EDITOR’S NOTE: The following essay by Phawker almnus Elizabeth Fiend [pictured below] about her early days as a weirdo punk rocker/comic strip artist is included in THE BOOK OF WEIRDO just published by Last Gasp. Legendary in alt-comic book circles, Weirdo was a comics anthology created by R. Crumb in 1981 and ran until 1993. THE BOOK OF WEIRDO includes a comprehensive history of the publication, interviews with its three editors — R.Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Peter Bagge (of Hate fame) — and testimonials from artists that contributed over the years, including Miss Fiend, hence this essay. Robert Aline […]
BEING THERE: IDLES @ Union Transfer
Photo by MATT SHAVER Bristol post-punk outfit IDLES is not the heaviest band out there, and they certainly aren’t the edgiest. They are, however, indubitably one of the angriest bands around. The fundamental rebelliousness that is the driving force of punk rock music, in the case of IDLES, manifests itself through a twisted (though profoundly humane) depiction of love. You heard me right: the thematic heart of IDLES’ punk-ness is a kind of re-imagined Flower Power. Their two debut full-length records, Brutalism and Joy as an Act of Resistance are both unashamedly anti-fascism and an unconditionally inclusive call for community. […]
Q&A: w/ Black Keys Drummer Patrick Carney
BY LARA MICKLE After a five year hiatus, the Black Keys are back with a new album called, simply enough, Let’s Rock, and a tour that stops at Wells Fargo Center on October 14th. Re-connecting their basement-rocking roots, Let’s Rock channels a distinctly bell-bottomed 70’s rock vibe by keeping it stone-cold simple and using no instruments made after 1978. Last week we got bespectacled Keys sticksman Patrick Carney on the horn. DISCUSSED: What the hell they’ve been up to for the last five years (a lot, it turns out); making babies; producing other people’s albums; seeing Wu-Tang Clan at the […]
BEING THERE: Bon Iver + Feist @ Liacouras Center
Photo by GRAHAM TOLBERT Pasted on every door of the venue were warnings of extreme strobe lighting. The heavy promise of a twisted psychedelic dream that would channel both the cabin fever seclusion of Bon Iver’s early music and the cryptic auto-tuned voice of 2016’s 22, A Million grew closer with Feist’s preparatory words, “Your hearts will be turned into a flock of pastel geese flying into the future,” at the end of her opening set. With the sudden darkness and quick flashes of hallucinatory art across stage-bookending screens as the i,i intro “Yi” played in the background of Bon […]
BEING THERE: Hop Along & Tierra Whack
Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JONES Philly loves their own. The crowd, crammed into a warehouse somewhere in Northern Liberties last night, went wild for the performances of three Philly-born artists’ Hop Along, Tierra Whack and Orion Sun, at the opening of the 4-day House of Vans event. Indie rock band Hop Along—which is comprised of two siblings, front-woman Frances Quinlan and her brother Mark on drums — opened for Tierra Whack. Live, Frances’ voice is an enigma— think a chain-smoking baby, crude and rustic, pulsing in its ragged rawness. That voice’s full-throatedness pierced the venue, making the audience empathize with the […]
TELEVISION: Last Night On It’s Always Sunny
The gang finds out that Philadelphia City Council has proposed a law to decriminalize public urination, but one councilwoman has vowed to vote it down. The gang likes the idea of being able to urinate publicly with impunity, so Dennis devises a plan for the guys to “obtain” the naysaying city councilwoman’s house keys and set all of her clocks back so she misses the public urination decriminalization bill vote. But then Dee arrives to ruin the fun. Turns out this is “Dee Day” and for the next 24 hours the gang must devote all of their time and attention […]
ALL THAT JAZZ: Talking Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way With The War On Drugs’ Drummer Charlie Hall
BY JONATHAN VALANIA If you don’t know Charlie Hall [pictured, below right] you should. He’s the drummer for The War On Drugs, Windsor For The Derby, co-founder of The Lindsey Buckingham Appreciation Society, leader of the a cappella choral group The Silver Ages, and an all-around good guy. A fan and a student of music in all its popular and unpopular forms, Charlie’s latest project is a tribute/cover band called Get Up With It that will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1969 release of Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way, the jazz master’s initial foray into the experimental […]
BEING THERE : White Fence @ Underground Arts
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Those familiar with the smaller stage at Underground Arts may know that seven musicians is at least three too many for a space of that size. A small extension was added centerstage on Thursday night for White Fence frontman Tim Presley, like a mini-catwalk, but the garage rock anti-hero hardly took advantage of it in the conventional sense, using it instead to edge up his mic only slightly to give the rest of his band just a little breathing room in the wings. Presley comes off as demure, unassuming and refreshingly unpretentious, his shirt tucked into […]
Win Tix To See Bon Iver @ Liacouras Center
I am old enough to remember when Bon Iver was just a weird-beard folkie lumberjack with a broken heart and a bad liver haunting the woods of Wisconsin, cranking out subterranean heartsick blues in his dad’s hunting cabin like the Unabomber of Love. This was back before he went prog-rock at Newport and started a riot — that was way cray. I remember Father John Misty threatening to cut the power with an axe and the guys from Mumford & Sons had to wrestle him to the ground. So much drama. And yet, despite the confusion of the moment, […]
BEING THERE: Lucinda Williams @ World Cafe
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Lucinda Williams has a cold. Less than a minute into “Right on Time,” her first song of the night, she stepped back from the microphone saying “shit” under her breath, to reach for a tissue while she shook her head in agitated dismay at someone backstage. The annoyance on her face made me fear a stoic, empty performance lay ahead, or worse yet, a shortened-set meltdown. If her sandpapery voice could barely make it through the first verse of “Right on Time,” there was no way she’d be able to perform the straining high-range melodies of […]
BEING THERE: Brittany Howard @ The Fillmore
Photo by MATT SHAVER Wiping the sweat from her brow, Brittany Howard paused between songs Friday night at The Fillmore to wag her finger at the crowd with a warning: “Be careful now. Don’t fuck around and drive me up.” Fans swallowed her words in a roar of cheers that would do just that, after only two songs in a set that featured every track off of her just released solo full-length debut Jaime. Unable to speak over the unending applause, Howard gave up trying, blowing a kiss to the crowd with a mouthed “love you” before turning back to […]
BEING THERE: Dead Milkmen @ Laurel Hill
Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JONES The Dead Milkmen are the band that invariably comes to mind when we think of Philly punk rock. To me, their sound has always stood out against their contemporary punk rockers: no screaming, no harsh distortion or feedback – instead, punk attitude and punk rock song structures accented by surf and funk influence, with no shortage of comedy. Since their humble cassette beginnings in ’83 as a band of fictional characters in the minds of guitarist/vocalist Joe Genaro and his high school friends, Rodney Linderman (vocalist/keyboardist), and Garth (who joined the Air Force), to the full […]