BY STEVE VOLK ALL-THINGS-BOWIE CORRESPONDENT Word was David Bowie will not tour behind The Next Day, his first new album in 10 years. Then his lovely wife Iman said something or other that suggested maybe he would. Oh, Bowie. Must you force us to live in mystery? Yes, apparently. You must. Our suggestion, for those trying to find some way of coping? Keep hitting refresh on your news feed, on one tab. But on the other, watch these six top-shelf, underwatched Bowie performances we mined for your pleasure. Five Years (1976) The 70s were Bowie’s decade and this performance […]
MILESTONED: Happy 70th Sly, Wherever U Are
Today marks Legacy Recordings’ Artist of the Month, Sly Stone’s 70th Birthday! A visionary musician, composer and bandleader whose work transformed the 1960s and ’70s in ways that are still influencing generations of musicians in America and around the world, Sly Stone brought the funk into the mainstream by pushing aside every preconceived boundary of pop music. Celebrate Sly & The Family Stone this month with a new poster design contest at Creative Allies. Design a funky, brightly colored poster for inspired by the song titles that accompanied so many of the group’s famous recordings for a chance to […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR DAVID EDELSTEIN: Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master is both feverish and glacial. The vibe is chilly, but the central character is an unholy mess — and his rage saturates every frame. He’s a World War II South Pacific vet named Freddie Quell, played by Joaquin Phoenix to the hilt — the hilt above the hilt. We meet him at war’s end on a tropical beach where he and other soldiers seek sexual relief atop the figure of a woman made out of sand.No, it’s not your father’s war — at least, the war portrayed in most sagas […]
CINEMA: The Stoker In The Wry
STOKER (2013, directed by Chan-wook Park, 98 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Few cinematic events this year were as titillating as the arrival of South Korean director Chan-wook Park on American shores, where the merciless creator of hard-hitting thrillers like Oldboy and Thirst has made his first English language film, Stoker. Park’s work has been so masterfully constructed up to now, a worried mind might travel back 20 years ago, when director John Woo capped off his string of action masterpieces with a drab misfire, Hard Target with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Co-produced by the Scott brothers, Ridley […]
BOWIE WEEK: 10 Great Tracks You Missed When You Wrote Him Off After Scary Monsters
BY STEVE VOLK DAVID BOWIE ARTS & SCIENCES CORRESPONDENT In honor of the Dame’s return, it’s time to reassess not only his 70s work (it’s still great) but all that came since. Because the truth is, for all the bitchin’ and moanin’ about Bowie’s post-Let’s Dance out-put, he often hit his old marks. Here’s a selection of the best of his blue period. “Absolute Beginners” From David Bowie: The Singles, 1969 to 1993 This epic ballad is simply overstuffed with goodies—from the ‘50s-era “bop bop ba-oos” to the sweeping, ain’t-new-love-grand chorus. Big hearted and perfectly coiffed, “Absolute Beginners” rocketed […]
RECONSIDERED: The Dishonesty Of Wired
SLATE: “The greatest crime of that book,” Landis says of Wired, “is that if you read it and you’d just assume that John was a pig and an asshole, and he was anything but. He could be abrupt and unpleasant, but most of the time he was totally charming and people adored him.” The wrongness in Woodward’s reporting is always ever so subtle. SNL writer Michael O’Donoghue—who died before I started the book but who videotaped an interview with Judy years before—told this story about how Belushi loved to mess with him: I am very anal-retentive, and John used […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Teleportation Accident
BY BRANDON LAFVING UK-based author Ned Beauman reaffirmed his position as “Most Likely To Be The Victim Of Homicidal Jealousy Of Male Writer Aspirants” last month when Bloomsbury published, The Teleportation Accident. This is the 27-year-old Beauman’s second novel to receive thunderous and near-universal accolades — the first being 2010’s Boxer, Beetle — and much as I’d love to call ‘bullshit’ after reading The Teleportation Accident I must resignedly admit to knowing what the hype is about. Our picaresque and highly unlikely story opens in Berlin circa 1931 with Egon Loeser, a bohemian anti-hero/playwright too smart for his own […]
GUNCRAZY: How The NRA Bought The 2nd Amendment
WASHINGTON POST: For more than three decades, the NRA has sponsored legal seminars, funded legal research and encouraged law review articles that advocate an individual’s right to possess guns, according to the organization’s reports. The result has been a profound shift in legal thinking on the Second Amendment. And the issue of individual gun-possession rights, once almost entirely ignored, has moved into the center of constitutional debate and study. For proponents of stricter gun control, the NRA’s encouragement of favorable legal scholarship has been a mark of its strategic, patient advocacy. “I think this was one of the most […]
BOOK REVIEW: J.K. Rowlings’ The Casual Vacancy
BY DANIELLE HAGERTY With The Casual Vacancy, Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has mothballed — for now anyway — the unicorns and death-eaters to explore the magic-less tragedies of ordinary lives. It’s set in a charming English village full of drama and intrigue. It’s also quite complicated, a lattice of contentions and conflict stretched over 500 hundred pages. And definitely PG. In her first foray into the Potter-free realm of young adult fiction, Rowling explores themes and subject matter which are distinctly not suitable for children: drug use, rape, and violent physical abuse are just a few of the mature […]
BOWIE WEEK: Last Night Ziggy Stardust Saved My Life
Some blogs do Shark Week, here at Phawker we’re more inclined to do a Bowie Week. In case in you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of one. Enjoy. SLATE: At the time I was working in a tragique department store outside London. I was in “clocks and watches,” and my best friend Biddie—later to become James Biddlecombe, star of panto and cabaret—worked in “soft furnishings.” This was a really grim period. Our lives were seedy and turgid, and we were in desperate need of some satin and tat, to mention nothing of a frock coat and a bipperty-bopperty […]
Will Oldham & Dogfish Head Together Again, Naturally
GRUBB STREET: Over the course of the past year or so, Delaware’s Dogfish Head Brewery has involved itself with musicians like Miles Davis and Del the Funky Homosapien as the impetus for a series of limited release ales. For the latest release, Sixty-One — a hybrid brew that veers into wine territory by adding a touch of Syrah grape must from California to its 60 Minute I.P.A. — the cult beer-maker’s president and founder Sam Calagione recruited “Appalachian post-punk solipsist” and loyal Dogfish Head drinker Bonnie “Prince” Billy (nee Will Oldham) to cut a couple tracks for the launch. […]
Philly Post Declares Brit Model/Bradley Cooper Crush Suki Waterhouse The New ‘Queen Of Philadelphia’
We have no objections, your honor. PHILLY POST: Cooper, a recent Oscar nominee, A-Lister, and all-around pretty boy, is the closest thing Philadelphia has to celebrity royalty at the moment. (Will Smith being kind of the Benedict-style semi-retired King of Philly Celebrities; or maybe Smith is the West Philly version of the Dowager Countesson Downton Abbey—still sharp, still funny, still not to be trifled with, but letting others have their turn at the helm. It’s possible to overthink that.) Which means that Cooper’s eventual soulmate could very well end up being … the Queen of Philly. MORE RELATED: Bradley […]
SMUS: Sequestration Without Representation Is Tyranny!
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY This one’s for all the folks who are going to be adversely affected by the “sequester.”There are many examples of why there should never have been any such thing, but verbiage constraints limit me to highlighting only the top four which I’ll present in the order of the magnitude of their egregiousness. But before I get into the meaty implications of the matter, allow me to digress for just a moment. For once (there may have been others but I’ll be damned if I can remember even one) I’m going to give Republicans credit for […]