EDITOR’S NOTE: This week we will be re-posting choice Q&As from the past year. Today we present this reprise edition of this in-depth interview with Sex Pistols guitarist/songwriter Steve Jones, which originally posted on January 17th, 2017. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR VICE Steve Jones has been a lot of things in his 61 years: a love-starved bastard, a smooth criminal, a peeping tom, an insatiable man-slut, a master thief, an insufferable prog-rocker, a wouldbe Yacht Rock A&R rep, a SEX shop clerk, Chrissie Hynde’s pre-Pretenders fuck-buddy; a teenage Sex Pistol, a 23-year-old has-been, a sticky-fingered junkie, a shit-hot […]
Win Tix To See An Advanced Screening Of I, Tonya
The 2017 Oscar season continues with I, Tonya, an unlikely prestige film about a felonious but not entirely unsympathetic Olympian’s fall from grace, or something close to it, starring Margot Robbie as the notorious Tonya Harding and directed by Craig Gillespie. This much-buzzed-about black comedy is constructed like a mockumentary, in the style of The Big Short, where on camera interviews with actors in character — based on “irony free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews” with the people portrayed in the film — are supplemented by reenactments with those same actors often breaking the fourth wall. Check out the […]
BEING THERE: Converge @ Union Transfer
Photo by MARK LIKOSKY As a Boston kid having come from the same early 90’s punk/hardcore scene that spawned Converge, it’s awe-inspiring to bear witness to a few suburban kids who made a demo back in 1991 slowly evolve into legends. Back then, having a demo, or better yet a split 7-inch, was a huge deal and hearing about local bands that got multi-album deals was not only unheard of but usually meant they would inevitably sell out and/or fail. This was also a time when the straight edge movement was resurgent and dark, metallic hardcore — Converge’s forte — […]
THE X-MAN COMETH: A Q&A With John Doe, Frontman Of The Legendary L.A. Punk Band X
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR VICE “The west is the best,” Jim Morrison sang in 1967. “Get here, and we’ll do the rest.” In 1976, John Doe took Mr. Mojo Risin’ up on the invitation. Fed up with the bleak fatalism, shitty weather and general played-out-ness of the East Coast scene, Doe loaded up the truck and headed to the City Of Angels, where he would soon meet fellow East Coast exile/aspiring punk poet Exene Cervenka. Together they would form the legendary X — arguably one of the few bands that could convincingly stake a claim to The Clash’s status […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To A VIP Advanced Screening Of Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape Of Water
Easily the strangest film this prestige season is Guillermo del Toro’s eccentric romantic masterpiece The Shape of Water. The film opens in Philadelphia at the Ritz Five Friday, December 14th and is a rather unique love story involving a mute woman named Elisa and a mysterious creature trapped in a top-secret government lab. Heavily influenced by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Amélie), the film has del Toro returning to his roots to give us a darkly fantastic fairy tale that has Elisa falling in love with the monster who feels like a hybrid of Abe Sapien from […]
BEING THERE: LCD Soundsystem @ The Fillmore
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER At 9:00 PM on Tuesday night, the players of LCD Soundsystem scrambled through a crowded, labyrinthine metropolis of instrumentation and stage gear to take their places. The last of them — singer and producer James Murphy — emerged to the roar of a Philly Fillmore at max capacity, heightened to a fever pitch of anticipation over six years of waiting since his 2011 “retirement.” Murphy is arguably one of the unlikeliest late-middle-aged heroes of a rock-n-roll myth. At 47 now, the frontman’s affect and aesthetic is derived from the unique interface between “don’t care” and “doin’ […]
BEING THERE: The National @ The Kimmel Center
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER I’m gonna get a little gonzo here. I didn’t go to the Kimmel Center last night because I was a huge fan of The National, I went because fans tend to talk up their live show, because I love live music, and because in best-case scenarios, seeing a band that you like live can make them a band you love. Four or five songs into their set, though, I was wondering why I wasn’t loving The National. Was it the venue, would I be enjoying this same show much more at a smaller club? Maybe. Music […]
DIRTY PROJECTORS: Up In Hudson
Directed by Daren Rabinovitch of Encyclopedia Pictura. Incredible.
Q&A: Journey To The Center Of Mike Birbiglia
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published back in 2014. On the occasion of comedian Mike Birbiglia’s two night stand at Merriam Theater on Friday and Saturday, we present this encore edition. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Welcome to another round of Stupid Answers To Stupid Questions. Actually, that’s only half true. Comedian Mike Birbiglia, of Sleepwalk With Me fame, provided pretty smart answers to our stupid questions. DISCUSSED: Getting bladder cancer at 19; what he and Terry Gross talk about when they are not robbing banks; the strangest place he ever rubbed one out; whether the rumors are true that while […]
EARWORM: Trout Mask Replica For Dummies
Captain Beefheart was an enigma wrapped in a riddle: a blues-braying Tasmanian Devil, industrial-strength surrealist, poet, painter, visionary, and charlatan. Stirring together the primal, blacksnake moan of Delta trance-blues and the free-jazz headfuck of John Coltrane and Charles Mingus in the burbling psychedelic cauldron of ’60s West Coast pop experimentalism, Beefheart’s music was the stuff of spells and incantations, fire-walking and levitation. Safe as Milk, from 1967, remains the ideal starting point for Beefheart beginners, with all the trademarks of his sound pitched in perfect tandem: proto-garage snarl, menacing blues, Martian poetry, exotic rhythms and extraterrestrial sound effects. Purists point […]
BEING THERE: RL Grime @ The Electric Factory
Photo by DYLAN LONG Last night, Henry Steinway, AKA RL Grime, dropped in at the Electric Factory to spin a set of dark, high-energy bangers, dreamy interludes and catchy sing-a-longs galore. Joining him were Blood Company’s Graves and Fool’s Gold label mate Kittens, the former who is known across the EDM spectrum for his groundbreaking Diplo & Friends mix from earlier this year. The Nova Tour comes as RL is fresh off of his sixth annual Halloween Mixtape, an annual mix produced by RL consisting of the most sinister and spooky tracks that the community has offered up that year. […]
BEING THERE: Wavves + Joyce Manor @ UT
?????? Photo by DYLAN LONG Emo rockers Joyce Manor and esteemed surf-punk savants Wavves dropped by Union Transfer last night for some co-headlining shenanigans. Fans over the age of 24 were the clear outliers of the crowd; this one was for the kids. Before the main acts, we were graced with the presence of California’s Culture Abuse. For me, these guys stole the show. I’ve never witnessed a more crowd-pleasing frontman than David Kelling. He was goofy, engaging, and rambling – in short, he was himself. Turns out that Kelling has cerebral palsy. Nevertheless, the five-piece ripped through a set […]
Win Tix To See Flying Lotus @ The Electric Factory
Photo by TIM SACCENTI Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, is a two-time Grammy nominated multi-genre music producer, electronic musician, DJ, filmmaker, rapper, curator, label boss and TV star from Los Angeles, California. Flying Lotus has released five studio albums?—?1983 (2006), Los Angeles (2008), Cosmogramma (2010), Until the Quiet Comes (2012) and You’re Dead! (2014)?—?to critical acclaim. He has produced music for Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Thundercat, Wiz Khalifa, Thom Yorke and Erykah Badu as well as much of the bumper music on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. He has curated and hosted a radio station in Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V. […]