As we mentioned earlier, Gov’t Mule paid tribute to Jimi Hendrix at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago last night. The group devoted the whole second set to its “Gov’t Mule Hendrix Halloween Experience” and stuck mostly to Hendrix tunes they had never covered before.

Thanks to YouTuber Zepcowboy we get to watch a number of the Hendrix covers Gov’t Mule performed including a Little Wing in which guitarist Warren Haynes emulated Jimi by playing an upside-down white Fender Strat just like the left-handed Hendrix. Check out this special Little Wing…

Gov’t Mule – Little Wing

Fittingly, “Purple Haynes” and his Mule band mates kicked off the set with Are You Experienced?

READ ON

Jam titans Widespread Panic are one of the many bands in our scene known for their Halloween concerts. JB and Co. always bust out interesting covers and wear crazy costumes at their annual Halloween celebrations, but due to their current “hiatus” there’s no Widespread Panic show today. So in lieu of an actual performance, the band has shared some “treats” for fans to enjoy.

First off, at 10:30 AM ET, they will stream the entire 10/31/96 show in the WP Archive Room on Turntable.FM. The band has also shared professionally shot footage of last year’s Halloween performance from Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom…

Playlist – Widespread Panic @ Aragon – 10/31/11

Finally, revisit Panic’s 1992 Halloween show from 20 years ago today minus a couple of songs missing due to a tape error. Check this out this classic Widespread Panic Halloween performance…

READ ON

For the fifth consecutive year, Madison’s historic Barrymore Theater hosted their Night of the Dead Halloween celebration, which selected the best local jambands to perform a musical costume set. This year, the Barrymore invited HT friends Steez to add some Halloween Creepfunk to the party. Naturally, given their affinity for the King of Pop, the band decided on a Michael Jackson set. We caught up with bassist Chris Sell to talk about preparing for their first full tribute set, the song selection process, and their inspired Michael Jackson costumes and props.

[All photos by Adam Miszewski]

Hidden Track: Knowing your collective love for MJ, I assume the decision was pretty easy, but were there any other serious contenders of bands to cover for the set – Madonna or Bob James perhaps?

Chris Sell: Well, this is the first time we’ve ever really tried to cover a whole artist, so we were pretty stoked initially and tons of ideas were floated out there. We have such eclectic taste that our collective mouths watered at the opportunity to learn a whole set of an artist, but when we started to think about what was actually feasible in the little time that we had available and thought MJ would be do-able. Of course we are mostly instrumental band, so being able to learn all the vocal melodies on either saxophone or talk-box etc were important factors in the decision as well.

Workin’ Day and Night

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READ ON

We’re still getting out wits back about us after a fantastic weekend down in Atlantic City for Phish. We struggled with our internet connection for the past few days, but aim to get caught up shortly. For now, we wanted to point you in the direction of JamBase for their Halloween Setlist Wrapup and Jambands.com’s news department for plenty of info about Halloween performances from Umphrey’s McGee, the Disco Biscuits, String Cheese Incident, Gov’t Mule and others. Stay tuned for photos from String Cheese and reviews of Phish and Umphrey’s plus much more soon.

Mule and Phish weren’t the only bands performing on Halloween as there was plenty of action all over the country from our favorite bands. We’ll have extended takes on most of these shows over the next few days, but for now let’s take a look at what went down on October 31st…

Umphrey’s McGee

Day of the Dead IV, Las Tortugas

Set I: JaJunk* > 2 × 2 > Q*bert > 2 × 2, Cemetery Walk, Padgett’s Profile**, Cemetery Walk (part II), Sweet Sunglasses#

Set II: Jazz Odyssey > Nothing Too Fancy > Hangover > Night Gambler## > Nothing Too Fancy, FF > Professor Wormbog^ > JaJunk, Mulche’s Odyssey, Land of Wappy^^

Enc: 40’s Theme, Nemo’s Fat Bottomed Good Times%

Notes: * With “Smooth Criminal” (Michael Jackson) and “Heartbreaker” (Led Zeppelin) teases. ** With “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” (Michael Jackson) tease. # Mash-up of “Sweet Dreams” (Eurythmics), “Sunglasses at Night” (Corey Hart), and “Electric Feel” (MGMT). ## Mash-up of “The Gambler” (Kenny Rogers), “Night Fever” (The Bee Gees), and “Rapper’s Delight” (Sugarhill Gang). ^ With Bill Kreutzman on drums. ^^ Mash-up of “Wappy Sprayberry,” “Land of Confusion” (Genesis), and “Seek and Destroy” (Metallica). % Mash-up of “Nemo,” “Fat Bottomed Girls” (Queen), and “Good Times, Bad Times” (Led Zeppelin).

Source: Umphreys.com via Jambands.com Box Scores

Umphrey’s continued what’s becoming an annual tradition by mashing up some of their originals and their favorite covers in innovative ways at the Dance of the Dead IV festival in Las Tortugas – Groveland, CA. Besides mashing up such tunes as Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler with The Bee Gees’ Night Fever and The Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight, the band also welcomed Bill Kreutzmann of The Dead to sit in on Professor Wormbog.

We can’t wait for video and audio to surface.

READ ON for a quick look at a few other band’s Halloween shows…

[Originally Published: 7/17/2009]

The scenario is this: It’s October 31st at 8pm in Indio California. Phish has not announced what musical costume they are performing and they have not handed out playbills this year. Those banks of lights go down and it’s time for THE set. What’s it going to be?

Side Note: While many of our readers are familiar with the “Musical Costume” concept, it’s worth mentioning to those that aren’t that starting in 1994, on Halloween, Phish would play a three-set show and in the second set, would cover an entire album by another artist. There have been four:

1994 – The White Album (The Beatles)
1995 – Quadrophenia (The Who)
1996 – Remain In Light (The Talking Heads)
1998 – Loaded (Velvet Underground)

For fun, we’ve thrown together a collection of 35 albums – taken anywhere from 8 to 35 seconds of the first track, mixed it in with some Phish audience noise, added some fades, had fun with a few volume swells and this what we’ve got:

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You got 15 minutes? Why don’t you test yourself – see how many of these you would know as of right now. Some of the selections are the obvious front-runners, some are long shots, and some — well some of these I just included because I find myself hilarious.

If you’re stumped on a few, hopefully some fellow Hidden Track readers can help you out.

UPDATE [August 28]: While our readers have identified roughly 88% of the albums from the audio clip, there are still some that nobody has mentioned – four to be exact – do you know what they are?

READ ON after the jump for a Partial Answer Key including full credit given to the first HT commenters that ID’d the album…

The producers of the 4th Annual Las Tortugas Festival, hosted by Blue Turtle Seduction, have announced the initial artist lineup today.

The artist announcement includes Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, Tea Leaf Green, Hot Buttered Rum, Bag of Tricks (featuring Zach Gill, Steve Adams and Dave Brogan of ALO), The Mother Hips, and many others.

The biggest name talent is Umphrey’s McGee who played to a packed Warfield Theater last year on Halloween for their Halloween Monster Mashup. It is clear that UM is headlining, time slots or how many sets they will be performing have not been announced.

Tickets and on-site cabins will go on sale July 29th.

We wish them the best, as all signs point to the fact that this will not be the only Halloween-weekend-festival in the lovely state of California.

UPDATE 12:14PM: UM confirms that they will be “playing two shows”

We’re one week removed from Halloween 2008 and a number of recordings of this year’s memorable concerts have started to surface.

Here’s a look at what’s come out thus far…

Cornmeal: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

Derek Trucks Band: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

Ekoostik Hookah: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

Max Creek: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

New Deal: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

Outformation: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

Perpetual Groove: FLAC/MP3/STREAM, Webcast

Phil Lesh and Friends: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

Railroad Earth: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

Tea Leaf Green: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

The Brew: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

The Bridge: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

Toubab Krewe: FLAC/MP3/STREAM

Umphrey’s McGee: Official Recording, FLAC/MP3/STREAM

Widespread Panic: Official Recording, FLAC, MP3 (Coming Soon), STREAM

A large variety of bands took the stage last night with a bag full of treats and tricks for their loyal fans. Let’s kickoff our coverage with a look at the setlists from some of the bigger shows as they happen…

Al and the Transamericans

The Electric Company
Utica, NY

Set: Somewhere In Kansas*, 20th Century Man, Another Home*, Everything Here, Grass Is Greener*, Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young), Guitar, Time* (Kirk Juhas), Some Of The Parts*, Lost & Found, Jambalaya ^ (Hank Williams), I Will, Light Of the Moon*, Waiting For The Rain*, Instrumental (“a Gordon Stone Original”), Deal (Hunter/Garcia) > Waiting For The Punchline

* First time played (?) and tracks off “This Day & Age”
^ w/ (insert name of local very cool senior citizen on totally rockin’ trombonaphone)

Black Crowes

Hammerstein Ballroom
New York, NY

Set: Halfway To Everywhere, Evergreen, Sting Me, Seeing Things, Evil Eye, She Talks To Angels, Poor Elijah, Ain’t No More Cane on the Brazos, Whoa Mule, Torn and Frayed, We Who See The Deep > Thorn In My Pride > Drums > Wiser Time, Remedy, Wounded Bird

Encore: Good Friday
Encore 2: Hey Hey What Can I Do?

[via CrowesTK @ Amorica]

The Breakfast

The ‘Sco @ Oberlin College
Oberlin, OH

Set: Looney Tunes Theme > Beef Barley > The Simpsons Theme > Beef Barley, Popeye The Sailor Man Theme, The Sound, South Park Theme > Hard Luck Harry > Ghost Busters Theme > Metropolis, Sponge Bob Square Pants Theme, Jam > Over Exposure

[via OMS211]

READ ON for a slew of Halloween setlists from the likes of Phil Lesh and Friends, Umphrey’s McGee, Gov’t Mule and more…

In our continuing celebration of Halloween, we’ve prepared a Friday Mix Tape chocked full of goodies recorded on this date in history. Some of these tracks come from commercial releases, so be sure to purchase the full album if you like the tracks we used. Let’s take a gander at some tricks and treats…

We start with the rambunctious Magic Fingers from Frank Zappa’s Halloween release. Next, enjoy one of my favorite Phish covers of all-time: Born Under Punches from Live Phish: 10/31/1996. After that, we bring you Widespread Panic covering Nelly’s Hot In Herre from Jackassolantern. We check in with moe. for a spot-on rendition of The Simpsons Theme Song from the band’s 2002 Halloween concert. Let’s turn to the Grateful Dead for the scrappy shuffle Althea from the bonus disc of Road Trips Vol. 1 No. 1. Finally, Gov’t Mule lends us Zeppelin’s Over The Hills and Far Away from last year’s show which was released as Holy Haunted House.

• CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS WEEK’S MIX TAPE

October could be our favorite month to see live music, thanks in part to the temperate weather and full venue schedules. School’s finally back in session, leading most bands to play their own shows instead of the banding together for the shitty touring festivals that occur every summer. And the best part about October is that it peaks on Halloween, when bands pull out all the stops.

This week Grousing The Aisles looks at three fantastic shows from October, and then as an added bonus, we’ve rounded up links to Halloween show downloads from all across these United States. Be sure to read on after the jump to find links to downloads from Arcade Fire, Gov’t Mule, Ryan Adams and many more.

The Breakfast 10/27/2007 SBD MATRIX [MP3, FLAC, STREAM]:

Is it just us or does it seem like the unwritten ban on covering Phish songs has finally been lifted? The Breakfast celebrated Halloween by covering Lawn Boy in its entirety at their 9th annual Fonghoulish Freakout at the Higher Ground. Sure the vocals may have been a bit Bisco-esque, but The Breakfast showed incredible musicianship by nailing some of Phish’s most difficult passages with ease.

Photo and recording by Dave Pecoraro

Guitarist Tim Palmieri didn’t try to replicate Trey Anastasio’s tone. For instance, on Bathtub Gin, Palmieri played the solo using an envelope filter that made his guitar sound more like Jerry Garcia than Trey. Run Like An Antelope and Split Open and Melt featured some great interplay from all the members of the band including keyboardist Matt Oestreicher, who supposedly hadn’t heard any of Phish’s shit before starting with The Breakfast earlier this year.

Lawn Boy took up the majority of the show, but The Breakfast also played a number of their own complex compositions. The show started with a ripping jam that led into the Zappa-esque Buquebus (no Bangbus?). Other impressive originals included a heavy Food For Thought and the quirky Honey Butter. The gig seemed to gain major hippie cred points when Phish’s Mike Gordon came out wearing a mask to play bass on a bizarre cover of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive — that seemed to excite the audience more than any of the Lawn Boy covers.

Kudos to The Breakfast for allowing Dave Pecoraro to tape the show so everyone could check out their version of Lawn Boy within 48 hours of the show ending. In less than a week his recording has been downloaded by over 4,000 people who have now been exposed to the power of a good Breakfast. Read on for more…

Halloween has become one of the most anticipated holidays on the calendar for fans of the usual touring bands (not just for pervs like Neeko on the lookout for Halloween sluts). More and more bands these days uses the holiday evening to play creative sets, and last night was no exception. This week’s lazy edition of The B List brings you 10 hot-of-the-presses setlists from last night.

1. Black Crowes – United Palace Theater – NYC, NY
Word has it The Crowes had planned to do all Ramones tunes for their Halloween gig but Rich Robinson bagged the idea

Set: Give Peace A Chance, Space Captain, Black Moon Creeping, Darling Of The Underground Press, Sister Luck, Another Roadside Tragedy, Nonfiction (w/Patti Smith), Ain’t No Cane On The Brazos, Polly, Girl From A Pawnshop, Jealous Again, Soul Singing, Wiser Time, Thorn In My Pride

Encore: Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’?

2. The Police – Madison Square Garden – NYC, NY

Set: Message in a Bottle, Synchronicity II, Walking On the Moon, Voices Inside My Head > When the World Is Running Down You Make the Best of What’s Still Around, Don’t Stand So Close to Me, Driven to Tears, Hole In My Life, Truth Hits Everybody, Everything She Does is Magic, Wrapped Around Your Finger, De Do Do Do De Da Da Da, Invisible Sun, Walking In Your Footsteps, Can’t Stand Losing You, Roxanne

Encore 1: King of Pain, So Lonely, Every Breath You Take

Encore 2: Next To You

3. Phil and Friends – Nokia Theater – NYC NY [via thephilzone.com]

Set I: Shakedown Street> Loose Lucy, Jackie Tune, Candyman, Put A Spell On You> Jam > Ghost!> Casey Jones

Set II: Phil Reads, Jam > Cryptical > Jam > Boris The Spider > Caution, Voodoo Child, Cryptical > New Speedway > Sympathy For The Devil > Jam > I Know You Rider, Donor Rap

Encore: Werewolves of London

Dr. Neeko is back for Round II — before we begin, let’s point out that he loves his mother, his aunt, all his old lovers and Rue McClanahan…

When I was a kid, before I became a doctor of course, Halloween was all about the mad rush to stuff as much tooth-rotting, brain-zipping sugar as you could fit into an old pillowcase before the sun went down and you missed curfew. We usually made out pretty well. We knew which houses gave the full-sized candy bars, which houses turned off the porch light and pretended not to be home, and which houses you could get away with visiting multiple times.

Of course you got the occasional old lady who’d give out four pennies wrapped in Scotch Tape, or the big buzz-kill-do-gooder handing out pieces of fruit. Fruit? Handing out fruit on Halloween is like giving out cap-guns in a war zone. Handing out fruit on Halloween is like dispensing condoms at an Indigo Girls/Ani DiFranco double-bill. Handing out fruit on Halloween is like giving out handjobs at an orgy. But all in all, it was a good racket we had going back then…

Look, ma: These girls show up on Google Images under “Halloween sluts”

Then, sometime around college, Halloween took on a new meaning. It was still about candy, but a different kind of candy, an even sweeter candy, a candy for the eyes. In the same way that St. Patrick’s Day is a ‘free pass’ to start drinking at 9 am, Halloween is a ‘free pass’ for many women to dress slightly more revealing than a Mexican hooker in August. And I, for one, think that’s just great.

Now, you can’t appreciate this fine aspect of the holiday if you’re at the wrong location. Chances are, you’ll wait till the last minute to make plans, and you’ll end up sitting at home watching Heroes on the DVR, handing out your hard-earned candy to a bunch of ungrateful neighborhood brats. Not cool, man. So, in an effort to spare some of you hornball HT readers from that awful fate, I’ve decided to compile an in-depth review of the eye-candy potential for a handful of Halloween concerts around the country. Let me guide you in the right direction…let me help you realize the full potential this holiday has to offer. So read on for a full list of concerts and what you may expect in terms of post-show spank material…