[Dir. by SCOTT COLAN] The Fleet Foxes play the Electric Factory tonight with the mighty Espers. PREVIOUSLY: QUEER AS FOLK or How Philadelphia Got Its Freak On [Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA It all started, for me anyway, at Brooke Sietinsons‘ walk-up loft/hobbit hole on Second Street, somewhere in that OK Corral-esque strip between the Standard Tap and the 700 Club. Even though she no longer lives there, the exact location will have to remain a secret because, technically speaking, L&I could still fine her for dispensing the Morning Glory seeds of Philly freak-folkdom without a permit. But […]
TONITE: Secret Cinema
The Secret Cinema presents ISLAND OF LOST SOULS * Thursday, July 30th, 6 PM American Philosophical Society Museum Philosophical Hall 104 South Fifth Street, Philadelphia 215-440-3440 * BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Recently I was chatting with my three year old about his great passion, animals. Sometimes you forget that a fresh mind needs all angles explained to them. “We’re animals too,” I said. His eyes grew wide. “No way!” he shook his head in disbelief. I’m do not think I convinced him although he stopped challenging me after I repeated the fact a few times; he saw the gap between […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
BIG NEWS: Dr. Dog Signs With Anti
Anti Records, home to such iconic artists as Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Mavis Staples, is proud to announce the signing of acclaimed symphonious pop purveyors Dr. Dog. The band, which has amassed a dedicated audience through four remarkable albums and a steady diet of exhilarating live shows, is currently preparing to record a new LP set for release in early 2010. Guitarist-vocalist Scott McMicken promises a subtle yet profound evolution in the band’s harmonic sound. (continued, with tour dates, after the jump)
TONITE: Nekophilia
BY JONATHAN VALANIA A tomboyish siren with a thick red mane and lungs of fine Corinthian leather, Neko Case is equal parts gender warrior and indie aesthete, a potent hybrid aptly evoked by the Joan-of-Arc-on-a-muscle-car tableau on the cover her new album, Middle Cyclone. Case is also in possession of what is arguably the greatest voice of her generation — clarion in tone; trans-national in its reach; and bottomless in its capacity to transmute wryly-observed public fictions into inescapable private truths that all more or less boil down to: I am woman, hear me ruminate. That voice was in fighting […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To Day 3 Of All Points West
We have a winner for yesterday’s contest: Phawker reader TIM ALLEN correctly answered that Creation Records was the label that My Bloody Valentine nearly bankrupted with the costly making of their landmark Loveless album. But fear not dear reader, there are no losers here at Phawker, just people who haven’t won yet. With that in mind, let’s get one of you into a pair of tickets for Day Three of All Points West, aka Sunday August 2nd. Even though we have long believed that headliners Coldplay are little more than Radiohead for people who still buy Sting solo albums, this […]
KILLADELPHIA: Murder Rate Drops 30%
DAILY NEWS: The city’s homicide rate has fallen 30 percent from the grim total it had registered by this point in 2007, when the constant deluge of murders led to the loathsome local nickname “Killadelphia.” According to police statistics, 162 homicides have been recorded so far this year, compared with 183 a year ago, and 234 in 2007. The city had 333 homicides all of last year, a 15 percent drop from the 392 slayings in ’07. The homicide rate — which soared at a time earlier this decade when homicides in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles were reaching […]
CONTEST: Win Tix 2 See My Bloody Valentine At APW
Time for round two of our All Points West tix giveaway contest. These tix are for Day Two of APW, aka Saturday August 1st, and although Tool are the official headliner (along with Gogol Bordello, Ting Tings, Arctic Monkeys, Neko Case and Chairlift) in our estimation the real reason to be there that day is My Bloody Valentine. We can still remember where we were they day we heard Kennedy got shot: In our bedroom, listening to MBV’s Loveless, tripping our tits off. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Anyway, a pair of tickets […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Century Foundation fellow Maggie Mahar is the author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Healthcare Costs So Much, published in 2006. A former financial journalist for Institutional Investor, The New York Times, Barron’s and Bloomberg, Mahar writes the Healthbeat blog, a Century Foundation project. She has also contributed to Dartmouth Medicine, covering Medicare spending and the possibility of reform. Money-Driven Medicine argues that, over the past century, the history of U.S. health care has been shaped by corporate interests’ gradual encroachment on physician autonomy. According to Mahar, this has produced a system of costly and inefficient competition among […]
BOTTLED WATER: Lies And Propaganda
GOOD: Tappening, the tap-water campaigners, has taken its gloves off and is fighting the bottled-water business the dirty way. Using the old beat-them-at-their-own-game approach, Tappening’s new Start a Lie campaign takes on truth in advertising by allowing you to create your own viral lie about bottled water. Because, as they say, “If bottled water companies can lie, we can too.” MORE RELATED: There is so much wrong with bottled water that it’s hard to know where to begin (read Elizabeth Royte’s Bottlemania, for starters). But let’s start with the fact that bottled water is the most brilliantly marketed product ever […]
GREATEST HITS: Today I Saw… Revisited
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Today I Saw was a series of short imagistic non-fiction narratives I did back in 2007. I didn’t even conceive it as a series for publication, it was really just a bunch of scenes and images I jotted down while doing field work as a social worker. I was doing intensive community based work with homeless families, and writing about all the crazy things I saw in the field helped me decompress at the end of the day from the stress and pressure I was under at my often emotionally-grueling job. Phawker approached me about writing for them […]
DEATH ON THE PIAZZA: Daily Beast Sends Deeney To Plush Night Club — Plush Night Club Is Not Amused
DAILY BEAST: The room has all the ambience of a high school gymnasium converted for a dance; the walls are brick and cinderblock painted a garish orange-red, and at the head of the room is a platform that barely qualifies as a stage where heavily tatted dudes in wifebeaters mill about, some holding microphones and rapping along with the music, some just taking up space. The music is so loud that you have to scream directly into someone’s ear for them to hear you. The crowd loves the down and dirty vibe that prevails; booty bounces to the beat of […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
READY, STEADY, GO: Craig Finn, The Hold Steady, Xponential Music Festival, Last Night [Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA] *** ZEE AVI: Honey Bee WIKIPEDIA: Zee Avi (born Izyan Alirahman,[1] also known as KokoKaina; b. 1986) is a Malaysian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and ukulele player. She was born in Miri, Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. She moved to Kuala Lumpur when she was 12.[2] She studied fashion design at American InterContinental University in London.[3] Zee originally posted a video of her first song on YouTube because one of her friends had missed her first performance in Kuala Lumpur, so she created a […]