Ryan Bingham wrote “The Weary Kind,” the Academy Award-winning theme to Boozy Crazy Heart, starring Jeff ‘The Dude’ Bridges. He has a rowdy new album, his third for Lost Highway, called Tomorrowland, produced by the unsinkable T-Bone Burnett, who partnered with him on the Crazy Heart soundtrack. He’s a little bit like Townes Van Zandt without all the drugs and insanity. Oh, he’s also, like, really handsome, too, if you are into that kind of thing. Bingham’s tour in support of Tomorrowland stops at Union Transfer on Friday. We have a pair of tickets (a $50 value!) to give […]
Antonin Scalia Gets Philly Welcome From PPA
Artwork by DONKEYHOTEY CONSTITUTION DAILY: The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land, but no justice, even Antonin Scalia, is apparently safe on the streets of Philadelphia when it comes to its Parking Authority. [Yesterday] Scalia was in Philadelphia at the Union League of Philadelphia, the private club best known outside the city for its role in the Eddie Murphy film Trading Places. Scalia’s car was ticketed despite the presence of a Philadelphia official police business placard on its dashboard. MORE RELATED: The Supreme Court is siding with Democrats in refusing to block early voting in the battleground […]
THE $32 TRILLION DOLLAR MAN: Do The Math, Mitt Romney Will Double The Deficit In 10 Years
BY MIKE WALSH You think the deficit is high now. Wait until Mitt Romney gets elected. $16 trillion in new debt is nothing for a man of Mitt Romney’s skills. He claims that Obama doubled the national debt. This is “factually inaccurate” or what I like to call “fucken’ bullshit.” When Obama took office, the national debt was about $10 trillion. It is now a little over $16 trillion. Now $6 trillion in debt is nothing to be proud of, but it is not double $10 trillion. That would be $20 trillion, Mitt. You’re only $4 trillion off. But it’s […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Calexico @ Union Transfer
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER If Calexico were a movie instead of a band, it would be Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil – a taut, arty thriller set in a Southwestern border town, full of long shadows and obtuse angles, where evil wears a badge, good men die like dogs, and everyone gets what’s coming to him or her in the end. For going on 16 years, Calexico has been trafficking a brand of indie rock aptly described as desert noir – a distinctive blend of spicy mariachi flourishes, campfire cowboy folk, midcentury modern jazz, and panoramic […]
IGGLES REPORT: The Twilight’s Last Gleaming
BY JOE PAONE IGGLES CORRESPONDENT The fans, flat all day, sullenly filed out of the Linc more or less in silence. Few could muster the legendary anger to, as we often do, bitch and moan LOUDLY about the pitiful state of affairs. Sunday’s atrocity against the Detroit Lions was, in terms of the tenor of the crowd, much like the Eagles’ last game at the Vet, when Ronde Barber ripped our hearts out and stole a Super Bowl appearance we believed was rightfully ours. Much as after that game, you could hear a pin drop on the way to […]
THE XX: Chained
Simple but elegant, like their music. They play a way sold-out show at the Electric Factory October 29th. But stay tuned if you are dying to go but didn’t buy tix in time.
DOPE: The Hustlers That Came In Out Of The Cold
BY JEFF DEENEY “Hustlers Anonymous is a fellowship of members whose lives have become unmanageable due to the choices they have made. The only requirement for membership is the desire for a better life and a willingness to take certain suggestions. Many of us have experienced negative consequences as a result of our hustler lifestyle: incarceration, broken families, police harassment, and near death experiences. Due to the lure of the streets we have time and again chosen the seemingly easy way out over our mothers, children and our own personal freedom. If you are tired of handing over control […]
HOT DOC: ‘Like A Prince From Another Planet’
EDITOR’S NOTE: In June 1972, Elvis-mania took over the Big Apple when the King sold out a four-night run at Madison Square Gardens that would prove to be his first and final performances in New York city. A rave New York Times review, excerpted below, said he played “like a prince from another planet” (you can read it in full HERE). The headline of that Times concert review is now the title of a new box set out 11/13 on Sony, featuring 2 CDs and a DVD of never-before-seen concert footage captured by a fan’s camera. You can see […]
WORTH REPEATING: Bozo Goes To Benghazi
Artwork via GOP CLOWN COLLEGE NEW YORK TIMES: The ugly truth is that the same people who are accusing the administration of not providing sufficient security for the American consulate in Benghazi have voted to cut the State Department budget, which includes financing for diplomatic security. The most self-righteous critics don’t seem to get the hypocrisy, or maybe they do and figure that if they hurl enough doubts and complaints at the administration, they will deflect attention from their own poor judgments on the State Department’s needs. At a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last […]
INCREDIBLE: Man Plunges 23 Miles To Earth From The Edge Of Space, On Purpose, And Lives To Tell
ABC NEWS: Daredevil Felix Baumgartner shattered the speed of sound and broke three records today after he took a leap from 24 miles above the Earth on the edge of space. At one point during his freefall, the 43-year-old Austrian was traveling at 833 mph or Mach 1.24, a feat that normally could only be accomplished by a supersonic jet, or perhaps the space shuttle. Aside from being the only man to achieve a supersonic skydive, the extreme athlete also broke two other records, including the highest exit from a platform at 128,000 feet and the highest free-fall without a […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Swans @ Union Transfer
Photo by PETE TROSHAK In Paradise Lost Milton wrote “Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.” If good ol’ Uncle Milty were alive today, he undoubtedly would’ve been rocking a Swans T-shirt at the Union Transfer on Saturday night. Playing to a packed house of believers who hung on every note, Swans shepherded a fearless crowd through a nearly two and a half hour journey up from the underworld and into the light – only their version of paradise isn’t scored with the gentle sound of harps and the flutter of angel wings, […]
RIP: Arlen Specter Has Left The Building
NEW YORK TIMES: Arlen Specter, the irascible senator from Pennsylvania who was at the center of many of the Senate’s most divisive legal battles — from the Supreme Court nominations of Robert H. Bork and Clarence Thomas to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton — only to lose his seat in 2010 after quitting the Republican Party to become a Democrat, died Sunday morning at his home in Philadelphia. He was 82. The cause was complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his son Shanin said. Mr. Specter had previously fought Hodgkin’s disease, and had survived both a brain tumor and heart […]
EARLY WORD: This Awful Bliss
Swans have always straddled the chasm between the immanent and the transcendent. Love, life, sex, death, and decay are inevitably very physical realities, but their thematic representation in the Swans’ oevure invariably evokes the otherworldly. The sonic delivery vehicle for these invocations is a relentless, elemental repetition evoking an expansive state of being. Swans prime mover Michael Gira is a fiercely uncompromising artist whose vocal delivery unleashes a bestial but yearning soul howling fearlessly into the void. In contrast to the exultant hymns of Gira’s previous work, the brand new and highly acclaimed The Seer plumbs mournful depths, evolving […]