Posts by DaveO

Sometimes less is more. Effort that is. This week, you’re only getting tracks from three different bands, but I’m giving you fat sections of music from all three entries. Those of you who download the weekly podcast (and yelled at me last week for not including a download link) will be settling in for an hour’s worth of music from a Jazz Duo that somehow captured the hearts of jamband fans years ago, a trancefusion band in the midst of an impressive summer tour playing large stages and the brownest band on the scene.

After not delivering last week, the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast is back, click here to download.

[Thanks to tgakidisfor this week’s photo]

Benevento Russo Duo – Blues For Allah, Best Reason To Buy The Sun
Date & Venue: 2010-08-27 Highline Ballroom – New York, NY
Taper & Show Download: nyctaper

Joe Russo stated in an interview with JamBase in February of last year that, “I don’t care who comes to see our band; if you like our music, that’s great. But the first time someone yelled a Phish song at us when we were playing as The Duo, I got really fucking pissed. I was like, ‘That’s it, all we are now is this [band] that has to do with Phish.” This problem I’m sure has continued to grow as since that interview was published, he is now also touring with Phil Lesh and Bob Weir. It seems as though he may have gotten over it though, as The Duo last week performed the long GD composition Blues For Allah.

No future tourdates for the Benevento Russo Duo are currently on the books, but Marco Benevento is playing with Garage A Trois alongside Skerik, Mike Dillon and Stanton Moore; they play tomorrow at Doug Fir in Portland, OR. Joe Russo resumes his drumming duties with Furthur on September 16th in Eugene, OR.

Video of The Duo playing their BIG HIT Becky…

READ ON for tracks from the Disco Biscuits and Ween…

Atlantic City is from the 1982 Bruce Springsteen solo release Nebraska. The tune went through a grand reworking in 2006 when Bruce toured with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour which you can see at the bottom of this piece.

The Contestants:

Without a doubt the most famous cover of Atlantic City was done by The Band for their 1993 album Jericho.

READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…

Friday Mix Tape is supposed to be in general a shorter piece that doesn’t require too much “thinking”, but we’re going to see if we can rhythmically stretch your mind a little bit today. Rather than get into the history of odd time signatures and writing tunes in 5, I am going to point you […]

I’ve been a little busy the past few weeks, so my apologies for neglecting this column. But I’m back and while technically I’m only supposed to be using performances from August 16th – 22nd, I need to grab a little something from Sunday August 15th because the Jeff Tweedy solo set from Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival welcomed many special guests and was all around awesome. We’ll start with a few tracks from that and move on to some setlist trickery that My Morning Jacket has been employing and close out with the guitarmageddon that ensues when two jamband shredders sit-in which each other’s ensembles.

[Thanks to liveween for this week’s photo]

Artist & Title: Jeff Tweedy – Various – See Below.
Date & Venue: 2010-08-15 Solid Sound Festival – North Adams, MA
Taper & Show Download: Brenndan Murphy

Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival, by everything I’ve heard, was a massive success and one of the highlights was the Jeff Tweedy solo set that featured a number of rarities, special guests and essentially turned into a Wilco set by the end of it. I’m going to embed three separate tunes from the show but I recommend downloading the whole thing now. Tweedy plays a solo set on Sunday at Loufest in St. Louis and Wilco next plays Friday September 3rd at Jazz Aspen.

Look Out For My Love (w/ all of Avi Buffalo)
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READ ON for two more tracks from the Tweedy set as well as MMJ & RAQ…

“Let me tell you what this End of Summer Tour is about. It’s all about our fans being in the big venue with the big bill. The entire tour is a springboard for a big lightshow and big production.” the Disco Biscuits have just released a hysterical viral video based on the opening scene of […]

It has been seven years since The Postal Service released Give Up and I still listen to it at least once a month. The obvious choice for a Cover Wars would have been Such Great Heights with the likes of Iron & Wine and Ben Folds likely to battle it out for the win, but when I sat down to write it, I figured I’d pick a different tune on the record so we could delve a bit more into obscurity. What follows is an interesting collection where the professionally recorded takes are not necessarily superior to the do-it-yourself YouTube sensations. Have a listen below to six different covers of the opening track to what will hopefully not be the only ever LP from The Postal Service.

The Contestants:

English singer Frank Turner leads us off this week with a solo acoustic version available on his release Source: First Three Years.

Turner performing a live version:

READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…

[Originally Published: December 1, 2009]

On Your Way Down was originally released on Allen Toussaint’s 1972 album Life, Love and Faith. It’s OK if you thought this was written by Little Feat, because a lot of people do. Little Feat recorded their studio version just months after Toussaint and put it on their record Dixie Chicken.

The Contestants:

Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint: I’m always torn on whether or not to include tracks like this in Cover Wars. That is, covers that also feature the original recording artist. But in this case, Elvis Costello handles the lead vocal duties for the duration of the song, plus it’s an amazing take – so it would be a shame not to include it. If you’re not familiar with this CD/DVD, it’s amazing – would make a good holiday gift. Source: The River In Reverse

READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…

The upcoming live release from Trey Anastasio is cleverly titled TAB At The TAB as the tracks all come from the February 27th, 2010 concert at Atlanta’s The Tabernacle. The album will be released on September 14th and if you order through iTunes or LivePhish you get two bonus tracks: Birdwatcher and Cayman Review. Dry […]

The nature of this weekly feature is that it highlights the quick turnaround of recordings made of live concerts. As the years have gone on, it has become easier to turn around these tapes faster and faster. And with our point-and-shoot cameras getting better every year, it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to shoot some good video and upload it to YouTube. What is really fucking impressive about this week’s selections is that there are two different pro-shot videos officially released to accompany our audio. And one of them took place two days ago!

[Thanks to NeilyBoy for this week’s photo]

And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you.

Click here to download the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast

Artist & Title: American Babies – Winter War Games
Date & Venue: 2010-08-08 House of Blues – Atlantic City, NJ
Taper & Show Download: Unknown

In this era of frequently selling live concerts over the Internet, the freely available SBD patch is becoming somewhat of a rarity. So I was excited to see this show up with the SBD source on the Live Music Archive as I did my weekly search for audio from the previous week. It’s been a busy summer for Tom Hamilton & American Babies playing shows with Big Light, Tea Leaf Green, and Umphrey’s McGee. This track, was released on the Weight of the World – EP in April of this year. American Babies next play the Liberate Music & Arts Festival in Sheldon, VT on Friday August 20th.

READ ON for tracks from Gov’t Mule, Phish, and Umphrey’s McGee.

Yesterday, Luke “The Prophet” Sacks shared his preview of the second leg of Summer Tour and laid out the ever-shrinking list of songs that Phish could possibly bustout that they have played at least once before. Today, we’re going to have a listen to some of the best songs written by the individual members during […]

I had a horrible nightmare, I dreamed that we went…back in time. It was terrible. Well…We’re safe and sound now, back in good old 2010. We’ve got a nice collection this week, opening up with long instrumental exploration, members of The Grateful Dead, a jamband’s first show in over a year and some topical humor dedication from our friends from down south.

[Thanks to Craig T for this week’s photo]

And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you.

Click here to download the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast

Artist & Title: Geoff Scott’s Public House – Unknown
Date & Venue: 2010-07-20 Atwoods Tavern – Cambridge, MA
Taper & Show Download: Andy Murray

I often write in this feature about one of Boston’s best kept secrets – Club D’Elf. Another one is Geoff Scott, guitarist formerly of Miracle Orchestra, that heads up Tuesday Night gigs at Atwood’s Tavern in Cambridge, MA. Geoff pulls from a similar pool of musicians that show up at Club D’Elf, and this 20-minute segment of music – which we are all having trouble figuring out song titles for – illustrates what this ensemble is all about. This past Tuesday’s performance featured Mike Rivard of Club D’Elf (Bass, Sintir, Kalimba), Johnny Trama (Guitar), Timo Shanko (Saxophone) and Brian Sayers (Drums). It’s not the most organized pickup jam, so I can’t even point you to a website that tells you when the next gig is.

READ ON for tracks from String Cheese Incident, the Rhythm Devils and Widespread Panic…

Whoops! Looks like we have entered into some type of wormhole because something seems funny about this edition of Last Week’s Sauce. Our President is William Jefferson Clinton and Elian Gonzales has been recently returned to his native Cuba. Gas prices are continuing to rise, we’re currently looking at $1.46 a gallon up 25% from last summer’s average of $1.17. And of course, there is a jamband show on every block. Let’s have a listen in!

[Thanks to kb for this week’s photo]

And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you.

Click here to download the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast
NOTE: This one clocks in at over two hours.

Artist & Title: Derek Trucks Band – Rastaman Chant
Date & Venue: 2000-07-16 Pittsburgh Blues Festival – Pittsburgh, PA
Taper & Show Download: Unknown

21 year-old guitarist Derek Trucks continues to be a musical force to be reckoned with. Trucks was officially made a member of The Allman Brothers Band last summer and in between playing Red Rocks earlier this month and picking up the second leg of ABB tour now, Derek snuck in a few gigs with his solo band.

Susan Tedeschi joins the Derek Trucks Band for Valentine’s Day earlier this year. Call me crazy but I think she might have a thing for young Derek:

READ ON for tracks from Agents of Good Roots, Billy Bragg, the Disco Biscuits, Living Daylights, Phil Lesh, Phish, SCI, Soulive, Kimock and Ween…

Any Major Dude Will Tell You is the third track on the 1974 Steely Dan album Pretzel Logic. Here’s a funny excerpt from Blinded by the Lyrics…

“Okay, friends, break out your Steely Dan decoder rings. Starting with the release of their debut album Can’t Buy A Thrill back in 1972, no group has trafficked in more oblique, head-scratching, and just plain weird lyrics than Steely Dan. Case in point: Have you ever seen a squonk’s tears?, an enigmatic line from “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” off the Pretzel Logic LP.’

What on earth is a squonk? As they used to say on the old Laugh-In television show, “Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!” Actually, don’t both bother, because the word squonk is not found in any dictionary.

It turns out that squonk is a piece of jabberwocky, a completely made-up word referring to a mysterious animal, that due to its abject homeliness, spends most of its time crying. Credit for coining squonk goes to William T. Cox, who introduced the word in his oddly named book Fearsom Critters of the Lumberwoods, with a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts. To quote from Mr. Cox’s volume: “The squonk is of a very retiring disposition, generally traveling about at twilight and dusk. Because of its misfitting skin, which is covered with warts and moles, it is always unhappy; in fact, it is said, by people who are best able to judge, to be the most morbid of beasts.”

Two years after Steely Dan introduced listeners to the mythical squonk in “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”, Genesis included the song “Squonk” on their A Trick of the Tail album, wherein Phil Collins sang: Stop your tears from falling / The trail they leave is very clear for all to see at night.

The Contestants:

God Street Wine: The earliest recording on the Live Music Archive of God Street Wine performing this cover dates back to 1990. So when GSW played it last Friday, it was a good 20 years since that night at The Wetlands. Resident GSW expert ScottyB pointed me in the direction of the performance below from 1994. Man, the way they perform the intro makes it sound more like The Grateful Dead than Steely Dan. Source: 9-16-1994

READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…

Wait, what year is it? God Street Wine and Ray’s Music Exchange were playing on the same night last week? We round out our look at the week that was with Boston’s world/jazz/fusion collective Club D’Elf and we lead off with Reid Genauer & The Assembly of Dust. Enjoy.

[Thanks to belexes for this week’s photo]

And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you.

Click here to download the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast

Artist & Title: Assembly of Dust – Light Blue Lover, Sometimes
Date & Venue: 2010-07-08 Brooklyn Bowl – Brooklyn, NY
Taper & Show Download: Z-Man

Taper Z-Man often shows up in this weekly feature, but the tapes are normally from down south. I guess Z-Man had some business to attend to in New York, so this show by Reid Genauer & The Assembly of Dust got taped. Jason Crosby, who opened the show, joined AOD for the majority of their set supplying fiddle and keyboards. The audio selection is from the encore which features one of AOD’s newest tunes and an old Strangefolk classic. Reid and the gang next play Friday July 23rd in North Conway, NH with The Brew supporting. Hey speaking of reunions, what do you say Reid?

READ ON for tracks from Club D’Elf, GSW and Ray’s Music Exchange…

Foreplay/Long Time is the third track on Boston’s self-titled 1976 debut. Though many think it is the best-selling debut album in the US of all time, it is actually second with that honor belonging to the Guns ‘N Roses’ 1987 debut Appetite For Destruction.

The Contestants:

The Brew: Leading off this week is a straight-ahead and well-performed rendition from The Brew. There are a few good harmonies here and obviously Boston’s lead singer, Brad Delp, is one of the hardest rock voices to cover. Source: 10-30-2009

READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…

Umphrey’s McGee @ Red Rocks (Jul. 3) & Gothic Theatre (Jul. 4)

When Umphrey’s McGee came to Denver back in January and hosted one of their S2 events at the Fillmore, one of the fan-submitted-themes put up on the board read, “1st Song You Will Play When You Headline Red Rocks”. The band responded by playing a section from the title track from their 2009 studio release Mantis. This took place before the announcement of Red Rocks & Blue and I certainly wouldn’t have thought less of the band if they had re-thought this decision, as it appeared to be decided onstage within seconds. But there we were about six months later as UM finally took the stage as headliners after playing the venue four times as support and the opening guitar riffs of Mantis reverberated throughout The Rocks. Not only did they open with it, split it up into three separate sections in their two hour power-set, but they also skipped the usual music box intro Preamble so they could immediately get down to business.

[All Photos by Mike Sherry]

The opening lyric of Mantis is, “We believe there’s something here worth dying for,” a fitting declaration for a band who was finally crossing a headlining Red Rocks gig off the bands to-do list in their thirteenth year of touring, a career that has seen over 1500 shows, 62 in the state of Colorado. Fireworks – unrelated to Red Rocks – shot off from a nearby speedway were a real treat for the first 20 minutes of the set for those positioned high up enough to see them.

The set was constructed of the band’s strongest material – pulling the majority of the set from their recent more “mature” offerings. Hangover and Hajimemashite were the only two songs played from the band’s formative years and Haji stands the test of time not seeming like a song written by a 21-year old.

READ ON for more of DaveO’s thoughts & Mike’s photos…

Happy Belated Independence Day Hidden Track readers. Over the weekend there were enough Rock & Roll Fireworks and renditions of The Star Spangled Banner to last a lifetime. We’ll go relatively easy on the patriotic front and we’ll get right down to business.

[Thanks to richfor this week’s photo]

And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you.

Click here to download the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast

Artist & Title: moe. – Nebraska, Ugly American
Date & Venue: 2010-07-04 Stone Pony – Asbury Park, NJ
Taper & Show Download: The Other Scott Bernstein

The best way for me to select tracks for Last Week’s Sauce is when I steal the ideas from my friends. When I saw ScottyB (not the ScottyB who taped this show) send out over his Facebook feed, “can’t believe moe. busted out Ugly American. Been waiting 14 years for that one.” – I knew immediately what one of the bands for this piece would be. moe. plays tonight at the LC Outdoor Pavilion in Columbus, OH.

Is there anything better than screaming guitars and fireworks?

READ ON for tracks from Pearl Jam, Phish and Steve Kimock’s band…

Originally Published February 3rd, 2009

I’m sure your first thought when you got the news that Phish played Killing In The Name at their July 4th tour closer was, “Hey, didn’t they do that for Cover Wars?” – Well – you’re right we did, back in February of ’09. A lot has changed in the last 17 months, including the audio playlists we used to use don’t work anymore thanks to the death of IMEEM. I’ve been meaning to go back through our old editions & fix the audio, & well – this is as good a start as any. There will be no voting this week, we’ve closed the poll as the Disco Biscuits won fair & square the first time around and even made it pretty far in the first annual March Madness Cover Wars Madness if you recall.

This track is from Rage Against The Machine’s 1992 debut self-titled album. The album topped out at #45 on The Billboard Top 200 in 1994. With this week’s artists covering the tune, it’s hard to determine if the bands are going for a legitimate angry performance or are going for a more satirical approach. Well, in some cases it’s clearer than others. Regardless of the intent, it’s always a crowd-pleaser.

The Contestants:

Audioslave: Since three of the four members that recorded the original version are in this group, I have decided not to include Audioslave as an available choice in the voting, ’cause that just wouldn’t be fair. But check below for an Audioslave performance from the Quart Festival in 2005. For those that might not know, that’s Chris Cornell of Soundgarden on lead vocals.

READ ON after the jump for the scoop on this week’s competitors…

During the peak hours of the year I search for tapes on my usual sites and realize: Oh, all the big dogs are out at the same time. And that’s what this week’s edition is going to be, four of the biggest touring acts that allow taping every night: Dave Matthews Band, Furthur (Featuring Bob Weir & Phil Lesh), Phish and Widespread Panic.

[Thanks to wmule for this week’s photo]

And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you.

Click here to download the Last Week’s Sauce Podcast

Artist & Title: Dave Matthews Band – Busted Stuff, Time Bomb, All Along The Watchtower
Date & Venue: 2010-06-23 DTE Energy Music Theatre – Clarkston, MI
Taper & Show Download: adamdowns

This three song encore segment features the title track from the 2002 DMB album, a tune from 2009’s Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King, and of course the DMB-cover staple All Along The Watchtower. Also of note, Dave has been playing a solo rendition of Neil Young’s Needle And The Damage Done this tour. DMB plays tonight at the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, NJ.

Video of Gravedigger from the same show:

READ ON for tracks from Furthur, Phish and Panic…

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is the title track from the 1998 Neutral Milk Hotel indie classic. Such a classic that Pitchfork gave it a perfect 10.0. Well, they gave the reissue a perfect 10. Some call it the most important indie album of all-time, only a select few super-hip fans of the genre wouldn’t put it in a Top 5 list, though saying that Neutral Milk Hotel is overrated is also popular. Point is, if you didn’t know of this band, album or song until Phish covered it last week – go buy it and listen to it over and over again.

The Contestants:

Fanfarlo: This London-based ensemble released this video on their official YouTube page for something they have called their “laptop sessions”.

READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…