BY MEREDITH KLEIBER Joel Plaskett is no music-biz newbie. If you’re an American, his name may not yet be familiar to you, but Plaskett is among the most well known contemporary musicians in Canada. Hailing from the Halifax indie scene of the 90s, Plaskett cut his teeth with Thrush Hermit who hung it up in 1999. He went solo around the turn of  the century and blew up in the great white north shortly thereafter. He kind of looks like Michael Cera but his taught, whimsical brand of pop-rock sounds like the second coming of Marshall Crenshaw, and as second […]

BY MEREDITH KLEIBER If you live in the Philly metro area and have yet to attend the Philadelphia Folk Festival, well this is your year to start. The Folk Fest turns 50 this year and will be celebrating five decades of good, clean, crunchy, folky fun for the whole family this weekend when it returns to beautiful Old Pool Farm in Schwenksville. Once again the lineup is a heady mix of heritage folk artists and barn-burning upstarts. Below are our picks for the must-see performances of the weekend. And don’t forget to sample Yards’ special Folk Fest Lager, which is […]

[Illustration by ALEX FINE] You can buy tickets HERE. ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: Zimmerman, Robert: Aka Bob Dylan, aka the Mystery Tramp, aka Napoleon in Rags. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Bob Dylan was the all-seeing eye atop the pyramid of rock–a razor-thin, tousle-haired visionary speaking in stoned parables and meth-riddles about the nature of transcendental consciousness from behind impenetrable black shades. His status as generational oracle was earned by a triumvirate of hallucinatory folk-rock albums–1965’s Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, and 1966’s Blonde on Blonde–that he would spend the rest of […]

[Artwork by MPOKimageworks] NEW YORK TIMES: Energy “will give us serious and sustained problems” over the next 50 years as we make the transition from hydrocarbons — oil, coal, gas — to solar, wind, nuclear and other sources, but we’ll muddle through to a solution to Peak Oil and related challenges. Peak Everything Else will prove more intractable for humanity. Metals, for instance, “are entropy at work . . . from wonderful metal ores to scattered waste,” and scarcity and higher prices “will slowly increase forever,” but if we scrimp and recycle, we can make do for another century before […]

[Photos by JEFF FUSCO] PHILLY DEALS: Joon Associates Inc. and its President, Joanna Pang, asked for court permission to reorganize the Troc, lately a rock-and-roll concert venue, today in US Bankruptcy Court in Philadelphia “to obtain a breathing spell from creditors while it negotiates a restructuring of its debts” according to the petition (US BC E.Pa. 11-16432). In her filing, Pang notes the high cost of cutting Ticketmaster a share of the proceeds for every show in the face of declining sales, along with declining ticket sales and unrelated litigation costs, for a cash flow squeeze that has started to […]

DAILY BEAST: Roemer officially announced his candidacy for president last month in New Hampshire, committed to returning power to the people. From his address to the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans: “I will attempt to beat the tyranny of the big check. If we don’t do this, the change that’s necessary to rebuild America will never happen. Because Washington is bought and sold.” On why change is needed: “Real people don’t have a voice in Washington, D.C.  Special interest money controls the discussion… I will take no PAC money. I will take no special interest money. I will accept […]

[Photography by GRAHAM TOLBERT] BY MEREDITH KLEIBER You’ll be hard pressed to find a harder-working musician in Philadelphia than Adam Granduciel. When he’s not on tour with his own band, Philly’s own The War On Drugs, he’s either touring with The Violators, the band of close friend (and Drugs founding member) Kurt Vile, or completely engrossed in finessing experimental recordings in his Fishtown home studio. The War On Drugs’ new album, Slave Ambient, is essentially the product of those intense home-studio recording sessions, enhanced by Granduciel’s astute songwriting and the commanding synergy of the band. I caught up with Adam […]

FOX 29: Near Fairmount Park, around 34th and Huntingdon in North Philadelphia, police sources say a 50-year-old man was knocked from his bicycle, by a 13 year old, 15 year old and a 16 year old. They punched, kicked and stomped in the man in the head. His bike and watch stolen and he ended up in Temple University Hospital. People there are worried that teens flushed out of Center City and University City will attack elsewhere. Then at 12:40 a.m. on Sunday, the second attack was at 47th and Walnut, just five blocks outside the crackdown zone. A 22-year […]

DAILY BEAST: The Daily Beast spent a night at this open-air market for pills and needles, talking to users and prostitutes about what’s come to pass for normalcy in Kensington: hard-core drug use without police interference. Heroin isn’t sold here much—that trade is controlled by Latin drug crews in the Badlands. But users who buy in the Badlands come to Kensington to shoot up. Addicts duck into vacant lots on the Avenue after returning from dope corners a couple of blocks away and, barely concealed by high weeds, casually cook and shoot speedballs. People are hanging out everywhere, turning tricks […]

WARREN BUFFET: Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent. If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a […]