DVD Review: Phish – Live in Utica
My friend Matt once announced to a group of rabid Phish fans that he had never heard the Bathtub Gin from The Great Went, a jam many consider to be in the running for best ever status. He then explained that it wasn’t just because he was lazy, but he was saving it for a rainy day. Your first-listen to such a widely talked about piece of music is something you can only experience once and he was utilizing a little delayed gratification. I took his lead on my listening experience to Phish’s much talked about show in Utica last fall. I had traveled to the Augusta show the night before and went to a couple of the shows afterward, but didn’t make it to Utica. When the reviews started coming in about the all the Guyute craziness I told myself I would employ this tactic and listen to this show when the time was right.
When the news broke that the show would be the next Phish DVD release, I figured actually getting to watch the show as my first listen was even better than I had originally imagined, so that’s what I did. Armed with only the setlist and a general idea of the teases in the first set, I sat down on my couch and watched the show.
When the DVD was announced the press release mentioned that, “A new camera mounted at the front-of-house position accentuated the light show in a way never before featured on a live, indoor Phish DVD.” The camera is showcased, but what seems to be a constant complaint of Phish fans on video releases, the camera shot of the lights rarely lasts for more than 10 seconds at a time, and often ever shorter. The shot looks great, but the viewer can’t truly appreciate what lighting designer Chris Kuroda does for the band in six-second bursts.
READ ON for more of Dave’s thoughts on Live in Utica…
Cover Wars: Get Out My Life Woman (Allen Toussaint)
I was watching Allen Toussaint’s recording of Austin City Limits and before playing Get Out My Life Woman, Toussaint says,
“This song coming up is a song that I wrote for brother Lee Dorsey many years ago but it was really made popular by another great person, but it’s my most covered song of all songs I’ve written – I’m not sure why…..because ten minutes after I wrote it, I was quite confused.”
And I…I just don’t know what cover he is referring to. It’s been covered by so many major artists, as you’re about to see. I normally like to cap Cover Wars at ten renditions but somehow we ended up with 12 this time around, and that was excluding some legendary takes from the likes of Joe Williams and Jimi Hendrix.
The Contestants:
Artist: Ant Trip Ceremony
Album: 24 Hours
The Skinny: Chances are, if you aren’t familiar with a lot of random psychedelic bands from the 1960’s, you may not have heard of Ant Trip Ceremony, a band formed at Oberlin College with just this one album. In addition to the originals on their 1968 release are this cover and one of Hey Joe.
READ ON for more covers of Allen Toussaint’s Get Out My Life Woman…
Cover Wars: Fame (David Bowie)
Two weeks ago we announced on Twitter – and also right here on HT – that we were taking suggestions for future editions of Cover Wars. Last week, we took the lead from ChefRobD’s suggestion and examined five covers of The Crunge by Led Zeppelin. This week, we took the request of DrewPeiner and are looking at covers of Fame by David Bowie. Written by Bowie with a little help from John Lennon, it was released on the 1975 album Young Americans.
The Contestants:
Artist: Addison Groove Project
Album: 4-24-2004
The Skinny: Leading off this week’s edition is a cover of Fame from Addison Groove Project, a band that is unfortunately no longer on the road. This recording is from their first-ever trip to San Francisco back in 2004.
READ ON for more covers of David Bowie’s Fame…
Cover Wars: The Crunge (Led Zeppelin)
Well you asked for it. Last week we announced on Twitter – and also right here on HT – that we were taking suggestions for this weeks Cover Wars and we are men and women of our words. We went with ChefRobD’s suggestion to take a look at covers of The Crunge by Led Zeppelin.
The Crunge was released in 1973 on Houses Of The Holy and combines odd-time signatures with a James Brown-esque funk riff, a pairing that as it turns out is a match made in heaven.
For those of you who sent in suggestions that were not selected, hang tight because we are already working on next week’s edition which also was a suggestion gathered from Twitter feedback.
The Contestants:
Artist: Bustle In Your Hedgerow
Live Show: 2009-01-17
The Skinny: Marco Benevento and Joe Russo of the Benevento/Russo Duo plus Dave Dreiwitz of Ween and Scott Metzger of Rana make up this instrumental Led Zeppelin tribute band. This performance of Crunge is lifted out of a three song medley from this 2009 show where Crunge was sandwiched between Trampled Under Foot and How Many More Times. I’ve left a little of the audio of both of the songs in for context, but to hear the entire segment you should click on over to the full show at the Live Music Archive.
READ ON for more covers of The Crunge from the likes of Gov’t Mule…
Cover Wars: Heart Of Gold (Neil Young)
There have been a number of legendary singer/songwriters that have covered Neil Young’s Heart of Gold over the years such as Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, but it’s pretty safe to say we’ll never see Bob Dylan taking a pass at it. In a 1985 interview with Spin Magazine Dylan explained his annoyance with Heart of Gold…
The only time it bothered me that someone sounded like me was when I was living in Phoenix, Arizona, in about ’72 and the big song at the time was “Heart of Gold.” I used to hate it when it came on the radio. I always liked Neil Young, but it bothered me every time I listened to “Heart of Gold.” I think it was up at number one for a long time, and I’d say, “Shit, that’s me. If it sounds like me, it should as well be me.”
Honestly, I don’t hear it all that much. Does Bob Dylan have a trademark on acoustic guitar and harmonica or something? Anyways, we have a diverse set of covers this week, some from the world of soul music while others are more straight ahead. Have a listen and don’t forget to vote for your favorite.
The Contestants:
While not officially released on an album, The Bad Plus have a fantastic arrangement of Heart of Gold that they play live. Audio Source: 7-26-2009
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/badplusgold.mp3]READ ON for more covers of Heart of Gold…
Introducing: Hidden Track Mobile
The web is growing increasingly mobile and it’s time Hidden Track caught up. On the heels of officially launching our official Twitter feed, we have now optimized our site for a superior reading experience for anyone viewing Hidden Track on a smartphone. A quick look at our traffic analytics shows us that in March of 2010, 4% of our traffic came from mobile devices. That number is up by a multiple of three as 12% of our traffic came from mobile devices in March of this year.
We are using a great plugin for Wordpress called WPtouch Pro. For bloggers out there using Wordpress, we highly recommend both the free version, WPtouch, and also think it is absolutely worth the $39 to buy the Pro version of this package that we found out-of-the-box very easy to configure.
Now that we’ve got a mobile interface up and running, we hope you are now more likely to check in on the latest Hidden Track stories on your mobile device while you’re commuting, at a bar, waiting for the band to go on at your next show or wherever you may be. There is no URL to bookmark, just navigate to Hidden Track or any article from your smartphone or tablet and the page will automatically render in a format suitable for your device.
And here is where we need your help. We can’t decide how to display the mobile version of our homepage. We laid out the two options and in true Hidden Track fashion we’re letting our readers decide which one to go with.
READ ON for the two options and to vote…
Cover Wars March Madness: Championship
It seems like only yesterday that we started with the play-in game and had our 32 covers set up to compete. Today we’re down to our final showdown featuring Perpetual Groove’s cover of Live and Let Die squaring off against My Morning Jacket’s performance of It Makes No Difference.
The Final Matchup
Perpetual Groove – Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney) – A Play-In Selection
Perpetual Groove performing Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney from 10-30-2010
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/pgroovemadness.mp3]
VS.
My Morning Jacket – It Makes No Difference (The Band)
My Morning Jacket had the pleasure of recording It Makes No Difference for the 2007 compilation Endless Highway: The Music Of The Band at Levon Helm’s studio in Woodstock, NY. In 2006, prior to the release of Endless Highway, My Morning Jacket frequently covered the song in concert including their Bonnaroo festival set as well as in opening slots for Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder frequently came out to trade verses with MMJ lead vocalist Jim James.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/diffmmj.mp3]
Eddie Vedder with MMJ:
READ ON for the final vote!
Cover Wars March Madness: Final Four
Well, we started with 32 covers, 29 of which had won a Cover Wars over the past year and three that gained entry into the tournament via our Play-In Game, and we are down to our Final Four in the third annual Cover Wars March Madness. Voting ends on Friday at midnight EDT, so take a look at the remaining contestants and be sure to make your vote count.
Matchup #1:
Phish debuted this cover at Alpine Valley in the Summer of 1998. As most Phish fans know, there has been one other performance ever and it was the following week at Vernon Downs where the band paired Ramble On with their own Slave To The Traffic Light to close the first set. There are some killer Ramble On Teases in the Slave jam. Source: 8-1-1998
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/phramble.mp3]
UPDATE: The text in all the descriptions for Cover Wars March Madness are taken from the original editions which at times – are out of date. As one of our readers pointed out in the previous round – Phish has since performed one more partial performance of Ramble On, and yes – it was pretty terrible.
VS.
Perpetual Groove – Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney) – A Play-In Selection
Perpetual Groove performing Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney from 10-30-2010
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/pgroovemadness.mp3]
READ ON to place your vote and to check out the other match…
Cover Wars March Madness: The Elite 8
As the NCAA Basketball Tournament reduces down to eight teams today, we are a couple hours ahead of the game with our Elite 8 Bracket. There were some close contests in the Sweet 16, like The Band narrowing out Umphrey’s McGee w/Jennifer Hartswick in a 51% to 49% contest. We have our updated bracket below and four match-ups for you to vote on.
Matchup #1
Phish debuted this cover at Alpine Valley in the Summer of 1998. As most Phish fans know, there has been one other performance ever and it was the following week at Vernon Downs where the band paired Ramble On with their own Slave To The Traffic Light to close the first set. There are some killer Ramble On Teases in the Slave jam. Source: 8-1-1998
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/phramble.mp3]
UPDATE: The text in all the descriptions for Cover Wars March Madness are taken from the original editions which at times – are out of date. As one of our readers pointed out in the previous round – Phish has since performed one more partial performance of Ramble On, and yes – it was pretty terrible.
VS.
Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)
Jeff Buckley: Buckley’s hauntingly dramatic version from his 1994 debut Grace is the best known cover of Hallelujah. It’s one of the best known covers of any song ever. Many people who love the Buckley version have no idea Cohen was the originator – I know I’ve met more than a few.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/hallelujahbuckley.mp3]
Video from Chicago in 1995:
READ ON to vote on the remaining three matchups in the Elite 8…
Friday Mix Tape: Name-Checking Songs
We all know plenty of songs that reference another song by name, for example the famous line in Sweet Home Alabama, “I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern Man don’t need him around anyhow.” Or how about when Snow Patrol sings, “Put Sufjan Stevens on and we’ll play your favorite song. Chicago bursts to […]
Cover Wars March Madness: Sweet 16
Cover Wars March Madness rolls on. We’ve had our play-in round and our first full round of 32 covers and we’re left with our Sweet 16. We are in our third year of this tournament and we have just now done the obvious, we have generated an actual bracket so you can visualize how this is all going to go down. Have a look and be sure to vote in all eight matchups.
Matchup #1
Phish debuted this cover at Alpine Valley in the Summer of 1998. As most Phish fans know, there has been one other performance ever and it was the following week at Vernon Downs where the band paired Ramble On with their own Slave To The Traffic Light to close the first set. There are some killer Ramble On Teases in the Slave jam. Source: 8-1-1998
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/phramble.mp3]
UPDATE: The text in all the descriptions for Cover Wars March Madness are taken from the original editions which at times – are out of date. As one of our readers pointed out in the previous round – Phish has since performed one more partial performance of Ramble On, and yes – it was pretty terrible.
VS.
Wilco recorded this cover for the 2006 Big Star covers record Big Star Small World. Though never played live by Wilco, the song has made at least 11 appearances at Jeff Tweedy solo shows.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wilco13.mp3]
READ ON to vote on the remaining seven matchups in the Sweet 16.
Picture Show: Umphrey’s @ The Fillmore
Umphrey’s McGee returned to San Francisco’s Fillmore on March 12 and 13 for a pair of performances that saw Colorado upstarts Big Gigantic open.
[All photos by Dave Vann]
Saturday night’s show featured a jam-heavy first set including extended takes on one of the newer songs in the UM repertoire Conduit, as well as Red Tape, a song from 2009’s Mantis that the band frequently showcases a middle section of improvisation. Before closing the first set with a mashup of Everybody Wants To Rule The World and The Way You Make Me Feel, guitarist Brendan Bayliss had the honor of helping a fan propose to his girlfriend from the stage, and she of course said “yes.”
Sunday’s show was easier to move around in compared to the sellout the previous night and the band paid tribute to the late Owsley ”Bear” Stanley by performing a partial instrumental rendition of Steely Dan’s Kid Charlemagne, a song written about Owsley’s influence on the 1960’s Bay Area LSD scene. Night two also saw Dominic Lalli of Big Gigantic lend his saxophone skills to The Rollin Stones’ vamp Can’t You Hear Me Knockin.’
The next show for UM is UMBowl II at Park West in Chicago on April 2. Previously sold out, the band is releasing a limited number of general admission tickets tomorrow, March 22, at 12PM Central Daylight Time.
READ ON for more of Dave Vann’s shots from UM in SF…
Cover Wars March Madness: Round 1, Pt. 2
Earlier this week we had Part I of Round 1 of this year’s Cover Wars March Madness. Voting is still open for Part I and today you’ve got eight more matchups to vote on. Voting ends on Monday, March 21 at 11:59M PT with the round of 16 posting to follow on Tuesday afternoon.
Matchup #9 (Covers by Phish):
Phish debuted this cover at Alpine Valley in the Summer of 1998. As most Phish fans know, there has been one other performance ever and it was the following week at Vernon Downs where the band paired Ramble On with their own Slave To The Traffic Light to close the first set. There are some killer Ramble On Teases in the Slave jam. Source: 8-1-1998
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/phramble.mp3]
VS.
Phish: The Fall Of 1994 saw Phish mixing things up with their musical genres and instrumentation. The band performed a number of bluegrass classics with keyboardist Page McConnell moving to upright bass, bassist Mike Gordon playing the banjo, guitarist Trey Anastasio simply moved to an acoustic and drummer Jon Fishman playing the washboard (he played mandolin on some other ’94 bluegrass tunes as well). Source: 11-12-1994 via From The Archives Bonnaroo 2009
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/bostonphish1.mp3]Phish: The Phish bluegrass rendition of Foreplay/Longtime disappeared after 1994 but four and half years later the quartet rolled into Mansfield, Massachusetts (35 miles southwest of the city of Boston) and opened with this electric version. On a personal note, this was the first song I ever saw Phish play live, and it was 11 years ago yesterday. Source: 7-12-1999
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/bostonphish2.mp3]
READ ON to vote on the remaining seven matchups for the the second half of Cover Wars March Madness Round 1…
Cover Wars March Madness: Round 1, Pt. 1
Last week, we kicked off the beginning of Cover Wars March Madness by announcing our first ever “play-in” game. We took ten covers that had not previously participated in a Cover Wars and let the readers select up to three for automatic entry into this year’s tournament.
The winners of the play-in round are:
1) Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney) as performed by Perpetual Groove
2) Across 110th Street (Bobby Womack) as performed by My Morning Jacket
3) FM (Steely Dan) as performed by 2D (Gorillaz) featuring Nathain Haines
The other 29 entries already gained entry into the tournament the conventional way – by winning a Cover Wars in the past year. Now that we’ve got our 32 covers selected, let’s take a look at the matchups…
Matchup #1 (Bob Dylan Covers):
The Black Crowes – Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
In addition to performing the song live, The Black Crowes also contributed a studio take to this 1995 disc for NORML that also includes Gov’t Mule performing Don’t Step On The Grass, Sam, and Widespread Panic’s studio take of And It Stoned Me, amongst other tracks. Source: Hempilation: Freedom is NORML
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/rainydaycrowes.mp3]
VS.
The Black Keys – Wicked Messenger
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)
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/bkmessenger.mp3]
READ ON to vote in the remaining seven matchups for the the first half of Cover Wars March Madness Round 1…
Cover Wars: March Madness Play-In-Game
Well, Selection Sunday is this weekend and we here at Hidden Track are gearing up for our third annual Cover Wars: March Madness tournament. What we do is we take the winners of selected weekly Cover Wars throughout the past 12 months and put them up against each other with the winner being crowned Cover Wars Champion of the Year.
The first year’s winner was Mr. Blotto with its cover of 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover by Paul Simon. Last year, Perpetual Groove emerged victorious with its cover of the Talking Heads’ This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody). We are going to have 32 entries this year, but so far only 29 tickets have been punched. We need your help to select three more covers to make it into the brackets – so starting now through the rest of the week the battle is on for the final three slots among these ten covers.
2D featuring Nathain Haines performing FM by Steely Dan.
READ ON to see the other nine covers vying for the three play-in spots…
Cover Wars: Pale Blue Eyes (The Velvet Underground)
Pale Blue eyes is track four of the self-titled third album by The Velvet Underground. Covered by what I find to be a surprising amount of artists, we have narrowed it down to six diverse entries this week. Check in next week for the beginning of the annual Cover Wars March Madness.
The Contestants:
Leading off this week is this stunning rendition from Alejandro Escovedo that illustrates the positive atmosphere produced from an extremely quiet and attentive live audience:
READ ON for five more covers of Pale Blue Eyes…
Cover Wars: Thirteen (Big Star)
Thirteen was originally released on the 1972 Big Star album #1 Record. Clocking in at 2:35 with three verses and no chorus, it is just a fantastic tune about young love with the third verse pressing the question, “Would you be an outlaw for my love?”
The Contestants:
Leading off this week we’ve got Ari Hest and his live performance from Mexicali Blues in Teaneck, NJ. Source: 11-7-2008
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ari13.mp3]READ ON for four more covers of Thirteen…
B List: 10 Things You Might Not Remember About Trey Anastasio’s First Solo Tour
In May of 1999, Trey Anastasio hit the road for his first solo tour. For this 12-show tour, Trey kicked things off with an acoustic set before welcoming drummer Russ Lawton and bassist Tony Markellis for an electric second set. The debut TAB tour contained plenty of standout moments, but there are a few highlights that generally get forgotten about in Trio Tour discussions.
This week’s B List continues “Trey Week” by detailing 10 Things You Might Not Remember About Anastasio’s First Solo Tour. As the Phish front man sets off to embark on a tour tomorrow with the same number of shows and same format as the 1999 TAB tour, let’s take a look back at that initial run…
10) Type THAT into The Internet
“Golden Banter” as they say. It was 1999 and none of us were nearly as familiar with The Internet as we are now. After reading that his band had covered Voodoo Child when they had not Trey accurately pointed out, “There’s all this information but half of it is wrong!”. Then, there was also Trey’s reneged promise that the first person to type a song title into The Internet for his new acoustic ditty would have naming rights. Turns out that both the Internet’s pick of Minestrone and Trey’s pick of Purple Hugh didn’t stick and Page ultimately named the song The Inlaw Josie Wales. In this audio montage we hear all of this banter plus Trey’s hilarious take on his song’s “duologies.”
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/treyinternet.mp3]UPDATE: The nice thing about online publishing is that we can do things like this. So after being reminded by my good friend Brett aka “This guy here in the front row is yelling” reminds me of another chapter in Instrumental Internet Namegate. So here is the audio from Asheville that didn’t make it into the above montage.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/treyasheville.mp3]READ ON for more of this week’s Trey Week B List…
The Number Line: Trey Week Edition
Trey Week continues on Hidden Track with the return of a feature for the stat geek in us all – The Number Line. This edition of The Number Line takes a close look at Trey Anastasio’s solo career by the numbers. As always, be sure to add your own entries to our list in the comments section.
310 – Different songs played at Trey Solo Shows
145 – Instances of Drifting [The Most Played Trey Solo Song]
143 – Shows since the last Quantegy [5/3/2005]
141 – Instances of Push On ‘Til The Day [The 2nd Most Played Trey Song]
51 – First Tube Encores
READ ON for more of the Trey Week edition of The Number Line…
Cover Wars: “Trey Week” Edition
If you’re familiar with Cover Wars, a Tuesday staple here at Hidden Track, you know we take a song covered by at least a few artists, embed audio and video of different artists covering the song – and have our readers vote on the best version. Since it’s Trey Week, we are putting a different spin on it. For this edition of Cover Wars, we have a compiled a collection of ten different TAB covers. Since there have been so many different lineups of this band, we have kept it to just covers that have been played by the rhythm section of Tony Markellis & Russ Lawton and the horns.
And since we’re mixing things up so much, we’re going to allow you to select the three that are your favorites, and not just one.
The Covers:
C’mon Baby Let’s Go Downtown (Crazy Horse) Last Played: 10/23/2008
This Crazy Horse cover was debuted on the Trey ’99 tour and one of the few covers to get plays by both Phish and Trey’s solo bands. Missing in action for over six years, it reappeared on Classic TAB tour to open the 10/21/2008 show in Providence, RI.
Audio: 6-11-2002
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/treydowntown.mp3]
READ ON for nine more TAB covers and to vote for your favorite three…