[CLICK HERE TO VIEW] BY DYLAN LONG Year after year without fail, The Roots have managed to wrangle just the right combination of iconic — and destined to be iconic — artists from the realms of hip hop, rap, reggae, R&B, electronica, indie and soul, to showcase at their annual Roots Picnic in Philadelphia. This year was no exception. The eighth annual Roots Picnic kicked off Saturday with sets from the soulful Marc E. Bassy and Donn T, the little sister of Questlove, The Roots Don Dada, drummer and all-around ambassador of good vibes and goodwill. Mr. E. Bassy, hand-picked […]
JOHN OLIVER: Bring Me The Head Of Sepp Blatter!
DAILY BEAST: “The problem is all the arrests in the world are going to change nothing if Blatter’s still there, because to truly kill a snake you must cut off its head—or in this case, its asshole,” he continued. “But if America keeps driving this investigation and actually finds something to indict him, I don’t think you would understand how much that would mean to every person on earth. The whole world’s opinion of America would change overnight. Let me put this in terms you might understand: If the Dutch somehow found a reason to extradite and lock up Donald […]
LIFE OF BRIAN: ‘Goodbye Surfing, Hello God’
SLATE: Smile, the Beach Boys’ famously scrapped project, is the most celebrated album never made. Recorded in late 1966 and early 1967 on the heels of the critically lauded album Pet Sounds and the follow-up smash single “Good Vibrations,” Smile was being billed as a significant turning point in popular music well before the public had heard a single note of it. One of the album’s earliest champions was the writer Jules Siegel, whose magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, had commissioned him to write an article on its making. Siegel, blown away by what he heard during his interviews […]
CINEMA: To Live And Die In Twin Peaks
THE ADVOCATE: A Brooklyn, N.Y., filmmaker who previously told the story of a teen obsessed with porn is teaming up with the creator of the otherworldly film Tarnation to tell a strange story of a teen whose life revolved around the show Twin Peaks. But they need your help to do it.Travis Blue’s childhood in a small Washington town was turned upside down one day when he stumbled across a film crew shooting Northwest Passage, as the show was then called. Fascinated by the transformation of his hometown into a fictional world, Blue skipped school to watch the filming of […]
DUMB ANGEL: Smile, Brian Wilson’s Rosebud
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Teenage symphonies to God. That’s the phrase Beach Boys auteur Brian Wilson used to describe the a heartbreaking works of staggering genius he was creating in the mid-’60s, when his compositional powers were achieving miraculous states of beauty and innovation even as his fevered faculties skirted the fringes of madness. With the 1966 release of Pet Sounds, The Beach Boy’s orchestral-pop opus of ocean-blue melancholia, Brian clinched his status as teen America’s Mozart-on-the-beach in the cosmology of modern pop music. Less than a year later, he would fall off the edge of his mind, abandoning his […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: If actor David Oyelowo projects a regal air, it’s one he comes by naturally. Born in England to Nigerian parents, Oyelowo’s father had always told him that theirs was a royal family, a claim the actor initially discounted. “I was like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ ” Oyelowo tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. But then the family moved back to Nigeria where they lived on a street named after his family and the actor realized that his father had not been joking. Oyelowo says that his family’s royal heritage did not come with financial or “positional” benefits, but it did […]
WORTH REPEATING: Being Bernie Sanders
MOTHER JONES: Not long after graduating from the University of Chicago, and fresh from a stint on an Israeli kibbutz, Sanders arrived in Vermont in the late 1960s on the crest of a wave. The state’s population jumped 31 percent in the 1960s and ’70s, due largely to an infusion of over 30,000 hippies who had come to the state seeking peace, freedom, and cheap land. Sanders and his then-wife bought 85 acres in rural Vermont for $2,500. The only building on the property was an old maple-sugar house without electricity or running water, which Sanders converted into a […]
INCOMING: Maximum Bump N’ Grind
Burlesque is to stripping is what a Betty Boop cartoon is to a David Lee Roth video, what grindhouse is to grindcore, what slap and tickle is to reverse cowgirl. Retro, cool and stylish, burlesque is about sociology not gynecology. We, meaning you, should know. From The Trocadero’s days as a burlesque theater to The Peek-A-Boo Revue, burlesque has a long rich history in Philadelphia. Today, burlesque is alive and well in Philly with troupes like Broad St. Burlesque and the aforementioned Peek-A-Boo Revue keepin’ it real. Popular venues PhilaMOCA, Underground Arts, World Cafe Live, Johnny Brenda’s and Bourbon […]
MIKE LOVE NOT WAR: Q&A With A Beach Boy
!NOTE: This picture comes from a photo-sharing site where it was posted without attribution but with the caption ‘My mom backstage’ BY JONATHAN VALANIA In the psychedelic American fairy tale that is The Beach Boys — who play Camden on Saturday as part of a tour celebrating 50 years of endless summer — Mike Love is invariably cast as the villain. The pre-maturely balding Philistine. The counter-revolutionary company man. The sexist greed head who saw the band as little more than a singing ATM machine. The one who blanched at any and all attempts to move the band past past […]
CHEERS ELEPHANT: Airliner
Cheers Elephant, the Philly-turned-LA progenitors of so-called “chew it up, spit it out, rock and roll” spat out a new song last Friday called “Airliner.” The new song comes on the heels of “Speak Think,” released a month ago, and is one more reason to believe that a new album is in the offing. “Airliner” — like most Cheers Elephant songs, boasts an uber-catchy melody, slammin’ beat and freaky-chill vocal harmonies — is right in line with the Elephants’ recent trend of getting greater with every song they release. Hard to say what it’s all about beyond the fact that […]
The Duggar Family Has 19 Reasons & Counting For Electing Rick Santorum President Of The USA
From 2012 and never more relevant.
LIFE OF BRIAN: A Q&A w/ The Beach Boys Auteur
EDITOR’S NOTE: A version of this Q&A originally published on October 10th, 2013 BY JONATHAN VALANIA Teenage symphonies to God. That’s the phrase Beach Boys auteur Brian Wilson used to describe the heartbreaking works of staggering genius he was creating in the mid-’60s, when his compositional powers were achieving miraculous states of beauty and innovation even as his fevered faculties skirted the fringes of madness. With the 1966 release of Pet Sounds, The Beach Boy’s orchestral-pop opus of ocean-blue melancholia, Brian clinched his status as teen America’s Mozart-on-the-beach in the cosmology of modern pop music. Less than a year later, […]
RIP: Philadelphia Native Mary Ellen Mark, Unflinching-Eyed Photojournalist, Dead At 75
Photo by MARY MARK ELLEN NEW YORK TIMES: She brings to all her photographs an unflinching yet compassionate eye. In the midst of exotica or on the fringes of society, where she often chooses to be, she does not exaggerate the unavoidably alien, freakish qualities a less complex photographer would emphasize, but tries to find clues to what is familiar and human. Thus a picture of three Indian prostitutes solemnly, uncomfortably awaiting a man’s decision becomes a poignant, harsher version of young girls at a dance. Mark says that ”Falkland Road,” her 1981 book on the Bombay brothels ”was meant […]