Scott Bernstein

Televised Tune: On the Tube This Weekend

Friday [all times Eastern]: BBC Crown Jewels features Sounds For Saturday: The Music of The Faces [VH-1 Classic 8:00 PM] Jay-Z performs a track from American Gangster on The Late

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Grousing The Aisles: So Long, Rocktober

October could be our favorite month to see live music, thanks in part to the temperate weather and full venue schedules. School’s finally back in session, leading most bands to play their own shows instead of the banding together for the shitty touring festivals that occur every summer. And the best part about October is that it peaks on Halloween, when bands pull out all the stops.


This week Grousing The Aisles looks at three fantastic shows from October, and then as an added bonus, we’ve rounded up links to Halloween show downloads from all across these United States. Be sure to read on after the jump to find links to downloads from Arcade Fire, Gov’t Mule, Ryan Adams and many more.

The Breakfast 10/27/2007 SBD MATRIX [MP3, FLAC, STREAM]:

Is it just us or does it seem like the unwritten ban on covering Phish songs has finally been lifted? The Breakfast celebrated Halloween by covering Lawn Boy in its entirety at their 9th annual Fonghoulish Freakout at the Higher Ground. Sure the vocals may have been a bit Bisco-esque, but The Breakfast showed incredible musicianship by nailing some of Phish’s most difficult passages with ease.

Photo and recording by Dave Pecoraro


Guitarist Tim Palmieri didn’t try to replicate Trey Anastasio’s tone. For instance, on Bathtub Gin, Palmieri played the solo using an envelope filter that made his guitar sound more like Jerry Garcia than Trey. Run Like An Antelope and Split Open and Melt featured some great interplay from all the members of the band including keyboardist Matt Oestreicher, who supposedly hadn’t heard any of Phish’s shit before starting with The Breakfast earlier this year.

Lawn Boy took up the majority of the show, but The Breakfast also played a number of their own complex compositions. The show started with a ripping jam that led into the Zappa-esque Buquebus (no Bangbus?). Other impressive originals included a heavy Food For Thought and the quirky Honey Butter. The gig seemed to gain major hippie cred points when Phish’s Mike Gordon came out wearing a mask to play bass on a bizarre cover of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive — that seemed to excite the audience more than any of the Lawn Boy covers.

Kudos to The Breakfast for allowing Dave Pecoraro to tape the show so everyone could check out their version of Lawn Boy within 48 hours of the show ending. In less than a week his recording has been downloaded by over 4,000 people who have now been exposed to the power of a good Breakfast. Read on for more…

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MP3 Boot Camp: Wilco Throws Food

NYCTaper this week posted an amazing Wilco show from way back in February 1997, or about 24 band member changes ago. Wilco stopped by the [pre-Fillmore] Irving Plaza for a taping of HBO’s Reverb towards the end of the Being There tour. Check out track number 19 to hear the infamous “deli tray” incident.

  • Let’s start with a must-listen: The Rolling Stones stopped by Muddy Waters’ club in Chicago to play a show with him in 1981
  • Ted Nugent plays a number of his most classic songs, including Wang Dang Sweet Poontang, during this fun show from ’77
  • If you like early Talking Heads, you’ll love this bootleg
  • The Eagles’ new album may suck, but their old shit was awesome
  • Nazz shares his favorite songs about whiskey and Boston Douchebags
  • This week’s Music-hole megapost features shows from Supertramp, Lou Reed, Status Quo and many others
  • Bands That Jam has photos and mp3s from Umphrey’s McGee
  • Ickmusic has Jerry Garcia and John Kahn live from the big house

Finally, Blog Stoned just posted a Genesis soundboard from their recent European tour. We’re glad to see some crispy ‘boards making the rounds.

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Ryan Montbleau Band & Televised Baseball

The crowd cheered wildly as Ryan Montbleau sullenly sang a song about death from his new album, Patience on Friday. But the audience hadn’t misinterpreted it — the Red Sawx had just busted Game 3 of the World Series wide open.

All photos by Adam Kaufman


Music and sports came together this past weekend when the Ryan Montbleau Band shared the stage with the Red Sox during two special shows in Boston. As we told you last week, Montbleau’s gigs at The Paradise took place at exactly the same times as Games 3 and 4 of the World Series, which featured the Red Sox humiliating the suddenly ice-cold Colorado Rockies. Ryan’s manager, booking agent and promoter all advised him to cancel Sunday’s show, but we’re glad to report that the RMB avoided potential disaster when their fans rallied to make the weekend an overwhelming success. No Rally Monkey required.

Instead of ignoring the games, Montbleau embraced the circumstances and set up a huge screen next to the stage which showed the World Series to the audience. Luckily for the band, by the time Ryan & Company hit the stage on Saturday night, the Red Sox had already jumped out to a 6-0 lead, allowing everyone to focus on the music for the first set. Read on after the jump for much more…

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Wednesday Intermezzo: Goodbye Nickel Creek

After nearly a year on the road, Nickel Creek’s farewell tour comes to a close on November 29th. If you haven’t had a chance to see them before they go their separate ways, be sure to check out NPR’s webcast of Friday night’s show live from the 9:30 club in Washington D.C. Although, we’d really prefer to instead say goodbye to Nickelback from the public consciousness, not the Creek.

Finally, the full song list for the upcoming Rock Band video game looks absolutely incredible. We can’t wait to drum along with Epic or to sing Mississippi Queen when the game comes out on November 20th. Thanksgiving fun.

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Live Downloads: Umphrey’s at the Nokia

Umphrey’s McGee was one of the first bands to sell official recordings of nearly every show they played when they introduced the UmLive program in 2003.

At first the Chicago-based sextet only sold discs at their merch table, but soon thereafter they started peddling downloads of most shows through disclogic.com. Disclogic went bust in 2006, so Umphrey’s partnered with LiveDownloads.com to sell their official recordings through a new website called Umlive.net. That history lesson-cum-introduction leads us to Umphrey’s McGee’s terrific show at the Nokia Theater from October 20th, which is our Live Downloads show of the week.

Photo by Adam Kaufman


During recent tours Umphrey’s has perfected the time-tested formula of sprinkling special guests, random covers and heady improvisations throughout two sets of well-written songs. The first set of Umphrey’s Saturday night show at the Nokia Theater in New York City featured the boys nailing some of their hardest compositions while also dropping two inventive song sequences that had never been played before. Andy’s Last Beer started with an intense buildup and ended with the band giving the young crowd a lesson on odd time signatures.

Bridgeless followed and quickly segued into a danceable jam that slyly slithered towards a rare cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Power To Love. Guitarist Brendan Bayliss’s voice sounded great throughout the evening, and he absolutely nailed Power to Love. Of course covering Hendrix is all about guitar tone, and UM’s other guitar player Jake Cinninger put on quite a clinic during his solo. Keyboardist Joel Cummins took control shortly after Cinninger’s solo and deftly led the band back through the end of Bridgeless. Read on after the jump for much more…

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Monday’s Hors D’Oeuvres: Deaner’s Pissed

Rounder Records promoted Ween’s latest record in typical fashion, sending out preview copies to 100 journalists in the hopes of building buzz. The plan backfired when one of the scribes leaked La Cucharacha onto the Interweb two months before the release date. Dean Ween became violent when he heard that the fruits of his labor was freely available as shitty sounding MP3s with no cover art. We certainly understand Deaner’s frustration, but if Ween had released an album in the past four years, they would realize Internet leaks are par for the course.

Finally, control of oink.cd has been returned to the OiNK administrators, who supply a link to a list of torrents sites to use now that OiNK is out of action.

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Televised Tune: On the Tube This Weekend

Friday [all times Eastern]: Living The Life of Marley follows Ky-Mani Marley on the road and in the studio [BET 10:00 PM] Alt-rockers Rooney appear on an encore presentation of

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