[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 […]
TONITE: Let The Buyer Be Weird
tUnE yArDs, AKA Merrill Garbus, plays Johnny Brendas tonight. And yeah, that random capitalization thing is fucking annoying, and so too is the music sometimes, but Garbus is easily one of the most original thing going these days. She makes Lady Gaga’s music sound like the third rate house music it is — and if it weren’t for her outrageous outfits and even more outrageous videos, would anyone give a shit? The short answer is no, the long answer is check out tUnE yArDs.
PAPERBOY: This Is The End
BY DAVE ALLEN So, this is going to be the last Paperboy, at least the last one with my byline on it. This one will do what all the others do—warn you off the ink-wasters and steer you towards the gooey center, as always—while taking a look back at what some of what I’ve observed in nearly three years (yikes) of perusing the alt-weeklies. Here goes. ON THE COVER CP: I first read one of A.D. Amorosi’s covers long before I started writing Paperboy—even before I moved to Philly. I believe it was his John Legend cover in advance of […]
TONITE: The Odd Future Of Tyler The Creator
BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD While Bill O’Reilly and the Unfair & Biased clan are busy tarring and feathering Common, I’ve got a nagging feeling that somebody somewhere didn’t do their homework. Obama invited Common Sense to the White House last week and George H. W. Bush invited Eazy-E to the White House in 1991— but when it comes to thuggishness, real or manufactured, neither Common (Oh puh-leaze! The guy is like the Sesame Street of rap, and I mean that in a good way) or that dyed in the wool Republican Eazy-E hold a torch to the sheer pathology of Tyler, […]
INFO GRAPHIC: Think Globally, Buy Locally
[Click image to activate Internets] Source: eLocal.com
EARLY WORD: For Those Not Rapturing On Saturday
South Jersey music fans are ecstatic about the one time reunion of two local supergroups Love Sandwich and Stupidhead. Both were pioneers who provided the broom that swept the era of New Jersey Nerf Metal out of existence and restored the Dirty Jerz’s musical prominence that has given the world icons such as Springsteen, Yo La Tengo and Sinatra. Throughout the early 90’s, both performed countless sold out shows in the Delaware Valley and in tandem supported such acts as Bad Brains, The Roots, Rage against the Machine and for some reason Savatage. They are performing this one time only […]
CONTEST: Win Damon & Naomi Tix
Damon & Naomi play First Unitarian on Saturday May 21st in support of their new album, False Beats And True Hearts, which comes out May 21st. We have a pair of tickets to give away to the first reader to email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the name of the band Damon & Naomi played in with Dean Wareham back in the 80s. Put DAMON & NAOMI in the subject line and please include a day time phone number for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed! Damon & Naomi with Chris Marker – And You Are There from The Wire Magazine on […]
LIBIDINAL HUBRIS: Bolaris Drugged And His Bank Account Date Raped By Russian Harpies
DAILY NEWS: The FBI picked up the case, and asked Bolaris to testify before a grand jury. Last month, the feds busted 17 members of the Eastern European ring, which relied on “bar girls” from overseas who targeted wealthy out-of-towners at South Beach bars. The FBI said the women hunted late at night for men who wore expensive watches and shoes, and typically lured their prey to private clubs run by other members of the ring. The clubs – including the Caviar Bar – were just fronts, and were not open to the public. The men were often drugged or […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Goldman Sachs Of Sh*t
[Illustration by thadkellstadt] BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Has there ever been a more contemptible crew of con artists in the history of mankind?! Clearly Goldman Sachs has molded financial flimflam into an art form even John Myatt couldn’t envision. From deceptive foreign debt transactions to spurious mortgage-backed securities sales, this unprincipled pack of predators has left a trail of half-eaten carcasses stretching from the pillars of the Parthenon to the cul-de-sacs of suburban California — all the while reaping reprehensible profits for themselves and more than earning the dubious distinction of being Wall Street’s most cunning capitalistic carnivores. In the case of Greece, as […]
SIDEWALKING: Stop The World I Melt With You
The Ben Franklin Bridge, April 2011 BY RAY SKWIRE
Osama Bin Laden’s Greatest Crime Was Not Bringing Down WTC, It Was Murdering The Fourth Amendment
NEW YORKER: While most of the N.S.A. was reeling on September 11th, inside SARC the horror unfolded “almost like an ‘I-told-you-so’ moment,” according to J. Kirk Wiebe, an intelligence analyst who worked there. “We knew we weren’t keeping up.” SARC was led by a crypto-mathematician named Bill Binney, whom Wiebe describes as “one of the best analysts in history.” Binney and a team of some twenty others believed that they had pinpointed the N.S.A.’s biggest problem—data overload—and then solved it. But the agency’s management hadn’t agreed. Binney, who is six feet three, is a bespectacled sixty-seven-year-old man with wisps of […]
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: Study Calls Bullshit On The Private Prison Industrial Complex
NEW YORK TIMES: The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates. The state’s experience has particular relevance now, as many politicians have promised to ease budget problems by trimming state agencies. Florida and Ohio are planning major shifts toward private prisons, and Arizona is expected to sign deals doubling its private-inmate population. […]
ARTSY: The Great Depression In Full Color
DAILY MAIL: It was an era that defined a generation. The Great Depression marked the bitter and abrupt end to the post-World War 1 bubble that left America giddy with promise in the 1920s. Near the end of the 1930s the country was beginning to recover from the crash, but many in small towns and rural areas were still poverty-stricken. These rare photographs are some of the few documenting those iconic years in colour. The photographs and captions are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color. The […]