FLOWER CHILD: Give Festival, Liberty Lands, Saturday The annual Give Festival, a neo-hippie-esque jamboree bringing together local artists and musicians, celebrated its fourth year in Northern Liberties yesterday. The festival, put together by Brian Nadav, brought together families and friends for a full day (it ran from noon to 10 pm) of eating, drinking and dancing. All day, people filled their cups and opened their ears to local bands, like Audible Eyes, Spinning Leaves and King Britt’s Back to Basics Band, though there was a whole line up of bands that provided a wide variety of music that ranged from […]
REVIEW: Mars Volta At The E-Factory — The Lessness
BY MICHAEL DONOVAN There’s a reason that anyone who has spent an evening with the Mars Volta will experience a sort of “Volta Flashback” when asked to recount the band’s live performance. There’s a reason that the Mars Volta rarely stops touring (usually only to record). There’s a reason that the Wikipedia entry on the Mars Volta makes reference to the band’s “wild, energetic, and improvised live shows” by line three. The reason? The Mars Volta as a live band is nothing short of jaw dropping. As a two-time veteran of the band’s live act, I can attest: seeing the […]
We Know It’s Only Spoken Word But We Like It
YOU’VE GOT NAIL: Nail Me, Megawords Salon, No Libs, Last Night BY TIFFANY YOON LIVING ARTS EDITOR The girls of Sweatheart, Amanda Blank (who also moonlights with Spank Rock) and Rose Luardo, performed at the Megawords Storefront over the weekend, but their show wasn’t what fans expected. Rosie and Amanda weren’t rapping or singing, they weren’t even dancing, but they were watching 90210, gossiping and drinking diet coke. The Megawords storefront was created out of an abandoned space on 11th and Arch, and its function for its month long installation is to bring people together. “Where does that happen? It […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR The Bush administration’s global anti-terrorism campaign was meant to prevent another terrorist attack on the United States. But journalist Jane Mayer says that policies like extraordinary rendition — whereby suspected terrorists are transferred to countries that allow harsh interrogations not permitted under U.S. law — have compromised American values. Mayer cites that case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who spent nearly a year in a Syrian prison after being deported from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport during a layover. Mayer has written for The New Yorker on what she calls “the outsourcing of torture,” on […]
REVIEW: Old Crow Medicine Show
BY DAVE ALLEN The fellas in Old Crow Medicine Show might look like shaggy hipsters, but they’re steeped in Appalachian string-band tradition and exude down-home soul. The band’s latest, Tennessee Pusher, strays only slightly from their roots as the boys holler and yearn about the seedier side of Appalachia. The sound of the band’s all-strings lineup – fiddle, double bass, slide guitar, and a banjo/guitar hybrid called a guitjo – is thinned out slightly on Pusher. Where it previously packed a fervid intensity, with plenty of hard-pickin’ and double bass-thumping so heavy you’d swear they had a drummer, there’s now […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
REMAIN IN THE LIGHT: David Byrne, Zoellner Arts Center, Bethlehem, PA, Last Night ROLLING STONE: Byrne uses bodies in motion to advance the ambiguous narratives his multi-cultural rock — think of it as modern dance for people who don’t like modern dance. [Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA]
MOTHER: Will The Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE EMINEM’S MOTHER TELLS ALL IN A MUCH-ANTICIPATED MEMOIR: My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem: Setting the Record Straight on My Life As Eminem’s Mother By Debbie Nelson, with Annette Witheridge BEVERLY HILLS, CA—September 16, 2008—Eminem is the Elvis Presley of the new century. His fans are legion and loyal. Tens of millions of his albums have flown off the shelves. His music videos—even the older ones—have tallied millions of hits on YouTube. His relevance is undisputed. And his mother wants to set the record straight. In MY SON MARSHALL, MY SON EMINEM, Debbie Nelson reveals the truth […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Dick Cheney is arguably one of the most powerful vice presidents in American history, but much of his work is done behind the scenes. In his new book, Angler, journalist Barton Gellman details the forty-year political career of Bush’s second in command. Gellman is a special projects reporter on the national staff of The Washington Post. In 2002, he shared the Pulitzer with the Post staff for the paper’s reporting after the Sept. 11 attacks. Angler expands the Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles about Cheney that Gellman and Jo Becker wrote for the paper in 2007. RADIO TIMES […]
HEAR YE: DAVID BYRNE AND BRIAN ENO Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same. As it. Ever. WAS. EDITOR’S NOTE: Rolling Stone asked me to cover the opening night of the David Byrne tour at Zoellner Arts Center in Bethlehem tonight. The tour ends November 8th at the Tower. Standby for a complete report. WIKIPEDIA: In December 2007, David Byrne announced on the BBC Radio music show, The Weekender, that he was working with musician/producer and former collaborator Brian Eno on a brand new album of “proper songs”, describing it as a “completely different thing” from My Life […]
SEE YOU ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON: Pink Floyd Keyboardist, Rick Wright, Dead At 65
ASSOCIATED PRESS: LONDON (AP) — Richard Wright [pictured, far left], a founding member of the rock group Pink Floyd, died Monday. He was 65. Pink Floyd’s spokesman Doug Wright, who is not related to the artist, said Wright died after a battle with cancer at his home in Britain. He says the band member’s family did not want to give more details about his death. Wright met Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Nick Mason in college and joined their early band, Sigma 6. Along with the late Syd Barrett, the four formed Pink Floyd in 1965. The group’s jazz-infused […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
AMERICAN ROUTES Get Rhythm: A Tribute to Johnny Cash It’s a two-hour tribute in song and story to the Man in Black. We’ll hear from his family, friends and associates on the contradictions–preacher, outlaw, loving family man, rockabilly rebel–that made the man. Voices include Rosanne Cash; son John Carter Cash; sister Joanne Yates; bassist and original member of the Tennessee Two Marshall Grant; guitarist Johnny Western; producer Rick Rubin; long time manager Lou Robin; writer and critic Michael Streissguth; and of course Johnny Cash. THE WORLD CAFE Formed in 2002 as a trio of singer-songwriters (it eventually grew into a […]
MOTHER: John Lennon’s Oedipus Wreck
THE SUN: JOHN LENNON fantasised about having sex with his mother Julia, according to a leaked audio diary which it is claimed he recorded a year before his death. His widow YOKO ONO and BEATLES bandmate PAUL McCARTNEY are furious about forthcoming book John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman, which makes the lurid accusation. However on the tape – which you can listen to by clicking here – a voice alleged to be John’s can be heard noting: “I was just remembering the time I had my hand on my mother’s t*t in 1 Blomfield Road. “It was when […]
HEAR YE:Brightblack Morning Light Motion To Rejoin
Now playing on Phawker Radio! BY JONATHAN VALANIA Back in the early- to mid-’80s that today’s hepcats so lovingly fetishize and recycle, there were two kinds of bands: those that looked forward and those that looked back. The forward-lookers were going for the shock of the new, of course, while the backward-lookers opted for the comfort of the past. The forward-lookers were usually British, had pouffy hair and billowy pastel clothes that snapped and zippered in weird places, and all of them seemed to get their names from either A Clockwork Orange or Barbarella — Duran Duran, Heaven 17, Ultravox. […]