I AM THE RED MAN: Mike Patton’s Peeping Tom, TLA, Saturday Night BY S. FITZGERALD LODWICK I arrived on South Street shortly after nine and, after straightening out some unpleasantness with my press credentials, headed across the street from the TLA to enjoy a beer with the Mike Patton fanatics. One young woman had been to the Peeping Tom show just two days before, in Baltimore, MD. This is not wholly uncommon as, truth be told, Mike Patton fans are more of a cult than an audience. More intelligent than the Moonies, and far less frightening than the Scientologists, yet […]
Write Clever Caption, Win Tix To See The English Beat!
The City of Philadelphia’s photo archive contains over 2 million images that date back as far as the late 1800s, i.e. the last time a Republican won in this town. In all seriousness, this is an INCREDIBLE visual record of the city’s evolution and a relatively new web site, PhillyHistory.org, is making it available for online consumption and purchase. To date, some 22,000 images have been digitally scanned, at a rate of roughly 2,000 images a month. So, if you’ve been wondering why the line at Kinko’s is so goddamned SLOW, well, now you know. Phawker will be showcasing images […]
THE EARLY WORD: Girl, Kill Your Boyfriend
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DEVO, Even Better Than The Real Thing
BY ED KING, ROCKIST The great thing about Devo was that you didn’t have to listen to their music to love them. Their appearance on Saturday Night Live, where they performed “Satisfaction” and “Jocko Homo” [see below] — complete with robotic choreography, the Booji Boy routine, the yellow HazMat jumpsuits, and a fuzz box mounted directly on one of the guitar players’ guitar — was the atom bomb of the rock ‘n roll age as we knew it. With that appearance, the release of their debut album, and their spectacular, absurd videos, they were the first shots fired in the […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
EXCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THE SKY: Albert Hammond Jr., TLA, Last Night [FLICKR] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Perhaps the meanest thing you could say about Yours To Keep, the solo debut by Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr., is that it’s all craft and no personality. This is often the case when a background member of a popular band steps into the foreground with a solo project, armed with long-dormant songs but minus the compelling narrative a band like the Strokes has worked so hard and long to establish. And because we know so much — too much, […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
SMASH YR. HEAD ON THE INDIE-ROCK: Sebadoh Reunion, North Star, Last Night BY SIMONE SECCI FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT I’m not going to hide my excitement about seeing live one of my favorite band since I was 14, that implicates I guess that I can’t be totally neutral in judging their show and also that my expectations about it were pretty big. First band I found in front of me when I got to the North Star bar is Bent Moustache from Holland. They are, I have to say, a very powerful and unstoppable noisemaking machine, growling and sharp bass and guitar […]
COMING SOON: DEVOlution For Dummies
An in-depth Phawker Q&A with Mark Mothersbaugh, founder of DEVO, scorer of just about every movie you have ever seen, and acclaimed visual artist. Look for it Friday!
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
THIN WHITE DUKE OF THE STRATOSPHERE: Sonic Boom, JB’s, Last Night [FLICKR]
TONY CONRAD: Ten Years Alive On An Infinite Plain
WIKIPEDIA: Tony Conrad (born Anthony S. Conrad in 1940 in Concord, New Hampshire) is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. His father was Arthur Conrad, who worked with Everett Warner during World War II in designing dazzle camouflage for the US Navy. Conrad’s most famous film, The Flicker (1966), is considered a key early work of the structural film movement. The film consists of only completely black and completely white images, which, as the title suggests, produces a flicker when projected. When the film was first screened several viewers in the audience became […]
MAILBAG: ‘Not if they were giving out free cocaine and BJs’
The following was forwarded to us by a reader, along with the quote above: Dear [Redacted], I received your complaint this morning about our decision to convert the TLA into The Fillmore Philadelphia. Being a huge live music fan myself I can understand your attachment to the TLA name. All I can ask is that you give us a chance. This is not just a name change. We are putting hardwood floors in the club, changing the decor to reflect rock and roll history — and Philadelphia rock history specifically. We are bringing chandeliers into the venue. After select shows […]