The Bridge, winding down from their April tour, played with Strange Arrangement, building up for their summer tour, at Martyr’s in Chicago on 4-30-2011.  Next time Strange Arrangement will play the Chicago crowd it

The band formerly known as 50 Cent Haircut who, after some confusion with a particular rapper sharing two-thirds of the same name, decided a change would be beneficial, now enter the world and hopefully its consciousness as Patrolled By Radar, and bring with them a fantastically sublime new album Be Happy.

Purposefully unclassifiable and borrowing from predecessors such as Pink Floyd, The Flaming Lips and, as odd as it may appear, Neil Young,

The New Pornographers kicked off their spring tour to a packed house at the Fox Theater on Wednesday night. What you get from a Pornographers show is a mix of melodies and catchy pop hooks tempered with a sufficient balance of edge, and banter laced with plenty of f-bombs and sarcasm.

A blazing beacon of turquoise and teal crowns SF’s Bottom of the Hill, as Seattle sextet The Head and the Heart shuffles modestly onto a cramped stage. Delirious fans push forward for an intimate look at the Pacific Northwest folk rockers, as intense high-pitched shrieks erupt from the audience.

“Happy Earth Day!  We burned a bunch of gasoline to get all these people into this room, but we try to be low impact once we’re here.  I suppose we could have been super environmental and not played but… Hey! It’s 12:31 am! It’s not Earth Day anymore! Yeah!

The beauty of the Grateful Dead legacy extends far past the demise of the original line-up that sadly ended with the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995. The Grateful Dead created a dedicated community, or rather a counterculture, based on music and family values that have since refused to give up and let go.

April Fools Day.

I don’t want to compare Strange Arrangement to any band; I want to compare them to every band.  Take a taste of all the jamband scene has to offer, take a taste of all the funk, bluegrass, soul, and blues of the past, and add them up.  That is what Polygraph sounds like.  The term “poly “meaning “many “is the flavor of this album, many influences, many arrangements and many different ways to get down.  From the fun and quirky to the meaningful and profound,

Cornmeal and The Giving Tree Band have a lot in common.  They're both from Chicago, both play bluegrass/folk music, and both even have a set of brothers in the band.  When I asked Wavy Dave Burlingame of Cornmeal what he thought of the greenest band in