March 24, 2009

The emails are starting to flow out from Music Today with news of how you did for Phish’s Late Summer preorder. Did you score your golden ticket or were you

The grids for this year’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival have just been posted at nojazzfest.com. Neil Young and his band join Wynton Marsalis, Bon Jovi, Dave Matthews Band,

The Allman Brothers Band keeps pushing — gentle nudges here, violent heaves there — and with still four nights left to go in the epic and already legendary 2009 Beacon Theatre residency, calling shows like last night’s a “blowout” just seems so remote. It was a raging inferno and a soulful celebration, capped off by perhaps the greatest version of Les Brers In A Minor yet played by the current Allman Brothers Band lineup.

[Moogis Screenshot by Musichead]

Overall, the third Monday felt almost entirely unpredictable: a comfortably weird and somewhat esoteric setlist that for what its many, many guests connote, also felt just right. The first set was long and cinematic; I’ve heard better Don’t Want You No More > It’s Not My Cross to Bear openers, but the band got right to business with a chugging, dynamic Done Somebody Wrong, complete with good ol’ Thom Doucette blowing crisp and modal harp. Into this song, especially, the ABB’s breathed a lot more life in recent years: a shuffling intro that finally feels like one instead of a random pre-jam, stirring Gregg vocals, and a better jam segment.

From there things erupted: Warren blowing large shotgun shell holes in Can’t Lose What You Never Had, Derek and Ron Holloway (hi Ron!) laying waste to a wrenching Desdemona (to these ears, still the best of the “new” ABB songs), and a mesmerizing walk through the new and unnamed (though some say it’s called Orfeo) instrumental. I like it: very fusiony Bitches Brew, a tangle of minor key progressions and dark tones, rippling percussion, a little inchoate getting from the spare melody to the jam segments, but overall long and satisfying.

READ ON for more of Chad’s thoughts from last night’s show…

The great photographer sat curled on the Hampton, Virginia stage like an invisible snake holding a widescreen camera. Indeed, the renowned lensman, Danny Clinch appeared more like a Pirate King on the prowl for his next big scenic adventure—dark hair slicked back, black boots rooted to no one spot for too long, and a sharp arch in his eyebrows.

Watching him shoot Phish’s return to the stage on March 6, 2009, brought to mind Clinch’s collaboration with the Vermont band in 2004 as they neared what appeared to be a conclusion before what became a very long, frustrating, and confusing second hiatus for the Best Live Band in America. Indeed, two entities edging towards The End with links to two legendary bands are the subject of another double feature edition of Hidden Flick.

Timothy Leary’s Last Trip was co-created by A.J. Cataline, David Herman, and O.B. Babbs, the son of original Merry Prankster Ken Babbs, who also hosts the documentary. The film is weird, far from perfect, amateur hour, and somewhat ridiculous at times. However, it is also a fascinating 56-minute study of Leary at the end of his life. Last Trip isn’t exactly a final acid adventure captured on celluloid, so let’s dispel that notion. Instead, the documentary features the ex-Harvard professor and lifelong psychedelic pioneer, and his relationship with LSD, the countercultural movement, drug prosecution laws, Hog Farm leader Wavy Gravy, and, of course, the noted writer, co-partner in acid, and famed rabble-rouser, Ken Kesey, as he accompanies Leary on a few road trips—the Pranksters clean up the ancient Furthur bus, and take it on a trip with some of the original MP crew, offspring, and Leary and Kesey in tow—and a cyberspace journey—a final call from Kesey to Leary which ran on the net, and was alleged to feature a Leary suicide, but that turned into a mythic charade—before his demise of prostate cancer on May 31, 1996.

READ ON for more on this week’s double feature…