MICHAEL STIPE: The Man Who Sold The World

NME: Stipe was a guest of Jimmy Fallon’s ahead of his appearance at the upcoming Bowie tribute at Carnegie Hall in New York this week. The REM frontman, who wrote a poem for Bowie following his death in January, will be among the artists performing tribute gigs for the Thin White Duke over two nights (March 31-April 1) in New York this week. The first, with Patti Smith, Pixies, Cat Power, Debbie Harry and The Roots all taking part, will be live-streamed on Skype. MORE PREVIOUSLY: David Bowie Will Never Die PREVIOUSLY: Q&A With Longtime Bowie Producer Tony Visconti PREVIOUSLY: […]

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Win Tix To See The Savages @ Union Transfer

Photo by PETE TROSHAK Folks, we are excited to announce that we have a pair of tix to giveaway to some lucky Phawker reader to see The Savages at Union Transfer on Thursday in support of their just-released sophomore album, Adore Life. Here’s what The Guardian had to say on the heels of their 2013 debut, Silence Yourself: “[Savages] makes us dream of what it must have been like to have been around to hear, in real time, the debut releases by Public Image Ltd, Magazine, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division, to feel, as those incredible records hit […]

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SPOTLIGHT: Getting Wiggly With Abi Reimold

  BY TOM BECK Abi Reimold doesn’t need your help. She doesn’t need your studio, she doesn’t need your guitar lessons, and she sure doesn’t need your damn money. Okay, maybe she could use your money. Unlike many DIY artists in the anybody-can-be-a-musician city of Philadelphia, she doesn’t have a day job. Instead, she opts to make all her income by means of her artistic endeavors, namely her music and photography business. Emphasis on the business. “I kind of sold out with photography,” she admits. “I don’t mind doing weddings and stuff like that. I’ll shoot anything for anyone if […]

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NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

  FRESH AIR: Nearly 80 years ago, about 2,800 Americans volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The war began in July 1936, when Gen. Francisco Franco led a fascist military coup against the the country’s newly elected democratic government. It lasted until Franco’s victory in 1939. Journalist Adam Hochschild tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that “it was by far the largest number of Americans before or since who’ve ever joined somebody else’s civil war.” Hochschild chronicles Americans’ involvement in the war in his new book, Spain in Our Hearts. He says that the majority of Americans in Spain […]

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FEELING THE BERN: The New Math

  POLITICO: Bernie Sanders’ winning streak – which includes blowout victories over Hillary Clinton in three states on Saturday – has helped him narrow the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. But if Sanders is going to surpass Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates to this summer’s convention in Philadelphia, he’ll need to build on that momentum and win by wide margins in the types of states where Clinton has prevailed thus far – and Sanders currently trails in most of them. A POLITICO analysis underscores Sanders’ challenge: Even after runaway victories in Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington this week […]

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CINEMA: Biff! Bang! Pow!

  VULTURE: It’s a shame that ‘Batman v Superman’ is also a storytelling disgrace. It has maybe six opening scenes and jumps so incessantly from subplot to subplot that a script doctor would diagnose a peculiarly modern infection: “disjunctivitis.” Said infection is the upshot of a sort of gene-splicing. For a studio to move beyond the “franchise” and “tentpole” stages to the vastly lucrative “universe,” a comic-book movie must at every turn gesture towards sequels and spinoffs, teasing out loose ends, cultivating irresolution. The movie wanders into so many irrelevant byways that it comes to seem abstract. There’s enough going on to […]

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BEING THERE: Guerilla Toss @ Underground Arts

Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Right before Guerilla Toss was set to play at Underground Arts last night, I took a seat on the floor in front of the stage with my camera. The floor just happened to be the spot from which I could get a decent photo and still revel in wallflower-y seclusion. There, I could avoid contact with anyone remotely interested in talking with me and consequently figuring out my affinity for what some call “art rock” and what I’d rather not be troubled with giving a name to. Truthfully, I’m a sucker for deeply collaged sounds […]

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RIP: The Garry Shandling Show Has Been Canceled

  NEW YORK TIMES: Garry Shandling, a comedian who deftly walked a tightrope between comic fiction and show-business reality on two critically praised cable shows, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 66. A spokesman for the Los Angeles police confirmed the death but did not give a cause. TMZ, the celebrity news site, reported that Mr. Shandling had had a heart attack. Mr. Shandling, who began his comedy career as a writer and went on to become one of the most successful stand-up comics of the 1980s, was best known for “The Larry Sanders Show,” a dark look […]

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SIDEWALKING: Ice Ice Baby

Ice Cube, The Pearl Theater, 6:51 PM Wednesday by JOSH PELTA-HELLER PHAWKER: From your music with NWA to your solo music to your heavier movies with a message like “Three Kings,” you’ve obviously always had a mind to tell stories with social commentary. Could you speak to the contrast between telling those stories the way you chose to vs. the much lighter movies you tend to do now? ICE CUBE: Well you know wit my records, you know, I speak on the ills of the community, you know I have no filter whatsoever, I wanna talk about the real. But […]

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BOOKS: The Terminator

I was sitting in a lecture the other day about the population crisis we will be facing in the next few decades. By 2030, we will have over nine BILLION people, and apparently we are completely unprepared in almost every imaginable, and even unimaginable, way to handle the ramifications of this population explosion. It’s horrifying to think about, so it’s probably best to just ignore it, until we are in the midst of this unprecedented crisis. One man who hasn’t allowed himself the comfort of ignorance is Lawrence Cirelli, the author of the darkly comedic novel The Exit Broker. The […]

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