For the past 20 years, pioneering mandolin player David “Dawg” Grisman has put out dozens of fantastic releases featuring “handmade” acoustic music from a variety of artists and genres on
The Specials made their return to a U.S. stage for the first time in over 30 years on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this past Tuesday night. The 2 tone
With the festival season kicking off in earnest this weekend at Coachella and Wanee, we thought this was the perfect time to re-run Jennifer Kirk’s Festival Survival Guide to help you prepare for your festival experiences…
[Originally Published: May 21, 2009]
When the Bonnaroo 2009 lineup was announced a few months ago, my roommate asked me to email him a list of festival ‘essentials.’ As a festival veteran of sorts – I’ve been to every Bonnaroo but one and attended Langerado, Summercamp, Rothbury, Coventry, Oswego, Big Cypress, and the NOLA Jazz Fest – he picked the right person to ask for such a list.
In addition to my festival resume, I’m also a stickler for being organized and more importantly, prepared. As it has turned out in the past, I usually end up ‘running’ the camp site for my friends and well, I kind of like it. Going to a festival and being prepared is a trial and error experience, so I wanted to share some of my ideas with the HT audience and in turn was hoping that you would also chime in with any advice so we can all, collectively, have a better festival going experience.
So, here is a list of some of the essentials you’ll need in order to succeed and of course, survive your long weekend of fun and music!
1. Get an RV. It will make life easier. Now, I’ve actually never attended a festival in an RV, and have done just fine. But, boy would I love to travel to one in style. Perhaps one day. But, if you can’t rent or borrow one then pay extra close attention to the 19 items left on this list.
2. Water. You can’t bring enough of it. Some festivals are starting to provide water refill stations (Rothbury did this last year and you were allowed to bring empty or sealed containers onto the concert grounds). Make sure to check the ‘official’ festival rules first. I would recommend purchasing several gallons worth. After all, you will need it to refill water containers, brush your teeth, wash your dishes, etc. Potable water is generally available on site at washing stations but I tend to shy away from the sweet, sweet stench of sulfur. READ ON for more of Jennifer’s Festival Survival tips and tricks…
At a recent performance in New York City, LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy asked fans not to leak the group’s new album, This Is Happening, and as if on cue
Check in on Wednesday of every week during Season 6 of Lost to share your thoughts, theories, complaints and assessments of the previous night’s episode. Big time SPOILER alert for
With the strict criteria of needing audio that was captured live during the previous week, some editions of this feature are easier to put together than others based solely on who was touring and who allows taping. This week was pretty awesome, as when I sat down to put this together I quickly found tapes from Thom Yorke’s Atoms For Peace, Mark Knopfler, and Ween. Rounding out with HT favorites The Mother Hips and a nod to our Cover Wars March Madness champion and voila – this one was easy.
[Thanks to stober for this week’s photo]
And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you. Click here to download Last Week’s Sauce Podcast #6
A & T: Atoms For Peace – Black Swan, The Daily Mail, Paperbag Writer
Date & Venue: 2010-04-08 Wang Theater, Boston, MA
Taper & Show Download: Dave Flaschner & Rob Adler
In case you didn’t know who Atoms For Peace is: Thom Yorke, Nigel Godrich, Michael “Flea” Balzary, Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco. I was at this show and it was ridiculous start-to-finish as every member of this band is beyond solid. I’ve included three tracks, one from the main set (which is the band performing The Eraser in its entirety) and two songs from the encore. The Daily Mail starts with Yorke solo on piano with the band joining in halfway through. Then, they play Radiohead B-Side Paperbag Writer. Atoms For Peace has four more shows on the books. Tonight and tomorrow in Oakland, Saturday at the Santa Barbara Bowl and Sunday at Coachella.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/atomsauce.mp3]Some video from the Boston show:
READ ON for tracks from Mark Knopfler, The Mother Hips and Ween…
Widespread Panic won’t officially celebrate its silver anniversary til 2011, but you can’t help but appreciate the group’s longevity. Twenty-four years of more-or-less nonstop Panic. Just sort of crept up on us, eh?
As Panic gets set for its first extended run of 2010, it’s about to release Dirty Side Down, the band’s eleventh studio effort and the return of longtime associate John Keane to the producer’s chair.
Having spent a few weeks with it, I feel like it’s among the better Panic albums of the past decade: emotional, propulsive, slightly unrefined and pleasant in its ragged imperfections. There’s a wealth of new material – the shifting tones in opener Saint Ex, for example, are as eclectic as Panic gets — but there are also several Panic live gems, like the furious Jerry Joseph tune North, and vintage cuts Visiting Day and Clinic Cynic, finally making it to the studio. And credit Panic another thing: rather than stumble under the emotional weight of a tribute to fallen comrade Vic Chesnutt, they have here a tasteful, yet heartfelt salute in recording Chesnutt’s tender This Cruel Thing. It does the job, without overreaching.
Hidden Track caught up this month with John “JoJo” Hermann, who was already gracious enough to participate in Hidden Track’s Baseball Preview, to look at what’s ahead. Panic, which kicks off its spring tour this weekend at the Wanee Festival, has another action packed year on tap, following a 2009 that was hardly restful.
HIDDEN TRACK: Before we get into what’s coming up for Panic, I wanted to rewind a bit to your action-packed 2009. The co-bill tour with the Allman Brothers Band is what a lot of people will remember most, and it just seemed like you guys were having so much fun up there every night.
JOJO HERMANN: It was such a great idea. It was a dream tour, it really was. I mean, having Warren and Derek and Jimmy, the three of them up there it was like the Three Tenors, except, I don’t know, the three guitar masters. Getting to sit behind them every night was a really incredible experience. I think we’re going to get to do it again soon, at Wanee.
READ ON for more of Chad’s chat with JoJo Hermann of Widespread Panic…
Last week Philadelphia’s own pyschedelic pop-rockers Dr. Dog released their latest and quite possibly their greatest album yet – Shame, Shame. To celebrate the release the band stopped by Late
If you’re a fan of the one drummer years of the Grateful Dead, you’re gonna love this Steel Cut Oats compilation that longtime HT reader Joe Kolbenschlag has masterfully put together featuring his picks from the October 17 – 19, 1972 shows at the historic Fox Theatre in St. Louis. Joe clearly knows his Dead as you can tell from this essay about the compilation…
After reviewing several shows for a next project, October 1972 seemed ripe for the picking, as we’ve not heard a single note from this extremely fertile period via official release. It’s only a matter of time before the powers that be also draw the same conclusion, and drop us a sweet three or four disc compilation set – possibly featuring an entire show. I hope to have remedied this temporary oversight by delivering four hours of selections from the Fox Theatre run from St. Louis, Missouri – October 17th, 18th, and 19th, 1972.
The middle show on the 18th is easily the most recognizable of the three – found in many collections, and for good reason – it’s a classic. Excellent ’72 energy, tight playing, group telepathy, and most important an explosive 2nd set jam that delivers in spades – it is the centerpiece of this collection – Playin’ > Drums > Dark Star > Morning Dew > Playin’ – 64 minutes of blissed-out Fall ’72 – it’s the first time the band wove multiple songs into the structure of Playin’ In The Band. This sequence is begging for official release.
Each of these shows has its own quirks and characteristics that make them unique in performance, and as actual recordings or ‘sonic journals’ as Bear himself calls them. The first night has its fair share of technical problems during the 1st set – monitors are a huge issue (when aren’t they back then), and it’s clearly a bother to the band more than normal – causing distractions during songs, and followed up with excessive complaints and long breaks after them. The middle show’s recording is heavy on Weir in the mix – which offers the listener a different perspective and appreciation of his playing at this time – his fills throughout add a much deeper flavor than what is normally found, and a pre-cursor to his evolving jazzy style which becomes more prevalent in 1973 and 1974. The final night – another wonderful complete show on its own merit – is marred by more tape hiss than the average tape from ’72, however, probably carries the most democratic mix of the three shows.
These nine hours of tapes offered a diverse range of aural challenges, including inevitable ‘cuts’ due to their analog nature. Some excellent tracks were automatically thrown out due to this unfortunate circumstance – specifically the Bird Song from 10.18, Black Peter from 10.19 – only 1 of 4 readings from 1972, and an otherwise uber-melt of a Playin’ In The Band from 10.17. Each of these tracks should be considered outside of this compilation as outstanding; however, they were not going to work in the context of my personal selection criteria. After having an opportunity to recently listen to Vault copies of 10.18’s Bird Song (same problematic cut, yet with obviously better sound quality) and 10.17’s Ramble On Rose (missing on all circulating copies), surprises from these shows still exist, and an official release could spring some new material. On a personal side note – any further cuts, blips, or skips that reside on this collection remain ‘as is’ from the original sources found in the db.etree.org directory – surgery was performed only for the purpose of sequencing, and not on any portion of actual music.
READ ON for more on Steel Cut Oats #5 and a full tracklist…
A fresh batch of Jambands.com feature articles have been posted today and among this month’s features is a sneak preview of the upcoming Relix cover story on MGMT. The MGMT
