Hidden Track

The hoards of people surging towards the gates of the venue at Camden – who knows the amphitheater is called this year – were ready for the show. They were screaming and whooping in waves, overcome with anticipation and the spoils of a glorious, sunny day on the lot at a Phish concert.

[All photos by Jeff Volckhausen]

It was the sound of the circus come to town, and it brought with it a smile – it was a sound missing at Jones Beach, despite how truly excellent those three nights were. Inside, the place was packed from the stage lip to the fences as Phish hit the stage running with Chalk Dust Torture, followed by a stellar version of Fee during which Trey flubbed the lyrics, started laughing and then joined with Page for a rich, deeply hued jam that grew and glowed organically, reds and purples across the stage and ember colors creeping from behind the cloud cover over the Philly skyline. It was unique, and a sign of things to come.

To start the improv in Wolfman’s Brother, Fishman set to dancing brightly, drawing everyone else into his groove. The guitar was lacing between Mike’s slapping lines, a clavinet spilling over top it all, and eventually Trey swung the lead up and cut loose, wailing to a shattering peak – the second in what would be a night of stellar thematic jams.

READ ON for more of Dan’s thoughts on Phish @ Camden…

SCI keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth posted this clip of his band rehearsing for their upcoming appearance at the Rothbury Festival… String Cheese Incident – Outside & Inside

After registering more than 100,000 voters last year, HeadCount plans to build upon their success with the launch of the “What’s Your Issue?” campaign encouraging music fans to become informed, active citizens.

Those who head over to the revamped HeadCount.org or visit the HeadCount table at a concert can answer a short issues survey about the issues that matter to them and be entered win free VIP tickets to Outside Lands Music Festival, held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park August 28-30, 2009, plus two round-trip airfares on Southwest Airlines to anywhere in the U.S., get access to free downloads and receive an update every six weeks on the issue that matters most to them. Let’s not gloss over that last point – you don’t have to worry about HeadCount updates flooding your inbox.

The organization’s revamped website has just been updated to include a wide range of resources that facilitate civic participation including issue pages, their blog, a listing of volunteer opportunities and a legislative action area where you can email your Congressional representatives. We recently asked HeadCount founders Marc Brownstein and Andy Bernstein about “What’s Your Issue?” and here’s what they had to say…

Hidden Track: The last election was over and you guys were extremely successful registering voters, can you tell us about the process of figuring out where you went from there with HeadCount?

Marc Brownstein: We’ve always known where we were going to go from there. The mission has always been a two-part mission. One of the parts is to utilize the power of music to organize the community at large in terms of voter registration. And then to take it one step further, part of our mission was going to be – ultimately- to become the civic engagement branch of the jamband community, the people who train the volunteers of the future.

So we built the foundation around voter registration and electing the officials is the very, very important first step. One of the things that I like to say is it’s not who is gonna be there running your government necessarily – that’s the most important thing – but once they get there how they are going to run it. That’s what HeadCount is going to be about in the future. It’s about issues and finding out what the issues of the kids in the jamband community are and how they can engage with the politicians in Washington to be running our country in the direction that our community wants to go in.

READ ON for more from Marc Brownstein and Andy Bernstein…

Green Day will be performing each night this week – with the exception of Monday – on NBC’s Later with Carson Daly to promote their new album, 21st Century Breakdown.The

Back in April we told you about Red Sox prospect Lars Anderson’s appreciation of the Grateful Dead and at the time we wondered whether he was into Phish as well.

When Phish announced the dates for their first tour in five years I was extremely excited to see that the shows lined up really well with my schedule. My plan