Tonight was a big night for The Black Keys at The Grammys as not only has El Camino won Best Rock Album and Lonely Boy won Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song trophies, but The Keys’ Dan Auerbach took home the coveted Producer of the Year award. The Black Keys also teamed up with Dr. John and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band to perform Lonely Boy on the live broadcast.
If you missed it, we’ve got you covered…
Our friends at Consequence of Sound have full coverage of the 2013 Grammys.
After nearly a year of speculation, warmup gigs and the shows themselves, The Rolling Stones’ 50 and Counting Tour came to a close tonight at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. The guest-laden performance was broadcast live as Pay-Per-View special both on television and over the internet.
The Stones started off the show with the old school pairing of Get Off My Cloud and The Last Time before moving on to a Bill Wyman-less It’s Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It) and repertoire staple Paint It Black. Lady Gaga was the first guest of the night as she emerged for a shriek-fueled Gimme Shelter. Following Wild Horses, the Stones brought out Gary Clark Jr. and John Mayer to create a four-guitar attack on I’m Going Down. Over the past few days the band has been soliciting votes for a song to play tonight via their new app. Dead Flowers was the top vote-getter, so Mick Jagger and Co. dusted off the Sticky Fingers classic for its 50 and Counting debut. Next, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, aka The Black Keys, came out to help the Stones on a debut of Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love.
In April of 2011 the Foo Fighters kicked off an extremely busy year and a half of promotional and touring appearances behind the Grammy-winning album Wasting Light. That touring cycle came to an end last night at the first-ever Global Citizen Festival in Central Park, an event that also saw Neil Young and Crazy Horse make their long-awaited return to the Big Apple after more than eight years.
[Photo via @pawhite]
The festival was put together with the aim of raising awareness to the plight of those living in extreme poverty. An array of celebrities, heads of charitable foundations and award-winning humanitarians spoke to the crowd about the festival’s mission in between acts with one of the last speeches coming from the event’s founder – Hugh Evans. K’Naan opened the concert with a quick, three-song set that included his global hit Wavin’ Flag, while Band of Horses made the most of their short time-slot with impressive takes on Knock Knock, The Great Salt Lake, No One’s Gonna Love You and The Funeral. John Legend made a surprise appearance and paid tribute to a man who spent the last decade of his life living next to Central Park – John Lennon – by delivering a stirring rendition of Imagine.
For a new, free festival, the Global Citizen Festival was well run as in-and-out was a relatively quick process and delays between sets were kept to a minimum. More vending and bathrooms would’ve been appreciated. Like the Foo Fighters, The Black Keys have spent plenty of time on the road over the last 12 months and it showed. Dan Auerbach, Patrick Carney and their formidable backing band ran through one hearty rocker after another with impressive precision including seven songs from 2011′s El Camino. Their heavy sound filled the large concert field which comfortably held the approximately 60,000 in attendance. Fuzz-tones, catchy choruses and Auerbach’s heartfelt vocal delivery were highlights of the impressive The Gold On The Ceiling, Lonely Boy, I Got Mine closing segment.
A few items of note popped up on Twitter recently that seemed worth sharing. One band is playing a secret show in Nashville this evening. A British singer is in the studio working on her long awaited new material. Also, there’s a photo contest going on from one of our favorites here at Hidden Track.
First we have a tweet from The Black Keys (@theblackkeys) announcing a secret show tonight. It starts at 7 PM somewhere in Nashville. Follow their feed for (hopefully) more information.
Next up were a few tweets between Lily Allen (@lilyrosecooper) and the website Pop Justice (@Popjustice) in which Allen declared she was in the studio working with producer Greg Kurstin (@GregKurstin). Kurtsin produced Allen’s previous two albums, the last being 2009’s It’s Not Me, It’s You, which earned him a Grammy Award nomination for Producer of the Year.
A recent tweet by Ryan Adams (@TheRyanAdams) to the band Tennis (@TennisInc) praising their recently issued album Young & Old, and the subsequent re-tweet by The Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney), resulted in a humorous back-and-forth exchange between Adams and Carney that diverted into discussion of Black Sabbath. The trading of similes and metaphors continued into today when Carney mentioned being in the studio with Royal Bangs (@royalbangs).
All week long we’ve been looking at our staff’s choices for the best albums of 2011 five LPs at a time. Our submissions include all styles of music from bluegrass to jazz, jam to indie, electronica to rap, as well as everything in between (but sorry Nefertiti’s Fjord it just wasn’t the year for lesbian-Afro-Norwegian-funk music). At the end of the day, we’re a music blog. Everyone is encouraged to write about what they like with no motives, no editorial biases, and no strings attached. We hope that comes across in our picks.
We’re in the home stretch so let’s check out numbers 10 through 6…
10) TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light
Key Tracks: Second Song, Will Do, Caffeinated Consciousness
Sounds like: A producer cut through a bit of the fuzz of TVOTR to make a very listenable experience.
The Skinny: Sadly the last TV On The Radio record that will feature bassist Gerard Smith, who passed away only nine days after the release, Nine Types of Light showcases TVOTR at their most accessible and sonically pleasing timbre to date. If the album were to have a single it would be the love-longing song Will Do which proclaims, “I think we’re compatible I can see that you think I’m wrong” coupled with “Your love makes a fool of you, you can’t seem to understand – our heart doesn’t play by rules….” Sounds like the guy isn’t getting the girl and unfortunately, is stuck in a state of being ready to go if his hopeful partner ever were to change her mind. Caffeinated Consciousness ends with three minutes and twenty one seconds that you just wish could be heard (with the horn section) by 20,000 screaming fans in the encore slot at an arena – and no, Phish covering TV On The Radio doesn’t count.
- DaveO
For those of you that were hoping to stream The Black Keys new album El Camino
Finally, while James Mercer has kept himself busy over the last couple of years, most notably with Broken Bells, his collaboration with uber-producer Dangermouse, it’s been roughly five years since we’ve heard anything in the way of new music from The Shins. The Portland-via-New Mexico act, which has gone through both lineup and label changes since the their 2007 album Wincing The Night Away
Looks like we’ve been stricken with a full-on case of The Black Keys fever, as the blues-rock duo prepare to release their highly anticipated new studio album El Camino
This past weekend, The Black Keys stopped by 30 Rock, where they were the musical guests on Saturday Night Live. The band, backed by a keyboard player and bassist, previewed two songs off their latest record, their first single Lonely Boy, as well as the vampy, fiery blues-rocker Gold On The Ceiling which featured some pretty nasty solos from Auerbach. Let’s check it out…
Tonight, The Black Keys will play a special intimate album release show at NYC’s Webster Hall, which can be streamed live on MTV Hive, beginning at 9PM EST. Additionally, as we previously mentioned, the band will head out on their first ever arena headlining tour this March with The Arctic Monkeys, who will hold down the opening slot, which includes a stop at Madison Square Garden on March 12.
Here’s the other song The Black Keys performed on SNL, Lonely Boy…
READ ON
HT faves The Black Keys continue their meteoric rise to rock superstardom with the announcement of the duo’s first arena tour. Set to kick off on March 2 at the U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati, this month-long tour finds the group playing such storied venues as Madison Square Garden (March 12), the Joe Louis Arena (March 3) and Chicago’s United Center (March 19).
Meanwhile, the group’s next show, following the aforementioned Saturday Night Live musical guest spot, will take place at Webster Hall in NYC on Monday. Our friends at MyFreeConcert.com are keeping track of the ways you can win a ticket to see the Keys at this intimate venue.
Here’s the full list of Black Keys tour dates…
December 5 New York, NY Webster Hall
December 11 Los Angeles, CA KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas
March 2 * Cincinnati, OH US Bank Arena
March 3 * Detroit, MI Joe Louis Arena
March 4 * Columbus, OH Jerome Schottenstein Center
March 6 * Portland, ME Cumberland Co. Civic Center
March 7 * Boston, MA TD Garden
March 9 * Washington, DC Verizon Center
March 10 * Philadelphia, PA Wells Fargo Center
March 12 * New York, NYMadison Square GardenArena
March 13 * Montreal, QC Bell Centre
March 14 * Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre
March 16 * Indianapolis, IN Conseco Fieldhouse
March 18 * Grand Rapids, MI Van Andel Arena
March 19 * Chicago, IL United Center
March 20 * Cleveland, OH Quicken Loans Arena
March 23 * Norfolk, VA Constant Convocation Center*Arctic Monkeys support
[via The Audio Perv]
A couple of weeks back we hipped you to the fact that Phish would be releasing a new seven-disc box set made up of their 1997 three-night run at Hampton, Virginia and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Well today, official word finally came from the band, who’ve detailed a variety of Phish song-referencing pre-order packages through Dry Goods for its December 6 release. Whether you choose the Black-Eyed Katy Bundle or just the standard CD box, all orders will receive a full 45-track MP3 download of Hampton Winston/Salem ’97 on the release date plus two previously unreleased Hampton/Winston-Salem related tracks from the Phish Archives. With the holiday season right around the corner, we’re pretty confident that this would make a great gift for the Phan in your family.
The fine folks at Phish Inc. have given us the Mike’s Groove from Hampton ’97 to sample (download):
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Finally, while it looks like we are guilty as just about every music site out in there in posting the trailer for a supposed BlakRoc sequel, that turns out most likely will not be coming out, we can report that The Black Keys will indeed be releasing an album of their own later this year entitled El Camino
[Originally Published: May 4, 2010] The Wicked Messenger is a track from Bob Dylan’s 1967 release John Wesley Harding. The bassline defines the music and the words are steeped in bible verse. Let’s dive right into this week’s covers because there are some really good ones.
The Contestants:
The Black Keys: There are some real gems from the 2007 I’m Not There soundtrack and this is one of them. Previously on Cover Wars, Stephen Malkmus and the Million Dollar Bashers contributed a cover from the same release for Ballad Of A Thin Man. Source: I’m Not There (Music From The Motion Picture)
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READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…
While the New Porns went with a fake biopic as the basis of their new music video, The Black Keys upped the ante with their faux-movie trailer inspired clip for Howlin’ For You. The Nashville via Akron-based duo, or Las Teclas De Negro as they are billed in the video, created a full-on Tarantino-esque, grindhouse-style movie trailer that features some great dialogue and even better cameos. Check it out…
The Black Keys – Howlin’ For You
The Black Keys have a handful of live dates scheduled, which includes a high profile appearance at Coachella in Indio, CA on April 15.
December 31st is the biggest night for live music of the year. An argument might be made for Halloween, but I’m not buying it. Your non-live-music-loving-friends don’t say things like, “Halloween is the most anti-climactic day of the year” while you sit there and just snicker. We’ve been a little Phish heavy this week so let’s take a look at how 24 other bands rang in 2011.
Side Note: This was my first time using embedded images from setlist.fm and I must say it looks super slick. That site has really got it going on, I hope the quality of data improves as more people use it, because with better information – statistics like “What songs did LCD Soundsystem play in 2010” will be really useful to have for a wide variety of bands.
READ ON for lots more New Year’s Eve Setlists
There were a couple of festivals this Labor Day weekend. One of them was moe.down in Mohawk, NY and you’ll be hearing plenty of recordings from that below. The other one was the North Coast Music Festival in Chicago and while we’ve seen plenty of video pop-up, it’s been pretty light to non-existent on the audio recordings.
You can download all of this week’s audio in one easy to listen to MP3 that we call the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast, click here to download.
[Thanks to tonedeaf this week's photo]
The Black Keys – Next Girl, Chop and Change, Howlin’ For You, Tighten Up
Date & Venue: 2010-09-05 moe.down – Mohawk, NY
Taper & Show Download: Rob Clarke
moe.down always does a great job of bringing in a few non-jambands to round out their talent. This segment of songs features a little extra help from the baking musicians whereas the video embedded below is during the portion of their set that was stricly duo-style. The Black Keys play tomorrow at the Virginia Beach Amphitheater.
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READ ON for killer tracks from EITS, the Mike Gordon Band and moe…
The “full-on promotional blitz” continues for The Black Keys’ latest studio release, Brothers,
