Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER NPR: David Byrne is, of course, the lead singer and frontman of the Talking Heads. The band recorded hit songs like “Psycho Killer,” “Life During Wartime,” “Once in a Lifetime,” “Burning Down the House,” and so many more. He is also a solo artist in his own right and has recorded instrumental electronic albums, pop records, and spoken word. He’s collaborated with Brian Eno, St. Vincent, Philip Glass, and Selena to name a few. He’s written books, scored soundtracks, even wrote and directed his own movie, 1986’s True Stories. If you wanted to find a common […]
MADAME GHANDI: Waiting For Me
Multi-talented artist, percussionist, producer and activist MADAME GANDHI today releases her newest video for Visions track “Waiting For Me” – watch here. Directed by Misha Ghose, “Waiting For Me” was conceptualized and produced by an all-female team and features queer, trans, female and gender non-conforming cast members and marks Madame Gandhi’s first-ever video shot in India. With its contrasting industrial imagery and color palettes, the visual brings to life the song’s empowering message, an eco-feminist call to action that eschews institutionalized power structures in favor of forging new narratives of self-expression. Of the video, Madame Gandhi explains: “We as artists […]
BOOKS: The Gospel According To Saint Nick
VICE: It felt like an extravagant gift from my past self when Stranger Than Kindness showed up in the mail. It’s an odd and substantial object—part art book, part memoir, part jigsaw artifact—by and about Nick Cave, designed to complement an exhibit about his work at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. (The exhibit is described by the curators as eight rooms devoted to “a spatial, multi-sensory exploration of his many real and imagined universes.”) Like everything else, the exhibition is now indefinitely postponed, but the book more than stands on its own. Cave, who fled Australia for London and […]
CINEMA: In Werner Herzog We Trust
NEW YORK TIMES: You’ve talked in the past about your desire for your documentaries to convey ecstatic truth3 — or deeper truth — rather than what you’ve called “the truth of accountants.” Does anything about the need for ecstatic truth feel different now, at a time when even factual truth feels destabilized? WERNER HERZOG: I’ll make it very simple. My witness is Michelangelo, who did the statue of the Pietà. When you look at Jesus taken down from the cross, it’s the tormented face of a 33-year-old man. You look at the face of his mother: His mother is 17. […]
UPDATE: we’re up to 4.2 MILLION unique visitors since this was made.
THOM YORKE: Last I Heard
This if f*cking INCREDIBLE! Arguably the greatest music video since “This Is America.” The 5-minute short film, made at the Brooklyn-based experimental studio Art Camp, is set in a dream world inspired by fragments of Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood’s imagination and made up of over 3,000 hand-illustrated frames. […] Art Camp commented on their process interpreting the latest track from Thom’s current album ANIMA: “Our first and last goal was to serve the feelings of the song and the record. Thom shared a list of visions with us, disconnected images from his dreams, and we expanded on it with […]
WORTH REPEATING: How I Became A Weirdo
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 […]
REVIEW: Hamilton @ The Forrest Theatre
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip hop musical about the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton has tapped into the politico/sociocultural zeitgeist, generating the kind of rabid fandom usually reserved for things like Marvel and Star Wars, and commanding thousands on the grey market for a seat at one of its sold out shows. The touring production opened Wednesday at Philadelphia’s Forrest Theatre where it will play through November 11, bringing Hamilton’s story to the city where the titular protagonist spent 15 years of his life while a member of the Congress of the Confederation and the Constitutional Convention. In fact the location […]
KIM GORDON: Sketch Artist
This is easily the best thing Kim Gordon’s ever done. And I’m old enough to remember when buying Bad Moon Rising on vinyl wasn’t just a hip format choice, it was your only option. “Sketch Artist” is the lead-off track from her just-announced/first-ever solo album, No Home Record, to be released October 11th on Matador Records. No Home Record follows the recent opening of Gordon’s solo exhibition “She Bites Her Tender Mind” at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) in Dublin and “Lo-Fi Glamour” at Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. The video for “Sketch Artist” was directed by Berlin-based artist and […]
ARTSY: I Will Dare
Opens May 4th at James Oliver Gallery, 723 Chestnut Street, 4th floor. Reception from 6pm – 9pm. PREVIOUSLY: Q&A W/ David Jablow
BEING THERE: Positively 4th Street
800 block of North 4th St. Philadelphia. Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA “May 10th. Thank God for the rain which has helped wash away the garbage and trash off the sidewalks. I’m workin’ long hours now, six in the afternoon to six in the morning. Sometimes even eight in the morning, six days a week. Sometimes seven days a week. It’s a long hustle but it keeps me real busy. I can take in three, three fifty a week. Sometimes even more when I do it off the meter. All the animals come out at night – whores, skunk pussies, buggers, […]
DIY IRL: Q&A W/ David Commins & Rachel Pfeffer, Publishers Of The Philadelphia Secret Admirer Zine
BY MARIAH HALL A zine is a self-published, limited circulation and often hand-distributed work, often featuring art, photography, poetry, and prose. Zine culture is rooted in the social and political activism of the ’60s and ’70s, and later became associated with the underground music scene. In a reflection of D.I.Y. values, zines are more focused on expressing particular views rather than gaining profits, and they act as a mode of communication and a platform for those not typically granted a voice. The last decade has witnessed a resurgence of zine culture, a revival of print media in a paperless age. […]
