Last Week’s Sauce features recordings of shows from the previous week. This week we’ll look at almost exclusively shows that took place on New Year’s Eve.
[Thanks to sonicsound for this week’s photo]
Artist & Title: Assembly Of Dust – Brown Sugar
Date & Venue: 2009-12-31 Tupelo Music Hall, Salisbury MA
Taper & Show Download: SmokinJoe
“You should have heard him just around midnight”. A few covers, an acoustic section and a fan requested bustout of Strangefolk’s Far From Yourself round out this New Year’s show from Reid Genauer and Assembly of Dust. Reid hits the road again solo for a few shows to start 2010. Catching him solo is highly recommended, I’ve said it before, Reid is one of the best screamers of our generation.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/aodsauce.mp3]READ ON to hear highlights from many other bands New Year’s Eve shows.
This year at Hidden Track, we concocted a little experiment for our year-end Best Albums of 2009 list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way – subjectively – we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.
To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of around 100 nominees and populated it in a Google spreadsheet – essentially anything that anybody who writes for Hidden Track liked at all, made the list. Then we invited our crew of writers to independently vote on the whole list (omitting anything unfamiliar) on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = five stars). We ended up with 33 voters with varying degrees of familiarity with the nominees; some folks voted on just about everything, while some just a few. From there, we eliminated anything that did not receive at least three votes, calculated the average scores, and sorted it. We took the top 25 scores and presto: the Hidden Track 25 Best Albums of 2009. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.
Let’s check out numbers 15 through 11 and see what made the cut…
15) Elvis Perkins In Dearland – Elvis Perkins in Dearland
Key Tracks: Hey, Chains Chains Chains, Doomsday
Sounds Like: Part marching band, Part Dylan-esque folk-rock
Skinny: Perkins sophomore effort is more of a complete representation of what he and his band In Dearland sound like. The combo’s “antique music” can best be summed up as equal parts ramshackle folk and Sousa marching band, making it virtually impossible at times to keep you from from tapping your feet along to songs like Hey, I Heard Your Voice In The Dresden and Doomsday with Perkins’ vivid lyrics as the guide.
READ ON for the next four albums in our week long countdown…
As we’ve previously reported due to a scheduling conflict at the Beacon Theater, namely Cirque de Soleil being booked at the newly renovated theater for an lengthy run of shows
Everyone who goes on Jam Cruise has their moment. They come at different points on the trip depending on the person, but mine came an hour ago on the Pool Deck where Brock Butler performed an impromptu two-hour set as the sun came up with a fiddle player named Ellie Labar. As Brock sang the most powerful It Starts Where It Ends, it hit me that I was as close to being in a musical utopia as I’d ever get. Over the first three days, Jam Cruise 8 has delivered it all from laughs to tears to a massive amount of incredible music.
[Photo by Justin Boose]
Day three started on a down note when we pulled into Ocho Rios, Jamaica along with a rainstorm. JC8 attendees made the best of the situation and explored the town or went off on excursions in rain gear. We all made it back onto the ship around 5PM for a set of roots reggae courtesy of John Brown’s Body. Over in the theater, the Hot Buttered Rum guys hosted Rock Star Karaoke. Those Jam Cruisers who wanted to sing a song simply put their name in a hat and HBR guitarist Nat Keefe would pick one out at random. Some tunes were trainwrecks but others were wonderful such as a tight version of Use Me sung by Higher Ground staffer Mikey.
After a quick changeover on the Pool Stage, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe held court for about a thousand Jam Cruisers. Karl D’s new songs have a powerful rock edge that fuses oh so nicely with the funk. If funk wasn’t your thing, you could while away the evening hours down in the Zebra Bar for Adam Deitch’s electronica-tinged Break Science project or in the theatre where Railroad Earth was holding court.
READ ON for more from Scotty on Day Three of Jam Cruise 8…
A band that is unfortunately no stranger to loss, having lost their very own Mikey Houser back in 2002, Widespread Panic faced a heart wrenching confrontation at their Phillips Arena 2009 New Years run; to play their hearts out for fallen comrade Vic Chesnutt.
The band did just that over the course of three sets at the Atlanta venue (home of 9 of their last 10 New Year’s shows), bookending the eulogy show with Chesnutt material including opening up with Vic’s Let’s Get Down to Business and closing down shop with his Protein Drink/Sewing Machine.
Sandwiched in between Vic’s nuts, Panic treated fans to: an acoustic first set, a smoking tribute to that other pop star who died in 2009 (at midnight), a sarcastic Another One Bites the Dust tease in Arleen, a brassy horn cavalcade courtesy of the Megablasters, a crack at Van Morrison’s Moondance, and a Patsy Cline nod in Walkin’ After Midnight.
With the stakes high on behalf of their fallen friend, Widespread Panic came out and raised them even higher. On a special night with emotions running wild, the final set Widespread Panic played for the aught decade (third set), may also be one of their very best according to many fans.
READ ON for a full setlist and downloads.
Nada Surf bring their trademark sense of harmony and musical craftsmanship to 12 of their favorite songs with their latest release, if i had a hi-fi, their first album of
Brooklyn saxophonist John Ellis is gearing up for a busy 2010. On February 23, ObliqSound will release Puppet Mischief, the second album with his New Orleans-based band Double-Wide, which in
Twenty years ago on the way to Crested Butte, Left Hand String Band and the Salmonheads decided to join forces. At that time they had no idea that it would last this long! Hell, “had we known it would last 20 years, we would have picked a better name”, Said Vince Hermann to the crowd of fans awaiting JAM packed night (pun indented)! But for all the fans, there is no better name and no better sound than Leftover Salmon and the yell of Herman screaming into the night … “FESTIVAL!”
Jonathan Richman has announced a new run of shows with drummer Tommy Larkins. These twenty-seven shows, including a four-night residence in Austin, TX and a three-night stand at the Music
Now that a reunion is officially on its way, Pavement will release forthcoming 23-track greatest hits-type compilation, Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement, out on double-LP and CD March
