Blog Posts

It was cold and snowing this morning, gray outside. I woke from a dream where some girl was smiling at me amidst great flooding. I had a major headache (vodka), way back in the gray matter (where the dream came from). I was drinking coffee and reading Rolling Stone. I don’t know if it was…

The last time 25-year-old guitarist, singer/songwriter Benjamin Wagner played at Caffe Lena he says, “people felt I was too ernest.” On Sunday, he will appear with A Pop Band to emphasize that his heart is musically in the groove. The former city resident, Uncommon Grounds employee and Saratogian freelance writer returns to promote his new…

They Might Be Giants ushered in the frenetic descent towards a new millennium New Year’s Eve at New York City’s Tramps, stampeding with reckless wit and scathing intelligence through nearly thirty of their eccentric pop gems in just over two hours. Charging through a raucous set that borrowed equally from TMBG’s seven hit-strewn LPs, frontman…

Though their whistful acoustic hit “Name” has catapulted Goo Goo Dolls from obscurity to ubiquity, the Buffalo-based band is better known for the seering, Replacement-inspired clamor evidenced on their post-punk LPs Jed and Hold Me Up. Tuesday’s racous audience at New York’s Academy, however, were not soley MTV converts and had obviously hung with the…

John Flansburgh may rock legions of disenfranchised, flannel-clad youth, but he ain’t no slacker. Calling from his New York City recoding studio Sunday, half of Brooklyn’s alterna-rock team, They Might Be Giants (TMBG) was busy mixing an upcoming live EP. Short of breath and apologetic, Flansburgh’s Sunday was no day of rest. “I’m kind of…

These days, Benjamin Wagner is a 22-year-old singer-songwriter in Saratoga Springs trying to make a name for himself with his debut CD “Bloom.” But when he attended college four years ago, Wagner wanted to be “the next Walter Cronkite.” “No shit,” Wagner muses. “That’s what I wrote on my college application to Northwestern — which…