Beirut man Zach Condon joined The National at the Paléo Festival in Switzerland last week. Paléo Festival has been running since 1997, taking place near Lake Geneva. This year saw performances from Jack Johnson, Pulled Apart By Horses, Bloody Beetroots, The Chemical Brothers, Portishead, Beirut, The Strokes, PJ Harvey, The Dø, Robert Plant & The Band of Joy, Metronomy and Mika, who was drafted in last minute to replace Amy Winehouse. Condon added vocals to The National's 'Fake Empire' in a set that stretched backed to Sad Songs For [...]
![EVENT (Atlanta, GA): The Hodge Podge (It's A Wonderful World Edition) [07/15]!](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/3580210_lg.jpg)
CLICK PICTURE TO VIEW FLYER How would you feel if you have a whole music label put on an entire show for just one audience, and you just so happen to be a part of it? Well, the whole IWWMG will be putting on a show for the ATL-iens this friday, over at the Apache Cafe ! It's 18+, $10 all night, AND it ends at 3am! Rockin' alongside of 9th Wonder will be DJ Methuzulah , Poe Mack , and Clan Destined ! Hosted by [...]

most of the words & photos by Dominick Mastrangelo They played for over 3.5 hours before the sun set on LCD Soundsystem in a cascade of white balloons dropping from the Madison Square Garden ceiling in NYC Saturday night. I wished they played even longer. Everyone I talked to agreed . But James Murphy and co. gave everything at Madison Square Garden last night (4/2). And the [...]

Keeping It Peel is the brainchild of the good persons over at Football And Music . To honour the memory of the late great John Peel, Football And Music has decreed October the 25th " a sort of John Peel Day, but for bloggers ." Like many of the blogs listed on the Blogroll down there on the right, I'm in. It seems the right thing to do - as a music-obsessed teenager I listened religiously, finger sweating on the 'pause' button of my music centre waiting patiently to catch [...]
A few days ago long-circulating video of the entire Grateful Dead show from Boston Garden on September 24, 1991 was uploaded to YouTube and I've been enjoying the hell out of these clips. Jerry was clearly enjoying Bruce Hornsby's addition to the "musical conversation" as displayed during a perky Althea, an energetic China > Rider, a spacey Dark Star and a tear-jerking rendition of Standing On The Moon. We've put together a playlist of Duanebase's videos so you can watch the entire show in order... Grateful Dead - [...]

You may have noticed things have been a bit quiet 'round here lately. An extreme bout of lethargy/cannae be arsedness coupled with actual real work being a bit hectic has lead to a slow down in the proceedings. But, for what it's worth, I can safely say " I'm back ". So too, you probably noticed, is old thumbs aloft himself, the strangely auburn-coiffured Paul McCartney . Beatle Bum I gulped a huge gulp back in March when I hit ' return [...]

Poor Brian Wilson. Deaf in his right ear after his dad Murry had uncharitably clouted him, he suffered more than his siblings at the hands of this hard-to-please man. A somewhat failed song writer (doo-wop songs his 'speciality') Murry Wilson was the Beach Boys manager/co-producer/arranger in those heady surf-filled, drag-racing days. Much like those dads of today who coach frantically from the side of the pitch while their 13 year old chases a ball around, he lived the dream through his sons. He constantly obsessed over every facet of [...]

D'you think the irony has been lost on the three quarters of a million sheep-like Facebook users who've signed up to get Rage Against The Machine to number 1 with a song who's main hook repeats " Fuck you I won't do what you tell me " about 327 times? A better choice of download for Christmas number 1 would be this , if it were commercially available. Beck does the Velvet Underground 's 'Sunday Morning '. It's gorgeous. It's the first track on the Velvet Underground & Nico album. But you [...]
Night Two (12/3): [via YEMblog ] Night Three (12/4): [via YEMblog ] Previously on HT : Phish Fall Tour Coverage YEMblog : Audio, Video, Reviews & More

Halloween's Coming, Halloween's Coming. Skeletons will be after you. No they won't, but at least it gives me a half-arsed excuse to post some Nirvana on here for the first time. I like Nirvana a lot. I've been going through something of a reunion with them every day in the car to work this week. They blow the cobwebs off before a hard day at the coal face, that's for sure. Nevermind still sounds freakin' A or awesome or whatever superlative those college frat boys would use to describe it back [...]

I'd been meaning to re-post this excellent Beatles show a couple of weeks ago when the world was going Beatles mad and I re-posted the best of the Beatles posts I'd done, but somehow I forgot to upload it at the time and I thought, "Ach, I'll do it later..." Spurred on by a request from reader FC3 (as well as other requests in the past) I'm re-posting it here, right now, today. The original files were deleted by persons unknown during the great DMCA clampdown of November 08. Don't be surprised if the new files are also removed [...]

That story from the other day ( here ) about the boy who swapped his iPod for a Walkman for a week had me thinking back to all my old compilation tapes I've still got in a box. I used to listen to the John Peel show religiously and sit with my finger poised over the pause button of the cassette deck on my music centre (as they were called, in my house at least, between 1983 and 1990, until CD first came into my life) waiting for something good to pop up inbetween the anarcho-punk, dub reggae, Ivor Cutler [...]

On constant rotation chez moi this week has been the new long player from the Super Furry Animals . It's called Dark Days/Light Years and it's a belter. But you probably knew that. So far ahead of everyone else in terms of originality and imagination, I would say that the Super Furry Animals are currently the Best Band on the Planet. Except they're clearly not on this planet. To the uninitiated, on the face of it the Super Furries are just another generic indie guitar band. But look closer. Are [...]

...Spring is upon us, follow my only song. The clocks change this weekend, and the opening line from the Fleet Foxes 'Ragged Wood' has been ringing in my head since yesterday, when I logged onto The La's forums to discover that Lee Mavers , my generation's Syd Barrett, Arthur Lee and Howard Hughes rolled into one (Eccentric behaviour? Check. Reclusive lifestyle? Check. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? Check) has come out of hibernation for a one-off (or maybe more) guest spot on Pete Doherty's tour. He's [...]

My wee girl likes Hannah Montana, High School Musicals 1, 2 and 3 and all that sort of pre-teen garbage. A particular favourite of hers at the moment is Camp Rock, the story of a poor girl who finds herself at a summer school full of rich, beautiful and talented teenagers all intent on making their mark in the business of show. But you don't need to know that. However. 'Camp Rock'! I always have a wee snigger at that title. In my head I can picture Freddie Mercury in a puff-sleeve blouse singing "Scaramouch scaramouch do the [...]

The name's White. Jack White. Iffy Bond themes notwithstanding, Jack White can barely do wrong. Even without his pants on, as you'll hear below. In the past I've posted some fairly essential White Stripes shows and Raconteurs radio sessions. If you're very quick and look in the darkest corners of Plain Or Pan? they're still available. But not for long. I know many people prefer the basic blues riffs and rudimentary style of the White Stripes to Jack's more considered approach [...]

Currently going through a major reappraisal in the house of Plain Or Pan? at the moment is Elliott Smith . I've been playing all my outtakes stuff and gone a-diggin' in the deepest corners of the fabulous internet. Not surprisingly, my wee treasure hunt has turned up some good stuff, not least the following concert.... Some of you may be familiar with the Black Sessions. Effectively the French equivalent of a John Peel session they go out live over the radio. Usually there's also 2500 promo CDs [...]

Man-bag wearing, perma-tanned soul/folk/rock crooning all round pie, mash 'n' jellied eels geezer Paul Weller played a 'God's Jukebox' session recently on Mark Lamarr 's Radio 2 show. And it was a belter. Extremely well played (is that a mellotron?) and captured perfectly in the high quality files below, Weller and his " boys" run through a selection of tracks from his new album '22 Dreams' , as well as a track from 'As Is Now' and a cover of Manfred [...]

On the 12th May 1995, Jeff Buckley was playing at Prince 's club, 'First Avenue' , in Minneapolis. On the same night, a session he recorded in Atlanta a couple of weeks earlier (probably) on the 22nd April was broadcast on the radio. It was later released on a bootleg CD simply titled ' Sessions '. I paid about £15 for my CD at the Barrowlands market one Sunday, way back before the internet was freely available and file sharing was all the rage. Of all the Jeff Buckley bootlegs and odds 'n' sods I have, the [...]

Today's post has the feel of that dodgy Freeview Channel, ' Dave ', the channel that shows endless repeats of 'Have I Got News For You' , 'QI' , 'Never Mind The Buzzcocks' etc - all great stuff, none of which was actually produced by ' Dave ' itself. Read on... Many of you I'm sure will be familiar with the Bon Iver album, 'For Emma, Forever Ago' . All critics and music fans alike seem to love it. It's been called modern folk, it's been called folktronic, but to me [...]