So we just caught Reggie Watts‘ Comedy Central special while absently flipping thru the Box Of Lies over the weekend and our first reaction was that somebody must have put angel dust in our dime bag and it was only a matter of time before we’d be naked, sweating, handcuffed and kicking out the back window of a cop car. First there’s the hair, which can only be described as mid-70s Wooly Mammoth. Then there’s the look — like he covered himself in honey and shot himself out of a cannon through the wardrobe closet of Santa’s elves. Finally, […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See The Wandering
The Wandering gathers five traditionally-minded artists from Memphis and North Mississippi and features the string work of Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars, Black Crowes) and a quartet of distinctive female voices—Shannon McNally, Amy LaVere, Valerie June, and Sharde Thomas, erstwhile leader of the Rising Star Fife and Drum band. A more detailed CV of each member follows below. They perform tomorrow night at The World Cafe. We have a pair of tickets to give away to the first lucky Phawker reader that can tell us what Rolling Stones song Luther Dickinson’s dearly departed father, Jim Dickinson, played piano on. Email […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
M. Ward, Union Transfer, Saturday night by PETE TROSHAK Mysterious troubadour M. Ward brought his dark and dreamy music to Union Transfer in Philadelphia on Saturday night, in support of his excellent new solo album A Wasteland Companion. In contrast to the sunny throwback Cali pop of his She & Him duo with Zooey Deschanel, Ward’s solo work is more rural, more dust and dirt, less sandcastles in the sky, more Leonard Cohen than Brian Wilson. Ward and his band, dressed like old school club musicians in suits and hats, effortlessly shifted through genres: spectral folk, rollicking country, otherworldly pop […]
MILESTONE: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Turns 10
BY JONATHAN VALANIA so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. That was written by William Carlos Williams, an American poet. Best I can tell, he was talking about the significance of insignificance, that little things truly do mean a lot—like if you could surf the past in a time machine and you did something as small as, say, kicking a stone in the Stone Age, it could send a ripple through the entire fabric of history. Everything after could be slightly different. You might even erase yourself from existence. I bring […]
CONCERT REVIEW: The Shins @ The Tower
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER If Zac Braff’s Garden State was The Graduate for the iPod generation, the Shins’ “New Slang” was its “Sound of Silence.” “You have to hear this one song, it will change your life,” Natalie Portman beseeched us all in Braff’s film. That scene sure changed the Shins’ life, for better and for worse — depending on where you stand on the two albums that followed, 2007’s winsome Wincing the Night Away and the new Port of Morrow. I like ’em fine, but they sound like the work of a different band from the one […]
Q&A: M. Doughty, Former Soul Coughing Frontman, Ex-Junkie, Acclaimed Author & Recovering Genius
Photo by Deborah Lopez BY JONATHAN VALANIA “If heroin still made me feel like I did the first time, and kept making me that way forever — kept working — I might’ve quite happily accepted a desolate, marginal life and death,” writes Mike Doughty, aka M. Doughty, former frontman for the dearly departed Soul Coughing, in the introduction to The Book of Drugs, his wickedly funny recently-published memoir. Although he is loathe to admit it, Soul Coughing was easily the most fascinating, innovative and sonically-subversive American band to come along since Devo. Future generations of scientists may well conclude that […]
RIP: MCA, Fighter For The Right To Party, Is KIA
ROLLING STONE: Adam Yauch, one-third of the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of 47, Rolling Stone has learned. Yauch, also known as MCA, had been in treatment for cancer since 2009. The rapper was diagnosed in 2009 after discovering a tumor in his salivary gland.Yauch sat out the Beastie Boys’ induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April, and his treatments delayed the release of the group’s most recent album, Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2. The Beastie Boys had not performed live since the summer of 2009, and Yauch’s illness prevented […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Devil In Miss Jones
BY JONATHAN VALANIA It’s another lazy Sunday morning coming down. You are awakened by the sunshine streaming through the open windows and the sound of the Brooklyn streets outside coming alive. Oddly, Danger Mouse is laying next to you, on his back, looking up at the ceiling, languidly strumming an elegiac guitar. He acts like you aren’t there. If you listen closely, you can hear a tinkling, Eno-esque piano arpeggio out of the corner of your ear. It sounds, and more importantly feels, like raindrops falling on your head. You roll over and there’s Norah Jones — beautiful, kind, […]
THIS JUST IN: My Morning Jacket @ The Mann
with special guest BAND OF HORSES Fri * Aug 17 The Mann Fairmount Park * Philadelphia Tickets On Sale Friday, 5/04 at 10AM! PREVIOUSLY: Opening for a band that draws seven or eight times as many people as you do seems like a no-brainer, after all if you win over just a quarter of the crowd, you’ve more than doubled your draw in this market. The downside is nobody shows up for the opening act at the Big Rock Show — never have, never will. Tuesday nigh at the Mann was no exception when Neko Case opened for My Morning […]
Q&A w/ Nick Lowe, Elder Statesman Of Pure Pop
Photo by Dan Burn-Forti BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT Nick Lowe’s 45-year career as a singer-songwriter, record producer, and all-around musical instigator is a one-man Village Green Preservation Society, to quote the Kinks’ 1968 mission statement. After brief spell in a Cream-influenced psychedelic rock band, Kippington Lodge, Lowe and his fellow UK mates, including future standouts in the late-’70s new wave scene, got an early start on “preserving the old ways” in the Americana roots-rock band, Brinsley Schwarz. A big push to launch the band in the States flamed spectacularly, and in the US their records would be left for […]
CINEMA: The Unkown Soldiers Of 20th Century Pop
BY JONATHAN VALANIA A little known fact outside of musician circles is that the instrumental tracks of many of the most beloved and iconic pop songs of the 1960s — The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me,” The Mamas & Papas’ “California Dreamin’,” The Monkees’ “Mary Mary,” Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas,” The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night,” Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” to name but a few — were not performed by the artists credited. […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, The Hives, NYC last night by GENE SMIRNOV
REWIND: R.E.M. @ The Mann 6/18/08
Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA BY JONATHAN VALANIA First time I heard “Wolves, Lower” live was at the Beacon Theater in New York City, and The Dream Syndicate opened. It was 1984 and Michael Stipe had hair down to his shoulders. The second time I heard it live was last night at the Mann Music Center, and Modest Mouse and The National opened. Hate to sound like Bill Murray reviewing movies he didn’t see on SNL back in the day, but The National? Didn’t see ’em, babe. I blame the traffic planner who thought just one or two little one-lane access […]