Kurt Vile Spins His New Single On The TeeVee

Lo-fi late night TV ad for Kurt Vile’s new album Walkin’ On A Pretty Daze due out April 9th wherein he plays the song on a record player. The single, “Never Run Away,” sounds pretty great and you can download it below for free. We suggest you don’t look this gift horse in the face. Speaking of which, pretty sure that’s his daughter in the horse mask. Adorable. DOWNLOAD: “Never Run Away” [MP3]

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CONTEST: Win Tix To See The Feelies At UT

Seminal avant-pop savants  The Feelies play Union Transfer tomorrow night in support of Here Before, their first album in 18 years. We have two pairs of tickets to give away to  lucky Phawker readers. To qualify,  just sign up for our mailing list [SEE RIGHT, below the masthead] then email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the correct answer to the following Feelies trivia question: What is the name of the 1986 Jonathan Demme film the Feelies appear in? While we are all waiting to see how this turns out, enjoy this interview with Feelies mainman Glenn Mercer that originally ran on […]

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SEQUESTRATION BLUES: Edgar Alan Poe House Will Only Be Open Three Days A Week

  PHILADELPHIA BUSINESS JOURNAL: Sequestration will hit home this spring on Independence Mall. Budget cuts will mean closure of five sites at Independence National Historical Park, effective in May, and the Liberty Bell Center and Independence Hall will be closed at 5 p.m., eliminating evening hours in the summer, the National Park Service said Wednesday. Overall, the local budget for park sites was cut by $1.21 milion —or 5 percent of the $24.3 million budget. Across-the-board spending cuts must be absorbed in the remaining seven months of a fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. About 89 percent of the park’s […]

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BEING THERE: Nick Cave @ The Keswick

Photo by ERIC ASHLEIGH If you heard a distant rumble or saw a flash of light on the Northwest horizon last night around 9 p.m., that was Nick Cave, like a bat out of hell, smiting Glenside to a crisp as per his satanic majesty’s request. And it was good. Very good. How could it not be? Everyone knows Heaven has better weather but Hell has all the best bands. Cave looked and sounded in peak form (good hair, great suit, whipped himself about the stage like an electrocuted Elvis),  and his voice contained multitudes. Deep, dulcet, and strong like […]

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HOW SOON IS WOW: The Pablo Cuckoo Tape

SLICING UP EYEBBALLS: A newly revealed cassette recording of The Smiths rehearsing in a Manchester warehouse in May 1983 — prior to signing their first record deal — has surfaced online, collecting performances of nine songs with early arrangements and lyrics in what the band’s drummer today called “an early recording you’ve probably never heard before.” Dubbed “The Pablo Cuckoo Tape” after the pseudonym given the “source close to the band who made the recording,” the 40-minute performance initially was shared via smithstorrents.co.uk and now has been uploaded to YouTube, and can be streamed via the player embedded below. The […]

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NYPD Spent ONE MILLION Man Hours Arresting 440,000 For Pot Possession Over The Last Decade

  HUFFINGTON POST: The NYPD spent 1 million hours making 440,000 arrests for low-level marijuana possession charges between 2002 and 2012, according to a new report released Tuesday — just as legislative leaders in Albany are deciding whether to pass a bill reforming drug laws. The Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Arrest Research Project, pro-drug law reform groups that commissioned the report, said its findings show a “huge waste” of police resources. “We cannot afford to continue arresting tens of thousands of youth every year for low-level marijuana possession,” Alfredo Carrasquillo, a civil rights organizer with the activist group […]

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MISSING: Name: A Lady & Gentleman In Black, Age: 388 Years Old, Last Seen: City Of Brotherly Love

  INQUIRER: The perfect crime has long been a concept best left to Hollywood writers, not East Coast goodfellas. But this one was close. As St. Patrick’s Day came to an end 23 years ago, two men dressed as police got into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, cuffed the guards to a basement pipe, and made off with 13 works of art, including ones by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas. The loot, valued at $500 million, made the heist the largest in U.S. history. On Monday, the FBI shone a new spotlight on the old crime, one with a local twist. […]

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BEING THERE: Low @ Main Street Music

Photo by PETE TROSHAK Slowcore avatars Low arrived in Philly on Monday night to play an hour long free show to a packed store at Main Street Music in Manayunk. The event was a celebration of the eve of the release of their The Invisible Way album, produced by Wilco mastermind Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy let the band do what they do best while infusing their spare, dreamy sound with a dash of country influence resulting in one of their best albums yet. The band played almost all new songs but dipped into their back catalog to play “Dinosaur Act” at […]

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WORTH REPEATING: The Devil And Old Saint Nick

Illustration by JAY BEVENOUR EDITOR’S NOTE: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds play the sold out Keswick Theater tonight. Let There Be Light By Jonathan Valania [via MAGNET, circa September 2001] He was born like this, he had no choice. Nick Cave was born with the gift of a golden voice. He asked Leonard Cohen, “How lonely does it get?” Leonard Cohen hasn’t answered yet. But Nick Cave hears him coughing all night long, a couple floors above him in the Tower Of Song. In the beginning, there was the Birthday Party. And it was good. Rock ‘n’ roll as […]

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