Photo by DAN LONG Having cancelled a handful of shows earlier this month due to “altitude sickness,” it was an open question whether Lemmy would truly be back in the saddle last night at the Tower Theater. Would he bow out after two songs like he did in Austin? Would he plow through, driven by The Will To Rock (and maybe a coupla handfuls of trucker speed)? Or, would he die onstage? These were the lingering questions that hung in the air last night. On top of that, it is the opinion of many Motorhead fans that Lemmy should bow […]
Win Tix To See Yo La Tengo @ The Keswick
Artwork by ALEXIS NOLLA REVERT Time is short, the Secret Service is already telling us to pack it up and get on the slow boat to the FEMA camps, so we will cut to the chase: We are very excited to announce that we have a pair of tickets to see indie institution Yo La Tengo perform a rare acoustic show at The Keswick Theater tomorrow night. To qualify to win you need to A) sign up for our emailing list, below right of this post, underneath the masthead. Trust us, you want to be on this list. Among other […]
COMMENTARY: The Pro-Life Jihad On Planned Parenthood Is Actually A Racist War On The Poor
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY So, the phony, gutless, misogynist Congressional Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood. Well, isn’t that just swell. The bottom feeders haven’t the cojones — let alone the common decency — to take on a monstrously bloated, unconscionably inept, disgustingly wastrel Pentagon, but yet they can somehow muster the cowardice to shove critically important family planning services, life-saving cervical and breast cancer screenings, vital Pap and HPV testing, as well as a host of other extremely worthwhile women’s reproductive health and family planning educational services up the crotch of America’s opposite sex. Congratulations, you cretinous, pandering […]
FORGET IT DAD LIFE’S ALRIGHT: A Q&A w/ FIDLAR Guitarist Elvis Kuehn, Son Of A T.S.O.L.
Illustration by PAUL GRANESE BY DYLAN LONG Ever since the skate-punk legions began massing on the West Coast in the early 1980s, the members of FIDLAR have had themselves a wonderful blend of punk rock and skateboarding culture to blast as they spent their days pounding brews and landing wild tricks. Having shared the stage with bands like The Black Lips and The Hives already, FIDLAR has been on the rise for quite some time, welding all different realms of punk rock together to form a crushing, I-don’t-give-a-fuck powerhouse of low-production melodies. In advance of their show at Union Transfer […]
LOST CLASSIC: The Gun Club’s Fire Of Love
THE GUN CLUB Fire Of Love (Superior Viaduct) On the night of August 16th, 1938, as Robert Johnson lay dying, poisoned by a jar of corn whiskey laced with strychnine by the jealous boyfriend of a pretty girl Johnson was flirting with at a country dance he was playing in Greenwood, MS, he had a brief and flickering vision — of gaunt white man in a cowboy hat slumped in the backseat of a car motoring through the backwoods of West Virginia on New Year’s Day 1953. It was Hank Williams. Drifting in and out of consciousness as a […]
Win Tix To See Jesus & Mary Chain Perform PSYCHOCANDY @ Union Transfer Tomorrow Night
Hard to remember now but there was a time when the Jesus & Mary Chain divided the population of planet Earth into two camps: Those who were sure they were the Second Coming and those who thought they were the end of Western Civilization. Such was the response 30 years ago to the band’s debut, Psychocandy. History would, of course, judge it a seminal and deeply influential classic, an exploding cigar in the mouth of western civilization that just keeps giving. The Jesus & Mary Chain are currently in the midst of a U.S. tour marking the 30th anniversary […]
WXPN Announces Michaela Majoun’s Replacement
WXPN: “We’re really excited to have Kristen join our team,” said Bruce Warren, WXPN Assistant General Manager for Programming. “She’s a huge lover of music, radio, people and the Philly area, where she grew up.” Most recently, Kurtis was the award-winning Midday Host, Assistant Program Director and Music Director at public radio station KGSR 93.3 FM in Austin, Texas, where she started in 2011. She was previously Midday Host and Music Director for KEZE 96.9 FM and Afternoon Host at KZZU 92.9 FM, both in Spokane, Washington. She began her radio career in Boston, where she graduated from Emerson […]
INCOMING: Still Stranger Than Paradise
Eszter Balint, best known as the then-16-year-old star of Jim Jarmusch’s career-making, tide-changing, genre-defining 1984 indie flick STRANGER THAN PARADISE, has a new and quite good album out called Airless Midnight. Her acting career was revived recently when Louis CK cast her as his non-English speaking Hungarian love interest for six episodes of Louie. A few weeks ago Phawker conducted a comprehensive five-hour interview with her. By her admission, it’s the most in-depth and revealing interview she’s ever done. Very interesting stuff. Her father was an celebrated experimental playwright in Hungary who fled to New York in 1977 when […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR FAKE MICK JAGGER: The second important thing is Keith’s talent. We took it for granted, in a way, as he says. We felt it was our duty to get together and write a song, one good song each day we worked. He is kind to say I could take what he gave me and run with it. But he is the one who gave me the actual song to write the lyrics to. He wrote a dozen Top 10 hits in five years, and, after the band added Mick Taylor and essentially grew up, he wrote most […]
Win Tix To See Bad Religion Frontman Dr. Greg Graffin Ph.D Discuss His New Book @ Coda
AMAZON: From the very beginning, life on Earth has been defined by war. Today, those first wars continue to be fought around and literally inside us, influencing our individual behavior and that of civilization as a whole. War between populations-whether between different species or between rival groups of humans-is seen as an inevitable part of the evolutionary process. The popular concept of “the survival of the fittest” explains and often excuses these actions. In Population Wars, Greg Graffin points to where the mainstream view of evolutionary theory has led us astray. That misunderstanding has allowed us to justify wars […]
META FOLK-ROCK: The Night They Drove Old Josh Tillman Down, And All The Bells Were Ringing
SUB POP: Father John Misty has delivered a hilariously meta new video for “The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment,” a standout from I Love You, Honeybear, his acclaimed album. The new visual was helmed by writer-director-producer Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3, Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation). Tillman says of the clip: “This video is partially inspired by the LeBron James quote “It is precisely the superficial differences between people who are otherwise alike that inform the hostilities between them.” Special thanks to my body double Tyler who I had to kiss no fewer than two dozen times and […]
POPEADELPHIA: Priest Spent 10 Months Building Lego Vatican And, Like, Wants People To Know This
Photo via DAILY MAIL USA TODAY: When Father Bob Simon was in 7th grade, he tried to build a replica of the Vatican out of red and blue Legos but it didn’t look “anything like the real thing.” Since his first attempt, he’s “had it in his mind” that he would one day build a replica of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Square. In September of 2014, he began building a replica ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to Philadelphia. “It took about ten months,” Simon, 50, told USA TODAY Network. “I was buying bricks [Legos] for about two years […]
INCOMING: 30 Years Of High Fidelity
Thirty years? Where does the time the go?