November 11, 2008

Sometime in the last two years—there’s no exact date, but the shows that birthed Live at Tonic are probably a good place to start the discussion—Marco Benevento became a brand unto himself. Given the number of hats he wears, who’s to say what group, configuration or collaboration is his number one priority—and does he have to have just one?—but we’re past the point where any of Benevento’s eponymous groups is a mere Benevento-Russo Duo side project. That “B” in “Marco B”? Could just as easily stand for “bandleader,” dude.

[All Photos by Jeremy Gordon]

In his Benevento trio shows, which have one and soon two-full length albums from which to draw a panorama of core material, Benevento’s main focus is piano. There is, of course, the requisite sampling of other keyboard effects and toys for good measure, but the emphasis isn’t on creating an effects-driven soundscape so much as it is song-based: wrapping piano improvisation around a core melody and milking that melody for endless possibilities.

If there was anything discouraging about Benevento’s headlining set at Drom on Saturday, it was brevity: the whole thing was over and done with in a swift, encore-less hour-and-twenty. It wasn’t the band’s fault (Marco’s publicist, Kevin Calabro of Hyena Records, advises Hidden Track the band was originally told it could play at least another half hour, til 11:30 p.m., then was swiftly denied an encore right at 11 as Drom turned into a dance club). But it left little time to savor what Benevento, Jon Fishman and Reid Mathis had cooked up so much as absorb it like a laser beam to the head: tight and sinewy jams passing in blurs, and dazzling virtuosity to spare.

READ ON for more of Chad’s thoughts and Jeremy’s photos…

We’d like to pay our respects to the baseball player with the best name ever: Herb Score. Score, who pitched from the Cleveland Indians from 1955-59, passed away this morning

Earlier today, The Raconteurs unveiled a fun promotional schtick that we wanted to share. Jack White et al have come up with an Antique Roadshow parody called From Old To

This past weekend Van Morrison took the stage at the Hollywood Bowl for a special three-night stand at the historic venue. The legendary singer-songwriter used two of those nights to

Has it really only been a week? There were no real surprises last Tuesday, and by this I mean that Pearl Jam has emerged victorious from last week’s edition where we looked at eight covers of Rockin’ In The Free World.

The general election may be over, but Cover Wars goes on. This week we will be featuring one of my favorite John Lennon solo songs: Jealous Guy. There are many covers of this tune out there, so this week’s contestants are by no means the only artists to have covered the song, but rather a sampling. Lennon originally wrote the melody to Jealous Guy on a trip to India in 1968 when the song was called Child Of Nature. The song would get new lyrics three years later when it was released on Lennon’s second studio album Imagine. You can read more about that here.

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READ ON for the tale of the tape on this week’s competitors…

Watching President-elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Chicago’s Grant Park, I came across a televised image of Spike Lee greeting Reverend Jesse Jackson. I couldn’t help but think that not only was this country headed in a positive direction with the election of the Illinois senator as our next Commander in Chief, but those who had been dejected and doubtful for so long, also had their moment of truth on that historic evening.

Lee has been making films for over twenty years, and when he began his career, he came across as an extremely funny yet talented angry black man. He is still that angry black man with the soul and confidence to back up his tirades against the injustice of history. However, he is also one of America’s best filmmakers, and like all great men of the cinema, Spike Lee has had his fair share of misfires over the years. She’s Gotta Have It, his debut feature-length film, is not one of those, and stands as this week’s Hidden Flick.

The film was made for $175,000 over two weeks in the summer of 1985, and grossed $7,000,000, which is a major feat in any other era. However, as time has marched onwards into the 21st Century, Lee’s debut celluloid statement seemed to get lost under the wheels of history as Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, and Malcolm X were heralded as his triumphs while some of his other cinematic treasure appeared forgotten.

READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick – She’s Gotta Have It…

It’s the third week of Phil Lesh and Friends’ Nokia marathon, and since last week, we’ve seen a presidential election. But almost more importantly, a Warren sit-in as well as