For the first time in our history, the Hidden Track staff has put together a list of ten items for the rabid music lover in your life. These are all items with the HT stamp of approval and if we don’t own ’em, we wish we did. So let’s get down to business, ’cause frankly – if you haven’t started shopping yet you’re going to need all the help you can get…
HT Suggests: Logitech Squeezebox Radio
Why You’d Want It: This all-in-one music player allows you to listen to SiriusXM, Pandora, Rhapsody, a whole host of other services, thousands of internet radio stations and any music files you throw at it in any room of your house – no computer required. All you need is a wi-fi connection and you’re golden.
The Squeezebox is the same size as a clock radio and is about as easy to use as it gets once you get past the annoying initial installation. We had a chance to play around with a unit and we loved being able to switch from hearing about the hot stove on sports radio station WFAN to listening to Howard Stern interview Billy Joel on Sirius to streaming Miles Davis’ All Blues over Pandora in just a few short clicks of the click wheel. There’s a handy program guide that makes finding new stations a snap and the color display tells you everything you need to know about what you’re listening to including all the track information from Sirius/XM.
Terrestrial radio might be dying, but the Squeezebox shows that internet and satellite radio are where it’s at for a ridiculously wide variety of listening options.
Grab It At: Amazon.com for $149.99
READ ON for more of HT’s First Annual Holiday Gift Guide…
Last night in San Francisco, the Black Crowes wrapped up the Say Goodbye to the Bad Guys tour at The Fillmore by treating fans to five Rolling Stones covers to
Prince’s Welcome 2 America tour continued over the weekend with performances in the New York City area. For Saturday’s show at MSG, Prince welcomed old collaborator Sheila E to the
Today we continue our look back at the year that was with a list of 10 Great Musicians We Lost in 2010. We’ll feel the loss of these innovative artists for years to come and we wanted to pay our respects once more.
1. Captain Beefheart (1941 – 2010)
Playlist: Six-Part BBC Documentary
Don “Captain Beefheart” Van Vilet, rock legend and artist, died from complications from multiple sclerosis last Friday. Captain Beefheart was an experimental musician who never conformed to anyone’s standards except his own right up until the time he left the industry in 1982 to focus on creating visual art. High school classmate Frank Zappa saw Van Vilet’s brilliance early on and signed the Captain to his Straight Records. Zappa produced the seminal double-album Trout Mask Replica in 1969, which landed the number 58 slot on Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of the 500 Best Albums of All-Time.
READ ON for ten more talented musicians who we miss already…
We first fell in love with Nicole Atkins a few years back when the Neptune, NJ native joined the mighty My Morning Jacket on stage during their epic New Year’s
While we found it kind of curious that Paul Simon is scheduled to release his new his new studio album So Beautiful, Or So What next April, when the record’s
The opening to Regina Spektor’s Live In London DVD highlights an orchestral snippet of Guns N Roses’ “November Rain” before jumping into Spektor’s own “On the Radio,” where she sings – “And on the radio/You hear November Rain/That solo's awful long/But it's a good refrain.” One wouldn’t expect a classical music prodigy to be a hard rock fan, but we also expect one to be such a good percussive piano player, where her ivory talents make for more a pop rock foundation than sleepy melodies.
Ryan Adams can be easily heard in the opening moments of “The Father,” the rootsy, warm and inviting keeper by Vancouver-via-Los Angeles band HoneyChild. Led by Tobias Jesso, the group nails the opener by balancing delicacy with heaviness. Think of an Americana answer to The National and you might get the gist of the first track.
Barry’s Maine is one of sun-scorched blueberry barrens, just enough gas to get through the evening (providing the pickup doesn’t end up in the puckerbrush), cheap beer (none of that microbrew stuff), and, yes, drugs. And the thing is, Barry’s Maine is just as real as that postcard version – but you’d have to know about it to write about it.
With all the sprucing up and revamping of past catalogs that is going on today, endless new glossy ways to watch and hear, one can only imaging the amount of re-mastering that the late great Frank Zappa would be doing on his vast history of releases. The man was constantly tinkering with his music, refiguring it for new formats (CDs at the time) overdubbing; processing and pushing the limits of his technology which makes the new DVD release The Torture Never Stops so surprising in its simplicity.
