DAN GROSS REPORTS: R5 Productions’ Sean Agnew was at First Unitarian Church Tuesday, when Andrew W.K. was doing a spoken-word event, when the text messages began pouring into his cell phone. The church, where he books indie rock, punk and hip-hop shows, had just been name-dropped on “Gilmore Girls.” Agnew said he thought it was all a big mistake until he downloaded the episode yesterday and saw for himself. Agnew was surprised, and points out that Tokyo Police Club [pictured], a real band with whom a “Gilmore Girls” character was to tour, actually played the First Unitarian several weeks ago. […]
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PBJ, IT’S WHAT’S FOR LUNCH: Peter, Bjorn & John, Fillmore, Thursday Night BY AMY Z. QUINN Peter Bjorn and John’s MySpace profile cheerfully announces that in their band, “everybody writes, everybody sings, everybody plays, everybody’s happy.” Good enough for me, and for the rest of the crowd at the sold-out Fillmore/TLA Thursday night. Long story short, this was the first visit to our fair city for the Stockholm, Sweden-based trio, and you can bet your old ABBA records they’ll be back before too long. As for “Young Folks,” it occurs to me that the song suffers that the hands of […]
Chester The Molestin’ Lawyer In Deep Doo Doo
Yesterday, Larry Charles, 49, of East Oak Lane, faced five separate preliminary hearings on sexual-assault or indecent-assault-related charges. In February, he was held for trial on rape, sexual assault and other charges in the case of a 14-year-old girl with whom he was caught naked in the lawyers’ lounge at the Criminal Justice Center at 13th and Filbert streets on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Two of the five girls who testified yesterday are sisters of the 14-year-old. A third is a cousin. The two other girls are sisters whose mother had dated Charles. The mother had two younger […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
HOW SOON IS WOW? Johnny Marr w/ Modest Mouse, Electric Factory, Last Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER: I’ve never really been able to quite put my finger on what it is exactly that bothers me about Modest Mouse: Was it that they always sounded to my ears like The Sons Of The Pixies? Or, was it that they came up around the time I stopped believing in rock bands — which was, not coincidentally, when the Pixies’ broke up (not to worry, this was a temporary thing, for me and the Pixies). Either way, in the interim, Modest […]
BRIAN WILSON: Prayer
It took the light from “The Sombrero” Galaxy featured in this short film 28 million years to travel across space and time to be captured by The Hubble Telescope.
EARLY WORD: With The Lights Out It’s Less Dangerous
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NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In 1961, an integrated group of self-proclaimed “Freedom Riders” challenged segregation by riding together on segregated buses through the Deep South. They demanded unrestricted access to the buses — as well as to terminal restaurants and waiting rooms — but pledged nonviolence. Despite being backed by recent federal rulings declaring it unconstitutional to segregate bus riders, the Freedom Riders met with obstinate resistance, even by hatred and violence — as in Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala, where white supremacists attacked bus depots themselves. Local police often refused to intervene, but still the Freedom Riders kept to their pledge of […]
CINEMA: Exhumed Films
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It struck me during the first five minutes of the recent Tarentino/Rodriguez collaboration that the Weinsteins spent 50 million dollars to conjure the magic that Exhumed Films brings to Philly every month. The insane trailers, worn film prints, seventies-era lava lamp-like Coming Attractions announcements and of course the perverse genre films that Grindhouse professed to celebrate, have all been the stock-in-trade of the Exhumed Films collective which has exhibiting genre film favorites and oddities for nearly ten years now. Tarentino and Rodriguez can labor mightily to capture the off-handed weirdness of independently-shot films from the […]
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FIRST THING U LEARN IS THAT U ALWAYS GOT TO WAIT: Modest Mouseketeers, Electric Factory, Last Night SIMONE SECCI FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: Never saw Modest Mouse live before and I regret that ’cause probably if I’d done that right after their masterpiece, The Lonesome Crowded West, that would have probably gotten stuck in my head as one of the best live acts of the last decade. Having the legendary Johnny Marr from The Smiths (!!!!) on the guitar and a tag team percussive duo of the two Jeremiah Green and former Black Heart Procession drummer, Joe Plummer, like saying probably the […]
City Paper Gets Its Chocolate In Our Michael Nutter
BRAND WARS: This is a little embarrassing, it’s like showing up at the party looking hot and some bitch shows up in the exact same outfit!
LIVE & DIRECT: Dwight Evans For The Deaf
JONATHAN VALANIA REPORTS: The subtext of just about everything Dwight Evans has said so far: John Street is f**king up royally. As representative from Pennsylvania’s 203rd Legislative District, Evans pushed the city’s school district into the arms of the state like an unfit mother who loves her kids too much not to put them up for adoption — he says the city does not have the economic capacity to run the school system. Evans will bring back John Timoney — seemingly every other candidates idea of the Superman that can stop crime. Evans voted FOR casinos — BOO! — because […]