BY STEVE VOLK Nearly 10 years gone, David Bowie is back. Huzzah? The verdict is FUCK YES! The takeaway here is that Bowie is finishing his career, cruising toward his finish line—whether this be his last album or not—the same way he created his brand: Fearless and peerless. Sure, Dylan delivered Dylan-y classics in his 60s and Leonard Cohen never wavered. But who, at 66-years-old kept venturing this far out onto artistic limbs, searching for sounds he’s never made before? No one. Before this tour de force is over, Bowie recalls past glories and creates new ones. Shouts martial […]

Photo by MICHAEL PERSICO NAME: Blackbird Pizzeria LOCATION: 507 South 6th St, Philadelphia, PA, 19147 JAWN: Vegan pizza, wings, sandwiches, fries, salads VIBE: With its no-frills, bare-bones atmosphere, Blackbird doesn’t try to wow their customers with any flashy high-concept gimmickry. At Blackbird, the food speaks for itself. PRICE RANGE: Slightly above your average pizza shop prices but so worth it. HIGHLIGHTS: Thankfully, there is no shortage of vegan-friendly options in Philly, but when the urge to indulge in the guilty pleasures of a junk food binge arises, Blackbird Pizzeria is the answer. The choices range from specialty pizzas with insanely […]

  “Moon Girl is a golden age hero we re-invented for today’s audiences by re-contextualizing her character into the 1950s,” says Trov, who wrote it along with writing partner/fellow South Philadelphian Johnny Zito. In broad strokes, it goes like this: Masked vigilantes wage class warfare from the roof tops of 1950’s New York. Claire is an exiled Russian Princess hiding in New York. When enemies from her old life resurface, the repressed Warrior Queen must fight back. Moon Girl becomes a champion of the counter culture and inspires others in this era of social revolution to be more-than-human. But in order to […]

  Amen. MELODY MAKER ’74: How big is your group at present … “Nine people.” Tell me something about the bass player… “That’s me. I play bass on all my records. I play most everything on all my records. I just overdub everything.” Wouldn’t the group ever like to be on the record with you … “Sometimes they’re on the record also, but they feel good about it. They like it this way and they’re pretty honest about what they like. “I’ve recorded like this ever since the Stand album, ever since Dance To The Music, I guess.” Have you […]

Kinda sounds like Coldplay if Coldplay was, like, good, instead of Radiohead for people who still buy Sting albums. Plus they’re nominated for a Mercury Prize and this video is pretty awesome. At TLA 3/21.

Photo by AUGGIE FROG NEW YORK TIMES: It started in 1998 in Seattle, when my partner and I sold our Internet consultancy company, Sitewerks, for more money than I thought I’d earn in a lifetime. To celebrate, I bought a four-story, 3,600-square-foot, turn-of-the-century house in Seattle’s happening Capitol Hill neighborhood and, in a frenzy of consumption, bought a brand-new sectional couch (my first ever), a pair of $300 sunglasses, a ton of gadgets, like an Audible.com MobilePlayer (one of the first portable digital music players) and an audiophile-worthy five-disc CD player. And, of course, a black turbocharged Volvo. With a […]

  DAVE DAVIES: The Berks County Board of Elections is investigating two $10,000 contributions that Reading Mayor Vaughn Spencer made to Philadelphia City Council candidates in 2011 — the day after Spencer received a $30,000 contribution from the political committee of the powerful electricians’ union in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia candidates who got the contributions, re-elected Democratic Councilman-at-large Bill Green and 10th District Democratic challenger Bill Rubin, had already received the maximum contribution permitted under the city’s campaign finance law from the political committee of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, campaign finance records show. Christine Sadler, solicitor […]

“J. Edgar Hoover Shotgun” c. 1960s  gelatin silver print by Hunter S. Thompson FRESH AIR Four years after Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tim Weiner published Legacy of Ashes, his detailed history of the CIA, he received a call from a lawyer in Washington, D.C. “He said, ‘I’ve just gotten my hands on a Freedom of Information Act request that’s 26 years old for [FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover’s intelligence files. Would you like them?’ ” Weiner tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “And after a stunned silence, I said, ‘Yes, yes.’ ” Weiner went to the lawyer’s office and collected four boxes […]

  THE NEW YORKER: Aaron Swartz hanged himself in his apartment in Brooklyn on January 11th. He was twenty-six, but he had been well known as a computer programmer for many years. At the age of fourteen, he helped to develop the RSS software that enables the syndication of information over the Internet. At fifteen, he e-mailed one of the leading theorists of Internet law, Lawrence Lessig, and helped to write the code for Lessig’s Creative Commons, which, by writing alternatives to standard copyright licenses, allows people to share their work more freely. At nineteen, he was a developer of […]