BY SOPHIE BURKHOLDER A Catholic-raised Pittsburgh girl, Amy Rigby fled her steel mill hometown for New York, then in its mid-70s punk prime to attend Parsons School of Design. Soon shrouding her eyes in black liner, she quickly became a fixture at CBGB and fell into a crowd of downtown punk scenesters. Her love of music grew into a passion for making her own, first with bands like Last Roundup and The Shams, and later on her own. Her first solo album, 1996’s Diary of a Mod Housewife, received widespread critical acclaim in the press a few short years […]
EXCLUSIVE: Nick Cave @ The Mann Presale Code
PRESALE Thursday, February 20 from 10am to 10pm EST PASSWORD = HOLLYWOOD PUBLIC ON SALE Friday, February 21 at 10am EST https://www1.ticketmaster.com/nick-cave-the-bad-seeds/event/02005838D413C1E9
NEIL NATHAN: Promised Land
Since his folky cover of ELO’s “Do Ya,” produced by Mike ‘Slo-Mo’ Brenner, which earned the praise of its legendary composer, Jeff Lynne, and was included on the Showtime hit “Californication” — the multi-faceted artist Neil Nathan (neilnathan.com) has made an art form of joyfully genre bending record making, jumping seamlessly between glam rock, garage, americana, power pop, alt country, and folk, while recording in Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Texas, and Brooklyn. But for the past three years, Neil’s been primarily holed up at Studio1935 in South Philadelphia, collaborating with Producer Mike ‘Slo-Mo’ Brenner and Engineer/Co-producer Pete Rydberg, on a barrage […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Here It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is now the richest man in the world, with an empire that stretches from Hollywood to Whole Foods — and even into outer space. The new PBS Frontline documentary, Amazon Empire: The Rise And Reign Of Jeff Bezos, investigates how Bezos transformed Amazon from an online bookseller into a trillion-dollar business that’s unprecedented in its size and reach. Director James Jacoby, who worked with fellow filmmaker Anya Bourg on the project, calls the company an “inescapable part of our modern lives.” “It’s not just how the majority of Americans are shopping online,” he […]
THEATER REVIEW: Queen Lear In Bristol
BY JON HOULON THEATER CRITIC I used to beat myself up over not being able to recall much of what I read. For instance, the only thing I remembered from the 400 plus pages of Kerouac’s rather spotty Desolation Angels was the word “passersby.” At least I got a song out of it — and that’s a fact, Jack! But then I read U and I by the great Nicholson Baker where he admits to only retaining a tiny bit of his literary hero John Updike’s canon. I figured if Baker could only summon up a phrase or two […]
How Bloomberg Ate Biden’s Lunch In Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: As you may have noticed if you’ve been near a TV recently and it was turned on and dialed in to pretty much any channel, ever since Mike Bloomberg formally announced his intentions back in November to throw his hat into the Dem presidential ring, he’s been aggressively prosecuting a coast to coast air campaign, carpet bombing swing states and inflection points all along the primary map with a vast arsenal of pithy, pointed anti-Trump television spots that run with the kind of ubiquity and perpetuity that you’d have to be a billionaire many times over to […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: “The Trump campaign is planning to spend more than $1 billion, and it will be aided by a vast coalition of partisan media, outside political groups and freelance operatives who are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage leaves behind could be irreparable.” That’s what my guest, McKay Coppins, writes in the new issue of the Atlantic in his article “The 2020 Disinformation War: Deepfakes, Anonymous Text Messages, Potemkin Local-News Sites, And Opposition Research On Reporters – A Field […]
CINEMA: Poster For New Wes Anderson Flick Drops
INDIE WIRE: The first look at Wes Anderson’s upcoming feature film The French Dispatch (in theaters July 24th) has arrived courtesy of The New Yorker, which has debuted a handful of photos from the project with captions that introduce the star-studded ensemble cast. […] For The French Dispatch, Anderson has reunited with the likes of Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Tilda Swinton, Lea Seydoux and Owen Wilson, while welcoming Timothee Chalamet, Elisabeth Moss, and Benicio del Toro into his world for the first time. Searchlight’s official synopsis for “The French Dispatch” reads: “The film is a love letter to […]
FROM THE VAULT: Bring The Noise
Artwork by DAUBER EDITOR’S NOTE: The following originally published in the Philadelphia Weekly back in 2006. We are reprising it here today in response to the news of Rage Against The Machine reuniting for a world tour. DISCUSSED: IRISH GIRLFRIENDS; THE IRA; RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE; MUMIA; PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN; THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF DEMOCRACY BY JONATHAN VALANIA Five years and three girlfriends ago, Rage Against the Machine was on the FOP shitlist for staging a Free Mumia concert at the Meadowlands. Mumia, as you may have heard, was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. None […]
How I Learned To Stop Hating On Taylor Swift
BY RACHEL TESON I’ve never been a big fan of Taylor Swift. Sure, I grew up singing “Teardrops On My Guitar” and “Should’ve Said No” among her other early country songs. As I got older, and became more familiar with social media, I began to actively dislike the star, but if you had asked me, I would not have been able to give you a reason why. After watching her documentary Miss Americana, now streaming on Netflix, I discovered what that reason was — the Celebrity Industrial Complex. I thought that T.S. wrote the same generic love songs because she […]
GEEK SQUAD: Let Us Prey
BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is just as fun as that title. And honesty, that is all the film needed to be. The last time we saw Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad (2016) proved how hard it can be to make a fun film. The similarities between these films go beyond the sexy killer clown. Both films star large superhero teams in content meant for an older audience. But Birds of Prey actually gives a damn about being a solid film. Beyond Joker’s ex girlfriend […]
BOB MARLEY: Redemption Song
ROLLING STONE: The Marley family, Universal Music and Island Records have teamed up to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Bob Marley & the Wailers’ “Redemption Song” with an inspirational video. Created by French artists Octave Marsal and Theo De Gueltzl, the clip features nearly 3,000 original drawings that represent the song’s message of emancipation. Jamaican imagery fills the screen as a powerful lion wears a crown, eventually growing wings and flying away from a kingdom. Marley can be seen strumming an acoustic guitar filled with flowers. MORE
BEING THERE: Kiss @ The PP&L Center
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Could have been the fact that I was recently promoted to Theater Critic at Phawker and have a background in Kabuki. Or the fact that both my wife (who, concerned for my personal safety in Trump territory, forbade me from donning my Lizzie Warren kit) and my editor (who blew out of there like some sort of psyclone ranger during the Reagan era) are from Allentown and this, therefore, would practically be a family affair. Or maybe it was just my desire for an alternate State of the Union. No matter. On Tuesday night I laid […]