Can’t believe that we are already in mid-November and starting to get into the holiday season. With that said, there is a ton of new music being released and below is a little snip-it to help get you in a groove as we start the countdown to 2018. Got some newbies as well as some seasoned vets in this mashup of music. Hope you enjoy and cheers!
Peace + Love + Music
Thanksgiving gave me a minute to sit back and have a little fun putting together a Top Tracks of 2013 playlist. This clearly doesn’t include all of the great music that has filtered our ears this year but it is a collection of music that has been on rotation for me in 2013. I tried not to duplicate artists (I could have gone on for days with whole albums from the likes of Vampire Weekend, Cayucas, White Denim, Bastille, etc.) so I hope you like this playlist which should keep you going for hours and perfect for some holiday road trips.
Cheers!
England in August anyone? For me, this lineup is ridiculously awesome.
Sweet home Chicago! What can I say except the 20th Anniversary of Lollapalooza far exceeded any experience I could have ever imagined. More photos will be coming soon but wow what a good time and so many great bands/artists performing. If you wanted to discover new music, hear some great bands of the past 20+ years or just come and hang out, Grant Park was the place to be.
My First Show: Ryan Leslie
My Final Show: Deadmau5
My Favorite Show: GROUPLOVE
Who I Saw:
Day One of Lolla: Ryan Leslie, Tab The Band, Young The Giant, Naked & Famous, Delta Spirit, Foster The People, White Lies, Two Door Cinema Club, Skrillex, Afrojack, Muse, Coldplay and late night CULTS show at the Hard Rock.
Day Two of Lolla: GROUPLOVE, Walk The Moon, Maps & Atlases, Friendly Fires, Black Lips, Big Audio Dynamite, Joachim Garraud, Local Natives, My Morning Jacket, Eminem, My Morning Jacket. Night show: Skylar Grey, Mia Moretti & Caitlin Moe, Black Lips.
Day Three of Lolla: Rival Schools, little hurricane, The Cool Kids, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, The Cars, Flogging Molly, Boy & Bear, Nas & Damian Marley, Deadmau5
Best Bud Light Stage Show: Young The Giant or Friendly Fires
Best Music Unlimited Stage Show: Muse
Best Sony Stage Show: GROUPLOVE
Best Google+ Stage Show: little hurricane
Best BMI Stage Show: Boy & Bear
Biggest Surprise: Maps & Atlases and Tab The Band
Overall Stage With The Best Performances: Sony Stage
Most Entertaining Show: Deadmau5 – debut of his new rig extravaganza
Most Disappointing Moment: the police during Eminem not caring about kids who were comatose from whatever got them into that state
Next Big Thing: Young The Giant, these guys drew over 20,000 people at 1 p.m. and Foster The People, man in six months these guys are doing it!
Band Redemption In My Book: My Morning Jacket – I’ve seen them a handful of times and never really dug their shows, I did this time
Bands I Was Sad To Miss: Fitz & The Tantrums, City & Colour, Ween and Foo Fighters plus Portugal. The Man, again – just too hard to be two places at once
Late Night Show: CULTS at the Hard Rock
Angriest Performer: again, Eminem. The crowd was pretty angry too
What Would Have Been Great: a fourth day of the festival
Top Lolla’er: The dude dressed in a watermelon costume crowd surfing
Random Moment Of Awesomeness: mud wrestling taking center stage after the first downpour on Sunday
Best Festival Eats: the guy who brought in Garrett Popcorn in with him. Thanks for sharing!
Best Place To Cool Off: didn’t find one
Biggest Waste of Time: Food lines or anyone who waited for a cooling bandana from Toyota
Best Marketing at Festival: Outside a street team was handing out Foster The People “Pumped Up Kicks” shoelaces and of course I got some
Worst Part: not having a poncho or jacket when the rain came pouring down on Sunday
Clutch Move: running straight for the port o johns and finding a new garbage bag to make a poncho
Tips For Next Year: carry a poncho – when it rains it pours, drink as much water as possible, don’t try to go swimming in Buckingham Fountain – I witnessed a few beat downs, ice cream is your friend in August, make a list of bands you want to see but don’t stick to it, comfortable shoes, you will walk a lot
10th anniversary of Bonnaroo is in the books and I’m ready to get tickets for next year. Being a Bonnaroo rookie, it was all about taking in as much of the experience as possible. After an afternoon waiting for everyone to fly in, rent the truck and an off the reservation experience at Walmart, we were on the road. Some 60 miles and one wrong turn later, we arrived. After finding the RV and unpacking enough food and booze to feed the entire stage crew for the festival, it was time to get the party started. Meandering through the festival grounds at night it was hard to capture just how big the Bonnaroo fields are and how over 100,000 people flow in and out. The first time you see it during the day, your jaw drops at the sight of an entire city being created in virtually the middle of nowhere. If that’s what it takes for people to get along, be polite and just have a good time, I can live with that.
I also learned that no matter what bands you plan to see, you can go ahead and throw that plan out, it just isn’t going to happen and that’s a good thing. Getting a chance to pop in and out of shows, listening to some new bands (and some old), wandering around the festival grounds and just kind of going with the flow seemed to be just fine. Photos will be coming soon (I promise) but here are some of my highlights from Bonnaroo X.
My First Show: The Walkmen
My Final Show: Apache Relay
Best What Stage Show: The Black Keys
Best Which Stage Show(s): G.Love/Warren Haynes
Best Tent Show: Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses
Best Overall Show: Walk The Moon
Biggest Surprise: Childish Gambino
Best Legend Show: three way tie – Robert Plant, Dr. John, Gregg Allman
Random Moment Of Awesomeness: blue blinkers dropping from the sky for Arcade Fire’s set
Overall Stage With The Best Performances: On Tap Stage – shows included Band of Heathens, Apache Relay, Chancellor Warhol, Mat McHugh, Pimps of Joytime, JEFF The Brotherhood, Bobby Long and more
Most Entertaining Show: Lil Wayne for the fact that at least 40,000 festival goers/hippies knew all the lyrics to his songs – you had to be there to understand where I’m coming from
Most Disappointing Moment: Terrible sound quality for the Buffalo Springfield show made it almost impossible to listen to (this saddened me more than anyone will ever know)
Next Big Thing: Walk The Moon and Apache Relay
Top Party: the overflowing sea of madness for Girl Talk at 2:30am
Oddest Show That Was A Blast: Primus
Funky Good Time Show: Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Band I Was Sad To Miss: GIVERS
Angriest Performer: Eminem
Best Intro: Lewis Black for Warren Haynes
What Would Have Been Great: a late night set from a headlining DJ
Top Roo’er: Guy trying to make the “World’s Biggest Glow Stick” (if you saw/met him, you know what I’m talking about)
Top Sports Bar Moment: Game 6 of the NBA finals was like the March Madness scene in Vegas (video coming soon).
Best Festival Eats: Bear Creek Farms’ hand cut French fries and Gravy
Best Broo’ers Festival Beer: Ashville Brewing Company’s Ninja Porter
Best Place To Cool Off: the cinema (if no line to wait)
Biggest Waste of Time: anything that involved a line
Shocker Of The Festival: no rain
Worst Part: Dust everywhere and if you didn’t have a bandana, you were SOL
Clutch Move: renting a pickup truck
Tip For Next Year: less junk food and more healthy food, bring laxatives and don’t go off the reservation
More Tips: flip flops are your enemy, dust sucks, that fountain water is filthier than Vegas’ Rehab, expect rain, drink water and more water
Lollapalooza released the 20th anniversary line-up today and while there are definitely a handful of artists making the summer festival rounds, I think they did a great job when you look at the line-up from top to bottom. Eminem, Foo Fighters, Coldplay and Muse as your headliners are definitely four big ones you can’t argue. Now personally as I contemplate making the trip, I’m excited about so many of these bands and quite frankly too many to list but (and trying to take out the artists I’m planning to see at Bonnaroo) Ween, Crystal Castles, Local Natives, The Kills, White Lies, Two Door Cinema Club, Delta Spirit, Sleigh Bells and Chicago’s own Smith Westerns. Plus Fitz & The Tantrums, Noah & The Whale, Tinie Tempah, The Vaccines, Foster The People, The Naked and Famous, Friendly Fires, Young The Giant, The Joy Formidable, Afrojack, Collie Buddz, Pretty Lights and a whole lot more. August 5-7 in one of the greatest cities in the world should be quite the music scene. At $215.00 for three days of an insane amount of music, seems like a heck of a deal to me.
Full line-up below.
We are 49 days away from Bonnaroo!! Since I’m claiming it as a holiday, here are 49 Reasons to look forward to Bonnaroo June 9-12.
49. Saying you are going to Tennessee just sounds so good
48. GIVERS are going to be going Up! Up! Up! after playing the festival
47. Bonnaroo Buzz from Ben & Jerry’s
46. Getting a chance to hear an amazing talent in Bobby Long
45. A good excuse to go buy galoshes
44. Justin’s Maple Almond Butter packets in tow
43. Donald Glover is part of the comedy line-up
42. Getting a chance to see The Band of Heathens live!
41. The legend, Henry Rollins
40. “Let’s Go Surfing” by The Drums
39. Mud sliding during and after the rain
38. Sonic Stage
37. Florence Welch – I can’t wait to see her perform
36. Grace Potter
35. Matt & Kim’s intro music (Beastie Boys – “No Sleep Til Brooklyn”) and they’re fun live
34. Check out the works on display at the Poster Art Exhibit
33. Portugal. The Man
32. The cinema but only if The Big Lebowski or My Blue Heaven are playing
31. Listening to Ryan Bingham play tracks off Mescalito, his first album
30. Since Jimmy Fallon announced the initial line-up maybe hope that he and The Roots show-up as a surprise guests
29. Old Crow Medicine Show belt out “Wagon Wheel”
28. Les Claypool
27. Checking out Eminem to see if he reaches way back and busts out D12 “Purple Pills”
26. The Black Keys rock out (I’ve been blown away by their performances twice this year already)
25. Grammy Winners Arcade Fire play yet another festival as a headliner and after years on the smaller stages
24. Getting down with Galactic
23. Late night with Bootsy Collins
22. A chance to see The Decemberists before the pack it in
21. Planet Roo
20. The only way I’ll see Lil Wayne because I know I wouldn’t buy a ticket to just his concert
19. Have you ever seen Ray LaMontagne live?
18. Austin’s Finest – Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
17. The Silent Disco
16. Listen to blues music with G. Love
15. Lewis Black, nuff said
14. Party into the night with Girl Talk
13. Seeing the sun rise
12. Mumford & Sons play their largest show to date
11. The honor of seeing Mr. Robert Plant live
10. Hearing Warren Haynes play “Soulshine”
9. One more time to see Gregg Allman before it’s too late
8. Superjam
7. Late night with Dr. John and the Original Meters
6. Surprise performances that are sure to be in store this year
5. Celebrate 25 years of Widespread Panic
4. Celebrate the 10th anniversary of Bonnaroo
3. String Cheese Incident do their thing
2. In my lifetime getting a chance to see Buffalo Springfield perform live
1. Four days listening to music and camping with great friends
Of course there are a whole lot more than 49 reasons to look forward to Bonnaroo so feel free to drop yours in the comment section below.
Do You Hear The Music? 