Thirty years? Where does the time the go?
TONITE: Shake Bamalama!
Artwork by CHUCK SPERRY The Drive-By Truckers have a well-earned rep for consistently delivering grungy Southern rock operas set in places where red meets neck, where life is hard and folks die soft and squishy and often emphysemic, dirty deeds get done dirt cheap, and everyone goes to church but nobody really goes to heaven. Where dubious characters — jaded pole workers, homicidal preachers’ wives, and modern drunkards — lead self-inflicted lives of quiet desperation in high-def whiskey-hued vérité. Everyone’s on something – booze, pills, God, or all the above – and before all is said and done, they’re gonna […]
FRINGE REVIEW: The Captive
This year’s Fringe Arts Festival features a conglomeration of local masterpieces that radiate creativity and burst with color and character, and the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective with their brilliant production of The Captive is no exception. Local visionary Dan Hodge (The Rape of Lucrece, Mary Stuart, The Duchess of Malfi), specifically selected Philadelphia’s historic Physick House as the venue to breathe life into Edouard Bordet’s infamous period piece. The audience was moved from room to room within the breathtaking mansion to witness each act of the presentation, making for a kinetic and enthralling performance about passion, love, entrapment and torture. […]
THIS JUST IN: Jeb Bush In BIG Trouble With Mom
Just wait until she finds out about the coke.
TONIGHT: Get Your Helado Negro On
Tonight with Xenia Rubinos @ Late Night Fringe. On a related note, anybody the first person to successfully translate this Fringe Guide Helado Negro write up back into English wins a sense of a accomplishment for a job well done. Since its dawn, Helado Negro has achieved a successful organic growth. The inclusiveness of myriad forms of meticulous music craftsmanship has kept Helado Negro flourishing with a powerful force. Roberto Carlos Lange, the voice and mastermind behind the act, has cultured his identity, ideology and musical dexterity with constant artistic and introspective development; Lange is an innovator involved in every […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
Artwork via FEESABILILLAH ARTS FRESH AIR Four years ago, an American drone strike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born imam. It was a targeted attack; more than a year earlier, the Obama administration and the CIA had placed Awlaki’s name on a “capture or kill list.” The Obama administration justified the killing of an American citizen by arguing that Awlaki posed an imminent threat to the United States. New York Times reporter Scott Shane tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that administration officials felt that Awlaki had “turned the corner from being just a propagandist … for al-Qaida to being […]
BEING THERE: Eagles Of Death Metal @ Underground Arts
Photo by TOM BECK What I love about The Eagles of Death Metal is that they’re one of those token cartoonish bands who refuse to take themselves seriously, but still somehow manage to find a way to come together and make kick-ass rock and roll. It’s a style pioneered by The Damned, and difficult to accomplish without coming across as a cheesy, Weird Al wannabe. Few other bands have achieved such a feat, among them The Darkness, Tenacious D, Weezer, Ween, and probably most famously, Nirvana. Some people might put Kiss in this category, but they don’t count. Kiss was […]
COMMENTARY: No Justice No Peace
Artwork by SWOBODA BY WILLIAM C. HENRY With apologies to Woody Guthrie and especially all Palestinians: This land ain’t your land, this land is my land From the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea waters From the Lebanon cedars to the Sinai sand dunes This land was made for me not you Could easily be the first stanza of Israel’s national anthem, right? Certainly the words reflect the aspirations and sentiments of Israelis over the last 70 years, no? All right, let me make something perfectly clear up front: I don’t hate Zionists per se — at least not in a […]
BEING THERE: Micachu & The Shapes @ The Boot and Saddle
Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ I found Micachu and the Shapes’ arrival fitting for the seasonal transition out of annoyingly happy summer music festival season. I wanted so badly for them to drag all of us at Boot and Saddle last night by the hair into an atypically breezy autumn night and to rock us into early onset seasonal depression. I waited with the crowd on our collective tippy toes, our ears ready to be embraced by the bittersweet sound of Mica Levi [PICTURED, ABOVE] shredding on some old guitar— it would possibly be something handmade. We knew she would […]
BOOK REVIEW: Maximum R&D
BY JAMIE KNERR As a fan of the Who for 35 years I was sure I’d heard it all: every rock-and-roll excess story, the many sub-plots of internal intrigue, bitterness, rivalries, and self-sabotage, apocryphal tales of every variety, some of which one suspected were at the very least slight exaggerations. Pretend You’re In A War-the Who & the Sixties, a new biography of the band written by Mark Blake, proved me wrong on those accounts. It turns out the stories are by and large true (and corroborated), and the myths that have sprung up over the years often pale by […]
BEING THERE: Wovenhand @ Underground Arts
Photo by DAN LONG The rainy late summer evening cast a suitably gloomy pall over last night’s proceedings, but the damp masses in Philly’s Underground Arts created a sorta human humidity that sapped the luster of yours truly. I was there to bear witness to another performance by the tragically but not surprisingly unheralded Denver-based gothic Americana outfit Wovenhand. For the uninitiated please allow me to smarten ya up some: David Eugene Edwards, the wunderkind/visonary behind Wovenhand, has been making haunting, beguiling music in one aggregation or another since 2001. Before Wovenhand, Edwards helmed the awesome mule-kicking combo 16 Horsepower. […]
BILL HICKS: Porn, Pubic Hair And Reagan’s Neck
WARNING: NSFW TEXAS MONTHLY: Comedian Bill Hicks died over two decades ago (or at least that’s what the sheeple want you to believe), and while his posthumous catalog has been lovingly curated by his parents and longtime collaborator Kevin Booth, it’s also been fairly stagnant, with the last release in 2005. That’s to be expected for the catalog of someone whose last performance was more than twenty years ago—but it’s also about to change, as comedy distributor Comedy Dynamics, in partnership with Hicks’ estate, releases Bill Hicks: The Complete Collection Friday September 11th. That collection features twelve CDs, six DVDs, and a photo book, and though some […]
CRUISR CONTROLLER: Q&A with Andy States
Photo by CHRIS SEMBROT BY TOM BECK It’s beginning to feel like great indie bands out of Philly are a dime a dozen anymore, and like racist assclowns seeking the Republican nomination, its getting difficult to keep track of them all. But there’s countless reasons why you shouldn’t get discouraged, and CRUISR is one. Andy States is the brainchild of Philly’s token indie-pop band, which, as of yet, hasn’t quite broke the the ranks Philly scene setters like Hop Along and The Districts. But they’re working on that, and with appearances at the Wells Fargo Center opening for Imagine Dragons […]