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

[Illustration by ALEX FINE] A man who needs no last name, Willie is to Country what Neil is to rock: the Buddha, bestowing laid-back grace on all those who bask in his benevolent THC-tinged glow. Born April 30, 1933, in Abbott, Texas, Nelson begins writing songs at age seven. After serving briefly in the Air Force during the Korean War and studying agriculture at Baylor University, Nelson moves through a series of luckless, low-paying career changes–disc jockey; door-to-door vacuum and encyclopedia salesman. By 1958, in dire financial straits and married with children, Nelson is forced to sell his songs for […]

The debut full-length by Taiwanese-born Canadian lo-fi minimalist/one man band Alex Zhang Hungtai, slightly better known by his stage name Dirty Beaches, sounds like a speakers-blown transistor radio tuned to The Geator stuffed into the back pocket of some poor fucker whacked-and-hacked by Joe Pesci, tossed overboard and currently resting in pieces at the bottom of the sea. No wait, it sounds like prom night 1958 on angel dust right before the flying saucers land and worlds collide. Scratch that. It sounds like there’s a David Lynch movie in my pants and everyone’s invited. No, no, no. WTF does that […]

  DAILY NEWS: At deposition, Paige insisted he invited Harris into his car only to “mentor” a troubled young man. He denied that any sex, consensual or otherwise, took place. Instead, the married officer offered an unusual defense that another judge, rejecting Paige’s plea for summary judgment in Harris’ civil-rights complaint, called outrageous: Paige claimed that he frequently had consensual sex with women in the secluded spot and that Harris somehow found the spot, fished one of Paige’s used condoms from the snow and dumped its contents, along with Harris’ spit, into the Styrofoam cup detectives later had tested for […]

  WASHINGTON POST: Hundreds of Occupy protesters marched, chanted and scuffled with law enforcement officers in New York, San Francisco and cities around the world as part of a May Day “general strike” for economic equality Tuesday. May Day protests were underway in more than 125 cities in U.S., Europe and Australia on the spring day labor unions have typically celebrated as International Workers Day. This year, the Occupy Wall Street movement called for May 1 to be “A Day Without the 99 Percent” and urged students to skip school and employees not to go to work to show their […]

  NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE will release a very special album titled AMERICANA on June 5, 2012. AMERICANA is the first album from Neil Young & Crazy Horsein nearly nine years. Crazy Horse is: Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina, Poncho Sampedro, and Neil Young. As you’ll see from the track-listing, AMERICANA is collection of classic, American folk songs. In their day, some of these may have been referred to as “protest songs,” “murder ballads,” or campfire-type songs passed down with universal, relatable tales for everyman. Some of these compositions which, like “Tom Dooley” and “Oh Susannah,” were written in the […]

“Mr. QUINTRON is a very eccentric concert and nightclub organist from New Orleans, Louisiana. He plays music on a custom made Hammond / Rhodes combo synthesizer / organ (which he’s got all built up to look like a car with real working headlights) backed by raw simple drum machine beats (think 808 boom chika boom through one BIG speaker with all the treble turned down) and his own patented invention THE DRUM BUDDY – a rotating, light-activated analog synthesizer which is played much in the same way that a DJ spins and scratches records. Of course lets not forget about […]

FRESH AIR When Sissy Spacek started her film career, she was told to lose her heavy Texas accent. But her famous drawl became one of her greatest assets when Terrence Malick cast her in his 1973 crime drama Badlands.Spacek played Holly, a teenage girl from South Dakota who became an accomplice on a cross-country murder spree. The film, which also starred Martin Sheen, was narrated in Spacek’s distinctive Southern voice.How she got the role remains up for debate. Spacek says that Malick remembers auditioning one of Spacek’s friends, only to become charmed by Spacek herself after she interrupted their meeting. […]

DAILY NEWS: If the city’s property-tax valuation overhaul happens, Candace DiCarlo already has a real-estate agent lined up to sell her South Philadelphia home. “It’s going to drive people out. They’re going to ask me now to pay $5,500 a year [in property tax],” said DiCarlo, 59, a self-employed artist who lives on Broad Street near Washington Avenue. “I feel like I love the city and it doesn’t love me back.” Community groups have warned that many homeowners could wind up with rude sticker shock when the Nutter administration moves to a tax system that relies on the market values […]