David Byrne — post-New Wave elder statesman of all things arch, artsy, affected and oblique — is the Marcel Duchamp of 20th Century rock n’ roll, transmuting the artifacts of the mundane and the quotidian into magical charms to ward off the confusion, dread and ennui of modern life. That was/is his great trick: embracing weirdness as the baseline of the new normal, and in the process making the avant-garde danceable while convincing us all to stop trying to make sense of the senselessness swirling all around us. Message: The WTF-ness of The Now? Same as it ever was. […]
BEING THERE: Car Seat Headrest @ UT
Photo by MATT SHAVER I first heard Car Seat Headrest last spring, driving through Southwestern Pennsylvania mountain roads with my mom, on Jenny Eliscu’s satellite radio show. As Will Toledo [pictured, above] alternately screamed and spoke the lyrics of “Bodys” in a matter-of-fact tone, my mom laughed out loud, saying “What is this depressing shit you listen to?” Typical baby boomer parent, unable to understand my millennial malaise. Six months later, I look up at Toledo on the stage of Union Transfer as he sings that same song off of the 2018 re-release of his 2011 DIY triumph, Twin Fantasy, […]
REVIEW: Joe Ely Full Circle: The Lubbock Tapes
BY JON HOULON Any archival release from Mr. Joe Ely — one-man Texas music institution, former Ringling Bros. wrangler and founding member of the Flatlanders – is cause for celebration around these parts. This one is called Full Circle: The Lubbock Tapes and it’s brought to us on Ely’s own Rack ‘Em Records. Full Circle. Let me come. This may take a minute if you’ll indulge me. There are holy grails and there are HOLY GRAILS. The grails that mark us. The Flatlander’s More A Legend Than a Band, recorded in 1972 but not released in the United States […]
BEING THERE: Jay Laughlin @ Johnny Brenda’s
Photo by MARK LIKOSKY Opening with “Before the Dawn” perfectly set the mood for Saturday night’s intimate, unplugged celebration of the 30 year anniversary of the day guitarist Jay Laughlin and his friend Frank “Skip” Candelori started playing music together in a band called Turning Point. Although Skip tragically passed away in 2002, Saturday night, Jay sat with his old acoustic guitar upstairs at Johnny Brendas to walk us through his memories making the audience fell like they were right there in the practice space writing some of early 90’s hardcore’s most seminal material. Some diehard fans from back in […]
TESTIMONIAL: Q&A W/ The MC5’s Wayne Kramer
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Borne of riots and ruin, under a bad moon rising in the end times of the Age of Aquarius, Detroit’s MC5 were an unholy marriage of jacked-up vintage rawk n’ roll boogaloo, bloozy black snake moaning, free jazz interstellar overdrive, stick-it-to-the-man radical chic and lysergic emanations. Doing their level best to unleash anarchy in the USA, their rallying cry was “Dope, rock n’ roll and fucking in the streets” and their guru/manager was John Sinclair, self-appointed leader of the White Panther Party, a caucasoid analog to the Black Panthers. The original line-up was as follows: haystack-haired blooze […]
BEING THERE: Sir Elton John @ Wells Fargo Center
Photo courtesy of Getty Images And, in the end, the chap born Reginald Kenneth Dwight 71 years ago – long known better as Elton Hercules John – rose from the piano stool on the Wells Fargo Center stage after closing his hits-heavy 24-song show and soaked up the vociferous Philadelphia crowd’s love one last time. It was only the third of his 300+-date “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour – which opened in glamorous Allentown, PA, over the weekend and is expected to circle the globe thru 2021 – but it was the finale of his sold-out two-night stand in Philly. […]
TED TALK: Q&A With Ted F*cking Leo
BY SOPHIE BURKHOLDER Ted Leo is a born and bred punk. He grew up in Bloomfield, New Jersey, coming of age at the peak of the 1980’s hardcore punk scene, playing in bands like Citizens Arrest, Puzzlehead, and, later, noted DC neo-mods Chisel. In 1999, having mothballed Chisel, he stepped into the spotlight with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, cranking out seven well-received albums of high-octane, punk-edged power-pop over the course of the next decade and built a large and loyal following in the process. But somewhere around 2010 he ran smack into a brick wall of bad karma, […]
BEACH HOUSE: Drunk In LA
Directed by Sonic Boom. PREVIOUSLY: In the beginning, before there was Spiritualized or Spectrum, there was Spacemen 3. If you came of age in 80s, in the dreary grey flannel age of Reagan/Thatcher, when drug war hysteria was reaching a feverish pitch, Spacemen 3 was hands down the most persuasive and rewarding argument for the ingestion of mind-expanding substances since Pink met Floyd. In August of 1984, Jason Pierce (a.k.a. Jason Spaceman) received a government grant to attend Rugby Art College — which he promptly misused to purchase an electric guitar and amplifier. It was at Rugby Art College that […]
BEING THERE: Yeah Yeah Yeahs @ 215 Block Party
Photo by PETE TROSHAK Let it be known that on Saturday afternoon a hearty band of settlers arrived in the parking lot of The Electric Factory under a dreary skies and occasional torrents of rain to protest much like their forefathers did back in 1773. It wasn’t the hatred of a tyrant king or anger over the price of tea that brought these people together, instead they gathered together for the 215 Block Party to protest the end of summer by drinking quality beer, eating from food trucks and catching some up and coming bands and a legendary New York […]
INCOMING: A Night At The Opera
Once the largest concert venue in the world, the Philadelphia Opera House was built a century ago in 1908 by Oscar Hammerstein and attracted some of the greatest entertainers of the 20th Century. But for that last 20 years it has stood silent and boarded up at the intersection of Poplar and North Broad, awaiting a seemingly-imminent demolition that mercifully never came. Thanks to a $56 million renovation project underwritten by a partnership between Live Nation and real estate developer Eric Blumenfeld, the long dormant venue will come alive with the sound of music in December.“This music venue will help […]
INCOMING: Vengance Is Mine
RELATED: The ’90s were a helluva drug. You really had to be there, kid, but suffice it to say it was 10 years of unprecedented peace and prosperity, a pot in every chicken, 2.5 SUVs in every garage, a Clinton was president and Donald Trump ran beauty contests instead of the free world. In the ’90s, the Internet went public and we all become tech stock billionaires overnight — all of us — selling dog bones over the World Wide Web, which was what we called the Interwebs back then, as was the style of the day. Good. Times. Music […]
Win Tix 2 See Yeah Yeah Yeahs @ 215 Block Party!
Illustration by PAR4NOID Hey boys and girls, we have a couple pairs of tickets to giveaway to see reactivated neo-post-punk-no-wave-trash-rock nogoodniks The Yeah Yeah Yeahs @ the Goose Island Beer Company’s 215 Block Party outdoors at the Electric Factory on Saturday! To qualify to win, all you have to do is say nice things about us. Just kidding! That was just a sly Catch 22 allusion, which should go without saying to a hep cat such as yourself. No, you are going to have to do a little work to earn those Yeah Yeah Yeahs tickets, i.e. send us an […]
FLEET FOXES: I Am All That I Need
Fleet Foxes have released a stunning short film for their Crack-Up album opener “I Am All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar”. Directed by Sean Pecknold, with art direction and production design by Adi Goodrich, both of Sing-Sing, and choreography by Steve Reker. The film was shot entirely on 35mm film in southern California, creating a look that feels like an old technicolor movie, with everything hand-made and in-camera. It was made in partnership with WeTransfer who commissioned and helped produce the video. WeTransfer will be hosting the video on their editorial platform WePresent alongside a conversation […]