Hidden Track

Tonight, tenor saxophonist extraordinaire Joshua Redman takes the stage with two of the best drummers I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing: Gregory Hutchinson and Brian Blade. Also joining Redman for the second of two nights at the Highline are bassists Reuben Rogers and Larry Grenadier. Here’s a taste of Redman with Blade on Drums and Sam Yahel on Keys:

Redman blogged, with a heavy dose of humility, about the upcoming gigs on his website:

On the plane to New York and getting pretty psyched up for these upcoming double trio shows with Reuben, Greg, Larry and Brian. Two phenomenal bassists, two masterful drummers, and one, lone overmatched and under-skilled saxophonist: could ket kinda ugly! We recorded together last March, but this will be the first time for any of us playing live in this sort of configuration. Should be a lot of fun, and pretty wild. Honestly, I have no idea what to expect. But isn’t that what jazz is all about?

READ ON for more on Joshua Redman’s double trio shows…

The surviving original members of the Grateful Dead teamed up with Warren Haynes and Jeff Chimenti last night to treat the crowd at the Mid-Atlantic Inaugural Ball to a tasty

On one of the official release dates of their new album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective have announced a massive world tour. The band kicks things off with a sold-out show tonight in NYC and will perform at four additional shows in the U.S. before heading overseas in March.

In March, the zealous overachievers are booked for 22 shows over 25 days in 11 countries. There’s no rest for the weary as May through June has the band playing 22 U.S. shows and two in Canada.

Most of us at Hidden Track Headquarters think this album qualifies as an early contender for best album of 2009 and Merriweather Post Pavilion will surely be making numerous appearances in many top 5 / top 10 album lists from a variety of publications at the end of the year.

READ ON after the jump for the band’s full itinerary. Mark your local show in your calendar as you will not be disappointed by AC live…

Looking back on last week’s Cover Wars, Tea Leaf Green has emerged victorious with over 50% of the vote. In 2nd place was The Allman Brothers Band and I am also very happy to report that every entry received at least one vote – I love it when that happens. In case you missed it, last week we looked at ten covers of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

This week I have chosen an 80’s super-hit by Simple Minds. This song was written specifically for the 1985 brat-pack film The Breakfast Club. Simple Minds is still touring and plan to release an album in 2009, a title has not yet been revealed.

As always, be sure to register/login to IMEEM before starting the playlist below to stream full-length clips.

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READ ON after the jump for a look at this week’s contestants…

[Originally Published: March 26, 2008]

What do Jerry Garcia, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Luis Bunuel and Neil Gaiman have in common? Well, they all in some way are connected with a film made by a Polish director set in the Spanish Inquisition about the surreal adventures of a soldier who has found an ancient manuscript during the Napoleonic Wars. Oh, and the film was based upon a novel written in Spanish by a legendary Polish writer and adventurer, Count Jan Potocki at the turn of the 19th century—crazed mystics help to narrate the sweet wreckage drenched in ghost stories, bent royalty, and seductively demonic women.

The film by Wojciech Has is The Saragossa Manuscript and it is a wild jaunt through incredible scenes of such mind-blowing cleverness that one is drawn deeper down the rabbit hole into a rich maze of tales within a tale within an overall twisted myth. At certain points, narration shifts between characters, settings of time and space (a familiar Hidden Flick theme) leap back and forth, exotic eccentric ‘story-guides’ fade in and out of the mix and all of the adventures are accompanied by a truly spacey soundtrack by Krzysztof Penderecki, who would go on to add music to The Exorcist and The Shining.

And what the heck does that odd cavalcade of artists that began this piece have to do with this rich, ancient celluloid artifact? In the 1990s, Jerry Garcia along with Scorsese and Coppola helped fund a restoration of the film for modern audiences. Sadly, the film was to undergo its final inspection the day after the Grateful Dead leader’s passing in August 1995 and he never saw the print in its full restored 182-minute glory. Read on for more about Jerry Garcia’s favorite movie…

• The Saragossa Manuscript: Netflix / Amazon