2010

We covered tons of ground this week on Hidden Track and before we get back to the grind we wanted to recap some of the things we learned…

The new White House Chief of Staff is a Deadhead…

Pete Rouse, the gentleman President Obama tapped this afternoon as his interim Chief of Staff upon the departure of Rahm Emanuel is a Deadhead. He’s the guy who helped get The Dead back together to play a benefit for the then candidate’s campaign according to a New York Times profile. [READ MORE]

Built to Spill has started covering Ripple…

“The New Grateful Dead” has been tossed about in the past describing Built To Spill, it’s a comparison that a lot of Deadheads completely don’t understand – but I think it has some merit once you get past the obvious differences in overall sound. Well this tour, which is massive by the way with very few days off, they have been playing Ripple. The cover starts off slow and somewhat true to the original, but by the end it is a full-on rocker. [READ MORE]

Dark Star Orchestra is experimenting with original material…

JM: Right. We started working on that a little bit, as you said, it’s not going to replace what we do. But everybody also has this itch to be creative, so there’s no reason we can’t write songs and find a place to place them. I don’t think anyone should worry that we’re going to stop playing the Dead – that would upset a lot of people – but that doesn’t make it wrong for us to write and record together. Maybe we, I don’t know, maybe we open for ourselves some time playing original music. So, no one gets cheated out of [his or her] Grateful Dead experience, that’s still happening. But original music is a fairly new development for us. [READ MORE]

READ ON for more things we learned this week…

For this week’s Friday Mix Tape we scoured the Live Music Archive for six bands covering Ween and after a few bouts with the advance search feature we came up

Pete Rouse, the gentleman President Obama tapped this afternoon as his interim Chief of Staff upon the departure of Rahm Emanuel is a Deadhead. He’s the guy who helped get

The Live on Letterman series of webcasts continues this month with performances from Gorillaz on October 7th and My Morning Jacket on October 12th. You can watch both acts live

Even though I still have more to share from my food adventures in Los Angeles (here are Part 1 Part 2 Part 3), I thought I’d tell would you about the food trip I am taking to Montreal. I am flying out of NYC to Montreal tonight, dropping my bags off and heading right to Au Pied de Cochon.

Here is an excerpt from an article that Peter Meehan wrote for the NY Times in 2008…

P.D.C., as the locals call it, was a pizzeria before Mr. Picard got his meaty mitts on it, and a blazing fire in a wood-burning oven greets guests at the door. Beyond it, the restaurant is long and narrow, bright but not too bright, with a mirror running down one side and an open kitchen on the other. The bare wooden tables are crowded with boisterous eaters of every age and description. And the chef — look for the unshaven man with a shock of untamed black hair — frequently works both sides of the bar, talking and drinking with customers and cooks.

Mr. Picard put his restaurant on the gastronomic map when he put foie gras on poutine back in 2004, just after the restaurant opened. Many dishes at P.D.C. are conceived with that same wicked sense of humor — who puts foie gras on French fries? — and carry an unspoken threat of a cholesterol-triggered overdose. There’s a even a whole section of the menu dedicated to the fatty livers: foie on a burger, foie on a pizza and, most compellingly, the Plogue à Champlain — a dizzying combination of buckwheat pancakes, bacon, foie gras and maple syrup.

That last dish Plogue à Champlain sounds amazing (just saying)

The other restaurant we will be hitting this weekend that is also on my restaurant bucket list is Schwartz’s Deli in Montreal

READ ON for more about Jon’s foodie trip to Montreal…