SHOCK OF THE NEU: Fujiya & Miyagi, Johnny Brenda’s, Last Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Melody, lyrics, chord patterns — these building blocks of pop music composition are constantly being updated, re-invented or re-contextualized. Great leaps forward in rhythm, however, are fewer and farther between. The Bo Diddly beat and, say, the collected R&B works of James Brown, and for that matter, the entire genre of hip-hop, are prime examples of giant steps in rhythmic innovation. In the early ’70s a group of experimental German musicians, the so-called “Kraut-rockers,” which includes the bands Neu and Kraftwerk, moved beat […]
FORECAST: Hot In The City Tonight!
With The Mooney Suzuki Tonight At The Khyber
HEAR YE: Can’t Tell Me Nothing Mixtape
BY JASON FLEURANT Kanye West‘s abiding belief in himself is often misconstrued as arrogance. So it’s only fitting that the never-could-hold-his-tongue MC would drop a mixtape/single called “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.” After all it was that same motto that fueled the Chi-Town native to reach for his dreams and become such a success, while the world stood against him. Mixed by A&R Plain Pat, the mixtape features numerous G.O.O.D artist and affiliates. Getting fans excited for the forth coming LP is three cuts from Common’s “Finding Forever.” His official single “The Game” which has legendary DJ Premier doing cuts […]
DANDI WIND: Flooded Grass
Tonight at JBs.
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
ON MAGNOLIA MOUNTAIN: Ryan Adams, Fillmore at the TLA, Last Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER For all intents and purposes, Ryan Adams is the Paris Hilton of indie rock — you just can’t bring yourself to not look, or more accurately, listen. As such, the messy-haired alt-country heartthrob has become a polarizing figure. THE CASE AGAINST: Hoo-boy. Adams came to fame, or some variation of it, on the heels of the messy collapse of his first band, the insurgent country pioneers Whiskeytown. With the exception of his breakthrough solo debut, Heartbreaker, Adams? recorded output has been both maddeningly […]
REVIEW: Lord Help The Polyphonic Spree
BY ED KING ROCK SNOB I’m finding that one unexpected part of the aging process is reliving every half-decent pop culture trend of my youth. Musically, I feel stuck in some prepubescent summer of ’74 pool jukebox rut of pleasant mediocrity. It makes sense. This is the era when major-label releases of surprisingly interesting material could fly under the radar, get tossed into the cheapest bins at used record stores — you know, the ones that sit on a table in the sun, dog-eared covers and missing inner sleeves be damned — and await the adoption of a hopeful, budget-conscious […]
JUST ANNOUNCED: Beastie Boys At Festival Pier
August 9th.
HOT DOCUMENT: The Day The Music Died
Philadelphia, PA — June 22, 2007 — WXPN, the nationally-recognized leader in Triple A music and a noncommercial radio service of the University of Pennsylvania, today announced that it wlll join other Internet radio providers in a “Day of Silence” to protest higher royalty rates expected to go into effect on or after July 15th. Silence is what Internet radio may sound like after that date because of a royalty rate hike scheduled to go into effect. The new rates will also be retroactive for 17 months and payment will become due to the SoundExchange collection organization under the terms of […]
PORTER WAGONER & DOLLY PARTON:
“Last Thing On My Mind” circa 1967, when Miss Parton was all of 21.
REVIEW: Porter Wagoner, THE WAGONMASTER
BY ED KING ROCK CONNOISSEUR My in-laws live in a rural part of Pennsylvania. They’re not what I’d call “country folk,” but they live around more country folk than I ever met growing up in Port Richmond. Driving up their street, I always appreciate that ranch house with shutters in the shape of fiddles surrounded by musical notes. “That’s gotta be one serious country fan’s home!” I’d think to myself, but never shared the thought with anyone but my wife. Then one day, seemingly out of the blue, my father-in-law said, “Let’s take a walk. I want you to meet […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
PLEASE DON’T FEED: Panda Bear, First Unitarian Church, Last Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER The great advantage of our shiny white iPod-abetted Information Age, where the far-flung chaos of recorded music has been organized and arranged into the orderly feng sui of alphabetized and easily-accessed mp3s, is that innovative music-makers like Panda Bear can connect the dots and create unexpected and stunning constellations of sound that cross the once un-breach-able barriers or time, space and genre. I can think of no better explanation, barring something being in the water, for the way that Panda Bear’s Person Pitch combines […]