Posts by Luke Sacks

It isn’t often that the MSG Network is mentioned in this column but on Thursday, April 9 at 10 pm the channel will premiere The Beacon Theater: A New York Legend Reborn, a documentary about the refurbishment of the legendary venue which reopened in February with a pair of Paul Simon concerts. The station is […]

Picking my favorite GSW song was a lot harder than I thought. They certainly have plenty of fun songs that I used to love dancing to when seeing them live years ago. But over the course of time, GSW was one of those bands that sort of fell out of sight/out of mind in terms […]

Phil Lesh and Bob Weir of The Dead will appear on ABC Television’s The View (Syndicated, check local listings) this morning. The guys, through a new text messaging system set up with fans, announced they are expected to play a song and chat with the ladies. Maybe Bobby and Phil will find some time to […]

Last week, Ticketmaster took some major heat for an unplanned and accidental presale for tickets for Phish’s four performances at Red Rocks this summer. Fans that thought they had stumbled onto a surprise jackpot had their orders canceled and received an email from David Butler, President of Ticketmaster North America, explaining why.

In an exclusive Q&A with Hidden Track, Luke Sacks spoke with Butler, who is responsible for Ticketmaster’s primary ticketing business in the US and Canada, via phone about the cause of the error, how Ticketmaster is working to thwart scalpers, what band he has seen nearly 50 times himself and more.

LUKE SACKS: Let’s start with the incident last week when tickets for the Red Rocks shows went on sale early. Speculation among fans has ranged from a simple computer glitch to Ticketmaster secretly activating that link so scalpers could get in and do their thing. From your perspective, can you walk me through what happened?

DAVID BUTLER: Absolutely. It was fundamentally human error by an employee of Ticketmaster in our Rocky Mountain region. An experienced person, who has been with us for years, accidentally, in releasing the show to be visible on the website that the on-sale was coming, accidentally made it appear to be on sale against the desires of the promoter or the artist. It was really just human error. She was trying to set it up so the show would be apparent with the future on-sale date so the fans would know it was coming. She just goofed.

LS: So that happened, all these orders were filled and eventually the decision was made to cancel these orders. Who made the decision to cancel the orders and subsequently to send out the $50 credit? Were those solely Ticketmaster decisions? Was the band or their management involved?

DB: To be clear, the mistake was totally ours at Ticketmaster and that’s why we sent out the gift certificates. Our policy is, if there is ever an error and the event goes on sale prior to the on-sale date, even if its on our website, that we will invalidate all the orders and if any money is taken we will refund it because we have to protect the integrity of the artist and the promoter that the show goes on sale as announced to the fans. So that’s exactly what we did.

READ ON for more of our exclusive interview with David Butler…

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno will have a purple and paisley feel this week as Prince performs on March 25, 26 and 27. The high-heel wearing guitar genius will be promoting two new albums, LOtUSFLOW3R and MPLSoUND, which will be available only at the ultra-hip Target on March 29.  Prince will also perform on Leno’s final night as […]

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, one of the most underappreciated bands of the last 30 years, are the subjects of Runnin’ Down a Dream airing on the Sundance Channel on Monday at 7:45 am. If that’s too early for you, set your DVR because this one is worth watching. Director Peter Bogdanovich brilliantly weaves personal […]

In the opening of the new Wilco DVD Ashes of American Flags, Jeff Tweedy, donning a cowboy hat in a Neil Young sort of way, leads his band through the title track during a soundcheck at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa.

As the camera narrows in on Tweedy’s eyes, he stares out into an empty room looking more anxious than his status on the music scene would suggest. Although he is as established as any singer/songwriter of his generation, Tweedy still seems to have the eye of the tiger each night on stage and performs as if he’s still proving he’s worthy of a next gig.

In the span of that opening song, a tone of intimacy, both musically and visually, is set and lasts the duration of the film, the first-ever Wilco concert DVD. It’s hard to believe that a band as successful in the digital age as Wilco has waited so long to release a live DVD but it was well worth the wait.

READ ON for more of Luke’s thoughts on Ashes of American Flags…

Van Morrison, who usually shies away from public appearances outside of stepping on stage, will find himself front and center this week. Van the Man will perform on the first-ever Late Night with Jimmy Fallon broadcast on Monday. Then on Tuesday morning he’ll appear on Regis and Kelly where he will no doubt win over […]

VH1 Classic will air the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster tonight at Midnight. Released in July, 2004 the film features unprecedented access to the band members as they recorded the album St. Anger. Fans can see the band come apart at the seams as lead singer James Hetfield battles a drinking problem and Lars […]

Wilco has just announced a string of April dates that will take the band through the Midwest and South for nine shows. Prior to already announced festival appearances at Bonnaroo (June 11-14) and 10KLF (July 22-25), Wilco will snake through college towns including Bloomington, IN, Athens, OH, Knoxville, TN, Birmingham, AL and Oxford, MS for […]

VH1 Classic will air U2’s rockumentary Rattle and Hum on Wednesday at Noon and if you haven’t seen it recently, it’s worth a viewing. We catch a glimpse of the Angel of Harlem recording sessions at Sun Studios in Memphis, a heartfelt take on the political Silver and Gold and an incredible performance of I […]

We are less than a month away from Phish’s return at Hampton Coliseum and while some are still uncovering every stone and calling in every favor looking for a ticket, others are turning their attention to the content of the shows.

Whether you are in the door or not, you’ve got to be thinking about what the set lists will look like. By the time things ended for Phish 2.0 in 2004, the song list had been trimmed significantly (28 songs were played four or more times in the final 18 shows) and it seems to make sense that the band would narrow the field at least a bit again this time around.

That said, the band has made no public comments since the return was announced so nothing has been guaranteed, but I suspect we won’t see any repeats during the Hampton run.

Will wee see new covers? The last cover to be added to the regular rotation was the Velvet Underground’s ass-kicking Rock & Roll. Other than that, no cover that has debuted since 10/31/98 has been played more than five times. It will be interesting to see if any new covers are added to the repertoire or if any classic ones resurface.

READ ON for a few guesses at Phish’s post-Breakup opener…

Cat Power played the second of her two nearly-sold out gigs at Harlem’s historic Apollo Theater on Saturday night. For almost two hours, vocalist Chan Marshall and the Dirty Delta Blues Band wove in and out of a cover-laden set and lulled the respectful crowd into a dream-like state.

While she played mostly other people’s music with a few originals sprinkled in, she put her own spin on each selection. The show moved at the pace of molasses but was enjoyable in is thickness. Marshall sounded, at times, like Janis Joplin if she weren’t allowed to scream. Often it was a little tough to pick Marshall’s voice out of the mix when the band played beyond hushed tones and her annunciation isn’t the best. But she can belt out a tune like few others and while I never actually fell asleep, I certainly hovered in that space between awake and asleep for a good portion of the night until a slightly more upbeat – and I mean slightly – tune would snap me back to reality.

With the sparsest of lightning and no stage setup to speak of – you could see the heating vents on the back wall of the stage, Marshall spend so much time in the shadows she was reduced to a pair of white shoes and a silky voice for most of us in the Mezzanine.

But the show was streamlined with minimal time between songs and no banter between Marshall and the audience save for throwing some roses into the crowd as she took her final bow.

READ ON for more of Luke’s Cat Power @ The Apollo review…

VH1 Classic will air Oliver Stone’s 1991 flick The Doors on Tuesday at 7PM. The movie is more about Jim Morrison, portrayed wonderfully by Val Kilmer, and his nutjob antics than the band and their music which makes it an easy target for criticism. Meg Ryan, before she turned herself into a duck with plastic […]

The new God Street Wednesday feature on Hidden Track seems to take me down memory lane more than any other column on the site. I guess that’s because for me, God Street Wine’s peak came at a time when I had
nothing to do but blow off classes in college and listen to music.

[Photo by Charlie Watts]

Back in the early ’90s, God Street Wine was just as much a part of the emerging “jamband scene” as anyone including the eventually more popular Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic or Phish. Granted GSW wasn’t selling out arenas the way Phish began to in 1994, but on the “small room” circuit, GSW brought just as much to the table as anyone other than Phish at that time.

GSW had a nice mix of quirkiness – with Aaron Maxwell’s booming vocals adding a little theatrics to the mix – and straight up rock and roll. They may not have been Phish with the extended jamming and 30-minute Tweezers. And they may not have been John Popper when it came to arranging music or wailing out solos. But one thing GSW always did was write a fun song and play the hell out of it live.

READ ON for more of Luke’s essay and some live God Street Wine…

Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy has added two Chicago shows at the Vic Theater to his solo tour schedule. The shows, which were announced on a popular Wilco message board by Tweedy’s wife Sue, will serve as benefits for a yet-to-be-named cause and come on the heels of shows last week in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and […]

VH1 Classic will air a look at The Band’s 1969 self-titled album, sometimes known as the “Brown Album” on Thursday at 4PM. The album came amid high expectations following 1968’s Music From Big Pink but staples Up On Cripple Creek and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, along with the lesser-know The Great Divide, […]

After tackling Holiday flicks in my last column, I wanted to keep the ball rolling with the big screen theme. This week I’m taking a look at five of the top music scenes to appear on film. My criteria, because there’s a million ways to do a list like this, is that the song (on its own) and the movie (on its own) have to be enjoyable. I’m not talking about a good musical scene in a piece of crap movie or a piece of crap song in a great movie.

Basically these movies and songs all stand on there own but in these cases, morph together to make the other even more special.

1. Moving in Stereo – The Cars: Fast Times at Ridgemont High

The Cars + a topless Phoebe Cates + slow motion = winner. In one of the most memorable scenes in teenage sex-romp comedy history, the music, plot and gratuitous sex come together to form that perfect storm. It’s not too often you can pick the exact scene where an actor peaks but for Cates, this is clearly it. She went on to star in Gremlins and disasters like Drop Dead Fred, but after Fast Times it was all downhill. Cars bassist Benjamin Orr sings lead on the heavily produced track which ironically, is not on the film’s soundtrack.

READ ON for four more of Luke’s favorite musical movie scenes…

Thanksgiving dinner had not yet been cleared and TV stations across the land already had the Christmas movies queued up and ready to go. Between November 28 and December 26, you will only have about 147 chances to watch your favorite holiday movie. So here is a quick list of five Christmas movies well worth a couple of hours of your time in the next few weeks.

Christmas Vacation (1989)

It doesn’t get much better than “Shitter’s full.” The Griswolds bounced back in a major way from a somewhat lackluster trip to Europe to provide the straight up funniest of the holiday standards. It might not have the heart of A Christmas Story or the nostalgia of Rudolph’s bad claymation but Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo and the third installment of Griswold children, including an already-on-her-way-to-creepy Juliet Lewis, provide solid yuletide yucks.

Clark fights many battles in this one. Among them are taking on his neighbors, including a yuppie bitch played by Seinfeld’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus, fighting to get the Christmas lights working and being bitchslapped by his boss, played brilliantly by Brian Doyle-Murray. There’s also the gratuitous hottie, played by Nicolette Scorsese, who works in the department store (“Can’t see the line, can you Russ?”) and reappears in Clark’s poolside fantasy.

READ ON for the rest of Luke’s list of classic holiday movies…

Ahh, Thanksgiving. A time for turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, bad football on the front lawn, drunk uncles falling down and of course, Phish.

[All photos via Phishpics.net]

Although there is no late fall run for the band again this year – we’ll have to wait until March for the band’s return to the stage – we’re taking a look back at the band’s Northeast Turkey Week run from November 2003 and picking out the best pieces of white meat from a group of shows that is general considered undercooked by most fans. The run started in Nassau the day after Thanksgiving and wrapped up in Boston with the band’s 20th Anniversary Show at the Fleet Center.

Maze – 12/2/03 Boston

One of the few times that Page seems to really be front and center on this run. Longer than your average Maze, this version seems to be infused with some extra venom. I never thought I’d walk away from the band’s 20th Anniversary show calling a Rift-era setlist staple a highlight, but in what turned out to be a pretty standard setlist, Maze provided the boldest and deepest improv of the night.

READ ON for four other highlights from the Phish 20th Anniversary Run…