Posts by Ace Cowboy

Rage Against the Machine is back. The rap-rock-but-better-than-Kid-Rock’s-brand-of-rap-rock-group reunited for the first time in seven years at this weekend’s universally beloved Coachella festival, and choppy amateur videos from the performance are starting to hit that YouTube site the kids are all talking about. But right now choppy’s all we got, so here’s the best one […]

I’m not sure how many of youse still watch the David Letterman program nightly, but Thursday’s episode of Late Show featured a great triple-banjo performance by Bela Fleck, Tony Trischka and…Steve Martin. In HD, no less. [youtube]1jn3KCZEqxc[/youtube] That’s fucking badass. Watch it quick before Viacom calls YouTube and makes them forcibly pull it down like […]

Quite a Saturday for the ol’ Cowboy — the setlist looks like this: Reveille > English football > NFL Draft > Kei Igawa’s Yankee victory > NFL Draft > Mo’s first save > IFC Center documentary about horse-fucking called Zoo (no joke) > return home for The Devil & Daniel Johnston > This American Life. […]

The kind folks at ownyourphone.com know how much you wanna hear a bitchin’ Frankenstein every time the phone rings. A real Frankenstein, not that Muzak for Cellular Telephones shit. Ownyourphone’s service allows you take any part of any song on your computer (no DRM-infected files) and make it into a ringtone. You get one free […]

Rainy days are always perfect for a little taste of the yazz piano. And who better than to take us away like Calgon than the man in the ski cap and the cokenails and the gawdy rings. Thelonious Monk is obviously a legend, but until you sit there and watch him, I mean really focus on […]

Like my own musical Tuesdays with Morrie, I feel fortunate to have spent some good times with Tonic in the club’s dying days. The best little naked performance space in New York never did wrong by me, and on three Wednesdays in November it provided a fun backdrop for evenings with Marco Benevento and his […]

You’d think by the fourth round of additions, any festival, no matter how big in size or diverse in lineup, would be scraping the bottom of the barrel. But 10KLF continues to come up with a net full of quality stuffs. Check out the seven latest acts to sign onto the already-packed roster: Galactic Jon […]

Fresh off its annual 67-night run at the Beacon Theater in New York, the Allman Brothers Band set up camp two weekends ago at the Spirit of The Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, Florida for the band’s third annual Wanee Festival.

Joined by a laundry list of talented bands, the Allmans played sets each night of the festival, and Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes and Oteil Burbridge all played with their own outfits on the side. Having just been down in Florida for Langerado, neither Scotty nor I ventured down to the less-Jewish part of the state for the festivities. Nevertheless, our photographer George Weiss was on the scene, and he came back with the following awesome shots for all’a youse.

Since it’s billed as a family-type festival, who else would show up but Robert Randolph & the Family Band? He looks like he’s certainly feeling it:

Read on for 14 more incredible shots from the third annual Wanee Fest…

We don’t watch American Idol, but we’ll fight with our lives for your right to watch it. Seriously, even though it’s mostly pop shlock, at least they’re trying to find real singers with genuine talent. We can get behind that. We can also get behind Carrie Underpants — well, if she’d let us, or if she’ll drink that roofie colada. Apparently this […]

The city of Ithaca may be Gorges, but it’s also full of stone-cold noobs. Celebrating 5/8/77? Bah! I can’t wait ’til Uniondale throws a parade on 2/28/33. It’s been almost 30 years since the Grateful Dead unleashed its most traded set of music on an unsuspecting Cornell crowd. You know the one; it starts with […]

Yeah, this doesn’t have much to do with music. But I saw this on Deadspin early this morning and thought, “You know who would love this video? Everyone!” [youtube]Q62X73zQhK4[/youtube] I’m guessing if you’re headed to the recently announced Rock Fever Festival in Rocklahoma this July, you might see this lady and her friends. I’m still loving […]

You know, with the weakening dollar and the currency exchange rates the way they are, I hear in England it’s now called “One for Onesday.” Financial jokes? Ugh. Up first, the incomparably underrated Assembly of Dust: Man With a Plan — 8/18/06 — Gathering of the Vibes [vbr mp3] Space Oddity — 12/31/06 — Paradise Rock […]

My roommate unearthed the ultimate Talking Heads stash recently — almost and entire show from Rome in 1980, with future King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew sitting in with the band. It’s delicious, and you oughta check out Belew’s craftsmanship on Life During Wartime. Then move onto Crosseyed and Painless, I Zimbra, Cities and the rest. […]

Come late June, the School of Rock Festival is headed to Asbury Park, New Jersey. So women, paint your nails and face and tease your hair; men, throw on the wife beater and hair gel. Let’s all pile in the Camaro for a trip to the Shore. The lineup looks incredible, and given this is my birthday weekend, […]

To be completely honest, this year’s Green Apple Music & Arts Festival lineup in New York was, to borrow an expression from the Torah, lamer than FDR’s legs. You know it’s a weak festival when the weather steals the show, a warm spring weekend providing the saving grace for the East Coast third of the […]

A Nor’easter one weekend, a glorious spring day filled with tank-tops the next. I played a little indoor bocce, caught four bands and stood in the, what’s this?, sun for a few hours at an Earth Day street fair outside Grand Central. I smell a new season arriving, and it’s the season of awesome. Williamsburg […]

The Green Apple Music Festival started out a disaster for me personally.

First I slept through Thursday night’s kickoff show, an acoustic affair with the Benevento-Russo Duo, when a planned short nap before a midnight ramble became an unplanned 10-hour slumber through the night. Then Friday evening arrived, and the usually reliable and talented Grace Potter put on a less-than-stellar show with the Nocturnals at Southpaw, complete with three extremely creepy, balding middle-aged dudes taking as many pictures of her as possible — not a fun vibe trying to peek through compulsive masturbators to watch a show.

So I turned to the free shit to break me out of the funk. As we mentioned yesterday, the Green Apple organizers planned several sets gratis outside Grand Central Station for the second straight year, an oasis of quality tunes in a big, bad city. So I headed up to the makeshift hippie enclave for an Earth Day street fair to meet up with some good friends and try to salvage a piss-poor beginning.

Read on for more photos and videos from the sunny day in NYC…

We’re pretty geeked up about this weekend’s Green Apple Music Festival, even though overall enthusiasm for the event can only be considered “tempered” at best compared to last year. Organizers expanded the music and arts festival to three cities this year, adding Chicago and San Francisco to the mix, but there’s no question it’s flying well below the […]

Spanning the four months between the Coventry Disaster and New Year’s 2004, I somehow found myself on an unplanned, unconscious live music hiatus. The only performances I caught in person took place under the pavement while riding New York’s underground public transportation system. But I did watch those amateur shows intently. Sometimes I found myself hanging out for 20 minutes, sometimes an hour, literally, […]

As far as I know, JamBase hasn’t cornered the worldwide market on posting straight press releases. So let’s take a look at a couple from the inbox today…

The North Mississippi Allstars are set to release their first live concert DVD on June 26th — the new disc will be called Keep On Marchin’:

Six Hi-Definition cameras beautifully capture the November 11, 2005 performance at the Higher Ground. The show was one of many the band did in support of their Grammy-nominated sixth record, “Electric Blue Watermelon.”

And the good people behind Nugs.net are releasing Rock the Earth, a benefit album to support environmental conversation in these United States:

Nugs.net’s artist partners donated the recordings for this compilation, including an exclusive release from Jack Johnson. Other artists contributing to the benefit compilation include Dave Matthews Band, Grateful Dead, Phish, Widespread Panic, The String Cheese Incident, The Disco Biscuits, The Radiators, Trey Anastasio, Gov’t Mule, STS9, Zero, Umphrey’s McGee, moe., and ALO.

Read on for a full tracklist for that cool-lookin’ Nugs.net hippie compilation…