Frank Zappa bootlegs will become much harder to come by in 2008 thanks to Gail Zappa and the Zappa Family Trust. The ZFT spent the holiday season sending out cease
As you’ve no doubt noticed, we’ve taken our foot slightly off the accelerator. It’s tough to post a full slate of nonsense when there’s very little in the way of
Each year the taste makers of a Yahoo! group named NYC-Freaks come together to throw a party featuring some of their favorite “just about to break” bands. Freaks Ball VIII
We hope everyone’s enjoying a happy holiday…but HT Grinch Chuck Myers does not. He’s kinda hoping someone falls down and sprains an ankle today. I seen ’em.
I’m not a fan of Christmas. Sure, I like the pretty lights and the attractive women in Santa outfits, but seeing yard after yard filled with glowing plastic manger scenes doesn’t fill my heart with joy. Hell, I’m not even a Christian and I find plastic mangers to be somewhat blasphemous. Maybe I can find an inflatable Lao Tzu to stick in my front yard.
Anyway. Given my tendencies towards Scroogely behavior, I like to spend the holidays surrounded by depressing music. “Fairy Tale of New York” doesn’t usually make it onto my mix CDs, because it’s just too darned happy. Yeah, I can conjure up some bitter sadness if I think of poor Kirsty MacColl getting mowed down by an asshole in a boat as she saved her son, but that’s not really specific to Christmas.
No, the songs that bring a smile to my withered lips are far bleaker than anything a drunk Pogue can conjure. “Lonely Christmas Eve” by Ben Folds is a step in the right direction, but the music isn’t very sulk-worthy. Folds’ ditty about a lubed-up Santa getting stuck in the chimney (“Bizarre Christmas Incident”) puts the “ahhhh” in my Bahhhh Humbug, but he really gets it right on “Brick,” a timeless carol about a yuletide abortion.
Mew’s Christmas rape story, “She Came Home for Christmas,” is a mainstay, even if it is overwrought and schmaltzy. Tom Waits’ “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” could be titled “Christmas Carol from the Crack Addict Hookers Who Work the Corner By My House,” and Meryn Cadell’s “Cat Carol” still makes me misty-eyed even though the neighborhood stray is living in my basement and pissing on the childhood memories I have stored down there.
These are all great songs to play as I sit in a dark room with a plate of nachos and a worn-out copy of “It’s a Wonderful Life” that plays soundlessly on my vintage VCR. But last year, I discovered* what might be the saddest Christmas song of all. It’s a song that you may have heard, a little tune called “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
No, I’m not shitting you. This is some bleak stuff. Read on to find out why…
Some days they giveth gifts, and sometimes, on that same day they taketh, too. [youtube]_rn6AEVXpeo[/youtube] If Oscar Peterson wasn’t the greatest piano player, he’s certainly on the short list.
Like most other secular Semitic folk, the neurotic Jews that run Hidden Track typically associate the Christmas holiday with Chinese food, blockbuster movies, casino trips with the Asians and beach-dominated Caribbean vacations. Sadly we’re not publishing this post with the sand ‘neath our feet, so we’re loading up the molester-white van and taking you all to Jamaica, to a musical resort that Dave Chappelle tells me is “right near ‘da beach.” Boooyeeee.
Mid-December brought the respective and crossover fanbases of Umphrey’s McGee and the Disco Biscuits down to the Greater Antilles for an all-inclusive Caribbean Holidaze music vacation. Fans shuttled back and forth between the Hedonism III and Breezes resorts, the former of which featured early afternoon and evening sets from the two aforementioned bands, plus the stellar Benevento/Russo Duo, Keller Williams, Mad Professor, Tom Hamilton and the Beatles-Floyd supergroup known as Brain-Damaged Eggmen.
Our friend Dave Vann knows his way around an f-Stop, and he agreed to snap some photographic evidence of bands melting faces and fans raging their tits off. So read on after the jump for a full photo gallery from Caribbean Holidaze, featuring pictures and YouTube videos of all the live acts, the gorgeous scenery and a climate many of us long for at this very moment. And since we weren’t there ourselves, feel free to leave a first-hand report or observation in the comments…
We’ve been pretty harsh on STS9 in the past, so on the day before Christmas, it’s only fair we recognize a cool thing they’re doing for their fans. STS9 is teaming up with iClips to offer free webcasts of their upcoming shows at The Tabernacle in Atlanta on December 28-31.
Fans that weren’t able to score tickets to the nearly sold out run will be able to surround their screens with heady crystals while watching a five-camera feed from the shows. We’d usually throw in a joke about feeding Phipps’ daughter here, but we’ll move on since these guys are also donating $12,000 from this year’s NYE shows to Rock Against Cancer. Good stuff.
Now let’s start the abbreviated holiday week off right with some linkage:
Finally, read on after the jump for a very special Christmas Eve video treat…
We’ve twice discussed the unexpected gifts that some of our favorite musicians are proffering for Christmas, and now we can add Phil Lesh’s name to the growing list: The best
I was flippin’ through the channels last night when I came across a Dennis Hopper-narrated documentary on punk. I realized after a few minutes that I was watching an episode
The world moves on a woman’s hips; the world moves and it swivels and bops… It’s Friday, it’s 3 pm, and many of you will be off for the next
