This is an open call for your two cents. 215 Magazine has asked us to pen a piece about the most notable moments in the last 50 years of Philly concert history — both the best of the best and the worst of the worst — and we’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter. Drop us a line at feed@phawker.com and let us know the 10 best (and/or worst) concerts you have attended in the 215, all genres apply and no venue is too big or too small. Please include a phone number as we may want to […]
BREAKING: Michael Jackson Death Ruled Homicide
MSNBC: The Los Angeles County coroner ruled Michael Jackson’s death a homicide, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press on Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the findings have not been publicly released. Dateline NBC’s Josh Mankiewicz confirmed that Dr. Murray is the target of a manslaughter probe. Meanwhile, a search warrant affidavit revealed that Jackson had lethal levels of the powerful anesthetic propofol in his system when he died in his rented Los Angeles mansion on June 25. MORE HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP: 82 minutes. That’s how much time passed before anyone called 911 after Dr. Conrad […]
AMANDA BLANK: Might Like You Better
PITCHFORK: In Romeo Void’s hands, the line “I might like you better if we slept together” is a casual diss as much as a come on, and it’s delivered with a detached, arch wit, making it a subversive punch line within a dark post-punk song. With Blank, it’s the whole song, one idea– Blank is horny–stretched well past its breaking point. Crazy thing is Blank’s song is less danceable, less subversive, far lighter, more PG, and just flat out more boring than Romeo Void’s. She doesn’t sound sexy, she sounds like she’s going through the motions. MORE NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Amanda Blank first […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Journalist and author T.R. Reid set out on a global tour of hospitals and doctors’ offices, all in the hopes of understanding how other industrialized nations provide affordable, effective universal health care. The result: his book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. Reid is a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post — in whose pages he recently addressed five major myths about other countries’ health-care systems — and the former chief of the paper’s London and Tokyo bureaus. Reid was the lead correspondent for the 2008 Frontline documentary Sick Around […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN: Asteroid #4, Kung Fu Necktie, Last Night [Photo by TIFFANY YOON] BY WILL HANNAN Drugs make for better music. Whether you’re playing in a stoner metal three-piece ripping bongs and noodling on your Gibson or you’re in a throwback psychedelic band eating acid and drooling on a friend’s vinyl collection, the introduction of psychotropic substances will inevitably make your music more interesting. If you don’t trust me, take it from the two bands that played Kung Fu Necktie last night: The Asteroid #4 and Gondola. Gondola, a Sabbath-inspired bass, guitar, and […]
SUFJAN STEVENS: The BQE
ASTHMATIC KITTY: Back in October of 2007, Sufjan Stevens debuted The BQE — a visual and musical homage to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM) Howard Gilman Opera House in downtown Brooklyn. Originally commissioned by BAM for the Next Wave Festival, The BQE featured three simultaneous film projections, a 35-piece band and orchestra, and live hula hoopers for a 3-night run. One week following the performances, Sufjan and his orchestra went into the studio to record the soundtrack, but afterwards, feeling disenfranchised by the magnitude of the universe, Sufjan decided to shelve the project. Until […]
BRENDAN CALLING: Open Letter To Dom Pileggi
Dear Sen. Pileggi: I can call you Dom, right? Even as state senate majority leader, you’re still a public servant, answerable to me and everyone else in Pennsylvania, so I don’t mind being a little informal with the help. Thanks to your intransigence and obstruction holding up both the state and the city’s budget in the Pennsylvania State Senate, nonprofits are running out of money, the city’s cutting jobs and delaying police training, and counties from east to west are owed money. All because you missed YOUR deadline: and now everyone has to suffer because you’re in a pissing match […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Writer-director Robert Siegel wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed 2008 film The Wrestler; Patton Oswalt, the stand-up comic and actor, starred in CBS’s The King of Queens and provided the voice for Remy, the main character in Pixar’s food romance Ratatouille. Now the two have collaborated on a new film — a drama, not a comedy — called Big Fan, about an obsessive 35-year-old New York Giants fan. Oswalt’s character, Paul, works as a parking-garage attendant, lives with his mom, and finds an outlet for his passion — and a minor kind of celebrity — as a frequent […]
HEAR YE: Jay Reatard Watch Me Fall
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Because we love you! MATADOR: As we approach the August 18, 2009 release of Watch Me Fall, Jay Reatard’s 90-somethingth release since dropping out of 8th grade to pursue this game, you might ask, who is this guy? In the late ’90s, 15-year-old Jay Lindsey, living right outside Memphis, played all of the instruments on a demo tape by his newly-minted performing moniker of “The Reatards.” This cassette was sent to Eric Friedl of the Oblivians, who had used the “Goner Records” imprint on a couple of releases. His next would be a 7” […]
ELVIS COSTELLO: Indoor Fireworks
Written by Nick Lowe.
RIP: Legendary Memphis Producer Jim Dickinson
MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL: The North Mississippi Allstars have lost their father, Bob Dylan has lost a “brother,” rock and roll has lost one of its great cult heroes and Memphis has lost a musical icon with the death of Jim Dickinson. The 67-year-old Dickinson passed away early Saturday morning in his sleep. The Memphis native and longtime Mississippi resident had been in failing health for the past few months and was recuperating from heart surgery at Methodist Extended Care Hospital. MORE BILL BENTLEY: There aren’t many shamans still in our world. Most have been ground down to dust, and those […]
TONITE: Passion Pit Stop
BY AMY Z. QUINN If we’re talking football — and isn’t everyone in Philadelphia talking football right now — this is the time of year for two-a-days, the brutal cram session practices designed to whip a team into shape as the season’s kickoff looms ever larger on the calendar. And while the members of Passion Pit, the Boston five-piece electro dance-pop outfit, weren’t discussing the NFL’s dramz yesterday while traveling from Canada to Philly for their first shows in town, they were in for a two-a-day here Saturday. Passion Pit, as the already legendary story goes, began as a four-song […]
HOW MANY ROADS MUST ONE MAN WALK BEFORE YOU CALL HIM A MAN: Dylan Hassled By Shore Cops
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood. A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday. “I don’t think she was familiar with his entire body of work,” Woolley said. The incident began at 5 p.m. when a resident said a man was wandering around a low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood several […]