THE SNACK PACK: Snacks w/ BLOC PARTY DJs, Woody’s, Last Night [Photos by TIFFANY YOON] INQUIRER: “I thought this was Killadelphia,” said Kele Okereke, the singer of the London quartet Bloc Party, at the TLA on Tuesday night. “We were expecting something dangerous.” […] Under the strobing lights, the crowd undulated like a rolling sea, into which Okereke launched himself as the band neared the end of its set. As the band quickened its pace, stretching its rhythms to the breaking point, he floated on a sea of hands, safe from harm.
GIRL GERMS: Letter From Rock Camp
Editor’s Note: This week, on the campus of Girard College, Girls Rock Philly! is holding their summer Rock Camp for girls ages 9-17. The campers get their choice of concentrations in guitar, bass, drums, vocals, keyboard and DJ’ing. Our beloved neophyte rock diva, 14-year-old Jenn W. (Roxborough represent!), is on the scene and will be sending us dispatches from Rock Camp all week. Monday, Aug. 4 DEAR PHAWKER, We started off the day in the auditorium of the Elementary Building, with all the girls filing in to sit. I came to camp with my best friend C., so I already […]
RESURRECTION: The Second Life Of No Depression
Plans for a major overhaul of NoDepression.com — the website of the former bimonthly alternative/roots-music magazine No Depression — are well under way this summer, with the new site set to be launched in late September. NoDepression.com, which will be edited by the magazine’s founding co-editor Peter Blackstock, will include regular blogs by many of the magazine’s most frequent contributors, including Blackstock and fellow founding co-editor Grant Alden. The new site will also include record reviews and live reviews, features on emerging artists, news updates, the current website’s popular upcoming-releases list, reader-participant discussion forums — and, perhaps most significantly, a […]
THE EARLY WORD: Have Mercy, Baby
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Nobody puts Duffy in the corner. “Do you want to be my friend or not?” says the Welsh nouveau soul sensation, beneath a crisp Brit accent, after a third attempt is made to sort fact from fiction in her Wikipedia entry. “Forget all that, just talk to me.” It’s true that her first introduction to pre-Watergate musical styles came from her dad’s collection of Ready, Steady, Go VHS tapes of that British rock TV show, but it was Bernard Butler (ex-Suede guitarist and producer/co-songwriter of Duffy’s 2.5 million-selling debut Rockferry) who gave her graduate […]
HEAR YE: Sparklehorse It’s A Wonderful Life
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO! BY JONATHAN VALANIA HE WAS DEAD ONCE. FOR TWO BREATHLESS MINUTES in 1996, Mark Linkous, the auteur behind Sparklehorse, lay dead on the floor of a London hotel room while paramedics rushed to revive him. Fourteen hours earlier he’d stepped off a plane at Heathrow Airport to begin a European tour supporting Radiohead. After swallowing an ill-advised cocktail of Valium, liquor and prescription antidepressants, Linkous collapsed on his hotel-room floor, where he would lie on his back for the next 14 hours in a kneeling position that cut off the circulation to his legs. When […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
HEAD BANGER’S BALL: Man Man, Download Fest, Susquehanna Center, Yesterday BY DAVE ALLEN The Download Festival came to the Susquehanna Bank Center on Saturday and boy are my ears tired. Louis XIV, a punkish quartet with the elemental stab of AC/DC, played to a sparse, disinterested crowd in the mid-afternoon. Lead singer Jason Hill brought some swagger and reverse windmills on guitar, and the set took on an arena-friendly sheen when guitarist Brian Karscig moved over to keyboard on “Finding Out True Love is Blind.” The setup for Philly homeboys Man Man promised something different: keyboard and drum kit facing […]
RAWK TALK: Q&A With The Whigs
BY MICHAEL DONOVAN The Whigs — currently the pride of Athens, GA — play the Download Festival tomorrow in Camden in support of their rocktastic second album, Mission Control, released earlier in the year. We managed to catch up with Parker Gisper, just back from the Whigs whirlwind tour of Japan, and currently stuck in traffic somewhere on 95… PHAWKER: First and foremost: Download’s tomorrow — how’s it feel to be going on stage with Iggy Pop and The Killers? PARKER: It’s pretty exciting! We’re huge Iggy Pop fans, and I’ve never seen him live, so hopefully we’ll get done […]
JUST IN: Magnetic Fields To Play Merriam Theater
THE MAGNETIC FIELDS SATURDAY OCTOBER 25 @ THE MERRIAM THEATER – 250 S. Broad St, Philadelphia Tix: $36 and $32 / Drs: 7pm / All Ages On Sale: Fri. 8/8 MAGNETIC FIELDS: California Girls [Dir. by JAMES DOOLITTLE]
WORTH REPEATING: Lust For Life
LUST FOR LIFE: Iggy & The Stooges, Electric Factory, Last Night [FLICKR] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Thanks to the many miracles of our modern affluent society, today’s super-rockers are kicking out the jams longer and harder than ever before. (Think about it: For the better part of the ’70s, the smart money would have been on Keith Richards’ dad snorting his son’s ashes, not vice versa.) As Iggy Pop (aka, James Osterberg), who turns 60 next week, proved Wednesday night at the Electric Factory, men well-acquainted with the business end of a sigmoidoscope are still capable of rocking […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR While his Office character may take himself seriously, actor Rainn Wilson seems to be all about the laughs. Wilson plays beet-farming, archery-loving middle-management kook Dwight Schrute on the NBC hit television series. Now, Wilson is trading his crossbow for a guitar in the new film The Rocker. In The Rocker, Wilson plays a failed hair metal musician. After he’s kicked out of his band, the group goes on to achieve great success. But when he joins his nephew’s garage band, he gets a second chance at fame. Wilson made his breakthrough as an actor playing an eccentric mortician […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
HEY, MR. SPACEMAN: Spiritualized, TLA, Last Night [Photos by JONATHAN VALANIA]
WORTH REPEATING: Hey, Mr. Spaceman*
*First appeared in the December 2001 issue of Magnet. Spiritualized play at the TLA tonight. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Somewhere Over The North Atlantic, Sept . 25, 2001 Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space—35,000 feet above the Earth, to be exact. We’re on our way to Ireland to tag along on a Spiritualized tour. It’s gonna be fun, but there are some risks involved. As Americans, we’re traveling under the threat of death from Osama bin Laden, The Evil One, who lives in a cave. During the course of our trip, you might feel a little like Salman Rushdie […]
HEAR YE: Conor Oberst Conor Oberst
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Conor Oberst plays the Troc Aug. 11th BY JONATHAN VALANIA The biggest cliche about Bright Eyes — aka 24-year-old indie-pop pinup Conor Oberst — is that he’s emerged as the latest “new Dylan,” a Mr. Tambourine Man for the O.C. Nation. Like all cliches, this one’s been worn meaningless by overuse. And yet it’s essentially true. Heck, Oberst already got props from the last New Dylan who amounted to anything: Bruce Springsteen. Like Dylan in his prime, Oberst writes long, elliptical narratives — weaving word-clotted threads of angst and regret, anger and shame, ecstasy and […]