2007

This week’s edition of GTA features a miscellany of terrific performances. We start off with an outstanding Ryan Adams’ show from last week before moving on to a Meters bootleg that comes straight from George Porter Jr. Prince, a funk all-star in his own right, recently completed a 21-show run in London, and we’ve got his hot after-show from Friday night that includes a terrific cameo by Amy Winehouse. Finally we travel back to 1967 for a look at the beginnings of Traffic. As usual we’ve included a link to MP3 files for all of the torrents we’ve reviewed.

Ryan Adams 09/21/2007 SBD Matrix [FLAC, MP3, STREAM]

Ryan Adams is currently in the middle of a lengthy tour with The Cardinals, and we’ve gotta give Adams some major kudos for allowing tapers to patch in to the soundboard during many gigs on the run (there are soundboards of nearly every recent show on the Live Music Archive). It’s good to see Adams learned something from Phil Lesh about how circulating free soundboards actually drives ticket sales. After scouring some of Adams’ fan sites, we got a recommendation that Friday’s show in Toronto was the best of the batch. If only finding soundboards of the best recent shows from every live band was this easy.

Both the crowd and Adams seem extremely happy to be in each other’s company throughout every song played at this show. I’ve heard so many negative things about Adams’ demenor and stage presence, but this bootleg shows Adams to be engaging in his personality and his musicianship. Many audience members shout requests throughout the night, and Adams’ playfully jokes “You all sound like cavemen grunting from up here.” Musically, the highlights were numerous, including the band’s incredible harmonies on Peaceful Valley and its jamming on Magnolia Mountain. Read on for three more downloads…

We made an impassioned plea at the bottom of Monday night’s One More Cup of Coffee post for video of the epic Meet Me In The Morning collaboration between Bob

Bonnaroo seems like forever ago, and ‘forever ago’ seems like the worst turn of phrase I’ve ever used in a Hidden Track post. So, um, there we go. In any

Keller Willams has once again assembled his WMDs for a series of east coast dates in November. While we enjoy Keller’s creative, albeit gimmicky solo work, we love seeing Keller

So, apparently, and we’re not sure when this happened, but Amazon.com’s long-awaited challenge to iTunes is open…maybe…we think. Amazon’s new mp3 store is offering unprotected music files at a cheaper

The PBS schedule is out, and Pitchfork‘s got the story: Norah Jones begins the televised festivities on October 6th, while most music-lovin’ New Yorkers will be on Randall’s Island for

Leeds United Association Football Club recorded a Premiership-high 21 losses in a dreadful 2003 season that saw the club finish 19th of 20, the team’s last taste of top-flight English

When I met former Phish keyboardist Page McConnell last May in the JFK airport on my way to San Francisco, my first thought was to thank him for all the times his band awed me silly. My next inkling was to ask him to buy me some magazines and a Snickers with almonds at the terminal’s Hudson News, the least he could do for taking so much of my disposable income lo these many years.

But just last week a little birdie told me to pick up a fairly new book by Emily White called You Will Make Money In Your Sleep: The Story of Dana Giacchetto, and that quasi-biography shed some new light on where all my ticket and merchandise money had gone.

Giacchetto, a hip money manager for Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Cameron Diaz and the popular rock band Phish, became known as Scammer to the Stars when he pled guilty to fraud charges, spent years in jail and was banned for life from working in finance. And as it turns out, Phish was the biggest loser:

In December 1999, the accountant for Phish notified Dana that he’d discovered a $3 million discrepancy in their account, and he was preparing to sue. He had an urgent meeting with the band and warned them that they had been robbed. In the story of Dana as a thief — a story Dana still denies — Phish was the extreme loser; their account was mercilessly ransacked…

And here I thought Phish fans were the extreme losers…turns out it’s the band. I keed, I keed. Anyway, I’m making my way slowly through White’s book, and it’s an interesting read even without the Vermont foursome (and, in truth, they only show up on four or five pages). Phish eventually re-claimed their pilfered millions in surprising fashion, but read on after the jump for full excerpts of the band’s plight.