CT 150

A look at our best IDs.....from Dr. Dog to the Disco Biscuits, Les Claypool to Death Cab, Ben Harper to Phish, Guster to G.Love, My Morning Jakcet to moe. and many, many,many more!

Plus

1.) Tom Hamilton & Aron Magner – “Swimming at Night”
2.) Tom Hamilton & Aron Magner – “Invite Your Friends”
3.) Michael Franti – “Sweet Little Lies”
4.) Michael Franti – “East to the West”
5.) G. Love – “Fat One”
6.) G. Love – “Sauce”
7.) Keller Williams

“Bonus Tracks” 8.) Benevento/Russo Duo – “Divided Sky” (Phish) 9.) Benevento/Russo Duo – “18 and Life” (Skid Row) 10.) Benevento/Russo Duo – “To Be with You” (Mr. Big)


Tracks 1 through 7 recorded on-site at the Langerado Music Festival (www.langerado.com), tracks 8 through 10 recorded at Wakarusa (www.wakarusa.com).

Please click here to download

Coffee Talk

I’m not sure at point writers actually began holding court in coffee shops, but I’m going to go ahead and give credit to the Beats. Personally, I like to write at home in my sweatpants with my lights dim and my headphones loud, but over time many of my favorite writers have used their local coffee shops as venerable Bat Caves. Since I’m much better at procrastinating than relaxing, I’ve spent a good deal of my time in L.A. holdup in a coffee shop sandwiched between my friends' apartments, where a day of internet only costs a cup of coffee. Though I haven’t really spoken to anyone, I’m going to say about 80% of the people in this room are writers of some sort: bloggers, journalists, budding novelists and, especially, on strike screen writers. The glass door that just opened even reads “We Support the Screen Writers Guild (this is L.A. after all).” Someone also told me the famous blogger Perez is in here right now, but keeping with blogger rules of edict, it seems more appropriate for me to ignore him in person and the write about him online anyway.

Even though I’m blowing through my last few Relix vacation days visiting my friends out here, I still kind of feel like I’m playing hooky and that my high school principal is going to bust in here in any minute and give me a Saturday detention or something. So I’ve actually been pretty productive while my friends are slaving away at their day jobs, if you consider string 25 Cold Turkey IDs together for our 150^th episode being productive. Oddly enough, this coffee shop also seems to have blocked MySpace, which is another reason why writers seem to congregate hear. And they play some pretty good music, which so far has been a nice blend of Secret Machines, Modest Mouse and Fleetwood Mac. Since this place seems to be a few cups of coffee ahead of the curve, I’m going to go ahead and declare Fleetwood Mac back in that ironic, Yacht Rock sort of way. Either that or they just like bands whose names begin with the word M.

Since I like to relate every city I visit to New York, I now know that I am staying in West Hollywood, which is the Chelsea of L.A.. Last night we had dinner with my friends’ friend who lives in Silver Lake (the Williamsburg of L.A.) as apposed to Marina del Rey (the Lower East Side of L.A.), Bel Air (The Upper East Side of L.A.) or Brentwood (The Upper West Side of L.A.). Though I don’t think I can ever live anywhere outside the four block radius I currently call my home in New York, I really, really like L.A. if only because they serve this drink which I can only describe as a mixture of ice tea and lemonade, two of my favorite childhood cocktails. I didn’t know that you could even get those two flavors together outside of a Snapple can, let alone at every restaurant we’ve visited, but apparently that is how advanced they are out here. I also like the fact that since this place in three hours behind New York, my body will let me go to sleep before 2 AM and get up at a reasonable hour without the aid of the three alarm clocks and two phone calls I need to get out of bed by office hours. But, despite missing my friends out here, I’m glad to be going home tomorrow. Otherwise I might start to feel like Larry David trapped in some sort of Curb Your Enthusiasm alternate reality where everyone smile and no body understands sarcasm. ‘Till I return next season….

California, No Doubt About It

I love visiting my college friends in Los Angeles because I feel like I’m a character guest starring in an episode of some television show spin-off from our beloved college dramedy. I know all the characters by heart and can jump in for a few scenes now and then, before returning to my regularly scheduled program. So in case you are just tuning in, here are our opening credits (some good opening credits music from my college days---Dispatch---is now likely streaming on your right via my podcast).

Nick: Nick is one of my boyz from college, which means we saw a lot of shows together in a really short period of time (which now feels like an eternity ago, but when we hang it seems like yesterday...time is truly strange). Instead of going abroad he spent a semester in Disney World driving the Monorail and dating the girl who played Winnie the Poo. He says she wasn’t a barrel of honey, but she could sure f*ck like an animal….

Caitey: Since Caitey is the only person to censer a picture of herself on my blog, I pinched this picture from her MySpace page. Caitey is one of those friends who has her own little language that it takes a few years of collegiate practice to truly master. For instance, the phrase “how’s the construction in your apartment coming” translates to “am I going to have a place to stay when I come to New York in December” and the question “is Juan still your roommate” actually means “am I going to have to share a bed or do I get a room all to myself.”

Amanda: In college Amanda and I unknowingly hosted the first post-jam radio show, where we’d play Phish before the Cure and Dexy's Midnight Runners right after the Allman Brothers Band’s “Midnight Rider.” She likes to change her haircut at least once a year, so her hairdos kind of mark our growth like houses on seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Nick Jones: Nick Jones and I lived on the same dorm before we both finished puberty and became good friends over the last eight years. Nick is also a race car driver looking for sponsors, so if you want to help him get out of his self-described post-college racing purgatory please send me an e-mail (who knew living out one's matchbox car childhood fantasy would cost 2 mill?).He used to date Caitey, so I am doing the divorced kid thing today, though I love them both equally depending on what is on the evening’s agenda.

Jesse: Jesse doesn’t have a MySpace pic for me to pinch, but works for Bob Marley which automatically makes her cool. She was also the only other person who liked G. Love at Skidmore, despite the fact that we count G.Love among our alumni on Wikipedia.

Dan: Dan was one of my housemates senior year, which means we threw a lot of parties and got to go to court together for breaking a noise ordinance violation one beautiful October day. Throughout college he had a steady stream of Chinese girlfriends and we used to joke that if he was drafted he’d be stationed in Asia. Then one of our housemates actually got called up to Iraq and we all felt really bad. He often goes by Z-man, which means he is the last name in my phonebook and occasionally gets calls from my pocket. Sorry Dan.

Chris: The newest edition to our cast in Chris, Caitey’s current boyfriend. We like Chris and hope that before Christmas he will make the leap from the "guest staring" category at the start of our end credits to the "also staring" category at the end of our opening credits. Welcome aboard and sorry if you'd prefer to remain anonymous!

Wedding Tour: Viva Las Vegas

There’s an old adage that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but it’s up to my lawyer friends to let me know if that clause still holds weight in the internet/blog/reality TV era, so I have no qualms about posting some pictures from Suman and Kristi’s amazing wedding in Las Vegas. Especially when my body is still on Las Vegas time. So, below are a few pictures my good friends Jen and Eric took during our Thanksgiving weekend journey to Las Vegas.

Despite the fact that Vegas is probably my least favorite destination city in the country (thus putting it behind Chicago and LA, but ahead of Fargo, Boise and Omaha, though the latter city is the subject of one of my favorite Counting Crows compositions), I’ve now been to Vegas five times in the past four years (including twice this month). But since all of my earlier journeys have been fueled by either Phish or Vegoose, I’ve never had a real Vegas weekend---or at least the type of Vegas adventure that might end up in a scene from either a Hunter S. Thompson novel or National Lampoon Vacation film. But thanks to my dear friends Suman and Kristi, I found myself digesting my kosher Turkey in the heart of Sin City with some of my closest friends. Since the average age our of our wedding party was 26, the entire weekend also took on a bit of a Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead feel and was actually both a wedding and a bachelor party rolled into one (I’ll leave it up to you, dear reader, to figure out which images correlate to which event). But I will tell you that the weekend involved a $2,800 bar tab at the 40 Deuces burlesque club (apologizes to my Relix cohorts, looks like I will be eating canned tuna for the foreseeable future), a $400 dollar bottle of vodka (much of which regrettably ended up on the floor during one heartfelt hug), a hooker (who to my friend’s credit he thought was just a friendly girl who spent 2 hours hearing about his lovely girlfriend), a strip club (which offered more levels of VIP access than Vegoose and Bonnaroo combined), a 13 bedding mansion (our Real World approved home which came complete with a pool table, hot tub, poker chips and towels), a party van (which looked like a Hummer, but felt like a DeLorean talking us on a Back to the Future adventure through time to our high school prom days) and a minister that look like neither Elvis or Frank Sinatra. I’m happy to say that I managed to walk away from Vegas with a few hundred dollars in my pockets (most of which I brought with me from New York, but I digress) and no wedding rings on my fingers, giving the weekend a refreshing festival feel. And of course like any festival, the event ended with a friend of mine passed out in the backseat of his car while I navigated my way through 7hrs of traffic back to LA for a much needed vacation from reality (or at least the type of reality you can find on TV between the hours of 8-10 PM each night on your local broadcasting station).

While congratulations are certainly in order for Suman and Kristi (whose wedding itself was amazing), the real winner of the weekend was my good friend Nick, who managed to win well over $500, wave that $500 in the face of a man he called Mikey (though his name tag clearly read Davey) while screaming “feel the breeze” and, sadly enough, rolling those winnings into a $500 tip when he accidentally left his earnings at a fine establishment at 5 AM (or so my cell phone log reads, I was already counting hetty sleep by that point).

Above: Since The Skidmore Scope (our alumni magazine) has rejected the last few photos I've submitted (apparently they favor babies over Bonnaroo), I'm going to try to get this in the Winter/Spring edition. I'll just leave out the whole hookers in Vegas part...

Above: The anti walk of shame...Suman en route to his wedding. His smile falls somewhere between elated and scared shitless

Above: John (right) was awarded best man duties, which included holding the ring, signing the wedding certificate and making sure Suman didn't end up in the next "Makisupa Policeman" narrative

Above: Nick, Jen, Eric and I at the wedding. Next time the four of us are wedding two of us might be under a hupa (and no this wedding isn't taking place is Massachusetts)

Above: Vegas is full of difficult decisions. Should I...

a) see a concert and visit the shark reef?
b) play poker and attend a comic book convention?
c) eat sushi and watch someone get married?
Since I've already been to a and b, we opted for letter c. The sushi was great and the wedding wasn't bad either! (though it did take us longer to get our order than for Suman and Kristi to tie the knot)

Above: Jen took most of these pictures, except this one of course since she's in it. She'd probably prefer it if I discussed her encounter with Page at the Mandalay Bay rather than commenting on her post-tour teacher glasses, but then again what are friends for?

Above: Since I temporally lost my podcast co-host Benjy on Daft Punk tour this summer, I figured I look for him in the most obvious location. Alas, no luck....

Above: The Bride, the Groom and their Beer

Happy Thanksgiving from Cold Turkey

We’ve always felt that no month screams Cold Turkey quite like November and, to celebrate, we’ stuffed a few extra episodes onto our servers in time for Thanksgiving. From now until December we will be uploading a new episode of Cold Turkey every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, including exclusive interviews with Ben Harper, Death Cab for Cutie, Shooter Jennings, Thievery Corporation, Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Mickey Hart, Susan Tedeschi, Dispatch, Editors and many, many more. It will all culminate with the Clifford Ball of all Cold Turkey podcasts, our 150th episode. So, in case you want to include some fresh links your Thanksgiving stockings, here are some recent podcast’s Benjy and I uploaded!

Infected Mushroom

Les Claypool

The Shins and Gogol Bordello

Deep Banana Blackout Do James Brown

Ben Harper

Mickey Hart

Mocean Worker

Del and the Boys Thanksgiving Special

Dark Star Orchestra at GOTVs

Birthday Boys

Before I remember what actually happened, I figured I should post some pictures from my belated birthday party. And since I really have nowhere else to put it, I also included the I invite I sent out. All photos were taken by the great Morgan Fedele...

After a few weeks of continuously pressing refresh on my evite page, I’m excited that you’ve all either RSVPed for our party or at least glanced at our invite in that “yeah, I’m coming, chill out” kind of way. It should be fun, even if I’m not actually sure what we are celebrating. Anyway, as promised, I invited a few bands to come play for you while I stand around awkwardly and most likely walk away in the middle of our conversations. Sorry about that, I have an acute case of party ADD.

Times/Bands:

So I am excited that this Saturday, at 11:00 PM SHARP, American Babies are going to take the stage for us at Ace of Clubs. In case I’m speaking music geek to you,

American Babies:

Tom Hamilton

Joe Russo

Scott Metzger

Jim Hamilton

These four men have spent the better part of the past decade playing in some of my favorite bands---ever, really---including the Benevento/Russo Duo, Brothers Past, RANA, Electron and Bustle in Your Hedgerow and managed to create one of the best albums of the year, without actually sounding like any of the bands I just mentioned (think a post-jam version of Ryan Adams or/Counting Crows depending on how you order your self-depreciative indie/country-rock).

Since I know the only thing more fun than going to a party is going to a party fashionably late, I want emphasize that they are going on at 11 PM Sharp. So please, please, please try to get there by 11, even if that means starting your pre-game right this minute (I talked to your boss/mom, its cool).

Oh yeah, that’s 11 PM razor tongue sarcastic sharp, not SRST (standard rock star time) or even SNMGET (standard neurotic Mike Greenhaus evite time).

I’m also excited that after American Babies (around 12:30) we’re going to host the live debut of a brand new band, Cliffsidepush, featuring not only some of the best musicians around, but also some of my closest friends: Suman Mitra, Eric Pietrzak, Jordan Marion and Jon Gonzales. While these four rising stars know more than a thing or too about playing music in public, and have frequented some of my favorite haunts like Wetlands and Falstaffs, they also know my deepest and darkest secrets and know that all I really want for my birthday is a tall glass of chocolate milk. Plus, Eric is the only person who has played my parent’s basement, my college crash pad and my increasingly belated Hungover for the Holidays party and also shares my outdated haircut (whatever the 1990s were fun)

After that (around 2 AM) I’ll probably continue to get drunk and reminisce about a time I actually spent complaining about than enjoying, but I digress…

Directions:

For those of you unfamiliar with the Ace of Clubs, it is located at the former Acme Underground (which is, oddly ,enough located under the Acme Bar and Grill).It’s official address is Lafayette and Great Jones, which roughly translates to “3^rd street and Broadway” in MTA terms or “near B-Bar” in underage drinking terms.

Neuroses:

And since no one likes to get to a party where they don't know anyone and everyone likes to get to a party where they feel special, I've also taken the liberty to coming up with a short time schedule of when you should all come by, complete with a special VIP pass.

1) Friends who attended a small collegiate prep-school in Rye, NY between the years 1993 and 1999 and, despite helping fund this glorious display of self-indulgence, are cringing at the increasing number of anti-Bush, pro-Phish references in my evites should show up at 10:36PM and reminded me what I looked like with braces and an, um, bad hair cut.

2) Friends with whom I spent one to 48 months in a small artistic oasis in upstate New York ironing out our rebellious post-adolescent, pre-indie rock angst should arrive at 10:42, spend 8-16 minutes reminiscing about a time we complained about before freaking out that we have now been out of Skidmore longer than we were actually there (graduation asterisk pending).

3) Friends with whom I spent one to 48 months in a small artistic oasis in upstate New York ironing out our rebellious post-adolescent, pre-indie rock angst and with whom I lived/squatted in a big yellow house thereby catapulting us to a level of not quite friend, but not quite family fraternal love should arrive at 10:50 and bring me the money you still owe me from that last electricity bill.

4) Friends with whom I spent one to 48 months in a small artistic oasis in upstate New York ironing out our rebellious post-adolescent, pre-indie rock angst and with whom I share a love of the theater/and or comedy should bring your passports because this bar is located a full 6 avenues from Avenue C and cheers Justin Shatraw when the clock strikes 12

5) Friends with whom I spent one to 48 months in a small artistic oasis in upstate New York ironing out our rebellious post-adolescent, pre-indie rock and with whom I worked on the Skidmore News should arrive at 10:46 and bring 1-3 tangible examples of the fact that I never knew how to spell or use my grammar check (but that I saw a ton of Phish shows back in the day).

6) Friends who I met in a "field" or "lot" and with whom I’ve spent the majority of the past decade discussing a popular quartet from either Burlington, VT or Philadelphia, PA should arrive at 10:50 and take shot every second that goes by when someone doesn’t mention the words PT of Kidz
7) Friends who are girls that I never hooked up with because of some lingering 7^th grade insecurity, thus leading to a stream of crazy text messages, e-mail chains and blog entries, should arrive at 10:57 and probably avoid my blog Sunday

8) Friends with whom I work at a small music magazine whose out of office climate is alternately described as a “fraternity” or a “mafia family” should arrive at 10:45, wear a Relix t-shirt, dance in the front row and not expect me in the office until at least next Tuesday.

9) Friends who I don’t actually know but who consider themselves “fun,” “cool,” “sexy,” “interesting” or “easy” should come at 11 PM, and buy Juan a drink

10) Friends who are named “Dee” or “Gabby” and with whom I have now celebrated my birthday no less than 3 times this year should know the drill by now…

11) Friends who were in my Top 8 before I decided that having a Top 8 was causing more problems than it was worth and ultimately shifted to Facebook anyway, should arrive at 9PM and remember that your VIP passes are secretly discussed as the cash I need to fund this thing.

12) Friends who I met through seeing a lot of live music around New York city should pick up passes marked “special,” “why special” (red back),” “why special” (green back)” and “infinitely special” at the door and try their hardest to convince me that they never liked jambands, despite the fact that their dog is named Reba and their license plate read Forbin420 until last September

13) Friends with whom I share a “mom,” “grandma” or “great grandma” should arrive at 10:30 and promise not to mention anything that actually happens tomorrow night at Thanksgiving, Passover or the High Holidays (but smirk lovingly during those 4 questions)

What else?

Oh yeah, despite what this e-mail might imply, I have a blog (http://www.greenhauseffect.com/), tri-weekly podcast (www.relix.com/radio) and JOB (http://www.relix.com/ and http://www.jambands.com/). Stop by and see what I’m doing when I should be sleeping and/or enjoying my 20s

I think that’s it, so I will see you all before 11 PM this Saturday. If you want to bounce with the bands with me, please check out their MySpace pages.

http://www.myspace.com/tomhamiltonsamericanbabies

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=269954450

Love you all, even those of you who will give me an ulcer my showing up at 11:08

Mikey Greenhaus, on behalf of Jon “I have a real job now” Goldstein and Juan “I have a real job now, or at least a annual stipend” Martinez

The Kids Are Alright

Last night I had dinner with a pair of couples…one of whom now has a baby daughter…at Evan and Eve's apartment. I can’t remember the last time I had dinner with an 8 month year old (or ate a meal that included cheese which wasn't coupled marinara sauce for that matter), but it was a nice snapshot of what my life will probably be like in a few years. I’ve always liked kids, mostly because we have the same taste in food, and I'm still trying to figourout when exactly my appitite stopped evolving. Since my first friend abandoned his training wheels in nursery school people have assured me that life is going to drastically change after some momentous moment of maturation (driver’s license, legal drinking age, virginity, marriage, first Phish show, a variety of graduations), but in general I’ve found that my friends have remained the same until they have kids. Then people really start to change or at least refocus their energy (speaking of which, please check out my friend’s Russ and Beth’s awesome new blog here).

In-between conversations about the benefits of bundling three childhood vaccinations into a single shot (a “bad idea” I’m told), sending your child to pre-school in Park Slope verses Brooklyn Heights (a “good idea” they tell me) and phasing a 14 month old into some sort of pre-pre-school program (a toss up depending on your take on the whole nature verses nurture thing) the conversation segued into the benefits of living in Brooklyn verses Manhattan. Though I live in Manhattan and will probably stay here until I inevitably retreat back to Westchester sometime in my mid-30s, I’m not scared of the outer boroughs and am proud to say I’ve seen a show in each and every one of them (even Staten Island!). But, as many of my friends have settled on the other side of the East River, I've noticed a sort of reverse snobbery in their tone ....and, in my semi-intoxicated state, had an odd flash forward to an inevitable future where my wife is having a conversation with one of her friends on the rim of a sandbox in Prospect Park one Sunday afternoon about how congestion is suffocating our theoretical child and how Brooklyn’s daycare system is less competitive and more supportive than Manhattan’s, at which point I’ll probably interject something about how Staten Island is really where it’s at and reference that one show I show there ten years ago, only to be forced to spend the night on the crappy love seat that’s been giving me back problems since I played in a sandbox (thank goodness I salvaged those cushions!).

Needless to say all this reality talk scared me enough to instantaneously met up with a female friend of mine I like to call the anomaly (not Jewish, not neurotic, not into jambands and not serious girlfriend material) and have an equally enlightening conversation about the merits of the Blind Pig Bar verses the Pink Elephant tavern (one sucks but is where it’s at tonight, the other is chill but dead, go figure). Come to think of it I think I got along best with the 8 month old....

Lost in Translation

Last night I went to see my friend Lucy’s dance performance in this communist looking community center in the Lower East Side. As much as I pretend to be artsy, I don’t really know anything about dance, but was impressed that Lucy pulled off such a great “show.” In a lot of ways watching her performance was kind of like watching a movie in another language. I really had no idea what was going on, but could kind of figure out the story’s general premise with the few tools I did have: the lights, the music and the dancers’ expressions.

I know Lucy from Skidmore and wasn’t at all surprised that I recognized a number of people in the audience. Some graduated before me and other arrived long after I left, but they all seemed to mash into one big mutt of familiar faces, kind of like a background shot from an episode of The Simpsons.

After the show I went with a few friends to a BYOB Indian restaurant on 1^st avenue and I ate some vegetarian dish that didn’t really fit into any of food groups profiled on the placemats my Mom had on the kitchen table when I was growing up. I’ll probably have indigestion for a week, but it was worth it to hear a song I can only describe as an Indian dance remix of “Happy Birthday” played over the restaurant’s PA. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but then again that was part of the fun.

I was actually only friends with one of the five people at my table when I was in college, but we all managed to find enough common ground to make the evening’s conversation feel natural. It’s strange that in a small micro-community like college there are certain universals…certain people, certain bars…who manage to transcend time and who everyone can relate to/make for of regardless of the year they graduated. At one point I looked over at a group of girls two years younger than me, who I vaguely remember hanging out with in some peripheral circle, but whose names are now lost in the lump of random Phish trivia that consumes most of my short term memory. I’m sure our paths will cross again at some point, either in person or on Facebook, and I’ll be sure to ask their names, but until then it’s nice to know they are somewhere in the backdrop, experiencing the same indigestion I am.

Back to Blogging: The Return of Ron Dagan

Before I lose all the new traffic I received thanks to my Fan Site of the Month nod on Jambands.com, I figured I better post something here. So I’m going to try to fill up this space with a few short snapshots of my daily life here in New York each morning. I’m going to try to work my way up to daily again, but I’ve said that more times than Deep Banana Blackout has gone on hiatus. Anyway, here is goes:

Last night was the first Saturday in as long as I can remember that I actually spent in New York City without some sort of obligation, so, naturally, I tried to pack the evening with enough random activities that I felt sufficiently stressed. I started the day having brunch, err lunch, with my friend from high school Chris in the West Village. Now, Chris is one of those friends that I never see often enough, but with whom I always have a great time talking about life. But since we tend to only see each other once or twice a semester, the first half of our conversation always feels like a job interview: we go over our recent resumes, talk about our goals, namedrop a few mutual references and finally agree to call each other in a week or two. Of course since we’ve both been keeping up on each other's progress via the Internet, most of this is a formality, but regardless it's nice to know that I can get a Cliff Notes look at my good friends' lives in less time than it takes to prepare a two cheese omelet (hash browns, no toast)

Latter in the day, after popping into the Relix office for a few hours, I had dinner with my friend Jenny and went to see a Galactic/RSJ2 show at Roseland. Of all my friends in NYC Jenny has assumed the big sister role and regularly gives me advice on shopping, cloths, girls and all the other things I’m not very good at dealing with. We have a natural rapport and are both extremely neurotic, so if anyone wants to know any more about our friendship, how we are like brother and sister or the last 8 people either of us have dated, I'm sure the waiters at this fine Mexican restaurant can give you a nice recap in any number of languages.

Galactic was fun, though I still find it odd that I have friends who have seen them upwards on 30 times and still can't name a single song, and after the show I attended two unrelated birthday parties which happened to both take place at the same bar in the Lower East Side (New York's a surprisingly small place when you refuse to leave a ten block radius after 11 PM) But the best part of the whole night was when a friend of mine walked in from a Ron Dagan concert at the Canal Room. In case I am speaking Wet Hot American Summer to you, Ron Dagan is a kids folk singer whose tour schedule reads like the Directory of North American Jewish Summer Camps and, more than anyone else, is probably responsible for seeding both the 1990s jam and indie-rock scenes outside some canteen in upstate New York, New Hampshire, Maine or Pennsylvania. I had no idea he was still playing music, let alone the Canal Room, and think we should pare him with Michael Franti or at least Matisyahu at the Jammys this spring. Then again the show probably would start way after lights out in my bunk...