Tonight is the closing night of the Dill Pickles’ summer run at Fergie’s. *** SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS: I Put A Spell On You
THE BEATLES: I’m Only Sleeping (REMASTERED)
RELATED: Remastered Beatlemania Hits 9/09/09 LOS ANGELES TIMES: A team of top engineers, led by longtime Beatles associate Allan Rouse, labored for four years to return the feel that was lost in the flimsy-sounding 1987 compact disc reissues — the way everyone except audiophiles and vinyl hoarders (and, at the spectrum’s other end, YouTube browsers) hear Beatles music. “It’s not smarter or more sophisticated,” Paul McCartney recently said in Billboard of the remastering effort. “It’s just more real — it’s more true to the noise we were actually making.” Grasping the archival essence of this latest Beatles push doesn’t at […]
RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Chairlift’s Aaron Pfenning
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Time was when licensing your songs for commercials was the kiss of death credibility-wise. All that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, also known as the early ’90s. Then along came a series of stylish Volkswagen ads featuring choice cuts from the likes of Spiritualized and Nick Drake and suddenly the script was flipped. These days some of the best music can be heard in television commercials, artists get paid handsomely and their music spreads far and wide beyond the craggy walls of the indie ghetto, opening up further opportunities and vastly […]
TUNES: Remastered Beatlemania Hits 9/09/09
[Painting by JON LANGFORD] CNN: On Wednesday — 9/9/09 — remastered versions of the Beatles catalogue will be released, giving listeners what the remaining members of “The Fab Four” say is the closest reproduction ever of how their music sounded in the studio. Research shows that more than 40 years after their last public performance, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr’s music remains as interesting to young people now as it ever was. A Pew Research survey released last month showed that 81 percent of respondents between ages 16-29 said they liked The Beatles. Eleven percent said […]
UNCANNY: Madonna’s Daughter Looks Just Like Mom
DAILY MAIL: Trussed up in white wedding dress and veil, Madonna’s daughter Lourdes recreates her mother’s famous wedding dress pose in the Eighties hit song Like A Virgin. The 12-year-old wears lashings of red lipstick and has the iconic beauty spot painted above her lip. It is taken from what is believed to be a second version of Madge’s Celebration video, which will include fans dancing to the song, to be released next week. MORE
USELESS INFORMATION: Father Knows Best
SHITMYDADSAYS: “What are you listening to?…I know who Hall & Oates are god dammit. It’s the mustache guy and the gay man.” MORE SHITMYDADSAYS: I’m 28. I live with my 73-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says. MORE RELATED: You can follow Phawker’s Twitter stream HERE
CONCERT REVIEW: Britney At The Wachovia
DAN DELUCA: Throughout, she wore a headset microphone and consistently moved her mouth in time with the never all-that-expressive vocals that were pumped through the sound system. Probably, she was actually singing over pre-recorded tracks that removed any possibility of an aural mishap. […] Spears fans were deliriously happy to be in the same room with one of the biggest brand-name superstars in the world, and the object of their affection worked hard enough to put on a properly sensory-overloaded show, with a stage that shot off smoke jets and lit up in a burning ring of fire as Brit […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Writer and director Quentin Tarantino discusses his new film, Inglourious Basterds, which blends elements of the spaghetti western with those of World War II films. Tarantino’s other films include Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill films. RADIO TIMES Hour 1 We devote the hour to the life and work of Senator Edward Kennedy. Our guests include historians ROBERT DALLEK and JULIAN ZELLIZER. Then, Washington Post political reporter DAN BALZ joins us to talk about the Kennedy’s influence in politics and in the Congress. Hour 2 Vogue has set the standard for fashion and fashion magazines for […]
THE EARLY WORD: Black Mirror
[Click to activate Internets] ARCADE FIRE: Black Mirror Arcade Fire • Black Mirror (Official Video) from Tracy Maurice on Vimeo. Arcade Fire- Black Mirror from Tracy Maurice on Vimeo.
RIP: Pop Songstress Extraordinaire Ellie Greenwich
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Ellie Greenwich emerged as a songwriter when America itself was on the cusp of everything, a whole set of conventions unspooling under the power of rock ‘n’ roll, the civil rights movement and the incipient counterculture. Her American polyglot upbringing prepared Greenwich, who died today at age 68 of a heart attack, for what she became: one of the great sound alchemists who turned the ambiguities of youth into the essence of American pop. Able to sing, arrange and produce as well as pen indelible hits, Greenwich found her artistic home within New York’s Brill Building, where […]
PHAWKER TAWK: W/ The Vivian Girls
BY BRITTNEY BARRETT Named after the slippery hermaphroditic heroines of Henry Darger‘s The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, the Vivian Girls have built a burgeoning career out of channeling the same sense of adventure and exploration possessed by their namesakes. That’s about as far as the comparisons — given that Darger is best known for his winding, 15,000 page bizarro epic, the girls are defined by their emotional realism and punk-rock brevity, speeding through their debut in a flurry […]
MUST SEE TV: Breakfast At Sulimay’s
This week the wrecking crew reviews new music from Amanda Blank and Radiohead. NPR: In the back booth of Sulimay’s Restaurant in Philadelphia, you’ll regularly find three saucy old-timers. Between them, they’ve lived almost 100 years in Philadelphia’s Fishtown, but these three aren’t just fixtures of the neighborhood diner scene. Ann Bailey, Bill Able and Joe Walker have become surprisingly popular — as pop music critics. As Walker, 84, explains, “It is the music of the age — it is the music of the young people. And it’s what they’re going to remember years from now, with nostalgia. I don’t […]