Archive: 2009

Hidden Track Unofficially Wins 2008 Best Music Blog Award [youtube]9fWvub_WBho[/youtube] Thanks to our loyal readers, family and friends for voting. Winners will be officially announced on Thursday morning. We’ll have more at that time.

READ ON for P4K’s story on a possible Pavement reunion at Coachella…

I haven’t seen much written about The Dead’s $100 ticket prices by journalists, but the fanbase couldn’t be angrier. Deadheads have taken to internet mailing lists and message boards to air their grievences. Most seem to understand that other ’60s relics charge similar prices for tickets, but expected the band to offer more reasonable pricing […]

After a brief hiatus, Cover Wars is back. What can I say? I went on vacation for a week to Chicago over New Year’s and I left you guys without a playlist of covers of the same song to listen to at work. How you got by, I will never know. If you can remember, our last edition looked at covers of Hey Bulldog and Toad The Wet Sprocket has emerged victorious. Color me surprised, though they did do a great job with the song.

This week I have selected The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down from The Band’s self-titled second album, which was released in 1969. The song, which tells a civil war story, was ranked by Rolling Stone as the 245th greatest song of all time, nestled between Gimme Some Lovin’ and (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.

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 a look at this week’s contestants…

We’d like to welcome our friend Kevin Cassels to the Hidden Track team. Kevin was the editor-in-chief of The Pharmer’s Almanac: The Unofficial Guide to Phish, Vol. 6, released in 2000. He is also the former drummer and founder of Asheville-based rock band Mother Vinegar.

A sure fire way to test the knowledge of any Phish fan is to ask them about Trey Anastasio’s old friends from school and their contributions to Phish songs. Aside from Phish lyricist Tom Marshall, there’s Dave Abrahams, a childhood friend of Trey’s immortalized in the lyrics of McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters who co-wrote classics like Runaway Jim, Glide and Fast Enough for You.

There’s Steve Pollack, better known as The Dude of Life, author of Suzy Greenberg and lyricist of Fluffhead, Skippy the Wondermouse, Run Like an Antelope and more. Founding Phish guitarist and vocalist Jeff Holdsworth was the first band member Anastasio met upon his arrival at the University of Vermont in 1983, and the duo would go on to recruit Mike Gordon and Jon Fishman in the following weeks.

However, other than Holdsworth, no one in this group played a more central role in the formation of Phish than former percussionist Marc Daubert, an official member of Phish from September 1984 to February 1985. Like Holdsworth, Daubert’s songwriting contributions such as The Curtain and I Am Hydrogen remained in the Phish’s live repertoire throughout the band’s career. Today, the percussionist is now a guitarist and vocalist who has just released a new album of all original compositions entitled Parlor Tricks.

READ ON to find out why Marc Daubert left Phish, the meaning behind the lyrics to The Curtain, what Marc’s up to now and much much more…

[youtube]xatZgEZ62fU[/youtube] Mr. Rogers Meets A B-Boy

With the Inauguration a week away a veritable who’s who of the music industry will descend upon our nation’s capital to help celebrate the swearing in of our 44th president Barack Obama. As part of the variety of planned events a free concert is set to take place this Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial that […]

Time Out Take Five lets Glide contributor Doug Collette takes a pick at five recent jazz releases,

Some albums kick off with the strongest or most accessible song as a means of sucking the listener in. Others, ease their way into the real meat of the album so as not to scare the listener with their boldest material. But very few jump in with their most grating and difficult content. Women's self-titled album is, however, just one of those anomalies.

Ohio rock trio Heartless Bastards return with their third album The Mountain on February 3 via Fat Possum.  Following the critical acclaim of their two previous albums Stairs and Elevators and All This Time, fans have a lot to look forward to with The Mountain.   In true ascetic discipline, Heartless Bastards’ Erika Wennerstrom moved to […]

Twelve Radiohead singles are reportedly set to be reissued on limited-edition vinyl. After reissuing several of Radiohead’s albums on vinyl last year, Capitol Records intends to release a handful of the band’s singles on 180-gram vinyl, reports Atease. The vinyl covers will feature the original 5" CD artwork printed as a sticker on the record […]

Sonic Youth are in the final stages of recording their new album. The band say they hope to release the record, which currently has a working title of ‘The Eternal’, this June. Thurston Moore told NME‘s sister publication Uncut that the band were focussing on making "a record replete with juicy supersonic songs!" The record […]

Former Pavement guitarist Scott Kannberg has said that the band may reform soon – and that their booking agent has had talks with Coachella festival chiefs about them performing at the event. He did, however, warn that despite negotiations having taken place, it was more likely that the band would reform after 2009 had finished. […]

Leonard Cohen will play his first U.S. concert in 15 years at the Beacon Theatre in New York on Feb. 19, and speculation is that it will serve as the anchor for a North American tour. Tickets for the show go on sale Friday (Jan. 16) via Ticketmaster.Last summer, the artist embarked on his first […]

With the long winter weekend coming up, it’s time for the fourth installment in the Acoustic Mix series. Past volumes have been among the most popular downloads we’ve had, and this one, like those, represents the very best of what we do around here. It opens with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss doing a nasty version of Black Dog from over the summer, followed by Ryan Adams and the Cardinals with Born into a Light off last fall’s Cardinology.

Next, Warren Haynes and Grace Potter team up with Steve Kimock on steel guitar for a devastating version of Wild Horses, and Dylan covers an old Robert Johnson joint, 32-20 Blues, a regular feature in Warren’s sets for years now. Scaring the Children give a stunning performance on – this one’s worth it for the quality of the recording alone. The guitar and bass create absolutely mesmerizing reverberations through the central jam; it’s long been one of my very favorite recordings. The mix closes with George Harrison playing While My Guitar Gently Weeps all alone (with a couple extra verses thrown in for good measure), and a barn burning acoustic Drowned from Pete Townsend in the mid-90s – unlike anything I’ve heard. This is the best of the best, so as always, enjoy!

• CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS WEEK’S STORMY MONDAYS

READ ON for a special second Stormy Mondays download and Dan’s reviews of both The Bad Plus & Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet at The Village Vanguard…

Instant gratification. That’s the name of the game these days with music fans. With a few clicks of the mouse and a quick trip to Google one can go and find almost any album by any artist. And while today’s mainstream artists are hardly starving, it’s safe to say not many are making money off of albums and that’s the trend we’ve been seeing since Napster started.

I mean hell, look at Britney Spears’ most recent release Circus. She had to host an infomercial on MTV just to sell her CD (aptly titled For the Record). She played the “feel sorry for me” card quite well and guess what? It actually worked — she’s selling albums. So are infomercials the way to go? Artists as huge as Britney have to stoop to this level of salesmanship. Artists are struggling to find new and inventive ways to market their music. The industry is in knots trying to figure out how to market and distribute albums, but also do so at a minimal cost.

READ ON to find out just what sets UM’s Mantis apart from the pack…

READ ON to find out what HT Faves Fleet Foxes will play on SNL…

The era of the $100 ticket started many years ago, but for the most part jamband ticket prices have remained in the double digits. The surviving members of The Dead recently announced their first tour in five years and the ticket prices listed at GDTSTOO range from $45 to $105. Most top tier tickets are […]

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMgDUv_F3fw The Dead – We Strike At Dawn

Former Wetlands owner Peter Shapiro and his brother Jon produced All Access – a film that shows two musicians from different backgrounds performing together. All Access features concert pairings of B.B. King with Trey Anastasio & the Roots, George Clinton’s P-Funk with Mary J. Blige, Dave Matthews & Al Green. Sting with Cheb Mami & […]