July 30, 2008

You probably best know Bob Odenkirk as one half of the hilarious duo that brought us the fantastic cult sketch comedy show – Mr. Show. His comedy partner David Cross

Do you wanna hear Jim James sure-to-be-fabulous set from Newport but can’t make it out to the Folk Festival? Thanks to NPR Music’s webcast you’ll be able to hear every

Maybe you’ve heard; festivals are pretty popular nowadays. While seemingly effortless to concoct, the abundance of all this new festivage has led music fans to take for granted the grandiosity of work involved in building a festival from the ground up.

Think about the nightmare of just planning a Super Bowl party for example, where you had to coordinate keeping the Party Ball cold, picking up the Chicken Wings from Pluck U early enough to make kickoff-but not so early that they’d be cold-and making sure there were places for everyone to sit to see the television. Kinda puts it in perspective, when you realize that building a festival is kinda the same thing only you are arranging the party for anywhere from 500x to 5,000x more people, with the addition of high profile musicians, outdoors with nowhere to take a deuce, with food for everyone… And you have to get the A-ok from the community and the cops. You getting the idea? It’s awfully hard work to build a festival and run it smoothly.

So, we got in touch with Jimmy Hunt and Wes Hight (despite being Appalachian State fans, grrrr), the founders of the first-ever Music on the Mountain festival in Boone, NC to talk about the challenges and of giving it a go for the first time. Music on the Mountain takes place August 23rd in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains featuring Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and Perpetual Groove. The mission of the festival aims to raise awareness as well as donate a majority of the proceeds to the cause of renewable energy. We are planning to run this as part of a two part series: before and after. So, we’ll check back with Jimmy and Wes after the festival to see how it went. READ ON for more about the making of a festie…

The Walkmen’s fifth studio effort You & Me officially hits stores on August 19th. For next three weeks though the New York indie-rock outfit has teamed up with music website

It’s been a while since we’ve had a self-congratulatory ego strokin’ post on HT, but we can’t help our excitement over being named one of WNEW’s Best Music Blogs. We

That sense of a mission, a group adventure where having fun with legions of your friends, traveling hundreds, and sometimes thousands of miles, despite the occasional challenge, is apparent within the first notes of a rousing Runaway Jim.

The band charges into the energetic heart of the song with nary a tune up note, seamlessly segueing into My Soul. The comically appropriate new song, Water in the Sky appears both literally and figuratively as a thunderstorm for the ages is about to present one of those “occasional challenges” that the band would overcome and use to their advantage, and, in the process, solidify their place as America’s best live band as the 1990s drew to a close.

The Vermont Phab Phour used the apocalyptic atmospheric disturbances like a weirdly ethereal stage prop in this week’s Hidden Flick, Phish – Walnut Creek. The DVD, hidden away in the corners of the vast vault for 11 years, finally hits the streets in August and it’s a beautiful document of the band during one of their peak eras. I wasn’t sure what to expect, looking back at this show from July 22, 1997 at Walnut Creek Amphitheatre in Raleigh, North Carolina, or whether the film would live up to the usual Phish standards. Fortunately, what is so amazing is that it takes you back and the show plays like a surreal wayback machine to that heady period of time. All initial concern is quickly wiped away. READ ON for more of Hidden Flick…