On sale Saturday. Tickets available at Ticketmaster.com, 800.745.3000, AEGLive.com, MannCenter.org, TicketPhiladelphia.org, 215-893-1999 or The Mann box office. ROLLING STONE: In newly released audio from a March 1966 interview, Bob Dylan claims he kicked a heroin habit after moving to New York City. “I got very, very strung out for a while,” he says in excerpts released by the BBC. “I kicked the habit. I had a $25 a day habit and I kicked it.” He was speaking to New York Times writer Robert Shelton on a plane from Lincoln, Nebraska to Denver while on his legendary 1966 electric tour. This […]
SIDEWALKING: Miss Thang
Silk City, 1:09 AM last night by JONATHAN VALANIA
TONITE: The Gold Heart Mountaintop Queen Directory
Employing the same Buckeye ingenuity that keeps the Goodyear blimp afloat, Robert Pollard can polish a turd with Budweiser until it shines with 24-carat radiance, transmuting a tossed-off, six-pack idea into a classic rock artifact or at the very least a beguiling no-fi curio. As captain of the drunken boat that is Guided By Voices, Pollard built a cottage industry by churning out cheap, miniature melodic masterpieces with all the fidelity of a ham radio broadcast. He does it with volume — by which I mean quantity not loudness. As such, the discography remains daunting if only for its sheer […]
Usually Hilarious Taiwanese News Animators Now Calling Philly ‘Crappiest Place To Live’ On Earth
This from people who’ve been known to eat cats and dogs? RELATED: Eating dog meat is a long-standing culinary tradition not just in China, but also Korea. Cat meat can be found on the menu in China, Vietnam and even parts of South America. MORE
CINEMA: The Man Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest
[Illustration by NOMA BAR] BY ALEXANDER POTTER In America in the late 1960s and early 1970s, real life was truly more shocking — and infinitely more sleazy — than fiction. The resignation of a disgraced president was still fresh in citizens’ minds, and the stench of corruption permeated the walls of every bureaucratic institution in the nation. Likewise, the Big Apple was rotting from the inside out: Garbage collectors went on strike, leaving fetid mountains of refuse to pile up on the city’s streets; the murder rate was skyrocketing to an all-time high; and to add insult to injury, president […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Love, violence, death and America have always been themes for Australian-born singer-composer Nick Cave, so he was a natural to compose the soundtrack for 2007’s epically paranoid Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Cave also wrote the screenplay and soundtrack for the Australian epic The Proposition, which Roger Ebert described as “pitiless and uncompromising, so filled with pathos and disregarded innocence that it is a record of those things we pray to be delivered from.” Cave appeared in Wim Wenders’ 1987 film Wings of Desire, and he’s written plays and novels. In 2008, […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Uncommon Sense
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY It’s official. She’s running, and she says she’s going to bring “the voice of common sense” to the White House (a revelation that no doubt brought an even more deeply furrowed brow to the faces of those still trying to figure out which planet she commutes from). Recognizing Miss Sensible’s all-too-self-effacing nature, I think it’s only fitting that I cite a few past examples of Michele’s “common sense” utterings so that those who may be unfamiliar with these quasi-cum-laudables might join in appreciation of the intellectual depth and derring-do exhibited by this nimble-minded master of malapropism. […]
LOVE WILL KEEP US TOGETHER: Internet Mistakes Cop-Clobbered Couple For Lovers In Repose
HUFFINGTON POST: While a city burned its Stanley Cup dream in the flurry of flames, looting and bone-breaking that was the 2011 Vancouver riots, an altogether different sort of passion spilled, literally, into the streets. At the moment, they’re known only as the kissing couple. But that won’t last long. When this unlikely snapshot of lovers entangled on a tear-gas filled street, with riot police in the fore and background emerged Thursday morning, you can bet the great media race was on. It will, most certainly, be the picture that launched a thousand media inquiries. Who are they? What were […]
Won’t Have Anthony Weiner To Dick Around Anymore
It is finished. RELATED: Weiner was Twitter’s first major political casualty in a darker way, too. This eposide demonstrated in a unique way that Twitter can encourage pack political journalism at its worst. I’m not defending Weiner. He lied to his colleagues, and what he did was unspeakably foolish, given that his outspoken liberalism guaranteed that he’d be a tempting target for the right. I’m agnostic on whether he should have resigned; other public officials who have committed far worse acts, sexual and otherwise, haven’t faced a fraction of the pressure he faced to step down. But ultimately, all you […]
TONITE: Come Feel Me Trimble
THE GUARDIAN: Trimble made a grand total of two albums in his early 20s: the last was released in 1982. He never had a record deal. The albums were privately released in minuscule quantities: he can’t remember whether there were 300 or 500 copies pressed of his debut, Iron Curtain Innocence, but either way, there weren’t many takers for his brand of lush-yet-disquieting Beatles and Pink Floyd- influenced psychedelia in early-80s New England. He never performed live outside of the central Massachusetts area. “We just played Worcester County, we didn’t even play Boston,” he says.The problem was Trimble’s habit of […]
Coltrane’s Long Island House On Endangered List
WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Long Island home where John Coltrane penned his iconic “A Love Supreme” is one of America’s most endangered historic sites, according to the annual list released by the National Trust for Historic Preservation Wednesday. Jazz great Coltrane purchased the modest 1950s Dix Hills ranch home in 1964 and lived there until he died in 1967. He transformed the basement into a recording and rehearsal studio and converted a guest room into a composition space. His wife Alice Coltrane lived in the home until 1973. Though the space is more artistically than architecturally significant, a local organization […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Star Of David
LARRY PLATT: Brenner gave birth to a generation of “observational” comics – funny men who examined small moments closely and poked fun at life’s minutiae. To borrow the now-infamous “Seinfeld” phrase, Brenner’s act was the first to be about nothing. In the same way that Dr. J paved the way for Michael Jordan, Brenner gave us Jerry Seinfeld, much to his chagrin. About a decade ago, a woman in the audience called out to Brenner: “Do you think in his quiet moments alone, Jerry Seinfeld admits you’re the original?” The crowd cheered. […] Turns out, Jerry was more than a […]
COMMENTARY: A Home Where The Buffalo Roam
BY JEFF DEENEY In yesterday’s Inquirer there was another article in a long series of familiar articles telling us yet again that the city’s homeless shelter system is a dismal failure. The shelter system cannot provide even basic services to many who engage it, let alone make a start towards the city’s stated goal of ending homelessness. There’s really nothing new, here; we all know how this story goes. Though the unique twist in this particular article was its focus on the groaning, overcrowded family shelters, reporting that they are already at capacity early in the system’s peak summer months […]