@ZackTeibloom “It has to be him. No one else is that ugly” @supercooleric said as we spent far too long debating whether it really was Ron Jeremy up in the VIP at the Dirty Projectors show. The balding, “hedgehog” head, the gut, the ‘stache, the fact that he was surrounded by women. I was still skeptical. Once people started taking pictures of him, it was hard to argue.

During the show he looked like he was working on his Weekend at Bernie’s impression for Halloween. Arms crossed, mostly asleep, he looked like death. When he was awake, he looked at the band, seemingly thinking:

“None of the chicks in this band are bang-able. Should I offer to buy them some tits? Would they still sing that well with 9.75″ in their mouths? I bet they don’t shave.” Read the rest of this entry »

@AndyShore Festival Crashers wanted to throw out some Phish related costume ideas with Festival 8 officially a week away. If you’re like me, you put things off to the last minute. Most of the costume stores are picked through by now and none of the good costumes remain, but this is going to be a special Halloween.

So many sets of Phish! Why not honor the special weekend by dressing up as your favorite Phish character or song? Here’s how you can pull it off: Read the rest of this entry »

@ZackTeibloom I want to remember this day. I want to remember the things I didn’t remember the next morning. No, it was more than that. I couldn’t even process them as they were going on. It was a 22+ hour shit show that started with 5:20 a.m. McDonald’s Breakfast and ended with singing Pinkerton into a mini basketball hoop at 3:45 a.m. as I struggled to remain on my feet. In between? I’m gonna try to piece it together. Read the rest of this entry »

@ZackTeibloom “It Might Get Loud” is a wet dream for electric guitar lovers.  Directed by the Acadamy Award winning director of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” we get an hour and a half of three generations of axe masters, Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White III, as they trade secrets and licks culminating in an awe-inspiring, intimate performance.

Even more telling than having the three gods in the same room getting loud, are the journeys that provide a glimpse of how the electric guitar shaped the lives of three boys from Ireland, London and Detroit. And how, in the decades since, these three virtuosos have shaped the guitar and its prominent place in rock.

We open with Jack festooning a guitar with a coke bottle, wood and nails in minutes saying “who says you need to buy a guitar?” After seeing this movie, I most certainly do. Read the rest of this entry »

@ZackTeibloom It all came into perspective last night. Chasing down the Festival Crasher lifestyle without money or a plan for the last few months finally came to the inevitable head everyone but me saw coming. As great as it’s been, I’ve been stranded and I’ve been stuck between rock and a hard place, but I’ve never had the perfect storm like last night. Let me bring you up to speed. Read the rest of this entry »

@ZackTeibloom As I made the decision whether to stay close enough that I could hear an atrocious Animal Collective set  or get close for the visually stimulating, but tortuous to listen to Tool show Saturday night, I had to wonder. What happened to Lolla this year?

It wasn’t just the rain, though it was a cold, harsh day Friday. It wasn’t just the heat. (Sorry if I brought the Austin heat with me.) It was a lack of headliners that did it in.

Last year on Saturday night at Lolla I was seeing a 9.8 Lupe show feed into a 9.9 Rage Against the Machine Show while knowing I was missing a Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings show that always hovers in the low 9 range. This year Saturday I was deciding if Animal Collective’s 5.5 show would get any better, foolishly getting close for a Tool show I couldn’t stand, going all the way across the festival for a 8.5 (tops) Yeah Yeah Yeahs show. That’s not the Lollapalooza I know and love. Read the rest of this entry »

@ZackTeibloom I’ve got Festival fever. Every festival-eve I stay up super late brimming with anticipation. Seeing as how it’s the night before ROTH-BURRRRY, my favorite festival of all, I’m off the wall. There’s only one problem. I’m not going.

I blew my Festival wad too early this year with SXSW, a week in Australia,  a two-week stay at Jazz Fest and a voyage to Bonnaroo without one of those, what do you call them, real jobs? Tonight I put $2.00 worth of gas in my car. Less than a gallon. Clearly I couldn’t afford to get from Austin to Michigan. I even had to sell a Cream DVD and Reservoir Dogs earlier in the day just to get that scrilla. I’d throw in an FMYLIFE, but come on,  I 100% deserve to be scraping by. Read the rest of this entry »

@AndyShore Yesterday, as news began to break on Twitter of Michael Jackson’s passing, I was in the middle of watching Ghostbusters with some friends. We quickly switched the movie off and began flipping through news stations, trying to find out what had happened. CNN was only reporting that he had sustained cardiac arrest, and then that he was in a coma. The only source reporting his death was TMZ. Read the rest of this entry »

@ZackTeibloom I cheered harder for an inflatable shark than I did for any band all weekend. Weird things happen when a mob forms to see Phish. I’ll start at the beginning.

To get into the front section (let’s call it the glory hole) of the main stage at Bonnaroo, you had to wait in a line as the show before it was going on. It was typically worth the wait, as you’d end up in the best spot, right behind the photo pit.

Bonnaroo closed with Erykah Badu, Snoop and Phish on the main stage, so I planned on staying in the glory hole all night. Unfortunately, they clear the hole out after every show and you have to get back in line. I found Jordan at the end of Badu and we got in the left line (since most people only knew about the right line.) Read the rest of this entry »

 @ZackTeibloom The rain came early and often at Bonnaroo this year, turning the festival grounds into a sloggy mud pit. Vendors lined up to buy $6 bales of hay this morning to cover the trenches so their customers could make it to their booths, as volunteers scooped the muddy slosh into buckets.

We’ve been able to avoid the rain, but the mud is now a fixture of the festival. It would take a world class broad jump to clear a moat to get back to our tent. Sadly, I only got a Division II scholarship in the broad jump, so my socks got soaked. Read the rest of this entry »