DAMIAN KULASH, SINGER/GUITARIST, OK GO: I caught the coronavirus early, when there were only six known cases in California, all of them hundreds of miles from L.A., where I live. My symptoms lasted forever, but were only genuinely scary for a day and a half. My wife Kristin’s battle was tougher, though. She was only briefly at the hospital, but bedridden with breathing problems for a long stretch. As she convalesced, I struggled to keep up with our two-year-old twins, and there were times when her breathing was so labored I worried she just wouldn’t wake up. We’re extremely lucky. […]
NEIL NATHAN: Staycation
The Go-Go’s “Vacation” retrofitted for The Plague Years. PREVIOUSLY: Neil Nathan Covers John Prine’s “Some Humans Ain’t Human” PREVIOUSLY: Neil Nathan & Friends Cover Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land”
ISOLATION DRILLS: What I’m Listening To Now
[Click HERE to enlarge] BY KYLE WEINSTEIN Elegant and cruel, Swans are beautiful birds with very ugly temperaments. That duality is the reason Swans maestro, visionary, and lead guitarist/singer/songwriter Michael Gira chose them for the namesake of his band, an ongoing art-rock concern that has been trafficking in bliss and dissonance to great acclaim since 1982. Built from the wreckage of New York No Wave scenesters Circus Mort by Gira and Jonathan Kane, Swans quickly established themselves as the most ferocious act in town, and considering which town that was, that pretty much meant the world. Their early sound was […]
WIRE FROM THE BUNKER: Meet David Allan Coe
BY JONATHAN HOULON Equally reviled and revered, the reputation of C&W bad boy David Allan Coe precedes the man by a country mile: ex-con, polygamist, cave dweller, prison philosopher, biker badass — in short, he’s an outlaw’s outlaw. From the tender age of nine until one year short of thirty, Coe was in and out of reformatories and then adult prison where he claimed to murder a fellow prisoner for propositioning him. Rolling Stone later refuted this as one of many tall tales associated with the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy as DAC would come to be called after finally slipping […]
BAD SEED TEE VEE: Stay Home, Watch This
A stream of videos, concerts, interviews, film, and more from the world of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, playing on random shuffle 24 hours a day. New footage added regularly.
THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: Nirvana At JC Dobbs
Sad, sad news. We received word today that Tom Sheehy, aka The Colonel — longtime Philly music publicist/scenester/historian, storied music biz vet, barroom philosopher, perennial guest list fixture, late-blooming recipient of a Ph.D. in 20th-century American History from Penn, colonel in the ‘MMaRmy, and frequent Phawker contributor — passed away this weekend. This week we will honor his memory by re-posting some of his greatest Phawker hits. We conclude our weeklong tribute to The Colonel with his 2011 remembrance of the night Nirvana honored a longstanding booking at J.C. Dobbs on October 1st 1991, one week after the release of […]
THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: The Life Of Brian
Brian Jones performs w/ The Rolling Stones @ Atlantic City 1966 EDITOR’S NOTE: Sad, sad news. We received word on Sunday that Tom Sheehy, aka The Colonel — longtime Philly music publicist/scenester/historian, storied music biz vet, barroom philosopher, perennial guest list fixture, late-blooming recipient of a P.H.D. in 20th Century American History from Penn, colonel in the ‘MMaRmy, and frequent Phawker contributor — passed away this weekend. This week we will honor his memory by re-posting some of his greatest Phawker hits. Today we’re re-posting The Colonel’s 2011 remembrance of seeing The Rolling Stones at the Steel Pier in Atlantic […]
THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: Pictures Of Lily Philly
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sad, sad news. We received word on Sunday that Tom Sheehy, aka The Colonel — longtime Philly music publicist/scenester/historian, storied music biz vet, barroom philosopher, perennial guest list fixture, late-blooming recipient of a P.H.D. in 20th Century American History from Penn, colonel in the ‘MMaRmy, and frequent Phawker contributor — passed away this weekend. This week we will honor his memory by re-posting some of his greatest Phawker hits. Today we’re re-posting The Colonel’s 2011 remembrance of (almost) seeing The Who and The Pink Floyd at JFK Stadium in 1968. MORE BY COLONEL TOM SHEEHY If you think […]
THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: The Beatles At JFK
[Photos of The Beatles backstage at JFK by BOB BONIS courtesy of NFAgallery.com] EDITOR’S NOTE: Sad, sad news. We received word on Sunday that Tom Sheehy, aka The Colonel — longtime Philly music publicist/scenester/historian, storied music biz vet, barroom philosopher, perennial guest list fixture, late-blooming recipient of a Ph.D. in 20th Century American History from Penn, colonel in the ‘MMaRmy, and frequent Phawker contributor — passed away this weekend. This week we will honor his memory by re-posting some of his greatest Phawker hits. Today we’re re-posting The Colonel’s 2011 remembrance of seeing The Beatles at JFK in 1966. MORE […]
BILLY BRAGG: There Is Power In A Union
BILLY BRAGG: We’ve been experiencing what we refer to as ‘Andy Warhol Weather’ here today: fifteen minutes of rain, fifteen minutes of sun, fifteen minutes of hail etc etc. As a result, I couldn’t take my guitar amp out onto the rubble mound this week for the #ClapForNHS #ClapForCarers #ClapForKeyWorkers so I set up in the old garage in case the rain came again. As it’s technically already May 1st — International Workers Day – in some parts of the world, I thought I’d play the riff from There is Power in a Union this week as a salute to […]
THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: Me & Keef
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sad, sad news. We received word today that Tom Sheehy, aka The Colonel — longtime Philly music publicist/scenester/historian, storied music biz vet, barroom philosopher, perennial guest list fixture, late-blooming recipient of a Ph.D. in 20th Century American History from Penn, colonel in the ‘MMaRmy, and frequent Phawker contributor — passed away this weekend. This week we will honor his memory by re-posting some of his greatest Phawker hits. We begin with his beloved Rolling Stones and the time he snuck into Keith Richards hotel room in New York in 1969. We will also be re-posting his remembrances of […]
MT VENGEANCE: May Day
PREVIOUSLY: 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 […]
BOOKS: The Gospel According To Saint Nick
VICE: It felt like an extravagant gift from my past self when Stranger Than Kindness showed up in the mail. It’s an odd and substantial object—part art book, part memoir, part jigsaw artifact—by and about Nick Cave, designed to complement an exhibit about his work at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. (The exhibit is described by the curators as eight rooms devoted to “a spatial, multi-sensory exploration of his many real and imagined universes.”) Like everything else, the exhibition is now indefinitely postponed, but the book more than stands on its own. Cave, who fled Australia for London and […]
