Archive: 2009

After registering more than 100,000 voters last year, HeadCount plans to build upon their success with the launch of the “What’s Your Issue?” campaign encouraging music fans to become informed, active citizens.

Those who head over to the revamped HeadCount.org or visit the HeadCount table at a concert can answer a short issues survey about the issues that matter to them and be entered win free VIP tickets to Outside Lands Music Festival, held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park August 28-30, 2009, plus two round-trip airfares on Southwest Airlines to anywhere in the U.S., get access to free downloads and receive an update every six weeks on the issue that matters most to them. Let’s not gloss over that last point – you don’t have to worry about HeadCount updates flooding your inbox.

The organization’s revamped website has just been updated to include a wide range of resources that facilitate civic participation including issue pages, their blog, a listing of volunteer opportunities and a legislative action area where you can email your Congressional representatives. We recently asked HeadCount founders Marc Brownstein and Andy Bernstein about “What’s Your Issue?” and here’s what they had to say…

Hidden Track: The last election was over and you guys were extremely successful registering voters, can you tell us about the process of figuring out where you went from there with HeadCount?

Marc Brownstein: We’ve always known where we were going to go from there. The mission has always been a two-part mission. One of the parts is to utilize the power of music to organize the community at large in terms of voter registration. And then to take it one step further, part of our mission was going to be – ultimately- to become the civic engagement branch of the jamband community, the people who train the volunteers of the future.

So we built the foundation around voter registration and electing the officials is the very, very important first step. One of the things that I like to say is it’s not who is gonna be there running your government necessarily – that’s the most important thing – but once they get there how they are going to run it. That’s what HeadCount is going to be about in the future. It’s about issues and finding out what the issues of the kids in the jamband community are and how they can engage with the politicians in Washington to be running our country in the direction that our community wants to go in.

READ ON for more from Marc Brownstein and Andy Bernstein…

Born out of a deep running comradery built on countless tours and ties between a host of excellent musicians comes THE BIG SURPRISE TOUR, a traveling show of epic collaboration and good times. Kicking off in Hampton Beach, NH on August 4th, THE BIG SURPRISE TOUR is not your standard up down up down line […]

Building on the momentum of registering more than 100,000 voters last year, HeadCount has launched a new campaign called “What’s Your Issue?” that encourages fans of live music to take the next steps beyond voting to become more informed, active citizens. Anyone who answers a brief issue survey  – either at a concert or online […]

Within days of Alternative Press including Censored Colors on its list of 10 Essential Albums of 2008, the members of Portugal. The Man were trekking through the Boston snow to start work on their fourth release in four years, The Satanic Satanist. As John Baldwin Gourley, named the year’s Best Vocalist in that same issue […]

Multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, producer and arranger Roger Joseph Manning Jr. will have to add ‘Guru’ to his list of titles.  While discussing the release of his latest album, Catnip Dynamite (Oglio), Manning waxes philosophical on the virtues of self-reliance and individuality, themes that have more or less defined his career and have equipped him with a razor-sharp focus in articulating his profound musical message time and again.

Green Day will be performing each night this week – with the exception of Monday – on NBC’s Later with Carson Daly to promote their new album, 21st Century Breakdown.The band has a long relationship with Daly and Later is the only show that let them play Jesus of Suburbia off American Idiot. Monday, June […]

Back in April we told you about Red Sox prospect Lars Anderson’s appreciation of the Grateful Dead and at the time we wondered whether he was into Phish as well. In an NECN interview, the first baseman – currently playing at Double-A Portland – mentions that he wished he could’ve caught the newly-reunited jammers at […]

When Phish announced the dates for their first tour in five years I was extremely excited to see that the shows lined up really well with my schedule. My plan was to hit the first five and take the Sunday of Camden off to rest and not be dead tired at work the next day. […]

Old Crow Medicine Show, Dave Rawlings Machine, The Felice Brothers and Justin Townes Earle team up for The Big Surprise Tour. READ ON for more info on what’s sure to be an amazing night of music…

At first I didn’t think I was at the right place. I mean, I had pulled up in front of the brick faced loading docks across the street from a local microbrewery. The store front in front of me had an a-frame sign, hand painted on the sidewalk. My fender was within inches of it. It read “Texas Hold-em. Totally licensed and legal”. There were metal, portable stairs on wheels locked in place against the bricks, allowing access to each of the loading docks. There was a chain link fence separating the docks, effectively locking in the seven port-a-johns that were placed off to one side, the fence surrounding them, I’m sure, for security reasons. Also inside the chain link were about five or six old couches. That must be the designated smoking/peeing section.

Up the metal stairs and inside the first door I found a mineral and gem show, free samples of vegan, coconut ice cream and the assorted families normally associated with mineral shows and free samples of vegan, coconut ice cream. There were nylon patterns stretched wall to wall, floor to ceiling in red and black that hid the industrial warehouse trappings against the red brick walls. There was free water refillable from the five gallon jug of ice water the staff drove themselves crazy replenishing (a hearty Thank You to the girl with the line up the back of her stockings). There was the loud, throb of dance music beats coming from the other side of one of the nylon covered brick walls, loud enough so that the tie dyed and barefoot children of the gem and mineral-ists wore ear plugs, the infants, headphones.

What there wasn’t was anyone at the door asking for tickets or money. Tonight’s show was put on gratis by the benevolent folks over at Lightworker Nonprofit Productions. LWNP is the brain child of Portlander Jake Weaver. Their mission is simple: “Lightworker Nonprofit Productions exists to provide communities across the country, exposure to multiple levels of artistic expression at no financial cost. Our goal is to keep ticket prices FREE to ensure that people of all income levels can attend our events”. Weaver adds, “By producing concerts and related events, with many different types of art being displayed at once, people can experience this expression, become more enriched, and bring that energy back into their community.” READ ON for more from A.J. about EOTO & Ozric’s show…

MGMT – Kids

Coming off the most accessible album of their career, Rather Ripped, the 16th full length recording from Sonic Youth is aptly named, The Eternal. They have returned to odd timing’s clanging guitars and poetic lyrical workouts, however not all the mainstream sheen is worn away.

Former Nirvana bassist, Krist Novoselic, has announced that he is running for public office to protest Washington state’s election methods. Novoselic filed papers Wednesday (June 3) to run for county clerk in Wahkiakum County as a member of the “Grange Party” — a party that doesn’t actually exist — in order to bring attention to […]

The second batch of expanded remastered cd’s of The Replacements is as much of a labor of love as the first four. The exhaustive liner notes and the meticulous detail former manager Peter Jesperson attributes to the bonus tracks (which sometimes double the number of cuts on a given cd) depict a dramatic backdrop to music that is wholly gripping on its own terms. Truth be told, the casual music lover who discovers The ‘Mats via these releases, not knowing their history, might very well come away convinced this Minnesota quartet is one of the finest rock and roll bands America’s produced in the last twenty years…or perhaps longer!

Happy Sunday from all of us here at HT! This is a quick reminder that it’s easy to have your finger on the digital pulse of what’s going on tonight at Phish in lovely Camden New Jersey. So be sure to follow @YEMblog for all the latest in: Setlists, jamming anecdotes, Mike’s wardrobe, and ScottyB’s […]

For me, this was the one – a serious, relentlessly energetic Phish concert that rollicked for more than three hours and drew generously on the vibes created by a happy crowd, a gorgeously temperate New England evening, and the assuredness of having spent a week on the road, working out kinks, getting sea legs back, remembering to enjoy one another’s myself onstage.

[All photos by Jeremy Gordon from 6/5]

All four of our beloved Phishermen delivered the goods, and while we’re still far from the point where they feel comfortable (excitable?) enough to take jams deep into the blurry, whirry cosmos, I haven’t seen or heard a better full-length expression of the fairly conservative, songs-first, relax-and-do-your-job well Phish 3.0 yet than what we witnessed at Mansfield last night. The boys were on. They had it. They reined things in where, say, 10 years ago they might have been an exercise in transcendent improvisation, or five years ago they might have been a frayed, sloppy trainwreck, but the crowd was better for it, the vibe was better for it, and the band, well, it’s safe to say it feels like Phish again. “Long live the Phish!” howled a goofy bobber in a Makisupa Police Academy t-shirt, seconds after Phish put the wraps on his apparel’s titular song.

All around, the setlists have been a little oddly paced in the week of shows we’ve seen so far, but maybe that’s a subtle suggestion to throw out old ideas about how a Phish show’s machinery should be oiled. They didn’t exactly lose anybody by opening with a new song (Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan — crisply rendered, if no great shakes) and a relative obscurity from Undermind, the cool, even-keel Nothing. Quite the opposite; when the groovy gallop of Back On the Train set in and had the whole place bobbing along like synchronized pogo, the band had already hit its stride, not yet even a half hour into the first set. From there came balanced moments of familiarity that were briefly, wonderfully toppled with aggressive jamming: a ripping, groovalicious Gotta Jibboo tempered by Page’s calming croon in Lawn Boy, for example, or a Trey solo nugget (Let Me Lie) splayed against Taste; or the laid back snacking of that Makisupa followed by a deceptively easygoing, then full-forced hungry Prince Caspian. Trey had already torched the midsection of Jibboo but it was here where he veered from note-y pointillism to starry-eyed, psychedelic abandon. Simply. Fucking. Gorgeous.

READ ON for more from Chad on last night’s Phish show…

Jeremy Gordon was on hand to shoot night three of Jones Beach…

Phish played another scorcher last night at Jones Beach in Wantagh including an old school first set in which the second newest song was from 1995 – 14 years ago. The show also featured the best post-Breakup segue, a sweet little space jam out of Down With Disease that turned into Twist. We’ll have photos […]

We’ve given each member of our team a chance to review one of Phish’s Summer Tour shows and this afternoon it’s Luke Sacks’ turn to share his thoughts on last night’s show added by some exceptional photos by our Jeremy Gordon. Be sure to follow the action live from the shows @YEMblog

I hadn’t been to Jones Beach since the last time Phish performed there 14 years ago and despite numerous trips there throughout my North Jersey teenage years, I couldn’t remember anything about it.

[All photos by Jeremy Gordon for Glide/HT]

Go to the food stands and they’ll hit you up $6 for a bottle of water. That I will now remember. The swampy murk to the left of the stage. That I will now remember. But the absolutely sick sound and fantastic show that Phish threw down on Thursday night will be the most memorable aspect of the evening for sure.

After the goofy a capella ditty Grind to open (giving everyone a chance to rush to their seats from under cover), a sparkling Divided Sky with a light rain falling got the show rolling and was played with appropriate sharpness and precision. The new song Ocelet followed and was 10 minutes of pure fun with Trey sounding incredibly sharp. Sounding a little bit like a Grateful Dead song, this song has a whole lot of potential and felt as if they had been playing it for years.

READ ON for more from Luke and Jeremy’s photos…

Way back on April 10th, I told you I had gotten an email in my inbox from Theodore Peck, winner of many of the recent “Food Throwdowns” stating that he was partnering with another competition mainstay Nick Suarez and that they were planning something big in the near future.

Well that something big is the 1st Annual Brooklyn Beer Experiment taking place this Sunday at The Bell House in Brooklyn.

You probably have seen postings recently on all of the major food blogs like Grub Street, Ed Levine Eats & The Village Voice’s Fork in the Road. In case you were not aware of all of the competitions that Mr Suarez and Mr Peck have won, here is the list. I did manage this week to get a hold of Theo for a couple of quick minutes on the phone. He told me that he has “an amazing prize that he can’t share more about.” Also I heard through the grapevine that some of the teams entered are from some well known NYC eateries. I bought my ticket already as a portion of the ticket sales are going to ovarian cancer research, a very worthy cause. This should be one of the coolest food events to hit the city in a long time. Plus Theo and Nick lined up some great celebrity judges. Hope to see you there on Sunday!

Other goings on around the foodieverse this week:

Looking for some great bar food that won’t break your bank? Check out the posting Cheap eats: Eight bars with free food that Time Out NY’s The Feed put up yesterday.

READ ON for more Foodieverse happenings…