Posts by Luke Sacks

If you missed She & Him’s performance of Black Hole on Later with Carson Daly back in May, you can catch it again tomorrow night on NBC. Monday, August 16 (All times ET) Classic Albums: Def Leppard, Hysteria [VH1 Classic 4PM] Prince: Purple Rain [Palladia 8PM] David Letterman: Sheryl Crow (R) [CBS 11:35PM] Jimmy Kimmel: […]

It would be nice if a television entity was doing a tribute to Jerry Garcia today on the 15th anniversary of his death, but that ain’t happening so your best bet this afternoon is the Rush documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage [Palladia 4PM]. The film provides a look at 40 years of Rush that includes […]

It isn’t often that Comedy Central’s hit The Colbert Report is mentioned in this space as it isn’t often a musician is the featured guest. But the show will welcome reggae legend and 2010 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jimmy Cliff to the hot seat on Monday night. Monday, August 2 [all times EDT] […]

Back in early June, I centered my Phish Summer Tour Preview around a symbolic fork in the road, which is where I saw the band prior to their 19-date first leg. It wasn’t my most accurate column as I mistakenly called the cavernous Thompson Boling Arena in Knoxville small and was probably a little harsh in criticizing their playing in Hampton. But at the end of the column I laid out three options that I thought were available to the band for this summer, which was really my main point of the whole article.

[All photos by Adam Kaufman]

We all saw what went down in June and early July with Phish tearing it up on a nightly basis and surprising the hell out of fans with bust outs and new covers galore. This is what I referred to in the column as “Option A.” Every song the band had ever played was fair game. Among the most outstanding choices: Fuck Your Face was played in Charlotte after being on the shelf for over 23 years (or 1,413 shows). The Friday night Camden show opened with the first Alumni Blues in 222 shows sandwiched around the first Letter to Jimmy Page in 587 shows. Tela, which had previously appeared only five times since 1997, was played twice. In Raleigh, the show opened with the now-rare Llama and always-rare Roses are Free with Have Mercy and a scorching Light Up or Leave Me Alone in the second set.

The new covers included The Band’s Look Out, Cleveland and John Lennon’s Instant Karma! in Cuyuhoga Falls, Tom Waits’ Cold Water in Portsmouth, VA, Jumping Jack Flash in Merriweather and a heartfelt take on Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, a gutsy choice considering the high regard in which that song is held. And in Alpharetta, on July 4, the band whipped fans into a frenzy with a Harpua featuring a cover of Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name Of. That of course after already playing Colonel Forbin’s Ascent > Fly Famous Mockingbird in the first set. So far the covers have all been one-offs. Will that continue in the second leg or will we see more polished versions of some of these? I’m hoping for the latter.

READ ON for more of our Phish Summer Tour Leg 2 Preview…

The always quirky Flaming Lips will visit the usually quirky Late Show with David Letterman on Wednesday following tonight’s show at Central Park’s Summerstage and tomorrow’s performance at NYC’s Terminal 5 as part of Spin Magazine’s 25th Birthday Party Concert Series. Monday, July 26 [All times EDT] Wilco: Ashes of American Flags [Sundance 3:30PM] Phoenix: Unplugged […]

In advance of a July 22 gig at Radio City Music Hall, Widespread Panic will make their first-ever visit to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon tonight on NBC. Tuesday finds HT faves Crowded House making their Fallon debut. Monday, July 19 (all times ET) Ben Harper: Live From the Artists Den [Ovation 1PM] Marvin Gaye: […]

The Kinks, one of the most underrated and under-appreciated rock and roll bands of all time, is the subject of Biography’s BIO airing Thursday at 3PM. Tune in for a look at brothers Ray and Dave Davies and how they and their mates went from Muswell Hillbillies in England to L-O-L-A singalongs across the globe. […]

Ovation will air Satchmo: Louis Armstrong on Thursday at 2pm. Tune in for a profile of the legendary jazz trumpeter which includes performances of Sunny Side of the Street and Potato Head Blues and features commentary from some of today’s most prominent jazz musicians. Monday, July 5 (all times ET) Fleetwood Mac: Soundstage [VH1 Classic 10:30AM] […]

Living legend Herbie Hancock will make two late night appearances this week as he visits The Late Show with David Letterman on Monday (CBS 11:35PM) and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday (NBC 12:35AM). Hancock’s latest release, The Imagine Project, includes special guests Jeff Beck, Pink, Dave Matthews and Los Lobos among others and will be released on June […]

Phish was all business for the first 2:45 of Friday’s show in Hartford, the second of two nights at the Comcast Theatre. But the encore, which featured a strange dedication and the same song played twice is probably what will be remembered most about this night.

Fee was an interesting choice for an opener on a Friday, when the crowd seemed ready for something with more energy. The song is fairly rare these days – it was played only once in 2009 – but doesn’t do much to get the crowd going and this version wasn’t really any exception. Rift was close and had some good moments but was not quite as tight as it should be as Trey struggled with the “darkness the light from above could not reach” lyric and several of the licks in the buildup and peak. The set got cooking briefly with a very strong Wolfman’s Brother that started funky but turned into more of a straight ahead rock and roll jam and the energy began to rise in the venue.

New Phish songs always sound strange the first time you hear them live. Everyone sort of looks around and shrugs and has that “I have no clue what this is” look on their faces. Summer of ’89 certainly drew those looks on Friday night. I can’t say I enjoyed the song all that much but I’ll reserve full judgment until it’s been worked out a bit. The beginning struck me as a Water in the Sky/Driver hybrid that tried to gain steam with a jam segment that didn’t go very far. But we’ll see how the song develops if it remains in the rotation.

READ ON for more from Luke on Night Two of Hartford…

New Wave pioneers Devo are back on the scene and will make an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 11:35PM) this  Tuesday. The group, best known for their funky red hats and 1980 smash hit Whip It, also will hit the road this summer, including an appearance at Lollapalooza in Chicago on August […]

It’s hard to believe but tomorrow Phish will take the road to launch their massive 29-date summer tour in Chicago. Summer tour has always been an important time for Phish and this year is no exception. In 2009 the band played a mostly successful run of summer shows, in two legs, after an inspired but mostly sloppy return at Hampton in March.

Phish on Jimmy Fallon – Kill Devil Falls [via theaudioperv.com]

Last summer the band conquered their usual sheds but also returned to some unique venues in St. Louis’s tiny Fox Theater and Red Rocks, a venue that finally welcomed the band back after a 13-year banishment.

This summer’s venues are mostly the standard sheds but the exceptions are glorious. The 6,500 seat, waterside Ntelos Pavilion in Norfolk, VA is a major upgrade over the Verizon Amphitheater in Virginia Beach. The Greek Theater in Berkeley is one of those venues that fans have been fantasizing about for years and Telluride Town Park is perhaps the quaintest place the band has visited since they were touring the country in a van.

While we’re on the subject of venues, I think the time has come for Phish to forsake an entirely outdoors summer tour and start working in some smaller theater and smaller arena dates as they did last summer when they played the Fox and smaller arenas in Knoxville and Asheville. The same approach needs to come to the Northeast, where chances to see this band in an intimate setting have been few and far between. There are very few people who actually enjoy sitting on the lawn at these giant venues and there just aren’t enough pavilion tickets to go around. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for the band to play more places like Radio City Music Hall or Hampton Coliseum or even NBA/NHL arenas like Madison Square Garden or The Wachovia Center in the summer, and forsake a few amphitheater dates.

READ ON for more from Luke on the coming Phish tour…

When HT faves Phish visited Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in May to perform Loving Cup as part of Exile on Main Street Week, the band stuck around and played a second tune for the cameras. Phish’s performance of Kill Devil Falls will air for the first time as part of Fallon’s Wednesday, June 9 broadcast, […]

John Travolta isn’t associated with the music business much anymore. He’s apparently more interested in making crappy action movies, flying his jets and being weird these days. But he starred in both Grease and Saturday Night Fever, two of the more popular music movies of the last 35 years. Check out a profile of Travolta on […]

The late great Janis Joplin will be profiled on the Biography Channel this Thursday at 9PM.  This in-depth feature tracks Joplin’s beginnings in Texas, her rise to the top of the music world and her subsequent fall.  Tune in for a look at one of music’s most unique voices and personalities. Monday, May 24 Regis […]

It’s been 38 years since the Rolling Stones’ legendary Exile on Main Street LP was released but this week the album will come front and center once again as Jimmy Fallon celebrates the release of a deluxe edition with some special musical performances on Late Night. The yuckster will host a week of shows celebrating […]

Anyone who has heard the Exile on Main Street set from Phish’s Festival 8 last October had to be damn impressed by what Sharon Jones and members of the Dap Kings added to the performance. The group, which kicks plenty of ass on its own, will appear on The Late Show with David Letterman on Tuesday […]

U2 can sell out just about any venue on the planet but on Friday, February 27, 2009 they played to a mere 5,000 people from the roof of the BBC Broadcasting House in London. Check out what went down on the rooftop on Palladia at 11:30 AM on Monday. Monday, April 26 Genesis: When in Rome […]

Having passed on Avatar and hearing mostly meh things about Alice in Wonderland, the last time I saw a 3D Movie in the theaters Dennis Quaid was chasing a giant shark and Darryl Strawberry was a lanky rookie. So I was a little unsure of what to expect from the Phish 3D preview on April 20 in Brooklyn. Since the music has been reviewed ad nauseum (and for the record – I am in the “the Exile set was amazing, the acoustic set was cool and the rest was pretty average” camp when it comes to the music played that weekend), here is a quick rundown of the things that I liked most about the movie and a couple of things I would have done differently.

• I like how far 3D glasses have come. Gone are the cardboard versions with one blue lens and one red lens that dig in painfully behind your ears. In its place is a version that more resembles a cheap pair of sunglasses bought at a drugstore. But after two hours, I will admit they gave me a headache.

• I liked the way that 90% of the footage in the film is concert footage. A few shots of the festival and the crowd are fine but overall, show me the band and the action on the stage. For the most part, this film does just that. The footage of the band, the horns and the backup singers jammed into the practice room is fantastic. I could have watched that all night.

• I liked the way the 3D allowed you to get a real feel for the spacing on the stage. When Page leans over his keyboard during the funktastic Undermind (which by the way is by far my favorite 2009 addition to the setlist rotation) and peers over at the other side of the stage, you get a real feel for how close he is to Trey and how far
  he is from Fishman. When the band is pulled in close for the acoustic set, you can feel it. When Fishman and Gordon are locked in and looking at each other, you feel like you are right there next to them.

READ ON for more of what Luke liked and didn’t like about Phish 3D…

Madison Square Garden is so important that it has a network named after it. The MSG Network will air a history of the storied building on Thursday afternoon at 2PM EDT. Everyone from the Jackson 5 to Led Zeppelin to Jay-Z has rocked the house at the World Most Famous Arena. Monday, April 19 John […]