February 28, 2008

On Monday we kicked off a new feature called Tour Diary with the first of four entries from the Umphrey’s McGee crew about their recently completed West Coast tour. Here’s UM Lighting Crew Chief Wade Wilby final installment:

02/15/08 The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA
OM Trio opened
Set I: Bridgeless> Much Obliged> Dump City, Partyin’ Peeps, The Fussy Dutchman, Sociable Jimmy> Bridgeless
Set II: Miss Tinkle’s Overture, 2nd Self> Der Bluten Kat> Gulf Stream¹> Der Bluten Kat, Syncopated Strangers, Utopian Fir
Encore: Bombtrack^{2 3}

1 First Time Played (Original) ; Portions played on 11/10/07 & 12/31/07
2 First Time Played (Rage Against The Machine)
3 Ilya Stemkovsky (Vocals) and Brian Felix (Keyboards)

All photos by Matt Ziegler, except where noted

San Francisco is a gorgeous depiction of West Coast vegetation and landscape; Rolling hills dotted with island-like real estate and a dreamy climate controlled by the waving palms. Besides its deep natural romance, the city has played host to some of music’s most famous live moments, classic venues and of course…The Fat Man. We would only come in contact with one of the aforementioned amenities in The Fillmore, and it would prove to be our last 3 night run there, making it a very special weekend at this institution of rock and roll. Read on for more…

Just one week from today the Langerado Music Festival kicks off at Big Cypress in the Florida Everglades. I’ve attended the last two Langerado festivals, but this year’s lineup takes things to a new level. As someone who doesn’t get to many festivals, I think the best part of going is the enjoyment I get from checking out artists I haven’t seen before. Here’s the second part of my list of ten bands I’m excited to see for the first time at Langerado:

1. The Avett Brothers – North Carolina’s Avett Brothers play deeply spiritual music that seems to appeal to a diverse range of music fans. The songs that Seth and Scott Avett write are gritty tales of life played on basic acoustic instruments. Their most recent release, Emotionalism, shows the wide range of styles in the fellas’ music. Within one song on the album you may hear elements of Calypso followed closely by a bluegrass stomp. I’m very interested to see how they pull of this melange of styles live. Read on for more on the Avetts and four other bands….

We were very impressed when the initial Bonnaroo lineup surfaced a few weeks ago. Now we’re feeling down right fluffy after hearing about the first two acts who are set

When I looked at the date this morning I got a reminder of just how quickly time passes. Can you believe it’s been five years since the boys in Phish

The internets were abuzz this week with news of a “new” Velvet Underground song. The guys at Dead Flowers unearthed a live VU recording from 1967, which features the previously