Saturday, July 12, 2008

Preview: New Phish Walnut Creek DVD Videos

In an effort to get all of us to go buy the new Phish Walnut Creek DVD, Phish just released four clips from the upcoming release. Enjoy!

Taste



Mike's Song



Weekapaug Groove



Bouncing Around the Room

Friday, July 11, 2008

Captured Disco Biscuits Rothbury Webcast

For those of you that missed it, you can find a copy of the Disco Biscuits' Rothbury webcast here. If you didn't read my review, let's just say this show is hot.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Rothbury 2008 (or These Rothburys Taste Like Rothburys): Saturday

I awoke rested and opened the smoothie booth bright and early on Saturday morning. Our first customer of the day put a dose in the tip jar. Our second customer of the day looked a little messed up, so I jokingly asked him if he wanted some molly in his smoothie. He replied that he just took his medicine and then stuck out his tongue, which had no less than 10 doses on it! I also met my first reader, Chris, who stopped by and got a smoothie (extra molly on the house of course).

For some reason I swear I kept seeing the Disco Biscuits walking around the festival all weekend. Pretty much every generic looking Jewish person could pass as Brownstein.


Add a jew-fro and you’ve got the Barber.


And Magner, well he just looks like any white person that would fit in a Dockers commercial.


We got out of the booth in time to catch the Emmit-Nershi Band, which was really great. Drew Emmit (of Leftover Salmon) and Billy Nershi (of String Cheese) basically went back and forth the whole show trading licks. The show also read like a highlights list from any Cheese show: "Good Times Around the Bend" "Restless Wind" and of course, "Texas". This was just a really fun and upbeat set, even when it sounded a little sloppy. The band also announced that they would be playing a secret show in the woods later that night, but unfortunately they didn't say when, so we were never able to find them.


Texas:





We served some smoothies to one of the artists and the manager of a group called "Gandalf & the Hobbits" who simply described their sound as "Hobbit Rock." I eventually traded them a smoothie for a CD, but the CD seems to have misplaced itself at the moment. We caught a little Derek Trucks, which was alright, but I just couldn't seem to get that into it for some reason. I guess my expectations were just too high for someone who has been touring with the Allmans since he was 12 or something like that. Considering that I hadn't seen any real shredding since the Disco Biscuits, I was definitely in the mood for some, and the whole soul stew thing just seemed to me like a lot of horns and not a lot of shredding...

We worked the booth during Dave Matthews and waited for Sound Tribe, which ended up being more than worth the wait. I've only seen STS9 a few times so I don't have much for comparison, but this was a great show. One of the great things about this band is that they take all sorts of other styles of music and fuse it into electronic dance music. In the 4 or so hours they occupied the stage, we heard elements of rock, funk, jazz, classical, and pretty much everything else (except for Bluegrass). Take "Breathe In." This was the song I enjoyed the most not because it had the best beat or the best guitar solo or the coolest effects, but simply because it evolves into such a melodious, pretty piano song for the last couple of minutes.

STS Roth

Unfortunately, I forgot to charge my camera before this show and so I don't have any pics or videos. My final thought on this show that this was such a good show that I went out and paid for the download rather than waiting for it to rear its ugly head on the net.

As I finally went to bed after STS9 I was excited. Excited that we had made some money slinging smoothies. Excited that I would be seeing at least 1/2 of Phish the next day. And of course, excited that there was only one day left...

robert borsody

this is my dad and this is the website i set up for him robert borsody

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Rothbury 2008 (or These Rothburys Taste Like Rothburys): Friday

I woke up Friday morning around 9:00 a.m. to find out that one of my business partners, let's call him Einstein, had not yet sold a single smoothie despite having been open for two hours. Apparently, the ice truck that he went to in the morning didn't have any ice and so rather than going to one of the other 10 ice trucks or the general store or getting in the car and driving .2 miles to the Rothbury Gas Station, Einstein thought that it would be better if he just turned away all of the customers until the magic ice ferry suddenly appeared.

We let our old friend Jumbie, who makes all sorts of trippy show posters, sell some of his art under the table at the booth. Not only did we make a couple of extra bucks on the posters, but we got a ton of people to stop by, look at our menu, and order stuff just because the art caught their eye. It also helped that whatever combination of drugs the guy was on made him a great salesman. Unfortunately, that same combination later inspired him to give away the vast majority of his posters for free at one of the late night shows. Hopefully he gets his shit together and puts up a website one of these days, because these posters of his really are spectacular.


The booth was pretty busy all morning and I basically worked until Tea Leaf Green. I was excited to see this band after enjoying the hell out of them at Summer Camp, and was even more psyched when I saw that Reed Mathis was on the bass, because he definitely brings this group to a whole other level. Unfortunately for some reason it was a pretty weak set overall. There were some moments, but it just seemed like a really slow, uninspired performance. In general it seemed that there was too much soft piano and not enough guitar. Maybe my expectations were so high that they were bound to disappoint, maybe they were just tired. Either way, one lackluster performance has not reduced my opinion of this band, especially if Reed Mathis sticks around. His bass playing was definitely the highlight of the set for me.

We caught Yonder Mountain with Fishman next and this was an absolutely perfect daytime show. Everyone was dancing, the hippies were twirling, and the hula-hoopers were hooping. Although I wanted Fishman to be center-stage whaling out some sort of Moby Dick action, I realized that this was Yonder with Fishman and not Fishman with Yonder. Although YMSB's music doesn't exactly highlight Fishman's strengths as a drummer (it seems like most of their music has very simple, basic rhythms), that's not to say that he didn't add anything to the mix. You could tell how excited these guys were to have Jon Fucking Fishman playing with them, and it definitely translated to a great, high-energy set, if only to impress the drummer. I'm not familiar enough with YMSB's catalog to really give a song-by-song breakdown, but "Two Hits and the Joint Turned Brown" was definitely the highlight of the set for me.


Two Hits and the Joint Turned Brown:





Unfortunately, between all of the work, walking back and forth, and lack of sleep, I was too exhausted to make much music on Friday night. We sat around listened to Widespread Panic from the booth and watched the fireworks before packing it in early. I'd have to say that one of the biggest disappointments for me this weekend, surprisingly enough, was missing Widespread Panic. Not because I'm a huge WSP fan or anything, but because Ann Marie Calhoun (of fiddle "Stash" and "Ripple" fame) sat in for a decent chunk of the show. Although I was disappointed, I knew that sleep Friday night would mean energy for Sound Tribe on Saturday night, which was more important to me anyway. Besides, I was scheduled to open the booth at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday, so the sleep was totally necessary.

Ear Candy: Mike Gordon @ Rothbury


This was a really fun show even before Trey & Fishman sat in. They were like icing on the cake. You can download it from mediafire here.

Rothbury 2008 (or These Rothburys Taste Like Rothburys): Disco Biscuits Late Night


I've been trying to write a review of the Disco Biscuits' late night show from Rothbury for a few hours now and I just can't seem to do it. There are only so many times you can use descriptive words like "amazing" "awesome" "face-melting" "jaw-dropping" and "awe-inspiring" in one review, and these are the only words that I can think of to describe this show.

In all seriousness, I did not write a single thing down during the show, did not make a mental note of anything they could have done better; I didn't even dance during this show. I literally stood there in complete awe asking myself "who do they think they are?" for 3+ hours.

I have nothing more to say other than this: the Disco Biscuits fucking killed it at Rothbury.

07/03/08 Rothbury Music Festival, Rothbury, MI
Set I: World Is Spinning, I-Man> Digital Buddha> Run Like Hell1> Digital Buddha1, Home Again, Shelby Rose> The City> Orch Theme> Shelby Rose, Wizards in Winter
Encore: Story Of The World, Rockafella> Run Like Hell
1 with Murph (STS9)


In the meantime I've got a bunch of videos:

Orch Theme (1)


Orch Theme (2)


Run Like Hell


The City


Digital Buddha


If anyone captured the Iclips broadcast of this show, please e-mail me.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Trey Anastasio & Mike Gordon "Backwards Down the Number Line" Video

Rothbury 2008 (or These Rothburys Taste Like Rothburys): Thursday

We awoke Thursday morning to nearly-perfect festival weather. Although the gate wasn't supposed to open until 8:00 a.m., they started letting people in around 4:00 a.m. and so by the time I woke up there were already a couple thousand folks milling around and ordering smoothies. Overall business was pretty decent, and we were all ready for the festival to get going. We had the Michael Jackson blasting from the booth, and we were starting to look like a legitimate vending operation.


I was fortunate enough to spot the Cheesecake Lady a.k.a. the Twirling Hippy walking past us. If you've never met her, I highly suggest that you seek her out and taste her wonderful delicious cheesecakes. Between the 10 or so of us working the booth, we easily bought over $100 worth throughout the weekend. I wanted to eat them all, but they were so strong that any more than one and I would have probably started hallucinating. My favorite was definitely the chocolate raspberry.

Our booth was right in the middle of a row of 25 food vendors in the campground, next to the main entrance from the campground to the stages. Since the music didn't start until the evening we all just kind of hung out around the booth for most of the day. To our left was Hotbox concessions out of Madison, Wisconsin. We were able to trade smoothies with them all weekend for grilled cheese and quesadillas, which was awesome considering the fact that the fat person inside of me always comes out and eats 100 grilled cheeses and 50 gyros at every festival.

At about 4:00 p.m. when it was hot and sunny some kid who couldn't have been older than 17 passed out right in front of us while ordering a smoothie. We gave him a chair and some water, and after a few minutes he was good. He swore he passed out due to a lack of water and not an excess of drugs. Damn kids.

We also met this one guy who traded with us who somehow managed to combine elements of Hinduism, Islam, the Mayan Calendar, telepathy, rainbows, and the Helping Phriendly Book into one seemingly coherent philosophy. Then he claimed not to do hallucinogenic drugs and lost all credibility whatsoever.

We caught a little Zappa Plays Zappa and it was pretty good but not amazing. I only got to catch a couple of minutes of the show before running back to the booth to close it up before Lotus and the Disco Biscuits. Things took a little longer than I had hoped and as a result we were only able to catch a little bit of Lotus. From what I saw it was a great show: Bellweather > Flower Sermon > Greet the Mind and the place was packed. They definitely should have had Lotus on a bigger stage with the size of the crowd they attracted. Lotus has definitely been one of my new favorite bands for a few months now and it pretty much sucked that they were scheduled to be playing at the same time as the Disco Biscuits. Here's some of what we caught:



...and we were off to catch the Biscuits! The Disco Biscuits' Thursday night set will likely require an entire post of its own but I'll give the short version now: one of the greatest shows I've ever seen.

Stay tuned!

Ear Candy: Trey Anastasio with Mike Gordon "Backwards Down the Number Line" & "Alaska"

If you can't wait for the whole thing to download you can listen to these two new songs that were written by Trey and Tom Marshall and performed for the first time with Mike Gordon this last weekend at Rothbury. (Remember, if you don't have an Imeem account you need to get one if you want to hear more than a 30 second clip.)

15 Backwards Down the Number Line - Trey Anastasio

16 Alaska - Trey Anastasio

Now all they need is a drummer and a keyboardist!

Ear Candy: Trey Anastasio Rothbury Download (MP3)

Here you go. It was an amazing set. I have a lot more to say about this one. I don't know the quality of the recording because I am downloading it myself as we speak. Enjoy!

Trey Rothbury Mediafire

Terrapin Hill Harvest Festival: September 19-21, Harrodsburg, Kentucky

This made my day:

After taking 2007 off the folks at Terrapin Hill have announced the 2008 Terrapin Hill Harvest Festival. The initial lineup includes Keller Williams & the WMD'S, Tea Leaf Green, Mike Ferris, Benevento-Russo Duo, and Cornmeal, with more to be announced.

Rothbury 2008 (or These Rothburys Taste Like Rothburys): Tuesday & Wednesday

Although the Rothbury festival did not begin until Thursday for most, it started on Tuesday for me. For those of you who don't know this, this Summer I am part of the smoothie-slinging brain-trust known as Hippie Dips, and we had ourselves a booth at the festival. For some laughs, check out our misadventures at this year's Summer Camp Festival (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4).

Our trip to Rothbury, Michigan started where it usually does: good old Lexington, Kentucky. After loading up the cargo van, picking someone up in Louisville, and backing the van into a tree, we were on our way. 8 hours later we had finally arrived. We did not rent anything from the retards at Oasis Tents in Paris, Kentucky this time so instead of 6 hours it only took 1 hour to set up the tent. Wednesday morning rolled around and we passed the health inspection without any problems. Everything was going smooth; too smooth actually.

Then it came. The skies turned pitch black at 2:00 P.M. and a monstrous thunderstorm with tornado-force winds came down on us. Hard. So hard that it cracked our tent in half, nearly flooded the whole site, and even knocked over a row of porta-potty's in the campground.

Our Tent: Totally Destroyed

Although we were hit hard, other booths got it worse. The French bread pizza folks forgot to tie their tent down before the storm which meant their tent got blown up into the trees. Strawberry Fields (our biggest competition) also had all of their stuff destroyed, and I was kind of hoping that they would just call it quits and go home.

The Tent Would Never Make it Back Down

A side note for those of you who are interested: if you want to sneak into a festival without paying just show up on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. None of the security will be there yet, no one is checking credentials, and the only people out there are food and craft vendors who don't know you, don't know that you're not another vendor, and wouldn't tell anyone even if they did. This might not be true for every festival, but it is something that seems painfully obvious that I had never thought of before doing this vending thing. With festival tickets ranging from $150-$300, this might not be the worst idea in the world. Once inside the grounds, there isn't anything between you and the music that a little duct tape and scissors could not fix.

Back to Rothbury. After the storm we had to buy a new tent and wait for a few hours before setting back up. We hung out in the nearly empty campgrounds, cleaned up all of the mud that had caked on all of our shit, and prayed that the weather would clear up. The music hadn't even started yet and I was exhausted from our battle with mother nature.