Just a little reality check: This Pope sh*t ain’t gonna last forever, Joy Boy. Then what are you gonna do with your life? Here’s one option, go see a special VIP advanced screening of the THE MARTIAN, starring Matt Damon as astronaut Mark Watney, mistakenly left for dead on Mars by his crew mates. But in fact, he is not dead. It will take four years for a NASA rescue mission to reach him and he only has enough food and oxygen to last a month. Solution? “I’m gonna have to science the sh*t out of this,” says Watney. […]
BEING THERE: A$AP Rocky & Tyler The Creator @ Festival Pier
Photo by DYLAN LONG What do you get when you take one of the most vulgar and provocative rappers in the last 10 years and put him on a bill with one of the biggest and baddest members of Harlem’s hip hop collective A$AP Mob? The answer is quite simple: The Rocky and Tyler Tour. Several thousand fans from far and wide descended upon Philly’s Festival Pier last night to witness a mixture of well-crafted versifying, Tyler The Creator dancing like a man covered in honey and fire ants and A$AP Rocky effortlessly wooing every female in the house with […]
BEING THERE: Motorhead @ The Tower
Photo by DAN LONG Having cancelled a handful of shows earlier this month due to “altitude sickness,” it was an open question whether Lemmy would truly be back in the saddle last night at the Tower Theater. Would he bow out after two songs like he did in Austin? Would he plow through, driven by The Will To Rock (and maybe a coupla handfuls of trucker speed)? Or, would he die onstage? These were the lingering questions that hung in the air last night. On top of that, it is the opinion of many Motorhead fans that Lemmy should bow […]
Win Tix To See Yo La Tengo @ The Keswick
Artwork by ALEXIS NOLLA REVERT Time is short, the Secret Service is already telling us to pack it up and get on the slow boat to the FEMA camps, so we will cut to the chase: We are very excited to announce that we have a pair of tickets to see indie institution Yo La Tengo perform a rare acoustic show at The Keswick Theater tomorrow night. To qualify to win you need to A) sign up for our emailing list, below right of this post, underneath the masthead. Trust us, you want to be on this list. Among other […]
Win Tix To See Jesus & Mary Chain Perform PSYCHOCANDY @ Union Transfer Tomorrow Night
Hard to remember now but there was a time when the Jesus & Mary Chain divided the population of planet Earth into two camps: Those who were sure they were the Second Coming and those who thought they were the end of Western Civilization. Such was the response 30 years ago to the band’s debut, Psychocandy. History would, of course, judge it a seminal and deeply influential classic, an exploding cigar in the mouth of western civilization that just keeps giving. The Jesus & Mary Chain are currently in the midst of a U.S. tour marking the 30th anniversary […]
Win Tix To See Bad Religion Frontman Dr. Greg Graffin Ph.D Discuss His New Book @ Coda
AMAZON: From the very beginning, life on Earth has been defined by war. Today, those first wars continue to be fought around and literally inside us, influencing our individual behavior and that of civilization as a whole. War between populations-whether between different species or between rival groups of humans-is seen as an inevitable part of the evolutionary process. The popular concept of “the survival of the fittest” explains and often excuses these actions. In Population Wars, Greg Graffin points to where the mainstream view of evolutionary theory has led us astray. That misunderstanding has allowed us to justify wars […]
TONITE: Shake Bamalama!
Artwork by CHUCK SPERRY The Drive-By Truckers have a well-earned rep for consistently delivering grungy Southern rock operas set in places where red meets neck, where life is hard and folks die soft and squishy and often emphysemic, dirty deeds get done dirt cheap, and everyone goes to church but nobody really goes to heaven. Where dubious characters — jaded pole workers, homicidal preachers’ wives, and modern drunkards — lead self-inflicted lives of quiet desperation in high-def whiskey-hued vérité. Everyone’s on something – booze, pills, God, or all the above – and before all is said and done, they’re gonna […]
BEING THERE: Eagles Of Death Metal @ Underground Arts
Photo by TOM BECK What I love about The Eagles of Death Metal is that they’re one of those token cartoonish bands who refuse to take themselves seriously, but still somehow manage to find a way to come together and make kick-ass rock and roll. It’s a style pioneered by The Damned, and difficult to accomplish without coming across as a cheesy, Weird Al wannabe. Few other bands have achieved such a feat, among them The Darkness, Tenacious D, Weezer, Ween, and probably most famously, Nirvana. Some people might put Kiss in this category, but they don’t count. Kiss was […]
BEING THERE: Micachu & The Shapes @ The Boot and Saddle
Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ I found Micachu and the Shapes’ arrival fitting for the seasonal transition out of annoyingly happy summer music festival season. I wanted so badly for them to drag all of us at Boot and Saddle last night by the hair into an atypically breezy autumn night and to rock us into early onset seasonal depression. I waited with the crowd on our collective tippy toes, our ears ready to be embraced by the bittersweet sound of Mica Levi [PICTURED, ABOVE] shredding on some old guitar— it would possibly be something handmade. We knew she would […]
BEING THERE: Wovenhand @ Underground Arts
Photo by DAN LONG The rainy late summer evening cast a suitably gloomy pall over last night’s proceedings, but the damp masses in Philly’s Underground Arts created a sorta human humidity that sapped the luster of yours truly. I was there to bear witness to another performance by the tragically but not surprisingly unheralded Denver-based gothic Americana outfit Wovenhand. For the uninitiated please allow me to smarten ya up some: David Eugene Edwards, the wunderkind/visonary behind Wovenhand, has been making haunting, beguiling music in one aggregation or another since 2001. Before Wovenhand, Edwards helmed the awesome mule-kicking combo 16 Horsepower. […]
Win Tix To See The L7 Reunion @ The Trocadero
Let us set the Wayback Machine to planet 1992. Where the women wore the combat boots and the men wore the mascara and fishnets — well, at least Kurt Cobain did. Girls rioted. The glass ceiling on the moshpit was shattered (in hindsight, glass was probably a poor choice for a mosh pit ceiling). And the Lolla first Palooza-ed. LA-based all-girl alt-rockers L7 led the charge of girl-positive rockers like Hole, Babes In Toyland and The Breeders who kicked down the door of the old boys club that was rock n’ roll. Things would never be the same. Fast […]
Five Years Ago I Warned That ‘The Philadelphia Prison System Is Violent, Predatory & Deeply Corrupt,’ Yesterday The Feds Finally Took Action
[Artwork by ALEX FINE] BY JEFF DEENEY Back in the summer of 2011, I wrote about an acquaintance who worked in the The Philadelphia House Of Correction on State Road who was having trouble getting up in the morning and going to work. It seemed like each day brought some unbearable new horror story of violence perpetrated against prisoners by the Corrections Officers (COs) tasked with maintaining order in the facilities. Much of the disorder, the person claimed, on the intensely overcrowded cell blocks was in fact driven by crews of COs that operated like organized crime syndicates. Working with […]
The Philadelphia Prison System Is Violent, Predatory And Deeply Corrupt Because Nobody Is Watching It
[Artwork by FERNANDO BOTERO] EDITOR’S NOTE: The following first posted to Phawker on July 22nd, 2011 BY JEFF DEENEY A couple months ago I was approached by a person in the midst of a major moral dilemma: This person works inside the Philadelphia Prison System, and claimed to have been witness to massive, systematic and ongoing abuses inside the institution. This person described the common practice among Correctional Officers (COs) of ganging up on troublesome prisoners in their cells and dishing brutal beatdowns to put them in line. The person described an incident where a prisoner was tied to a […]