Phish

SNL Sound-Off: Vampire Weekend

I really, really didn't want to like Vampire Weekend's Saturday Night Live stint on the eve of their forthcoming record, Modern Vampires of the City. I'm one of those haters whose ears bleed at the mere mention of an Oxford Comma, I think they sound like the soundtrack to a fancy Hamptons beach part ... More >>

Hands on a Hard Body Sings of Tough Times; the Strouse-Adams Superman Spoofs a Tough World

Moving vehicles

Owsley, LSD King and Grateful Dead Soundman, Was a Foodie

Owsley "Bear" Stanley was the self-taught master chemist who produced much of the acid used to popularize the psychedelic chemical in California in the mid-60s, which was partly chronicled in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). His LSD made the scene in other acid-fueled events of th ... More >>

The Disco Biscuits

Zac Brown Band Stretches Country's Limits (And Its Legs) On Uncaged

Country music has never had a simple relationship with Mexico. While outlaws like Waylon Jennings once warned that there "ain't no God" on the other side of the border, Tim McGraw more recently took the opposing position, suggesting that God in fact created the country, but only as a place for trapp ... More >>

I Was A Teenage Jam Band Scenester: Coming Around On The Ominous Seapods And Other Life Lessons

Through a series of maybe not-so-unfortunate events, I was a teenage jam band scenester, which, when properly italicized and luridly capitalized, sounds like a sordid music-crit version of a '50s exploitation paperback. But the truth is, I wasn't seduced by drugs, sex, or anything else until college ... More >>

Jones Beach Theater And PNC Bank Arts Center Schedules Announced: Drake, Wiz Khalifa, Kelly Clarkson, And More

Ah, the summer, the time of year when one can enjoy a concert in the glorious out of doors. This morning Live Nation announced the full lineups for its two local amphitheaters—the PNC Bank Arts Center in bucolic Holmdel, N.J. and the Jones Beach Theater, out on the South Shore of Nassau County ... More >>

10 No-Brainer Rock Legends Never Nominated For The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame

This weekend, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its class of 2012, which consists of Donovan, the Beastie Boys, the late singer-songwriter Laura Nyro, the Small Faces and the Faces, blues guitarist Freddie King, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Guns N' Roses, although not lead singer Axl Rose, wh ... More >>

Live: Howlin Rain Roll Through Brooklyn Bowl

Howlin Rain Brooklyn Bowl Wednesday, February 8 Better than: Any California jamband since Garcia died. A great rock guitarist needs a signature affectation. Ethan Miller's happens to be an abrupt upstrum that, combined with a backward stagger, probably makes him something of an onstage hazard to ... More >>

Live: Cults Shimmy Into The Spotlight At Webster Hall

Cults w/Delicate Steve, Dirty Fences Webster Hall Thursday, January 19 Better than: Surfing the Hype Machine. Cults might be one of those bands that seemed to be birthed entirely on the Internet, but give them some credit: Even now, some 18 months after launching their debut EP on Bandcamp, there ... More >>

PLANET ENO

Two tributes to a musical icon

JAM ON

Phish plays four nights

The Wild Outdoors: Trace Amounts Cocaine and Weed are Floating in the Air

​Remember when your parents used to constantly bug you to go outside? They may have been acting like nothing more than common pushers. According to ScienceNow, researchers in Italy have found that trace amounts of illicit drugs float in the atmosphere at a higher rate near areas with more dru ... More >>

Scientists Blame Quantum Physics for Smell

​"What's that smell?" is a question that has plagued mankind for thousands of years, but have you ever stopped to ask, "Why does that smell?" The BBC reports scientists at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas are trying to figure out the reasons why and how things smell, and they ma ... More >>

The 10 Best Thom Yorke Dancing Videos

​Careening around a dim warehouse and gripping a bowler hat like Liza Minnelli on uppers, Thom Yorke leaves no doubt of his dancing prowess in the clip for "Lotus Flower," the lead single off Radiohead's feverishly received eighth album, The King of Limbs. His delectably bizarre moves continue ... More >>

Download the Hold Steady's Monday Night Set at the Music Hall of Williamsburg

"I woke up this morning and I had this weird feeling," Craig Finn told an unsuspecting audience on Monday night at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, toward the end of the second of the Hold Steady's two shows there. "I hadn't really realized this until today, but our first show ever was on January 3 ... More >>

Live: The Butthole Surfers Ring In The New Year With Balloons, Strobes, Violence, And Possible Digital-Genital Contact At MHOW

​Butthole Surfers Music Hall of Williamsburg Friday, December 31, 2010 Better Than: Sharing a flask of warm champagne and a handful of stale gorp at the Phish show. Upon getting jostled and stage-squished for about the seventh time, my friend turns to me and says, "After midnight, everyone ... More >>

Brooklyn, This Is Your Rain Dance: Rating Audience Moves at Yesterday's Chromeo Pool Party

So much umbrella dancing. "An accurate summary of the pagan ritual-meets-Fred Astaire umbrella dancing that became yesterday's BK show," wrote Montreal joke-funk duo Chromeo on Twitter earlier today, about our own Puja Patel's report on the show. (Thanks Chromeo!) But that got us thinking: what do ... More >>

Phish Fan's Jones Beach 25 Foot "Horror Leap" Was Nonfatal, Somehow

​Despite launching himself off of Jones Beach's dauntingly tall mezzanine and falling 25 feet into the seats below, the Phish fan who was carted out of the band's Wednesday show by paramedics will live. The Post is reporting that the guy, who remains formally unidentified (Gothamist pegs him a ... More >>

Inside the Nitrous Mafia, an East Coast Hippie-Crack Ring

Summer concert season means jamming to the familiar hiss of 'hippie crack'

Drake Concert Debacle Now Causing the Cancellation of Other Free New York Shows

Aftermath of a free Drake concert. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne​It was inevitable that the city of New York would begin to crack down on the plethora of free, sometimes anarchic summer shows around the five boroughs after Tuesday's Drake concert degenerated into a near riot. Now we have the first o ... More >>

Live: Galactic (And Doug E. Fresh) Bring New Orleans To Brooklyn Bowl

Intense bass warning. Galactic Brooklyn Bowl Friday, June 4 If this was a scene from Treme, it'd play as farce: real New Orleans dudes playing real New Orleans music... in a snazzy, opulent, achingly hip Brooklyn bowling alley. We'd be mocked as clueless, unappreciative cultural tourists who woul ... More >>

How to Fix the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Tips on how to expand its reach—or blow it up entirely

Live: Vampire Weekend Stage A Physically And Emotionally Grueling Blowout At United Palace Theatre

Vampire Weekend/Titus Andronicus United Palace Theatre Sunday, January 17 I personally do not see anyone wearing the $30 bright-yellow "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" scarf available at Vampire Weekend's merch table -- and believe me, I'm looking -- but later it's rumored they're completely sold out, so ... More >>

Interview: Vampire Weekend's Chris Tomson On the Contra/Operation Ivy Connection, Eating Raisins with M.I.A., and the Regrettable Term "Upper West Side Soweto"

Vampire Weekend. Photo by Soren Solkaer Starbird.​There's no feeling indifferent about this band. For fans, Vampire Weekend's sophomore album, Contra (out Tuesday, and reviewed by our own estimable Rob Harvilla here), is enough to make January feel like July--a sugary refinement of the band's ... More >>

This Week's Voice: Phish, G-Side, Phil Kline, I Slept With Joey Ramone, Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, the Year's Best Graphic Novels, and More

Phil Kline gets into the holiday spirit. Photo by Tom Jarmuich​In this week's Village Voice, Rob Harvilla does the thing that probably everybody with a masochistic streak should probably do at least once, which is go to a Phish show at Madison Square Garden, while Brandon Soderberg meets up wi ... More >>

Live From Nine Inch Nails' Retirement Party

In praise of Trent Reznor, the nihilist-turned-populist, waving goodbye

News Roundup: Brendan Flowers, Live Nation, Neutral Milk Hotel, Chris Brown/Rihanna

--The Killers' Brendan Flowers likely got to live out a childhood fantasy Saturday when he joined Bruce Springsteen for a duet of "Thunder Road" at the opening night of the Neatherlands Pinkpop Festival. Nowadays, it's a right of passage for Springsteen-influenced acts to join their idol onstage. Th ... More >>

Five Questions for Gigantic's Paul Dano

"I'd like to do something that involves an older woman, perhaps in the vein of The Graduate or Harold and Maude." Gigantic: Dano and the girl of your dreams There's a genuine quality to all the varied roles --whether killer (Taking Lives, 2004), mute older brother (Little Miss Sunshine, 2006), or ... More >>

The Mixtape Will Save Us All

If you want them to buy it, make it free

Heroic DJ Finally Stumbles a Bit, Making Him All the More Endearing

"Music for Torching!" The Summer Barbecue Special

Special guest: "Handsome" Jim Bentley, BBQ master

Life Imitates 'South Park'

Rolling with the Worldwide Marijuana March

Not Giants in Those Days

A video disc and a big pile of reissues make the case for a '70s prog cult band who were never pompous

Wax Museums

New download revolution: revelation for gramps, granny, and fans of 'Yes, We Have No Bananas'

Torrent Rain

Fat content's equivalent of the South Beach Diet provides healthy alternative to paying buttplugs

Big Ole Time

Country-blues revivalists wail against wars for Phish-heads

Flops and Monks

Philip Glass's handpicked humanitarians keep it unstuffy

Progentelechy

Placebo frees maggot brains; Uncle Jam's ass doesn't follow

Chutes und Ladders, Raft-Rapped Families, Bubbles auf der Barrel

A big juicy fuckup for hissyfit-having little girls who hate being little girls

Listings

Proggy Went A-Jammin'

Open Arms

Jam On It

Hippies, Jazzbos, and Beat Junkies Build One Nation Under a Mutant Groove

Music

Music

Music

Total Eclipse of Art

Fanning the Fame