December 2011
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ARTICLE: "New Phish Box Set Brings Back the Bliss"...
Photo: Brantley Gutierrez
The release of the economically titled Phish box set “Hampton/Winston-Salem ‘97” provided a chance to review the release by way of my memory banks of the original shows. Part review, part essay, full-on musing. It’s nice to have an excuse to write about Phish, which doesn’t happen very often nowadays.
“‘Bliss was it in that...
July 2011
2 posts
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ARTICLE: "Unconventional wisdoms" (Steely Dan)
I had the chance to just run with a sort of essay on Steely Dan by way of preparing the populace for their show at Tanglewood on Tuesday evening. Had the chance to quote some of my favorite Dan lyrics; I’m curious to hear what anyone may think of this. Just click on “Comments and Reactions” below.
“Fagen’s lyrics are frequently so dry, so cynical, so dense with...
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ARTICLE: "Playing backup to Charlie Chaplin" (Marc...
I had the chance to write about Marc Ribot’s solo-guitar score for Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid in today’s Boston Globe. He performs it tonight at good ‘ole MASS MoCA.
“I don’t want it to be heard as a concert. I want to disappear, which is what good film scoring does. If the effect is done perfectly, people will think they’re seeing what they’re, in fact, hearing. It’s...
June 2011
17 posts
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PHOTOS: Liam Finn amid the work of Nari Ward at...
Liam Finn playing a “pop-up” gallery show on Sunday afternoon at Solid Sound Festival. He and the crowd are situated amidst Nari Ward’s 2011 piece, Mango Tourists.
Photos by Jeremy D. Goodwin
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PHOTOS: Thurston Moore and Nels Cline at Solid...
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PHOTOS: DJ Spooky in North Adams late-night
Photos by Jeremy D. Goodwin
Photos by Jeremy D. Goodwin
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PHOTOS: Glenn, Nels, Darin and co.
PHOTOS: Sarah Lee Guthris & Johnny Irion @ MASS...
Photos by Jeremy D. Goodwin
Photos by Jeremy D. Goodwin
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PHOTOS: Wilco at Solid Sound, Day 1
Photos by Jeremy D. Goodwin
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PHOTOS: Wilco press conference at MASS MoCA,...
Wilco held its pre-festival press conference in the gallery of work by Katharina Grosse at MASS MoCa in North Adams, Mass. Photos by Jeremy D. Goodwin
Photos by Jeremy D. Goodwin
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Looking ahead to Solid Sound Festival 2011
Photo of Glenn Kotche by Jeremy D. Goodwin, 2010
So, we’re heading toward the end of June and the Solid Sound Festival II is fixin’ to get nasty at MASS MoCA up in North Adams this weekend. Last year, it proved a very mellow weekend of pleasant surprises. This second take boasts two completeish shows by Wilco, plus sets from Thurston Moore and his partially acoustic five-piece,...
more The Trip
And this!
VIDEO: clip from The Trip
I had the chance to see The Trip at Berkshire International Film Festival. It’s a compendium of episodes of a six-part series that aired on BBC2, and not coincidentally has some serious pace issues (it needs to be cut by about a quarter). But when it hits, it hits. In fact, you can perhaps think of in relation to Tristram Shandy: a Cock and Bull Story as Made is to Swingers. The same two...
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"Great Barrington festival transforms a town, a...
I had the chance to write about the Berkshire International Film Festival for this Sunday’s Boston Globe. This means I’ve now written about this festival for four different publications over the course of its six years; it was a challenge to avoiding repeating myself and still keep it fresh, while still introducing the event to the publication’s readers, since the Globe had not...
May 2011
4 posts
6 tags
ARTICLE: "Of Borscht, Flaubert and Hungarian...
I’m pleased to have the cover story in this week’s Metroland, about the Berkshire/Pioneer Valley band Bella’s Bartok. (Metroland, for ausländers, is the alt-weekly for Albany and the New York Capital Region.) I knew I’d seen them in various situations—playing in the parking lot, at a Halloween party, in a friend’s living room—but didn’t realize I...
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ARTICLE: "Two Gents swing" (Two Man Gentlemen...
Caught the Two Man Gentleman Band last Friday at Gypsy Joynt, which just relocated from mini-strip-mall-land to downtown in Great Barrington. This review ran in today’s Berkshire Eagle. BTW, the band responded to the review by tweet and noted that Andy Beane has indeed purchased a house in Great Barrington.
“It’s easy to assume the two are working their way through forgotten...
What it means to be a progressive in America
We were right about abolition. We were right about the Fugitive Slave Act. We were right about women having the right to vote. We were right about direct election of United States Senators. We were right about creating unions, about workplace safety, about child labor, about the eight-hour workday. We were right about creating the weekend. We were right about segregation and we were right about...
April 2011
1 post
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ARTICLE: "Night and Day: Iron and Wine"...
“‘I wouldn’t say I sat down and said ‘I’m going to write a ’70s pop record. You try a couple different arrangements for a song and sometimes what works is a Wurlitzer—and you start playing it and it starts to sound like ‘Daniel.” —Sam Beam
I chatted with a man possessing a much-admired beard for this advance feature in Metroland on Iron and Wine, who play MASS MoCA’s...
March 2011
3 posts
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ARTICLE: "Back to the land" (The Low Anthem)
In the first week of March, 2009, the very interesting then-trio The Low Anthem played a gig at Mission Bar and Tapas, the rather tiny nightspot that makes a welcome habit of booking talent that seems a bit above its head. It was a few months after the self-release of Oh My God Charlie Darwin, a record that would be picked up later that year and become the band’s breakthrough—at...
VIDEO: The Low Anthem at MASS MoCA
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ARTICLE: "Bluegrass at its peak" (The Travelin'...
I ranged a little far in this review of The Travelin’ McCourys’ show at Pittsfield’s Colonial Theatre last Saturday, reflecting on the differing emotional palettes that various streams of American popular music are best suited to employ, and how the McCourys’ performance relates to the expectations of their genre. (I should note, also, the version on my website is a...
February 2011
1 post
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ARTICLE: "Picking the best in music" (Grammys...
Published in today’s Berkshire Eagle.
“Of the more than 100 Grammys awarded last year, only nine were actually presented during the telecast, making room for superstar medleys, cover versions, and pyrotechnics. It was like watching a demented cross between the Super Bowl halftime show and The Last Waltz.”
January 2011
4 posts
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Welcome to the story of the Battle of Egremont
The Indignity Must Perish, engraving by J.C. Armytage from M.A. Wageman’s painting.
On Saturday, January 29th, I live-tweeted my inspirational journey on the historic busride re-tracing the steps of a key episode in the Battle of Egremont, the “Trail of Awkward Silence” upon which Corporal A.E. Puffington led a ramshackle platoon of farmers on that day in 1705. A fairly...
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Busride into hist0ry! →
This morning I’ve been live-tweeting historic busride of the ‘Trail of Awkward Silence,’ a key episode in 1705’s Battle of Egremont. Check it out, I’m still at it. #BattleofEgremont
ARTICLE: Sweet Honey in the Rock
Read my advance feature on Sweet Honey in the Rock from today’s Berkshire Eagle. They play Pittsfield’s Colonial Theatre tonight.
“If you come out of an African worldview, music has always been the tool through which you have conversations. It’s always been the way you document things that are going on, it’s always have been the way you deal with things that...
December 2010
4 posts
ARTICLE: 2010 Year in Review
It’s nice looking back on the year and remembering how many opportunities I had to go see great music and talk to interesting people. My “year in review” piece for the Berkshire Eagle touches upon artists ranging from Wilco to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to Herbie Hancock to Vampire Weekend. This also includes lots of links to some of my favorite pieces I had the chance to write in...
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ARTICLE: "Demented universe of Kid Koala"
Kid Koala has been up at MASS MoCA developing a project based on his (as yet unpublished) graphic novel Space Cadet and its accompanying soundtrack. I popped up and chatted with him on his second day in town. Here’s the advance feature, published in today’s Berkshire Eagle. (I got DJ Spooky to chime in as well.)
“Kid Koala pulls out a black-covered journal with ‘Space...
VIDEO: Kid Koala and 'Space Cadet'
Very cool video from Babelgum.com on Kid Koala and his Space Cadet project: a graphic novel (about an astronaut and her robot guardian) with accompanying soundtrack. The video shows Kid Koala at work on both the illustrations for the book and in his very fun-looking home studio. He is due to set up shop at MASS MoCA this weekend, where he’ll be in residency working on a live performance...
ARTICLE: "Folk-punk lets loose" (Bella's Bartok)
My review of Bella’s Bartok’s Saturday night show in Pittsfield is in today’s Berkshire Eagle.
“The sprawling, eleven-member ensemble sounds surprisingly precise on its very good recorded debut, At the Kingmaker’s Ball. But in concert, this Berkshire-born Gypsy-punk juggernaut is delightfully imprecise. Its sound is informed by Eastern European folk music,...
November 2010
2 posts
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ARTICLE: The Low Anthem show review (Jambands.com)
On a day off from their tour supporting Emmylou Harris, The Low Anthem popped by a nondescript building in Pittsfield, Mass. to play an off-the-record show for about 115 people. My review is up on jambands.com
I profiled the band (re-live the memories here) when they played Pittsfield’s Mission Bar and Tapas in early 2009. They were already arguably too big for the venue in terms of fan...
October 2010
3 posts
1 tag
ARTICLE: "Phish owns jacked-up fans and diehards"
Here’s my review of Phish’s first night in Amherst this weekend, from today’s Berkshire Eagle. (Please note: I do not write the headlines!)
“Phish’s current alchemy of well-practiced stagecraft and a few dollops of in-the-moment openness adds up to a show that is a unique composition. This one had bombastic rock gestures that filled every corner of the place, alongside...
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ARTICLE: "Coming full circle with Phish"
Phish is playing UMASS Amherst’s Mullins Center twice this weekend, and the Berkshire Eagle wanted an advance feature. I wasn’t offered an interview with a band member, so I wrote a bit of an essay on the band and where I seem them today. (I’ll share some more thoughts about the angle I took, and why, later on.) It was published in today’s paper. A review of Saturday...
ARTICLE: "'Orchestrion' entertains; raises host of...
Here’s my review of Pat Metheny’s one-man, multi-machine show at Great Barrington’s Mahaiwe Theatre on Sunday night; it’s published in today’s Berkshire Eagle.
“It would be easy to say the elements of the orchestrion itself were a pleasure to watch, many of them stacked up in a junkyard jumble at the rear of the stage in a piece of mad hatter sculpture that...
September 2010
3 posts
ARTICLE: "Party time at outdoor venue" (Vampire...
Fun times at the Vampire Weekend show in Holyoke on Monday. Here’s my review of the show, published in today’s Berkshire Eagle.
“Vampire Weekend’s lyrics are stocked with careful, 21st century details rich in consumerist signifiers (‘the colors of Benetton,’ Tom’s of Maine, S. Pellegrino) and self-conscious multiculturalism (‘You spilled kefir on your...
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ARTICLE: "Vampire Weekend: Kaleidoscope of...
I was pleased to have the chance to speak with Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend for this feature, which comes in advance of the band’s Monday show in Holyoke at the new outdoor venue Mountain Park (which has already hosted The Flaming Lips, My Morning Jacket, and MGMT in this, its inaugural summer). The piece can be found in today’s Berkshire Eagle.
“Vampire...
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ARTICLE: "Trio sails in creaky ships" (Crosby,...
In today’s Berkshire Eagle, I reviewed Crosby, Stills and Nash’s show this week at Tanglewood—here’s the piece.
“Stephen Stills seemed the most at home, particularly when wandering away from the band for one of his many solos on electric guitar. Graham Nash seemed vaguely cranky, and David Crosby, his hair blowing from an onstage fan, maintained his placid,...
August 2010
24 posts
ARTICLE: "Word x Word poet rocks fest"
The second Word x Word Festival—an interesting affair celebrating the word, as written spoken and sung—kicked off Sunday night (well, actually at a rooftop party on Saturday) with a triple bill featuring Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, Derrick Brown and Mike & Ruthy. Poet Brown entranced with a great set. Last year, the opening show featured The Low Anthem and Taylor Mali.
“The way...
And finally... selected photos from Solid Sound...
Please check out my carefully selected photo collection from the 2010 Solid Sound Festival!
Also, a handy guide to coverage… besides assorted on-site tweets and the audio, video, photo and text updates right here on Found Sounds (check out “Archives” link below), please peruse:
Advance feature article in Berkshire Eagle
Music review in Berkshire Eagle
and...
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ARTICLE: "A civilized affair" (Solid Sound...
And here’s the “color” piece, written for Metroland, Albany’s alt-weekly. What do you think, does my description of the scene jibe with your own impression? Please comment below! (Just click “Comments and Reactions.”)
“Apparently, this is what happens when 5,000 music fans assemble for the concert of a major rock band and are treated like valued...
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ARTICLE: "One big installation" (Solid Sound...
I’d love you to check out the first of two reviews of the Wilco-led Solid Sound Festival that held the Berkshires in thrall for several days (weeks?). Here’s the review of the music, published in the Berkshire Eagle.
Coming later this week is a color piece on the festival and scene as a whole, coming in Metroland. (Above photo by JDG.)
“To assess it simply in terms fit...
Some gorgeous (and some self-consciously "artsy")... →