Let’s face it, every single person in this “room” has air guitared a Trey solo or attempted to play their own vacuum like Fishman at some point along the way. But not too many people out there ever get the opportunity to take a real live stab at covering ‘em. So today, we’ll take a look at some nods to the popular rock band as we highlight some truly stellar Phish covers.
Listening to bands cover Phish is entertaining, because generally speaking, you can really sense a sincerity by all of the band members to a) get it right and b) nail it. Plus, you know what they say: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
Benevento/Russo Duo: YEM -> Mike’s Song -> Freedom of Choice -> Mike’s Song 12/27/05
Considering Marco Benevento closed out this Duo show with Mike Gordon by saying it’s the best they have ever played, it’s pretty clear that this one is special. The highlight of this phenomenal run has to be Marco’s ambient improvisation in the early segment of You Enjoy Myself and the subsequent interplay with Mike on the big build up, but just listening to Marco cover both the duties of Page and Trey with his arsenal of effects is jaw-dropping. If for some terrible reason you don’t already have this entire show, go get it, son.
READ ON for more Phish-y bustouts by the likes of moe., Phix and others…
After a few past Cover Wars appearances, the Ryan Montbleau Band can now claim a victory after scoring the majority of votes from last week’s edition when we looked at ten covers of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. I wouldn’t be a responsible writer if I didn’t point out that Donny Hathaway also deserves much credit as Montbleau’s cover is part Lennon part Hathaway.
This week we’re taking a look at seven covers of Pink Floyd’s Young Lust off of their 1979 epic The Wall. In the ongoing story of The Wall, this tune depicts a part of every rock star’s career that just doesn’t get enough songs written about it. I am talking about banging groupies in hotel rooms.
Anyway, be sure to register/login to imeem to stream the playlist below.
Sometime in the last two years—there’s no exact date, but the shows that birthed Live at Tonic are probably a good place to start the discussion—Marco Benevento became a brand unto himself. Given the number of hats he wears, who’s to say what group, configuration or collaboration is his number one priority—and does he have to have just one?—but we’re past the point where any of Benevento’s eponymous groups is a mere Benevento-Russo Duo side project. That “B” in “Marco B”? Could just as easily stand for “bandleader,” dude.
In his Benevento trio shows, which have one and soon two-full length albums from which to draw a panorama of core material, Benevento’s main focus is piano. There is, of course, the requisite sampling of other keyboard effects and toys for good measure, but the emphasis isn’t on creating an effects-driven soundscape so much as it is song-based: wrapping piano improvisation around a core melody and milking that melody for endless possibilities.
If there was anything discouraging about Benevento’s headlining set at Drom on Saturday, it was brevity: the whole thing was over and done with in a swift, encore-less hour-and-twenty. It wasn’t the band’s fault (Marco’s publicist, Kevin Calabro of Hyena Records, advises Hidden Track the band was originally told it could play at least another half hour, til 11:30 p.m., then was swiftly denied an encore right at 11 as Drom turned into a dance club). But it left little time to savor what Benevento, Jon Fishman and Reid Mathis had cooked up so much as absorb it like a laser beam to the head: tight and sinewy jams passing in blurs, and dazzling virtuosity to spare.
READ ON for more of Chad’s thoughts and Jeremy’s photos…
Has it really only been a week? There were no real surprises last Tuesday, and by this I mean that Pearl Jam has emerged victorious from last week’s edition where we looked at eight covers of Rockin’ In The Free World.
The general election may be over, but Cover Wars goes on. This week we will be featuring one of my favorite John Lennon solo songs: Jealous Guy. There are many covers of this tune out there, so this week’s contestants are by no means the only artists to have covered the song, but rather a sampling. Lennon originally wrote the melody to Jealous Guy on a trip to India in 1968 when the song was called Child Of Nature. The song would get new lyrics three years later when it was released on Lennon’s second studio album Imagine. You can read more about that here.
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Watching President-elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Chicago’s Grant Park, I came across a televised image of Spike Lee greeting Reverend Jesse Jackson. I couldn’t help but think that not only was this country headed in a positive direction with the election of the Illinois senator as our next Commander in Chief, but those who had been dejected and doubtful for so long, also had their moment of truth on that historic evening.
Lee has been making films for over twenty years, and when he began his career, he came across as an extremely funny yet talented angry black man. He is still that angry black man with the soul and confidence to back up his tirades against the injustice of history. However, he is also one of America’s best filmmakers, and like all great men of the cinema, Spike Lee has had his fair share of misfires over the years. She’s Gotta Have It, his debut feature-length film, is not one of those, and stands as this week’s Hidden Flick.
The film was made for $175,000 over two weeks in the summer of 1985, and grossed $7,000,000, which is a major feat in any other era. However, as time has marched onwards into the 21st Century, Lee’s debut celluloid statement seemed to get lost under the wheels of history as Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, and Malcolm X were heralded as his triumphs while some of his other cinematic treasure appeared forgotten.
READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick - She’s Gotta Have It…
While the dawn of the internet age has benefited the music fan in more ways than we can count on two hands, there’s one thing missing from the good old days: the countdown. For years, the highlight of the day used to be racing home from school to plow three Coke Classics and gear up to see if Patience would maintain the number one position on Dial MTV or if Skid Row would overtake GnR. Somewhere between then and now, album reviews became omnipotent, but highlighting the great individual songs - the hit single if you will – faded away. Besides, Adam Curry was the man.
So anyway, it’s with that in mind that we decided to churn out the HT Occasional Countdown – a top ten of sorts consisting of some of the best new songs across a variety of HT friendly bands. There’s no real basis upon what makes the list, besides what gets the most play on our respective iPods, but hopefully you will enjoy the selections.
10) Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit - Wayne Rooney from A Larum
There’s no way a song dedicated to one of footy’s top-selling Wallbangers doesn’t crack the top ten.
9) Lotus – Bellwhether from Hammerstrike
It’s about time somebody responded to the ubiquitous request for some more freaking cowbell.
READ ON for more of the first HT Occasional Countdown…
No big surprise, after we looked at six covers of And It Stoned Me last week - the Jerry Garcia band version was the clear winner. Jerry’s soulful late-JGB style vocals are pretty damn hard to compete with.
For Election Day, I figured we’d throw together some covers of Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World. Much like Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA, the song’s seemingly patriotic chorus is contrasted with negative imagery and politically themed verses.
As always, be sure to register/login to IMEEM before starting the playlist below.
Over the past six months, we’ve been honored to run Jennifer Kirk’s engaging series about all sides of the presidential election: Land of Confusion. Today, she shares her final thoughts about today’s election…
“This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”
This quote comes from the late, great Hunter S. Thompson. It was made in 1972 and sadly, it still rings true to this day. Today is a day, that no matter what happens, will remain in our memory for years to come. It is a day that we have to make a collective decision on how the direction of our country will go for the next four years, and perhaps longer. It is a day that we make a statement to the rest of the world as to who we are and who we aim to be. A day that no matter the outcome — we must still stand, united. I sincerely hope that our divisions can one day be mended come January 20 when one of the candidates takes office. Our country and our model of government are still very young in the eyes of the world. So late today, or most likely, tomorrow — we will find out what our statement will be to the world, but more importantly what that statement says of ourselves.
My apologies for not getting a Cover Wars up last week. I was fighting off what I affectionately refer to as the “Tour Flu” after logging a four-day-weekend full of live music from the likes of Trey Anastasio and Umphrey’s McGee. The extra time provided an opportunity for Widespread Panic and The Punch Brothers to duke it out for the title of best cover of Ophelia. Chris Thile and the Punch Brothers ultimately walked away victorious.
This week, we look at six renditions of the first track on Van Morrison’s 1970 release Moondance: And It Stoned Me. The song, while adopted as a stoner anthem, seems to have more to do with what’s in the gallon jar mentioned in last verse than it does to smoking anything. In the artist’s own words, taken from a biography [via wikipedia]:
I suppose I was about twelve years old. We used to go to a place called Ballystockart to fish. We stopped in the village on the way up to this place and I went to this little stone house, and there was an old man there with dark weather-beaten skin, and we asked him if he had any water. He gave us some water which he said he’d got from the stream. We drank some and everything seemed to stop for me. Time stood still. For five minutes everything was really quiet and I was in this ‘other dimension’. That’s what the song is about.
As always, be sure to register/login to IMEEM before starting the playlist
The house looked like any other neighborly dwelling except for the fact that it was huge, ancient, had a large iron gate at the foot of the driveway, and I think I saw a talking rat scurry past me as I walked up to knock on its formidable front door.
I was there to sign up voters on my little growing election list, and when I knocked on the door, I heard a series of loud thumps, a deep, resounding echo inside, and footsteps, before a very friendly face peeked out to see who had dared knock on his door. The man who answered the door was an aging hippie wearing a tie-dyed shirt. He asked if I’d like to come in as he filled out my forms, and I obliged because a) he didn’t appear to pose a threat, b) he was an aging hippie wearing a tie-dyed shirt, and c) in the room on the right, I could see Phantasm playing on a television screen, and thought I’d check out a few minutes of this underground 1979 horror hoot. Alas, this would turn into one of several Halloween Hidden Flicks to be devoured, but I did not know that at the time.
Phantasm is a goofy thriller in which a very strange, tall man uses a flying silver ball to attack strangers. The ball has a drill, that when attached to the head can perform routine amateur lobotomies, or eliminate, on a permanent basis, nagging headaches. I watched a few minutes while the hippie horror film fan went to get us something to drink (I assumed a soda while doubting it would be acid, or cyanide-laced Kool-Aid).
are probably a good place to start the discussion—
, his debut feature-length film, is not one of those, and stands as this week’s 
playing on a television screen, and thought I’d check out a few minutes of this underground 1979 horror hoot. Alas, this would turn into one of several Halloween Hidden Flicks to be devoured, but I did not know that at the time.
