2008

It’s been quite some time since we last brought you a new edition of Tour Diary, but our next installment was worth the wait. Former Blips artist The Brew recently made their first appearance at moe.down and then headed over to the Stone Church for what they thought at the time would be their last appearances at the landmark venue. Bassist Joe Plante gets us started…

[All photos by Ashley Plante]

August 30, 2008

Driving. It feels much better when you are driving to moe.down, even if a few early hitches come up. Hitch # 1: The night before we arrive at our hotel in East Burke, VT after a long couple of sets, find we are down a couple of beds and a room. It is 3:00AM. Chris Plante (keyboards) and Andrew May (sound engineer) are the self appointed “chosen ones” to deal with going back to the venue for a second option. Long story short, they drive around boondocks Vermont, get offered a potential sleeping spot, but it is the home of about 400, mythically gargantuan, hermit-crab-size spiders, which the owner ( a really cool, down to earth girl) loves. Andrew is just a little intimidated by this. Actually, he is petrified. After trying to sleep in a less than comforting environment for paranoid arachnophobes, they drive back to the hotel parking lot to sleep in the van with a hungry flock of mosquitos waiting. That was 4:30 AM. Two hours later is wake up call. The poor guys got about an hour of sleep and an hour of swatting. No time for bitching, just laughing this time. And time for moe.down!

We all pile into the van, turn on our GPS, affectionately named Gertrude (yes, she is a sexy bitch whom we spoon when nobody is looking), and we think we are looking at a 7 hour drive to moe.down. Little did we know Gertrude had planned on taking us through Canada to get there. I almost drive into the nightmare that would have been the Canadian Transit Authority without passports. That is Hitch #2. We turn around, having wasted two hours of our trek to nothing but technology and now we are looking at 8+ hours across the backroads of Vermont, NH, and New York, until the infamous I-90. A little shitty, but still amped for our prime time slots at moe.down!

READ ON for more of The Brew’s adventures at moe.down…

Some Dude hipped me to the setlist from the first show of David Byrne’s tour and it looks incredibly nasty. Nice to see that he’s playing the classics… [youtube]F6sfFFscN5M[/youtube] David

After spending only one year at Big Cypress in the Florida Everglades, the Langerado Festival heads back to the bright lights of the city on March 6-8 at Bicentennial Park

Jamtronica innovators the Disco Biscuits may have taken the fall off from touring, but a couple of Bisco side projects are ready to rage. Conspirator featuring Aron Magner and Marc Brownstein of tDB will embark on a special October run hitting venues along the East Coast. Meanwhile, Electron (feat Aron Magner, Marc Brownstein, Joe Russo, and Tom Hamilton) is teaming back up to play a special string of dates in the Northeast that same month.

Here’s a look at what else is goin’ on this hump day…

• The Black Crowes cancel six upcoming shows on the West Coast
• Choosing the best albums to come from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo
• Eddie Van Halen called Sammy Hagar when McCain used Right Now
• Ryan Adams & The Cardinals will release Cardinalogy on October 27
• Paul McCartney’s decision to play Israel has led to threats on his life
• Austin Scaggs of Rolling Stone finally starts a Smoking Section blog

READ ON for the full list of Conspirator and Electron tour dates…

Folks, today we’re kicking off another new periodic department here at Hidden Track and we’re really excited about it. Since it’s the collaborative vibe of lots of writers and commenters that make this site tick – most of whom are pretty tuned in to the music writing landscape – we decided to try out what we call Writer’s Workshop.

As you may have guessed, it’s about writing and the idea is to rap with some great music writers who actually know what they are doing. Thus, our guests will drop some knowledge, a few tricks of the trade, and their tales of sweat and blood.

Our first guest is the one and only Amanda Petrusich of Pitchfork, Paste, Spin, and New York Times fame. Amanda just published her new book, It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music, and continues to make a name for herself as one of the music’s burgeoning young writers. So, without further ado, let’s dig in…

Ryan Dembinsky: Could you run through your standard protocol (if you have one) when you go to review an album? For instance, where do you listen to it? How many times? Do you look for particular elements or just wait to see what jumps out you?

Amanda Petrusich: I try to listen to every record I review at least twice before I sit down to write about it. I actually think it’s much easier to develop ideas about an album when you let it become a part of your life for awhile, even if it ends up being unwelcome. Twice is just a vague hallmark; I’ll do my best to listen until I think I have some larger notion of what a record is “about” – whether it’s a lyrical theme, a narrative, a certain guitar sound, whatever. Something needs to click. Trying to review a record when nothing clicks, that’s the real challenge.

READ ON for more of the premiere edition of Writer’s Workshop…

When popular rock band Phish reunited at Brad Sands’ wedding on September 6, I decided to start a website to keep track of all the new Phish blog posts, new

We’re happy that the winners of Cover Wars are continuing to diversify. For a while, a few usual suspects were consistently walking away victorious from this weekly feature. But we saw Martin Sexton earn the most votes two weeks ago when we looked at covers of Wind Cries Mary, and the winner of last week’s Doobie Brothers Edition is none other than Dolly Parton!

Traffic – Santa Monica, CA (1972):

This week we are taking a look at the title track of Traffic’s 1971 album Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys. The song structure and shear length of the tune makes it quite conducive for an interesting Cover Wars.

As always, be sure to register/login to imeem to ensure that you will be hearing full-length tracks and not snippets.