2008

To say that the city of New Orleans has been through a lot in the last few years, would be an understatement. While the Crescent City recovers from the devastation

Yesterday, we kicked off our Second Quasi-Annual Grateful Dead Week with a clip of the jam pioneers’ tender performance of Peggy-O towards the end of their career in 1994. Today,

No big surprise last week that our top two candidates were Phish and Neil Young. Over the weekend Phish pulled ahead as the winner of last week’s edition when we looked at covers of The Beatles’ A Day In The Life.

Check your pulse if this video doesn’t make you smile:

This week we look at Hey Bulldog off The Beatles’ 1969 release, Yellow Submarine. Yes, that’s right, we’re doing Beatles’ tunes in back-to-back weeks. Wanna fight about it? Lennon once described this song as a “good sounding record that means nothing.” While this may be true for parts of the verses, I’ve always loved the line, “Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles. What make you think you’re something special when you smile?” I think it’s funny and a little harsh. Also, one of the best basslines ever. For a boat load of fun info check out the song’s entry at The Beatles Bible.

We’ve got a nice mix of artists this round and I’ll say I was surprised at how many versions of this are out there. Once again, I have left off a number of them that I had found.

As always, be sure to register/login to Imeem before starting the playlist below to ensure you stream full-length clips.

READ ON after the jump for the details on this week’s competitors…

‘Tis the season for gift giving and the fellas from Umphrey’s have kicked down quite the stocking stuffer. Head to the band’s download portal, Umlive.Net, to download a free holiday EP of never-before-released material spanning holiday shows from the last few years. The Chicago-based sextet and their organization sent this note to fans announcing the gift…

Dear Friends,

The holidays are upon us and after enjoying a good balance of work and play at Holidaze, our preparations continue to ensure we close out the year in style. While the palm trees and white sandy beaches of Chicago in December aren’t quite as nice as those in Jamaica, we couldn’t be more excited to celebrate the end of 2008 with fans, friends and family in our beloved hometown.

As we said in the Umphdate that announced Mantis, we are eternally grateful to have your support, and are humbled by your relentless dedication and energy. Thank you so much for making it possible for us to do what we do. In appreciation, we’ve decided to give away a free holiday EP of never-before-released material spanning holiday shows from the last few years. Please click here for the free download. If you already have a umlive.net account just add the tracks to your shopping cart and download. If you don’t have an account, signing up is free and fast after you add the gift to your cart. Please, please, please tell your friends as we’d like to put this in the hands of everyone, but we would appreciate if you would send them to UMLive.net to sign up and download rather then sending the files yourself through email or by file sharing.

READ ON for the rest of the band’s note to their fans…

[Originally Published: 04/28/2008]

Stanley Kubrick knew the secret pearl of storytelling. One doesn’t bring the vague and blurry messages to the audience. A filmmaker, like a musician, painter, poet, and street corner dude on a milk crate, painted silver and doing robotic dance movements, accompanied by a battered boom box, makes the crowd come to their bit of strange art.

No doubt, if ten people were asked to list their five favorite films by the towering American expatriate who lived the bulk of his adult life in England (like another crazed Yank genius, Terry Gilliam), you’d get five completely different lists. And that’s fine. I have my own favorites, but I don’t hold them to my chest like they are minemineMINE.

Hell, if you still don’t get the god-like majesty of 2001: A Space Odyssey or marvel at how well Kubrick fooled the audience in Eyes Wide Shut, because it was, in fact, almost all a dream, and you needed to track the weird, non-linear jumps in the story to notice that the brilliant and underrated Tom Cruise was given the ultimate mind fuck to fuck with his yuppie mind while he watched…well…how to do that fine sexual task properly, then long-ass segues aside, you were missing Kubrick’s point and need to look again.

Secret societies abound, no secret there, and it is no secret that Eyes Wide Shut carried with it a legion of references to Kubrick’s other work and, in fact, the life he led with his wife when they shared a New York apartment before making their permanent home across the pond in the UK. It was his last film and the links with his other cinematic masterpieces span all the way back to this week’s Hidden Flick, The Killing—a 1950s race track heist gone wrong cobbled together by two titans of non-linear storytelling. READ ON for more of this week’s Hidden Flick…

With the Phil Lesh & Friends / RatDog two-night Bay-area New Year’s run barely a week away and the leak of a mini-doc about The Dead’s Penn State reunion show,