Furthur ended the best tour in the band’s short history tonight at the Mizner Amphitheater in Boca Raton, FL; where the group still had a few more tricks up their
The latest installment of the Neil Young Archives Performance Series, entitled A Treasure, is set for a June 14 release. This 12-track album collects some of the best moments from
Last Friday marked the official launch of the brand spanking new @Hidden_Track Twitter feed. To coincide with the new feed comes the first of my Twitter-centric columns where I’ll check in with a weekly look at what’s happening with @Hidden_Track and beyond.
We want the feed to be a way for you to directly interact with us here at Hidden Track as well as for our followers to tweet with each other. Just yesterday was the first of our #htconvo conversations where we asked our followers to tweet about their first concert experiences. We’ll have more of those discussions and plenty of other ways to get our followers involved with Hidden Track.
@Hidden_Track is also an outlet for the staff to share with you what’s currently occupying our headphones and rocking our turntables. We’re letting our followers know what’s #nowplaying with a rotating cast of contributors tuning you in to what their tuned into.
READ ON for a look at what we’ve been listening to…
As we mentioned weeks ago, Phish has decided to put one of the group’s best shows of 2010 as a DVD/CD release called Phish – Live in Utica. Today, the band has officially announced the set and has put together a few pre-order packages for Dry Goods.
The DVDs feature every note Phish played on October 20, 2010 at the intimate Utica Memorial Auditorium including a section of pure “hose” that develops out of Have Mercy and numerous teases of Guyute that led fans to label the show “Guyutica.” Those fans who pre-order the set through Dry Goods will receive a bonus disc called Phish: I-90’s that, “follows the band along the I-90 New York Thruway as they honed their skills in drummer Jon Fishman’s home state, recalling highlights from some of the region’s many great Phish shows in the 90s.” A landmark version of Slave to the Traffic Light that contains Ramble On teases from August 12, 1998 and a high-energy romp through David Bowie from November 4, 1994 are just two of the tracks featured on the Phish: I-90’s compilation.
The following line from the band’s press release has us particularly intrigued, “A new camera mounted at the front-of-house position accentuated the light show in a way never before featured on a live, indoor Phish DVD.” You can order the Phish: Live in Utica box set through Dry Goods now and it will ship on or around May 13, just before the official May 17 release date.
READ ON for the full announcement from Phish…
Last week we kicked off a two-part series of articles by Pete Mason detailing the rise of Strangefolk from the group’s start at the University of Vermont through their climb to prominence as a national touring act on a major label. The second part continues the story from Reid Genauer’s departure in 2000 through the present with a hint of what’s to come.
Reid Genauer left Strangefolk in the fall of 2000 following the band’s Garden of Eden Festival. His departure had both an immediate and long term impact on the band.
Jon Trafton: When Reid left, we didn’t know what to do. Should we keep going? [Strangefolk drummer] Luke [Smith], myself and Erik weren’t ready to stop and we were confused as to what to do. The immediate effect was finding a replacement in [current guitarist] Luke [Patchen] and adding in keyboards was a cool idea – something I’d always wanted to check out. Our first show as a reformed Strangefolk was on November 4, 2000 at the Mad Mountain Tavern in Waitsfield Vermont. Don [Scott] actually joined mid-tour because our first keyboardist, Scott Shdeed, just wasn’t working out, so Don had to learn as we went on the road. Don joined us in Eugene, Oregon and got immersed very fast.
Along with the shifts in personnel came changes to the band’s sound and personality. The new members brought new ideas and a fresh perspective to the band.
Trafton: Patchen is an awesome singer and great on guitar. At first we felt we had to honor the songlist and play the older songs – at least the ones that Reid, Erik and I had written together. Patchen never exactly wanted to try to fill Reid’s shoes because he’s got his own thing going, but he did a great job with the older songs.
At the start we were respectful to the fans and the past musically but then we eventually began to move on into newer songs and sounds. He’s like Velcro, remembers everything we learn, has a great personality and is a utility both on acoustic and electric and gives us great interplay. Don is a great guy and a good choice to join the band. He can help us get into spacey zones and takes the pressure off of Jon.
Patchen: I never really wanted to have a day job, it just didn’t seem fun to me. For two years I played the subways in New York City and it was a job in a way. I would get up and play from 6AM to 9AM and again from 4PM to 7PM being paid in change.
READ ON for the rest of The Strangefolk Story…
Free-form Classic Rock Radio Lives! WNEW & WPLJ return for two nights or Prisoners of 2nd Avenue @ Bowery Electric, April 1 – 2
If you grew up in the New York Metro area from the late ’60s all the way up until the late ’80s listening to what we pathetically now call “terrestrial radio,” then the following list will put a smile on your face:
Scottso
Bruce Juice
Get The Led Out
The Nightbird
Mixed Bag
On This Rock
If you weren’t into Top 40, jazz or disco, then you tuned in to WNEW-FM “Where Rock Lives” or WPLJ-FM for “New York’s Best Rock” to listen to the people who shaped the world of what we now call classic rock. Most people today don’t know who Scott Muni, Pete Fornatele, Jim Kerr, Pat St. John, Dave Herman, Jimmy Fink, Richard Neer, Dan Neer, Jim Monaghan, Carol Miller, Tony Pigg, Vin Scelsa, John Zacherle, Jonathan Schwartz and Allison Steele are (and in some cases were). But for those of us who lived and breathed by Scott Muni starting his show off every single day with a Beatles or John Lennon song, or who tuned in to PLJ every night in order to hear Carol Miller play a block of Zeppelin, it was all so simple.
The idea of rock and roll not just being the latest single, but being the sum of the whole album which the artists worked so hard to put out meant that we understood rock as an art form. And this meant that the creators of this music – as well as the “shepherds” of the radio waves – truly were ARTISTS. And this wasn’t unique to New York City. There was KLOS in L.A. and WRIF in Detroit amongst the many.
Today, all of this is gone. Ray Davies forecasted it in 1982 with Around The Dial. Nobody puts out an album with six to ten songs that comes in at less than 44 minutes. No longer can we savor the moment when we walk into the RECORD store to buy the latest releases and smell all all that vinyl. No child today (unless he’s hip enough to own a turntable and willing to overpay for an outdated source product) will ever know the feeling that Cameron Crowe perfectly recreated in the scene from Almost Famous when William pulls out his sister’s albums from under his bed and drops the needle onto The Who’s Tommy for the first time. And NOBODY will ever again hear the type of radio that made us all fall in love with the music to begin with. Because make no mistake about it: the channels on Sirius/XM satellite radio that play old rock and roll are formula driven. There is no spontaneity. There is no whim of the DJ. No matter whose show it is today, it has all been constrained within the realm of the number crunchers. Unless of course your last name is Stern. And Howard isn’t playing music.
READ ON to see how the Prisoners of 2nd Avenue fit in…
Last year, The Onion’s A.V. Club invited 25 bands into their Chicago office’s to cover 25 different songs as part of their inaugural A.V. Undercover series. Once a song was picked it was crossed off the list till they were all done. The pop culture site is back at it again with another 25 bands and 25 songs that range from Prince to Huey Lewis & The News to Belle & Sebastian.
Earlier this week, The A.V. Club posted the fourth cover performance of the series as The Low Anthem put their indelible ramshackle folk-rock stamp on Wilco’s A Shot In The Arm. READ ON to see how it turned out…
For three Wednesday nights in March and April, guitar maestro Steve Kimock has assembled a rotating cast of All-Stars to accompany him for a residency filled with completely improvisational, free-form jamming. I was able to catch the middle of these three nights at New York City’s Sullivan Hall last Wednesday, which featured a truly stellar lineup of Marco Benevento (The Duo/GRAB) on keys, Adam Deitch (Lettuce/Pretty Lights/Break Science) on drums and Marc Friedman (The Slip) on bass joining Kimock. The results were inspired, daring and overall, very impressive.
[All photos by Marc Millman]
While I have included links to videos and audio below, for one to truly grasp the events of this evening, one needs to understand Kimock’s, and these other super-talented musicians’, schools of thoughts. While Benevento and Friedman are well known on the jamband and indie scenes, and have played together in many instances prior, this was the first time that these four musicians had formally played a gig as a whole. Deitch was in my mind the wild-card on this evening, bringing an impressive funk and hip-hop swagger to the fold that I wasn’t quite sure how it would fit into this scene of loose, laidback, patient, and at times, very psychedelic playing. In the end, Deitch held the backend down, but never really stepped into the spotlight as I would have hoped to showcase his nasty chops.
Incorporating some Kimock numbers throughout the evening, things really seemed to open up with the first set cloer of 5 B4 Funk. A number that relies on heavy bass thumping, Friedman crushed the low-end and had the near sell-out crowd bobbing and moving. You’re The One was another highlight as it really kick started a fiery set two and allowed Kimock to really get cooking – something I wish he’d do more of, frankly. While he is the most impressive guitarist I have ever seen in terms of sound, tone and technicality, he manages to stay true to his philosophy of exuding patience in nearly any situation. That may be the reason that I have always found his fans to be jazz lovers, as you really need to focus, peel back the layers and pay attention to gain the full effect and receive the ultimate payoff.
READ ON for more of this week’s Postcards From Page Side…
Following the announcement that the band will perform its classic album Bug in its entirety in London in July, Dinosaur Jr. has announced a short tour in the US in June. The US
John Popper, the iconoclastic frontman of Blues Traveler has once again re-invented himself with The Duskray Troubadours. His month-long recording sessions in the mountains of New Mexico were much less a solo endeavor, and more or less a collaboration anchored by the strong musical bond between Popper and Jono Manson – bandmates from days of yore. Popper put it best as, “A liberating, scrappy roots-rock alter ego of Blues Traveler.”
