Archive: 2009

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1-AJS1k4P0 SNL Digital Short – Doogie Howser

After landing themselves on many of their peers’ and critics’ 2008 "best of" lists with Skeleton, Abe Vigoda returns to the wild with an incredible gem named Reviver.  The followup to 2008’s CD/LP Skeleton, this new 5 song EP stakes claim in new, darker musical territory.  Reviver slows the mood, crashing into and washing over your […]

Son Volt will venture to the road early in 2009 for a slate of headlining shows behind the band’s most recent studio set, 2007’s "The Search."the mid-west and east coast.  The band have finished recording their next as-of-yet untitled album which is set to be released in May 2009.  A full tour cycle will follow […]

After two "acoustic" shows which you already read about on Hidden Track, Gov't Mule played the first of their annual year-end shows at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom on December 30th.  Of course, this was a new venue for Gov’t Mule with the Beacon Theatre being recently renovated, however Warren Haynes immediately made the room his own by opening with “Blind Man In The Dark.”

Jason Collett’s latest record, the 2008 release Here’s To Being Here (Arts & Crafts) is a marvelous thing; it’s personal enough to put on when drinking with friends becomes an option. It begs for authenticity through conversation. He pens lyrics like “The perennial fatigue of the times/when you’re long in the tooth/short in the sleeve/there’s nowhere left to hide” which let you into a world you only feel like sharing with your best friend. All this coming from a guy with three children. And when he’s not getting personal, he’s still littering his albums with references to joints and cigarettes.

Considering all of the Hidden Track staff put our blood, sweat and tears into this site for little reward it’s very nice to get some recognition. This little blog that could, has been named one of the finalists for the 2008 Weblog Awards’ Music Blog category. We’re up against the biggest names in the biz, most of which are run by full-time paid staffs including Stereogum, Idolator, I Guess I’m Floating, Electroqueer and My Mood Is Music.

If you appreciate what we do here – or just like to root for the underdog – please head over to the voting page and cast your one-click vote for Hidden Track as Best Music Blog. You can place a vote once every 24 hours so keep going back to vote everyday until January 13. We’re very lucky to have a loyal audience and we’d love if you guys can vote for HT.

READ ON to place your vote for Hidden Track…

[Editor’s note – This was supposed to be published yesterday, but wasn’t thanks to some sort of quirk with WordPress. We’re running the piece as is but please note the Freaks Ball is tonight and the winner of the contest has already been picked] As we prepare for Saturday’s Freaks Ball IX featuring the New […]

Back in mid-November Van Morrison scheduled a special three-night run at the Hollywood Bowl in California with the promise of a full performance of arguably his best work, Astral Weeks. As we reported, those memorable concerts were captured on film for a DVD to be released later this year. But for those of you who […]

Someone once said that History becomes Fiction in the very act of writing it down. When the Phish tour dates were finally announced I thought a lot about that quote and my recent position in life.

I find myself almost 30 and well on the path that Phish themselves sent me on almost 14 years ago. The upside is my career is everything I’ve ever wanted and I couldn’t be happier. The downside is I won’t be able to just run off and follow the impetus for my career in the music business like I use to. A new, younger touring generation will be filling the aisles this summer and that brings up, dare I say… bittersweet feelings. I feel there is a need for the veterans to address the new rats with where we went wrong in order to hopefully not make this Era of Phishtory as destructive as the last.

To You, the New Class of Phishtorians I offer these words of warning and encouragement. It’s great to see that Phish is still scoring young in the demographics and you will be finding a way to tell your parents you won’t be a camp counselor this year, but rather, discarding the trappings of The Machine and getting in your car to cruise the land of the brave and free (thank you Ween).

Here are some pointers from a guy who has been in the trenches, learned from said trenches, and now, am getting paid to live on a tour bus and see great music night in and night out. In short: These words come road tested.

READ ON for Wade’s three tips for post-Breakup Phish fans…

Head to Jambands.com to check out our industry insider’s – including our fearless leader Scotty B – choices for the best of 2008 and what to expect from 2009 as part of Mike Greenhaus’ annual Auld Lang Syne series.

[youtube]qM4px25reiA[/youtube] Frightened Rabbit – I Feel Better

In case you are still unsure of your goals for the New Year and still talking ’bout the man in the mirror and thinking about making that change, then this is your guide for a resolution. If there has ever been a musician with a soundtrack for righting life’s ship, it’s the late great Warren Zevon with his uplifting, half-full outlook on life. Well, maybe not exactly, but Warren always had a way of infusing his perpetual internal guilt in his songs and despite the mordant, melancholic lyrics, somehow they often leave an optimistic feeling.

Hence, today we’re taking some Zevon classics (many of which are from his last studio album, the foreboding magnum opus and severely underrated, The Wind) to devise a guide for some New Years Resolutions…

Cleaning Up Your Act – Dirty Life and Times (from The Wind)

Whether your vice is dirty needles, dirty sluts or dirty butts, misery loves company and in this case company plays a mean guitar (Ry Cooder). When you hit the fork in the road and do not know just which way to turn, the secret is to get those demons out on the table and talk to someone. As Warren will tell you, it ain’t easy admitting to having a problem, but admitting the problem exists is the first step to recovery.

“One day I came to a fork in the road. Folks, I just couldn’t go where I was told. Now they’ll hunt me down and hang me for my crimes. If I tell about my dirty life and times.”

READ ON for more Warren Zevon-fueled resolutions for ’09…

Cable music network Fuse debuts the third installment of the Best of Bonnaroo series on Sunday at 11AM. Best of Bonnaroo Volume 3 includes performances by Kings of Leon, Cypress Hill, Atmosphere and the Flaming Lips. Between this episode and the release of the first Bonnaroo 365 performance Sunday’s a big day for fans of […]

Phil Lesh and Friends closing out the 2008 NYC Phil-a-thon at the Nokia Theater in Times Square on November 18th, 2008.All photos by David OppenheimerFor a complete gallery and show streaming audio, click here

The two shows on this DVD are a lot like hearing that stutter in "My Generation" or the huge guitar of "Baba O'Reilly" for the first time. It's just great rock n roll in its purest, most deliberate form.

Merge Records, home to bands including Arcade Fire, Superchunk, Teenage Fanclub, Conor Oberst, Spoon, Buzzcocks and Dinosaur Jr., have announced that it is putting on a five-day music festival to celebrate its 20th anniversary. The festival is set to take place July 22-26 in the indie label’s home state of North Carolina and will feature […]

Bon Iver have made their forthcoming EP, ‘Blood Bank’, available to listen to in its entirety online. The EP, set for official release on January 19 after being available as a tour-only vinyl release, is available to hear at MySpace.com/boniver. In a MySpace message the band said the EP, featuring the songs ‘Blood Bank’, ‘Beach […]

Marco Benevento, is taking up a February residency at Oakland, Calif.’s intimate and famed Yoshi’s jazz club, including a special tribute to Neil Young with Russo on drums.  Benevento will perform each Tuesday, from Feb. 3 to Feb. 24, with special guests like Bill Martin (Medeski Martin & Wood) and Jeff Parker (Tortoise). Meanwhile, Benevento […]

Live Nation is passing on the 2009 edition of its Pemberton Festival in British Columbia, which got the go-ahead from a provincial land commission too late in ’08 to prove feasible. Organizers said the November approval left them with an extremely tight schedule to plan a festival and line up bands, according to local reports. […]

Ex-Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell and producer Timbaland have teamed up to record an album together. The duo are set to release ‘Scream’ on March 9. Every song on the album is said to have been partly inspired by Pink Floyd’s legendary 1979 album ‘The Wall’. Each track flows into the next, giving the […]