EDITOR’S NOTE: John Prine passed away today of complications from Covid19. So we’re re-posting Jonathan Houlon’s tribute penned a week ago upon the news that Prine had contracted Covid19 and was in the ICU on a ventilator. Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose. Goddamn. BY JONATHAN HOULON If you haven’t heard, sad news from Nashville: John Prine, folksinger-songwriter extraordinaire and a goddamn national treasure, is on a ventilator with Covid-19 symptoms. If anyone can beat this thing, it’s Prine — he’s proven to be pretty much un-killable. He’s already stood up to cancer. Twice! One of his bouts and […]
DISPATCHES: My Life Under Quarantine
EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve asked Phawker contributors to send in dispatches describing their lives under quarantine. Enjoy. BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC So, for my day job, I do IT. Luckily it’s something you can do from almost anywhere. I work for a successful local non-essential retailer whose home offices are based in Center City. Our stores may be closed for the time being, but retail life is all about planning ahead — since it can sometimes take 3 to 6 months to get a product in stores. So currently all of corporate is working from home, pulling normal 8 hour […]
OP-ED: The New Abnormal
EDITOR’S NOTE: Gonna be doing a weekly OpEd for Philly Mag until this shit show is over and I can go back to my day job. Whatever that is. Here’s the first one. PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: At a press conference back in 1986, President Ronald Reagan famously declared “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’” setting into motion the austere neoliberal in-free-markets-we-trust, get-a-job-you-bum zeitgeist that held sway for the next 34 years. That is until the COVID-19 pandemic finally breached the walls of fortress America and quickly metastasized into […]
DISPATCHES: My Life Under Quarantine
EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve asked Phawker contributors to send in dispatches describing their lives under quarantine. Our first one is from our intern, who, like all of our interns, is a student at Temple. BY RACHEL TESON It started with cleaning. I went into work where I am a hostess, and they gave me a red bucket and gloves. Since the restaurant is a high volume one by City Hall, our bosses wanted to try to combat the spread by cleaning as much as possible. I had to wipe down the revolving door and the hostess stand every half hour, and […]
TIME HAS COME TODAY: Starve The Beast
SOURCE: COVIDACTNOW.ORG NEW YORK TIMES: Terrifying though the coronavirus may be, it can be turned back. China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan have demonstrated that, with furious efforts, the contagion can be brought to heel.Whether they can keep it suppressed remains to be seen. But for the United States to repeat their successes will take extraordinary levels of coordination and money from the country’s leaders, and extraordinary levels of trust and cooperation from citizens. It will also require international partnerships in an interconnected world. There is a chance to stop the coronavirus. This contagion has a weakness. Although there are […]
REST IN POWER: Bryan Dilworth (1968-2020)
I don’t know how common knowledge this is, but countless times back in the ’90s, when some up-and-coming band that Bryan booked had been stiffed at the Khyber, he would wind up paying their meager guarantee out of his own pocket so they’d have enough gas money to make it to the next town/gig and live to rock another day. I remember sitting with him at the bar one night when some band I can’t remember the name of that we all liked but nobody in Philly had heard of/cared about was playing for the sound man, and Bryan, in […]
I HEAR A DARKNESS: Q&A With Will Oldham
[Photo by JEFF RUTHERFORD] EDITOR’S NOTE: Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy shares the bill with Jonathan Richman Sunday night for a sold out show at Union Transfer. Oldham is touring in support of last year’s I Made A Place, his first LP of new songs since 2011. To mark this auspicious occasion, we are re-posting our 2010 Q&A w/ the irascible Mr. Oldham. Enjoy. NEW YORKER: Oldham remains an elusive figure, but the show is a gentle reminder of why he is often cited as one of the finest singer-songwriters in contemporary American music. Oldham was a student of […]
BEING THERE: Black Lips @ First Unitarian
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER I have to admit that when I first checked out the Black Lips about a decade ago, it had nothing to do with their music. I’d never heard it. Rather, I was drawn in by their already legendary antics such as whipping their junk out, vomiting, and kissing one another. That last stunt allegedly got them kicked out of India. This stuff may seem pedestrian to you, my faithful old-school punk reader, but for a dyed-in-the-wool folkie like me it sounded super-cool. I mean, in the folk world, the worst we get up to is, say, […]
BEING THERE: The Black Crowes @ The Foundry
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER After breaking up three years prior, The Black Crowes reunited in 2005 and began work on a record that would shift away from the rollicking radio-ready electric blues boogie of Shake Your Money Maker and the space-kissed psychedelia of 2001’s Lions. The resulting LP, 2008’s Warpaint, featured a balanced narrative of contemplative ballads on America’s southern mountain life: bittersweet odes to sunsets, backwoods swamp-stomp evangelism and a subtle, irreverent iconoclasm reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor. All of which revealed Chris’ and Rich Robinson’s deep roots in the lore of early-20th-century Appalachian folk music that framed up new […]
EXCLUSIVE: Nick Cave @ The Mann Presale Code
PRESALE Thursday, February 20 from 10am to 10pm EST PASSWORD = HOLLYWOOD PUBLIC ON SALE Friday, February 21 at 10am EST https://www1.ticketmaster.com/nick-cave-the-bad-seeds/event/02005838D413C1E9
NEIL NATHAN: Promised Land
? Since his folky cover of ELO’s “Do Ya,” produced by Mike ‘Slo-Mo’ Brenner, which earned the praise of its legendary composer, Jeff Lynne, and was included on the Showtime hit “Californication” — the multi-faceted artist Neil Nathan (neilnathan.com) has made an art form of joyfully genre bending record making, jumping seamlessly between glam rock, garage, americana, power pop, alt country, and folk, while recording in Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Texas, and Brooklyn. But for the past three years, Neil’s been primarily holed up at Studio1935 in South Philadelphia, collaborating with Producer Mike ‘Slo-Mo’ Brenner and Engineer/Co-producer Pete Rydberg, on a […]
How Bloomberg Ate Biden’s Lunch In Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: As you may have noticed if you’ve been near a TV recently and it was turned on and dialed in to pretty much any channel, ever since Mike Bloomberg formally announced his intentions back in November to throw his hat into the Dem presidential ring, he’s been aggressively prosecuting a coast to coast air campaign, carpet bombing swing states and inflection points all along the primary map with a vast arsenal of pithy, pointed anti-Trump television spots that run with the kind of ubiquity and perpetuity that you’d have to be a billionaire many times over to […]
