They play the Mann Center on Friday and tomorrow we’ll be giving away a pair of tickets. Stay tuned…
New York Times Reviews Will Bunch’s Backlash
NEW YORK TIMES: By far the most compelling, if not terribly original, arguments in “The Backlash” concern the current media environment, which has amplified the loudest and most partisan voices, and helped spread fact-free theories about President Obama’s not being born in the United States or wanting to take away people’s guns. Mr. Bunch invokes Neil Postman — who argued in his seminal 1985 book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” that the entertainment values promoted by television are subverting public discourse — to explore the phenomenon of Mr. Beck and his shameless emotional appeals to his audience’s deepest fears about change […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
ARTSY: Getting Your Fringe On
BY LINDSAY HARRIS-FRIEL FRINGE CORRESPONDENT It’s the most wonderful time of the year again, when every night of the first half of September is your opportunity to break up with monotony. The 2010 Philadelphia Live Arts/Philly Fringe festival is back, and as usual, the selection is overwhelming. This year the Festival puts more emphasis on film and visual art than usual, widening the focus of entertainment choices, and has brought the Festival Bar further south again, tightening the geographic intensity. So, please, go out every single day and night and make sure that you view every single show. Make sure […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Marah’s Dave Bielanko
BY JONATHAN VALANIA All you youngin’s are probably too new here to remember all this, but there was a time back around the turn of the century when Marah — a scrappy little roots-y, beer-lovin’ band of street-urchins from South Philly-by-way-of-Conshohocken — was being groomed to be the second coming of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band circa The Young, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle. Marah was always essentially the brothers Bielanko — Dave, the rakish, boozy street poet with the soulful rasp and the uncanny capacity to channel the heart of the common man and Serge, the […]
FRINGE PREVIEW: The Festival Bar
BY ARTHUR SHKOLNIK The Festival Bar, now in its third year, is an after-hours space which opens its doors for the duration of the Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. The former home of Club Egypt in Northern Liberties (Spring Garden and Delaware Ave.) has been revamped with eye-catching visual art and modern media installations in preparation for the 16-day, all-inclusive array of genre-spanning entertainment. The Festival Bar has become the verified hot spot for thousands of festival-goers seeking after-hours recreation, and during the week features a motley assortment of nightly cabaret, including but not limited to: live stage performances, […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
EARLY WORD: Night Of The Igguana
EDITOR’S NOTE: In honor of Iggy & The Stooges playing the House of Blues in Atlantic City on Friday, we have dug into the vaults to retrieve our coverage of the last time they came through town back in 2007. This includes a review of their Electric Factory concert and an in-depth interview with founding member/guitarist extraordinaire Ron Asheton, who sadly passed away in 2009. The current line-up includes Mike Watt on bass (filling in for deceased bassist Dave Alexander), Scott Asheton on drums, and guitarist James Williamson who first replaced Ron Asheton back in the early 70s for the […]
CONCERT REVIEW: I Went To The Philadelphia Folk Festival And All I Got Was A Crunchy Good Time
[Photo by GOOB712] BY ARTHUR SHKOLNIK Tucked away on a tranquil farm amidst fields of sweet corn in quaint, semi-rural Schwenksville, PA is the cultural tradition and phenomenon known as the Philadelphia Folk Festival, which began in 1962, and celebrated its 49th year this weekend. Campers came out in droves and quickly filled the reserved 40 acres of space for the three day festival, forcing shuttle buses to make constant trips to and from a field sanctioned for overflow parking. Early intermittent rain and dampened grounds did little to muddy the spirits of performers and festival goers, who managed to […]
RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Richard Thompson
BY ARTHUR SHKOLNIK Quintessential Englishman Richard Thompson has been pushing the boundaries of finger-style guitar since the mid-sixties, when he founded Fairport Convention as a teenager. Five decades and over 40 albums later, Thompson has proven himself a force not to be folked and he is consistently ranked as one of the top five living guitarists and one of the greatest songwriters in recent memory. His newest album, Dream Attic, is a collection of 13 new tracks recorded in real time during a series of West Coast shows. The music continues to emulate life through introspective lyrics and incandescent guitar […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH: Exhuming The Old-Timey Mass Murder Mystery At Duffy’s Cut
[Illustration by TIM DURNING] “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” —William Faulkner BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY There is an old saying: Under every mile of railroad track is a dead Irishman. Locally speaking, this is almost literally true. Back in the 19th century, the Main Line, not to mention large stretches of the railroads in this part of the country, were built on the blood, sweat and tears of Irish Catholic immigrants, who back then commanded about as much respect as Mexican immigrant workers command today. Out near Malvern, under mile 59 of what […]