August 2008

Normally, Phish has no problem winning an edition of Cover Wars regardless of their performance of the song in question. But the hardcore fans of Bonerama (can I call you people Boneheads?) made their virtual voices heard and their band has walked away victorious from last week’s Frankenstein Cover Wars.

This week’s selection was inspired by flipping through my RSS feed of shows added to bt.etree.org on Monday. I saw two sources of the Gov’t Mule’s show from 8-8-2008 get posted and I thought – hey, Spanish Moon could be a great Cover Wars to throw together. Written by Lowell George, Spanish Moon was first released on Little Feat’s fourth studio album Feats Don’t Fail Me Now. It would appear again four years later on the band’s first live recording Waiting For Columbus. Both recordings feature the Tower Of Power Horn Section.

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READ ON after the jump to see your options and cast your vote…

Last week my 9 to 5er (actually its a 10 to 6er) had me away for a company “off site.” While for most of you out there that might mean

In between the two Godfathers, and before the great Apocalypse, stood a Conversation. And even before two cars raced each other on an open road, and later, a light saber blazed to life and slashed across the room, there was something called THX-1138. Indeed, in the early 1970s, two filmmakers—Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas—used one San Francisco film company—American Zoetrope—and one very gifted editor—Walter Murch—to craft a new method to tweak the audio waves fantastic. Murch revolutionized the way sound could be edited and showcased almost like a living character in Lucas’s first groundbreaking film THX-1138, but it would be the film that he worked on in between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II where he would exploit that technique to an even greater effect, this week’s Hidden Flick, The Conversation.

The film stars Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who records conversations for various corporate and governmental agencies. Essentially, Hackman’s character wire-taps, bugs, and tapes by any technical means necessary. The conversation of the film’s title takes place at the beginning of the story as a couple walks in San Francisco’s Union Square while being recorded from three microphones—one held in a bag carried by a wandering off-duty cop, the others by two soloists in opposing buildings, directing their recording equipment at the couple in the square with long devices which appear, at first, to be rifles as if the two are trained snipers scoping out their hapless prey. READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick…

With single-copy sales struggling, the publishers of Rolling Stone magazine opted to make one of the biggest changes in the history of the publication. The world’s largest music magazine is