If you missed last week’s Q&A with Alex Chilton biographer Holly George-Warren, author of A MAN CALLED DESTRUCTION: The Life And Music Of Alex Chilton From Box Top To Big Star To Backdoor Man, check it out HERE.
SIGUR ROS: The Rains Of Castamere
Sigure Ros’ contribution to the Season Four Game Of Thrones soundtrack. They also make make a cameo this season. Somehow that makes perfect sense. Either way, this is one of Jonsi’s most beautiful vocals, which is really saying something if you’ve been paying attention. PREVIOUSLY: Live From Hopelandia
CINEMA: Taste The Whip, In Love Not Given Lightly
THE RAID 2 (2014, directed by Gareth Evans, 150 min., Indonesia) NYMPHOMANIAC: VOLUME 2 (2013, directed by Lars Van Trier, 123 min., Denmark) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Director Gareth Evans’ 2012 film Raid: The Redemption was the freshest slab of action cinema to bloody-up the screen since the early ’90s heyday of John Woo. The film followed Rama (self-contained martial artist Iko Uwais) as a member of a SWAT team climbing the stairs of a high rise housing project in Jakarta to arrest the drug lord who living in the top floor suite. The team soon finds out […]
Half Of NJ Voters Favor Legalization Of Recreational Marijuana Use; Half Admit To Getting Stoned
STAR-LEDGER: A poll released today shows New Jersey voters are evenly divided in their support for legalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use — although the results show wide gaps among different sexes, age groups, and political affiliations. The Quinnipiac University survey found that 48 percent of registered voters backed the idea, while the same number were opposed.But gaps emerged when the groups were broken down: • Men back legalization 54 percent to 43 percent, while women are opposed 52 percent to 43 percent. • Voters 18 to 29 support legalization 56 percent to 43 percent, […]
When Bill Hader Does Star Wars It Stays Done
About to get on the horn with good ‘ol Bill to talk about Fred Armisen — still can’t talk about that, quit asking — and came across this and decided it’s just too effing funny not to share with you good people.
WORTH REPEATING: Idiocalypse Now
NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to him. No more. Now such people are courted and flattered by conservative politicians and ideologues as “Real Americans” defending their country against big government and educated liberal elites. The press interviews them and reports their opinions seriously without pointing out the imbecility of what they believe. The hucksters, who manipulate them for the powerful financial interests, know that they can be made to believe anything, because, to the ignorant and the bigoted, lies always sound better than truth: […]
HOLLY GOLIGHTLY: Devil Do
Holly Golightly and The Brokeoffs play The Fire on Tuesday April 15th, in support of their new album, All Her Fault.
Nikki Allen Poe Kicks Off His Pro-Pot/Anti-PPA City Council Candidacy With Presser At The Rocky Statue
Photo by LAUREN M. WAKSMAN Comedian/marijuana activist Nikki Allen Poe announced his candidacy yesterday for the at-large seat on Philadelphia City Council during a press conference in front of the Rocky statue at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Given that Poe is running as an alternative to the corrupt Democratic party machine politics that have maintained a chokehold on city politics for far too long, Phawker is full on endorsing this dude. The event wasn’t very formal (the candidate was surrounded by supporters dressed up in cannabis-themed outfits), however after a few minutes of hearing the guy speak, it was […]
CHILDREN BY THE MILLION: Talking Alex Chilton Blues With Rock Biographer Holly George-Warren
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Alex Chilton remains a forbidding totem of American music with a formidable pedigree: white soul prodigy, progenitor of power-pop purity, pill-addled punk, swampy garage blooze and, in the final decades of his life, indie’s aging princeling of noble white failure. He was a musician’s musician, and each entry on his resume has spun off countless imitators and innovators. Forever to be known as the guiding light in Big Star’s twinkling constellation of pure pop, Alex Chilton would probably have it any other way. Even during the reunion/reactivation of Big Star in the last two decades of […]
JIMMY FALLON & ANNE HATHAWAY: Perform Broadway Versions Of West Coast Gangsta Rap
Basically what this means is everyone who has ever talked shit about Anne Hathaway on Twitter needs to sit down and shut the fuck up. NEXT!
INCOMING: A Man Called Destruction
Putting the finishing touches on an in-depth Q&A with veteran music writer/friend of Phawker Holly George-Warren’s just-published Alex Chilton biography A MAN CALLED DESTRUCTION. If you don’t know from Alex Chilton, dig in below. Otherwise look for it tomorrow on a Phawker near you! ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: It has been said that the genre of power pop -– frail, white man-boys with cherry guitars reinvigorating the harmonic convergence of the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Byrds with the caffeinated rush of youth –- is the revenge of the nerds. Big Star pretty much invented the form, which explains […]
ENDORSEMENT: Nikki Allen Poe For City Council
Look for more on this guy in the coming days and weeks, including coverage of his press conference tomorrow at the Rocky statue announcing his candidacy for the at large seat on City Council, a proper Q&A and a formal endorsement. In the mean time, watch this. The choice couldn’t be any clearer. A beard change is gonna come.