It was back in early 2006, when I was spending an inordinate amount of time touring with The Ragbirds, that I was introduced to Matisyahu. It was early spring, and we were on the way to a gig. Someone had put a disk in the CD player, and my response upon hearing it was, “What is THAT? It’s amazing!” Well, it was Matisyahu.
Randy proceeded to explain (more…)
Those of you who weren’t sure if I was insane previously? This post will put you *right* over the edge. So, I was originally going to make some crack about “Matisyahu Religion” in the title of this post, since there have been others, and a theme did seem to be presenting itself. However, I thought better of it. Just the name will work great in this case.
Here’s a Jewish kid from White Plains NY who goes to Israel for a semester in Israel, has some kind of religious experience and eventually becomes a Hasidic Jew who now lives in Brooklyn. Not really all that unusual so far. However, since that clearly wasn’t enough, he’s a musician with an absolutely fantastic voice who mixes Reggae influences with beat-boxing, rap and Hazzan-style Jewish Cantor singing. I know, I know, it sounds crazy (improbable…?), but trust me on this one: it’s fantastic. Click here, go listen. This post will be here when you get back.
This photo is from (more…)
Seeing Radiohead in concert is a little bit like a religious experience. OK, a lot like a religious experience.
Very, very different than a U2 concert, for instance, which also qualifies as a religious experience, but for different reasons. Bono runs his shows like (more…)
But I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Anyone who has seen Radiohead live will not need to ask what I mean by that. So, for the uninitiated: Thom York dances to his music like a little kid. It’s so much fun to watch! This is a band with great energy.
The Radiohead show was the best thing I saw at Bonnaroo 2006. I went to the festival having listened to several of their records several times — hardly what you would call a superfan. Upon leaving the festival, I have become a full-blown Radiohead convert.
Radiohead was the headliner on Saturday night. There were kids camped out at the main stage by dawn in hopes of getting good positioning for the show. Those that decided to do that had to sit through whatever was on the menu for the main stage, in the hot summer Tennessee sun, all day long.
That looked like a lot of work, so, being the eternal optimist that I am, I decided to just get to the main stage in time to squeeze my way as close as possible. That had worked great all day the day before, and all day Saturday. As you can see from previous posts, it had been a pretty good strategy.
Not for this show.
This was the first photo I took at the show. The camera was confused by what I asked it to do, so what it captured is not what things actually looked like that night…but believe it or not, this is kinda how it felt.
As you can tell, I was WAY (more…)
