Mike Gordon show review: 12/11/11, Albany NY

Mike tunes up at the Egg

Isn’t it great when things turn out even more awesome than you ever expected? This is exactly what happened at the Egg in Albany on Sunday night, as Mike Gordon (best known as being the bass player for Phish) and his band blew the doors off the place with three hours of incredibly diverse music, long, intense jamming, and just plain fun. The theater was about 75% full of Phish heads (it might have been more had the show been on a Friday or Saturday), and the small venue provided an intimate setting for the final show of the band’s brief fall tour.

Gordon and guitarist Scott Murawski, Brooklyn drummer Todd Isler, keyboard player Tom Cleary, and percussionist Craig Myers started things off with Horizon Line, which turned into a long jam segment that featured a lot of tempo changes, dueling solos between Murawski and Cleary, and most unexpectedly, moments of dark, progressive sounds that blew me away. From what I’ve heard of Gordon’s solo work, it’s fairly mellow with a slant toward country/bluegrass, jazz and rock. This show explored vast soundscapes of varying textures and themes – it was far more than I ever expected. The Phish song Only a Dream followed, and the band once again jammed out the middle section, taking the song to new heights and arrangements that made the studio version of the song seem even more insignificant. I’m Deranged, The Way it Goes, Just a Rose, Voices, and River Niger kept the first set rolling, with most of the songs continuing the jamming and overall magic; some of the jams did lose momentum and probably went on a little longer than necessary, but that was far from the norm. The band then did a great version of Marvin Gaye’s Baby Don’t You Do It, keeping the soul of the original in tact but giving it a more intense, country rock feel, with Cleary passionately hammering out the vocals. Then they segued back into Horizon Line to bookend the set, which clocked in at about 90 minutes.

Scott Murawski and Tom Isler

After a brief intermission, the crowd roared back to life with the opening notes of Funky Bitch, a Son Seals song that Phish has played hundreds of times. Gordon’s band’s version was fairly close to Phish’s version, but different just enough that it didn’t feel like we were watching a Phish cover band. The Phishiness continued with Gordon’s tune Sugar Shack (from Phish’s Joy album), with Murawski easily handling the guitar melodies and jamming it out a bit. Then they played a cover that I never could have predicted (although if I knew Mike Gordon’s solo history better I might not have been as surprised) – Hand in My Pocket by Alanis Morissette. I’ve never been a big fan of Alanis, but I’ve never really disliked her either, and Hand in My Pocket is actually one of her songs that I do enjoy. The band rocked the hell out of it, with Murawski belting out the vocals with great passion and intensity. Dig Further Down, Crumblin’ Bones, Skin It Back, and Hap Nappy continued the terrific set, with all band members firing on all cylinders as the jams kept going. Gordon announced that the final song was dedicated to a longtime friend in the audience, a song they played together in high school – the Who’s Don’t Get Fooled Again. It was a good version, a fun way to end the set.

The Dude of Life!!!

For die-hard Phish fans, the encore was by far the highlight of the night. An additional microphone was brought to the stage, leading everyone to assume a guest vocalist would be joining the band. It turned out to be none other than Steve Pollack, a.k.a the Dude of Life. Pollack has been collaborating with Phish from the very beginning, and on Sunday he graced us with his presence for a song he wrote with Phish, Suzy Greenberg – the crowd was bouncing off the ceiling.

The whole show was a wonderful surprise for me. I expected a more laid back, moody and offbeat show, much like Gordon’s solo albums. But the jams went to crazy places I never imagined, and Murawski, who many know from the band Max Creek, is in fact a guitar god. He would go from dark riffs to lightning-fast solos with the utmost precision and clarity; his grooves were so impressive and crucial to the overall sound of the band. He was a genuine joy to hear – I’ll have to check out Max Creek now. I’m looking forward to seeing Phish in the near future, but when Gordon brings his act to town again, you can bet I’ll be there too.

Mike Gordon at the Egg gets 4.5 out of 5 stars!

Last.fm

In the digital age we live in music has excelled, not beyond anything we thought it might become, but in how it’s delivered to us. The past 20 years saw the decline of the cassette tape, compact disc, and physical formatting is now all but dead.

So as physical media phases out we turn to more convenient ways of obtaining music (not always done legally now is it?) from services such as Morpheus, Kazaa, Limewire, and most famously: Napster.

So we learned that the RIAA severely dislikes not making money on album sales… so we downloaded even more, torrenting sites becoming more and more popular, The Pirate Bay, for example.

Now I don’t know about you, but in my education I’ve found out that artists usually sign a contract and make most of their money up front. A label will give you, say, $2 million, to buy equipment, record, produce, create music videos, and finish an album. How much of that gets spent on production is usually at the band and manager’s discretion. They are then, most of the time, offered some ridiculously low royalty percentage that means even less after you divide it up between band members and management.

So artists generally don’t make that much off of album sales, but usually off of touring. Ever notice that’s why Bruce Springsteen doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about putting out new albums but will sell out stadiums on a yearly basis? Or that U2′s music has been in steep decline since the late 80s but still manage to have gigantic concerts where they rake in obscene amounts of fans a.k.a. money? (And they don’t even pay taxes to the Irish government!)

Before my tenure at Hi-Fi started I was dealt several cease and desist letters for uploading music just to my former blog’s domain just for personal use. Talk about touchy by the record companies!

So where’m I going with all of this? Well, today’s digital music playground is found through music streaming services such as Spotify, Grooveshark, iTunes, SHOUTcast, Pandora and the least famous… Napster.

I’ve tried using all of those, and iTunes, while on my home computer is fine, because I have my library there too, is not viable on the road. With the rest of these you can build and tag artists/genres you like, but c’mon, that’s a huge hassle for us to list all the bands we like and may have an itch to hear.

Last.fm takes care of that. They have a nifty piece of scrobbling software that will record what songs/artists you play the most, it even makes charts! But by far the best thing is, is that you can take your library with you wherever you go. For free. They offer your library streamed to you, they also offer your library with suggestions for similar artists. Which keeps the likes of Maroon 5 the hell out of my easy listening playlist and doesn’t turn me into a fit of rage.

So, if you’re going places, constantly on the move and let’s say maybe you’re trying to preserve some hard drive space, Last.fm is the way to go, take your own music with you and still gives you a taste of similar artists or you can just play a channel as you would on those other streaming sites.

It gives you everything… and what’s yours.

Phish – live bait vol. 6!

Phish will be playing a 3-day run in Colorado during Labor Day weekend, and the generous folks at livephish.com have decided to celebrate by releasing Live Bait Vol. 6, a collection of fantastic Phish performances in Colorado over the last 20 years or so. Click here to get the FREE download – almost 3 hours of music. Enjoy!

 

 

 

The Grateful Dead Movie Event!

The Dead have risen and they’re invading movie theaters! On Wednesday, April 20^th, theaters across the country will screen the film “The Grateful Dead.”  Released in 1977, the film mostly contains footage from the Grateful Dead concert at San Francisco’s Winterland Theater in 1974. There is an extensive animated portion that opens the film, and throughout the movie is footage of fans inside and outside the theater (including a disturbing segment where we get a glimpse of “nitrous alley,” where fans are seen taking hits from nitrous oxide tanks), but the focus of the film is the concert performance.  If you’re not a fan of the music, this film won’t do much for you other than serve as an encapsulation of the Grateful Dead’s peak in popularity (a peak which they rode for a long time).  But for Deadheads, or even just casual fans, the music sounds great and it’s a fun show. Plus as you can see from the poster, there will be a previously unseen interview with Jerry Garcia, which could be entertaining.  Locally it will be screening at the Crossgates Mall at 7:30PM on, as I said, April 20^th (for obvious reasons).  Hope to see you there!

A Phishy New Year to You

Phish is legendary for their New Year’s shows, and this year’s may have topped them all. Here’s what went down at Madison Square Garden leading up to 12:00AM, and the celebration thereafter. Enjoy.

Nugs.net: Free music for the masses

I wanted to inform the HiFi reading audience of a gem of a website that offers legitimate free downloads and high quality streaming audio of some of the best bands on the planet.

Nugs.net is also (I think) closely releated to the people at LivePhish.com, however, the variety of music that is offered on Nugs.net is just unbelievable.  The array of artists featured is quite extensive, although most of the music would fall under a similiar genre being that of “Jam Band” or “free form improvisational” with bands like Phish, Widespread Panic, Bruce Hornsby, Ratdog, Robert Randolph and The Family Band, Jack Johnson, MMW, and many others featured.

You can download quite a large array of free shows from these artists, but if you would rather simply stream the show it is very easy (I use Windows Media Player) and the quality is fantastic so far from what I have listened to at this time.  As I type this blog entry I’m listening to a Yonder Mountain String Band show from a 2000 show at The Mystic Theater in Petaluma, CA, incredible!

If you visit the site look to the top right and you will see a link for “free stash”, from there you can browse an assortement of artists and shows in their entirety that you can download complete free from being prosecuted, cuz’ it’s totally legit and on the up and up!

If you love good music and either want to add to your collection or discover these artists beyond the studio albums please click here and enjoy!

Let us know here at HiFi Central what you think of this site and our suggestions.

Waiting for Zeppelin, not Columbus

Phish has always bucked convention – improvising set lists, performing vacuum cleaner solos, an a capella redition of Free Bird (including the guitar solo), and what they’ve become known for on Halloween, covering an album in its entirety (they call it their “musical costume”).  In the past they have covered the White Album, Quadrophenia, the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, Dark Side of the Moon (performed two days after Halloween in 1998), and last year’s Halloween album, the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street.  When Phish announced they would be playing a Halloween show in Atlantic City this year, speculation began to flood the interwebs and Phish message boards as to what album they would cover.  The most popular guess was Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti.  This began due to Phish covering the song The Rover from that album earlier this year.  Plus P.G. is a double album, which fits Phish’s formula for album covers.  There were a lot of other albums that people were theorizing would be covered, but Zep’s classic was by far the frontrunner.  On October 30^th, Phish added fuel to the Physical Graffiti fire by playing the Zep classics Whole Lotta Love, Heartbreaker, Ramble On, Thank You, Stairway to Heaven, and Good Times Bad Times during that night’s 2 sets.  But on the 31^st, Phish truly played a trick – and a treat.

Phish decided to cover the album “Waiting for Columbus,” the 1978 live concert release from the band Little Feat.  Most Phish fans know of Little Feat – Phish has covered Time Loves a Hero in the Past, and recently has been covering On Your Way Down (a great song that I saw them do in Albany in 2009).  And Little Feat covered Phish’s Sample in a Jar on the “Sharin’ in the Groove” album, a Phish tribute by many different artists.  But no one could have predicted that Phish would pull this out of their hat on Halloween.

The response from the Phish online community has been mainly positive – most people did not have a clue as to what album Phish was covering, they just knew it was high-energy and awesome.  I’ll admit I wouldn’t have known either, as I am very unfamiliar with Little Feat…but according to Phish, that band has been a tremendous influence on them, and if you listen to the songs, you can hear their influence in Phish’s music. 

I admire Phish for doing what has made them great for so many years – playing what they want to play, not what they think their audience wants to hear.  Had they not covered Remain in Light or Loaded, I probably would have never been exposed to those amazing albums.  Now of course I will go buy Waiting for Columbus, because if it’s good enough for Phish, I know I’m going to love it. 

There were of course some negative-nellies on the message boards, complaining that Phish played an album nobody had heard of, etc.  But those idiots are in the minority – any music fan should #1 be grateful they were even at a Phish Halloween show, and #2 they shouldn’t resist Phish’s attempt to broaden their musical horizons.  Embrace what you have been exposed to – drink it in and be happy.  Because that’s what Phish has always been about.

Van Halen album and tour for 2011…yeah, right.

Sorry if I seem so pessimistic about this recent announcement, but I feel that we fans have heard this stuff about Van Halen re-uniting in the past several times over…and with great fanfare, has come great dissapointment. Honestly, many of us really don’t care anymore if they tour or make another album.  If they do it will be nothing more than a pleasant surprise at best.

Supposedly the band is back in the studio laying tracks down for their first album with Roth since 1984 (1983); but past history has shown that Eddie Van Halen and his brother Alex can take about 5 minutes with Roth in the same room, then the bottles begin to fly!  I would imagine that Diamond Dave has become even more annoying in his older age; he was irritating in his 30′s and 40′s, can you imagine his 50′s?  The most recent news I heard about David Lee Roth is that he was changing careers and becoming an EMT in New York City while also pursuing a musical career in bluegrass…so for him to get back with Van Halen is quite suprising to say the least.  Strummin’ with the Devil: A Bluegrass Tribute to Van Halen  (2006) and wasn’t a band album; I happen to like these alternative genre cover/tribute albums and this one is not band, it actually feature’s Diamond Dave on a track or two, but Dave’s pipes are rusty and this mellow style is more fitting today.  Since we are on the topic of cover/tribute instrumental albumsI must admit that the Iron Maiden Piano Tribute album is by far my favorite and I suggest you check it out if you get a chance; the version of ”Aces High” is pretty cool.

Is it true that founding member Michael Anthony was kicked out and  replaced with Wolfgang Van Halen (Eddie’s son) as the band’s bass player? Man, so now Roth is really outnumbered if things go sour in the studio, eh?  At least Anthony wasn’t related and provided Dave some type of neutral ear if things weren’t working out with the other two.

Roth’s vocals are not the same that he had back in the early 80′s, so I’m very skeptical if Van Halen was actually to release an album if it would be worth listening to, let alone buying.  I personally would give it a listen but I would not expect much in the way of fireworks like their early work.  It would be best, in my humble opinion, for Van Halen to let sleeping dogs lie and go out (literally) on a good note.  Albums like Van Halen I, II, and Fair Warning are the highlights of when the band was at their peak; I can’t imagine an album 30 years later will be anything  good, we’ll see I guess.  Hell, Ozzy is still churning out albums and that guy sounds the same after all these years, so…

Just thought you might like to know the gossip about a reunion of the band; as much as I would like to see them tour part of me is saying save my money and my attention elsewhere.

The Essential Bill Monroe 2-Disc Set (1945-1949)

Recently on a canoe / camping trip to The Adirondacks in Upstate New York my father asked me for some music that would inspire him during the drive though the Eastern High Peaks Region.  Instantly I thought of Bill Monroe, if you are not familiar with this bluegrass icon you should be, this is vintage bluegrass at its best.

I picked up this box set a few years ago on a lark since I wanted to add some dimension and variety to my music collection.  I had been familiar on a superficial level with Bill Munroe and Earl Scruggs (a protege of Monroe) and liked what  I had heard, normally the only time I listened was on my local college radio station (WRPI). 

I had picked up the two-disc set of Allison Krauss and Union Station Live and was really intrigued by bluegrass and modern country. If you are not famliar with Krauss’ live album it is one of the best live albums I’ve heard, incredible.  I’ve never been one to feel compelled to pick up a Tanya Tucker, Merle Haggard, or Willie Nelson album; that type of Country/Western music never really has appealed to me.  However, vintage Johnny Cash and Hank Williams Sr. always has, so I figured that why not Bill Monroe .  Luckily my bet paid off and this 2-disc set is worth every penny as an introduction to the roots of bluegrass.

Although Monroe had many hits over his 40+ year career, one of the highlights of his music was his hit “Blue Moon of Kentucky“; this song is featured on this collection; one can plainly see why this song was so appealing, but there are 39 other songs as equally as impressive.  The biggest gripe however about this box set is that a majority of the songs are not the actual studio hits, many are alternate versions or unreleased studio tracks of hits.  There is a companion cd that Columbia released “Bill Monroe: 16 Gems”, this is more of a “best of” album than anything else, good yes, but for a purist I feel that the box set is far more a better investment.

The overall sound quality is good but not incredible, most of the tracks were recorded in the early to mid-1940′s so you can understand why it may sound “boxy” at times.  You can get a used box set for about $12.00 on Amazon.  Do yourself a favor if you are a bluegrass fan, or looking for an inspirational album to set the mood as you head on your epic camping trip.

The Essential Bill Monroe (1945-1949) 2-disc set gets 4.0 out of 5.