BY SEAN HECK Throughout the second half of our first decade into the millenium, Brooklyn-based electronic rock outfit LCD Soundsystem breathed fresh life into the by then decaying corpse of dance-punk and attempted to fuse it cohesively with the sounds of contemporary garage rock bands and 80s post-punk bands, coming into their own and proving themselves as an entity independent of their influences along the way. After that, they disbanded—only to reunite a few years later. Since their return, they have overstayed their welcome, and seem keen on the idea of relying indefinitely on the god-tier status that they […]
JUST FOR THE LAUGHS: Q&A W/ Chris DiStefano
BY SEAN HECK Don’t let Brooklyn-born actor and comedian Chris Distefano’s macho-man persona fool you. He is a whip-smart observational comic whose fluid storytelling style makes the audience feel like one of his buddies from back home. Chris got his first big break as a regular cast member on MTV’s Guy Code and Girl Code. He continued to flourish in starring on the IFC series Benders, and co-hosted Netflix’s Ultimate Beastmaster. Chris’s weekly web series, Stupid Questions with Chris Distefano, can be viewed for free on Comedy Central’s YouTube channel. He co-hosts the popular weekly history podcast History Hyenas […]
BEING THERE: Metric @ Union Transfer
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Halfway through their Fillmore set on Thursday night, Metric singer Emily Haines nodded openly at her band’s evolution. “You get this pair of pants, and you wear them all the time, and then you don’t know where those pants are anymore!” Consider that fair warning, Metric fans: by “those pants” she meant the first half of their 20-year catalog, because the Toronto synth-rockers shined the hot strobe lights almost exclusively on their latest record for the duration of their set, saving just a couple of their best-beloved hits for last with no apology and no further […]
THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE: Meet The Man Who Sued Led Zep Over “Stairway To Heaven” & Lived To Tell
Photo by BRYAN SHEFFIELD via PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: The fact that Philadelphia barrister Francis Alexander Malofiy, Esquire, is suing Led Zeppelin over the authorship of “Stairway to Heaven” is, by any objective measure, only the fourth most interesting thing about him. Unfortunately for the reader, and the purposes of this story, the first, second and third most interesting things about Malofiy are bound and gagged in nondisclosure agreements, those legalistic dungeons where the First Amendment goes to die. So let’s start with number four and work our way backward. At the risk of stating the obvious, ladies and gentlemen […]
BEING THERE: Cherry Glazerr @ First Unitarian
Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JAMES The narrow collection of artists in my playlists that I have relied upon to get me through the last few months has grown so stale and tired that I almost want to walk in headphone-less silence on my way to work every morning. Almost. But then I remembered my sister’s mention to me last month of a band she told me “was weird as fuck, but your kind of thing.” The group in question was Cherry Glazerr. So after seeing the name pop up on the web after the band’s release of their third studio album […]
CINEMA: Sim City
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL (directed by Robert Rodriguez, 122 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC If you got into Anime in the 90’s, you were undoubtedly indoctrinated with Yukito Kishiro’s Battle Angel, the bleak cyberpunk love story cribbed in equal parts from Blade Runner and The Terminator. Hollywood’s take on this animated classic hits the big screen this week thanks to Robert Rodriguez (Sin City), who took on the project that has been in gestation under James Cameron (The Terminator/Avatar) for almost two decades, who also penned the script. Alita takes the larger than life worlds Cameron is known […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Dear Mr. President…
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I know that you’ve been variously described as The Artist of the Deal, The Great Deal Maker, and Master of the Deal. High praise indeed! Except that it’s all horseshit! Face it, Mr. Fraudster, you can’t–and NEVER could–deal your way out of a paper bag–or into a poker hand bluff–if your bankrupt, bullying, welshing, dodging, LIFE depended on it. For Christ’s sake, even your claimed authorship of that so-called “deal” book has been branded as COUNTERFEIT! So, where was all that purported EXTRAORDINARY “deal making” skill of yours whensomething as crucial as national security (your […]
BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE: Boyfriends
Broken Social Scene have a new EP out tomorrow called Let’s Try The After, Vol 1. One of the EP’s most awesome songs — a classic BSS tune called “Boyfriends” — is out today care of an all-gif video by @WhatGIFs. And yes, we definitely put this out for Valentine’s Day, because in many ways, that’s also what the song is about. In addition to this wildly fantastic video, the band has also created a little site where you can send all your loved ones valentines, sharing all the lovers’ spit in the world. Let’s Try The After – Vol 1 […]
WORTH REPEATING: Benedict Burr
“Aaron Burr” by A. DEGRAFF JUST SECURITY: In July 2016, when Trump called on “Russia, if you’re listening” to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, several Republican leaders directly and indirectly criticized him. […] By that point, however, not only did Burr know that the intelligence community had attributed the DNC hack to Russia, but the U.S. intelligence agencies even knew in summer 2015 the specific unit and agents within Russia’s intelligence services who performed the hacking. Among other specific data, Dutch intelligence agencies had for months reportedly accessed security cameras in the hackers’ Moscow offices and handed that information over to […]
BEING THERE: Sharon Van Etten @ Union Transfer
Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JONES Recently, I’ve felt haunted. Maybe it’s the Benadryl dreams, or my deepening fascination with astrology, or my long-overdue first reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, but the ghosts of my past, and even of my present, have started to creep into my subconscious. And while these kind of prolonged meditations on the phantoms of the past can help bring to light the parts of ourselves we often prefer to keep in the dark, the benefits of these reveries can grow toxic when left unchecked. There is a power in learning to simply let go, and that kind […]
CINEMA: Black Mirror
“Hey man, I don’t mind bein’ a vampire and all that shit, but a man has got to see his face!”– Scream Blacula, Scream (1973) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC As a lifelong horror fan, I was humbled by Horror Noire, the dense and informative documentary on the Black Horror film genre, based on the book with the same title by Robin R. Means Coleman. This homegrown project, written and produced in Philadelphia by Stage 3 Productions is masterclass in horror that every genre fan needs to take. While I like to consider myself a fan of black horror […]
ANDREW BIRD: Sisyphus
“Sisyphus” is taken from his recently announced forthcoming album, My Finest Work Yet, due March 22 on Loma Vista. Preorder the album here. Of the Matthew Daniel Siskin-directed video [see above] Bird explains, “We shot this video after a storm system moved through Los Angeles and there was a strange mist wisping through the mountains. I had an acute panic attack as I was standing on the edge of a thousand-foot precipice wearing this giant head mounted on a baseball helmet. The more extreme shots were handled by my stunt double, pro-climber Sterling Taylor.” He furthers, “I wanted the […]
The Only Response To SOTU 19 That Matters
WASHINGTON POST: An 11-year-old boy who says he’s been bullied because of his last name — Trump — will be one of President Trump and first lady Melania Trump’s guests at the State of the Union on Tuesday, the White House announced. Joshua Trump, a sixth-grade student from Wilmington, Del., who is not related to the president, drew headlines last year after his parents went public to share stories of the abuse they said he had suffered because of his last name. MORE