FRESH AIR Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s latest project — their first together in nine years — is an album featuring American folk songs and the tunes many of us learned as children, performed with grit, wit and a whole lot of electric guitar. Americana is a wild journey through the classic American songbook, featuring songs like “Oh, Susanna,” “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain” and “Clementine” reinterpreted in a folk-rock style. Young tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross that he got the idea for the album while working on a book about his life. Thinking about his childhood reminded him […]

At The Mann July 29th & 30th. PREVIOUSLY: Sigur Ros To Blow Mann’s Mind x SIDEWALKING: The Man From Hopelandia Jón Þór Birgisson, Reykjavik, Iceland, 6;23 PM BY JONATHAN VALANIA RELATED: Let’s start with an understatement: things tend to move quite slowly in the world of Sigur Rós. This is true whether we’re talking about the glacial pace of their songs, the glacial pace at which they release them, or their artistic progression. In the 13 years since Ágætis Byrjunbecame the first and possibly only post-rock crossover record, Sigur Rós have edged closer to actual pop while still maintaining their […]

Times are tough all over. A record number of Americans are on food stamps. Millions out of work. Millions more taking pay cuts and forced furloughs, holding onto what precious few jobs there are by the skin of their teeth.  The Philadelphia Orchestra, which is the mother ship of the Philly Pops,  has declared bankruptcy. Which, just to be very clear, means the Phily Pops is also bankrupt. As such, it has sought to re-negotiate the fat-cat contract of Philly Pops conductor Peter Nero, who currently pulls down more than a half million dollars a year for waving a baton […]

  BLOOMBERG: Everybody blames the Internet for the decline of newspapers, but the Web is only the most recent of electric interruptions to have disturbed their profitability, which began with radio in the late 1920s and was followed by broadcast television, car radios, transistor radios, FM radio, and cable television. Newspapers were in so much advertising trouble in September 1941 that Time magazine ran a piece (paid) about their “downward economic spiral.” Press scholar David R. Davies argues in his 2006 book The Postwar Decline of American Newspapers, 1945-1965 that daily newspapers were in serious trouble by the mid-1960s, because, […]

Insanely great. They open for Jane’s Addiction at the Mann on August 15th.

The Wire: The Musical with Michael Kenneth Williams from Michael Kenneth Williams Even funnier than it sounds on paper.

Photo by DDC95 BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT I spent the last couple of days in the realm of geeks, aka the annual Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con, snapping pix of cosplayers (geeks in costumes), listening to celebrity Q&As and surprisingly deep lectures on certain aspects of high nerd-dom, talking shop with other geeks, searching numerous retail stands for comics and statues, and walking around the floors of the Pennsylvania Convention Center in my quests for the correct rooms. In short, it was awesome. Here is a list of the top 10 things at the con. 1. The Shopping. […]