Posts by Shane Handler

If there ever was a record shop where everybody knows your name, it might be Pure Pop Records in Burlington, VT. In fact it shares a distinctive downstairs entry way, identical to the set of the fabled NBC show Cheers. In the city that gave us Phish and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Pure Pop […]

Seattle, Austin, Portland, Chicago, Nashville….we know what we’re getting at here – all kick ass music cities. Everything from the venues, record stores, local bands gone big and music festivals, there’s no shortage of cool and hip. But what about Phoenix, Arizona? Well, there’s no way Phoenix even dares come close to top tier music […]

Just last Monday on the Facebook page for Thursday Night Asteroid there an shared article from a science website that Asteroid 2004 BL86 will sweep past the Earth at a distance of 1.2 million kilometers with a clever enough remark – “Another near miss. We’ll get you all one of these days.”  If this wasn’t the […]

The period of the late 90s brings up many things for Phish fans: patchwork pants, heady nugs, wooly sweaters, The Clifford Ball, The Great Went, Oswego, lot shirts, Great Woods, Europe, Lemonwheel, cow funk, Worcester, CK5, Andy Gadiel’s Phish page, and the list goes on and on. But perhaps the venue that most purely defined […]

Like most bands with biting names (check, Murder by Death), The Drums’ sound does not reflect what their name brags. In fact its quite the opposite as hooks galore dominate the latest offering from the Brooklyn band founded in 2008.  Where their last album, 2011’s Portamento was short on substance, The Drums have returned with […]

Bass guitar legend Tony Levin has recorded and/or toured with just about every rock icon of the past three decades – from King Crimson to Peter Gabriel to Paul Simon to John Lennon. But the one musician who hadn’t graced that impressive list was especially close to home: With his latest project, Levin Brothers, the […]

For the music fans amongst us that love a good DIY story, look no further than the accomplishments of Alejandro Rose-Garcia. Rose Garcia, (a.k.a. Shakey Graves), who last week (10/7) released his second full length, And The War Came. This follows the artist’s 2011 self-released debut album, Roll the Bones, which brought him national acclaim and, […]

Over the course of two prior full length albums, Rubblebucket has allured listeners with its dynamic horn driven grooves and the joyous voice of lead singer Kalmia Traver. Now based in Brooklyn via Vermont, Rubblebucket hones many of the area’s international influences with scrapes of Afrobeat and the festive island atmosphere not unlike what Arcade […]

In what is now becoming an annual event in the Green Mountain state, the 4th annual Grand Point North Music Festival, curated and presented by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals along with Higher Ground is taking place this Saturday, September 13th and Sunday, September 14th, 2014 at Burlington, Vermont’s picturesque Waterfront Park. In addition to […]

From 2007 to 2012, songwriter Jesse Elliott led acclaimed rockers These United States through five studio albums and nearly 1,000 live performances in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, appearing everywhere from Glastonbury to SXSW, Daytrotter to Lollapalooza. In early 2013, Elliott was stopping over for a month in Denver on his way to a new life in New […]