May 22, 2008

Sometimes the only Birds of a Feather are found when one looks in a mirror. Sometimes, you’re IT in your little world, and keeping others from that fact comes with a price. Certainly, paying someone to find out things about your long, forgotten past, and then killing people who find out about the events in that very past sounds downright insane. Yet, that’s exactly what Orson Welles does in this week’s Hidden Flick, Mr. Arkadin a.k.a Confidential Report.

The eternal enfant terrible of the cinema wrote, directed and played the title role of the mysterious and eccentric billionaire (are there any other kinds?) who is trying to hide a shady past from his innocent adult daughter still wallowing in the fantasy that her father’s huge mound of cash was accumulated by good old fashioned hard labor. Nope, the man is downright filthy, corrupt and evil and she’ll find out eventually—or so he fears.

Welles, as he did so often in his directorial escapades, created a landmark visual and audio experience—truly a work of complete cinema—with bizarre camera set-ups, voice-overs in which he sometimes plays multiple characters, shadowy tricks of the light, buildings as medieval gothic playgrounds, towering figures hidden by masks (often Welles in the title role as the extremely wealthy man with a secret), and, as always, wonderfully strange actors playing characters you’d only find in a…well…Welles’ flick. READ ON for more about Welles’ Mr. Arkadin…

Alright folks, we are about to embark upon assembling ten of the finest renditions of perhaps our favorite song in the entire world, the Phish epic, Harry Hood.

This is a song that is really definitive of the song structure that Phish became known for in the early days. Some call it a serial song as it is akin to progressing through serial numbers, but most often folks refer to this type of song with several composed sections and improv sections as the two distinctions, the “composed stuff” and the “jam.” The idea is they meander from section to section like wandering from place to place, environment to environment.

Harry Hood starts out as a reggae groove with a couple minor chords, beginning the song with a darker color, then weaving in and out of a catchy chord progression and a dirty-ass dark guitar riff, until finally it crescendos and resolves to the floaty happy place that is the end jam. The song typically concludes with the boys improvising in a pretty basic major key jam that builds and builds until the roof comes off and your arm hair feels like it’s falling out.

I should note that this is actually the second iteration of this list and with Phish having played it 258 times; it might not be the very last. Nevertheless, we’re getting closer to nailing it down. But enough of the introduction already, you all know the story and the song, so just let’s get to the damn list, right?

10. 12/31/1998 – MSG, New York, NY

This is a fairly unique rendition in that the into part is improvised and very eerie, which in the later years seemed more and more rushed – typical of most of the composed stuff in later years. Also, fed up with the glowstick war, but hoping for something green and glowy, the crowd successfully connected hundreds of the sorter glowrings to weave a gigantic “glowsnake” through the floor of the Garden. This one also gets a little favoritism here, because this was part of a hilarious trip including but not limited to fake tickets, Tom Marshall’s parents, skybox seats and lots of Jagermeister. READ ON for Rupert’s top nine versions of Harry Hood…

Like most of you on the Thursday before a long weekend I’ve already turned my brain off, but luckily there are some more dedicated bloggers out there who haven’t –

When last we saw RAQ they were putting the finishing touches on an epic weekend run at the Blender Theater for the Green Applefest, yet less than a month later the band returned to lower Manhattan for a more personal event.

On September 11, 2001 Scott Hazelcorn went to his office at Cantor Fitzgerald, and like many people that fateful day never returned home. Scott had a lifelong dream to work with children, and from that dark day forward his friends and family joined together to help realize that dream by forming the Scott Hazelcorn Children’s Foundation to benefit Camp Haze. Camp Haze is an opportunity for the youngsters who lost loved ones, either on that day or from another tragedy, to come together for a week long all expenses paid camping adventure.

This year, much to the delight of Scott’s younger brother Eric, the members of RAQ both current and past performed dressed in their finest threads at the Ten Ton Ball. The proceeds from this amazing evening of music went towards the Scott Hazelcorn Children’s Foundation. READ ON for more on the Ten Ton Ball…

In lieu of this week’s MP3 Boot Camp we bring you Download This…

After reading Dead scholar Blair Jackson’s riveting piece on Phil Lesh and Friends’ recently completed five night stand at the Warfield Theatre I just couldn’t wait to hear more of the shows. On Friday we directed you towards downloads of the first two shows, and today we’ve got your downloads of the last three nights.

[Photo by J.C. Juanis]

Just a note that I really like to tag all the mp3s I create, but I didn’t have the time for this batch. I wanted to get these uploaded quickly for those like myself and DayJob1978 who really wanted to hear these shows.

05/16/2008

Set 1 – “Workingman’s Dead”

320kbps MP3s: http://www.sendspace.com/file/hkspc9

FLACs: http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=515332

READ ON for links to audio from the rest of Phil’s Warfield run…