R5 PRODUCTIONS: Back in 2013 both Dr Dog and the Pig Iron Theater Company were awarded a Fostering The Arts Grant from the Knight Foundation. Two years and hundreds of meetings later they will finally present their work with a four night stand at Union Transfer in September. A full collaboration between one of Philly’s most popular bands and the award winning experimental theater company. We don’t want to give away too much right now other than the collaborative effort will transform Union Transfer like you have never seen it before, a complete take over of the space in […]
TONITE: Shamone It
VILLAGE VOICE: Almost overnight, Shamir Bailey became something of a hero. At this time last year, he was releasing his first EP, the five-track Northtown, named for the Las Vegas suburb from which the singer-songwriter hails. Immediately, the EP showed a rare promise, garnering positive reviews for its clever meld of smart synth-pop and disco-inspired beats. And then there was Shamir himself: an über-stylish youngster, barely twenty, with a voice that sounded surprisingly like Nina Simone’s. He was entirely self-styled, from the way he sang and the smart construction of infectious songs that lay just somewhere left of mainstream […]
BEING THERE: Robert Plant @ The Mann Center
Photo by DAN LONG Flash back to 1972 in South Plainfield, NJ. I’m three years old. My earliest memories are of my father and I pulling the pots and pans out of the cupboard and setting them up like rack toms on a Ludwig kit because he and the drunk and stoned partygoers who were at my house every weekend were ripe and ready to watch me do my thing: the outro of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock & Roll.” Bonham’s mini-solo/big finish was in my hands now. Wooden spoons in hand, I blasted out the fills with such vigor – in […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Message From Neil Young
Yesterday my song “Rockin’ in the Free World” was used in an announcement for a U.S. presidential candidate without my permission. A picture of me with this candidate was also circulated in conjunction with this announcement but It was a photograph taken during a meeting when I was trying to raise funds for Pono, my online high resolution music service. Music is a universal language. So I am glad that so many people with varying beliefs get enjoyment from my music, even if they don’t share my beliefs. But had I been asked to allow my music to be […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR Screenwriter Oren Moverman talks with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross about the film’s depiction of the Beach Boy’s troubled life. We’ll also listen back to an interview Gross recorded with Wilson in 1988. PREVIOUSLY: Love & Mercy tells the harrowing, heartbreaking story of the life of Brian Wilson — Beach Boys auteur and resident genius — which goes like this: Angel-headed boy from Hawthorne, California, at the dawn of the 1960s, smitten by the harmonic convergence of The Four Freshman and the shimmering Spectorian grandeur of “Be My Baby,” forms band with his two brothers and asshole cousin, […]
THE BEING THERE: Dillinger Escape Plan @ UT
Photo by DYLAN LONG Anybody who knows anything about thrash-y Jersey mathcore avatars The Dillinger Escape Plan went into Union Transfer last night expecting non-stop moshing, crowd surfing and acrobatic stage diving. But last night the barrier that usually separates the fans from the stage at these sort of shows was duly absent, which of course only further encouraged reckless stage-diving havoc while packing the front three rows of fans together smack up against the front of the stage like smelly, headbanging sardines. Mutoid Man, the supergroup consisting of members from the heavy hitting Cave In and the legendary Converge […]
REVIEW: FFS (FRANZ FERDINAND + SPARKS) s/t
It’s surprising that the term “supergroup” hasn’t garnered a more negative connotation. Every time a new one pops into existence, the band almost always fails to live up to its quixotic expectations, giving fans and music writers nothing more than just a really bad case of musical blue balls. There’s a lot of reason to believe that the newly formed FFS (acronym for Franz Ferdinand + Sparks) might be deemed for the same fate. The band, as their name ever-so-creatively suggests, is a conjunction of both noughties Scottish dance-rock band Franz Ferdinand and Sparks, a willfully cheesy LA-based glam […]
Win Tix To See The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn @ TLA
When Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn was growing up in suburban Minneapolis in the shag-carpeted ’70s, there was nothing musical about the family Finn, nothing at all. Nobody played an instrument. Nobody played records on the stereo. They did not even sing show tunes on long car rides. But when he was eight years old Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham choked to death on his own vomit, and that’s when he discovered the awesome, mood-altering, life-changing power of rock n’ roll. Up until this point he’d thought of rock n’ roll as nothing more than the interstitial music between […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: Nixon Agonistes
FRESH AIR Richard Nixon’s presidency has always been one surrounded by questions and controversy: Why did he wiretap his own aides and diplomats? Why did he escalate the war in Vietnam? Why did he lie about his war plans to his secretary of defense and secretary of state? What were the Watergate burglars searching for, and why did Nixon tape conversations that included incriminating evidence? Tens of thousands of files from the Nixon White House, National Security Council, CIA, FBI, State Department and Pentagon were declassified between 2007 and 2014. Hundreds of hours of Nixon’s tapes were made public […]
BEING THERE: Courtney Barnett @ Union Transfer
– Photo by TOM BECK Judging by the wide spectrum of ages in the crowd at Union Transfer last night, Courtney Barnett isn’t the voice of a generation, she’s the voice of every generation, more specifically every generation that’s still willing and able to leave the house on a Monday night for an evening of gloriously loud, raw rock n’ roll thrills. The Aussie indie sensation’s acerbic lyrics and deadpan delivery bring out the dry and sarcastic humor cherished by Millennials while still maintaining that classic “I-wrote-these-songs-in-my-garage-with-only-three-chords” primitivism old heads have been swooning over since The Sonics did it in […]
INCOMING: The Importance Of Being Morrissey
For the deeply devoted—and they are legion—there are but two periods in the history of mankind: The time Before Smiths and the time After Smiths. The years B.S. ended in Manchester one May afternoon in 1982, when Johnny Marr—his rockabilly quiff stacked high and retro, Brando-esque Levis cuffed just right—ambled up to 384 Kings Road and knocked on the door. One Steven Patrick Morrissey, unemployable bookworm homebody, who at the ripe old age of 22 was beginning to get the distinct feeling that life had passed him by, answered the door. Marr did not bother with the inane niceties of […]
CINEMA: The Stanford Prison Experiment
What happens when a college psych study goes shockingly wrong? In this tense, psychological thriller based on the notorious true story, Billy Crudup stars as Stanford University professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who, in 1971, cast 24 student volunteers as prisoners and guards in a simulated jail to examine the source of abusive behavior in the prison system. The results astonished the world, as participants went from middle-class undergrads to drunk-with-power sadists and submissive victims in just a few days. Winner of two awards at the Sundance Film Festival, including Best Screenplay, and created with the close participation of Dr. Zimbardo […]
BEING THERE: Alvvays @ Union Transfer
Photo by NOAH SILVESTRY Last night in a town called Philadelphia, Taylor Swift played before a stadium full of teenage girls (mostly, I assume). It was probably great. I wouldn’t know, because I was busy moshing with those girls’ male counterparts to Alvvays, whose hooky eponymous debut has been blasting triumphantly through the speakers of smoky college dorms and beat up first-car stereos across the continent since its release nearly a year ago. I’m hooked too – that blue-marble 12” has been more or less glued to my turntable since I got my hands on it. And just like that […]