Luke Sacks

One of the the things I miss most about Phish is summer tour. In addition to the music, summer tour always provided an opportunity to see parts of the country I never would have if not for the concerts. Just take a few days off from work, hop in the car and the hit the road. Next thing you know you are in the middle of nowhere with 15,000 other fans at 4 pm on a Wednesday drinking a Sierra Nevada.

For this week’s B List, I put together a quick list of four cities that I never would have stepped foot in if not for Phish Summer Tour. Let’s take a look…

George, WA
July 16, 17, 1998
July 12, 13, 2003

One of the most beautiful sights I ever witnessed on Phish tour was this incredible venue situated just above the Columbia River in Central Washington. Chances are if you’re in George, you’re there for a concert cause there ain’t a whole lot going on otherwise. The venue offers breathtaking views of the Columbia River, as well as the surrounding areas. Both sets of shows I saw at the Gorge were great, including being front row in front of Page for the 7-16-98 show, but the venue itself was the true star. On-site camping, soft grass, and plenty of fan vendors (who aren’t harrassed by security) made this one of the most desirable venues in the country. If you were willing to make the trek to the Gorge, you were not disappointed.

READ ON for more of Luke’s list of out the way locales…

There are nights that change your life that you are conscious of as they are happening. Some you realize the next day or a few days later. Looking back, April 18, 1994 was a night that my life changed forever and it took me 14 years to realize just how important it was. It’s the day I walked out of my dorm room down South College Avenue and into the Bob Carpenter Center on the campus of the University of Delaware for my first Phish show.

Some dude, fittingly named Jimmy, that lived on my floor literally walked down the hall handing out tickets to anyone that wanted one and in a giant pack, we were off. At that point, I knew as much about Phish as your average Northeast Corridor college student in 1994 – the drummer wore a dress and played a vacuum, they were sort of like the Grateful Dead but I wasn’t sure how and they had a catchy song called Bouncing Around the Room. But the legend of their concerts had already begun to spread and I knew if nothing else, it was a great chance to get wasted with a lot of other people.

It turned out to be a fuck of a lot more than that.

On paper, my first show boasted your typical 1994 setlist. There were some oddities – a Mike’s Song with no Weekapaug Groove, a dedication of Ya Mar by Trey to his now wife Sue. But the music was mindblowing to a guy who had never heard it before. The tone that Trey squeezed out of that guitar, the jazzy way Page would insert himself into the mix, Gordon thumping away in his bright green jumpsuit, and that guy in the dress behind the kit holding it together with precision and power. And the overall combination of humor and seriously that always underlined Phish’s approach to performing. I can still close my eyes and see my view of the stage that night. I recall standing there during 2001 with the lights going and the music rocking and thinking I was seeing something special. I remember the bizarreness of My Friend My Friend and the rocking cover of Good Times Bad Times. I remember almost everything about that night.

READ ON for more of Luke’s thoughts on the return of the Phish…

Don’t you just love it when you spend the morning hunkered down over your computer trying to score concert tickets only to find out a few hours later that a second or third date was added?

Concert tickets are damn expensive these days and scoring good seats not only means shelling out a few hundred bucks, but also putting in the time and effort to secure the tickets. The days of lining up outside a venue or visiting the local ticketmaster outlet are long gone. These days it’s all internet. So when 9:55 am rolls around, the refreshing begins and the nonsensical passwords are typed in at a furious pace.

My question is this – how does adding additional dates work? Are these dates booked all along and promoters just wait till one night has sold out to announce the second? Are the second nights just on some kind of a “hold” until the first night has sold out? Probably some kind of combination of that and more.

READ ON for more of Luke’s editorial on adding dates…

When Phish fans get together and talk about a potential reunion, every detail is open for debate and analysis. What should they open and close with? Will Trey bring back the Pepe Le Pew t-shirt? How pudgy will Fishman be?

[Photo via Phish.com]

When it comes to the venue, clearly “Brad Sands’ Wedding” is not a common choice. But the four members certainly owed it to their longtime man-behind-the-scenes to reunite for a few jams on his special day.

For those of us that were left off the guest lists, here’s a list of five venues (and one bonus) Phish should hit on its inevitable Reunion Tour…

1. Madison Square Garden, New York, NY

The world’s most famous arena has seen it all. From the Rangers winning the Stanley Cup after an eternity of heartbreak to legendary boxing matches when boxing mattered to the Knicks actually being a decent team that you could root for without feeling dirty. But as someone who grew up in the NYC area and has been to the Garden countless times for major events, I can tell you that there was no feeling like walking around and into that place on the night of a Phish show. The random slow-build of cheers that seemed to start hours before lights out could be heard up and down 7th and 8th Avenue.

READ ON for more venues where we’d like to see post-Breakup Phish…

Legendary rocker Neil Young announced this week that Wilco will be one of the opening acts for his upcoming North American tour. On paper, this sounds like a truly wonderful night of music with two acts that, at times, seem very similar.

There are several common threads between Wilco and Young, including Tweedy and Company performing at Young’s Farm Aid fundraiser back in 2005. In an interview around that time promoting the event, Tweedy listed Young’s Live Rust as his top live album ever. Tweedy also covered Young’s Too Far Gone at several of his first solo shows and included a Roll Another Number lyrical reference in Passenger Side, a Wilco classic and fan favorite.

With Wilco and Young in the same building for seven North American dates, performing on the same stage, the mind has to wander to possible collaborations.

Here are a few suggestions:

Young’s Powderfinger with Nels Cline

Cline, who often employs that fractured-chord sound that Young and Crazy Horse perfected, has gone from newcomer to Conquering Lord in Wilco World. His shredding guitar and frenetic fingerwork has become as vital to Wilco’s sound as Tweedy’s raspy voice, calculated lyrics and witty banter. Cline would simply demolish Powderfinger, one of the great Neil Young classics, that includes several solos that Cline could infuse with his unique sound.

READ ON for more Wilco/Neil Young sit-in recommendations from Luke…

If a Wilco concert were a storm, Jeff Tweedy would be the rain – the key ingredient that defines the makeup of the event. Without rain, there isn’t much of a storm. But thunder and lightning, in this case drummer Glenn Kotche and guitar wiz Nels Cline respectively, make the storm a hell of a lot more exciting.

On a gorgeous night in Brooklyn on Wednesday, a Wilco monsoon blew through McCarren Park Pool with the band on top of its game and clicking on all cylinders.

Tweedy, in a jovial mood from the outset, led his troops through 27 songs, a longer set than most of the shows on this tour. Weaving in the Total Pros horn section throughout the night, Wilco tore through mostly upbeat numbers, forsaking the lion’s share of their slower ballads for the night, until they ran into the venue’s 10 pm curfew. READ ON for much more on last night’s Wilco show…

Yesterday Scotty gave us the first part of his three part Newport review, but Luke Sacks also attended Saturday’s festivities and offers his opinion:

The Newport Folk Festival holds a special place in the history of rock and roll and conjures up some great imagery. After all, Bob Dylan plugged in and changed the course of music forever at the festival back in 1965. Dylan was almost booed off the stage during his performance that year but since then, the music landscape, and that of the festival, which has been around since 1959, have both changed drastically.

[Photo by Drew Granchelli]

This year’s festival was heavy on the rock but light on the folk as far as the bigger acts went. Aside from some rock musicians playing solo acoustic sets of their electric songs, there weren’t many folk elements to be found in the music. There was plenty of mellow acts – She and Him, Richie Havens, Son Volt and the Cowboy Junkies to name a few – but no big folk name. READ ON for more…

New concert venues are popping up around the country like strippers that have slept with A-Rod. Some of these new venues will be great and some will, of course, suck.

So what makes a good venue? Obviously it’s hard to compare an 15,000 seat amphitheater to a 1,000-person club. But there are certain elements that are crucial to fan happiness no matter what the size of the venue.

Here is a quick list of suggestions to keep the average concert-goer happy:

1. Have the best sound possible

Seems kind of obvious…but Terminal 5 – I am looking at you. While some musicians are fun to look at and light shows are wonderful, we are there for the sound. So when it comes to setting up the venue, the sound should be the top priority. Whatever it takes, get the sound right. Don’t roof the floor section with a giant balcony that will muddy the sound. Don’t line the walls with substances that will cause echoes or reverb. Don’t just stack the speakers wherever there is room. If you don’t get the sound right, you’ve blown it before you’ve sold the first ticket. Also don’t blow our doors off. The show should be loud…but not so loud that my ears are stinging for 12 hours afterwards. Find that nice zone where it’s plenty loud but not painful to the ear. The 9:30 Club in Washington DC has this concept down perfectly.

READ ON to find out what else Luke looks for in a new venue…

After attacking the crappy music played at stadiums and arenas last week, I figured this would be a good time to talk about some music that brings joy instead of cringes. So as you crank up the BBQ and break out the Roman Candles for the Fourth of July, here are five albums that are bound to make you smile:

1. Juno Soundtrack

I defy anyone to listen to the Moldy Peaches’ Anyone Else But You (which is also covered by the stars of the movie – Michael Cera and Ellen Page) or Barry Louis Polisar’s All I Want is You and not feel good. Throw in classic rock gems such as Velvet Underground’s I’m Sticking With You, the Kinks rocking Well Respected Man and Mott the Hoople’s cover of All the Young Dudes and you’re bound to be smiling. Good movie taboot. READ ON for more of Luke’s list of smile-inducing albums…

The squeak of the sneakers at a basketball game…the calls of “peanuts” or “ice cold beer here” at a baseball game…the clack of the puck on the tape…

The sounds you used to hear throughout the course of a sporting event were the common noises from the field and the occasional organ ditty. If a team really wanted to go out on a limb, maybe they’d pipe in the beat of We Will Rock You once in a while.

These days, it’s more like a bad iPod playlist serving as the background music to our sporting events.

Most stadiums and arenas, which are now closer to shopping malls than sports venues, rely heavily on blasting (usually crappy) music and crowd cues to generate “energy.” READ ON for more of Luke’s editorial on music at the ballpark…