Archive: 2006

I learned at an early age to heed the sage advice of those two important wisdom dispensers that regularly preached “Don’t believe the hype.”

That strong warning from Chuck D and Flava Flav against getting caught in a rushing, gushing torrent of positive hysteria has often proven prophetic, but as it turns out after my virginal awakening last night at the Roseland Ballroom, My Morning Jacket is clearly the exception that proves the rule.

Jimmy James Incorporated (any Newsradio fans?) and the disgusting amount of hype surrounding the Louisville-based “post-jam” band blew through New York like Hurricane Gloria last night, and I’m not entirely sure of the last time I’ve exited a show with such a strong first impression or melted face: The caliber of their balls-to-the-wall, fuck-your-face rock from start to finish actually made my brain hurt from all the spastic headbanging I involuntarily enjoyed.

It must’ve been my morning blazer night at the Roseland as well, with more sport jackets per capita than any venue in the country. But the well-diversified crowd came to rock, and from the hot-out-of-the-gate opener to the 36-song encore, MMJ last night exhibited all the qualities that have just about every music blogger out there calling them the “best band in the country.” After that show, I can’t disagree, either because they were that damn good, or because I’m hurting so bad this morning I feel like Terri Schiavo over here…

There’s nothing quite like finishing the long week after the Thanksgiving holiday — we’re a mere three weeks from Christmas and four weeks from New Year’s. But before you get all weekend aggro out there, check out these sexy links: George Harrison passed away five years ago this week. In honor of one of my […]

There’s nothing quite like finishing the long week after the Thanksgiving holiday — we’re a mere three weeks from Christmas and four weeks from New Year’s. But before you get all weekend aggro out there, check out these sexy links: George Harrison passed away five years ago this week. In honor of one of my […]

I’m not very technologically advanced. Sure I’ve got two blogs, a cellular telephone, a handful of DVR boxes and wireless Internets, but if technological stupidity were dirt, I’d cover a full acre or two. I’m clueless 99.44 percent of the time. So I recently coaxed my good friend over at Newmradio to create some podcasts with the Hidden Track audience […]

Fourteen years since his last release, Out of the Cradle, Buckingham emerges once again from the shadows with Under the Skin.

British rock/psychedelic/dance/blues outfit Primal Scream went in a new direction with albums like XTRMNTR and Evil Heat. But for every crazed, brilliant mash-up of these genres, Primal Scream can also deliver straightforward, sleazy rock and roll. And this is what their latest, Riot City Blues is all about.

On December 29th at Atlanta’s Roxy Theatre, Widespread Panic will play their second annual Tunes for Tots charity concert to directly support music education in Georgia area schools. At last year’s first charity event, Widespread Panic raised over $100,000 that directly purchased musical equipment for the Union Grove High School Guitar Club, Lovejoy marching band […]

When Michael Franti summons “how you feelin?” people respond. This was clearly the case at Boston’s Avalon Ballroom as Michael Franti and Spearhead had 1,500 bodies jumping to their rockin reggae rhythms, while fans responded with full lung capacity to Franti’s vigorous calls.

Tickets go on sale tomorrow for the unofficial kick-off to festival season, the 5th Annual Langerado Festival. We’re counting the days ’til March…

Recently I spoke with one of the festival’s founders and promoters, Ethan Schwartz, about all things Langerado. He filled us in on the origin of the festival, the difference between Langerado and other festivals where police presence has been increased, bands he’d love to see play in the future and so much more…

I was hoping I’d wake up and it would be Friday. Since that didn’t happen, why not spend this lovely Thursday discussing the best ever rock side projects. It’s not easy to come up with a perfect definition for side projects, but since this is a dictatorship, we will say that the band must have started while one of the band members was performing regularly with a larger act.

1. The Traveling Wilburys: One of the few supergroups that has actually produced material that was not only good when it was released but has grown on me even more over the years. If rock n’ roll were like professional wrestling, Petty, Orbison, Lynne, Harrison, and Dylan would be the Five Horseman and could kick any other teams ass. Plus, you gotta love that they skipped right over Traveling Wilbury’s Volume 2, releasing Volume 3 two years after the first record.

Please read on for the rest of The B List…and let’s hear your thoughts at the end.

Sound Tribe Sector 9 keyboard player David “Lars Ulrich” Phipps has started using his laptop for things other than music. Phipps recently used his band’s message board, The Lowdown (snicker), to rant against the torrent site Oink. Your best bet’s to take a moment and read Phipps’ complete open letter from The Lowdown site, but […]

Rapid Fire Review Week continues with HT’s favorite Disco Biscuits Diehard Matt Quinn’s review of this weekend’s two Hammerstein shows:

It’s been a long year for The Disco Biscuits. With “new” drummer Allen Aucoin at the kit, virtually every fan of the band agrees that they are playing with the kind of vigor and creativity that’s been absent since the end of 2002.

Sure there were the brief flashes of greatness in the ’03-’05 era. But for the most part it was directionless and unfocused, a band very unsure of where it was going, a band running out the clock on its first incarnation. After an adequete NYE run, a short spring tour and a summer spent on the festival circuit, the Biscuits’ fall tour has seen them firing on all cylinders in venues across the country, and the shows at the Hammerstein Ballroom on 11/24 & 11/25 were certainly no exception.

The first night opened with a section that featured exactly the type of setlist creativity Biscuits fans have been craving. The Overture is normally a tightly composed, classical style piece that features a trance jam in the center of it. In lieu of the trance this night, the Biscuits dropped into a 30-second composed segment of Little Lai, then a 30-second composed segment of Bazaar Escape, then a 30-second composed segment of House Dog Party Favor, then directly into an entire Bach Invention (#13 in A Minor, to be exact), then picked up the end of The Overture where the trance section would normally end.

The entire segment was obviously rehearsed, and rehearsed well. There was no jamming between the segments; they were played as though it were one giant composed piece. Apparently the setlist had this labeled as “The OverBerzerk,” but I’ve taken to caling it “The Berzerkerture.” I just think it rolls off the tongue better. Whatever you want to call it, it was well-planned and flawlessly executed.

Read on for the rest of Quinn’s stellar review and download his recordings from both the 11/24 and 11/25 Hammerstein shows…

Seven years in, Devon Allmans’s (son of Greg, nephew of Duane) Honeytribe have finally released their debut album Torch, and it sounds like you would imagine it to – a modern take on the well worn Southern Rock model that has been perfected by Daddy Gregg and Uncle Duane.

Somehow, whenever Edie Carey and Holly Figueroa get together for a show at Seattle’s Tractor Tavern, the weather seems incapable of cooperating. Such was the case for Monday’s show, during which Seattle got a wicked (to borrow from Carey’s Bostonian vocabulary) snow and ice storm, leaving the roads unto impassable.

Mercury Rev is winding down a busy 2006 with two new releases. First up is "The Essential Mercury Rev — The Weird Years 1991-2006," a 32-track, two-disc set blending cuts from the band’s first six studio albums with hard-to-find oddities. The set arrived in October internationally via V2 and is available in North America only […]

Snoop Dogg was arrested yesterday (Nov. 28) in Burbank, Calif., for investigation of illegally possessing a handgun and drugs as he left NBC Studios after performing on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," police said. The 35-year-old rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, and two members of his entourage were arrested around 6 p.m. […]

We’re more than 90 posts into this blog’s mediocre existence, and not once have we cross-promoted anything from our Glide Magazine parent. I was hoping to make it to 100 posts without doing so, but like Julio César Chávez in his quest for 100 straight victories to start his career, this is my defeat. It’s not that I’m even promoting Glide, it’s […]

That graphic always makes me smile. I’m still waiting for someone to get the reference of the title of this department — come on people, dig deep. Anyway, since last week’s column featured no Grateful Dead or Dead-related projects at all, this edition of GTA is fully dedicated to Jerry Bear, the Godfather of Wook. Let’s get over that Wednesday hump together with some help from Jerome.

• Garcia On Broadway 10/25/87 LATE SBD/AUD (FLAC)

In 1987, Jerry hit Broadway for a series of 18 shows at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Can you imagine the smell in that theater at the end of that run? Just a bit of a different crowd than those seeing Beauty and The Beast, which has been playing at the Lunt-Fontanne for the past seven years.

Garcia’s estate recently released the Halloween show as part of its Pure Jerry series, but we’re gonna focus on the night of the 25th here. Jerry and the acoustic band plays an amazing first set, presented here in all its soundboard glory. For the second set, Mr. Jorts himself, Bob Weir, joined his uncle Jerry for the final four songs of the evening. The second set was clearly taped in the audience, yet the sound is surprisingly good and the performance, while not tight, is interesting. The highlight is the first and only JGB All Along The Watchtower. Other shows from the run newly featured on etree are 10/23 and 10/24…

As if anyone in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut tri-state area needed an additional incentive to see the quasi-reunited-and-it-quasi-feels-so-good Greyboy Allstars at the Nokia Theater two days before New Year’s Eve, the band has announced a special guest for the evening: We are very pleased to announce the addition of our (everybodys) hero, drummer extraordinare ?uestlove of The […]

One needs to know before listening that Wolf Eyes' Human Animal isn’t remotely close to your leather clad teased hair metal from days of lore, this is the psychopathic soundscape that hides in the heads of serial killers spilled out onto CD. A director could take this disk, and literally use the whole thing in order as a musical score to create a cringe inducing fright fest.