Brianland

Paul Simon certainly exceeded my expectations last night! He and his two bands only had a couple warm-up gigs in Dublin before bringing back “Graceland” in front of 50,000 people in the most famous park in the English capital of Europe. A 2 hour show became 3 hours, and he started at 7:20 to avoid […]

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. Whatever the particulars of any all-encompassing multi-day music festival you’ve been to — this one takes place in New Orleans.  When the festival music is over each night, instead of driving into a traffic jam or walking to a campground or checking into some generic hotel, you’re living in history and set loose in […]

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Here’s the artists / bands / ensembles I caught at New Orleans Jazz Fest over the last week . . . Thursday, April 26th, 2012 (1) — the Honey Island Swamp trio – at the Ogden Museum of Art Friday at Jazz Fest (11) — The Classic New Orleans Revue – with “Carnival Time” Johnson […]

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  It’s 4AM on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans — on a dosey-doe night of subterranean hideaways and pirate characters right outta “Treasure Island” and hanging in the Blue Nile next to Will Blades the young Hammond B3 master as he works the keys and valves and peddles to Karl Denson on sax and Stanton […]

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The Glorious Gumbo that is New Orleans .   Every big city in the world has a jazz festival — but when someone says “Jazz Fest,” unless otherwise qualified, they’re referring to The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival that’s been running every year since 1970, including the year after k.  And btw, New Orleanians […]

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The Grateful Dead Played My 30th  Or Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned At A Grateful Dead Concert             The weekend of my 30th birthday, four old friends drove from Winnipeg to New York to help celebrate it, and the Grateful Dead flew in from San Francisco to play. It’s a curious story […]

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The Ballad of the Profiteers   . You’re suckin’ on / your money’s teat, When nothin’s left / for folks to eat, You’re livin’ high / down on Wall Street, Crushin’ dreams / beneath your feet. How come it is / and why it’s not, The biggest thieves / are never caught, When all you […]

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Obama’s election night in New York City may have been my favorite single night / moment in 25+ years of living in Manhattan. (You can read about it here: https://brianhassett.com//2008/11/election-night-2008/ ) That feeling was extended to a week-long celebration in my second favorite city, Washington, D.C. — a home-game in the History League — And lo, […]

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Here’s the (Route) 66 greatest musical performances ever captured on film — after watching thousands of clips and reviewing hundreds of them for RockPeaks, this is the best of the best . . . And it tells a story, one complete show of shows, in a sequence of greatness . . . Blessing the blast is Johnny Clegg bringing Nelson […]

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Here’s an article I wrote on the film Festival Express, published in Relix Magazine, April 2004. Drivin’ That Train . . .         The Festival Express Rolls Again After 30 Years by Brian Hassett “That was the best time I’ve had in rock and roll,” said Jerry Garcia. “There were no straight people.” In the summer […]

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