PHAWKER.COM – Curated News, Gossip, Concert Reviews, Fearless Political Commentary, Interviews….Plus, the Usual Sex, Drugs and Rock n' Roll

32nd & Baring, earlier today, by DAVE BROWN *** OASIS: Cigarettes & Alcohol This is when they took a brief break from cranking out uber-catchy Beatles forgeries and had a go at ol’ T. Rex. Still, makes me want to smoke and drink and f*ck shit up, which is, of course, the highest compliment you can pay a rock song.

  NEW YORK TIMES: Around the south and east of Ukraine, in vital cities in the country’s industrial heartland, ethnic Russians have staged demonstrations and stormed buildings demanding a wider invasion of their country by Moscow. But some of the people here calling for Russian intervention are themselves Russian — “protest tourists” from across the border. They have included passport-carrying Russians, like Aleksey Khudyakov, a pro-Kremlin Muscovite who said he traveled here “to watch and maybe to give some advice.” In Kharkiv, another Russian scaled a government building to dramatically plant his country’s flag — offering at least the image […]

  All that Jay Laughlin (Turning Point, Godspeed, 1200, Lenola, Grand Fabric, Like A Fox and now JJL) now has to show for 20-plus years of writing, recording and performing music. RELATED: Early morning on February 22nd, our studio/practice space of the last 12 years or more burned to the ground and nothing was salvaged. We lost everything we’ve all worked on for our whole musical careers. We’ve all been playing music since we were kids with multiple bands along the way (Turning Point, Godspeed, 1200, Lenola, Grand Fabric, Like A Fox and now JJL). The list of gear that […]

Illustration by MULTIMAGE Today, the legendary Roots crew announced their annual ROOTS PICNIC is returning to Philadelphia’s Festival Pier at Penn’s Landing on Saturday, May 31st. The festival is celebrating its seventh year with an eclectic lineup over two stages that Roots Picnic fans have come to expect – boasting performances by: Janelle Monáe, Action Bronson, araabMUZIK, The War On Drugs and a show-stopping set with Snoop Dogg backed by The Roots. Named one of the greatest live bands around by Rolling Stone Magazine, the legendary Roots Crew have become one of the best known and most respected hip-hop acts […]

Photo via FREAKINGNEWS THE GUARDIAN: After several days of Russian stealth, the move to deploy forces came suddenly and decisively. The Kremlin said Putin wanted troops in Ukraine “until the sociopolitical situation is normalised”. Less than an hour later, in a hastily convened extraordinary sitting of Russia’s Federation Council that was laced with cold war rhetoric, senators voted unanimously to support Putin’s plan, and proposed withdrawing Russia’s ambassador to the US. MORE BBC: The lightness, the hint of a Kiev spring, the sudden smiles of a week before were already waning. Now the mood is much darker; there is defiance […]

  KIYIVPOST: Early on Feb. 23, a handful of journalists and activists hastily picked up soggy folders stuffed full of documents that contained some of the most guarded secrets in Ukraine during Viktor Yanukovych’s rule as president since 2010. They had been fished out from the Kyiv reservoir leading to the Dnipro River. Under protection from guards of the EuroMaidan revolution, who now control Yanukovych’s 140-hectare luxury compound 20 kilometers north of Kyiv, the journalists gathered the documents and created the online database yanukovychleaks.org. The documents were found in Mezhyhirya, the former president’s now-nationalized multimillion-dollar estate, which had been guarded […]

  “My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends […]