Shameless Plug...

For the first of my weekly shameless plugs, I decided to dip into the Greenhaus Effect.com archives and pull out this typo-plagued entry from February. With the Super Bowl just a few short days away, I thought it was so outdated it was actually timely.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Go Steelers!

Trey and Jon "Jimmy" Fishman in Pittsburgh


Since my Super Bowl knowledge is limited to the bands playing the halftime show, I have no real basis to root for the Steelers. But, I did have my peak musical experience at a Phish show in Pittsburgh and have felt a need to support all things Steel Town ever since (but apparently not enough to actually watch the game…). So, as of tonight, I am on Steelers Tour, eagerly crossing my fingers for a “Harpua” breakout sometime fourth quarter.

Given my obsessive-compulsive personality, I really should have been a sports buff. But for some reason, sports never really interested me growing up, which is probably why I ended up attending a college whose lone varsity team majored in ultimate Frisbee. Like anything in life, I guess I can blame my lack of testosterone on my parents, who lulled me to bed with Peter, Paul and Mary records, and my learning disability, which made me as coordinated as Ray Finkel in Ace Ventura (how’s that for a sports allusion).

Looking back, it wasn’t always easy growing up in suburbia without sports and I still lose my entire high-school clique for six months each year when fantasy baseball is in full effect. But, over time, I’ve slowly cultivated a “jock-identity” for myself. For instance, since I tend to root for underdogs, I fashion myself a Mets fan (as opposed to the Yankees, who I'm sure have some secret tie to Clear Channel, man). On a similar note, I guess getting drunk on Super Bowl Sunday without watching the game is kind of like tweaking in Bonnaroo's lot without hearing any music. So, since I’m still beat from my recent jaunt to Chicago, I’ve decided to forfeit my ticket to Suman’s annual football party in good conscious.

I pondered going to a friend’s house to listen to the Schwartz/Foley Phish Bowl on Sirius instead, but since I get paid to hear Schwartz talk on a daily basis I’ve decided to take this drinking holiday off to listen to a mix tape I made sometime around lat year’s Tibet House benefit. Plus, I think Adam Foley may have accidentally killed a goldfish at my party last weekend…ah, the spoils of being part of the “jamband industry.”

Well, back to work for me and back to procrastinating for you. I’m actually going to be in NYC this weekend (for a change!) so if anyone wants to visit an east village watering hole let me know….

Earplug Alert!

A pretty interesting week of music in and around New York City. Here is where I will be---or at least where I hope to be.

2007-01-30-Jared and the Deyounger Brothers @ Annex
Yes, my co-worker Jared has managed to skip post-jam completely and finds himself playing a hip Lower East Side indie-club owned by none other than 2004 buzz band Interpol (the club is so hip, in fact, Interpol isn't even allowed to play there anymore)

2007-01-30-Tom Hamilton @ Living Room
Tommy previews some material from the awsome forthcoming American Babies album at the Living Room. The first night of a month long ballad.

2007-02-01-David Byrne @ Carnegie Hall
The first night of DB's four night residency finds the former Talking Heads frontman revisiting his long dormant 1985 score, Music From the Knee Plays. Indeed, there is a fine line between art and really, really pretentious artists, but David Byrne always manages to remain in the light

2007-02-02-Galactic @ Irving Plaza
I've seen Galactic about 30 times and still can't name one of there songs. But that didn't stop me from scoring a ticket for show 31!

2007-02-02-Digital Frontier @ Rebel
The baby-Bisco generation's next inverted hope returns to New York City and rolls out the red carpet (pun intended) for Philly's own Push at this midtown nightclub

2007-02-03-Mike and Schwartz on Sirius!
Don't go see live music (sorry Dee and Andy). Instead sit at home and listen to Jon and I talk about Phish for hours on Sirius Jam_On (consider this a pilot for I'm with Relix Magazine)

2007-02-04-I hear something about a sporting event.....

2007-02-05-Cat Power @ Hiro Ballroom
Cat Power has always been a bit out to sea, so the Maritime Hotel seems like as good a place as any to hear her claw away at her emotions

The Greenhaus Effect H20

After almost a month on the road, sometimes for work, sometimes for pleasure, a lot of the time somewhere in-between, I’m finally home and on solid ground. And, after refilling my fish tank (RIP), I’m ready to start the New Year by falling into the same old habits. Speaking of which, I’ve decided to re-launch the Greenhaus Effect with some new tricks and, yes, consistency! From now on Mondays and Fridays will offer “diary-style” entries (basically the usual blog fare), Tuesday will see the return on the Earplug Alert concert listings, Wednesdays will feature some sort of shameless self-promotion, and Thursdays will counter that self-promotion with some free mp3s. We'll see how long it lasts, but, for now, enjoy!

The Mikeys IV

(Jam Cruise Journalism Panel Above: Burning Spear, Patterson Hood, Benjy, Kayceman, and me)

If you asked me in May of 2000, the month I completed my freshman year of college, what bands appear most often in my itunes, urr CD player, the answer would most likely go something like this: Phish, Guster, the Disco Biscuits, The Grateful Dead, moe., the Slip, and Fat Mama. So, it is kind of funny, and even more fitting, that seven years, three apartments, and enough typos to make me question the spelling of my own name, many of those bands still top my annual, neurotic award ceremony. But, whether it’s the Slip’s newest set of songs, Joe Russo’s current set of hair products, or my latest batch of Jewish guilt, the pieces fit together in slightly different order. Indeed, some bands are easy to grow out of, others you simply grow up with.

Albums:

Best indie-rock carpetbagger: The Slip-Eisenhower

Though The Slip’s Eisenhower sums up many of 2006’s central themes for me---the rise of post-jam, the fall of Capitol Hill, the uncertainly of life as a single twenty-something born in July (though not of 1975)---the best part of the year’s best release is that Brad Barr and company weren’t trying to be profound. And, as “Airplane/Primitive” postulates, if it’s truly “the day before the rest of my life,” I can only dream about what the Slip have in store for tomorrow.

Best “it band” without a “the” attached to its name: Cold War Kids-Robbers & Cowards

Hipsters these days. One night their playing an opening spot at the Bowery Ballroom and then you go to the bathroom and by the time you flush the toilet their selling out the place as a headliner (for, as the blogosphere reminds me, three nights). But if any group deserves the buzz it is this batch of artists, who managed to figure out that Billie Holiday and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah aren’t necessarily strange bedfellows.

Best heterosexual take on Siegfried & Roy’s shtick: The Benevento/Russo Duo-Play Pause Stop

Tom Hamilton and Joe Russo may be the next Brad and Jen, but, for me, Marco and Joe will always the true Wayne and Garth. And, as Wayne’s World once mused, “I now know that plutonic love can exist between two fully grown men.” Oh, and their new album is pretty hot too.

Best reason to stalk a member of the opposite sex on MySpace: The Elected-Sun, Sun, Sun

So, I was minding my own business, quietly stalking some girl I met at a bar on MySpace, when all of the sudden the Elected’s “Fireflies in a Steel Mill” popped into my speakers. Low and behold these guys sound like the Byrds, only fronted by Rilo Kiley. I didn’t get the girl, but I sure as hell got the CD.

Best proto-post-jam indie-rock revivalists: Built to Spill-You in Reverse

Built to Spill looks like Wilco fronted by Bill Nershi, sounds like My Morning Jacket crossed with the Arcade Fire, and jams like Neil Young on the Slip’s budget. Oh, and their fans complain like PT dwellers on Pitchfork.

Reissues and Live Albums:

Best reason to pull the Pharmer’s Almanac out from under your pillow: Phish: Colorado ’88
I’m not sure who this band is, but I sure wish they were still around. ‘nuff said

Best obligatory My Morning Jacket award: MMJ- Okonokos

Given all the praise he’s received in the past year, I’m not sure Jim James even has room on his mantel to place a Mikey. But, if he does, I hope he thanks me by breaking out “Bermuda Highway” next time he comes to town.

Best inverted breakup concert souvenir: The Disco Biscuits- The Wind at Four to Fly

For those keeping score at home, this two-disc set is the first of two albums to capture Sam Altman’s first final five nights with the Disco Biscuits (but which turned out to actually be his thirteenth to last shows). No matter, by the time you get through the 17:25 minute “Story of the World” you’ll wish they’d release disc another seventeen discs.

Shows:

Best music industry conference disguised as a music festival: Bonnaroo, Manchester, TN
Five years after some wook stole all our worldly belongings in the name of peace, love, and Tennessee Moonshine at the inaugural Bonnaroo, I’ve figured out to key to surviving Bonnaroo: don’t worry about seeing music . Seriously. Like a needle in a haystack, you will stumble into the weekend’s best offerings, whether it’s G.R.A.B.’s surprise debut, Pavement’s surprise semi-reunion, or Steel Train’s surprise use of a windbreaker in 80 degree weather. Indeed, Bonnaroo keeps me on my toes and, if living in the moment isn’t what Woodstock was about then acres of mud surely is.

Best Organ Donner Rap: Phil Lesh and Friends f. Trey Anastasio @ Beacon Theater, New York NY, 2-12-06

As an unabashed, all around dork, I’ve often joked that life couldn’t get much better than watching Phish and the Grateful Dead jam together while chugging a tall glass of chocolate milk. Well, on this snowy Sunday night at least one lifelong dream came true when Trey Anastasio joined Phil Lesh for his entire set at the Beacon Theater. To top it off the Beacon gave out free hot chocolate all night, resulting in a sensory overload not even a drunk text message could properly convey (though G-d and my phone bill both know I tried).

Best reason to put down your pen and take a stroll down shakedown: All Good, Masontown, WV, July 14-16
Living in New York and working in an office filled with critics (who sometimes discuss music), it’s easy to forgot that concerts aren’t meant to be analyzed. But All Good keeps it real and, for the first time, managed to keep it dry as well. From the Disco Biscuits to ALO to G.R.A.B. to Grace Potter, every performer arrived in top form and, I realized that some areas of shakedown have thankfully avoided gentrification.

Articles

Best Reason to Surrender All My Heady Cred.: Guster

If Guster arrived in New York for the first time tonight, not in 1995, and ditched the bongos around the time of George W. Bush’s first election, Zach Braff may very well have inserted a life changing Ganging up on the Sun advertisement into his Garden State fantasy. And, though it’s impossible to change the past, it’s sure as hell fun to revisit, which is why I consider this column my own personal Natalie Portman…

The First Person Award (for self-indulgence): American Babies on Cold Turkey (at Langerado) Even if we sound like a Jewish version of Chip and Dale, I love doing Cold Turkey every week (or at least every festival). And, this acoustic set recorded backstage at Langerado was not only my favorite episode, but also our most trafficked.
Plus having Magner sit-in made it kosher!

Wedding Tour Set 6: Family Friends

It is often said that you can choose your friends and are stuck with your family, but it’s not always that simple.

I don’t remember meeting Mat, but as long as I can remember we’ve been friends. According to family folk-lore, when I was three-months old my parents relocated from the heart of the happening post-hippie West Village to the slightly less Shakedown-approved suburb of Armonk, NY (with a brief detour in Upper East Side during its early-1980s Yuppie infancy). My mom, being a tried-and-true New Yorker, preferred her trees in parks and entertainment in her backyard (instead of vice-versa) and found it hard to relate to Armonk’s class of ’81. So, my Dad did what any devoted, 20-something husband would do: he picked up a few girls for her to play with. He found one at the bank, another at the beach, and, one spring day, a mother and her son Mat at the pool. I was eight months old, Mat was 10, and for the next 25 years he managed to stay precisely two months older than me. Our parents shared many of the same values---loving, educated, neurotic---and clicked immediately. They started-off as friends, but somewhere along the line we became family.

For the next decade our lives remained eerily intertwined. When we were three, we received younger siblings for Chanukah. When we were nine, we lost a grandparent on the same January day. I lost my first tooth while in a car with his family, he came pretty close to losing something else in my parent’s pool. Our families started sharing holidays and, and with each passing season, we looked forward to new things to worry about: Bar Mitzvahs, colleges, jobs, and, finally, weddings. We both brought girlfriends to Yom Kippur dinner the September after our college graduation, but while mine was gone faster then you could sound the shofar, his stuck around and last night they got married.

As they walked down the aisle, a number of random memories popped into my brain, scattered thoughts in mix-mashed order--- like images from a photo album spread across the kitchen table: attending/crying through the taping of a kids show in Kindergarten, raking leaves in second grade, working at 4H a few months later, carpooling to soccer games, running into each other on the train home from my first concert without the ‘rents…But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t shake this one image from that January when we were nine. In a weird, Wonder Years­-like way, I remember being really sad when my grandfather passed away and remember feeling a bit knowing that we were in it together.

I don’t see Mat that often anymore, but at the same time it’s nice to know he’s there and, more importantly, that he will be there when I find my own neurotic, Jewish girl to drive me slightly insane for the rest of eternity. And, with any luck, one day our wives will teach each other new ways to turn our hair prematurely gray. Mazel Tov…!

Jam Cruise 2007

Day 6: The Festival of the Future

I hate goodbyes, but fondly remember the final night of summer camp. There is something in the air, a nervous excitement, as campers simultaneously pack their bags and prepare for one final party. It is a night to reflect on missed opportunities and ponder the future, especially, how to spin those missed opportunities into stories of success. To slightly miss quote The Slip, who I strongly urge the good folks at Cloud 9 to book on Jam Cruise 6, “it’s the day before the rest of your life,” and suddenly time is calculated in hours, not days. Since the music industry takes a few extra weeks to recover from New Year’s Eve (either that or is really bad about turning off its out of the office auto replies), Jam Cruise and fellow destination packages like Ski Jam and moe.cruise have blossomed into the ideal Indian summer for twenty/thirty somethings who like live music. And, thus, Jam Cruise’s final night felt like the final night of summer camp, only instead of exchanging pen pal addresses and phone numbers, we swapped screen names and message board handles, figuring out creative ways to download a week’s worth of shows and explain to our friends that they “really had to be there” to understand.

As passengers prepared to hastily pack their luggage, or at least to cash in their final tokens at the canteen, Railroad Earth opened Saturday’s festivities, dubbed, arrr, “Pirate Night” with an energetic pool side set. Brock Butler, perhaps Jam Cruise’s breakout performer, followed with a cover-heavy acoustic set featuring both the post-jam space-rock of the Secret Machines and the proto-jam space-rock of Pink Floyd (very inverted!) Afternoon highlights included a jazzy funk-jam led by Karl Denson, a funky-jazz set by Garage a Benevento, and a purebred jazz/funk set by Galactic (who invited Luther Dickinson, Jen Durkin and Mike Dillon onstage during its set). Yet Umphrey’s McGee earned the weekend’s true sit-in award, opting for the one-to-three knock out of Luther Dickinson, Burning Spear and a Triscuit of Disco Biscuits. The Deep Banana Blackout horns also enhanced Umphrey’s McGee’s frat-jam (did I just coin a genre?) version of the SNL skit “Dick in a Box,” which was truly poetic in that American Pie kind of way.

But, like the weekend in general, the final night of Jam Cruise wasn’t so much about the music, as it was the experience (hyperbole justified), like the cruise ending Award Ceremony. I genuinely believe that life is full of two types of people: those who win awards and those who make sarcastic comments to mask some secret insecurity while award winners pick up their trophies. With the exception of a few awards for most embarrassing typos, I’ve always fallen squarely in the latter category and Jam Cruise was no exception. My roommate, however, is a bit different and managed to score the dubious distinction as the passenger who lost the most money at the casino (perhaps the weekend’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar). He swears he won the money back in cash (the award was measured in credit), but I’m just thankful he paid for his half of the room earlier in the night.

Unfortunately, my co-worker “Adam” lost out to “Lot Dawg” in the week’s heated Presidential Race. After consulting the exit polls, I’m not really sure what happened, but I have a sneaking suspicion that either Lot Dawg’s brother had something to do with the count or that a last minute write in (who encouraged passengers to sign a portion of her body I wasn’t born with), offset the margin like Ross Perot in ’92. Either way, I’m proud of Adam’s campaign and hope he heeds these words of advice: you may have lost the battle, but at least you won an asterisk on PT Bisco (see Day 4).

As President Elect, Lot Dawg prepared for his first dance to, um, the Disco Biscuits’ “The Very Moon,” we witnessed the public engagement of Annabel Lukins and Peter Stelling. As both Jam Cruise’s head counselor and most enthusiastic camper, Annabel has come to embody Jam Cruise for most passengers and I think I speak for everyone onboard when I say it was truly special for us to watch her engagement. When/if I ever muster up enough courage to tell a girl I love her like a “Ghost from ‘97” I hope its in as cool a setting as Jam Cruise, but, knowing my luck, I’ll end up losing the ring in my luggage I’ll be forced to ask my intended “to be my +1 for eternity” on the way home from some festival.

As someone who grew up reading online jam ‘zines and combing message boards for B+Ps it is generally moving for me to watch people come of age on the festival circuit. In the future, I think I might even organize my own Post-jam cruise (patent pending), which takes post-jambands from Williamsburg, Brooklyn up the east river to Astoria, Queens with a quick day stop in Long Island City along the way. Jam Cruise really is the festival of the future, even if my bar tab made me regret a chunk of my past.

I ended the night at Garage a Benevento (who broke out a cool version of Trey Anastasio’s “Plasma” which makes me wish G.RA.B. had lasted longer). After the show, I decided to call it a night and retired to bed “early.” As I slowly entered a deep sleep, dreaming of an empty inbox and filtered spam folder, my roommate busted through the door, rapping about some special jam session with Steve Kimock and Brock Butler. He kept talking and his words slowly soaked into my scull as I entered a state of R.E.M., like Jam Cruise in general, a blurry stage where dreams became reality.

Jam Cruise 2007

Day 4: Waving the Tie-Die Flag

Photo Credit - David Vann

Not since the days of Tupac and Biggie has there been an East Coast/West Coast rivalry as heated as Jam Cruise’s Presidential Debate. In the weeks leading up to our departure, HeadCount organized Jam Cruise’s first presidential debate, kicking off over 20 grassroots campaigns throughout the nation’s various local music scenes. Candidates made friends, created witty MySpace pages, and added those new friends to their carefully crafted, witty MySpace pages, setting the stage for the biggest day at the polls since last year’s Jammys. And, since arriving on the MSC Opera Tuesday, two one-name candidates have emerged as frontrunners from the pack of luggage-clad wooks: “Lot Dog” and “Adam.

Lot Dog is a San Francisco scenester with ties to Jambase and the public support of Bay Area upstarts ALO. His onboard friends are known to wear sparkly animal costumes and
his secret weapon is a suitcase full of promotional slap-on bracelets (remember those?). Adam is a New York-based Relix staffer with the support of Northeast jam titans the Disco Biscuits (minus Marc Brownstein, whose HeadCount ties prevent him from participating in the election). His onboard friends walk the tight (pants) rope between hippie and hipster and his secret weapon is a stack of promotional fliers recounting a recent trip to a Manhattan strip club. Both candidates have received onstage support from their hometown heroes and the race is neck-and-neck (or at least Berk-and-Berk) on the eve of election night. At press time, both candidates are preparing for this evening’s Presidential Debate, where Brownstein is expected to ask “the tough” questions, like how many times have you posted Trey’s mug shot on someone else’s MySpace page today, what’s the difference between a > and -> on a setlist, and does freedom of speech truly exist on PT?

And, while we’re pretty confident tomorrow’s election will end better than Tupac and Biggie’s longstanding feud, Jam Cruise’s heated race has brought to light two distinct hippie-rock approved music scenes. Last night, while Adam and Lot Dog discussed strategy with some of jam nation’s best spin doctors (Chris Baron is not onboard, alas), the Disco Biscuits went head-to-head with an all-star San Francisco Grateful Dead tribute. And, with a few exceptions, fans lined up along party lines, with West Coasters paying tribute to their roots on the sixth floor and East Coasters vacating the casino for the first time in days to see the Disco Biscuit’s fan-selected “ocean set” by the pool (a few muckrakers have already begun looking into instances of possible schedule gerrymandering). Lucky for Chicago-based Umphrey’s McGee and the boat’s New Orleans contingent, everyone seems to be down with Middle America and the Big Easy, though we hear rumors that Adam is going to snag Brendan Bayliss as a running mate and Lot Dog will add a Neville to his ticket at the eleventh hour.

Photo Credit - David Vann

But perhaps when Jam Cruise returns, jam nation is in need of some good, old-fashioned carpetbagging. For instance, what if a handful of Bisco Kidz migrated west or some of ALO’s posse were liberated east? Either way, one of the best things about a destination event like Jam Cruise is that it places fans from all over the country on the same, 12-story ship. While festivals like High Sierra and Gathering of the Vibes often draw regional followings (understandable given their location), Jam Cruise entices fans from all over the country (including Alaska, which went without jam music for a good 15 years between the Grateful Dead and String Cheese). For an East Coaster like myself, its nice to know that the hula-hoop is alive and well in other parts of the country and, for West Coasters, I’m sure its comforting to know that Philly kids still wear their hats at inappropriate angles. Indeed, all jamband fans are created equally.

Jam Cruise 2007

Day 2: Somewhere Between Pie and Infinity

I was born at precisely 1:09AM and have strictly adhered to a nocturnal sleep schedule ever since. Add to that a winter trip overseas, some New Year’s Eve jet leg, and a not-so-heady Atlantic Ocean time change and the line between day and night has blurred to the point where eggs only taste good at night and, for some reason, pizza sounds good for breakfast. Which makes Jam Cruise the ideal place to vacation since, no matter what time of day or night it is, you can stumble out of bed and into a game of poker, a guest-laden performance or, yes, a slice of pizza. And, if the sun never set on the British Empire, the show is certainly never over for Funk Nation, which sent a number of able-bodied representatives on Jam Cruise to answer the age-old algebraic question: How many ways can you add up the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, The Meters, the Neville Family, the Greyboy Allstars and Galactic, divide by Skerik, and get a supergroup which has never played before.

As it turns out the, answer is, luckily, somewhere between pie and infinity and Jam Cruise has been able to produce a number of jazz/funk, or really slightly jazzy, really funky, supergroups the likes of which have never been seen. Want to hear Meters bassist George Porter Jr. jam with the Dirty Dozen horns? We got that covered in the Jam Room on deck six! Want to see what he sounds like when placed next to some of Jerry Garcia’s favorite psychedelic musicians (rolled into a new version of the proto-jamband Zero)? Just walk down the hall and hear him play bass with Steve Kimock! Want to hear him with the current kings of New Orleans funk, Galactic? Well, while you went to the bathroom he rode the elevator upstairs and is playing with them right now on the Pool Deck. Oh, and while you were scoring big at poker (just kidding, alas) or watching Allman Brothers Derek Trucks and Oteil Burbridge in Jam Cruise’s Mass wedding (no, seriously!), Karl Denson and Skerik staged a not-so-hostile takeover of both Dumpstaphunk’s set in the Caruso Lounge and Galactic’s abovementioned poolside set. Oh, and even though I’d never really expect Berklee guitar master Eric Krasno to be a fan of the Band, he’s also tearing it up on a cover of “The Weight” with Derek Trucks and his wife Susan Tedeschi (who scored Trucks’ plus one on the boat and has remained busy onstage for a girl on vacation).

But the best part of Jam Cruise is that it takes that blurry-eyed New Orleans Jazz Fest enthusiasm and resets it in guitar fantasy camp. For instance, what better way to bond with Disco Biscuits’ Jon Gutwillig than by stealing his earning from a near sold-out show at Camden, NJ’s Tweeter Center in a game of poker (just ask my podcast co-host, Benjy, when he gets back from filming an episode of Wookies Gone Wild on the beach) or watch the Deep Banana Blackout/Rolls couple Fuzz and Carrie weigh the pros-and-cons post-jam poolside at the bar (which, by the way, has been stocked with some heady beer thanks to Starr Hill). And, is it the Starr Hill talking, or is that kid Avi G who spent a night sleeping at the foot of the Relix tent at All Good onstage with Kimock and that dude from P-Groove in the Jam Room? And holding his own at that!?

Photo Credit - David Vann

Not that Day 2 is only about jazz and funk. For urbanites like me who miss their Blackberries, the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood filled his solo set with the type of hipster heartache that made you feel like you walked out of the pool and into New York’s East Village (and what a damn good feeling it is at that!). Plus, Burning Spear proved to a generation of jam kids that, yes indeed, great music existed before Jerry.

I’m going to go get in line for some pizza now because, according to my clock, it is somewhere around 10AM and last night’s eggs have finally digested. I think when I get back Cold Turkey is going on a diet. I definitely quit my beer-and-veggie burrito-on-lot meal plan for this festival-like adventure, but we’re already signed up for next year!