BY ED KING ROCK SNOB In a wet, sloppy Super Bowl game that featured perhaps the greatest mismatch in quarterbacks, the unlikeliest of factors in football’s orgasmic finale came through: the Halftime Show, featuring Prince drenched in real, live purple rain and withstanding artificial lightning. I don’t recall when the Halftime Show as Cross-Generational, Cross-Marketing Rock Extravaganza began, but it’s always been a reason to bear witness to the last desperate breaths of rock legends (McCartney, The Rolling Stones), hate foreigners trying to upstage our national holiday (U2 and Bono’s American flag-lined leather jacket), or fully understand the impulses that […]
SMILE: The BEE GEES Were Cool Once…No Really
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER To rock boys coming of age in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the brothers Gibb were known primarily as the fey, toothy, Members Only-jacketed target of the Disco Sucks backlash that greeted the blockbuster sales and grating ubiquity of their Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. But unbeknownst to many, the Bee Gees also had an amazing career in the ’60s, creating deathless psychedelic-pop singles and ambitious album-length statements that explored complex themes and experimented with all manner of instrumentation and orchestral arrangements. Even back then, it was their harmonizing – as rich and distinct […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
DAYDREAM HIBERNATION: Grizzly Bear, Johnny Brendas, February 1, 2007 [FLICKR] EVA SAYS: When Grizzly Bear took stage at Johnny Brenda?s, they had all odds working against them- their stupid band name, the pretentiously hip crowd (spotting a member of Man Man in the mass, my friend swooned over the time the two of them used to spend together at the Last Drop. GAG!), and most distractingly, the suffocating veil of hype generated from Pitchfork. But last night they faced an even greater challenge, otherwise known as The Dirty Projectors, who had just finished playing one of the best live sets […]
SERGE GAINSBOURG & BRIGITTE BARDOT
“The Comic Strip”
WRECKLESS ERIC: Whole Wide World LIVE 1977
TO: REDACTED FROM: Wreckless Eric Subject: Beretta 76 Date: Jan 26, 2007 8:32 AM What is it about Philly? First the Jukebox Zeroes, now you lot. Everything sounds great. I particularly like Pretty Baby where you actually sound just like Blondie without sounding at all like them, if that makes sense. I meant that as a compliment by the way. Eric
AND THEN NOTHING TURNED ITSELF INSIDE OUT
PHAWKER RADIO: Yo La Tengo‘s AND THEN NOTHING TURNED ITSELF INSIDE OUT Gregory Crewdson’s eerie photographs of suburbia at dusk require set-ups as elaborate as a film shoot. “My photographs are about the moment of transition between before and after,” he explains. “Twilight is evocative of that. There’s something magical about the condition.” The eerie effect of twilight crossed with strong artificial light — street lights, house lights, lights from the sky — is exaggerated by Crewdson’s choice of backdrop, which is almost always nondescript suburban America. He is not the first photographer to be drawn to twilight — “nature […]
SEX PISTOLS: God Save The Queen
She ain’t no human bean!
NOW PLAYING: Sloan’s NEVER HEAR THE END OF IT
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO/REVIEW BY ED KING At 30 songs long ? 30 songs! ? it’s a wonder anyone will hear the end of this album, but that’s why I’m here. Never say never, Sloan. It feels like only last week that I came home from high school — having made a quick stop at the Sam Goody at Roosevelt Mall — with Elvis Costello & the Attractions’ latest, Get Happy!!, in sweaty hand. Oh baby! Through the wonders of a hitherto described process of “groove cramming,” the band and producer Nick Lowe managed to pack 20 soulful, fractured, […]