Photo by DYLAN LONG “Are you Derick?” “Nope, I’m Bob.” Bob was the fifth person I had asked if their name is Derick, who was the tour manager coming to give me photo credentials for the sold-out Bas show at The Foundry. I’d been waiting for a delightful hour and a half downstairs at this point, passing the time away with my +2 — neither of us were on the list for the show, despite publicist assurances to the contrary. I’ve come to expect at least one thing to go completely not as originally planned when covering shows, so I […]
Journey To The Center Of Donald Trumps Brain
This hasn’t come out yet, so keep it under your hat, but years ago Donald Trump had brain surgery and when the surgeon sawed off the top of his combover they found a funhouse mirror where his brain was supposed to be. The call is coming from inside the house!
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Inarguably The Most Digusting News Stories Of The Last 25 Years
EDITOR’S NOTE: OK, admittedly it’s not a very original title, but it IS accurate. William C. Henry is better known to me as ‘Uncle Bill.’ He’s always been a man of strong opinions and a persuasive argument-maker, but I was a little surprised to learn — after re-connecting with him after a prolonged period of radio silence — that his current perspective so closely mirrors that of Phawker. Which is refreshing, to say the least, since most (white) people seem to turn into Fox News zombies when they get to be his age (early 70s, FYI). Not Uncle Bill. […]
SIDEWALKING: When Murder Wears A Badge
Under the Ben Franklin, Monday 1:47 pm by JONATHAN VALANIA
BEING THERE: Steve Gunn @ Union Transfer
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Steve Gunn is a sandy-haired mop top with raccoon eyes who can play the guitar just like ringing a bell. Perched somewhere between Television’s Richard Lloyd and Jerry Garcia, Gunn is adept in the dark arts of arpeggio, clustered overtone and the kind of modal chording arabesques that make Western stoners feel like Sufi mystics for the space of an album side. Straight out of Drexel Hill, Gunn established a beachhead in Brooklyn more than a decade ago, where he’s been releasing pleasantly complicated albums of effortless art rock since at least 2007. And […]
NATIVE GUNN: A Q&A With Matador Recording Artist Steve Gunn, Straight Outta Drexel Hill Yo
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER BY JOSH PELTA-HELLER Recently, at a claustrophobic club that opened less than a year ago in the East Village underneath the decades-old 2A, Philly-native-turned-Brooklyn-indie-it-boy Steve Gunn and his band calibrated their instrument levels, getting ready to air out some cuts from their new record Eyes On The Lines. The album’s nine songs credit as many musicians, over twice the number of players they could have comfortably fit onto that stage with just enough room left over to turn back around with guitars in hand. But even as the band began to experiment with their volume, they […]
Minneapolis Cops Pull Over Family For Driving While Black, Murder Dad In Front Of His 4 Year Old
DAILY MAIL: The shocking footage of the aftermath of the shooting has sparked protests in Saint Paul, with hundreds of people descending on the Governor of Minnesota’s house demanding justice. It is the second controversial police shooting of a black man to emerge in 24 hours. In the video, Reynolds tells viewers that she and Castile were pulled over for a busted tail light by a ‘Chinese police officer’. She claims the cop, from the St. Anthony Police Department in Falcon Heights, asked Castile, a cafeteria supervisor at a Montessori school in St Paul, to show his license, but […]
Baton Rouge Police Murder Black Man Outside A Convenience Store Based On An Anonymous Tip
DAILY BEAST: Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was standing in the parking lot selling CDs as he had for years when two white cops arrived on Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning he was dead and protesters were in the city’s streets. Calls erupted from Congress and the NAACP for an independent investigation into the shooting, which the Justice Department announced within hours. Officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake were reportedly responding to a 911 call about a man threatening someone with a gun before they arrived, but Muflahi said no one was waving a gun, certainly not Sterling. A […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Robert F. Kennedy is often remembered as a liberal icon who worked to heal racial strife, decrease poverty and end the war in Vietnam. But biographer Larry Tye says the New York senator was actually a political operative whose views changed over time. “Throughout his life, [Kennedy] paid attention to what went right and wrong,” Tye tells Fresh Air‘s Dave Davies. “He grew by actually seeing things up close; he took things to heart in ways that few politicians do.” Tye chronicles Kennedy’s political turnaround in his new book, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon. […]
CINEMA: Cruising L.A. With Nicholas Winding Refn
THE GUARDIAN: In the first of two videos shot when director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Bronson) was making The Neon Demon in Los Angeles last summer, Danny Leigh and the director motor round town, stop for a haircut and visit a parking lot where Refn recently saw a man die. They also discuss why a self-confessed ‘wholesome Danish socialist’ still prefers success-orientated LA to any other place, as well as the point at which Hollywood iconography became forever fixed. MORE
THIS JUST IN: Kia Gregory Finally Breaks The Infernal Kia Gregory Barrier At The New Yorker
THE NEW YORKER: She hoped that she’d be able to tell her son’s side of the story, or, as she writes to him in the book, to “represent, baby.” She wants people to know things like her son’s full name: Michael Orlandus Darrion Brown. That hers is a large, tight-knit family, with traditions, such as fishing and barbecue. That from the moment her son was born, when she was sixteen, she called him Mike Mike. That he would lean over and wrap her in a cuddly hug. That he had been learning how to drive in her old Chevy […]
NASA: After A Five Year Voyage, Juno Orbits Jupiter
NEW YORK TIMES: Ducking through intense belts of violent radiation as it skimmed over the clouds of Jupiter at 130,000 miles per hour, NASA’s Juno spacecraft on Monday finally clinched its spot in the orbit of the solar system’s largest planet. It took five years for Juno to travel this far on its $1.1 billion mission, and the moment was one that NASA scientists and space enthusiasts had eagerly — and anxiously — anticipated. At 11:53 p.m. Eastern time, a signal from the spacecraft announced the end of a 35-minute engine burn that left it in the grip of […]
INCOMING: In Bob We Trust
It is difficult to overstate the contributions of Bob Dylan, but it is also, for similar reasons, difficult to say anything meaningful about him that has not been said. It’s like talking about the weather or something, “You know, I really like it when it’s raining.” Me too, man. Me too. However, if one were to attempt to overstate the contributions made by Bob Dylan you could begin with thinking about the word “prophet.” Fate wears some people like a glove, and Mr. Robert Zimmerman seems a likely candidate. Like Saul on the road to Damascus – “Zap!” – […]