Neeko describes a soul-stirring performance by nomadic Tuareg-Berber musicians Tinariwen.
The Phish is fried. Just as the fervor of internet-Phish-dorkdom reached its frenzied peak of reunion show madness, Phish keyboardist Page McConnell layeth down the smack. To paraphrase the open letter he posted recently on the band’s official website, the hypothetical reunion, “Ain’t happening, bitches.”
To be fair, there’s a lot left up to interpretation in his little four paragraph statement. He definitely doesn’t close the door on the possibility of a Phish reunion, and goes so far as to say that if it weren’t for Mike’s stupid new album about bird watching, they would have already made arrangements. Ok, that’s not exactly what he said. File that under ‘creative interpretation’. But he does say that Phish reuniting is “something I consider very seriously, and I think about it a lot.” Somewhere in America, a glowstick and an Uno card just read this and wet themselves.
As exciting as this all sounds, I’m not entirely sure I’m sold on a Phish reunion. I mean, what’s the point? They had their time and place, right? And let’s be honest, things aren’t exactly like they were at the peak of the Clinton ’90s when Phish was at their most culturally relevant. There’s two wars going on now, the world is melting, there’s nothing good on TV, dogs and cats living together- mass hysteria! Not to mention the fact that most of Phish’s core audience has all moved on to things like ‘lives’ and ‘families’, ‘mini-vans’ and ‘brunch’ and all that adult crap. Is there really room in this fucked up day and age of war and diaper changes for Phish tour? Maybe so, maybe not. READ ON for Neeko’s list of Phishy suggestions…
Neeko gets in on the HT GraphJam action: [CLICK IMAGE FOR FULLSIZE GRAPH] Widespread Panic: Makes Sense To Me (Live 09/30/2006) Give Us The Money Lebowski: Makes Sense To Me
Fact: White people look ridiculous when they dance. This is bound to be one of my least popular statements, but I stand by it. I have been to weddings and I have seen your macarenas, chicken dances, electric slides, mashed potatoes, and running men. I’ve been to The Phish concerts and I have survived the twirlers, twisters, hoopers, sicky-sicky ragers and meatstickers. The fact is, we all have a touch of the Elaine Benes gene.
Admittedly, I look more ridiculous than most. Get me drunk enough and I will perform the “African Ant Eater Ritual” in its entirety for any audience. But if you want to see a real, full-fledged spectacle, put on some traditional Irish music, preferably a jig or a reel. After a few glasses of Jameson, I will show you the true meaning of the word “spastic.” (In my more sober moments I realize that being a quarter Irish does not excuse such behavior.)
The ‘Celtic Music Resurgence’ of the past half a century has provided drunken a-holes like me with some truly inspired music to compliment our pints of Guinness and Smithwick’s. So, in honor of St. Patrick’s Month (which began officially on March 1st in Hoboken NJ) here are two of my favorite trad-Irish artists for you to check out! Slante!
Read on for Neeko’s look at the music of Flook and Solas…
The closest I’ve ever come to being ‘punk rock’ was when I played guitar in a one-off performance of the Grateful Dead Nixons. We played a four-minute set of Dead tunes done with the tempo, brevity and angst of a visit to CBGB’s bathroom.
I’m not shitting you when I say that we played four albums worth of Dead songs in four minutes. Our version of Dark Star took more time to count out than it took to actually play. But that’s the closest I ever came to being punk rock. We did not break anything or topple amplifiers, and we didn’t even spit on the audience. Although, I think my shirt may have had a tiny alligator on the left breast…
While I’m obviously not a punk rocker in any sense, I once had a decent collection of seven-inches and a couple of cool patches for my backpack. I’ve long since moved on from my “Gabba-Gabba-heyday(s),” until last week, when the iPod Shuffle Gods dropped a perfectly timed Sonic Reducer by The Deadboys on me.
I’ve spent the last seven days brushing up on my favorite two-minute power-chord cures for disco. At the request of B-List patriarch Scotty Bernstein, it’s time to present my personal Top 10 punk bands of all time. To make things interesting, I’ve decided to make it omit any bands with names that start with the word “The.” So, pierce your nose with a safety pin, and let’s dig in after the jump…
Jack Kerouac ruined my life. I had fantastic grades in high school. I was a hard worker, I went to class, had plenty of what ‘they’ call potential. I was well on my way to being a successful, productive member of capitalist American society. I could’ve been a banker, a businessman, a scientist or something respectable.
Then, I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Within two days of reading those final two words — “Dean Moriarty” — I quit the baseball team, bought a guitar and thought about smoking reefer. I started a poetry club at school and began saying things like “dig that, man!” In a word, I became “beat.”
I’ve since grown out of my immature, pseudo-beatnik phase and moved onto a mature, unrealistic-beatific phase (my Zeppelin phase remains the same). I got myself a day job, a cell phone and a 401k. But the profound impact of Kerouac and Moriarty goes on like the road. I still think about smoking reefer, and I occasionally listen to subversive jazz records. That mad, sympathetic desire for the American night still drives through my soul like a lone ‘38 Hudson sneaking up the Jersey Turnpike at 4 AM from parts unknown headed to destinations undetermined. I can’t shake that feeling…and I really don’t want to.
All of this mad-crazy fabulous energy was reawakened from slumber yesterday when I snuck out of work early like a grey dawn ghost and hoofed it down to the New York Public Library on 42nd and 5th. You see, the “scroll” has come home to Manhattan, part of a comprehensive exhibit about the embodiment of “Beat,” Jack Kerouac. For those of you not familiar with the Kerouac mythology, the “scroll” is the original 120 foot run-on-paragraph manuscript of the groundbreaking Beatnik utterance, On the Road. If you believe the legend, Jack speed-typed it out in a three-week insomniac haze of coffee and pea soup in his wife’s NYC apartment in 1951. It’s the original improvisational jam session of the literary world: a soul blown jazz-sax solo of stream-of-consciousness, over a rhythm section of real-world American-road experience.
Read on for more of Neeko’s semi-coherent ramblings and literary erections…
Dr. Neeko is back for Round II — before we begin, let’s point out that he loves his mother, his aunt, all his old lovers and Rue McClanahan…
When I was a kid, before I became a doctor of course, Halloween was all about the mad rush to stuff as much tooth-rotting, brain-zipping sugar as you could fit into an old pillowcase before the sun went down and you missed curfew. We usually made out pretty well. We knew which houses gave the full-sized candy bars, which houses turned off the porch light and pretended not to be home, and which houses you could get away with visiting multiple times.
Of course you got the occasional old lady who’d give out four pennies wrapped in Scotch Tape, or the big buzz-kill-do-gooder handing out pieces of fruit. Fruit? Handing out fruit on Halloween is like giving out cap-guns in a war zone. Handing out fruit on Halloween is like dispensing condoms at an Indigo Girls/Ani DiFranco double-bill. Handing out fruit on Halloween is like giving out handjobs at an orgy. But all in all, it was a good racket we had going back then…
Look, ma: These girls show up on Google Images under “Halloween sluts”
Then, sometime around college, Halloween took on a new meaning. It was still about candy, but a different kind of candy, an even sweeter candy, a candy for the eyes. In the same way that St. Patrick’s Day is a ‘free pass’ to start drinking at 9 am, Halloween is a ‘free pass’ for many women to dress slightly more revealing than a Mexican hooker in August. And I, for one, think that’s just great.
Now, you can’t appreciate this fine aspect of the holiday if you’re at the wrong location. Chances are, you’ll wait till the last minute to make plans, and you’ll end up sitting at home watching Heroes on the DVR, handing out your hard-earned candy to a bunch of ungrateful neighborhood brats. Not cool, man. So, in an effort to spare some of you hornball HT readers from that awful fate, I’ve decided to compile an in-depth review of the eye-candy potential for a handful of Halloween concerts around the country. Let me guide you in the right direction…let me help you realize the full potential this holiday has to offer. So read on for a full list of concerts and what you may expect in terms of post-show spank material…
You may remember Neeko from his oft-inane comments and his one-time contribution that he still uses to impress septuagenarian women…he’s ours now.
As a “huge fan” of The Hidden Track, it is my huge honor to now be called contributor to The Hidden Track. Not since my awkward threesome in that Bucknell U. sorority-house have I been so eager to “contribute”…I mean, man, I really dig this blog re-lig-i-ous-ly. I think Abe Cowboy, Robby Bernstein and the rest of the guys do a fantastic job and really give it their all. To paraphrase the Phil Lesh song, Donor Rap, these guys really have ‘a lot of guts’ to do what they do…
In spite of my overwhelming admiration for HT, I think it’s relatively easy to find it lacking. Sure, daily posts full of “links,” and “news,” and “jokes,” and “music” are ‘relevant’ and all…but where is the art, man? Where is the poetry? I haven’t seen one decent haiku in all the months this blog has been published! And that’s what the people really want, isn’t it? Haiku. That’s what they want.
Instead of boring you with my own self-indulgent art, I spent the last three weeks traveling back in time to visit with some of the great contemporary American poets. I schooled them in all things jam-band…I played them all the epic shows, the epic jams, the sit-ins, the bust-outs, the encores, the openers…and here is what they came up with. The finest American Poets of the past 150 years inspired by the crunchiest, headiest jams in the universe…so let’s hear it:
The Haunted Stolen Beard
Lo! That my ears were gently cupped in cotton!
My spirit soars aimlessly, bewildered by noodle jams.
Oh God! I weep. I weep!
Weary of Weir, he torments my ear.
Is it all that you wear, poor lost-soul Weir, but short shorts and short shorts?
Behold! Weir now wears abducted Jerry-beard.
-Edgar Allen Poe
Hippie, My Likeness
Hippie, my likeness,
You look so much like me, hairy, bearded there,
I now suspect a style of theft;
I now suspect there is some of myself in your patchwork, and
also in your sandals.
For nature-boy is enamored of me, and I of him,
But toward him it really pisses me off, honestly,
That hippie stole my god-damned nature-boy style,
getting all the hippie chicks,
I dare not tell you how pissed Walt Whitman is, brah.
-Walt Whitman
Read on for four more poems from Cummings, Frost, Pound and Ginsberg…
