Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Being assigned to cover the Die Antwoord show at the Electric Factory last night meant boning up on Zef culture (pun intended), which is all about looking extravagant while being poor. Zef is the South Africa version of ‘ghetto fabulous’ meets white trash. All of which dovetails nicely with Die Antwoord’s mission— embracing the oddities of humankind, casting aside all negative associations with obscenity and horror, and telling censorship to go fuck itself. Hard. Waiting in the photo pit at the lip of the stage for the band to arrive, I began to worry that […]
Win Tix To See Die Antwoord @ The E-Factory
Fearlessly and furiously dry-humping the dark, moist seam between art and identity like it’s the vajayjay of God, these faux-Zef art/rap/provocateurs from the land of Nelson Mandela are not only punk-as-f*ck and funny-as-sh*t, they are — or at least were — the greatest threat to the status quo since Marcel DuChamp ripped a dirty urinal off the wall and made it high art with nothing more than the power of Because I Said So. Having said that, the new-ish video for “Pitbull Terrier” from Donker Mag is a bit of a letdown visually and sonically, so instead of posting […]
FROM THE VAULT: A Hard Night’s Day
Hy Lit and the Beatles, Convention Hall, Philadelphia, 1964 BY JONATHAN VALANIA It is precisely 9:36 p.m. in West Philadelphia on the second splendidly summery September night of 1964, and exactly six minutes ago everything suddenly changed. For teenage Philadelphia, the calendar just flipped, along with everyone’s wig, to a new era. It will be years before anyone fully understands all the far-reaching implications, but this much is indisputably true: The hazy, crazy 1960s have officially begun. OMIGOD, THEY’RE HERE! THEY’RE REALLY REALLY HERE! For months, their songs have blared from the tinny speakers of transistor radios, and they’ve stared […]
DAVID LYNCH: Trailer For The Unified Field
Tres Lynch-ian, which is to say deliciously inexplicable. Can’t wait. RELATED: Michael Solomonov, the chef and co-owner of Philadelphia’s Federal Donuts, jumped at the invite to make confections in honor of the first major retrospective of Lynch’s work, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (where Lynch studied painting in the late ’60s). With names like Blue Velvet and Good Coffee — a “Twin Peaks” reference — Solomonov’s creations are an homage to the master of magical realist cinema. There’s one, though, that won’t see the light of day: the David Lynch. “I would have done a little clove […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See The Trip To Italy
Dunno about you but we here at Phawker could watch Steve Coogan and Rob Brydal act like petulant man-babies as they road trip across Europe doing their Michael Caine-offs until the cows come home. If that sounds like a good way to wind up your Labor Day weekend, have we got a deal for you. All you have to do is follow us on Twitter and then drop us a line at FEED@PHAWKER.COM saying you just did so. Or if you already follow us on Twitter, drop us a line saying as much. Make sure you put the magic words […]
ARTSY: There Goes The Eraserhood
David Lynch and Jack Fisk in Philadelphia 1967 by C.K. WILLIAMS NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Fisk persuaded his friend to join him at Pennsylvania Academy in January 1966. “At the academy, everybody I met was a serious painter,” Mr. Lynch said. “I was just starting to find something of my own. It was really inspiring.” He lived with Mr. Fisk north of the academy in a desolate, industrial area, where he would watch bodies being carried into the city morgue from a window. “I met the night watchman from the morgue at Pop’s Diner, who invited me over,” Mr. Lynch […]
BEING THERE: Sleep @ Union Transfer
Photo by DAN LONG It was easy to fade into the ether last night. Between the langorous doom-riddled sludge of Windhand and the colossal cannabinoidal metallurgy of Sleep, one could get seriously lost in the shear density of each performance, not to mention all the sonic ooze lathering the venue much to the absolute delight of the sold out crowd at Union Transfer. Bodies were flung, necks were tested, weed was incinerated and any unplugged ears, I’m certain, were rendered inoperable within the first few minutes of Sleep’s set. Following a series of recorded NASA transmissions which aired as the […]
Miley Cyrus’ Homeless Dude VMA Switcheroo Was Bravest/Coolest Use Of Celebrity Power Since Marlon Brando Sent Sacheen Littlefeather To Decline His Oscar For The Godfather In Protest
WIKIPEDIA: Marlon Brando became involved with the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the early 1970s. In 1973, he decided to make a statement about the Wounded Knee incident and contacted AIM about providing a person to accept the Oscar for him. Dennis Banks and Russell Means picked Sacheen Littlefeather. She represented Brando and his boycott of the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972), as a way to protest the ongoing siege at Wounded Knee and Hollywood‘s and television‘s misrepresentation of American Indians. Brando had written a 15-page speech for Littlefeather to […]
BEING THERE: The Maggot Brain Surgeon General
George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Ardmore Music Hall, Wed. night by DAN LONG
A TALE OF TWO DELINQUENCIES: The Deadly Double Standard Of Racial Justice In America
Via Twitter/photographer unknown BY JEFF DEENEY I grew up in suburban Philadelphia in the 80s. It was a time when working class families were leaving their row homes in a city they considered increasingly black and dangerous in droves for single houses on tree lined streets in nearly all white townships not far away, maybe ten miles, but in many ways worlds apart. By 1985, when the bomb dropped on the MOVE house and it seemed like Philly was death spiraling into apocalypse my parents watched the chaos over dinner in Delaware County marveling at what good fortune we had […]
SUPER BAD: Win Tix To Get On The Good Foot
There are two kinds of people in this world: the soulful and the soulless. If you are bothering to read this we’re gonna go out on a limb here and wager you fit into the former category. Which works out well because papa just so happens to have a brand new bag filled with free passes to see Get On Up, Taylor Hackford’s soul-powered, superbad, Mick Jagger-produced biopic of the Godfather of Soul himself, Mr. James Brown. See David Denby’s review below for the deets, but suffice it to say that if you like to have fun, you will LOVE […]
Win Tix To See Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here
Chances are if you are reading this you have seen Garden State, Scrubs star Zach Braff’s 2004 updating of The Graduate for the indie-rock generation, starring Natalie Portman as The Biggest Shins Fan On Earth. Or at least you know about it. Wish I Was Here is Braff’s crowd-funded follow-up. IMDB summarizes the plot thusly: “Wish I Was Here is the story of Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor, father and husband, who at 35 is still trying to find his identity; a purpose for his life. He winds up trying to home school his two children when his father […]
BEING THERE: XPoNential Festival 2014
Photos by PETE TROSHAK One of the must-see musical events of summer is radio station WXPN’s annual XPoNential Music Festival, which features alternating sets on two outdoor stages at Wiggins Park during the day and a main stage show at night at Susquehanna Bank Center adding up to 12 hours of non-stop music each day. This year’s edition carried on the tradition of an eclectic mix of music featuring less heralded but worthy acts and more famous acts like this year’s headliners Ryan Adams and Beck. Philly based Strand of Oaks set the bar high early on Saturday for the […]