Impersonating The Band hasn’t been a decently-paying gig since Scorsese filmed The Last Waltz in 1976, but judging by the full-up crowd at the Trocadero Thursday night The Felice Brothers seem to be on their way. Actually, ‘impersonating’ sounds a little too dismissive and I like these guys, so let’s go with ‘evoking’ or ‘carrying on the old, weird Americana tradition’ of the Band instead. Besides, they have the pedigree (hail from upstate New York, sons of a carpenter) they’ve paid their dues (busked in the subways of New York; went acoustic at the Newport Folk Festival; woodshedd-ed at Levon […]
ROSS ASSHAT: Troy Davis Would’ve Been Even More F*cked If Not For The Mercy Of The Death Penalty
New York Times’ token conservative apologist Ross Douhat is cut a lot of slack by people left of the Hard Right and often tagged as a ‘reasonable’ conservative and usually we are inclined to agree — hell, he’s a HUGE step up from the bloodthirsty jingoistic asshattery of Bill Kristol, whom he replaced. But it is times like this that we have our doubts about just how compatible the word ‘reasonable’ is with the word ‘conservative.’ In his Sunday column in the Times, Douthat twists logic to the breaking point with his head-scratching defense of the death penalty in the […]
BEST OF: #Occupy Wall Street
WARNING: The soundtrack is HORRIBLE. PREVIOUSLY: U SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION: Occupy Wall St.
The Silver Lining In The Cloud Over MLK High
INQUIRER: There is no shortage of awful, terrible Philadelphia stories to be told following last week’s release of the report by the city’s chief integrity officer, Joan Markman, on the Martin Luther King High School fiasco. You have the sordid details of backroom bullying, with an esteemed chair of the school board and a veteran legislator taking turns explaining to out-of-town charter-school operator Mosaica that things are different in Philadelphia and maybe he’d be better off leaving town. There’s the meteoric descent of Dwight Evans, a once-inspiring figure who has turned in a few short years into an all-too-common entitlement-addled […]
MUST SEE TV: Earthquake Weather
Pretty terrifying security cam footage released by the National Parks Service yesterday of panicked tourists at the top of the Washington Monument scrambling down the stairs when the earthquake hit. The shaking goes on for a LONG time. Yikes. Hats off to to the ranger for remaining at her post until the last tourist was down the stairs. RELATED: The National Park Service announced Monday that experts have completed an interior assessment of the monument and found it to be structurally sound. “The heaviest damage appears to be concentrated at the very top of the monument, in what is called […]
FRINGE REVIEW: The Bacchae
BY BRANDON LAFVING The Theater Collective entered a new, modern translation of Euripides’ The Bacchae, into the record. They pulled on a number of events and artifacts from recent history to connect Philly audiences to the masterpiece. The troupe is the brain-baby of one of the most prestigious authorial couples of Philadlephia, the eminent Lili Bita, poetess, actress, author, and Robert Zaller, author and professor of history at Drexel University. Zaller translated and adapted The Bacchae, while Bita plays the deranged/bereaved Agave, bewitched murderer of her own child. Original author of the script, Euripides, was one of the most prolific […]
EARLY WORD: Theophilia
He plays Union Transfer on October 25th with Friendly Fires. WIKIPEDIA: London was born on the island Trinidad, on February 23 of 1987 and was raised in Brooklyn[2] briefly, then moved to the suburbs of the Poconos. His debut EP Lovers Holiday, released on Warner Bros. Records on February 7, 2011, features TV on the Radio‘s Dave Sitek, Sara Quin from Tegan and Sara, Glasser, and Solange Knowles.[1] His full-length debut album Timez are Weird These Days, mixed by noted producer Dan Carey, was released by Warner Brothers on July 19, 2011. According to critics, London’s “genre-bending approach draws from […]
SMUS: Who Died And Made Grover Norquist Elvis?
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Given our national penchant for Idols, Survivors, and less than three men, I think it’s safe to say that 99 out of 100 Americans would tell you they’ve never even heard of Grover Norquist. Yet, he continues to function as the most powerful and influential Republican party puppet master inside and outside of Washington today. Whenever Grover’s around, the poor and the middle class brace for the worst, while the wealthy and powerful reach for their wallets and beg for his favor. With Grover, conning the American people isn’t just a calling, it’s an essential component of his tax-cuts-’till-the-cows-come-home brand […]
WORTH REPEATING: Sec. Def. Vs. The Tea Party
Lost in the media’s shameless car wreck rubbernecking of Kim Delaney’s meltdown at the Liberty Medal Award ceremony last week was the fact that the recipient of said medal, Robert Gates, the outgoing Secretary of Defense and former Director of the CIA under Bush The Father, and Deputy Director of the CIA under Ronald Reagan, had some very alarming things to say about perilous state of the Republic. He speaks in non-partisan terms, but read between the lines and he is clearly talking about the Tea Party and the ruthless goon squad they sent to Congress. Which is not to […]
THE EARLY WORD: Ryan’s Hope
RYAN ADAMS BRINGS TOUR TO PHILADELPHIA FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2 ACADEMY OF MUSIC WITH SPECIAL GUEST JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD TICKETS GO ON SALE THIS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 AT 10AM! NEW ALBUM ASHES & FIRE OUT OCTOBER 11 NPR FIRST LISTEN LIVE HERE With his forthcoming Ashes & Fire (out October 11 on PAX-AM/Capitol) already generating arguably the best critical notices of his career to date, Ryan Adams has confirmed another leg of North American dates including a stop in Philadelphia on Friday, December 2 at the Academy of Music. Tickets go on sale this Friday, […]
STRANGER THAN FICTION: The Beautiful Suicide
LIFE: On May 1st, 1947, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. ‘He is much better off without me … I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody,’ … Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale’s […]
ARTSY: The Photojournalism Of Stanley Kubrick
Before gaining his reknown as one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema, Stanley Kubrick worked as a photographer for Look magazine. In 1949, a 21-year-old Kurbrick was sent to Chicago for an assignment: “Chicago, City of Contrasts.” MORE RELATED: At the age of 13, his father bought him a stills camera and he soon became fascinated by photography. He soon became an excellent amateur photographer, selling his pictures to magazines whilst still at high school. Later when he was looking for a job, Helen O’Brien, a picture editor at “Look” magazine, whom Kubrick had befriended, asked him […]
Anonymous Pwned The Syrian Gov Computer Network
It’s times like this, we think the feds should be hiring Anonymous instead of arresting them. In a brilliant stroke of hacktavism, they appear to have taken control of all the official government web sites in the major cities of Syria and replaced their respective home pages with this interactive map of Syria comprised of all 2,316 martyrs that have been slaughtered by the Assad government since March. If true, this is a huge cyber blow against the bloody tyranny of the Assad regime, which has barred all foreign reporters from entering the country and continues to claim that “armed […]