Posts by Jeffrey Greenblatt

In our relentless pursuit of informing you about every festival that gets announced we let one slip through our fingers last week with announcement of the initial line-up of the Gathering Of The Vibes. The festie returns to Seaside Park in Bridgeport, CT and will once again be headlined by Phil Lesh & Friends, while […]

I gotta be honest I’m still burnt out from SXSW to really come up with something witty today. All those bands, all those panels, all those parties – it was exhausting. Oh wait I wasn’t in Austin, but it kind of felt like it from the wall to wall coverage detailing every second of the […]

Move over Wilco and My Morning Jacket, jam fans may have a new indie band to embrace – Of Montreal. While they may be best know for an insane arty stage show, nonsensical song names and the peddlers of the Bloomin’ Onion – they are also no stranger to the art of the cover song […]

For their Rolling Stone cover shoot back in 1992 Kurt Cobain famously wore a t-shirt declaring “Corporate Magazines Still Suck” as a way of sticking it to the establishment that was fawning over the band and seeing dollar signs. I’d like to see what Kurt’s reaction would have been to the new limited edition line […]

Happy St. Paddy’s Day everyone! When I was a kid it was all about Shamrock Shakes and green bagels – that’s how we Jews celebrated it at least. These days it’s all about trying to find the least obnoxious bar to throw back a few pints of Guinness, while I try to block out all […]

The Warfield Theater was host to 21 Grateful Dead show, 88 Jerry Band shows and numerous nights of Dead side projects over the years. Come this May, Phil Lesh along with Friends will take up residency at the legendary venue for a five-night run – bringing their tally to 30 performances. The bass player seems […]

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m really glad that SXSW is finally underway since I’m pretty sick of reading the scores and scores of previews that every music blog except this one has been posting (maybe next year Papa Glide will send us so we can get in on the act – hint, […]

I think it would be safe to say that interest in mopey singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen may be at an all time high right now. Last week as the result of some dreadlocked clown on American Idol covering Jeff Buckley’s take on Hallelujah the song soared to number one iTunes. Monday night Cohen was inducted into […]

How does an aging alt.rock band connect with a new generation of music fans? Well if your R.E.M. you hook up a the music discovery website iLike and allow people to stream your new album – Accelerate – for free a full six days before it hit stores for what the site is calling their […]

Forget about the buzz that has surrounded Vampire Weekend, because if music blogs had existed back in the mid-90s Radish would have become a household name rather then a footnote in the career of Ben Kweller. At the tender age of 15, Kweller and his grunge-based trio found themselves at the center of a major label bidding war – all of whom were looking to sign the next Nirvana (a band they were heavily influenced by, check their video for Pink Little Stars).

Radish eventually landed on Mercury Records, appeared on Conan, Letterman and even The Weird Al Show, but hype doesn’t necessarily led to success and their debut album Restraining Bolt was a commercial flop. The band’s sophomore effort was recorded, but never released and Kweller fled to New York City to pursue a solo career – all this by the age of 19. While many could have easily faded in obscurity, Ben decided to do things his own way and slowly built his solo career from the ground up. Read on to hear more about his slacker-infused indie-pop…