Bruce Springsteen will make a rare appearance on late night TV on the November 16th episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Fallon, a longtime Springsteen fan, will welcome The
Something tells me it’s been a while since anyone around here has watched a Beavis & Butthead clip, so today we’ve got a classic – Blues Traveler’s Runaround. Surprisingly, Butthead
Dead Kenny G’s @ Blue Nile, October 31
Contemporary jazz aficionados Skerik, Brad Houser and Mike Dillon have spent the better half of their musical careers contorting the face of jazz music. The three musicians have contributed to several projects (Critters Buggin, Garage A Trois) each initiating a full spectrum of sonic chaos, while heroically taking a stand against smooth jazz and expediting the genre to the grave.
On Sunday October 31 the three resurrected smooth jazz in the form of the Dead Kenny G’s. Dillon (drums, percussion, vocals), Houser (bass, baritone sax), Skerik (sax, keys) and friends performed the genre’s revitalized incarnation at The Blue Nile in New Orleans.
As one would expect, fans were decorated in their Halloween best, reeking havoc in the name of a good time. Dillon, Houser and Skerik all sported deadly costumes (complete with buoyant curls) of smooth jazz poster boy, soprano saxophonist Kenny G. The musicians played to the audience’s enthusiasm with a dissonant trifecta of saxophones; Skerik, Houser and friends experimented with a bizarre blend of acid jazz full of restless squawking while Dillon monkeyed with his drums. READ ON for more…
In terms of musical culture, the Roman calendar could not accurately document when the 70's turned into the 80's. The explosion of experimentalism that ran through rock, jazz and pop during the latter part of the 60's morphed into strange and not always so wonderful things in the two ensuing decades. Still, there were those artists who confronted that stance, often in marked contrast to their previous efforts, offering work that’s still worth listening to (and reissuing on compact disc) today.
Every time Kanye West releases a song or video, makes an appearance on the VMA’s or is made fun of on South Park, it stirs a debate. Is Kanye an incredibly ambitious musician, a public figure of epic proportions tackling race, culture and art all in one fell swoop, or a clown in king’s clothing?
His latest public endeavour seems to be his argument for “D: All of the Above.” The 35-minute video for Runaway is not only an intense visual undertaking, but a lengthy musical process, and it seems to be commenting on multiple facets of modern-day society, all while Kanye dresses himself in white suits and stares directly into the camera for long, meaningful moments that make you wonder if he’s thinking, “Please, tell me you love me.”
Here’s what Three Grown Men had to say about it…
Jonathan Kosakow on Kanye as musician:
The line that sticks out in my head the most from Kanye’s 35-minute “epic” is probably the last one that he wants to be remembered by. “We ain’t married but tonight I need some consummation.” In other words, Kanye wants to fuck you, but he won’t be giving you anything in return.
READ ON for more takes on Kanye’s latest video…
As Yo La Tengo gears up for the start of their semi-annual eight-night Hannukah run at Maxwell’s, which gets underway on December 1, the Hoboken-based band has announced a unique
…a desperate search, in a utopia that contained its own contradiction, product of a wish that at once went beyond art and found itself returned to it: “When freedom is practiced in a closed circle, it fades into a dream, becomes a mere representation of itself.”
As one travels through time and space, the layers of the hidden onion peel back, and one remembers the secret within. One takes on the skin of the chameleon like so many times before, and sheds everything old. There it is—the nut of it all. The pursuit of enlightenment yields ultra long periods of prologue and epilogue in one’s life, and the middle, the spine, the meat of the story of one’s life can often feel almost trapped in time and space, isolated from the history, the back story of the life led which resonates, and then drifts away, LOST, replaced by another…everything new is just a random portrait nearby. And on the passage of a few through a rather brief moment in time, it is up to you to find that hidden gem, that lost chord, that chameleon searching for a new language…
We close our Season 4 with a glance at an overlooked classic little film from the early 1980s and our final look at what we leave behind and what we take with us when we move far away from the shoreline of our dreams, look at ourselves in the mirror, a brief moment of reality check, and move forward with our free will intact as we look at the mockumentary with a sarcastic and stinging bite, Woody Allen’s Zelig.
First, let’s discuss reaching number 60 with Hidden Flick. Of course, some of these editions had multiple films being dissected and pondered over, so the total is probably closer to 75, but even 60 is mind boggling. I felt I’d cover 20 obscure films, and be done with it. There was zero planning, no idea whatsoever other than discussing the love of weird cinematic curios, and certainly not any philosophical intent whatsoever. Quite frankly, I began this little journey with two desires: I enjoy films and wanted to talk about them in a tight but loose fashion, and I wanted to write about films that were a little off the proverbial commercial beaten path. Hence, hidden flicks. Would I be entertaining? Uh…doubtful. I think my spin is all about “hey, WOW—I never thought about that,” and the pursuit of the Great Unknown. For better or worse, I jam, therefore I am.
READ ON for more of the Season 4 finale…
We were saddened to see that a band which has been around as long as we’ve been alive – New Orleans’ The Radiators – have announced their breakup after 33
We’re over a week removed from the end of Phish Fall Tour 2010 and now that you’ve had a chance to digest what went down, we’re asking you for your
HT’s Dan Alford continues his look back at the Phil Lesh Quintet in which the Grateful Dead bassist was joined by John Molo, Rob Barraco, Warren Haynes and Jimmy Herring. Part One looked at the unit’s start in 2000, Part Two looked at the group’s rise in 2001, Part Three looked at the peak of 2002, while today’s finale looks at the group’s final days…
In the fall of 2002, Phil, Bobby, Billy and Mickey joined forces for another incarnation The Other Ones – featuring Jimmy Herring, Rob Barraco, Jeff Chimenti and Susan Tedeschi on backing vocals, playing arena-sized venues with some excellent results, but they were just getting started.
In the late spring of the following year, the group resurfaced with a new vocalist, a new name and a new confidence with the material. Joan Osborne may have seemed an odd choice initially, but in fact she was a denizen of The Wetlands in the early nineties, a road warrior in her own right and Americana soul singer of the first order. Plus, she didn’t hesitate for a second, jumping right into the fray and leaving a mark on the music; like others before and after, Sugaree became her show piece, and her Joan Moan became a staple of the spacey interludes.
- Phil Lesh Quintet: Year One, Year Two, Year Three
The group churned out plenty of killer music on its summer tour, including an especially great gig in Hartford, a slew of Dylan sit-ins across the Midwest, and a pair of nights at Jones Beach that boasted acoustic sets. But the band also kept the PLQ off the road until the fall of 2003 when the group returned for its final 20 dates. READ ON for more on the Phil Lesh Quintet ’03…
