[Illustration by TAMER YOUSSEF] WALL STREET JOURNAL: Rebel forces in Libya surged into Tripoli Sunday, in what looks like the final days in power for Moammar Gadhafi and his sons. We should all first be grateful for the looming demise, after 42 years, of one of the world’s nastiest dictators. The U.S. and NATO interest now lies in executing as rapid a denouement as possible consistent with a minimum of bloodshed. The best outcome would be a quick Gadhafi exit, if not directly to some jail cell then to an Arab redoubt where he can sit in the prison of […]
FOLK FESTIVUS: Q&A With Jorma Kaukonen
Jorma Kaukonen, bottom left BY JONATHAN VALANIA Son of a Finnish American father and Russian Jewish mother, Jorma Koukonen spent his early child in the Phillipines and his teenage years in Washington D.C., where he learned to play guitar. He played in an early rock ‘ roll band called the Triumphs in the late 50s, before being seduced by the finger-style acoustic blues playing of Reverend Gary Davis whilst attending Antioch college. In 1962 he moved to the Bay Area to attend Santa Clara University, where his roommate was one Paul Kantner. During this time he struck up a friendship […]
FOLK FESTIVUS: Q&A With The Wood Brothers
BY MEREDITH KLEIBER FOLK FESTIVAL CORRESPONDENT Oliver and Chris Wood, AKA The Wood Brothers, have been playing as a duo since the middle of the last decade, but their musical pedigree extends even further back. Oliver’s soulful, bluesy style lent itself well to the south, where he toured a lot with his band, King Johnson, while Chris’s jazzy bass-playing skills helped to found Medeski, Martin & Wood. But it wasn’t until 2005 that the brothers decided that they had waited long enough to combine efforts professionally and make an album together. Their third full-length original album, Smoke Ring Halo, was […]
How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Bob Dylan
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY MIKE WALSH Let me make this clear up front: I’m not a Dylan-head, Dylan-ite, Dylan-phile, Dylan-ologist, or any other kind of extreme Dylan fan. In fact, I never bought a Dylan record or CD until just a few years ago. I never saw the need. Growing up in the ’60s, Dylan was on the radio all the time —“Blowing in the Wind,“ “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right,“ “The Times They Are a Changin’,“ “All I Really Want to Do,“ “It Ain’t Me Babe, “Mr. Tambourine Man,“ etc., etc. Plus, many other bands had hits […]
FOLK FESTIVUS: Q&A With Hoots & Hellmouth
BY MEREDITH KLEIBER FOLK FESTIVAL CORRESPONDENT The lineup of Philly’s own Hoots & Hellmouth has certainly changed a lot over the years, but what remain immutable are their folk-powered melodies, honeyed harmonies, and prevailing sense of good ol’ foot-stompin’ fun. To add a little more oomph and keep spirits high after the departure of founding member Andrew “Hellmouth” Gray, they recently added a drummer into the mix, thus changing the band’s dynamic and adding more rhythm to their already animated live energy. They play the Main Stage of the Philadelphia Folk Festival tonight. PHAWKER: Your performances always contain so much […]
ANARCHY UK: Putting Out the Fires With Gasoline
BY REBECCA GOODACRE LONDON CORRESPONDENT With at least $160 million worth of damage, over 2,500 people arrested, almost 100 small businesses destroyed and five people dead, the riots in the UK last week were some of the worst seen for decades — at it’s peak, there were more fires burning in London than any time since The Blitz. Whilst lives are tentatively being put back together, the big question which still looms over politicians, the police and the general public is quite simply why? Thousands of people seemingly turned on their own communities, ruthlessly smashing and burning their way through […]
The Other Reason We Vote Against Our Best Interests
THE ECONOMIST: Instead of opposing redistribution because people expect to make it to the top of the economic ladder, the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like to be at the bottom. One paradoxical consequence of this “last-place aversion” is that some poor people may be vociferously opposed to the kinds of policies that would actually raise their own income a bit but that might also push those who are poorer than them into comparable or higher positions. The authors ran a series of experiments where students were randomly allotted sums of money, separated by $1, and […]
WORTH REPEATING: ‘Another Texas Idiot For Sale’
ABC NEWS: When Rick Perry arrived in New Hampshire one day ago, he repeated the state’s “live free or die” motto, telling an audience, “You’ve got to love that. What Perry may not have loved, however, is the treatment he received just 24-hours later at a meet-and-greet stop in this picturesque Seacoast town where he encountered about two-dozen protesters who shouted at him, held signs with slogans like “Another Texas idiot for sale,” and followed him into a cafe to yell some more. The protesters, some of whom were senior citizens and members of the New Hampshire Alliance For Retired […]
FOLK FESTIVUS: Q&A With Joel Plaskett
BY MEREDITH KLEIBER Joel Plaskett is no music-biz newbie. If you’re an American, his name may not yet be familiar to you, but Plaskett is among the most well known contemporary musicians in Canada. Hailing from the Halifax indie scene of the 90s, Plaskett cut his teeth with Thrush Hermit who hung it up in 1999. He went solo around the turn of the century and blew up in the great white north shortly thereafter. He kind of looks like Michael Cera but his taught, whimsical brand of pop-rock sounds like the second coming of Marshall Crenshaw, and as second […]
Christine O’Donnell Storms Off Set Of Piers Morgan
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: The trouble started when Morgan asked O’Donnell about a part of her book that discussed gay marriage. That’s when O’Donnell accused him of “borderline being a little bit rude.” O’Donnell repeatedly urged Morgan to drop the topic of gay rights, but Morgan would not back down, asking another question about the Pentagon’s repeal of its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Morgan at one point looked as though he was trying to hold back a smile, and insisted, “I think I’m being rather charming and respectful.” O’Donnell said the gay marriage issue is not relevant or what she […]
EARLY WORD: The Folk Implosion
BY MEREDITH KLEIBER If you live in the Philly metro area and have yet to attend the Philadelphia Folk Festival, well this is your year to start. The Folk Fest turns 50 this year and will be celebrating five decades of good, clean, crunchy, folky fun for the whole family this weekend when it returns to beautiful Old Pool Farm in Schwenksville. Once again the lineup is a heady mix of heritage folk artists and barn-burning upstarts. Below are our picks for the must-see performances of the weekend. And don’t forget to sample Yards’ special Folk Fest Lager, which is […]
TONITE: The Subterranean Homesick Blues Traveler
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] You can buy tickets HERE. ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: Zimmerman, Robert: Aka Bob Dylan, aka the Mystery Tramp, aka Napoleon in Rags. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Bob Dylan was the all-seeing eye atop the pyramid of rock–a razor-thin, tousle-haired visionary speaking in stoned parables and meth-riddles about the nature of transcendental consciousness from behind impenetrable black shades. His status as generational oracle was earned by a triumvirate of hallucinatory folk-rock albums–1965’s Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, and 1966’s Blonde on Blonde–that he would spend the rest of […]
If You Can Read This You Are Already THIS Doomed
[Artwork by MPOKimageworks] NEW YORK TIMES: Energy “will give us serious and sustained problems” over the next 50 years as we make the transition from hydrocarbons — oil, coal, gas — to solar, wind, nuclear and other sources, but we’ll muddle through to a solution to Peak Oil and related challenges. Peak Everything Else will prove more intractable for humanity. Metals, for instance, “are entropy at work . . . from wonderful metal ores to scattered waste,” and scarcity and higher prices “will slowly increase forever,” but if we scrimp and recycle, we can make do for another century before […]