BY JOE PAONE IGGLES CORRESPONDENT Yesterday, my dad and I headed out on an absolutely beautiful fall afternoon to watch the Eagles commit football against our most despised rival, the evil Dallas Cowboys. We even arrived earlier than usual just to enjoy the weather, sights and sounds. We had no idea we were entering into some kind of sick, mean-spirited psychological experiment courtesy of the very team we’ve loved unconditionally for decades. I’ll always remember yesterday as the day the Eagles organization turned on its own paying customers. And it’s going to take me a long time to forgive Eagles […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Gary Clark Jr. @ The TLA
Photo by PETE TROSHAK Smoke and anxiety hung heavy in the air in the Theatre of Living Arts as a capacity crowd waited for Gary Clark Jr. to deliver The Blues. Once a generation this overlooked but deeply American genre produces a shining star whose undeniable brightness reaches the masses and shines a light into the darkest corners of our hearts and souls. With a palpable buzz swirling around him based on jaw-dropping live performances and his excellent Blak and Blu album, Clark just might be The One. Frequent shouts of “Gary, Gary!” rang out through the restless crowd before […]
CONCERT REVIEW: J.D. McPherson @ Johnny Brenda’s
Photo by SAMANTHA FRANKLIN BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER I have seen the future of the past, and his name is J.D. McPherson, a thirtysomething cuffed-denim Okie with lacquered hair, iron lungs and, goodness gracious, great balls of fire. McPherson and his gifted retro-rock posse recently released Signs & Signifiers, a bracing collection of tailfin rockabilly, rawboned R&B and sultry moonstruck balladeering. It is hands-down the feel-good record of the year. McPherson’s star has been rising steadily ever since. NPR and WXPN have taken up his cause, he’ll be on Letterman December 4th, and he sold out Johnny Brendas […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See JD McPherson & Sean Rowe!
With a dulcet baritone perched somewhere between the subwoofer-shaking pipes of Mark Lanegan and Leonard Cohen, Sean Rowe commands the kind of gravitas usually associated with fiery-eyed Old Testament prophets or mud-caked Delta bluesmen whenever he opens his mouth. An avowed naturalist who has done months-long survivalist stints in the wilderness living off nothing but his wits and fortitude and the fat of the land, Rowe also vibes a certain Thoreau-ian mien that only serves to reinforce his cred as a rough-hewn, antiquarian folkie that can reduce noisy bars to pin-drop silence with nothing more than an acoustic guitar […]
OHIO STATE OF MIND: Bowzer & Me Save Democracy
EDITOR’S NOTE: Matt Goldfine has been working in Philadelphia and Harrisburg politics for the last five years. Tired of fretting over the polls from afar, he drove out to Ohio on Sunday to volunteer for the Obama campaign’s get-out-the-vote drive. He will be filing regular dispatches from Ohio up to election night BY MATT GOLDFINE As I drove through downtown Cleveland this morning, an eerie fog clouded the tops of skyscrapers off in the distance. All the streetlights were all out and the ordinarily bustling sidewalks were empty. I got a text message that the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party HQ, […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Sean Hayes @ JB’s
No that’s not Keith Richards circa 1987, it’s Sean Hayes. Sean was/is part of the San Francisco folk scene that birthed Jolie Holland. She’s awesome. So is, in his own way, Sean Rowe. The shorthand description is ‘the white Bill Withers,’ The longhand description is, well, let’s let SF WEEKLY explain, they live with the guy: “Take him anywhere, play him for anyone, and the response is always the same: People want more. They’ll write down the name if they don’t know it already… an impressive treat in your pocket. Hayes’ music succeeds on the tension between warm, resonant […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Aimee Mann @ Union Transfer
Photo by Sheryl Nields We love Aimee Mann. How could we not. Just look at this picture. Those boots made for walkin’. Those glasses made for readin’. That coat made for wearin’. And don’t even get us started on that backdrop. Like butter, it is. We’ve loved her ever since the nihilists cut her big toe off in the Coen Brothers The Big Lebowski. That’s not true, we loved her before that. We loved the gorgeously melancholic soundtrack to PT Anderson’s Magnolia (SEE BELOW). We loved it when she was Sleater-Kinney’s maid, as humbling as that must have been. We […]
CRUEL & USUAL: The Obscene Living Conditions Inside Philadelphia’s House Of Corrections And The Inquirer Series That Helped Make It That Way
Painting by Fernando Botero BY JEFF DEENEY Recently I had a rare opportunity to go inside Philadelphia’s House of Corrections, the oldest jail in the Philadelphia Prison System, and see the conditions inmates live in. I was there in my capacity as a social worker and not as a writer and frankly I had no intention of writing about the experience. But as I walked the block prisoners implored me to, perhaps thinking I was a reporter, so I feel I must report on their behalf. “Tell them out there about this overcrowding you seen here!” “Put it in the […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Divine Fits @ Union Transfer
Unless you are dead, insane or in jail, you know that Divine Fits is indie-rock super-dooper group comprised of Britt Daniel from some band called Spoon, Dan Boeckner from Wolf Parade and Sam Brown from the mighty New Bomb Turks. They play Union Transfer on Monday in support of their debut A Thing Called Divine Fits. We have a pair of tickets to give away to the 13,oooth lucky reader to sign up for our mailing list (to the right of this post, under the masthead). And by 13,000th we of course mean 13th. Signing up to our mailing […]
Win Tix To See Father John Misty @ Union Transfer
From WIKIPEDIA: On May 1, 2012 Joshua [Tillman, formerly of Fleet Foxes] released the album ‘Fear Fun’ under his new moniker ‘Father John Misty’.[15] When discussing his motivations behind the creation of the name ‘Father John Misty’, Tillman paraphrases Philip Roth: ’It’s all of me and none of me, if you can’t see that, you won’t get it’. What I call it is totally arbitrary, but I like the name. You’ve got to have a name. I never got to choose mine.”[16] A couple of months prior to the release of the album a video was released for the […]
Win Tix To See GZA Perform Liquid Swords
We have a pair of tickets to see Wu Tang Clansman GZA perform his legendary 1995 solo album Liquid Swords beginning to end at The Troc on Saturday for the lucky 13th reader to sign up for our mailing list (to the right of this post, under the masthead). Signing up to our mailing list gets you special content alerts and early warnings about special promotions and concert ticket giveaways. And rest assured your email address will never be sold or shared with anyone, we promise upon pain of death. Us not you. So, let’s get you into a […]
DEAR TERRY GROSS: Enough With The Gershwins!
Artwork by ANDY WARHOL Terry, we love, ya. We listen every day. The best in the biz, etc. We plug the show all the time and happy to do it. You name-checking us is our ringtone, fer chrissakes! But enough with the friggin’ Gershwins already! Especially when there is so much awesome music going on these days and so little of it finds its way onto Fresh Air. A Google search combining “Fresh Air” and “Gershwin” yields 430,000 results! We just had one of those LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE-style meltdowns, but with GERSHWIN instead of BRITNEY — and we’re not even […]
Win Tix To See Ryan Bingham @ Union Transfer
Ryan Bingham wrote “The Weary Kind,” the Academy Award-winning theme to Boozy Crazy Heart, starring Jeff ‘The Dude’ Bridges. He has a rowdy new album, his third for Lost Highway, called Tomorrowland, produced by the unsinkable T-Bone Burnett, who partnered with him on the Crazy Heart soundtrack. He’s a little bit like Townes Van Zandt without all the drugs and insanity. Oh, he’s also, like, really handsome, too, if you are into that kind of thing. Bingham’s tour in support of Tomorrowland stops at Union Transfer on Friday. We have a pair of tickets (a $50 value!) to give […]