WELCOME TO THE FIRST ANNUAL PHAWKER JAZZ AND POP POLL The critics have spoken, the ballots have been cast, all chads undangled, and fed into a mainframe computer the size of an Olympic swimming pool, to be crunched with the hard calculus of SUCKS/DOES NOT SUCK and arranged in impenetrably dense type on a spreadsheet that stretches from your house to mine. Hey, who we kiddin’? We don’t even have a mainframe the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Yet. And 30,000 CDs are released every year and fuck you if you think we’re gonna listen to all of them […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
PAGING MOLLY RINGWALD: The Psychedelic Furs, Trocadero, December 29th 2006 BY SIMONE SECCI, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT In this time of wild 80s revival, it’s nice to see the real thing. Well, kind of. Unfortunately the Psychedelic Furs that left a definitive trace through rock music was already dead in 1983. It’s no longer existing and never will. The Furs of today are a great pop band that does the job in the best way, but no longer as a new wave icon. All this, to be honest, didn’t prevent me from jumping on my chair and dancing with the entire theatre […]
DEATH OF A SALESPERSON: All Things Must Pass
BY SARA SHERR The Tower Records at Broad and Chestnut was scheduled to close on Friday, Dec. 22. Instead, the doors shut late Wednesday night after an independent Virginia record retailer bought up the last of the remaining stock, which really wasn’t much by then. Two similar mass purchases had occurred earlier in the week, one from a New Jersey record store owner who bought up a bunch of major label stuff (which means a lot of Daniel Powter and Ashley Parker Angel, and returns for credit! Smart cookie!) The other was an unknown company which volunteered to take the […]
Cover Wars: Whose Artfag Kung-Fu Is Stronger?
Last week CP struck a decisive blow against the tyranny of PW’s seemingly unbreakable Cover Wars winning streak. But this week the Empire has struck back. Hard. So jump down, turn around and pick a bail of cotton, City Paper, because PW is the master now. What’s that you say? ‘Only a master of evil, Darth’? Perhaps, Rabbit. Perhaps. Still, all this is good news for people who STILL read alt-weeklies. Hands down the most singularly disturbing alt-weekly cover of the year, PW’s music issue rocks the dumbly-named Man, Man on the cover, dubbing them Band Of The Year and […]
GUNCRAZY: Two Teens & Amputee Critically Wounded In West Philly Trifecta After Chinese Takeout Spat
(AP) PHILADELPHIA Three people were injured, including two teens, after gunfire erupted in West Philadelphia Wednesday evening. Police said two teens and a 58-year-old [NOT pictured, right] were shot near the intersection of 57th and Walnut just before 7 p.m. ?We had a group of males in the 100 block of S. 57th Street firing a gun,? said Lieutenant John Walker of the Philadelphia Police. Officials believe the three victims were just innocent bystanders in an act of senseless violence. One 14-year-old was shot in the back and was taken to the Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia in critical condition. Authorities […]
Turns Out William Penn Was A Godamn Hippie! Please God, Don’t Tell Rizzo, It’ll Kill Him AGAIN!
[Photo Courtesy of PhillyHistory.org] The City of Philadelphia’s photo archive contains over 2 million images that date back as far as the late 1800s, i.e. the last time a Republican won in this town. In all seriousness, this is an INCREDIBLE visual record of the city’s evolution and a relatively new web site, PhillyHistory.org, is making it available for online consumption and purchase. To date, some 18,000 images have been digitally scanned, at a rate of roughly 8,000 images a month. So, if you’ve been wondering why the line at Kinko’s is so godamnned SLOW, well, now you know. Phawker […]
GUNCRAZY: Slayer Bells Ringing Out In Point Breeze OR The Mysterious X-mas Death of #402
Reginald Branham became a computer whiz while at Overbrook High School in the 1980s, earning a four-year scholarship to Drexel University and becoming a computer executive. In recent years, however, he had turned his attention to fixing up bars. On Christmas night, Branham, 37, was shot dead at his latest bar, Cognac Corner in the 1400 block of South 21st Street in Point Breeze, making him the city’s 402d homicide victim of the year. Police were not talking about a motive yesterday, but on the street outside the bar, those who said they knew Branham spoke of a possible hit […]
SMELLS LIKE JOURNALISM: Daily News Puts Boots On The Ground In Drug Trade, Gets To Know Name Behind Faceless Statistic And The Awful Truth Therein
DRESSED IN A black Dickies suit and black Timberlands, the chubby-faced 17-year-old crack dealer paced around the desolate lot working another graveyard shift. In the darkness, a steady stream of addicts ambled toward him to make a buy. Then he saw a familiar face: his close friend’s mom. “I need a nick,” she mumbled to him. Without hesitation, he sold her a nickel bag — $5 worth of crack. “I was surprised that she was a smoker,” Mikey recalled, months after that night. Today he calls it “the deal I will never forget.” “I was thinking that a real friend […]
Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Shades OR THE GREATEST PHILLY NEW WAVE SINGLE YOU NEVER HEARD OF AND COULDN’T FIND IF YOU TRIED!
THE SHADES “Hello Mr. Johnson” (NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO) Excerpted From THE BOB JR. Part Six BY DAVID SNYDER I’ve swore I’d get to this single before I put this miserable pamphlet in its grave. To set the context we’re going to revisit the bits and pieces of my life that on occasion have previously bubbled up here in the bastard offspring and, before that, in the old rag. I was born in Philly. But between fifth and sixth grade the family shipped out to New Jersey, some suburbs — from Northeast Philly, which was then a kind of […]
DEATH OF A SALESPERSON: 10 Things I Won’t Miss About Tower Customers
By SARA SHERR: 1.Mouth-breathers who hug the cart of refiles that I’m trying to put away. This is the same crap that’s been sitting in the racks for the last two months. If I put a bunch of Keak the Sneak CDs on a cart, does that make them suddenly more attractive and awesomely collectable? 2.People who ask stupid questions in order to make a conversation with me. Yes, we?re going out of business. Nope, there’s nothing left. Yep, that pesky downloading. 3.People who can’t read. I understand the Philadelphia public school system is in a shambles and it’s hard […]
EAKINS STAYS HOME! HOORAY! OUR RICH PEOPLE ARE RICHER THAN THEIR RICH PEOPLE! HOORAY!
As announced yesterday, a consortium of the local moneyed class has pulled out their checkbooks and stopped the Wicked Witch of Walmart from getting her flying monkey paws on our Eakins masterpiece. Maybe next time we can rally $60 million in a coupla weeks to, say, build a new school or put some new books in the Public Library or something. Still, let us applaud the following: Leonore Annenberg ($10 million to the Gross Clinic effort) is the widow of Walter Annenberg, the publisher and U.S. ambassador to Britain. She is the president, chairman, and sole director of the Annenberg […]
SHADES OF JACK AND THE BEANSTALK: You Mean $68 Million Clams Coulda Bought All This Stuff Instead?
FROM ATTYTOOD: 68,000,000: Dollars that could hire 170 new Philadelphia police officers for five years, or 850 officers for one year, based on official estimates of $80,000 a cop for salary, benefits and training. 68,000,000: Dollars that could almost completely close the current yawning budget gap currently faced by the Philadelphia School District, estimated now at $73.3 million. The gap has led to a series of painful cutbacks, such as the elimination of 175 administrative jobs. 68,000,000: Dollars that could hire roughly 124 new social workers for 10 years in city’s Department of Human Services (based on average city salary […]