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Newport Folk Festival Turns 50 With Sets From Seeger, Baez, Decemberists and More
"Pete Seeger," vaunted promoter George Wein said on Saturday, "is the Newport Folk Festival." It's hard to argue the point. Fifty years ago, Seeger co-founded the legendary event with Wein while headlining a bill featuring artists like Odetta, Memphis Slim and the Stanley Brothers. Saturday, the 90-year-old Seeger was back onstage leading a 50th anniversary […]
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Dark Was the Night Benefit Unites David Byrne, Feist, The National
Sunday was what you could call a "win-win" night for music in New York City. At Madison Square Garden, arena-sized stars like Bruce Springsteen and Dave Matthews rang in folk legend Pete Seeger's 90th birthday with a massive benefit concert for Clearwater, a non-profit environmental organization (full report here). Less than 20 blocks away, an […]
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Jack White's Dead Weather Debut With a Bang in New York
In 1990, a teenage upholsterer and would-be priest named John "Doc" Gillis landed his first musical gig drumming for the Detroit cow-punk band Goober and the Peas. Twenty years later, Jack White III was back behind the kit last night at New York's Bowery Ballroom with his newest band the Dead Weather, a black-clad squad […]
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Tom Waits Spins Yarns, Sings About Jesus at Tour Opener in Phoenix
"The world is not my home," Tom Waits sang on the opening night of his highly anticipated U.S. tour. "I'm just passing through." One place Waits has always made his own is the stage, so no surprise that last night's looked like a junkyard at midnight: nebulously lit and hung in mist. Flanked by a […]
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Radiohead Kickoff In Rainbows U.S. tour in Florida
West Palm Beach, Florida — with its disposable income, constant sunshine and skin-stretching breast implants — is either the most ridiculous place for Radiohead to kick off their latest tour of the U.S., or just the most ridiculously appropriate. Radiohead clearly reveled in their surroundings, as Thom Yorke strolled onstage wearing a Don Johnson-styled white […]
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The White Stripes Discover Small is Beautiful in Nova Scotia
"Well, you're in your little room, and you're working on something good," Jack White once sang. "But if it's really good, you're gonna need a bigger room." "Little Room" was just a forty-five-second ditty on 2002's White Blood Cells, but it also spoke to the paradox of fame: Once you're a celebrity, you can never […]
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Live Review: Arcade Fire in London
A masterpiece of Baroque architecture, London's St. John's Church sits cradled in Smith Square, a stone's throw from Westminster Abbey and Parliament. Its interior — usually reserved for orchestras and symphonies — holds about 600 people. Both grand and intimate, the space was an ideal venue for one of the first shows previewing new material […]
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