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The news is full of the amazing linup for this concert, which now includes Paul McCartney, the Who, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Eric Clapton, Eddie Vedder, Billy Joel, Roger Waters and Chris Martin. But the best news I've heard is... if you can't make it in person to the sold out show at Madison Square Garden, you can watch it live on TV. PBS channel 13 should be carrying the concert on Wednesday night.

For more information check out this article, or just google for 12-12-12 Sandy concert and you'll find dozens more.

There’s already video of tonight’s Rolling Stones concert on You Tube! If you go there, you can see video of The Stones doing “Honky Tonk Women” with Bill Wyman, and “I’m Going Down” with Jeff Beck. There may be more by the time you read this!

During my two week break from writing this column, I have been super busy. I saw two Phil Lesh shows in Manhattan, two great shows with my friends, Dinamita, my new favorite band, The Blues Project and the Paul Butterfield Tribute at The Bearsville Theater, The Cheating Hearts played in Manhattan for the first time on a bill with Norah Jones, and I just came from the Graham Parker and The Rumour show at The Bardavon. Whew! I’m exhausted! LOL.

The first night of Phil Lesh didn’t really speak to me. Maybe I wasn’t listening. But the second night spoke right to my heart and soul, especially the second set, when they went from “Wharf Rat” into “Death Don’t Have no Mercy” into “Viola Lee Blues” to  end the set. Then they came back and did “Saint Stephen” into “Satisfaction” for the encore! It was just like a good old Grateful Dead show! BTW, if you’d like to listen to soundboard tapes of any of the recent Northeast Phil Lesh shows, they’re all available for free streaming on Taper Rob’s Ustream channel. Google him!

The Paul Butterfield Tribute at The Bearsville Theater was great, especially the songs Jimmy Eppard sang. Butter’s music really lends itself to Jimmy’s voice. “Love Disease” was a highlight! And The Blues Project were awesome! They just sat there and played their asses off! It wasn’t an exciting rock and roll show, but they held me rapt with just the music! Those guys can still play!

Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers. Steve and I have the day off from our regular jobs and while we have this opportunity we like to make small improvements to HVmusic.com.

I've just added a commenting system to our News blog. Please give it a try by adding your own comments to the stories posted there by our contributors. And as always, if you'd like to contribute a story or bit of news to be published on HVmusic.com just write us.

Tonight I'll be heading the Kingston Holiday Inn to see one of my all-time favorite local bands — "Blind Mice", with Joe Veillette and Dorraine Scofield. Get more details here.

— Steve Wehr

Greetings loyal readers! I hope everyone made it through Hurricane Sandy without any major damage or losses. How many more American cities will have to be underwater before we decide to do something about our energy deathwish junky mentality? Anyone with a drop of foresight saw this coming a half century ago, but I guess we just hadn’t squeezed the last dollar out of the last drop of oil yet, so nothing could be done, right?

There’s a hurricane comin’ on, my son’s visiting from California, and they cancelled tonight’s Social Distortion show at The Chance, so we’re gonna go straight to this week’s live music picks.

• Halloween, Wednesday, October 31 – It seems like everyone did their Halloween partying over this past weekend, so the day, itself, may be a bit of a letdown. Then again, maybe not! THE CONNOR KENNEDY BAND will be at The Bearsville Theater performing the music of The Allman Brothers Band, and, in the city, JACKIE GREENE is at The Music Hall of Williamsburg, Americana Roots Rockers, RECKLESS KELLY, is at The Bowery Ballroom, and the big show tonight is SMASHING PUMPKINS at The Barclay Center in Brooklyn.
   
• Thursday, November 1 – The choices are slim tonight. Upstate, we’ve got DOCTOR JOHN and THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA at The Palace Theater in Albany, and downstate, TOM TOM CLUB at The Brooklyn Bowl.
   
• Friday, November 2 – Again, upstate, JACKIE GREENE returns to The Bearsville Theater, and downstate, CHRIS ISAAK is at The Beacon Theater.
   
• Saturday, November 3 – All shows tonight are in the city. Former Parliament/Funkadelic keyboard whiz, BERNIE WORRELL and his orchestra are at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, Former J. Geils Band frontman, PETER WOLF starts a two day run at City Winery, and #1 Itunes Reggae chart topper, J. BOOG, is at BB King’s. My son produced and engineered J. Boog’s chart topper, so if any of my friends are reading this, meet me down there.
   
• Sunday, November 4 – PETER WOLF concludes his engagement at City Winery, and upstate, The BANJO SUMMIT is at The Bardavon Opera House in Poughkeepsie, featuring arguably the top three banjo players in the world, BELA FLECK, TONY TRISHKA, and BILL KEITH. This really has to be a Pick of the Week!
   
• Monday, November 5 – New Orleans R n B and Funk royalty, IVAN NEVILLE brings his DUMPSTAPHUNK to The Highline Ballroom, along with highly regarded Big Easy guitarist, ANDERS OSBORNE.
   
• Wednesday, November 7 – The second Pick of the Week is former Thirteenth Floor Elevators frontman, and noted mental patient, ROKY ERICKSON, who will be at The Bell House in Brooklyn, and PHIL LESH AND FRIENDS begin their invasion of the East Coast with three nights at The Wellmont Theater in Montclair, concluding on November 9.

Have a great week, and please don’t forget to tune in to The Little Delaware Jamboree on WIOX, 91.3 FM, and on the web at www.wioxradio.org, every other Monday evening at 8:30 for my radio version of this column. The next show will be November 12.

Fred Perry is the owner of Reservoir Music Center on Route 28 in Kingston, and founding member of Alt-Country supergroup, The Brooklyn Cowboys, is from a 3rd generation musical family and lives in the Hudson Valley, where he does what he can to promote live music.

It was just a little over a year ago that I wrote the obituary for my friend, Eugene Geary, the most rockin’ guitarist I ever played with, who I wrote a couple of albums worth of songs with, and who passed away last October 11^th. We were friends since we were kids, and there is no replacement for him as a guitar player, friend, and musical partner.

Shortly after “Huge” passed on, a friend gave me a CD of the last songs we wrote and recorded together, one of which won a certificate of achievement in the Billboard Song Contest. The CD never left my car player, and, in fact, it’s still there, because my car burned up last April. I managed to save the CD player with discs intact, but I hadn’t gotten around to taking it apart yet to remove the discs, so, when another friend gave me a new copy, I was very happy to relive it again. As I drove around listening over and over, I realized that the anniversary of his death was upon us, and started thinking about the way we wrote and recorded those songs. Most of the songs we wrote together started with lyrics that I wrote, which Huge then wrote music for. For these last few, we changed the way we worked.

The initial spark came from my friend for these songs. He had the germ of the idea, and then we adopted the method Mick Jagger and Keith Richard used when they wrote together. Huge played the riff over and over, while grunting and making primordial noises in the back of his throat. I stood with pen and paper and translated these sounds into English, just like Mick used to do with Keith. For every record I ever made, my operating slogan was always, “If it’s good enough for The Stones, it’s good enough for us”, which is why every track we ever recorded was done live in the studio, with everyone playing in the same room at the same time.