Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Arriving at Union Transfer to see Strand of Oaks play a homecoming show felt a lot like walking into a gathering of old friends, without knowing anyone. As a self-proclaimed lone wolf, it’s a territory I have explored many times before. I’m used to tapping through my phone for non-existent text messages and notifications while being surrounded by overly affectionate couples and groups of friends who are, like, “Oh my God, so glad you came.” Still, I knew I was in for a good, interesting time. The most important thing I’d recently learned about frontman […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR The new film Inherent Vice satirizes over-complicated detective story plots by having an especially over-complicated plot of its own. It’s a Paul Thomas Anderson adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel. “It’s so dense,” co-star Josh Brolin tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “I mean, Pynchon will be following some linear structure and then suddenly he’ll take a big bong hit and go off on some tangent that still, you realize, eventually comes around and actually is connected in various ways.” The film is set in 1970 in a fictional California beach town where a burned out hippie private […]
BEING THERE: The 1975 @ The Tower Theater
Photo by DYLAN LONG Last night in Upper Darbyland, 69th Street was crawling with fans anticipating one of the U.K.’s edgiest up-an-coming indie rock bands, The 1975. With just one studio album under their belt — anchored by raw, electrifying singles such as “Robbers”, “Chocolate” and “Sex” — the group is in the midst of a lengthy North American tour that brought them to the Tower last night. The electricity of the crowd was evident from the moment the doors of the Tower Theater opened ’til the last of the fans trickled out onto 69th & Ludlow. Young Rising Sons […]
I CAN’T BREATHE: Staten Island Grand Jury Shown A Snuff Film, Shrugs And Asks Where’s The Harm?
NEW YORK TIMES: The Staten Island grand jury must have seen the same video everyone else did: the one showing a group of New York City police officers swarming and killing an unarmed black man, Eric Garner. Yet they have declined to bring charges against the plainclothes officer, Daniel Pantaleo, who is seen on the video girdling Mr. Garner’s neck in a chokehold, which the department bans, throwing him to the ground and pushing his head into the pavement. The imbalance between Mr. Garner’s fate, on a Staten Island sidewalk in July, and his supposed infraction, selling loose cigarettes, […]
THE SMALL FACES: Itchycoo Park
NEW YORK TIMES: Ian McLagan (pictured, right), a keyboardist with the British rock bands the Small Faces and later the Faces, and a sideman who traveled widely in top-tier rockcircles, touring or recording with Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, among others, died on Wednesday in Austin, Tex. He was 69. […] Mr. McLagan, who was born in London on May 12, 1945, joined the Small Faces as an organist in the mid-1960s, bringing a rollicking flair — the jazz organist Jimmy Smith has been cited as an influence — to a band that provided some of the […]
Billie Joe McAllister To Jump Off Tallahatchie Bridge
The Lower 40 is Phil D’Agostino (bandleader, bass), Brad Hinton (guitar), Ross Bellenoit (guitar), Matt Muir (drums), Jay Ansill (strings), Larry Toft (horns), Ansel Barnum (harmonica), Carl Bahner (vibraphone). The featured vocalists include Birdie Busch, Kerry Hallett, Allison Polans, Dusty Springfield, Susan Rosetti & Ali Wadsworth. Birdie Busch will open with a set of Willie Nelson covers. Tickets can be purchased HERE. A taste of the Lower 40’s Bobbie Gentry Tribute will be WXPN’s Free At Noon concert on Friday.
DANIEL KNOX: Blue Car
Sepulchral vocals resonating endlessly in a vast cathedral of shimmering gloom and world-weary resignation. Because everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost. Fans of Scott Walker and/or The National and/or Handsome Family take note. Not hard to fathom how Daniel Knox wound up collaborating with David Lynch and Jarvis Cocker. His new self-titled LP of velveteen doomcore drops in January on Carrot Top records. He plays Fergie’s on December 6th. If you do go, just remember, Butterfly, there’s only so much Guinness you can drink one life, and it will never be enough to save […]
LION KING: Strand Of Oaks’ Timothy Showalter
Photo by DUSDIN CONDREN BY NODYIA FEDRICK Strand Of Oaks’ mainman Timothy Showalter looks like a biker meth-lab chemist — long hair, tats, long beard, sleeveless Ts, all wrapped up in black — but in fact he’s this big pussycat/sensitive guy with low self-esteem who loves thrift-store shopping for vintage synthesizers and writes these amazing guitar-rock anthems. HEAL, Strand Of Oaks’ amazing new album, is wowing critics and blowing up on radio and it could not have happened to a nicer guy. “Goshen, Indiana,” HEAL‘s unstoppable lead-off single, gets our vote for Song Of The Summer. Resistance is futile. Strand […]
Win Tix To See Skinny Puppy @ The Trocadero
Here’s a chance to re-live your gloriously misspent goth youth. Skinny Puppy, Canuck-ian avatars of the Ministry/NIN/Front Line Assembly school of bummer EDM for bad people, play the Troc tomorrow night, along with Front Line Assembly, and we have a pair of tix to giveaway to some lucky recovering goth/Phawker reader. To win, all you have to do is send us an email at FEED@PHAWKER.COM and share some mildly embarrassing personal factoid (Example: “I actually liked the first Ministry album, back when they still sounded like pussies”) or anecdote (“The jocks at school used to call me ‘Flock Of […]
The Idiot’s Guide To This American Life’s Serial
BY MOLLY KASSEL Serial, the wildly popular podcast reported and narrated by This American Life’s Sarah Koenig, re-examines the 1999 strangulation murder of a Baltimore high school student named Hae Min Lee, whose lifeless body was discovered in a nearby park six weeks after she went missing. Serial is structured like a whodunnit and the listener is invited to play detective alongside Koenig, which is a big part of its charm. Though it retells a crime that happened 15 years ago, listeners feel like they are learning the facts in real time as Koenig uncovers them. Another part of […]
RIP: Legendary Badboy Saxophonist Bobby Keys
ROLLING STONE: He first crossed paths with the Rolling Stones in 1964 at the San Antonio Teen Fair. He was skeptical of the English rockers, but said, “I went out and listened to them and there was some actual rock & roll going on there, in my humble opinion.” “You got to realize that the vision, the image, according to 1964 US Rock and roll standards, was mohair suit and tie, and nicey-nicey ol’ boy next door,” Keys said in Keith Richards’ autobiography Life. “And all of a sudden hear comes this truckload of English jackflies singing a Buddy Holly […]
THE NEW BEER SUMMIT: Obama Taps Ramsey To Lead Soon To Be Forgotten Or Ignored Task Force To Reform The Nationwide ‘Shoot Blacks First/Ask Questions Later” Standard Operating Cop Procedure
Artwork by SHEPARD FAIREY CBS: President Barrack Obama is calling on Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey to lead a national task force, which has the mission to come up with ideas on better policing amid the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Tensions are high in the wake of a grand jury’s decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson for the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb in August. Obama spent most of Monday discussing ways to prevent the situation in Ferguson from happening elsewhere in the future. The president met with Commissioner Ramsey and other police […]
BEING THERE: Slayer @ The Tower Theater
Photo by DAN LONG Nothing says ‘father/son outing’ like a Slayer concert, am I right? The ear-raping wall of guitar thrash, the blood red stage lights, the chest-thumping double-kick drum pummeling, the demonic, blood-curdling vocals. These are the building blocks of male bonding, at least in my household. So this show was on my bucket list – I wanted my 17-year-old son to see Slayer before any more of them die. I’ve been bringing him to shows since he was nine, so he’s no stranger to the scene, but this was Slayer. Scratch that, this was motherfucking Slayer! He was […]