All posts by Jeff Sabatini

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On to Rothbury: Wrapping Up the Dead Spring Tour

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The DeadThe Dead at Allstate Arena

Rosemont, Illinois, May 5, 2009

I didn’t know what to expect heading into the The Dead’s Spring Tour. I had last seen the Grateful Dead back in 1991 — yes, during the Bruce Hornsby era — and to cut a very long story short, let’s just say I was a Skeletons/Touch kind of fan back then. Today I’m a full-fledged Dead Head, thanks to the wonder that is the Live Music Archive. So I was excited to get my mail-order tickets, but like any fan of the band, my emotions were a bit confused. No Jerry means a whole lot of things, but sorting out exactly what those would be this time around was anyone’s guess.

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Rothbury '09: 2-Day Live Crew

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RothburyIf you see me at the Rothbury Music Festival over the Fourth of July weekend, I will no doubt be stumbling around in my tie-dye, sunburned and babbling, trying very hard to stay on top of my buzz. I will be having a great time reliving the glory of what my wife calls my “salad days,” when I didn’t have a lot to do other than imbibe, play disc golf, and rock out at concerts.

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Back from the Grave; or Seeing the Ghosts of Elvis, Gram Parsons, and Mark Lindsey in the Guise of Freddy Fortune

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Freddy of the Four Gone ConclusionsWe recently uncovered an old email message that pre-dates GLONO by a couple of months. Back in the day, we had it showcased as a feature, but it somehow got lost in the shuffle of redesigns and content management system switches. We’re happy to bring it back. —Jake

Motor City Madness

Freddy and the Four Gone Conclusions

Lili’s 21

Hamtramck, Detroit, MI

Sat., 28 Oct 2000 

It was a great show. And with this understatement, I call to mind those long-undead days of the past. I get a titter from the peanut gallery, a dozen “RE:” e-mails saying, “No, I was at the last Truly Great Show.” Perhaps as great of a show as anything since the mirror-studded suits, fireworks display, and bloodied hand at the last Sleestacks performance at Quadstock? Yes. Name them all, yet this show stands proudly on the podium, perhaps even drinking a bit more champagne in the post-race celebration than you’d think fair. 

I went to Lili’s last night by myself to see Freddy Fortune and the Four Gone Conclusions open for the 3D Invisibles. Expectations were not high. Nor morale. (Nor I.) One of the two times I had gone to see Freddy’s current band, they didn’t show up. To paint the obvious in a shade of flourescent orange, things were a bit sketchy all over Hamtramck. (Flying solo has its merits, but talking to some psychotic guy who keeps spilling his Corona out his perma-grim mouth does not an evening of companionship make.) Flash forward, however, and by the time the country began changing its clocks for daylight savings time, after hooking up with my less than zero pal Burke, I realized that I had just witnessed a little moment of history in the making. This is one that people will be talking about in tones of reverence for many Halloweens to come. 

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NXNE: How (Not) To Write a Band Bio

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NXNE R Us!My NXNE Bonus Session

Learn to write a bio for fuck’s sake!

Hey, here’s a tip to those of you aspiring idiot musicians: Stop dropping names of other artists you “sound like” in your bio. Trust me when I say you’re full of shit and no matter how much you think you sound like Radiohead, no one else does. And what if you did, anyway? Do you think someone really wants to hear a Radiohead knock-off? Isn’t that what tribute bands are for? (Does anyone even want to hear the real Radiohead anymore?)

If you’re one of the six groups at NXNE whose bio contained a sounds-like Radiohead reference, I only hope your van got a flat tire on your way home. Ditto the six bands who listed the Clash and Wilco in their bio. (Now if you would have written, “We sound like the Clash except we suck,” that might have been cool. Or perhaps, “We sound like Wilco would if Jeff Tweedy wasn’t a total jackass.” Now that’s a bio!) To the six bands who said they sound like the Band, what the hell is wrong with you guys anyway? Martin Scorcese is not going to buy you large amounts of coke and film you on stage any time soon.

If you want to see the entire list of “we sound like artist X” mentions, you can see it after the jump…

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NXNE 2007: The Leatherettes

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The LeatherettesThe Leatherettes at El Mocambo

Friday, June 8, 11pm, Toronto

Perhaps I could forgive this talentless duo from Dundee, Scotland, excepting that the sound they so blatantly rip off happens to be from Detroit. I’ll admit that I tend to get all defensive when poseurs from the other side of the globe ape great garage rockers from the D, especially when they do it badly.

Essentially a PG-rated version of the Demolition Doll Rods, the Leatherettes are all attitude with nothing to back it up. Not to mention no titties, no cock sock, and no Christine.

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NXNE 2007: Arise and Ruin

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Arise and RuinArise and Ruin at Kathedral

Friday, June 8, 8pm, Toronto

“Forged deep within Mount Doom in Mordor, Arise and Ruin shot towards the heavens like a heavy duty Twin Hemi engine from hell to save the souls and ears of the fallen.”

When I read that band bio in the NXNE program, I laughed out loud and nearly shot beer out of my nose. I just assumed these guys couldn’t be serious, but since there was absolutely nothing else going on at eight, why not check them out? As it turned out, Arise and Ruin were far from a joke. Indeed, these were the sorts of uber-serious dudes who bow at the altar of heavy metal, and their band will likely be chosen to represent Canada if synchronized headbanging ever makes it into the Olympics.

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NXNE: GLONO Goes To Toronto (Part 1 of 3)

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NXNE R Us!If you have a job in which you never have cause to attend a conference, consider yourself lucky. Conferences and trade shows are among the most idiotic constructs of corporate America, a rancid bouillabaisse of sales call, vacation, shopping, forced death march, and marital infidelity. And then when you get back to the cube, you still have to make up all the work you didn’t do while you were running up your expense account in some other city.

So why, I ask, are creative types like musicians and filmmakers — people who ostensibly chose their lot in life largely as a way to avoid shit like conferences — eager to have their own?

You’ve all no doubt heard about South By Southwest, Austin’s mega-music conference. So have I. But Austin is not within driving distance of Ann Arbor, and Toronto is. So I’m here at North By Northeast to try and figure out what exactly a music and film conference is and why anyone would want to travel halfway across the continent to hang out in a Holiday Inn.

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Alanis Morissette – The Collection

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Alanis Morissette - The CollectionAlanis Morissette – The Collection (Maverick)

I’m breaking up with Alanis. I’m serious, man. This time, it’s for good. I just can’t stand her fucking whining anymore.

Yeah, it was great, back when we first met. When I used to hear her on the radio on those shitty alternative stations when I was driving in the car. I’d always listen and maybe even sing along.

Yeah, I ought to have fucking known right then.

It was good after that too though. Like when I downloaded “Thank U” from Napster. When it would pop up on my iPod from time to time, I’d always smile.

I even liked “Dogma.” That’s how fucked up over her I was.

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Of Polyester and Camel Toe: Remembering John Entwistle, Badly

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John Entwistle - So Who's the Bass Player: The Ox AnthologyJohn Entwistle – So Who’s the Bass Player: The Ox Anthology (Sanctuary)

The Who is my favorite band, and has been since I saw The Kids Are Alright documentary as a kid. In high school I got into the habit of listening to my own version of Quadrophenia in its entirety every other day (alternating it with The Wall for the ultimate teenage angst experience). I had painstakingly created an amalgam of the studio album and the far-superior-fidelity movie soundtrack album on cassette tape.

By 1990, I owned every Who album that had been released on CD, including the unlistenable Who’s Last and the awful box set that was released after their 1989 reunion tour. I had even bought up every bootleg and out-of-print record I could find to feed my obsession.

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