BY PELLE GUNTHER Firstly I’d like to apologize for being a total fuck up. My tales of this past weekend’s misadventures should have made their way to the Phawker days ago, but you see me and my incompetent self found ourselves stranded in Philly for a few days after the festival in a mess of drunk college pricks, without wheels, cash or even a cell phone to contact the world, let alone a computer to record my thoughts on Popped, or even a moment of silence to collect them. The self-defeating decision-making really started about two years ago when I […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To The Felice Brothers Tonight
Impersonating The Band hasn’t been a decently-paying gig since Scorsese filmed The Last Waltz in 1976, but judging by the full-up crowd at the Trocadero Thursday night The Felice Brothers seem to be on their way. Actually, ‘impersonating’ sounds a little too dismissive and I like these guys, so let’s go with ‘evoking’ or ‘carrying on the old, weird Americana tradition’ of the Band instead. Besides, they have the pedigree (hail from upstate New York, sons of a carpenter) they’ve paid their dues (busked in the subways of New York; went acoustic at the Newport Folk Festival; woodshedd-ed at Levon […]
THE EARLY WORD: Ryan’s Hope
RYAN ADAMS BRINGS TOUR TO PHILADELPHIA FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2 ACADEMY OF MUSIC WITH SPECIAL GUEST JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD TICKETS GO ON SALE THIS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 AT 10AM! NEW ALBUM ASHES & FIRE OUT OCTOBER 11 NPR FIRST LISTEN LIVE HERE With his forthcoming Ashes & Fire (out October 11 on PAX-AM/Capitol) already generating arguably the best critical notices of his career to date, Ryan Adams has confirmed another leg of North American dates including a stop in Philadelphia on Friday, December 2 at the Academy of Music. Tickets go on sale this Friday, […]
The End Of REM As We Know It And I Feel Fine
THE FINEST HOUR: R.E.M., The Mann, 6/18/08 [Photos by JONATHAN VALANIA] REM: “To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.” *** 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 […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Deerhoof At WCL
For going on two decades, these artful dodgers have been getting their shit together somewhere in the outer limits of the noise-rock fringe, with conceptual song cycles about desperate milkmen pied-pipering children into pastures of cellophane flowers and marmalade skies, or cuddly pandas wandering through the valley of the shadow of death. The personnel have shifted over the course of 11 albums, but these days Deerhoof are anchored by drummer/singer Greg Saunier’s deep kick and light voice, the twin-guitar abstract expressionism of John Deiterich and Ed Rodriguez, and the naif anime vocals of bassist Satomi Matsuzaki, whose helium-pitched pipes have […]
WILCO: Born Alone
TIME: In 2002, Wilco was a reasonably successful and well-known alt-country band—formed by frontman Jeff Tweedy after the dissolution of his previous group, Uncle Tupelo—that had put out three solid albums. But then it released Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a genre-hopping gem of musical perfection that is inarguably one of the best albums of the past decade. After one listen of “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” people who didn’t normally like alt-country found themselves wondering if maybe they liked alt-country. College kids liked it. People in their 30s and 40s—people with kids, people who’d stopped caring about new music and […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Lupe Fiasco At The Mann
We’ve loved Lupe since 2006’s Food And Liquor and even if we are feelin’ a little let down by the new Lasers we could not be more psyched to see him at the Mann on Saturday. We have two pairs of tickets to give away. The first two Phawker readers to tell us the name of the song he recorded with Jill Scott wins ’em. Email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with ‘Lupe’ in the subject line and include a cell phone number for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed. PREVIOUSLY: Top 5 Reasons Why LUPE FIASCO Was Better Than Whatever Hip-Hop Show […]
I WAS A TEENAGE SEX PISTOL: Q&A With Pistols Bassist & Principal Songwriter Glen Matlock
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Glen Matlock was the original bass player in the Sex Pistols, and he was also one the band’s principal songwriters — all the classic Pistols tunes (“Anarchy In The UK,” “God Save The Queen” “Pretty Vacant”) bear his imprimatur. So why haven’t you heard of him? Because he left the band — whether he quit or was fired depends on who you ask — just before the Pistols went supernova and was replaced by human car wreck Sid Vicious who’s onstage self-mutilation, epic dope appetite and ignominious demise (dead from a heroin overdose while being jailed for […]
CONTEST:Win Tix To See The Sex Pistols Glen Matlock
[Photo by RAY STEVENSON/REX USA] Glen Matlock & The Philistines play the North Star Bar tonight (yes, they’re doing Pistols material). Look for our Q&A with Mr. Matlock later today on a Phawker near you. In the mean time have a pair of tickets to give away to the first reader to email us at feed@phawker.com with the name of the one-off supergroup he formed with Sid Vicious. ***
Q&A With Scott McCaughey Of The Baseball Project
BY JONATHAN VALANIA The knock on rock music since, well, time immemorial is that there’s nothing new under The Big Rock Sun, that it’s all been done before and everything after is just a distant echo of the big bang that ended on or about 1969. The Baseball Project puts the lie to all that. I submit to you that they are doing something that’s never before: An indie rock supergroup that writes catchy songs about the lore and the legends of America’s pastime. If there is an ur-text for the Baseball Project, it’s “Take Me Out To The Ball […]
Q&A With Philly Homeboy Schoolly D, The Original OG
[Photo by Jonene Taddei] BY JONATHAN VALANIA Deep inside Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik’s 1,400 page ‘manifesto’, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” in between all the raging Islamophobia, pathological nativism, and bomb-making instructions, the man who killed 77 innocent, unarmed people in cold blood, warns readers of the negative effect that gangsta rap lyrics have on society. In section 2.67 of the PDF version, Breivik includes a slightly bastardized version of John P McWhorter’s 2003 anti-rap diatribe How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back, which singles out a few of the most sensational lines from West Philly native Schooly D’s proto-gangsta […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See TVOTR At The Mann
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] Raise your hand if you want to go see TV On The Radio and Broken Social Scene at The Mann next Friday? OK, put ’em down, we can’t see you, that’s not how this blog thingee works — not yet anyway. Presumaby there were millions of you raising your hands a moment ago, and now feeling a little stupid for doing so, as you should, but cheer up because we can help at least four of you. That’s right we have two pairs of tickets for TVOTR at The Mann Music Center on Friday September 9th […]
CONCERT REVIEW: My Morning Jacket At The Mann
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER 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 particular market. The downside is that nobody shows up for the opening act at The Big Rock Show. Never have, never will. Tuesday night at the Mann Center was no exception. Neko Case opened for My Morning Jacket and delivered a game but faintly glum set to mostly empty seats […]