FRESH AIR: Some of today’s most divisive issues related to racial equality, voting rights and voter suppression, women’s rights, who gets to be a citizen, mass incarceration and what is the meaning of equal justice are issues you can’t fully understand without understanding the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. These are the amendments that were added to the Constitution after the Civil War in the era known as Reconstruction. The 13th ended slavery. The 14th made anyone born in the U.S. a citizen and said that the state can’t deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process […]
ELVIS, I’M SCARED: A Few Thoughts About Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, Gettin’ Old & Fixin’ To Die
Robert Plant @ The Mann Center, Philadelphia, September 17th by CHRIS SIKICH BY JONATHAN VALANIA In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man by an Elvis impersonator. This happened at a picnic grove in the blackened heart of Pennsyltucky — Hellertown, to be exact, just a few towns over from my ancestral home — in the final decade of the 20th Century. Truth be told, this Elvis impersonator wasn’t very good — are any of them, really? isn’t that actually the whole point? — and as the keg-fueled crowd grew restless and […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: In 2013, Edward Snowden was an IT systems expert working under contract for the National Security Agency when he traveled to Hong Kong to provide three journalists with thousands of top-secret documents about U.S. intelligence agencies’ surveillance of American citizens. To Snowden, the classified information he shared with the journalists exposed privacy abuses by government intelligence agencies. He saw himself as a whistleblower. But the U.S. government considered him a traitor in violation of the Espionage Act. After meeting with the journalists, Snowden intended to leave Hong Kong and travel — via Russia — to Ecuador, where he […]
MUST SEE TV: The Kids Are NOT Alright
The most powerful — and heartbreaking — case for sensible gun policy ever made.
BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN: Q&A W/ Greg Sowders Of Alt-Country Pioneers The Long Ryders
BY BARRY GUTMAN During the 1980s, The Long Ryders – along with The Dream Syndicate, The Bangles, The Three O’Clock and The Rain Parade – were card-carrying members of Los Angeles’ “Paisley Underground” scene. While all of those bands channeled the ‘60s to some extent, none carried on in the folk- and country-rock vein of The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and Flying Burrito Bros. so prominently and perfectly. “Ivory Tower”, for example, from their first LP, Native Sons, would have fit perfectly on either of The Byrds’ first two albums – so perfectly, in fact, that that band’s master songwriter […]
BEING THERE: Andrew Bird @ The Fillmore
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER There is perhaps no better complement to the purple skies and browning leaves of an early autumn night than the violin-centric folk pop music of Andrew Bird. His pensive, literary lyrics, spinning horns, pedal loops, and virtuoso whistling drew a crowd of shaggy-haired Bird look-alikes to the Fillmore last night, many fans already equipped with previous tour merchandise, and even more dorkily smiling through the face hole of a life-size cutout of the mock Death of Marat on his most recent album cover at the venue entrance. That album, My Finest Work Yet, which came out […]
INCOMING: Boy Harsher
Photo by SVEN HARAMBASIC Boy Harsher is a nouveau neo-Cold Wave duo comprised of spooky siren Jae Matthews [pictured, above] and beat architect Augustus Muller fusing goth sonic tropes with industrial electronic rhythms. Originally dubbed Teen Dreamz, the group began as a series of short stories narrated by Matthews’s reverb-drenched voice swathed in dark, moody synths and electro drum beats sculpted by Muller. In due time, Teen Dreamz morphed into Boy Harsher, coming of age with their debut LP, Yr Body is Nothing, a disorienting high-velocity night drive on a lost highway for the ears. Matthews and Muller’s mutual background […]
IN MEMORIAM: The Devil And Daniel Johnston
Artwork by Daniel Johnston BY JON HOULON When I lived in Austin in the early 90s, Daniel Johnston hovered over the place like a ghost. He made his name there in the 80s but had since been institutionalized after clubbing a friend with a lead pipe or baptizing himself in a fountain on campus. Equally felonious, perhaps. But I didn’t know any of that back then as I puzzled over his hand-labelled cassettes in the local music section of Tower Records on Guadalupe. I couldn’t be bothered at the time. I wish I had. Like many, I found my way […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Several Democratic presidential candidates are calling for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after The New York Times published an essay Sept. 14 describing alleged sexual misconduct that occurred during his college years at Yale. New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, who penned the essay, covered Kavanaugh’s contentious 2018 confirmation hearings, in which Christine Blasey Ford alleged that he’d sexually assaulted her at a house party when they were both teenagers. The FBI conducted an investigation into Kavanaugh’s behavior, but it was restricted in terms of time and scope. The Senate ultimately voted […]
TYLER THE CREATOR: A Boy Is A Gun
TYLER THE CREATOR @ THE MANN CENTER’S SKYLINE STAGE SEPT. 25TH
RIP: Ric Ocasek, New Wave Architect, Dead @ 75
NEW YORK TIMES: From 1978 to 1988, Mr. Ocasek (pronounced oh-CASS-eck) and the Cars merged a vision of romance, danger and nocturnal intrigue and the concision of new wave music with the sonic depth and ingenuity of radio-friendly rock. The Cars managed to please both punk-rock fans and a far broader pop audience, reaching into rock history while devising fresh, lush extensions of it. The Cars grew out of a friendship forged in the late 1960s in Ohio between Mr. Ocasek and Benjamin Orr, who died in 2000. They worked together in multiple bands before moving to Boston and forming […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Devendra Banhart’s Ma
Ma, recovering freak folkie Devendra Banhart’s eleventh album, is a post-mortem of sorts that finds Banhart in unflinching confessional singer-songwriter mode, earnestly exploring themes of death and loss, political oppression, and the mourning of what once was. During the three-year period that passed since he released Ape In Pink Marble, Banhart travelled to Caracas, Venezuela, to find the city in ruins, his family starving, and many old friends missing and presumably abducted or murdered. Compounding the trauma of it all, his mother passed away during this time, and her ghost haunts the album. The first intimation of his mother’s […]
BEING THERE: The Growlers @ Union Transfer
Photo by MATT SHAVER Thursday night at Union Transfer, Brooks Nielsen, lead singer of Cali-based beach goths The Growlers, hit the stage rocking his trademark Robert Smith-inspired locks and a thrifty striped sweater. Lead guitarist Matt Taylor went for the no fuss, white tee and was joined by guitarist, Kyle Stratka who opted for a long-sleeve, colored tee. This was suspiciously dressed down for a band that usually sports incredibly dapper, coordinated suit ensembles. However, these perplexing sartorial choices had no apparent impact on their ability to deliver the good. They opened with “Problems III” which felt like a great […]