SLATE: They Might Be Giants had cut their teeth in New York’s early-’80s No Wave scene, playing the overly exuberant kid brother to “serious” acts like Sonic Youth and Swans. Armed with samplers, puppets, and yardstick-tall hats, they earned a reputation as thrillingly bizarro showmen. Every journalist who reviewed the duo exhausted his thesaurus in search of synonyms for quirky. But with modern ears, we can hear something in They Might Be Giants’ music more profound and specific than what Roget might call eccentric, madcap, or zany.” MORE PHAWKER: We have a coupla pair of tix to see They […]
WHAT A DRAG IT IS GETTING OLD: Iggy Turns 68
VOGUE: “I stare at myself in the mirror and I think, Wow, I’m really great-looking . . . I think I’m the greatest, anyway,” the great-looking musician, occasional actor, and undisputed style icon Iggy Pop once said. Pop was born James Newell Osterberg, Jr., in Muskegon, Michigan, on April 21, 1947, which means he is 68 today! Unlike so many of his angry punk brothers and sisters, he has nothing but lovely things to say about his upbringing—his parents even gave up their master bedroom in the trailer where they lived so that Jimmy would have a place big […]
LIGHTNING BOLT: The Metal East
Highbrow mind-expanding metallica from Rhode Island. They play First Unitarian on May 14th — show was moved from Johnny Brenda’s to the church due to overwhelming demand — in support of their new album, Fantasy Empire.
The Strange And Lonesome Death Of The Lovely Theresa And The Man Who Loved Her Too Much
GAWKER: In July 2007, the artists Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan ended their own lives. Both had grown erratic and paranoid in the preceding months, and on the 10th, Blake found his longtime romantic partner dead in their East Village apartment, overdosed on a lethal cocktail of whiskey and Tylenol PM. One week later, he drowned himself in the Atlantic Ocean at Rockaway Beach. The official story, forwarded in a flurry of media coverage of the so-called “golden suicides,” tells of folie à deux—a shared delusion, brought on perhaps by career-related stress and a lot of bourbon and champagne, […]
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Just Do It
WARNING: Becoming President of the United States can cause short-term memory loss, causing you to forget that you used to get high as balls.
Benedict Cumberbatch Reads William Safire’s Nixon Speech ‘In The Event Of Moon Disaster’
BBC NEWSNIGHT: It was 1969, the world waited for Apollo 11 to land on the Moon, Presidential speechwriter William Safire imagined the worst case scenario – that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would be stranded up there. He wrote this to President Nixon’s Chief of Staff, to be read by the president if his fears came true. MORE
CINEMA: Truth And Consequences
TRUE STORY (2015, directed by Rupert Goold, 100 minutes, USA) BY COLE NOWLIN True story: Jonah Hill and James Franco co-star in a movie without a single dick-joke, bro-hug, or bong rip. Instead of phallic digressions, there is tense dialogue and a relentless search for truth. If you are looking for laughs, sit this one out, otherwise you will be hard pressed to find a truly comedic moment. Instead, True Story grapples with big ideas about identity, authenticity, and situational ethics. Jonah Hill plays Michael Finkel, a promising journalist for the New York Times who goes from Pulitzer hopeful to […]
INCOMING: Knock Knock, It’s Tig Notaro
Wherein the famed funny lady/Taylor Dane-stalking lesbian cancer survivor treks cross-country playing the living rooms and back yards of super fans. Presumably awkward hilarity ensues, given that awkward has always been her sweet spot, and hilarity her forte. First episode airs 9:30 pm Friday on Showtime. PREVIOUSLY: If Tig Notaro never existed we would have never thought to invent her, which not only points out the shortcomings of our imagination but also the depths of her originality. A tall drink of water in low-slung jeans with Billie Jean King hair, she speaks in a laconic drawl that is either medicated […]
THE BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE
BY LUKE HOPELY I really don’t know much about Barry Hannah, and after reading Airships I was really pissed the fuck off about this fact. I know that he is a Southern writer and his name is bounced around with the likes of Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor on his book covers. I know that he wrote books from the 70s until his death in 2010. He wrote Airships in the 70s while going through the obligatory alcoholic phase all great writers seem to enter, although some never leave (looking at you Hemingway). Most of importantly I know Barry Hannah […]
EXCLUSIVE: Q&A With Neutral Milk’s Jeff Mangum
BY JONATHAN VALANIA In 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel released an album of hallucinatory folk-rock called In The Aeroplane Over The Sea that is, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, nothing short of a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Like Pet Sounds or My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless or Love’s Forever Changes, it is lightning caught in a bottle, one of those rare perfect albums that come along maybe once a decade. Or once a lifetime. In 1999, Jeff Mangum — Neutral Milk’s singer, songwriter and primary guitarist — disappeared from public life without explanation, declining all entreaties to […]
TONIGHT: Shaggadelic, Baby!
Artwork by JAIMIE HERNANDEZ The Shaggs were three sisters from rural New Hampshire who were just this side of collapse when they strapped their instruments. The Wiggin family was, by all accounts, a study in Pepperidge Farm country gothic. Daddy Austin Wiggin Jr. worked in the cotton mill and applied every coffee can-ful of cash he could earn toward his dream: that his three eldest daughters–Betty, Helen and Dot–would one day become international pop stars. Just one problem: Despite years of music lessons, none of the Wiggin girls could play or sing in a way that you would call “good.” […]
DICKIPEDIA: Ted Nugent
Ted Nugent makes being a dick look easy. But make no mistake, he works hard at it all day every day.
Q&A: With Tara Murtha, Bobbie Gentry Expert
BY COLE NOWLIN Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 hit “Ode to Billie Joe” — an eerie, genre-transcendent ballad of suicide and forbidden love– is the quintessential riddle wrapped in an enigma. The enduring mysteries of the song have befuddled listeners and sparked debate ever since it’s release. What was thrown over the bridge? Why did Billie Joe kill himself? Even more mysterious and intriguing than the song was the musician behind it, Bobbie Gentry. Gentry enjoyed a meteoric rise to stardom, enjoying roughly a decade in the limelight, before she gradually retreated from the public eye, eventually disappearing altogether. Where is […]