We’re celebrating Fat Tuesday with the video debut of New Orleans funksters Bonerama. This video for Big Fine Woman comes from PartyGras2009.com – a site anchored by PBS and Bonerama
I’ve been writing for a Hidden Track for a little over a year now, but it wasn’t until just last week that I finally had my William Miller moment. I had the opportunity to flex my journalism degree by interviewing ATO recording artist and former Better Than Noodling subject Ben Kweller.
The unbelievably likable and laid back singer-songwriter took some time last week to chat with Hidden Track from Omaha, NE – where he was kicking off his 17 city tour – about his new indie-twang-pop album Changing Horses…
Jeffrey Greenblatt: The title of the album is Changing Horses, it seems like it’s a nod to the new sound. Did you set out to make a country-inspired record?
Ben Kweller: I did. I came up with the album back in 2004, I came up with the album title and stuff and I wrote the song Hurtin’ You and that’s the one I was like “oh, I should make an album of songs like this called Changing Horses.” I’ve been working on the songs ever since and I just decided to record ’em.
JG: Did you grow up listening to a lot of country music?
BK: Oh yeah
JG: Who did you grow up listening to?
BK: Well you know in the beginning it was like everything that was on the radio like Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson and stuff like that. [I listened to] country, pop-country in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s and then I got into the older stuff when I got older, learned more about the roots of things, got into Johnny Cash and Hank. So sort of the same way with rock n’ roll you know like when Nirvana came out, and all those bands, all the grunge bands I was really into that stuff. And then you start to learn about the Velvet Underground and punk rock and the roots of it all.
READ ON for more of ATO recording artist Ben Kweller’s thoughts on producing albums, summer festivals and his son’s love of Guns N’ Roses…
After an incredibly successful election season that saw the non-partisan group register 105,697 voter registration, you couldn’t blame the folks at HeadCount for taking a break before gearing up for
Willfully walking into a wild and wacky situation is one thing. To do so in the pursuit of some sort of lofty man-made goal, and hope to pull through with all of one’s senses intact is quite another thing entirely. What is it one is really looking for? How to get it done? Does it really matter in the end? When has one truly gone over the edge? A case by case basis, to be sure, and The Edge, as Hunter S. Thompson would have said, is in the mind of the beholder as we commence on our little journey down the rabbit hole of madness.
A murder has been committed, and there are three witnesses. Unfortunately, the crime occurred in an insane asylum, and the witnesses aren’t speaking, so the main character, a journalist in a gravely misguided pursuit of a Pulitzer Prize for solving the mystery, decides to have himself committed into the institution in this week’s Hidden Flick, a sharp, haunting, and sometimes completely bonkers film, Samuel Fuller’s 1963 cautionary tale of moral destiny and mental destitution, Shock Corridor.
Peter Breck plays Johnny Barrett, the ambitious scribe, who is so confident in his own intellect and talent that he concocts a weird back-story to get himself inside the mental hospital as a patient with a lecherous edge. His girlfriend, Cathy, a stripper with the proverbial heart of gold, played by Constance Towers, would pretend to be his sister, and complain to the authorities that her brother was molesting her, and should be committed because of his pending mental breakdown and dangerous threat to society. Barrett would simply pose as a patient, investigate the other patients and guards, eventually interview the three witnesses to the murder, solve the case, identify the murderer, write his glorious story, and win the Pulitzer Prize. Such a brilliant and easy enough idea, right?
READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick – Shock Corridor…
This week’s Stormy Monday celebrates the music of The Band – potentially the greatest music ever made. The covers begin with Ohio’s own ekoostik hookah killing Don’t Do It, a
Every morning on my way to work I pass one of the largest American flags I’ve ever had the distinction to see first hand. And every morning since the inauguration – and release of Umphrey’s McGee’s Mantis – as I wait patiently sitting at that stop light while staring at that flag I tend to bounce my thoughts back and forth between the president’s speech and the opening line to the title track of Mantis…
We believe there’s something here worth dying for…
Oh, how those lyrics ring true for our country’s past, present and future. People have fought and died to defend the ideals that our government originally set forth.
Obama touched on this issue, too, and spoke of an era of responsibility with these great words from his inauguration speech:
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
READ ON for more of this week’s Land of Confusion column…
Over the next 10 days we’ll keep you updated on events happening down in the Hampton area during next weekend’s Phish shows. Up first, we’ve got some interesting news for
We’d like to welcome our new Midwest correspondent Benji Feldheim to the team with his review of a recent Gene Ween Band show…
[All photos by Allison Taich]
Gene Ween tried something different.
Armed with only an acoustic guitar, a harmonica and himself, Aaron “Gene” Freeman led about 100 people in a drunken singalong during a private party Jan. 30 at Tonic Room in Chicago. About halfway through, he forgot the words. But it’s Gene Ween, so who cares? At least that’s what the audience thought.
“What’s the second verse?” Gene said through a smile when he stopped in the middle of Marble Tulip Juicy Tree.
Amidst hoots and hollers, a few people obliged him and shouted the next few words. He jumped right back into the bouncing rhythm of the song with a scream and was back on point.
The intimate, one-man-show is a new thing for Gener, as he playfully reminded the patient crowd of this a few times. Not only was Gene playing his songs without the full electric energy of the band Ween, but he was also missing his musical partner and soulmate, the axe-wielding Mickey “Dean Ween” Melchiondo.
READ ON for more of Benji’s Gene Ween solo acoustic review…
If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the freak-folk movement of the last few years, you’re probably already familiar with the the name Marissa Nadler. For the majority
VH1 Classic will air the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster tonight at Midnight. Released in July, 2004 the film features unprecedented access to the band members as they recorded
