Hidden Track

Chuck Myers is back, and he’s about to debunk a myth about disco music…

Okay. Let’s have a show of hands. How many of you, at some point in your lives, scrawled the words “Disco Sucks” on a tattered spiral notebook, or smiled when some schmuck on the radio broke a copy of Saturday Night Fever, or regretted snorting that line of coke from Bianca Jagger’s asscrack at Studio 54?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Well, here’s the deal. You were wrong. Disco didn’t suck. Disco was one of the most revolutionary forms of American music in the past 50 years, right up there with rock and punk and hip-hop. Disco is music about rebellion and revolution and equality and freedom and joy and sex and drugs and having a good time when the whole damned world is trying to keep you down.

In other words, disco is music about Love.

The music you probably know as disco was what mainstream culture spit out for the masses. The disco you know was about money, not love. So before you decide you hate disco, let me ask you something… Did The Grateful Dead stop mattering because Dave Matthews sold a zillion records to kids who shop at Abercrombie & Fitch? Did the Clash become meaningless the moment that Alvin, Theodore and Simon put out Chipmunk Punk? Could a thousand hairsprayed pretty boys from L.A. destroy the ass-kickery of Iron Maiden? Read on for more of Chuck’s defense of the disco era…

Yesterday moe. announced that they will be taking a break after the 9th annual moe.down this August. Here is what they posted on their website:

This summer, moe. will embark on one of its biggest summer tours to date. The band intends to spend most of June and July on the road. The tour will begin at Summer Camp and wind down in early August. moe. will finish out the summer at moe.down 9 in Turin, NY.After moe.down, moe. will not be playing any more shows for some time. The band is taking a break with the intent of returning again in 2009. Summer tour dates will be announced as they are confirmed.

And then a member of the moe. organization then did some clarifying:

People, please relax. They just need some time off. We realize that you guys enjoy your time off from work going to see moe., but they deserve some time off work as well.

Please do not read into anything or compare moe. to other bands. A few months of no shows does not mean the band is breaking up. last fall they did maybe 5 shows in the same time frame and everyone survived, you will survive again even without those 5 shows!!

they are going to go out with a bang, playing as many shows in as many places as they can squeeze in, then go home to not think about work for a bit. When they are rested, have the new roof up, painted the den, changed a few diapers, gotten a massage, paid some bills, taught a kid how to ride a bike etc. they will return to rock out!!

melissa
moe. marketing chick

So she asked not to compare moe. to other bands…Sorry Melissa, we are going to do EXACTLY that. Read on for some hard core stat geekin’…

I think it would be safe to say that interest in mopey singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen may be at an all time high right now. Last week as the result of some dreadlocked clown on American Idol covering Jeff Buckley’s take on Hallelujah the song soared to number one iTunes. Monday night Cohen was inducted into […]

We’re getting awfully close to the long-awaited release of My Morning Jacket’s new album. MMJ played in Houston on Monday night, and Breakfast On Tour was on hand to capture a few of the new tunes. Unsurprisingly, I’m already smitten with the new songs. Especially the gorgeous I’m Amazed. Let’s see what else is goin’ […]

The votes are in and we can say the mandate from last week’s Cover Wars belongs to…….Grateful Dead.

This week’s edition features a song so fantastic that dudes in many bands have no problem whatsoever citing the opening lyrics, “I am an old woman named after my mother”. Three-chord songs really are a thing of beauty. Wikipedia tells me that, Songwriter Harlan Howard once said “All you need to write a country song is three chords and the Truth.”

That’s all that original performerJohn Prine has here, and it is most certainly was an instant classic. Let’s take a look at a few renditions after the jump.

How does an aging alt.rock band connect with a new generation of music fans? Well if your R.E.M. you hook up a the music discovery website iLike and allow people to stream your new album – Accelerate – for free a full six days before it hit stores for what the site is calling their […]

Armed with a new record and a new guitarist, The Black Crowes brought their “One Night Only” tour to a capacity crowd at the Park West on Friday. For seven nights across the country, the Crowes will perform the new Warpaint record in its entirety along with a brief set of classics and covers.

In times of change, the band always seem to revert back to a club tour to get their bearings. They had a similar setup on the East Coast to kick off 2005’s reunion, and this run proved to be a similar situation – allowing the band the comforts of intimacy while road-testing the material before delving into their usual outdoor summer plans.

These shows also provide a means for new recruit, Luther Dickinson, to ease himself into the mix – a transition that is more than already under way. Luther’s stamp is all over Warpaint, making it a surprisingly focused record whose weak link appears to be Chris Robinson’s lyrics. The songs themselves are the most interesting to come from the Brothers Robinson since 1996’s Three Snakes and One Charm, something which Dickinson and bassist, Sven Pipien can be given a lot of credit for. Pipien finally seems comfortable in his role, and is downright assertive on the new material – a welcome change from his playing during the awkward By Your Side days. Read on for more…

Forget about the buzz that has surrounded Vampire Weekend, because if music blogs had existed back in the mid-90s Radish would have become a household name rather then a footnote in the career of Ben Kweller. At the tender age of 15, Kweller and his grunge-based trio found themselves at the center of a major label bidding war – all of whom were looking to sign the next Nirvana (a band they were heavily influenced by, check their video for Pink Little Stars).

Radish eventually landed on Mercury Records, appeared on Conan, Letterman and even The Weird Al Show, but hype doesn’t necessarily led to success and their debut album Restraining Bolt was a commercial flop. The band’s sophomore effort was recorded, but never released and Kweller fled to New York City to pursue a solo career – all this by the age of 19. While many could have easily faded in obscurity, Ben decided to do things his own way and slowly built his solo career from the ground up. Read on to hear more about his slacker-infused indie-pop…

It’s been a long while since Stormy Monday has featured a single, long track, so this week we have a special treat I’ve been hanging on to for a while. It’s an old school psychedelic jam fest from the Fillmore West in 1969, a wild, all star event. Country Joe and the Fish are enhanced […]

On again, off again, on again funk-groovesters the Greyboy Allstars have been in the midst of a career renaissance – touring relentlessly and even releasing their first new studio album in over a decade last year’s What Happened To Television? Despite asking that question the band’s debut music video takes a direct cue from the […]