BY AMY Z. QUINN She’s hardly the most famous performer to ever come out of Jersey — The Boss and The Chairman Of The Board still hold those titles — but without a doubt, Patti Smith, the High Poetess of Punk, remains the greatest communicator of the kind of nameless electric angst that drives Kids In Search Of Something to head north on the Jersey Turnpike and never look back. When Patti beat it out of Gloucester County, fleeing a factory job and a year short of her degree at then-Glassboro State Teacher’s College, she was armed with a book […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER On her debut, the deftly titled Knives Don’t Have Your Back, Emily Haines sets her husky alto whisper against melancholy piano chords and waltzing rhythm beds, coloring her reveries with mournful strings, funereal brass and swooning Moog atmospherics. Performing Sunday night in the cathedral of the sold-out First Unitarian Church, Haines was backed by Sparklehorse drummer Scott Minor and ex-Mercury Rev bassist Paul Dillon – neither man a stranger to the notion of a light touch making the silences in between the notes positively deafening – and Moog operator-projectionist Todor Kobakov. A comely blonde […]
YMA SUMAC: Tumpa
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EARLY WORD: Holy Soul Jelly Roll
Ars Nova Workshop and Kelly Writers House welcomes writer John Szwed and pianist Dave Burrell in a public discussion that hopes to shed more light on the significance of pianist/composer Jelly Roll Morton and the stride continuum that paved the way for the jazz avant-garde. Thursday, January 11 | 6pm FROM JELLY ROLL MORTON TO THE JAZZ AVANT-GARDE with JOHN SZWED & DAVE BURRELL Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania | 3805 Locust Walk Free Admission
NOW PLAYING: NEW SHINS ON PHAWKER RADIO
BY ED KING, ROCK SNOB My first serious exposure to the music of The Shins was through that godawful Zach Braff film, Garden State. In a film that aspired to be The Graduate but was minus the talents of Mike Nichols and Dustin Hoffman, The Shins provided the Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack minus the song-smithery and understated cool of Paul Simon. I didn’t want to kill the band based on their association with Braff’s first step toward the pantheon of TV actors done in by good fortune and hubris (see McLean Stevenson through Rob Morrow), so I kept an ear […]
This Is Why We Stopped Watching Television
It’s nothing but Leo Sayer abuse, and we simply won’t have it. Because when you need love, you just close your eyes and guess what? You feel love.
REWIND 2006: THE YEAR IN MUSIC
WELCOME TO THE FIRST ANNUAL PHAWKER JAZZ AND POP POLL The critics have spoken, the ballots have been cast, all chads undangled, and fed into a mainframe computer the size of an Olympic swimming pool, to be crunched with the hard calculus of SUCKS/DOES NOT SUCK and arranged in impenetrably dense type on a spreadsheet that stretches from your house to mine. Hey, who we kiddin’? We don’t even have a mainframe the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Yet. And 30,000 CDs are released every year and fuck you if you think we’re gonna listen to all of them […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
PAGING MOLLY RINGWALD: The Psychedelic Furs, Trocadero, December 29th 2006 BY SIMONE SECCI, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT In this time of wild 80s revival, it’s nice to see the real thing. Well, kind of. Unfortunately the Psychedelic Furs that left a definitive trace through rock music was already dead in 1983. It’s no longer existing and never will. The Furs of today are a great pop band that does the job in the best way, but no longer as a new wave icon. All this, to be honest, didn’t prevent me from jumping on my chair and dancing with the entire theatre […]
DEATH OF A SALESPERSON: All Things Must Pass
BY SARA SHERR The Tower Records at Broad and Chestnut was scheduled to close on Friday, Dec. 22. Instead, the doors shut late Wednesday night after an independent Virginia record retailer bought up the last of the remaining stock, which really wasn’t much by then. Two similar mass purchases had occurred earlier in the week, one from a New Jersey record store owner who bought up a bunch of major label stuff (which means a lot of Daniel Powter and Ashley Parker Angel, and returns for credit! Smart cookie!) The other was an unknown company which volunteered to take the […]
OS MUTANTES Bread And Circuses
Os Mutantes now playing on Phawker Radio. From Perfect Sound Forever: Tropicalia Glossary – Who’s Who, What’s What. AI5 – Acto Instution #5. The 1968 military clampdown on Brazil. Temporarily ended free speech in Brazilian media. 5 days after the passing of AI5 two of the Tropicalistas, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, were arrested, shaved and exiled to freezing England. Tropicalia – The more Brazilian style of Psychedelia. Not only features pop music, but visual art, literature and performance type arts and artists. Arnaldo Baptista – Bass and keys. Took drugs. Went nuts after Rita dumped him. Recorded a half […]
COMMENT: Bloggerati Killed The Alt-Weekly Rock Stars
Our hugumbus YEAR IN MUSIC Omnibus is about to drop, but while we’re finishing up polishing this turd, chew on this from our pal JOE WARMINSKY in WASHINGTON CITY PAPER: Don?t get me wrong?I fully embrace what the blogosphere does provide. It’s essentially a broad, asymmetric rebellion against the SoundScan regime and the stodgy business plans of the major record labels. Blogs offer what good fanzines used to offer: stylistic detours, obsessive detail, contrarian viewpoints, and a secondary economy that allows overlooked musicians to flourish, at least on a small scale. There isn?t much money in it, and it’s mostly […]