I love the smell of teen spirit in the morning — smells like victory. Great song, great title, great video. Who says youth is wasted on the young? They play Underground Arts October 13th.

Source KEYSTONE ANALYTICS PHILLY.COM: After 50 minutes of debate, every Democrat voted “yes,” as did 20 of 27 Republicans. Several “yes” votes came from senators who have law-enforcement backgrounds. Under the proposal, state residents would need an access card from the Health Department after proving they have a practitioner-patient relationship and written confirmation of a qualifying medical condition. A handful of drug delivery methods that do not involve smoking it would be permitted under the bill, including extracted oil, edible products, ointments and tinctures.Qualifying medical conditions include cancer, epilepsy and seizures, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic stress […]

Artwork by PAOLO AMICO BY JONATHAN VALANIA J. Mascis has always been a man of few words, a condition stretching back to the prehistoric days of Dinosuar Jr. Emerging from the crunchy redoubt of Amherst, Massachusetts in the late ’80s in a splatter of hair-wagging guitar sludge and stoner-dude-ski-bum laissez-faire vocals, Dinosaur Jr. rose out of the primordial ooze of ’70s classic-rock radio and the tar pits of punk rock, like a tinnitus-inducing mash-up of Neil Young and Sonic Youth. Mascis became the guitar hero of alternative rock, a genre largely defined by anti-heroes. Twenty albums later — including 11 […]

  GAWKER: The latest census figures show that in 2013, the median black household earned just under $35,000, while the median white household earned more than $58,000. The black unemployment rate has been twice as high as the white unemployment rate for the past 50 years. These are not random economic fluctuations. When you enslave people, steal their labor, and then oppress them for countless generations afterwards, the economic effects persist. When considering what sort of reparations are appropriate, it is important to keep in mind that the institution of slavery did not just set back black people—it also greatly […]

  On my way up to NYC to have a word with this young lady, so behave yourselves in my absence and grind on the interview with Terry Gross’ hubbo below.  We will return to a regular posting schedule tomorrow.

  Like pearls before swine. On November 11th 1966, John Coltrane performed at Temple University, situated in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia. Coltrane’s backing band included, among others: his wife, Alice Coltrane, on piano; Pharoah Sanders on saxophones and flute; and Rashied Ali on drums.  The concert was staged just six weeks before his 40th birthday and a mere nine months before he succumbed to liver cancer. Despite the fact that, at the time, Coltrane was one of the living legends of jazz and tickets were only $2.50, the turn out was disappointing. According to an article in the student […]

  WASHINGTON POST: From 2006 to 2012, monthly marijuana use among high school seniors increased by more than 4 percentage points*, from 18.3 percent to 22.9 percent. If indeed marijuana use were the educational catastrophe that opponents predict, you’d expect to see downward pressure on national graduation rates as more kids took up the habit. But in actuality, the opposite happened: over the same period, as kids were smoking more, graduation rates jumped 8 percentage points. This should not be at all construed to imply that increasing rates of marijuana use are somehow causing higher graduation rates. Correlation doesn’t equal […]