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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
HAPPY EASTER: David Lynch’s Rabbits
WIKIPEDIA: Rabbits is a 2002 series of short horror web films written and directed by David Lynch, although Lynch himself refers to it as a nine-episode sitcom.[1] It depicts three humanoid rabbits played by Scott Coffey, Laura Elena Harring[2] and Naomi Watts in a room.[3] Their disjointed conversations are interrupted by a laugh track. Rabbits is presented with the tagline “In a nameless city deluged by a continuous rain… three rabbits live with a fearful mystery”. Rabbits takes place entirely within a single box set representing the living room of a house. Within the set, three humanoid rabbits enter, exit, […]
ARTSY: Signs Of The Times
Artwork by the daughter of @SandraSMcCrae
Q&A With New York Magazine Film Critic Matt Zoller Seitz, Author Of The Wes Anderson Collection
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published on March 14, 2014 Matt Zoller Seitz is the TV critic for New York magazine and Vulture.com and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. A Brooklyn-based writer and filmmaker, Seitz has written, narrated, edited or produced over a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image and The L Magazine, among other outlets. His five part 2009 video essay Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style was later spun off into the hardcover book The Wes Anderson Collection. Seitz is the founder and […]
KALEIDOSCOPE EYES: A Visit With Photographer Henry Grossman, The Man Who Shot The Beatles
All photos by HENRY GROSSMAN except the final image by JOSH PELTA-HELLER BY JOSH PELTA-HELLER In March of 1967, on assignment for Life Magazine, photographer Henry Grossman found himself sitting in EMI Studio Two at Abbey Road with The Beatles, while they sculpted and shaped the early demos of what would become “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.” “I remember when we walked in that Paul [McCartney] came over and said ‘hey guys, listen to this…,’” recalls Grossman fondly, “and he sat down at the piano and started playing something, and [the other three Beatles] all gathered around, and by […]
THE LADY OF THE LOG: Q&A w/ Catherine Coulson
Artowrk by JJUSTINE DEVINE EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally posted on September 28th, 2015. In advance of Sunday night’s long-anticipated reactivation of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, we present this reprise edition. EDITOR’S NOTE 4/25/16: Just found out the sad and shocking news that Katherine passed away today. In tribute, we present a reprise edition of this very in-depth interview we did with her last October in advance of her talk at the Pennsylvania Academy Of The Arts, which was part of PAFA’s David Lynch retrospective, The Unified Field. She was very generous with her time — this was probably the […]
ARTSY: Being David Lynch
Playing Lynch: Official trailer to Psychogenic Fugue from Squarespace on Vimeo. Psychogenic Fugue is the full length Director’s Cut film from the project “Playing Lynch”, a collaborative meditation on the work of David Lynch. Hosted by Squarespace, and directed by Sandro, this film features seven re-creations of some of Lynch’s most iconic characters, as performed by John Malkovich, and featuring the music of David Lynch, as performed by artists like The Flaming Lips and Angelo Badalamenti. The film was lovingly created for the benefit of the David Lynch Foundation. RELATED: “It’s Like You’ve Gone Through a Black Hole:” Five Artists […]
ARTSY: Night Of The Igguana
Like all things Iggy, this is undeniably badass. PREVIOUSLY: There may well be a sound more thrilling than the tub-thumping opening salvo of Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life,” but after five decades of listening closely I’ve yet to hear it. When that song starts, stillness is simply not an option. Resistance is futile. It’s a showstopper, which is why it’s usually the last song of the night. So when Iggy (known to his mother as James Newell Osterberg Jr.) kicked off his concert at the Academy Of Music last night with it, the question hanging in the air was: […]