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Last Sunday, I took the F train to Dumbo to check out Bridge Flea, the new flea market started by the same people behind Brooklyn Flea in Ft Greene. My visit was not bargain shopping orientated, it was food motivated. I went to try the lobster roll that the Red Hook Lobster Pound was selling.

The Red Hook Lobster Pound has only been open a short while but their lobster roll is as good as Brooklyn Fish Camp’s which usually is my one lobster roll per summer (at $26 can only afford one/summer). According to their website the lobster rolls are made from their homemade mayo, and JJ Nissen Top Split Rolls (the original lobster roll bread that they truck down from Maine). Even though the line was long (the lobster rolls were $13.00, half the price of what you would find anywhere else) it moved fast. It was great to see the rolls brushed with butter and placed on the flat top grill. The lobster salad was extremely fresh and each sandwich was made to order. This is one fine lobster roll.

I need to make it out to their store in Red Hook at some point.

Red Hook Lobster Pound
284 Van Brunt Street
Brooklyn
646.326.7650

Oh if you want another reason to go, the booth around the corner had made to order fish tacos as well. Take the trip to Brooklyn this Sunday, have some lobster and fish tacos. You’ll wonder why you haven’t done so already.

Other goings on in the foodie-verse this week:

Terroir announced on their twitter feed that Pig Roasts are taking over Hearth on these Tuesdays: 7/21, 7/28. 8/4, 8/18 http://bit.ly/cyJHI Pig stuffed w pork sausage/3 course menu/$42 pp +$18bev. (I already called for reservations.)

READ ON for the rest of this week’s goings on in the foodie-verse…

The twitter feed for Leg Up Management – who manage Animal Collective – has been updated with the following message… Animal Collective confirmed to get first officially licensed Grateful Dead

If you’ve read any of the interviews Mike Gordon has done since Phish got back together you won’t be surprised to see that he’ll be touring again with his solo

For the second year in a row, Naukabout – a Cape Cod-based lifestyle brand – will present a music festival at the Barnstable County Fairgrounds on August 8, 2009 featuring

Hot on the heels of a successful lunchtime set at the makeshift Third Man Records store in downtown New York, Dead Weather continue their Horehound publicity tour by visiting Late

There’s tireless chatter nowadays about the Internet, piracy, and the demise of the music industry as we once knew it. It is indeed a truism to say that album sales have entered a free fall and the major record labels are flailing about as they plunge toward their impending doom.

The thing is, they have it all wrong. The problem has little to do with the Internet or its savvy swashbucklers. They are not in fact the source of this industry implosion. Nope, the answer is much simpler. All it takes is a simple comparison of the great albums of today versus those at the height of the music industry bull market – the renaissance if you will: the 1980s. Today’s albums still have almost all the pieces in place: great songwriting, check; pleasing vocals, check; clever promotion, check; loyal fans, check. So, that leaves just one missing ingredient: a mean mother beast of a guitar solo.

Hit songs of the late ’80s almost always included a masterpiece of axe-wielding showmanship. On today’s albums, particularly on the great indie rock ones, the guitar solo is de-emphasized almost to the point of non-existence. Well, for this listener, long before the jam bands it was all about the glam bands and I for one love the guitar solo and miss it. So, with that in mind, let’s take a look back at the monster hits of the 1980s – the monster ballads to be precise – and take a close look at those epic guitar solos.

Skid Row – I Remember You (guitar solo from 2:37 to 3:18)

Listening to a monster ballad guitar solo is like judging a dive. There are myriad key factors to evaluate in unison over the course of a very short time. The key elements of these power solos include mastery of such variables as degree of difficulty, technical prowess, useless showboating, number of notes, and of course, squeal. While Sebastian Bach always stole the Skid Row thunder, in large part due to the fact that he kinda looked like a blonde Kristen Stewart, Dave “the Snake” Sabo co-founded the band before Bach ever joined and put the band on the map with guitar playing like this. Judges say? 9.2.

[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/10-i-remember-you.mp3]

READ ON for more legendary monster ballad guitar solos…

Last weekend, the 8th Annual Forecastle Festival brought about 17,000 people from around the country to downtown Louisville. This year’s fest has garnered rave reviews and went off with only a single hitch – 16 felony drug arrests, which the media picked up on instead of the fantastic music goin’ down. Matt Speck shot the festival and returned these photos…

READ ON for a full gallery of Matt’s Forecastle Festival photos…

We at Hidden Track have grown rather fond of Cornmeal, the Chicago jam-grass quintet that doesn’t seem to have a problem being called “jamgrass” or “jamband bluegrass” even though the terms are useful only as loose groupers. Fact is, though, if you dig a little deeper with Cornmeal, you hear plenty of bluegrass, roots and old-time, sure, but also a mischievous streak that recalls forebears like New Grass Revival in the way that they draw in everything from country and jazz to funk and blues without quite embracing any one of those idioms. There’s a lot to grab onto.

The band’s actually been around for nine years, but it took at least half that time to reach a stabilized lineup, and it’s only in the past two or three, since word got out from their Midwest fan strongholds and swept the festival circuit, that Cornmeal has attracted national attention. They’re still an unknown quantity in much of the country, although bassist Chris Gangi says the band does a little better every time it returns to developing pockets of fans in the northeast, southeast and west coast.

Hidden Track caught up with Gangi to hear about what’s on Cornmeal’s radar and how he, fiddle player Allie Kral, guitarist Kris Nowak, drummer JP Nowak and banjoist Dave Burlingame plan to keep striking while they have the momentum.

HIDDEN TRACK: So where am I finding you today?

CHRIS GANGI: I’m actually home at the moment, for about a day or two before we go back out again. It’s easy in Chicago to catch a day at home, and a lot of times we’ll bypass extended tours when we’re in the Midwest so we can make sure we get a few days off. When the band started out, that’s just what made sense expense-wise — we could go out for stretches and then come back home and save our jobs.

READ ON for more of Chad’s interview with Chris from Cornmeal…