FRESH AIR Suze Rotolo — she was the woman walking beside Bob Dylan on the album cover for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan — was Bob Dylan’s girlfriend in the early 1960s. She’s an artist, and a teacher at the Parsons School of Design in New York. And she’s written about her relationship with Dylan in a memoir, A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. Reviewing the book for Salon, Stephanie Zacharek writes, “This is an honest book about a great love affair, set against the folk-music revival of the early 1960s, but its sense of time […]
INSTA-REVIEW: Duffy Rockferry
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Because we love you, ya big dummy! BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT How can I review Welsh import Duffy‘s Rockferry album without getting caught up in the UK retro-pop marketing race? “If you like the sound of Amy Winehouse but are put off by the extraneous skank angle, try Duffy!” That works for me. Beside, there’s no topping Winehouse’s take on Lenny Bruce’s “Girl Singing” bit, and the cost of producing bubblegum with Sugar in the Raw is prohibitive. Duffy’s the cute, ever-so-slightly sassy good girl of swingin’ ’60s culture. She’s at her dinner […]
HEAR YE: Duffy Rock Ferry
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Gorgeous voice, soulful eyes, and the ‘Second Coming of Dusty Springfield’ and ‘New Amy Winehouse‘ hype is more than earned. From Wales. She plays the Apollo tonight. Sigh. We are officially in love.
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
EVERYBODY DANCE NOW: Broadzilla DJs, One, Last Night [Photos by TIFFANY YOON]
MEOW MIX: Babs, Cindy & A Bag Of Dicks
If we’re taking sides in the Barbara Walters vs. Star Jones bitchfight, I’m with Starr, people.The backstory: In her tiresome new book, Barbara dishes on Starr’s weight-loss surgery, among other things. Inevitably asked for her comment, Jones put the smack down: “It is a sad day when an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to publicly branding herself as an adulterer, humiliating an innocent family with accounts of her illicit affair and speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book,” Jones told Us. “It speaks to her true character.”SNAP! Called […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR W/ Guest Host DAVE DAVIES The United States is home to less than five percent of the world’s population — and almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Adam Liptak, national legal correspondent for The New York Times, says that’s one of the ways America’s legal system differs from those of other countries. Liptak’s recent series for The Times, “American Exception,” looks at the ways the American justice system is unique — including high incarceration rates, the awarding of punitive damages, felony murder liability for accomplices and commercial bail bondsmen. “Americans are locked up for crimes — from […]
HEAR YE: Eli “Paperboy” Reed & The True Loves
Now playing on Phawker Radio. Why? Because we loves us some you!
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded ground troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, has since been speaking out about the conduct of the Iraq war — especially about what he calls the Bush administration’s “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan.” His views take book form in Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, which also details his rise from an impoverished Texas childhood to become the Army’s highest-ranking Hispanic officer. When Sanchez relinquished command of group troops in Iraq to Gen. George Casey in 2004, investigations into torture at Abu Ghraib prison were being conducted. […]
TONITE: The Marshall Plan
As a young musician, Marshall Allen (b.1924) performed with pianist Art Simmons, Don Byas and James Moody before enrolling in the Paris Conservatory of Music. After relocating to Chicago, Allen became a pupil of Sun Ra, subsequently joining the his Arkestra in 1958 and leading Sun Ra’s formidable reed section for next 40 years (a role akin to the position Johnny Hodges held in the Duke Ellington Orchestra). Marshall, along with John Gilmore, June Tyson and James Jacson, lived, rehearsed, toured and recorded with Sun Ra almost exclusively for much of Ra’s musical career. As a member of the Arkestra, […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Al Gore, who galvanized public opinion with his advocacy on global warming, sees danger in another poisoned environment, this one metaphorical: In his book The Assault on Reason [CLICK TO READ EXCERPT], just published in paperback, he argues that what used to be called civil discourse is threatened by a combination of public apathy and political cynicism. In our infotainment-mad culture, Gore writes, the public attention span is short, the media are easily distracted, and a politics driven by fear and uninterested in facts has undermined the essential functions of democracy. “When evidence that any reasonable person can […]