Archive: 2011

One week ago, God Street Wine guitarists Lo Faber and Aaron Maxwell took the stage at the famed Iridium Jazz Club for two shows filled with GSW classics. The duo have been honing their acoustic sets since the beginning of the year and continue to mine the ol’ repertoire for additional nuggets. [Photo by Joe Madonna] […]

Back in April when we launched the @Hidden_Track Twitter account, we kicked things off with a B List of 20 Twitter Feeds to Follow. Number One on the list was Grace Potter (@gracepotter) of Grace Potter & the Nocturnals. The HT fave was an easy choice thanks to her consistent updates and behind-the-scenes pictures from the road. Though Potter was the only female in our list of 10 Bands to follow, there are plenty more worth following, and here’s 10 more Women who rock and are worthy of a follow.

1. Amanda Palmer (@amandapalmer)

Palmer is highly engaging of her rabid fans, often stirring conversations about whatever is currently relevant in her life. She also drops info on secret “ninja” shows alerting followers to when and where to catch her.

2. Neko Case (@NekoCase)

Case is quick to reply to her followers and is great at updating from the road. Her recent tour with My Morning Jacket was well documented by her 140 character updates.

3. Lilly Allen (@MrsLRCooper)

Though Allen seems to be more interested in tweeting than making records these days, her feed is entertaining and at times controversial. Never shy to tell it like it is, Allen’s tweets can be as sharp as her tongue.

READ ON for seven more ladies worth following…

Wyllys and the New York Hustler Ensemble @ Sullivan Hall – 8/18

Words: Scott Bernstein
Photos: Jeremy Smith

Last Thursday, HT contributor Wade “Wyllys” Wilby brought his New York Hustler Ensemble to Sullivan Hall on his wife/Hustler member Jennifer Hartswick’s birthday. Wyllys seized upon the celebratory mood from the get go and delivered a focused 90-minute set that blended pre-recorded electronic music with live gold from instrumentalists Hartswick, Natalie Cressman and Zac Lasher as well as special guests Rob Salzer (U-Melt), Todd Stoops (RAQ/Kung Fu) and Pete Pidgeon (Arcoda).

[All photos by Jeremy Smith]

Wyllys started the show up on the stage by his lonesome and showed off some of his turntablism skills. Wilby worked in clips of John F. Kennedy’s famous “we choose to go to the moon” speech and wound up bookending his set by dropping more quotes from JFK’s speech at the end. Hartswick and Cressman have spent plenty of time together on stage over the last 18 months and the connection they share and have honed over that time was clear throughout the evening.

Following Wyllys’ intro, he invited the core members of his group up for a few groove-laden tracks before welcoming the guests up. RAQ/Kung Fu keyboardist Todd Stoops made the most of his time on stage, banging away at Lasher’s rig to deliver one funky riff after another with a quickness using a meaty clavinet tone. Salzer made his first public appearance on guitar since leaving U-Melt and was exchanging smiles and energetic solos with Lasher, his former band mate. Yet Wyllys was the clear star of the show, directing the musical traffic in a way that kept things interesting throughout.

HT’s Jeremy Smith was in the house and took a number of fantastic snaps. READ ON for more of Jeremy’s killer photos from this show…

Even though Sammy Hagar and Mickey Hart are putting on the bravest of faces in their latest individual interviews with Billboard and Rolling Stone respectively, you can’t help but come away from the pieces feeling like these guys would kill to be back in the bands for which they are best known. Hagar tells Billboard that both […]

The Muppets show has left an indelible mark on arguably all of the HT Staff, as we all became attached to its mix of loveable characters, kitschy smart humor (much of it which went over our heads at the time) and celebrity guests. So we were pretty psyched to see the franchise getting a major […]

In this week’s Postcards From Page Side, Featured Columnist Brian Bavosa looks at the recent tragedies that seem all too common: stage collapses and the reasons why, and possible steps to prevent this from happening again…

Contrary to what you may be thinking, no, this week’s column is not about Phish’s cover of Timber (Jerry), commonly referred to as Timber Ho! Instead,  it will focus on what has become a an all-too familiar–and tragic–headline as of late, where we have seen a number of stage collapses at recent festivals and concerts around the world. My immediate reaction is how? Why now? What were the causes? And, it led me to think about what could have been done–if anything–to prevent these terrible, and deadly, events. Let us take a look at three recent disasters, all that have occurred within the last month or so.

The first tragedy we will look at occurred at the Indiana State Fair. Due to inclement weather, and a heavy storm that rolled through the area (the seemingly common X-factor in all of the collapses), the stage completely buckled and collapsed. Seven people were KILLED. Yes, dead. Unreal. Concerts are supposed to be fun, not deadly!

Now, my first reaction (and seems to be with each example we will look at) is: what the hell are those people still doing there by the time the storm rolled in?!?! In this day and age with the most advanced weather instruments, radar and equipment, how can we not tell a potential dangerous storm or situation is headed our way? Is it really worth making a dollar versus potentially causing a delay or possible cancellation, which sure, would cause headaches for the staff, promoters, venues and others, but is that really worse than the DEATH of concertgoers on your conscience? I guess this issue really gets my blood boiling because I understand that while being acts of nature in most or all of the cases, I still feel more can be done in prevention and preparation.

READ ON for more Postcards From Page Side…

Zomby does a great job in taking care of the music department, as Dedication kicks off with definite club music vibe slowed down to mid-tempo grooves. The music should rightfully be several times faster than it actually is, and it takes some settling into; it’s an odd feeling. But like they say (‘they’ being non-existent entities I just made up for the sake of convenience): Odd is always interesting, if nothing else.

ALate Late Party: 1965–1967 is a compilation featuring R&B saxophonist Charles “Packy” Axton, a Memphis musician who prior to the time of these recordings was a member of the Mar-Keys. By itself, his fiery playing on the opening track, “Holiday Cheer,” can have the same salutary effect on you as it did on me—but it doesn’t hurt that the rhythm section smokes, which tells you something important about Late Late Party.

This August 30th, Anti- Records is thrilled to be releasing a powerful album by the acclaimed band TINARIWEN entitled Tassili. For this enthralling new work, the renowned “Touareg” band has returned to the essence of their soulful and hypnotic sound. Recorded in a protected region of the South-Eastern Algerian desert, TINARIWEN were joined by Tunde […]

By the time Alison Krauss and Union Station waved farewell to the capacity crowd at Cary, North Carolina’s Booth Amphitheatre, they had unfurled a career-spanning set that included 30 songs.  That’s been the standard during their lengthy Paper Airplane tour, and the tour’s moniker has proven applicable only because of the recently released album of the same name

To celebrate the impending launch of their fall US trek, San Francisco duo The Dodos are giving fans a free live album download and the chance to win tickets to every date on their upcoming tour. The album was recorded in May at Melkweg in Amsterdam. The performance is over an hour’s worth of Meric […]

Sunday was the final day for Outside Lands 2011, with arguably the most stacked lineup of the weekend. Whereas many chose to show up around 2 PM on Friday and Saturday, a huge number came to catch local favorite The Fresh & Onlys start right at noontime. While it would have been nice to see […]

Following on her multi-million selling, multi-award winning, global smash of a debut album Lungs, Florence + The Machine returns with new music and confirms the release date of her forthcoming second album. The as-yet-untitled album was produced in full by Paul Epworth, in order to retain one complete sound. It all came together over five […]

Social Distortion have announced a series of performances throughout North America in support of their celebrated album Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes. The band will be playing several festivals, a triumphant hometown show with North Carolina honky-tonk rockers The Avett Brothers, and have been invited to open a series of nights for popular rockers Foo […]

Ater making limited appearances during the past few years, the String Cheese Incident comes through with a real road trip as it announces dates in the northeast and southern states. SCI is describing the upcoming outing, tagged “Roots Run Deep,” as the band’s first multi-city run in four years. During the past four years the […]

After a few turbulent years, Perpetual Groove has been hitting their stride in 2011. Brock Butler has been singing with passion and emotion in his voice that went missing for a while and the band has debuted a number of fantastic new songs at Amberland which are keeping setlists fresh. PGroove fans are hoping this […]

If you are like many people, your digital music library continues to grow exponentially. While physical CD sales still eclipse digital downloads, that will not be the case for long. Likewise, the proliferation of music streaming sites like Pandora, Spotify, MOG & Rdio make the ability to move away from physical CD’s even easier.  The problem now for many music lovers is how to enjoy all the music trapped on your hard drive & streaming through the web. Sure, you can listen through headphones, desktop speakers, transfer to a portable music player or listen through your laptop speakers. While all of these are acceptable for background tunes while surfing the web or casual listening, what if you want to fill your house with gut-thumping bass, speaker rattling, wake-the-neighbors-up cranking volume that only your stereo system can give you? Sonos has the answer and they’ll help you in your quest of  “streaming all the music on earth”.

So what is Sonos? How will it help you liberate all your music from your computer? Will it break your bank? Do you need to be a genius to set it up? What’s with this new Play:3 unit that’s being advertised? These are all the questions we’ll answer this week in Technology Tuesday as we explore and evaluate Sonos. Additionally, we’ll answer another great question: HOW CAN YOU GET A SONOS PLAY:3 FOR FREE?

READ ON for a complete guide to Sonos…

We keep our eyes peeled for new tour dates announcements each week and compile them on Tuesdays for this handy column… While still remaining active over the last few years, via festival appearances and curated multi-day runs, String Cheese Incident haven’t done any sustained touring since announcing a break from the road in 2007. Well, […]

The water encapsulates so much of all that is life and all that dominates our planet and all that swallows up our existence and makes it pure and deep and real that one can easily forget that the sea is a very lonely place for a reason. Being at the top can have its misgivings as only those who have occupied its desolate throne can attest.

And the water runs through all, encapsulates everything that we are, and hope to be, runs around in circles, bends upwards, twists downwards, explores ‘neath the shallow waves until it stops somewhere for a brief moment before daylight, sunlight, washed-out light beckons from upwards (or is it down?), and life races forth, to replace the bends in the darkness, cradling one’s amnesiac head, searching for the limbs of some weird aura thief. Honey spills from the tree, onto a racing body of water, and it disappears like all life.

Up above on the surface, one dwells in the sense of self-importance, inner ambition, outer rage, in betwixt some sort of answer hiding in many questions. Meanwhile, in the deep blue sea, nothing seems to matter quite like that—as the universe expands outwards, inevitably to disappear, or, quite contrarily, to contract back into the Big Crunch, seeking nothing, pulling all that it once was into a singular focal point—OK Computer wedded with In Rainbows washes ashore to herald a twin-side masterpiece as time marches on—life serves no purpose whatsoever other than to see what can endure…and what cannot.

In Luchino Visconti’s La Terra Trema, a fisherman and his family, are washed ashore by reality, and within its 165 minutes of melancholic sorrow and remorse is the dawning specter of doom. But one would be hard-pressed to see the film as JUST that. And, considering that we are about to hit the end of a season in which every little hidden piece of the human soul has been dissected and tossed out like some giant whale carcass, one can see the light in the darkness, the glimmer of faith in something; indeed, some hope.

READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick – La Terra Trema…

2011 has already been filled with new music from some of our favorite artists and that trend will continue later this year with the release of Wilco’s The Whole Love on Sept. 27 and Tom Waits’ Bad As Me on Oct. 25. Today, we’ve come across samples of each album. We’ll start with Wilco’s Jeff […]