KEY OF Z: The Langley Schools Music Project is a 60-voice chorus of rural school children from western Canada, untrained but captivated by melodic magic, singing tunes by the Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, The Bay City Rollers, and others. The students accompany themselves with the shimmering gamelan chimes of Orff percussion, and elemental rock trimmings arranged by their itinerant music teacher, Hans.Fenger. These 1976-77 recordings, captured on a 2-track tape deck in a school gymnasium, weren’t staged to achieve money or fame, to sell albums or land a record contract. These kids played music because they loved it. […]
WORTH REPEATING: On The Surveillance State
Artwork by SHEPARD FAIREY “‘Objectivity’ in media culture means, essentially, reporting accurately what’s happening “within the beltway” – that is, within the bounds of the state-corporate system of approved thought and perspectives. Challenging conventional doctrine and permissible evidence is dismissed as “biased,” “emotional,” or some other term of abuse. The cases you mention illustrate that. It’s possible to go beyond these bounds, for example, by investigating and reporting how power systems quite generally seek to use available technology to control and subdue the populations within their reach. Elsewhere I’ve brought up in this connection historian Alfred McCoy’s study of the […]
CINEMA: Gimme Shelter
20 FEET FROM STARDOM (2013, directed by Morgan Neville, 90 minutes, U.S.) WORLD WAR Z (2013, directed by Marc Forster, 116 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The world of classic rock was pretty much a guy’s show, with Janis Joplin and and Grace Slick being among the few women of the their era to grab rock’s glory. That’s the popular wisdom anyway but 20 Feet From Stardom may change your perspective on the era by spotlighting the achievements of the women, and mostly black women, who delivered the high points to classic recordings by The Rolling Stones, […]
A GOOD CAUSE: JD McPherson & Pokey LaFarge Team Up For Oklahoma Tornado Relief Fund
Oklahoma native JD McPherson and fellow American music torchbearer Pokey LaFarge have teamed up to record Bob Wills’ classic “Good Old Oklahoma,” which will be released digitally today. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of the single will be donated to Oklahoma City Community Fund’s Tornado Relief endowment. McPherson says, “This charity does the best work possible by contributing to dozens of local Oklahoma charities directly related to tornado damage relief: rebuilding, clean up, food and water disbursement, pet recovery… you name it. This fund applies to possible future tornadoes, as well as what we’re dealing with now.” […]
Activist Arrested For Writing A Protest Message IN CHALK On The Sidewalk Outside PA Guv’s Mansion
HUFFINGTON POST: A few days after a judge ruled that a San Diego, Calif. man must stand trial on 13 counts of vandalism over anti-big bank messages written in water-soluble chalk outside Bank of America branches — which together carry a maximum of 13 years in jail or a $13,000 fine — comes this story out of Pennsylvania. Corbett announced in February that he wouldn’t support expanding Medicaid rolls to at least 500,000 Pennsylvanians under President Barack Obama’s health care law. Democrats have been seeking to find a path forward, however, with lawmakers in the state Senate currently working […]
THE PIXIES: Bagboy
First proper new Pixies song since the breakup back in ’93 (the 2004 Zevon cover and the instrumental “Boom Thwack” don’t quite count). Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis) has not lost his capacity to be off-puttingly weird and stingy with the fuzzy pop hooks that offset the horror, the horror and made them irresistible back in the day. The fact that Kim Deal almost saves this song with her trademark angel-of-death vocal on the chorus only makes her recent departure all the more regrettable. Right at the 4:30 mark it sounds for a second or two like the Pixies are […]
HOT DOC: David Chase’s Eulogy
Dear Jimmy, You family asked me to speak at your service and I am so honored and touched. I’m also really scared and I say that because you of all people understand this, “I would like to run away and then call in four days from now from the beauty parlor. I want to do a good job because I love you and because you always did a good job. I think the deal is I’m supposed to speak about the actor artists work part of your life. Others will have spoken beautifully and magnificently about the other beautiful […]
SIDEWALKING: The Sixth Borough Strikes Back!
Penn Station, NYC, sometime this week, photographer unknown UPDATE: Dear $9 cocktail, up here we call you more than a half-case of Yuengling. With love, Schuylkill County.
WANTED: The SEPTA Bus Beatdown Triplets
Do you recognize these strapping young go-getters? If so please call Philadelphia Police Department Northwest Detectives Division at 215-686-3353. Or make an anonymous tip at Phillypolice.com.
BREAKING: Philadelphia Under Tornado Watch
READYNOTIFYPA: Tornado Watch until 10:00PM. Conditions favorable for severe thunderstorms with possible tornadoes. This watch means that conditions are favorable for the development of severe thunderstorms with possible tornadoes. Hail and strong winds are also possible. Persons in the watch area should be on the lookout for threatening weather conditions and listen for later statements and possible warnings. For additional updates and weather information, visit www.weather.gov/phi
THE GOLDBERG SISTERS: Stranger’s Morning
The Goldberg in question is actor Adam Goldberg (Saving Private Ryan, Dazed & Confused, Christmas On Mars). As for the Sisters part, not even sure if he has siblings, in any case none were involved with the making of this as Goldberg reportedly played every instrument in addition to doing all the vocals. Be that as it may this is a pretty mesmerizing video for the title track that Golberg patched together from Vine, which he has apparently been coronated king of. So now you know.
TECH: The Banality Of ‘Don’t Be Evil’
TRUTH OUT: Google, the company with the motto “Don’t be evil,” is rapidly becoming an empire. Not an empire of territory, as was Rome or the Soviet Union, but an empire controlling our access to data and our data itself. Antitrust lawsuits proliferating around the company demonstrate its quest for monopoly control over information in the information age. Its search engine has become indispensable for most of us, and as Google critic and media professor Siva Vaidhyanathan puts it in his 2012 book The Googlization of Everything, “[W]e now allow Google to determine what is important, relevant, and true on […]
SIDEWALKING: The Right To Bear Harms
East Tioga Street near Emerald Streets 7:27 p.m. Monday by JOE KACZMAREK GUN CRISIS REPORTING PROJECT: One man compresses a chest wound while another uses his belt as a tourniquet and a city medic holds a head wound after a 25-year-old man was shot seven times Monday evening in the Harrowgate section of Philadelphia. Police were responding to a report of gunshots on East Tioga Street near Emerald Streets shortly before 7:30 p.m. Monday and found the wounded man nearby on Helen Street. Medics rushed the victim to Temple University Hospital, where he was reported in critical but stable […]