Coronavirus: Things to Watch
NPR Unlocks 9:30 Club Archive Featuring Over 100 Live Performances
From 2005 until 2017, NPR broadcast live performances from the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. Now, in celebration of the venue’s 40th anniversary, that archive of over 100 performances is available for your streaming pleasure through NPR’s website. The fine folks at National Public Radio have put a tremendous amount of effort into this archive. Each individual concert has been published with its original write-up. Remember a time when “Conor Oberst has been called the voice of his generation”? Us neither, but apparently that happened when he was 24-years-old. In that sense, this isn’t just an abundance of fine performances, it’s also a collection of music criticism — sometimes hyperbolic, but always earnest — by hardworking people who love music. From the first concert by Bright Eyes in...
Dropkick Murphys and Bruce Springsteen Rock an Empty Fenway Park: Watch
The gates around the storied Fenway Park opened today to welcome its first event since the COVID-19 pandemic. In front of stands empty of audience members, Dropkick Murphys took to the baseball diamond for a livestream concert. Though they were alone inside the stadium, Bruce Springsteen joined them remotely near the end of the set for a collaborative performance. Dubbed Streaming Outta Fenway, the special benefit performance marked both the first time Dropkick played a full concert at Fenway, and the first such show of any kind sans an audience at a major US arena or stadium. Springsteen, meanwhile, made history in 2003 by becoming the first musician to play a ballpark-wide concert at Fenway. Thus it was fitting for The Boss to join the Boston Celtic punks for the uniq...
The Avett Brothers, Brandi Carlile, Dave Matthews Play Banding Together Benefit Livestream: Watch
Banding Together with Brandi Carlile (photo by Ben Kaye), The Avett Brothers (photo by Philip Cosores), and Dave Matthews Breckenridge Brewery is today (May 30th) presenting Banding Together, a benefit livestream concert supporting the Colorado Music Relief Fund. Airing from 8:00 p.m. EDT-11:00 p.m. EDT, the event is available via YouTube, 97.3 KBCO, and CBSN Denver. Tune in below. Hosted by KBCO Morning Show host Bret Saunders and CBS4 anchor Jim Benemann, the livestream will feature performances from The Avett Brothers, Brandi Carlile, Dave Matthews, Jack Johnson, Marcus Mumford, Big Head Todd & The Monsters, The Lumineers, Michael Franti, Nathaniel Rateliff, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Sam Bush, The String Cheese Incident, and Nick and Helen Forster. In addition to the music, there will be ...
Lord of the Rings Cast to Reunite for YouTube Livestream
Everybody is keeping in touch with old friends these days. As it turns out, so are some fellas from Middle Earth. This Sunday, the cast of The Lord of the Rings will reunite for a special livestream — because apparently Gollum’s nonstop reading of The Hobbit was only the beginning. The epic reunion is the latest installment in Josh Gad’s ongoing series “Reunited Apart”, which has already brought together the cast of The Goonies and Back to the Future during this period of self-isolation. In a teaser clip, Gad geeks out to Astin in an attempt to bring The Lord of the Rings family back together. “I was wondering what you might think about tracking down a certain group of buddies, comrades, pals,” says Gad. “Oh, what’s another word for it? Fellowship?” Astin protests, but event...
Led Zeppelin’s Reunion Concert Film Celebration Day to Stream on YouTube
Celebration Day, the concert film capturing Led Zeppelin’s one-off reunion at London’s O2 Arena in 2007, will stream for free on YouTube this weekend. The film will be available for 72 hours beginning Saturday, May 30th at 3:00 p.m. ET. Fans can tune in below via Led Zeppelin’s YouTube channel. Led Zeppelin’s reunion, which doubled as a benefit concert for music executive Ahmet Ertegün, took place at London’s O2 Arena on December 10th, 2007. It marked the band’s first full-length performance in almost three decades, and their first time playing together since John Bonham’s death in 1980. For the show, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones were accompanied by Bonham’s son, Jason, on drums. Celebration Day, which was released in 2012, captures Led Zeppelin’s 16-song, two-encore set i...
Radiohead Streaming 1994 Show Live at the Astoria on YouTube: Watch
It’s Thursday, and that means it’s time for another entry in Radiohead’s quarantine concert series. Today, May 28th, the rockers are unlocking footage of their famous 1994 London show Live at the Astoria. Tune in below beginning at 5:00 p.m. EDT. Coming as it did a little over a year after Pablo Honey and ten months before the classic The Bends, this set captured Radiohead in a liminal moment. Still riding high on the unexpected success of “Creep”, the band was already transitioning away from their early, grunge-derivative sound to the galactic rock that would define them in the second half of the ’90s. Live at the Astoria is notable as the first officially recorded performance of many future classics, including “Fake Plastic Trees”, “Black Star”, “My Iron Lung”, and “S...
Pearl Jam, Brandi Carlile, Ben Gibbard to Play All in WA COVID-19 Relief Concert
Brandie Carlile and Ben Gibbard, photos by Ben Kaye; Pearl Jam, photo by Lior Phillips Washington’s finest are coming together for a livestream benefit event dubbed “All in WA: A Concert for COVID-19 Relief”. Set to take place Wednesday, June 10th at 10:00 p.m. EDT/7:00 p.m. PDT, the concert will feature a number of local musicians and personalities. Among the confirmed talent are Pearl Jam, Brandi Carlile, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Mackelmore, comedian Joel McHale, Allen Stone, Mary Lambert, and The Black Tones, all Washington state natives. Some famous transplanted residents will also appear, including Dave Matthews, Ciara and her husband/Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, and Seahawks coach Pete Carroll. More guests will be announced soon. The concert w...
Waxahatchee to Play Entire Catalog During Weekly Livestreams
Live music may not return until next year, but for the safety and longevity of music it’s probably for the best. On the bright side, it’s also the reason why everyone will get the chance to see Waxahatchee play her entire five-album discography next month. Today, Katie Crutchfield has announced a new livestream series where she will perform a different record in full each Monday in June. Crutchfield, the singer-songwriter behind the Waxahatchee moniker, plans to dig through her catalog in chronological order over the course of the next month. Starting on June 1st, she will play her debut solo album, American Weekend. Following that on June 8th, she will revisit her breakthrough sophomore record Cerulean Salt from 2013. June 15th will see her play 2015’s critically lauded Ivy Tripp, with a ...
John Malkovich Gives Epic Preschool Graduation Speech: Watch
Imagine you’re sitting on the floor at home in front of your laptop for class, John Malkovich logs onto your Zoom meeting, and suddenly the Academy Award-nominated actor is giving you and your classmates the most bizarre graduation speech ever. That could be your reality if you were one of the toddlers who enrolled at Play ‘n’ Learn, a made-up preschool that hired Malkovich for their official ceremony on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. This whole thing went down because Colbert decided to give The New Pope star the prestigious opportunity of giving advice to recent graduates. Instead of giving him access to ivy leagues right away, Colbert tested him out with a brief message to preschoolers… and it went as oddly as expected. After introducing himself by saying, “You might know me f...
Jon Stewart’s Movie Irresistible Getting Digital Release This Summer
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a complete reshuffling of movie releases, what with theaters across the country shuttered. If there’s a bright side in all this, it’s that certain films are getting delivered directly to consumers much earlier than planned via paid video on-demand. The latest feature to receive the streaming push is Irresistible, the political comedy written and directed by the great Jon Stewart. Originally scheduled to debut in theaters on May 29th, Focus Features has announced that the film will now see PVOD release on June 26th. Priced at the standard $19.99 for a 48-hour rental period, Irresistible will be available on most major on-demand platforms, including Amazon, Apple, Comcast, DirecTV, Fandango, Google/YouTube, Charter/Spectrum, Verizon, Microsoft, Dish, Vud...
Sylvester Stallone to Host Rocky Watch Party Screening
“It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” Those words feel particularly relevant in 2020, which makes it the perfect time to revisit the start of the Rocky Balboa story — and you can do it with Philly’s Finest himself. Today, Sylvester Stallone will be hosting a livestream screening of Rocky on Facebook. To launch Creative Artists Agency’s (CAA) new weekly series “Screening Room with the Stars”, Stallone will be on hand to watch the 1976 classic with fans. The initiative will see a new film stream every Thursday at 7:00 p.m. ET/4:00 p.m. PT on the movies’ respective studio’s Facebook page, so Rocky will be screened on MGM’s page. Next week will find screenwriter and star Nia Vardalos hosting a viewing of My Big Fat Greek ...
Radiohead’s The King of Limbs: From the Basement Streaming on YouTube For First Time
Radiohead are flipping the script for the latest installment of their quarantine concert series. Whereas past editions have featured classic festival performances at Bonnaroo and Coachella, this week the band is taking fans into the basement. For the first time, Radiohead’s 2011 performance video, The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement, will be available to stream for free on YouTube. Recorded at London’s Maida Vale Studios by producer Nigel Godrich, the film features performances of all eight tracks from Radiohead’s 2011 album, The King of Limbs, as well as non-album singles “The Daily Mail”, “Staircase”, and “Supercollider”. The performance also features an expanded lineup, as Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, and Phil Selway are joined by Clive Dream on d...
