Despite the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, speaking unvarnished truth about the shadowy corporate-funded shell game known as American democracy is simply not permitted on corporate-controlled broadcast media, unless your name is Jon Stewart — and even he avoids certain third rails that jump-start the dark heart of the corporate/military/police/prison industrial complex like a pacemaker of doom. There is just one other comedian/commenter who is allowed to speak truth to America’s face, John Oliver — and that’s only because he’s British, which protects him from Fox News-derived allegations of heresy in much the same way the court jester’s […]
CINEMA: Meet Messenger Of God‘s ‘Guru In Bling’
VICE: On Tuesday, Pahlaj Nihalani was appointed India’s Censor Board chief after his predecessor, Leela Samson resigned, citing “interference, coercion, and corruption.” The cause: The Film Certification Appellate Tribunal had overruled her decision to keep the movie MSG: The Messenger of God, out of theaters. MSG: The Messenger of God is a terrible name for a movie that isn’t about Moses delivering cheap Chinese food (producers, call me), but the actual issue is that the goofball protagonist of the film is a thinly veiled stand-in for the actor playing him. That actor is the so-called “Guru in Bling,” or Gurmeet […]
THE SONICS: Black Betty
Never thought we’d be typing these words but Pacific Northwest proto-garage-punk avatars The Sonics have a NEW album coming out March 31st and they will be playing the TLA on April 12th! To wit: Recorded in “earth-shaking mono” by noted producer Jim Diamond of Ghetto Recorders at Soundhouse Studios in Seattle, “This Is The Sonics” (release date: March 31, 2015) reunites original members Jerry Roslie on keyboards and vocals, Larry Parypa on guitar and vocals and Rob Lind on sax, harmonica and vocals. They are backed by a powerhouse rhythm section, bassist Freddie Dennis (the Kingsmen, the Liverpool Five) and […]
ARTY: Look On My Works Ye Mighty, And Despair!
Cartoon by ELI VALLEY via NEW REPUBLIC
ANGELS OF MONTGOMERY: Ghosts Of The Dream
NEW YORKER: Barry Blitt drew this week’s cover, inspired by the photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that are everywhere again. “It struck me that King’s vision was both the empowerment of African-Americans, the insistence on civil rights, but also the reconciliation of people who seemed so hard to reconcile,” he said. “In New York and elsewhere, the tension between the police and the policed is at the center of things. Like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, Martin Luther King was taken way too early. It is hard to believe things would […]
LORD OF THE TRASH: Kim Fowley, Legendary Producer/Proto-Hipster Creep, Dead At 75
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Kim Fowley came out of a Hollywood that doesn’t exist anymore, the Hollywood of Kenneth Anger and Ed Wood. Best known for cooking up the Runaways, he began to work in the music business in the late 1950s and since then has turned up in more places than Woody Allen’s Zelig, producing for Gene Vincent, writing with Warren Zevon and introducing John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band when they performed in Toronto in 1969. MORE WASHINGTON POST: The broad strokes of the relationship between producer-manager Kim Fowley and former Runaways frontwoman Cherie Currie are the […]
BEING THERE: CRUISR @ The Barbary
Photo by DYLAN LONG Last night, fresh off of their incredibly successful support slot for The 1975’s North American tour, hometown hero indie-popsters CRUISR rocked a sold-out throwdown at The Barbary along with the likes of Cold Fronts & Needle Points. The Barbary is a small joint with a big sound system, and the openers wasted no time setting an upbeat vibe for the night with loud melodies and catchy breakdowns. CRUISR took the stage at 9pm and took their sweet time working through a setlist that hovered around a mere eight or nine songs. Lush guitar riffs swept over […]
THE MODERN LOVERS: She Cracked
1972 demo produced by Kim Fowley.
IN MEMORIAM: Novelist Kent Haruf 1943-2014
BY MIKE WALSH I spent a few years living in a small town in the northeastern plains of Colorado. That is also the same area where Kent Haruf set all of his novels, so I’ve felt an affinity with the man and his work. His novels remind me of that time in my life, those places, and the people who live in that area of the country. I’m also a fan of Haruf because his novels are just plain great. Haruf died on November 30 of liver disease. He was 71. All of Haruf’s novels are set in the fictional […]
HALLELUJAH: 86 Years Ago Today A King Was Born
TIME: From his earliest memory Martin King has had a strong aversion to violence in all its forms. The school bully walloped him; Martin did not fight back. His younger brother flailed away at him; Martin stood and took it. A white woman in a store slapped him, crying, “You’re the [n—-r] who stepped on my foot.” Martin said nothing. Cowardice? If so, it would come as a surprise to Montgomery, where Martin Luther King has unflinchingly faced the possibility of violent death for months. The shabby, overcrowded Negro schools in Atlanta were no match for the keen, probing […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Comedy Central’s television show Broad City has been compared to Girls and Sex and the City, but when co-creators, co-writers and co-stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer were creating the web series that ended up being a prototype of their TV show, they were actually channeling Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. “We didn’t realize it was going to be character development for a TV show later,” Glazer tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “I think we looked to Larry David more than anybody else.” Broad City is about two single 20-somethings, also named Abbi and Ilana, who live […]
REALITY SHOW: If Comcast Was Your Boyfriend
INDEPENDENT JOURNAL REVIEW: Back in October, we reported on Comcast once again making the number one spot on Consumerists.com’s list of the worst companies in America, taking out Sea World, Walmart and Monsato in the “final four.” Some key issues with the company are highlighted in the video: MORE PHAWKER: If Comcast is your boyfriend, believe me, you have a lot bigger problems than him not showing up on time. Wait until he starts slapping you around with completely arbitrary fees, like charging you $6 for the pleasure of paying your bill over the phone with an actual Comcast […]
Last Year The PPA Collected $233 Million In Parking Fees & Fines, Just $9 Million Of It Went To Schools
REDDIT: In 2014, the PPA brought in a combined revenue of $233,708,372 from its On-Street & Off-Street parking operations. $121,531,303 was from On-Street parking enforcement (ticketing) alone. While, you’d think that numbers like this would be a boon for the city. After constant wasteful spending, hyper-inflated salaries/pensions, and uncontrolled budgets – the city only actually receives a small portion of this. At the end of the fiscal year, only $46.5 million of their $233 million in revenue ended up going to the the City general fund & the School district. A measly $9.7 million of this was reserved for […]