laptop up to a large television, or simply blast the audio through an open window to the BBQ in your backyard.
