Posts by Ace Cowboy

Attention people of Sunrise, Florida: Schools is now in session. Well, not yet — but the six-time winner of Entertainment Weekly‘s Most Likely To Be Horatio Sanz’s Biological Brother award will be rockin’ Sunrise come March. Love ’em or hate ’em, Widespread Panic will be your Langerado headliner this year. We’re pleased to announce that […]

It’s been exactly eight years since the last time I ate the fungus, the magic mushrooms. Now, I know this space’s supposedly a music blog and not a debauched forum for drug-induced narration and hippie Bacchanalia, but if there’s anything I’ve learned along the way, it’s that the two often go hand-in-hand.

The popular rock band Phish swung through Chicago (aka the Windy Apple or the City of Broad Hips) during Parents’ Weekend of my sophomore year in college. I missed the first night of the three-night stand in order to dine in style with the folks, but they departed Sunday morning and I enjoyed that night’s show thoroughly. I couldn’t wait for the Monday concert, and my over-anxiousness hurt me.

That last UIC show did not disappoint. From start to finish, Phish put on a stellar performance — one of the more underrated concerts I caught from the band. It was an all-good affair, except of course for the 45 minutes when I just completely freaked the fuck out, peaking hard in a fully enclosed arena with no air and no music to distract me, as the band was taking a break in between sets…

The kind folks that produce what I consider the nation’s best music festival are promising the Langerado lineup will be announced one week from today. That’s November 15th for those of youse without wall calendars or pocketwatches or cellular telephones or any discernable people skills. So bookmark the Langerado page to see which bands will be playing […]

Please accept our insincerest apologies if you happen to be one of these girls, but life is all about having fun at other people’s expense. So let this be a lesson: If you take a picture with the jam world’s (least) favorite son and post it on the information superhighway, you might want to crop out the […]

Judging from the hundreds of e-mails I’ve received this week about the civil responsibility of voting, I’m guessing today is Election Day. My dime-store political analysis: Leave it to the Lefties to peak entirely too soon. Unbridled optimism from the Democrats suddenly became dangerously cautious optimism (with a dash of Hide the Pelosi), and the […]

Not that I’m into velvet rope culture, but I was lucky enough to stroll the black carpet at the Beacon Theater premiere of the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line last November. The stars arrived and the girls dialed girlfriends to deliver reports on celebrity style. I left the theater that night admiring the acting’s obvious superiority over a somewhat mediocre script, but I still couldn’t shake the notion that nobody could truly nail the Man in Black.

I was a bit of a Cash late-bloomer. Sure, I’d always known the hits, but not until the summer in the year of our lord 2000 did Johnny ever provide the musical backdrop for such a protracted period of time for me. All summer long Cash’s ruggedly pained vocals serenaded our perpetual season of darts. He’d shout “Hey, Porter” when I’d hit double 20 or lament the time he took a shot of cocaine and shot his woman down after a just-missed-19 single three.

But the first time I heard his live performance at San Quentin, I got pretty geeked up. Part of me wanted to take a double shot of the manliest, dirtiest whiskey in the bar, smash a glass bottle on the table and stab the guy yappin’ at my lady right in the groin. Then I remembered I was a sheltered weakling from Lawn Gisland and my sudden confidence turned to envy of this man’s complete coolness.

I mention all this nonsense as a quasi-preface to this particular bit of town crying: A new, remastered two-CD, one-DVD Johnny Cash: At San Quentin set will be released to the masses later this month, and we’re offering a free copy to one lucky reader of this post. That’s right, one of youse can win the three-disc package as part of our first ever Everybody Wins When I Plug Something And In Return They Offer Me Free Shit To Give Away contest.

Some blogs pick winners at random and some like to throw out trivia, but I’d like to subjectively choose a commenter that deserves it based on their response to this question: If you were locked away in a pound-me-in-the-ass state prison for the rest of your living days, what individual musician or band would you least want swinging by the clink to provide a glimmer of hope to you and your fellow inmates? And like we’re back in grade school, explain your reasoning and show your work.

Respond early, respond often — the contest ends at midnight next Sunday evening, and a winner will be announced Monday, November 13th at a signing ceremony in the White House Roosevelt Room with oversized balloons and a bunch of fancy pens. Remember to leave an e-mail address at the bottom of your comment, and make sure to check back and see if you win the fuckin’ thing.

Read on after the jump for some samples from the release and a full track and band listing from this legendary follow-up to At Folsom Prison…

Warning: If you want your asses blown out, read this post… I’m not sure if New Line Cinema’s behind this leaked tease or whether it’s unauthorized sneakiness, but the first six incredible minutes of setup for what many people are calling “The Greatest Motion Picture of All Time” have been uploaded to YouTube. Okay, so […]

Here’s a cool clip of the Killer Bs — Bobby, Billy and Brent — ransacking a piano in some hotel lobby. I always thought Brent slept out back in the alley, but I guess this proves he stayed in the hotel with the rest of the non-homeless Dead members. [youtube]ziiUTqMOVNI[/youtube] I keed, I keed, Brent Mydland is a fucking […]

Pardon my thinly veiled East Coast bias here, but there’s no better arena in the country that matches up to Madison Square Garden. The stench of history, the sheer electricity, the kinetic energy, the $23 personal pizza…the life. Good news: the friendly programming executives at the MSG Nework have brilliantly green-lighted a 10-episode series that […]

My night unofficially ended at 2:40 am, when I stood outside my Bleecker Street apartment wondering if the spins would ever stop. At that moment, an Eastern European man in his late 20s approached me and said, “Excuse me, sir. You have toilet?” He held out two dollars, his face looked pained and he was definitely not in costume or character. “No. Dude, just no,” I managed to blurt out, and I headed upstairs to crash harder than Billy Joel. Ho, snap, girlfriend, a Billy Joel joke! I’m so fresh. What’s next, something about Paris Hilton?

My night officially began before 8 pm, when I stood bare-chested inside my Bleecker Street apartment wondering how drunk I could possibly get on a weeknight and still wake up in time for work. Kenny Alias was the first to arrive, “fresh from Deer Creek.” He had just wandered the West Village streets whispering “doses” and looking for a sixer of “phatty Sammy Smiths,” making his way up to my place early to tell me what a disaster the current crop of Tweezers have been. “Things were way better before the hiatus,” he lamented, never breaking his jaded vet character once.

The party had yet to start in earnest, but guests began to trickle in. “Hey, you wanna hit a bowl before more people get here?” I offered Kenny.

Without missing a beat, Kenny responded, “Nah, I’ve gotta work on an insane Motion for Reconsideration tomorrow.” You can take the wook out of the federal judge clerkship, but you can’t take the federal judge clerkship out of the wook.

We don’t have any poisoned Three Musketeers or Syphilis-infested Twix bars, but we are doling out a heaping handful of old Halloween shows today. Enjoy the free streams, and remember to stay out of Old Man Bernstein’s house… Black Crowes – 10/31/05, Riviera Theater Bob Marley – 10/31/73, The Record Plant Bruce Hornsby – 10/31/98, Yoshi’s […]

It’s Tuesday, time for another exciting edition of Pullin’ ‘Tubes. Now if you would please, let’s all turn to the music section of your hymnals, and let’s begin on three with the Chairman of the Board: I know Sinatra’s supposed to be this great untouchable force, but I can’t watch him sing without bursting into […]

Our man on the inside of Sunday night’s much-discussed, oft-Googled Rolling Stones concert bartered Injun-style with a member of Scorsese’s thugs for this copy of an annotated setlist. Interestingly enough, Brown Sugar is listed on this dually notarized document, but the band omitted it from the actual performance. Racism? I sure as shit wouldn’t rule it out.

Anyway, Hal Hansen’s a Friend of the Program here, and he so graciously offered to submit us a full review of the evening’s festivities. What follows is probably the most comprehensive review of anything ever, but it’ll also serve as the best eyewitness recap from the perspective of That Random Guy Just Like You that you’ll find anywhere on the information superhighway. So read on after the jump, or else Hal will surely cut you…job well done, sir.

Our friend and unofficial photographer/videographer Hal Hansen went down to the Beacon Theater last night for the first of two Scorsese-filmed Rolling Stones shows, and he’ll weigh in with an update soon. As a preview, here’s what he’s got: “That Loving Cup was far and away the musical highlight. Other highlights included high-fiving Keith Olberman, […]

Word has it the Allman Brothers may be forced to take up residency somewhere else when their time comes to plant their lazy asses in New York for a month. There’s still no official confirmation from any of the parties — and I’m entirely not sure there will be any time soon — but one […]

Ugh. Sorry. I just cringed writing that headline, so I can just imagine how much vomit reversed course on your own Peristalsis Trail while reading it. For those of you like us that are giant pussies and couldn’t make it to the second annual Vegoose, the good folks at AT&T — “Your World Delivered” — […]

I mean, what else would explain this guy’s string of horrible luck in the health department? For someone who’s done so much good for so many people, I can’t believe what kind of medical obstacles he’s been forced to overcome. As he’s so accustomed to doing with his instrument, Phil dropped another bomb on us […]

We’re featuring two special sneak previews for youse to devour today. The first requires no introduction whatsoever — take a gander at what the movie’s poster calls “The Greatest Motion Picture Of All Time”: Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny. The second preview comes from the long-awaited album collaboration of unheralded country ‘n blues legend […]

I’m not sure if your frat brothers or tour-rat friends sent you this clip yet, but if you haven’t seen this, enjoy the first four minutes of what many critics are already calling “the funniest movie ever made.” As you may determine in the preview, it at least has the greatest ping-pong scene in cinema history. [youtube]w-qO8Oywpas[/youtube] Truthfully I prefer Martin Lawrence […]

Fifteen years ago today, the music world lost a living legend that made it possible for even this website to exist. No, it’s not Internet inventor Al Gore, it’s famed concert promotor and producer Bill Graham, and we honor his memory today. Graham’s helicopter crashed near Vallejo, California on this day a decade and a half ago, as […]