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Wilco 10/09/2009 SBD [FLACs, V0 Tagged MP3 – SS, MU] Many bands sell “official recordings” of their performances straight from the soundboard, but not Wilco. Occasionally Wilco will offer a

Music Today has started sending out notices of regret and confirmation to those who entered the lottery for tickets to Phish’s upcoming Fall Tour. How did you fare? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Also, in an effort to see how fans did across the board, we’ve created a poll for each show of the tour. Please READ ON after the jump to register a YES or NO vote as to whether your order for each show was fulfilled.

We continue our coverage of Yonder Mountain String Band’s recently completed swing through the Northeast with a review by our two newest contributors who both hail from Boston. Please welcome writer Eli Badra and photographer S. Balaji Mani to our ever-expanding team.

Colorado’s Yonder Mountain String Band are now in the middle of a brief fall tour, which culminates in a two-night Halloween stint at Liberty Hall, in Kansas. While working their way through the Northeast, the quartet stopped by Boston’s House of Blues, literally in the shadow of Fenway Park, this past Friday for a marathon session of bluegrass-flavored tunes.

The evening was a notable one for Yonder: two of its members, bassist Ben Kaufmann and guitarist Adam Aijala, both grew up in the fair state of Massachusetts. The band is no stranger to the state, either, having performed at just about every historic venue the city has to offer, including the older, smaller House of Blues that was once in Harvard Square. It was this show, however, that drew the single largest Boston crowd they have played for (by a factor two-and-a-half, according to mandolin player Jeff Austin). Did Yonder Mountain String Band deliver? Two sets, 28 songs and three hours offer a resounding “yes” to that question.

Taken as a whole, the first set served as a perfect warm-up, both for the band and the audience’s legs, keeping things energetic and light, but not too intense just yet. The music kicked off with Good-Hearted Woman, which got the vibe of the evening flowing. Austin and Kaufmann teamed up for the usual spot-on harmonies, underneath which Dave Johnston provided a steady current of sixteenth-notes that the rest of the band flowed on top of. Johnston and Aijala each took a couple verses of solo before things really kicked into high-gear, quickly jumping into double-time. The band ran through a few more choruses, which included a quick but impressive display of Austin’s chops on the mandolin, and brought the song to an end.

READ ON for more of Balaji’s photos and Eli’s words on Yonder…

The Monsters of Folk tour kicked off last week and has been receiving rave reviews at every stop. Mike Mogis, M. Ward, Jim James and Conor Oberst have been performing

Following the bold footsteps of UK regulators who earlier this month issued a preliminary challenge to the Ticketmaster-Live Nation proposed merger, US anti-trust regulators are following suit, not going as far as to rule out the merger entirely, but making it quite clear that in its current form the deal will not likely go through. According to an article in Bloomberg, the vertical integration of the various segments of the music industry pose a direct threat in affording a competitive marketplace for ticket sales.

Regulators are concerned the combined company’s presence in nearly every piece of live entertainment — including artist management, venue operation, concert promotion and ticketing — will undermine the ability for rivals to emerge and create competition that would bring down ticket prices, another person said.

Among concessions under consideration may be finding a way to allow a viable competitor in primary ticketing, one of the people said.

Now, in order to make concessions and ease some of the concerns regarding the concentration of power with regard to the ticketing element of the deal, reports show that the two companies are weighing their options with regard to possible divestitures, the leading candidate being a sale of Pacolian – a Ticketmaster acquisition from 2007 aimed to beef up the Ticketmaster client base. READ ON for more…