New Years Eve 1998-1999: Prince “1999″ (duh)
I was a freshman in college and 18 years old. On our college winter break my best friends from childhood decided we would take the train to Montreal for New Years. A place where people respected our right to drink alcohol. Our friend’s dad was a train conductor, and somehow we managed to get an entire train car to ourselves -twenty 18 year olds on the five hour train ride North. I remember looking out the window to the snow covered tree tops and …

Partially in honor of the retiring of the name We Are Jeneric but mostly in honor of me finding a few pieces of paper (below) in my jacket pocket, here are the lyrics to an alternative version of “Sir Charles the II” performed only once during a b3nson familyband set comprised otherwise entirely of classic hip-hop covers.

Happy nearly New Year from all of us at B3nson. Unfortunately, with the impending Mayan-predicted apocalypse looming, it looks like we won’t get to celebrate another. You know what that means? We should probably live it up.
That said, we’ll be hosting (in conjunction with Swordpaw) a night of revelry for all to enjoy. We’ve booked Valentine’s in its entirety so as to bring you that much more musical sensation to tickle your ear-buds. The show will start at 7:00, and bump all through the night. Snacks and a champagne toast …

Our friends over at Nippertown did a write up after our fourth annual Funsgiving show. If you weren’t there, make sure to read Tim’s great review.
Thanks a lot, Tim!

Merry Christmas from the Boston Celtics! A few Holidays back on lunch break from Stewart Electric Repair the Boston Celtics duo put together a holiday track. Originally it was for an Australian Record Label that was releasing an Indie Rock Christmas Album. Due to us not meeting the deadline and then having to go back to work after said lunch break the track became lost in translation. So here it is now for your listening pleasure! Enjoy!
Christmas Future Now by The Boston Celtics
“Autopilot on run, distant from the sun where …

December’s winding down, and with that 2011. 2012 will hopefully be a little more exciting. We have quite a bit to look anticipate; another apocalypse being the obvious frontrunner. With that, let’s see what our readership thinks the Best Albums of 2011 are.

I figure it’s about time for everyone’s best of lists, so here’s mine.  But think of it more as a “favorites of 2011″ instead, since some books (Open City – Cole) were snubbed simply because of personal taste rather than writing ability, and others were overlooked or demoted because they are collections spanning many years of work.
10. The Illumination – Kevin Brockmeier.  “I was absorbed in the novel from the beginning, and it gets much better as it goes on.  The novel’s concept alone makes it worth reading, and Brockmeier …

We here at B3nson have a tendency to focus on what is currently happening in the capital region music scene and sometimes we even focus on what is going to be happening in the capital region music scene. This is for good reason: there’s a lot of awesome stuff going on out there and there’s always a lot of awesome stuff just over the horizon. But, sometime’s, it’s good to take a step back from all of that and take a look at some things that have already happened. Maybe they happened before you were here, maybe they happened and you missed them. Maybe you were there and need a little trip down Memory Lane. That’s what this column is all about. We’ve had some great talents here in Albany, and sometimes they get overlooked or sometimes they go on to do other things. But with so many good stories to tell and so many great songs floating around it seems like a shame not to share them with people.