2009

Happy Wilco (The Album) Release Day

Wilco’s seventh disc, Wilco (The Album), hits stores today nearly six weeks after it was leaked, which led the band to stream it on their website. With each passing release

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Tour Dates: Virgin Gets Mobilized

Over the last few years the Virgin Mobile Festival has established itself as one of the premiere East Coast festivals, bringing both big name arena acts and more indie-oriented bands

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Hidden Flick: Mothership 2057

[Originally Published: March 10, 2009]

When I first saw Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, his epic out-of-nowhere British zombie/uber cannibalistic/virus outbreak/mutant apocalypse mind-blowingly violent death mental film, I immediately had the same reaction I have with any incredibly talented director. Give the bastard some serious coin to spin the celluloid fantastic into hyperspace. See what they can do. Give them enough rope to either jump across the whole psychedelic lake and swing back with their sanity intact and talents furthered, OR the rope tangles around their artistic neck, strangling themselves on their own self-indulgence.

Boyle reached his total mass creative potential in a completely unexpected way with the unpredictable critical and commercial success of Slumdog Millionaire. However, Boyle’s film before the East Indian tempest in a tea pot, is an intense and visually stunning piece of work that just seemed to come and go under the cultural radar in the 2007 theatrical night like so many other obscure gems. Indeed, this week’s Hidden Flick is Sunshine.

The science fiction film helmed by Boyle, and written by Alex Garland, tells the tale of a ship in 2057 sent from Earth to detonate a nuclear weapon “the size of Manhattan” within our dying Sol in a desperate attempt to reinvigorate and give new life to a dying star. The international cast is surrounded by ingenious CGI effect shots, and the usual Boyle setups which neither foreshadow, nor echo anything that has really come before in the film.

READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick…

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Billboard Q&A: Mike, Trey & Page

Lately, it seems that the only people more excited for the return of Phish than the fans are the mainstream media. Not only does every issue of Rolling Stone seem

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Stormy Mondays: Acoustic Reggae Mix

It’s time for a summer reggae mix, kicking off with Peter Tosh back in the mid seventies with a solo acoustic version of Get Up, Stand Up, followed by his

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Track By Track: An Inside Look at Mark Karan’s Walk Through The Fire

We’re starting a new column today called Track By Track in which an artist shares a story or factoid about each track on their latest album.

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Ever since guitarist Mark Karan joined The Other Ones in 1998, he’s been winning over Deadhead after Deadhead with his soulful lead guitar work. Mark followed his stint with Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart in The Other Ones by spending the last 11 years as a member of Bob Weir and RatDog and also started a band called Jemimiah Puddleduck. For all of Karan’s work as a crucial member of a number of bands, he’s never made a solo album…until now.

That album, Walk Through the Fire, comes out tomorrow on Quacktone Records and will be available in stores, on Itunes, Walk Through the Fire and at his website markkaran.com. The album features special guests Delaney Bramlett, The Persuasions, Billy Payne, The Rowan Brothers, Mike Finnigan, and Pete Sears. Each of the tracks on this disc has deep, personal meaning for Mark, a throat cancer survivor, including the title track which he wrote on his hospital bed after starting chemotherapy so we wanted him to tell us about them in his own words…

ANNIE DON’T LIE – This is a really fun, party sort of song by my friend Alex Call. I played in Alex’s band for quite a while. I hadn’t heard it in years when my friend Teresa James pulled it out at an LA blues gig as “Eddie Don’t Lie”. I remembered I always loved the song and started doing it myself. I love the singalong party vibe and the tex-mex quality the accordion brought to it. JT Thomas’ piano playing is great on this track.

LEAVE A LIGHT ON – I wrote this song when I was a songwriter and producer at Studio 56 in LA. It was poppier and more overblown back then, but I always thought it had something. I revived it for the record and tried pulling it into a more authentic, organic space. I had to twist JT’s arm to play the insistent quirky keyboard part, but it really makes the track for me.

[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/leave.mp3]

READ ON for Mark’s take on the rest of the tracks…

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