Posts by Jeffrey Greenblatt

Earlier this week the HT Staff picked their favorite albums of ’08, when we gathered Around The Barbecue. To continue on our year-end house cleaning, we’ve got another list. Back in early July I dropped my Top 6 Of The First 6 list, and since we’re not ones for traditional Top Ten around these parts I figured I’d revisit that format to round out the year’s releases.

The second half of the year saw releases from a number of my favorite artists, many of which made it on this list. So let’s get to my favorite six albums that were released in the last six months of 2008…

6. Blind Pilot – 3 Rounds and a Sound

This album was a late discovery for me – despite its July release. I literally picked it up several weeks back after hearing it mentioned on NPR during All Songs Considered’s Year In Music show and haven’t been able to stop listening to it since. Blind Pilot have taken the White Stripes/Black Keys minimalist band model of guitarist and drummer and unplugged it – though live they play with a nine-piece band. The Portland, OR duo’s debut is chocked full of strummy, lush indie-folk that would provide the perfect Sunday morning soundtrack and has helped to cement the Pacific Northwest’s stronghold on producing some of the best albums of the year.

READ ON for Some Dude’s top five releases of the second half of ’08…

After weeks of letting the episodes pile up on my DVR I finally sat down to watch Elvis Costello’s new talk show on the Sundance Channel – Spectacle: Elvis Costello With… and have been absolutely mesmerized by Costello’s intelligence and wit in engaging his guests. Costello seems to have a knack for getting people to […]

We hope that you rang in 2009 with style last night. I spent mine with My Morning Jacket as they ripped the roof off the Garden with a monster three and half hour show that included some fantastic covers. So, as you manage to shake off your first hangover of the year I figured we’d cut right to the chase and unload a batch of links to get you through the day…

• List Time: Best Album Cover Art Of ’08
• The Boss to release a Wal-Mart only Greatest Hits disc
• A cassette tape of a drunk John Lennon sells for $30 K
• Amander Palmer is pissed that her videos are gone from YouTube
• Cover Alert: Lykke Li tackles Kings Of Leon
• Paul’s Boutique will get reissued for its’ 20th anniversary
• An Apples In Stereo song is featured in a new Pepsi ad
• Zooey Deschanel and DC4C’ Ben Gibbard got engaged
• Give a listen to the demo that got Biggie Smalls signed
• AD kicks down a Jeff Magnum solo show from ’96
• Merl Saunders estate is suing Jerry Garcia’s over unpaid royalties

We here at HT want to wish you all a very Happy New Year and are looking forward to big 2009. READ ON for the full setlist and some videos from MMJ’s Monumental New Year’s show at the Garden…

On the heels of Phil & Bobby’s monster throw down last night in San Francisco, and as expected by anyone that got the latest issue of Relix in their mailbox over the last few days The Dead will in fact hit the road this Spring for a 19 date arena tour that will hit a […]

With 2008 rapidly coming to a close, we can start looking forward to the plethora of festival line up announcements that will be coming our way in the next few weeks and months. So, to get you used to the constant bombardment that is headed your way, we thought we’d tell you about the initial […]

I thought that I had cemented my list of favorite albums of the year about a month or so ago, but after listening to All Songs Considered’s Year In Music show I was introduced to the music of the indie-folk duo Blind Pilot. Unbeknownst to me the Portland, OR band released their debut album 3 […]

Alright kids, thought I’d get all those holiday songs that have been floating in your head for the last 48 hours or so out of there with a Mix Tape chocked full of some of my favorite tunes from 2008 releases. So sick back and relax and be prepared to have these six tunes rattling […]

Well, we’ve reached the end of our second quasi-annual installment of Grateful Dead-related Pullin’ ‘Tubes around these parts. We hope everyone has enjoyed watching and listening to the gems we’ve dug up, and I’m sure we’ll be back with round three sometime in 2009. While the band had a large cannon of original compositions to […]

My threshold for holiday music is pretty low, but there are a handful of Christmas songs that this Jew actually enjoys hearing around this time. While I was all set to share Darlene Love’s annual stunning performance of Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) from  The Late Show with David Letterman along with Jay Thomas’ hilarious […]

While everyone is either off unwrapping presents, drinking eggnog and enjoying some time with their family or figuring out which movie they’ll see followed by chomping down on some Chinese food I figured we’d cut right to the chase and unload a batch of links to get you through the day…. List Time: Stereogum’s 20 […]

We are all familiar with the Grateful Dead’s prowess as an electric rock band, but when the boys unplugged they were also quite the formidable roots-Americana act – deftly moving from folk to country to blues. Their acoustic, electric shows from 1970 (with Jerry also logging in a set playing pedal steel with the New […]

To say that the city of New Orleans has been through a lot in the last few years, would be an understatement. While the Crescent City recovers from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the one constant has been its rich music tradition and its flagship event the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. The fest […]

With the Phil Lesh & Friends / RatDog two-night Bay-area New Year’s run barely a week away and the leak of a mini-doc about The Dead’s Penn State reunion show, it’s a good time to be a fan of the music of the Grateful Dead. With that in mind we thought we’d once again offer […]

As I was trolling through YouTube looking for some tasty clips for our second Grateful Dead themed week, I stumbled across a rather interesting video of a young Joni Mitchell performing the Bobby cowboy classic Me & My Uncle – a song that up until now, I had always thought was a Dead original. After […]

Yesterday, after a couple of tracks from Animal Collective’s forthcoming album Merriweather Post Pavilion leaked, an email surfaced purportedly from Brian Weitz aka Geologist imploring their fans to assist in leaking the rest of the album. Well, according to a post on Stereogum Deerhunter front man Bradford Cox is calling the email “bullshit” after speaking […]

If you’ve been paying attention to the Best Of lists that have been rolling out these last couple of weeks the one album that seems to be floating near the top has been Bon Iver’s debut album – For Emma, Forever Ago. I previously drooled over this one when I put together my Top 6 […]

Looks like the art of the cover song may not just be a jamband thing anymore. Come this Valentine’s Day,  lo-fi indie rockers Times New Viking will honor the Velvet Underground with a special tribute show to the influential band. The show will serve as the closing party for the Wexner Center For The Arts’ […]

No grand theme for Mix Tape this week, but this one is inspired by a feature that I used to be a fan of when my friend was writing for Best Week Ever’s blog. The basic gist is to hit the “shuffle songs” button on your iPod and see what it spits out and post […]

Have you ever wondered just how to categorize bands like Okkervil River, The Hold Steady and M. Ward? Thanks to the fine folks at NPR we now have a new sub-genre for our music labeling pleasure with the introduction of the phrase – Smart Rock – into our lexicon. Smart Rock is defined as “music […]

Fleetwood Mac will reunite for their first tour in over five years in support of a new greatest hits compilation called Unleashed. The classic rock band have revealed the first 16 dates for what is sure to be a lengthy North American arena tour, which will kick off on March 1 at the Mellon Arena […]