[Illustration by NEWTASTY] WIKIPEDIA: Lenny Bruce (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), born Leonard Alfred Schneider, was an American stand-up comedian, writer, social critic and satirist of the 1950s and 1960s. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial led to the first posthumous pardon in New York history.On October 4, 1961 Bruce was arrested for obscenity[9] at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco; he had used the word cocksucker and riffed that “‘to’ is a preposition, ‘come’ is a verb” and that the sexual context of “come” is so common that it bears no weight, and that if someone […]
LET IT BLURT: Lester Bangs Speaks
ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: Back in the day, Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer and Nick Tosches formed a terrible triumvirate of rowdy, hard-living rock scribblers — angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of rock — feared and loathed by the music industry’s power elite. They didn’t just write about rock ‘n’ roll; he lived it, drank it, smoked it, felt it up, snorted it down and puked it up all over the page the morning after. BOING BOING: So what an incredible thrill it was to come across a 90-minute interview with Lester […]
MCCAIN: I Heart Cheney & Rumsfeld
It is all about judgment. SALON: Republicans are already starting to gird themselves for a Nov. 4 debacle. A front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times featured GOP leaders lamenting the disarray in the McCain campaign. More ominous for McCain are the results of a secret-ballot survey by National Journal magazine of roughly 100 prominent Republican campaign consultants. Freed from the demands of on-the-record spin, 80 percent of these operatives admitted that it was highly likely that Obama would win the White House. The other 20 percent — the cockeyed optimists of the GOP camp — predicted that the election […]
LOST IN TRANSLATION: Letter From Tokyo
Assistant Editor Eva Liao recently moved to Tokyo where she is studying Japanese in an intensive two year program that will, upon completion, certify her to conduct business in the Land Of The Rising Sun. She will be dropping us letters semi-regularly about her experiences as a stranger in a strange land. Dear Phawker, So yes, I’m in Tokyo! For almost a month now. I think I’ve made a pretty smooth transition. Or as smooth as I could have hoped for, I guess. Japan is unlike any other place Ive been and there are many tiny obstacles to surpass. Although […]
IMPERIAL HUBRIS: Rome Did Not Fall In A Day
NEW YORK TIMES: At the turn of the 20th century, toward the end of a brutal and surprisingly difficult victory in the Second Boer War, the people of Britain began to contemplate the possibility that theirs was a nation in decline. They worried that London’s big financial sector was draining resources from the industrial economy and wondered whether Britain’s schools were inadequate. In 1905, a new book — a fictional history, set in the year 2005 — appeared under the title, “The Decline and Fall of the British Empire.” The crisis of confidence led to a sharp political reaction. In […]
HOCKEY BOMB: Palin Roundly Booed By Flyers Fans
FORBES: Palin Gets Booed in Philly! This is sure to be the headline splashed across television and newspapers Sunday morning, the day after the Republican Vice Presidential candidate and hockey mom from Alaska drops the puck at the ceremonial face-off for the Philadelphia Flyers’ home opener on Saturday night at the soon-to-need-a-name-change Wachovia Center. What will be missing from the news: the jeers were deserved. As every sports fan knows, no one is safe in front of Philadelphia fans—they have never needed a reason to boo anyone in their ballpark, stadium or arena. As usual though, the boring chorus of […]
OBAMA: ‘Our Destiny Is Not Written For Us, But By Us’
[Photos by TIFFANY YOON] STARS AND STRIPES: Rally For Change, Progress Plaza, Philadelphia, 8 AM REMARKS OF SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: We meet at a moment of great uncertainty for America. In recent weeks, we’ve seen a growing financial crisis that’s threatening not only banks and businesses, but your economic security as well. It’s getting harder to get a loan for that new car or that small business or that college you’ve dreamed of attending. And in recent days, millions of Americans have lost more of their investments and hard-earned retirement savings as the stock market has plunged. I know these […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
READY FOR PRIME TIME: TV On The Radio, Electric Factory, Last Night [Photos by JONATHAN VALANIA] SET LIST Young Liars Wrong Way Dancing Choose Golden Age Wolf Halfway Home Province Dreams Blues SMO Satellite Love Dog Crying Method Starring VERDICT: With expectations high in the wake of the just-released and most-excellent Dear Science, TVOTR packed out the Factory Friday night with old-school admirers and newbie acolytes. Ninety minutes later, what was the takeway? Sad to say: Meh. Not sure if it was the muffled, monochromatic mix or the prospect that some bands simply should be heard (preferably in headphones) not […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Anthony Braxton
BY DAVE ALLEN Last night’s concert at Settlement Music School confirmed it: Anthony Braxton is from another planet. I’d known that he had written music intended to be performed at non-Earth locations and that one of his compositional heroes, the late Karlheinz Stockhausen, claimed to have emanated from the star Sirius. But during a compressed set with his Falling River Quartet, it was clear thatBraxton is operating on another plane of existence. Good for us, the curious listeners; not so good for his fellow players, whom he frequently left in the dust. On three types of saxophones and the mammoth, […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
[Photo by LAURA BUCKMAN] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Somewhere in the nether zone where the rip-and-burn ethos of the Digital Age bumps up against the you-break-it-you-bought-it copyright laws of the Analogue Age is where Girl Talk opens his laptop and throws a party. That may sound about as sexy as an algebra equation on paper, but as parties go, it’s a deathless, breathless unstoppable good time: smoke, confetti, toilet paper streamers, and, like, all your favorite songs — together at last! Unlike most, DJs, Girl Talk, aka acclaimed Pittsburgh-based mixologist Gregg Gillis, doesn’t cut and paste from obscure […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Letter From Obama
Jonathan — I’m coming to Philadelphia tomorrow, Saturday, October 11th. I’ll be visiting four different neighborhoods and talking to folks about what we can do together to change this country. See the details below and RSVP for the event in your neighborhood. Hope to see you there, Barack P.S. — Here’s the invitation for the event: This Saturday, October 11th, please join Barack Obama for rallies in Philadelphia, where he will talk about his vision for creating the kind of change we need. Change We Need Rallies with Barack Obama Saturday, October 11th Progress Plaza 1501 N. Broad Street Mayfair […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR The third season of The Sarah Silverman Program began this week on Comedy Central; because Silverman intentionally goes for the long bomb on sensitive topics — religion, abortion and sexual predators are — the show has become a kind of comedy litmus test. MORE PREVIOUSLY: This is something else we’re gonna do: buck the Calendar Journalism school of arts coverage. And buck it hard. We don’t work for the publicists, so why should we work on their clock? Who fuckin’ died and made them Elvis? Sure, Jesus Is Magic came out on DVD eons ago, but all copies […]
TONIGHT: TV On The Radio
Now playing on Phawker Radio! (right after the new Girl Talk) TVOTR plays the Electric Factory tonight!