CNN: Philadelphia will host the Democratic National Convention in July 2016, a source with knowledge of the selection process tells CNN. The Democratic National Committee confirmed Philadelphia’s selection Thursday morning, shortly after the news broke, using a Facebook video of chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz pulling a cheesesteak out of a refrigerator to announce the decision. New York and Columbus, Ohio, were the two other cities vying for the right to host the Democratic convention. The event is scheduled for the week of July 25, 2016. Democrats’ decision to nominate the party’s presidential nominee in Philadelphia is a major win for […]
CINEMA: Island Of Lost Souls
LOST SOUL: THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY’S ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (2014, directed by David Gregory, 97 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Shot like an expansive DVD extra, director David (Plague Town) Gregory’s unassuming documentary Lost Souls: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau overcomes its generic visual style by having a whopper of a tale to tell. Stanley was a South African-born director who made a pair of stylish low budget genre films (1990’s Hardware and 1992’s Dust Devil) that made him a favorite of the Fangoria crowd. Before procuring the novel’s rights, […]
LET IT BE: The Replacements Announce ‘Back By Unpopular Demand’ Tour, Play Festival Pier May 9th
PASTE: The Replacements had seemingly played their last show together on July 4, 1991 at Chicago’s Grant Park. It wasn’t until 2013 that the band would get back together to play Riot Fest and then Coachella, as well as other festivals the following year. Now the group has announced the “Back By Unpopular Demand” tour, their first full U.S. tour in more than two decades. The shows primarily take place in smaller venues as opposed to the festival settings that the punk rockers have played the past couple years. After the U.S. dates, there will be a few shows in […]
BEING THERE: Jason Isbell @ The Keswick
Photo by RORY MCGLASSON Last night, Jason Isbell and his band The 400 Unit were a long way from the torrid climes of their home base of Muscle Shoals — about 50 degrees and a thousand miles, to be exact — inside the Keswick they made themselves right at home and turned up the heat but quick. Most of the sold-out crowd arrived early, and were rewarded for doing so by opening act, Damien Jurado. The Seattle-based indie singer-songwriter warmed the crowd with a tight acoustic set of intense and beautiful songs from his rich catalog. Isbell opened the night […]
Win Tix To See Jason Isbell @ The Keswick Theater
We are very honored and excited to announce that we have a pair of tickets to give away to some lucky Phawker reader to see Jason Isbell at the Keswick Theater on Thursday February 5th! What’s that you say? ‘Who is Jason Tinkerbell?’ We’re gonna forget you said that and meet you on the other side of this New York Times profile from 2013: He found fame early and wasn’t ready for it. When he was 22, he joined the Drive-By Truckers, the brilliant and hard-living Alabama band. He quickly wrote several of the group’s signature songs, including the […]
BEING THERE: Cherub @ The Trocadero
Photo by DYLAN LONG The “Strip to This” Winter 2015 Tour stopped by the Troc last night for a night full of grooviness and vibes, hosted by the catchy electro-bro duo Cherub. The combination of their irresistible, hook-filled, but empty calorie electro-pop paired with the zero fucks they gave culminated in a night of sweat, smiles and dancing. Lots and lots of dancing. After an intriguing set by opener Mystery Skulls, a one-man-band from LA that traffics in live vocals/turntablist hybrids, Cherub took the stage and dove straight into a super-groovy and incredibly energetic set. Jason Huber, Cherub’s frontman, spent […]
Win Tix To See John C. Reilly & Friends @ WCL!
Photo via @AllSONGS Oh stepbrother, where art thou? Of the many hats worn by veteran entertainer John C. Reilly — actor, producer, comedian, screenwriter — perhaps his least-known/best-hat is the white felt Stetson he dons when picking and a-grinning his way through old timey American roots music with like-minded sidekicks Becky Stark and Tom Brousseau, each accomplished singer-songwriters in their own right, and upright bassist extraordinaire Sebastian Steinberg. Tonight, JCR and company will gather around the World Cafe Live campfire and deliver an unplugged set filled with eternal folk songs, classic country weepers and bluegrass standards. Becky Stark is an […]
BEING THERE: CRUISR @ The Barbary
Photo by DYLAN LONG Last night, fresh off of their incredibly successful support slot for The 1975’s North American tour, hometown hero indie-popsters CRUISR rocked a sold-out throwdown at The Barbary along with the likes of Cold Fronts & Needle Points. The Barbary is a small joint with a big sound system, and the openers wasted no time setting an upbeat vibe for the night with loud melodies and catchy breakdowns. CRUISR took the stage at 9pm and took their sweet time working through a setlist that hovered around a mere eight or nine songs. Lush guitar riffs swept over […]
Win Tix To See Patton Oswalt @ The Tower Theater
Christmas in January continues at Phawker this week with, get this, tickets to see Patton Friggin’ Oswalt tomorrow night at the Tower!. This came together very last minute at the behest of Mr. Oswalt, who, like PT Anderson, personally donated tix to Phawker for giving away to our readers. What can we say? We’re flattered, and excited that two of you lucky ducks is going to Upper Darby tomorrow night! Time is short so let’s cut to the quick. To keep this interesting were gonna make this hinge on a trivia question. What is the name of the Pacific […]
THERE WILL BE WEED: Win Tix To Inherent Vice
Chances are that if you are reading this you are a fan of the work of director Paul Thomas Anderson, who, a reasonable argument could be made, is the Gen. X equivalent of Scorsese/Kubrick. Chances are also good that you are a fan of the work of novelist Thomas Pynchon, ludicrously long-winded hermetic hippy oracle. By now you’ve no doubt heard the amazing news that Anderson has attempted the cinematic impossible — transmuting one of Pynchon’s dense mystical doorstops of a novel, specifically 2009’s Inherent Vice — into an epic cosmic stoner slapstick starring the Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, […]
THIS IS OUR MUSIC: Our Favorite Albums Of 2014
We said it before and we’ll say it again: Quoth the Chairman Of The Board, it was a very good year. So was last year, and the one before that and the one before that and so on. Why? Mostly, we can thank the disruptive, game-eating power of the Internet. The best thing that ever happened to music was the web-abetted collapse of the music industry’s one-size-fit-most paradigm and the death of radio as the prime determinant of what people like. Now people find music everywhere, it literally rains out of everything with an electric pulse, which has triggered […]
REWIND 2014: The Year In Questions And Answers
If armies run on their stomachs, blogs run on their big fucking mouths. We’re no exception. But we’d like to think that, on a good day, we put all that hot air to good use when interrogating visiting dignitaries in advance of their triumphant arrival into the City Of Brotherly Love. We’ve never pretended to have all the answers but we do know all the right questions. And we’ve never settled for easy answers to hard questions. Sometimes feelings get hurt and sometimes new connections are made. Sometimes painful truths emerge and sometimes we actually learn something. And sometimes we […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Television @ The TLA
Television are/were legendary ’70s art-punk avatars who staged dead French symboliste poets society seances at CBGBs and scored the metaphysical proceedings with blazing epics of six-string sorcery. As one half of the Television’s incandescent guitar duality, Tom Verlaine wielded his Fender Jazzmaster like a sculptor’s carving tool, chiseling Venus de Milos of sound out of thin air. Second guitarist Richard Lloyd would then knock the arms off. Together they constructed ringing spires of guitar incandescence, erecting a chiming cathedral of sound in the church of the clustered overtone. And they called it Marquee Moon. Unto to the world a […]