Care To Share Your Time With Me

Whether or not you're willing to admit it, you went through a Dave Matthews Band phase. Maybe it lasted a week, a few months, or a decade. Maybe you saw them play at a bar in Charlottesville when they were nothing more than hometown heroes. Maybe you bought Under The Table and Dreaming because you heard "What Would You Say" on the radio. Maybe you caught your first DMB show in this millenium after the band scrapped the Lillywhite Sessions in favor of releasing Everday in 2001.

I'm willing to admit that I played Under The Table and Dreaming endlessly after my friend bought the tape in 1994 and introduced me to them. I saw my first show in December of 1995. For a short time, the number of Phish shows and DMB shows I'd attended sat even. From there, my live music intake strongly favored Jimmy going off to camp rather than Jimi Thing, but I didn't really abandon Dave and Co. until attending a couple of his shows about five years ago and feeling like I had stumbled uninvited into an after party of a high school prom. It was then that I decided I had no choice but to leave them behind.

Searching for Warren Haynes videos today on YouTube, I stumbled upon a few of Dave Matthews performing solo in front of a small audience in 1994. Watching it reminds me so much of the band I fell in love with for a period of time a decade ago. They feature a musician and singer who would soon find himself at the helm of a band that would go on to be considered one of the most important groups, culturally, of the 90's and 00's. He just didn't know it yet.

I am certain that many years from now, I will listen back to these early songs from the Dave Matthews Band, without the bias of seeing them as merely a band for high school kids that I used to listen to. And they will bring back some great memories.

Enjoy these two videos of both 'Best Of What's Around' and 'Lie In Our Graves'.

Fare You Well...

On Tuesday, over $1.1 million in Grateful Dead memorabilia was auctioned off at Bonhams & Butterfield auction house in San Francisco.

Some of the more notable items included: Jerry's 1975 Travis Bean guitar ($312,000), Jerry's flight case w/ guitar strings and picks ($16,800), one of Jerry's leather guitar straps (c. 1973) ($20,400), plus various photos, artwork, and other musical gear.

The items were owned by the late GD, Inc. President and former truck driver, Lawrence "Ram Rod" Shurtliff.

Oh, if I were a rich man...

Jerry shown here w/ the Travis Bean guitar

Jackie Greene: So Hard To Find My Way

I've been watching this clip of Bay Area singer/songwriter Jackie Greene performing on the Conan O'Brien show for months now. After seeing this then twenty-four year old perform on the Sonic Stage at last year's Bonnaroo, I've been incredibly impressed with both his playing and songwriting abilities. This is one kid who is wise beyong his years. Backed by what appears to be a Max Weinberg-less "Max Weinberg 7", Jackie and his band put on one of the most complete performances I have ever seen in the 'music slot' on one of these talk shows. Bolstered by an excellent original song, a nailed vocal, and the previously mentioned backing band, this song deserves repeated playing. You will not be able to get the jumping, upbeat, horn-drenched chorus out of your head...in a good way. I will even venture out to say that it could have/should have been a hit by The Band. I dare you to refute me.

Check it out for yourself. And please, please, please check out more of Jackie Greene.

Trading Venues for Condos

From today's AM New York - City Clubs Falling Silent

Buyers, lured by the mystique of the Lower East Side's arts and music scene, pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to live at the center of it. A few years later that same edgy nightclub goes out of business, having received many noise complaints from the new condo owners, and pinched by skyrocketing rents driven up by those same well-heeled neighbors.

As a real estate professional by day and concert goer by night, I'm both fascinated and sick to my stomach about the loss of one music venue after another due to rising rents in further gentrifying areas of Manhattan. I can't help but think that Manhattan is turning into a caricature of itself, no different than the Greenwich Village-style food court at New York, New York hotel and casino in Vegas. Cleaning up Times Square I'm all for...but turning it into an urban Disney utopia, not so much.

Sure CBGB's hadn't had many meaningful acts prior to its victory lap. But even still, walking by the awning for the first time when it was still a viable venue stopped me dead in my tracks. So did seeing what was left of the Fillmore East, which is a mosaic-covered light post highlighting the Allman Brothers Band's historic nights at the venue. As of 2007, the former entrance lobby to the Fillmore East is a branch of Emigrant Savings Bank. The rest of the interior has been gutted and rebuilt as an apartment complex.

You have to read Bill Graham's letter to The Village Voice stating his reasons for closing the Fillmores back in 1971. Have things changed for the better, or just gotten much, much worse? (Scroll down a little to find it).

Pulp Muppets

I'm not sure why Muppets and mayhem is so damn enjoyable. But damnit, it is...

Chris Cornell Starts Halloween Early

Something I never thought I would type:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Here is Chris Cornell with Michael's Jackson's Billy Jean:

New York, New York: A Love Letter

Why do people move to New York? Wanting to be a character from Sex and the City? Friends? Seinfeld? Or is it the promise that there must be SOMETHING in that big vast city that will click with you and make things right...that will fulfill everything that is missing from post-college life that isn't happening the way you had hoped. "Hell, its gotta be better than [insert town here]." After all, 100 friends in college quickly become 20 buddies to go out with to reminisce about college. 20 buddies to go out with becomes 8 guys who didn't move away or get married. Which becomes 5 guys, 4 guys...wait, have I talked to anyone besides my boss or doorman this week?

Before the ipod-ification of all music, i.e. the loss of the cohesive album, certain albums become a soundtrack to a point in your life. You almost don't realize how often you listened to it until you look back and say, damn, that was all I listened to, huh? If it was a record, the grooves would have been worn through.

Listening to 'New York, New York' by Ryan Adams almost singlehandedly influenced me to move here. His album 'Gold' was one of the first albums I would have slept with under my pillow that wasn't Phish. Listening to the song now...I'm brought back to visiting one of those 20 buddies post-college that had moved to "the city"before it was even a thought to do it myself.

I miss getting in a cab to give the driver my destination's cross streets without knowing where the hell I was going and hoping he wouldn't take me to The Bronx. I miss walking around being nervous that if I ventured too far away, I wouldn't find my way back (damn south of Houston street grid). I miss thinking the city was too big to navigate. I miss the city having unlimited promise and everything seemed a little risky, a little out of my league, before the monotony and routine of everyday life got the best of me. But I still have this song to bring me back to when the opportunities appeared limitless. And I had the balls to move to New York fucking City.

I'll always love you New York.

Green Day, Working Class Hero

Fellow blogger Perez Hilton has made available Green Day's cover of 'Working Class Hero'. Billy Joe and the boys have done a great job with Lennon's lyrical masterpiece.

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Check it out here

RIP Tom Poston

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Tom Poston, the tall, pasty-faced comic who found fame and fortune playing a clueless everyman on such hit television shows as "Newhart" and "Mork and Mindy," has died. He was 85.

Modern Poet: Frank Turner

"Genius is a term often bandied about these days but Mr. Turner will deserve it if he continues down this road." 4/5 The Sun

"Turner is such a sharp observer that he really ought to write a book." The Times

"(Frank) has come up with a selection of originals...Bittersweet requiems for teen punk dreams and dark folk adventures in the flesh trade." Daily Mirror/Ticket

“It’s hard-hitting. It’s brave. It’s happy, it’s sad, it’s amusing, it’s harrowing. In short, it’s bloody great.” 8/10 Rocksound

This is just a sampling of the praise heaped on ex-punk/current-folkie Frank Turner's first solo EP coming out May 7th in the UK. It features 'The Real Damage' an ironically upbeat folk number with some genius true story lyrics.

Favourite with fans and industry alike, The Real Damage is a funny, real-life tale documenting the perils and pit-falls of those all too familiar wasted weekend with friends; Frank’s astounding lyrical and storytelling talent coming to the fore.