This past weekend, Neil Young assembled a number of notable artists for the 22nd installment of his Bridge School Benefit concert series – that included Wilco, DC4C, ZZ Top, Cat
NYCTaper just finished an extremely busy week that found him covering a number of up-and-coming artists at the CMJ Festival. Head over to his site for high-quality recordings of Cake
On November 24, legendary auction house Christie’s will be hosting an event that will feature memorabilia from a number of the influential punk, new wave and glam rock acts including
Sometimes the events surrounding a show garner it nearly impossible for a let down. For example, take an 80 degree sunny day on an October weekend packed with friends on a wedding getaway for the first time ever to the endearing city of Austin, Texas. Then add about a hundred thousand lubricated University of Texas Longhorns fans coming off their number one ranked football team’s takedown of the number six Oklahoma State Cowboys and put a thousand or so of the drunkest ones in Stubb’s BBQ for a nighttime serenade by Ben Folds. While normally this might sound like a recipe for disaster, it was a well behaved, yet euphoric populous to share in our cherry popping at the famed Stubb’s BBQ.
Before we dive into the nitty gritty of the Ben Folds show, I have two staunch recommendations for anyone taking a first time pilgrimage to Austin (warning: you veggies might want to skip ahead a couple paragraphs). Stubb’s is an obvious choice, but for a truly amazing barbeque feast, but you absolutely have to head a half hour outside town to the Mecca of food that is the Salt Lick. My friends and I, hung-over like you wouldn’t believe, rallied a group of 30 friends out to Driftwood, Texas to feast on juicy brisket, fatty spare ribs, giant sausages, barbequed chicken, cole slaw, every down-home side dish you could imagine, and some warm blackberry pie. The best of all was this amazing brown sugary sauce (more like barbeque gravy than a traditional barbeque sauce) that smothered over our heaping plates of food. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. Just get a load of this barbeque pit.
READ ON for more of Rupert’s review of Ben Folds in Austin…
There wasn’t much in the way of covers on Trey Anastasio’s recently completed tour with Classic TAB, but Big Red did give the crowd in Richmond one massive bust out
Nearly everyone who catches Ukulele wiz Jake Shimabukuro in action comes back raving about his virtuosic playing. He’s become so popular that his visits to NYC have become few and
In this critical time before the election, HeadCount and Cinetic Rights Management have made the documentary film A Call to Action available for free on Snagfilms.com. If you’re looking for
We’ve always had a soft spot for Coheed & Cambria, which has garnered a legion of fans over the years as it continues to top itself with prog/alt concept record
The latest issue of Spin features a really interesting read on what has become the cult phenomenon of The Rock-afire Explosion. If the name doesn’t sound familiar, think back to
My apologies for not getting a Cover Wars up last week. I was fighting off what I affectionately refer to as the “Tour Flu” after logging a four-day-weekend full of live music from the likes of Trey Anastasio and Umphrey’s McGee. The extra time provided an opportunity for Widespread Panic and The Punch Brothers to duke it out for the title of best cover of Ophelia. Chris Thile and the Punch Brothers ultimately walked away victorious.
This week, we look at six renditions of the first track on Van Morrison’s 1970 release Moondance: And It Stoned Me. The song, while adopted as a stoner anthem, seems to have more to do with what’s in the gallon jar mentioned in last verse than it does to smoking anything. In the artist’s own words, taken from a biography [via wikipedia]:
I suppose I was about twelve years old. We used to go to a place called Ballystockart to fish. We stopped in the village on the way up to this place and I went to this little stone house, and there was an old man there with dark weather-beaten skin, and we asked him if he had any water. He gave us some water which he said he’d got from the stream. We drank some and everything seemed to stop for me. Time stood still. For five minutes everything was really quiet and I was in this ‘other dimension’. That’s what the song is about.
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READ ON for the tale of the tape on this week’s competitors…
