December 13, 2006

We sent our resident left-coast photographer and good friend Felonious Monk down to the 12/3 Primus show in the California capital to snap a few shots of the action and deliver us a brief report of the evening…

Monk’s cherry-popping experience in the pit was so bizarrely overwhelming that he decided to share with us the ridiculousness of being a credentialed photographer. Maybe that lead-in sounds a little boring, but when a half-naked girl magically appears in the story, you’ll realize how interesting a night up front can be.

Using cliché-riddled math, the pictures he sent over should be worth exactly 7,000 words. But because he’s such a good guy and he took such exquisite pictures, I think we can bump that up to, like, 7,150. Check these puppers out…

This week, Grousing The Aisles takes a look at the best podcasts on the web.

Just in case you are living in the early 2000s, a podcast is a file (usually mp3) distributed by subscription for use on a portable music device or on a computer. In researching this piece, it really surprises me more up-and-coming bands haven’t taken advantage of this cheap and easy way to market their music. For now, these podcasts are the best music you can buy (legally) for absolutely nothing:

Umphrey’s McGee: UM was the first band in the so-called jam genre to use podcasting to market their music. Just about every two weeks, the band releases a new 70-minute “Best Of” compilation…for free. This week the band released the 35th installment of the series that features the best music of July 2006. Jon McLennand, podcast coordinator for the band, reports “It’s been a fairly steady growth since the inception, starting from around 6,000 downloads per podcast initially to 20,000 currently.” Yes, 20,000! That’s a serious model for success…

Can’t make it to one of the 417 Allman Brothers Band shows at the Beacon Theater every year? Want to see Gregg Allman look like Jon Voight dressed as Willie Nelson for Halloween from the comfort of your home couch instead of the deep balcony? Don’t wanna stand right behind Bill Walton’s enormous torso as One Way Out starts? Then get on over to the to the ABB site and vote in support of Butch Trucks’ new plan to stream the band’s Beacon run and beyond…

Read on for more details on this potentially awesome plan from a group of guys I wouldn’t automatically classify as all that tech-savvy…fix a laptop, eat a peach.

I’m not sure what kind of coincidence this is — after all, as a kooky Russian author told Elaine Benes, there are no big coincidences and small coincidences, there are