FRESH AIR: In August 2016, three months before the presidential election, Republican nominee Donald Trump was behind in the polls. Instead of staying on message, the candidate was engaged in a politically damaging fight with the parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq. On Aug. 17, in an effort to change course, the Trump team appointed Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of the conservative Breitbart News, to lead the campaign. Journalist Joshua Green of Bloomberg Businessweek says the switch would prove to be a turning point. “[Trump] was headed toward a pretty serious loss, and Bannon brought his […]
CINEMA: Bedtime For Gonzo
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hunter Thompson would have turned 80 today. NEW YORK TIMES: HUNTER S. THOMPSON, who has been lionized in two feature films, served as the model for a running character in “Doonesbury” and is the subject of enough doctoral dissertations to build a bonfire, now has a documentary devoted to him, “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” by Alex Gibney. Thompson, who always seemed to keep one drug-crazed eye on posterity behind his ever-present shades, would surely be pleased but not surprised. But how to freshly document the life of a man who was his […]
WRECKLESS ERIC: Q&A With Eric Wareheim, Philly Homeboy & Exactly One Half Of Tim & Eric
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published in the summer of 2014 on the occasion Tim & Eric’s last world tour. We are posting this special encore edition in advance of Tim & Eric’s 10th Anniversary Tour stopping at the Merriam Theater on Thursday. While Dr. Steve Brule, tragically, will not be joining them this time, a second season of Tim & Eric’s creepy-as-fuck Bedtime Stories, which is discussed at length in this Q&A, is slated to air later this year. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of the Tim And Eric & Dr. Steve Brule (aka John C. Reilly) 2014 […]
SUFJAN STEVENS: Neptune
Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner and James McAlister will perform “Mercury,” taken from their new collaborative album Planetarium, on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” tonight. Also, the video for “Neptune,” the latest from the album, premieres today—watch it here (SEE ABOVE). Stevens, Muhly, Dessner and McAlister are in the midst of a limited run of special dates, accompanied onstage by strings and brass. Following a concert at the Philharmonie de Paris, the band will play July 18 in New York at Celebrate Brooklyn!, July 20 in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and July 21 at the […]
VIVA LA RESISTANCE: Q&A w/ Henry D’Arthenay Of Venezuelan New Wavers La Vida Boheme
BY ERIN BLEWETT Present day Venezuela is a miasma of deprivation, violence and mayhem that has become the de facto legacy of deceased socialist leader Hugo Chávez. Citizens are being kidnapped for profit by criminal syndicates and killed with shocking regularity for speaking out against the government Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’s successor. Venezuela’s beloved La Vida Bohème is known for their high-octane, politically-charged, nouveau New Wave music which eventually got them declared as conspirators against the government on live television. Soon after, their tour manager was kidnapped and their booking agent murdered. As a result, they are now living in exile […]
CINEMA: On The War Path
WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (2017, directed by Matt Reeves, 140 min, U.S.) LOST IN PARIS (2016, directed by Dominique Abel & Fiona Gordon, 83 min, France/Belgium) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I remember how perplexed Charlton Heston’s Taylor was back in 1968 when he made the realization that the planet he and his men landed on was ruled by apes. As the third of the rebooted sequels touches down in blockbuster season I find myself similarly flummoxed by glowing reception of War For the Planet of the Apes, a terribly turgid, self-serious, gloomfest. Have the critics all […]
CINEMA: Blackmail Is My Life
NEW YORK TIMES: Roger J. Stone Jr., the subject and star of “Get Me Roger Stone,” struts through this documentary with peacock feathers fully fanned. He’s first heard from a perch in some luxury digs, dressed in a tailored chalk-stripe suit with an olive martini at the ready. “My name is Roger Stone,” he says, “and I’m an agent provocateur.” The scene suggests James Bond cosplay, although it’s worth mentioning that the definition of an agent provocateur isn’t a supercool British fantasy spy but someone who persuades others to do wrong. So, who is Mr. Stone persuading? It’s an inevitable […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Cactus Blossoms You’re Dreaming
Cacti are rare in Minnesota, about as rare as brothers who are able to shake off the competition for their parents’ affection and join their voices in harmony. Brothers Page and Jack produce classic rockabilly-inflected twang-pop akin to the Everly Brothers. In standard arrangement, their band The Cactus Blossoms opens portals to foregone decades where life was every bit as complicated but more was put into maintaining the facade of simplicity. On You’re Dreaming, “Change Your Ways Or Die,” with its wailing guitar slides and Desperado riffs, summons up images of loners struggling to make their way out West to […]
SECOND OPINION: ‘Baby Driver’ Ain’t All That
WASHINGTON POST: Nominally, “Baby Driver” takes place in Atlanta, but it really exists in the imaginative world of Edgar Wright, the British filmmaker whose previous films — “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” — brim with equal parts sophomoric humor, boyish kicks and grating self-satisfaction. This often clever but ultimately appalling piece of genre inversion has originality on its side: It’s a Tarantino-esque heist film re-conceived as a jukebox musical. But that novelty soon wears off as it becomes clear that it’s less written than reverse-engineered to live up to its title. It’s about […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Hail To The Thief
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY The stench is unmistakable. The rot is conspicuous. The entire fetid, rancid atmosphere is stomach churning. You’ve just crossed over into the Trump administration. So, how do you begin to describe a political pestilence? How do you put words to political gangrene? How do you assign an order of disgust to the symbols of political heinousness? By now you’ve no doubt guessed that I’m no fan of Donald Trump. Well, not only am I not a fan, I’m a proud despiser. As far as I’m concerned, he hasn’t a single redeeming quality. Not one. So, […]
This Will Go Down On Your Permanent Record
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an excerpt from THIS WILL GO DOWN ON YOUR PERMANENT RECORD, the imaginary novel about the Violent Femmes’ classic 1983 self-title debut I am working on. BY JONATHAN VALANIA The year is 1984. I am sitting Indian-style on the floor in my freshman year college dorm room along with a half dozen other self-styled punk-rock refugees from the stultifying conformity and bourgeois pieties of mainstream campus life. Incense burns to mask the sweet leafy odor of burning marijuana from the nostrils of our RA, or resident administrator, the closest thing to a sheriff on the […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See The Violent Femmes + Echo & The Bunnymen @ The Mann Center
The Violent Femmes self-titled 1983 debut is a deathless classic, a lightning-in-a-bottle masterpiece of teen alienation and post-adolescent psychodrama with the same trans-generational reach and cultural potency of Rebel Without A Cause, Romeo & Juliet and The Catcher In The Rye. The album indelibly mapped the frantic vicissitudes of teendom — the nihilistic angst, the desolate anomie, the hormonal riots — and scored the late-night dorm room soundtrack for a million private rebellions. Thirty three years later, the album’s power to provoke, amuse and connect with succeeding generations of angst-ridden post-adolescents of all ages remains undiminished. In the interim, […]