BY LARA MICKLE In 2001 Selena Mooney quit her job as director of technology for Ticketmaster and moved back to Portland and ingratiated herself in the city’s thriving punk rock/stripper scene. She started with a handful of ladies and now has thousands globally. Inspired by Bunny Yeager — who famously photographed Bettie Page, the patron saint of the punk rock stripper scene — she began taking retro-style pin-up photos of her friends, most of them tattooed, pierced and dyed blue, green or purple. The SuicideGirl look is some ratioed combination of sultry, vintage and riot grrrl. It was the […]
BEWARE: Greta Thunberg Will Have Her Revenge
Brilliant.
BEING THERE: Brittany Howard @ The Fillmore
Photo by MATT SHAVER Wiping the sweat from her brow, Brittany Howard paused between songs Friday night at The Fillmore to wag her finger at the crowd with a warning: “Be careful now. Don’t fuck around and drive me up.” Fans swallowed her words in a roar of cheers that would do just that, after only two songs in a set that featured every track off of her just released solo full-length debut Jaime. Unable to speak over the unending applause, Howard gave up trying, blowing a kiss to the crowd with a mouthed “love you” before turning back to […]
BEING THERE: Dead Milkmen @ Laurel Hill
Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JONES The Dead Milkmen are the band that invariably comes to mind when we think of Philly punk rock. To me, their sound has always stood out against their contemporary punk rockers: no screaming, no harsh distortion or feedback – instead, punk attitude and punk rock song structures accented by surf and funk influence, with no shortage of comedy. Since their humble cassette beginnings in ’83 as a band of fictional characters in the minds of guitarist/vocalist Joe Genaro and his high school friends, Rodney Linderman (vocalist/keyboardist), and Garth (who joined the Air Force), to the full […]
CINEMA: Do The Hustle
HUSTLERS (Directed by Lorene Scafaria, 110 minutes, 2019, USA) BY SOPHIE BURKHOLDER Any movie that includes Jennifer Lopez pole-dancing to Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” is a must-see in my mind. In this early scene of Hustlers, Lopez, who plays Ramona, lands multiple splits on her way down from the pole, sweeping piles of cash in towards her as she says, “Doesn’t money make you horny?” Ramona, a notable dancer at the Manhattan club Moves, directs her question to fellow employee Dorothy (stage named Destiny), played by an endearing Constance Wu, who soon finds herself in a mother-daughter-like friendship with Ramona. […]
TELEVISION: Last Night On It’s Always Sunny
The gang is back! SPOILER ALERT: nothing’s changed. Season 14 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia kicked off with the same old lovable crew of shitheels and their same old shitheel antics. Would you have it any other way really? In last night’s season-opener, titled “The Gang Gets Romantic,” Dennis and Mac devised a plan to set up a “meet cute,” as Mac referred to it, to lure in women for Dennis’ usual suspect behavior; while Dee assisted in the shenanigans by playing the role of a seductress, but as per usual only succeeds in scaring away her prey. Charlie […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: In the new Ken Burns PBS series on the history of country music, my guest, Doug Green, talks about the era of the singing cowboy as epitomized by the most popular one, Gene Autry. Cowboy lore, folk ballads, jazz, Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood are all ingredients of the music of the singing cowboys who were movie staples in the ’30s and ’40s and then on TV in the ’50s. A lot of the music has been forgotten, but Green wrote about its history in his book, Singing In The Saddle. And he performs the music with […]
Win Tix To See Brittany Howard @ The Fillmore
Artwork by XZIRTAEBX Alabama Shakes was formed in 2009 in Athens, Alabama — by a postal worker, a nuclear plant night watchmen, an animal clinic worker and a house painter — as a viable alternative to watching the cars rust, which was the prevailing pastime in Athens at the time. Having weathered a dues-paying, teeth-cutting cover band purgatory of sports bars and country dives and all the mightier for it, the Shakes began building buzz when the breathless blogger hype proved not just believable but vastly understated. On 2012’s million-selling Boys And Girls, Alabama Shakes sounded like Exiles On Main […]
TIPPING POINT: Seven Freshmen Dem Reps With Impeccable National Security Credentials Call For Impeachment Inquiry in Washington Post Op-Ed
WASHINGTON POST: Our lives have been defined by national service. We are not career politicians. We are veterans of the military and of the nation’s defense and intelligence agencies. Our service is rooted in the defense of our country on the front lines of national security. We have devoted our lives to the service and security of our country, and throughout our careers, we have sworn oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States many times over. Now, we join as a unified group to uphold that oath as we enter uncharted waters and face unprecedented allegations against […]
BEING THERE: Pond @ Union Transfer
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER There’s something rather tempting about the grungy industrial basement design of Underground Arts, and Nick Allbrook clearly thought so too, as he swung from his legs on a ceiling pipe with a wild smile on his face in the middle of his set last night, before careening back down into his self-requested crowd surf. The lead singer of Australian psych-rock band Pond, Allbrook took the stage of the small venue with his four other bandmates last night, some of whom trade off between Tame Impala’s touring band. Equipped with multiple synthesizers, a few guitars, a sparkling […]
LIVE @ U.N.: Greta Thunberg Will Not Go Quietly
NPR: Greta Thunberg has a message for world leaders at the United Nations this week: “We’ll be watching you.” Speaking at the Climate Action Summit in New York, Thunberg added, “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean.” But instead, Thunberg, 16, is trying to convince politicians to take climate change seriously, and to do something to stop a global warming trend that will affect the world’s children more than it affects anyone who’s currently in power. In an impassioned speech, Thunberg told those who hold […]
BEING THERE: Iron & Wine + Calexico @ UT
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Sam Beam took his place Friday night on the Union Transfer stage by a bank of half a dozen acoustic guitars and a glass of red wine, the crew of Calexico supporting the flanks. The Tucson-based Tejano troubadours have been collaborating and co-touring with Beam — better known by nom de guerre Iron & Wine — on and off now for about 15 years.Trading vocal harmonies with Calexico’s Joey Burns, and alternating between the two songwriters’ compositions, Beam’s smoky mountain ballads in perfect complement with Burns’ brass-gilded southwestern score. The magnetic indie folk singer and his […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: Fables Of The Reconstruction
FRESH AIR: Some of today’s most divisive issues related to racial equality, voting rights and voter suppression, women’s rights, who gets to be a citizen, mass incarceration and what is the meaning of equal justice are issues you can’t fully understand without understanding the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. These are the amendments that were added to the Constitution after the Civil War in the era known as Reconstruction. The 13th ended slavery. The 14th made anyone born in the U.S. a citizen and said that the state can’t deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due […]