Sonic Dances Eight dancers adorned with iPods and speakers will turn some of Philadelphia’s favorite public spaces into an outdoor stage. Follow the dancers of Group Motion Dance Company as they make their way down Broad Street to celebrate Opening Night at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. Choreographed by Manfred Fishbeck, in collaboration with Group Motion dancers, Sonic Dances will conclude in front of the Suzanne Roberts Theatre as audiences gather for the August 29 opening performance of Karen Getz’ Disco Descending. DETAILS Disco Descending Greek mythology meets disco fever: it’s 1978 — a group of suburban […]
MILE HIGH: Live And Direct From Denver
[Photos by LenEdgerly & DemConvention] Our DNC correspondent Nick Powell has managed to elbow out a space at the table in the press room. He will be sending us reports from on the ground — God and WiFi willing. Also, our analysts Amy Z. Quinn and Jonathan Valania will be parsing Obama’s speech. 9:55 PM AZQ: gotta go get the kid in pjs back in a sec 9:56 PJV: Oh great, I’ll tell Obama I am SURE he can stall for five minutes just start this John Lennon record over sure nobody will notice 9:58 PM Durbin. This […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
EXILE ON MAINSTREAM: Liz Phair, TLA, Last Night [Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA] 1. On the whole, it was a tidy kind of show. Liz Phair went onstage shortly after 8, rolled through Exile In Guyville and a three-song encore, during which she played on three different guitars and an electric piano, engaged in some truly priceless audience participation (more on that later), patted the show on its butt and had everybody home before curfew. 2. I was kind of disappointed not to see more college-age and twenty-something females in the not-quite sold-out TLA audience, though I guess these days the […]
TONITE: Some Assembly Required
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45 YEARS AGO TODAY: A Man Had A Dream
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former […]
INSTA-REVIEW: The New Nas
BY JOE WARMINSKY Nas dutifully hyped his ninth album during the height of summer, because that’s what you do when Lil’ Wayne is everywhere: You make sure the season’s hot-shit rapper has a little competition. But the untitled disc is really a back-to-school piece. This is Nas as essayist — and although the rhetoric is thoroughly familiar, his grip on it is firmer than ever. Even when he’s rapping about aliens, it’s tough to simply laugh it off as a conspiratorial rant: “I’m-a tell you what I seen with my three eyes/Word to me, not a hoax, back in 9-9/A […]
PAPERBOY: ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’ Edition
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
MILE HIGH: Live And Direct From Denver
SEMPER FI: Marine at Rage Against The Machine concert, Denver, 2:49 PM. [Photo by NICK POWELL] BY NICK POWELL DNC CORRESPONDENT My knees are throbbing, my shirt is drenched in mile-high perspiration, and I’m a little cranky after spending the afternoon with the iron-fisted leaders of the Iraq Veterans Against The War and following their attempt at an anti-war protest through the streets of Denver. The IVAW, who sponsored this afternoon’s concert with Rage Against The Machine, The Flobots, and others, sucked all of the protesting spirit out of the march by refusing media access to some of the vets […]
THE EARLY WORD: Return To Forever
TOON TIME: City Suckers, starring BoyCatBird The iconic BoyCatBird characters, created by Michael Segal for Ghostly International, appear in their very first animated short. This short was originally made to accompany the free Ghostly Swim compilation from Ghostly International and Adult Swim. [Hat tip to TIFFANY YOON]
RECONSIDER THIS: Don DeLillo’s Underworld
BY DAVE ALLEN Not long after Don DeLillo’s Underworld was published in 1997, it was canonized by critics and readers alike as the Next Great American Novel, and a 2006 survey in the New York Times cemented its cornerstone status among modern American letters. The praise, whether long-passed or more recent, is justified: DeLillo unseals nearly 50 years of American history from the stifling amber of nostalgia, while the narrative spans both coasts and the vast spaces between them without leeching the intimacies that connect them. In short, it contains multitudes. Many of the characters, after dissipating their energies through […]
TONITE: F*ck And Run
Exile in Guyville, 15th Anniversary Edition! Now playing on Phawker Radio!* DEAR DIARY, It’s been 15 years, but nothing’s really changed. It’s hopeless. I loved her then and I love her now for all the same wrong reasons: Because she’s a cunt in spring. Because I was a hero in a long line of heroes looking for something attractive to save. Because she gets away, almost every day with what the girls call, what the girls call, what the girls call murder. Because she writes with a number two pencil, she lives up to her potential and she’s clean as […]
HEY BIG SPENDER: We Are The Biggest Tipper
INQUIRER: “Philadelphians are the most generous tippers in the nation,” according to a news release from Zagat, announcing the official publication today of its 2009 guide to Philadelphia area restaurants. According to Zagat — or at least the 5,507 local diners who reported on their preferences and habits to Zagat — people in the Philadelphia area leave an average tip of 19.6 percent. New Yorkers leave 19 percent — the national average — while folks in L.A. leave 18.4. MORE