Columns

For an example of how the Phish fanbase grew exponentially in 1994, you need to look no further than at the venues the quartet played in New York City that

As we await the first multi-night run of Phish shows at Madison Square Garden in 11 years, we came across word that another fantastic act will play The Garden in

Longtime friend of HT Joe Madonna has contributed news and photos to the site over the past few years. Joe recently attended a Guster concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York City and wanted to share some thoughts on the show with our readers. Take it away, Joe…

Lost and Gone Forever, besides being Guster’s 3rd album, is classic. It has horns, it has rhythm, fans whistling and Page McConnell of Phish playing theremin. It’s classic! On Saturday night, we got to hear this amazing set live in all its glory. Fans young and old filled the historic theater over two nights to see the New Englanders rock this classic piece of work. There aren’t many bands that can pull off playing their whole album, but Guster pulled it off.

[Guster joined by producer Steve Lillywhite on bass]

Guster’s first set was a mix of old and new tracks, including a new song called This Could All Be Yours. The band dug deep and played X-Ray Eyes from 1998’s Goldfly. As they sometimes do live, Guster jammed into Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear The Reaper during their original Red Oyster Cult.

To close the first set of the show,they played a dance-hall version of Airport Song which had a very Passion Pit feel to it. Multi-instrumentalist Joe Pisapia’s dazzling keyboard work made it rock out. Old school fans threw ping-pong balls on stage to the band during the song. The band took a quick setbreak, and then came back out to a cheering crowd as Prince’s 1999 was played over the PA. That was a bit fitting since the album came out then.

READ ON for more from Joe on Guster @ the Beacon…

While I missed the first Mock Show poster convention in Denver during the Red Rocks run, I’m glad to see the second Mock Show will take place a short walk

For the second episode in the Jazz in the Present Tense series here at Stormy Mondays, we’re pointing our ears across the Atlantic to hear what Europe has to offer.

Jim DeRogatis has a long-held reputation as a firebrand, and he’ll be the first to remind you he’s more than a bit of a contrarian. But we’ve always found those labels a little disingenuous, especially for someone so obviously passionate about not only music, but about being as much reporter and informed critic as opinionated scribe.

In a music critic landscape circa 2009 that’s as much lazy, laurels-resting old hands as unedited, brutally overwrought bloggers, credit the man for valiantly bucking both trends. He’s best known as the pop music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, but DeRo is also a prolific author, blogger and, with Greg Kot, his opposite number at the Tribune, host of Sound Opinions, to us one of the few music radio talkshows that’s as informative as it is passionately music geeky.

This fall came his latest book, a visual history of the Velvet Underground called The Velvet Underground: An Illustrated History of a Walk on the Wild Side (Voyageur). We caught up with DeRo a few weeks back on that and other pressing topics.

HIDDEN TRACK: Being a well documented Velvet Underground fanatic, this must have been a fun one for you. Tell me about the genesis of this book.

JIM DEROGATIS: Voyageur Press has been doing a number of coffee table art books devoted to bands and memorabilia. They did one on Led Zeppelin and I’d contributed an essay on “Houses of the Holy” to that. They had this notion of doing a Velvets art book and they called me up and said could you do the connective tissue historical essay and corral some other writers, and I said, well shit yeah, Merry Christmas. They’ve very generously put my name on the cover.

I have a shelf full of a dozen if not more Velvets and Lou Reed and John Cale books, but being even a huge fan as I am, there is a tremendous amount of artwork in this book that I’d never seen before. It’s nice to be given that context to do some of the writing. The goal wasn’t to do a definitive history for fans, it was to show them a lot of the art they hadn’t seen before, rounded up in one place.

READ ON for more of Chad’s chat with Jim DeRogatis…

On Thursday morning at 9AM, you’ve got a tough choice to make. Hopefully you’ve got DVR and won’t have to pick between Biography’s profile of Jerry Garcia and Palladia’s airing