Hidden Track

I’ll spare you full reviews seeing how often I’ve sung the praises of this lineup, but with now two Phil & Friends Nokia shows under the ol’ belt for the run and a third on deck tonight, here are five off-the-cuff observations:

[Photo by Rob Chapman via Phillesh.net]

1. There’s a nice little debate kicking around the Phil faithful at the moment asking whether this year’s Nokia residency is better than last year’s. Most folks are hedging, but some glass-half-empty comments I’ve heard favor last year’s, saying that now that this incarnation of Phil & Friends is comfortable, it’s lost the surprise factor and settled into predictability.

Based on this year’s setlists, that seems a little absurd to begin with, but to me, that’s an apples-to-toothpaste comparison anyway. Last year’s Nokia run was essentially a test kitchen for this lineup to see just how chemistry it had and how much excitement it could muster, and on its last weekend, most observers agree, they clicked and became a band. This year’s model is the same personnel, give or take a guest, but a band utterly sure of itself after a long summer of touring and now confident in its ability to “get there”—aware of all its strengths, working on its weaknesses—with everyone willing to add a bit more of his (or her!) personality to the mix.

Most noticeably, Steve Molitz isn’t as reticent about slipping in the nutty keyboard effects this year—he’s been blasting off all over the place, and doing it tastefully, as in Tuesday night’s fierce Feel Like a Stranger second set opener. Teresa Williams, too, now qualifies as a full-fledged band member, and it’s been great to see her in places both logical (boy, did she nail that beautiful, beautiful Peggy-O on Sunday) and surprising (she and Jackie brought marvelous harmonies to Music Never Stopped on Sunday and Cassidy on Tuesday—both set two enders, both Bobby songs the Phil lineup doesn’t often play, and both terrific.)

READ ON for four more observations from Chad…

Let’s check in with the irreverent mind behind Uncensored Interview’s blog, The Shark, for another installment of Uncensored Thursdays…

Hey there downtrodden victim of the current financial crisis, don’t look so dour! Lots of people all across America have suddenly lost their jobs just like you and have found themselves wondering “What the fuck am I gonna do to support myself and/or my vicious $400 a day coke habit?”

The first thought that crosses your mind is to apply at the local Starbucks (the one on your corner, not the one across the street from the one on your corner) and become a part-time barista. Hey, they have health care and decent pay. READ ON for more from The Shark…

We’d like to wish a very Happy Birthday to HT Favorite Neil Young. Both Some Dude and I are very excited to catch the Hall of Famer in action at

After a few years of close calls it appears that we are mere days away from a reunion of legendary rockers The Faces. Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Ian McLagan, Kenney

The Dark Star Orchestra celebrated their 11th Anniversary last night on 11/11 by debuting their version of the Grateful Dead classic The Eleven during the second set of their show

Yesterday, we brought you the tag team of review of Saturday night’s Benevento/Fishman/Mathis show – a show that a healthy dose of HT’s New York bureau attended. Despite the poor

Sometime in the last two years—there’s no exact date, but the shows that birthed Live at Tonic are probably a good place to start the discussion—Marco Benevento became a brand unto himself. Given the number of hats he wears, who’s to say what group, configuration or collaboration is his number one priority—and does he have to have just one?—but we’re past the point where any of Benevento’s eponymous groups is a mere Benevento-Russo Duo side project. That “B” in “Marco B”? Could just as easily stand for “bandleader,” dude.

[All Photos by Jeremy Gordon]

In his Benevento trio shows, which have one and soon two-full length albums from which to draw a panorama of core material, Benevento’s main focus is piano. There is, of course, the requisite sampling of other keyboard effects and toys for good measure, but the emphasis isn’t on creating an effects-driven soundscape so much as it is song-based: wrapping piano improvisation around a core melody and milking that melody for endless possibilities.

If there was anything discouraging about Benevento’s headlining set at Drom on Saturday, it was brevity: the whole thing was over and done with in a swift, encore-less hour-and-twenty. It wasn’t the band’s fault (Marco’s publicist, Kevin Calabro of Hyena Records, advises Hidden Track the band was originally told it could play at least another half hour, til 11:30 p.m., then was swiftly denied an encore right at 11 as Drom turned into a dance club). But it left little time to savor what Benevento, Jon Fishman and Reid Mathis had cooked up so much as absorb it like a laser beam to the head: tight and sinewy jams passing in blurs, and dazzling virtuosity to spare.

READ ON for more of Chad’s thoughts and Jeremy’s photos…

We’d like to pay our respects to the baseball player with the best name ever: Herb Score. Score, who pitched from the Cleveland Indians from 1955-59, passed away this morning

Earlier today, The Raconteurs unveiled a fun promotional schtick that we wanted to share. Jack White et al have come up with an Antique Roadshow parody called From Old To