CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Former Wilco member Jay Bennett died of an overdose of a painkiller, the Champaign County coroner said Tuesday, and his office is investigating Bennett’s death as an accident. Tests showed Bennett died from fentanyl, a drug often prescribed to treat chronic pain, said the coroner, Duane Northrup. Bennett, who died May 24 at his home in Urbana, had posted a few weeks earlier on his MySpace site that he would need hip-replacement surgery. “A decade plus of multiple nightly stage jumps and various other rock and roll theatrics had finally taken a toll that I could no longer […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Bloody protests in the streets of Iran following that nation’s June 12 presidential election have captivated the world’s attention, but what does it all mean? Political analyst Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace joins Fresh Air to discuss this unprecedented moment in the country’s political history. Before joining Carnegie, Sadjadpour was the chief Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, based in Tehran and Washington, D.C. A regular contributor to BBC World TV and radio, CNN, National Public Radio and PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Sadjadpour has written for The Washington Post, The New York […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Top Five Things You Need to Know About the Old 97’s at the TLA Last Night
1) The Old 97’s would be a much more depressing band if Rhett Miller weren’t around. The structure of “An Evening With the Old 97’s,” as the show was billed, gave a unique insight into what half of the 97’s bring to the table: With no opening acts, first was a solo set by bassist Murry Hammond, who trudged through a dozen dirges that were about as cheery as a plane crash. “I’m all about the funerals,” he noted before one particularly depressing Carter Family cover. Next was a set of poppy love songs by lead singer Rhett Miller. While […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
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IT WAS 45 YEARS AGO TODAY: Macca To Rock D.C.
NASTY LITTLE MAN: Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Paul McCartney will perform at FedExField — the home of the Washington Redskins — on Saturday, August 1. This concert event at FedExField marks the latest in a series of landmark performances that link the beloved Beatle with Washington D.C., beginning with The Beatles’ first concert on American soil in 1964 at the Washington Coliseum, and continuing with McCartney’s critically acclaimed appearances in the District over the past forty-five years. Full press release and ticket purchasing info after the jump…
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Janelle Monae, the 25-year-old singer, songwriter and performer from Kansas City, blends cabaret, soul, funk and rock ‘n roll in her music. Her 2007 debut album Metropolis: The Chase Suite featured a character named Cindi Mayweather, Monae’s android alter-ego from the year 2719. “Many Moons,” a single off the album, earned the singer a Grammy nomination, and helped Monae catch the ear of Sean “Diddy” Combs, who signed her to his Bad Boy roster and re-released the album. In 2005, Outkasts’s Big Boi included two of her songs on his compilation, Got Purp?, Vol. 2. Monae also performed […]
EARLY WORD: High Capitol Drug Years
Click flyer to activate Internet. New Capitol Years vid after the jump. ***
OS MUTANTES: Bread & Circuses
ANTI: Founding frontman Sergio Dias Baptista and his new incarnation of the near-mythical Os Mutantes have signed with ANTI- Records with plans to release Haih — their first record in 35 years — on September 8th. Now Os Mutantes have found a home with other likeminded provocateurs such as Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Mavis Staples and Billy Bragg on the Los Angeles independent label ANTI- Records. 2006 saw a reunion of sorts, with the band playing a handful of shows in London, New York, the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, San Francisco and supporting the Flaming Lips at the Hollywood Bowl […]
EARLY WORD: Like A Raisin In The Sun
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THE VENTURES: Walk Don’t Run
ROLLING STONE: Bob Bogle, lead guitarist and co-founder of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-inducted band the Ventures, passed away on June 14th, the band’s Don Wilson told their native Tacoma, Washington’s News Tribune. Bogle, who suffered from non-Hodgkin lymphoma for the past several years, became ill this weekend and was taken to the hospital, where he died at the age of 75. Bogle and Wilson were construction workers who moonlighted as musicians when they formed the Ventures in 1958, and two years later their classic rendition of the instrumental “Walk, Don’t Run” catapulted the surf-rock band up the […]
RAWK TAWK: Q&A w/ Annabel Alpers of Bachelorette
“Quietly psychedelic, the quavery vocal harmonies, wheezy synthesisers and attic-salvaged stringed instruments are layered with a shy urgency, a breathtaking tangle of dreaminess and directness… slow oscillations between intimacy and abstraction…. Having understood the implications of technology – electricity having made us all angels, etcetera – Bachelorette fractured herself into a girl-group of one, clouds of ah-ah-ahs and shoo-wop shoo-wops both underscoring and distracting from her tales of gravitational and hormonal pull.” – Author Unknown
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR After more than five decades of making movies, Academy Award-winning writer and director Woody Allen recently released his 40th film, Whatever Works. The movie, which stars Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood, tells the story a “genius” professor in New York who ditches his upper-class life for something simpler — winning, along the way, the devotion of a beautiful and very young girl from Mississippi. Allen’s first film, What’s Up Tiger Lily, was released in 1966. The director then went on to make Play It Again Sam, Manhattan and Radio Days, to name just a few of his […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Eddie Vedder At The Tower
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Eddie Vedder is a golden god to that sector of the rock-audience demographic that loves sports as much as it loves music. On Thursday night, the first of a two-night sold-out solo stand at the Tower Theater, Vedder regaled the crowd with tales of soul-brother handshakes with Dr. J and bar-hopping during the NBA Finals with Sean Penn and Jack Nicholson (wherein a beautiful woman walks up to Jack and asks if he wants to dance, and Jack responds that she’s chosen the wrong verb to describe what he wants to do with her), […]