BY JONATHAN VALANIA In 2012, Tom Gabel, the 33-year-old year old frontman of Florida-based million-dollar major label punk band Against Me!, announced to the world that he was transgender and had begun the process of transitioning into a woman. Tom Gabel was dead, long live Laura Jane Grace. Grace told MAGNET she knew, deep down, since the age of five that she been had miscast in the role of heterosexual boy in the play of life. After years of drug-and-alcohol-abetted denial cross-dressing behind a cruel veil of secrecy and shame, Grace realized she could no longer deny her true […]
BREAKING: Pollard Throws No-Hitter — In 1978!
MAGNET: For reasons unknown, except that it’s the internet, news of Guided By Voices‘ Robert Pollard tossing a no-hitter as a college hurler on May 11, 1978, has gone semi-viral. We noted it in MAGNET’s Top 25 Of 2012 and thought it was relatively common knowledge among diehard GBV fans at the very least. Still, it’s a treat to see Pollard’s mug in the Wright State student newspaper account of his masterpiece. At the time, the no-no was the first in school history. Given the unlikely resurgence of interest in his mound milestone, we asked Pollard to share any […]
MAGNET: The Third Coming Of Edward Sharpe
EDITOR’S NOTE: An excerpt of this story first posted July 26th 2013. To mark the occasion of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros frontman Alex Ebert winning a Golden Globe just a few moments ago, here is the complete story. Twenty-First Century ambassadors of peace and magic or dopey Christian hippie cult on wheels? MAGNET goes to Bonnaroo to find the answer and bears witness to the third coming of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. BY JONATHAN VALANIA It’s a few clicks before zero dark thirty backstage at Bonnaroo’s Which Stage where Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes are […]
EXCERPT: The Man Who Fell To Earth
After 14 years, Moby has final created a worthy successor to 1999’s game-changing, bazillion-selling Play. MAGNET scales the walls of celeb-studded, anecdote-guarding Moby Castle high up in the Hollywood hills to find out what took so long. BY JONATHAN VALANIA This story starts in Moby’s apartment on a sunny pre-9/11 morning in New York city. Moby and his neighbor David Bowie are sitting on the couch strumming “Heroes” on acoustic guitars. They are prepping for a Tibet House benefit concert at Carnegie Hall organized by Phillip Glass. This is too good to be true, Moby thinks to himself. What if […]
ASK A WIZARD: Backstage w/ Wayne Coyne
In conjunction Scrapple TV, our partner in New Media crime, Phawker sat down with Flaming Lips mainman Wayne Coyne on his tour bus a few hours before their performance at the Festival Pier last month and rolled film. DISCUSSED: Sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, why the new Lips album is so goddamned dark, why he has Nick Cave’s blood, the story behind the Wayne Coyne Hand Grenade Incident, how he got Erykah Badu naked and covered in cum and glitter, and if he wasn’t the lead singer of the Flaming Lips what would have he done with his life. The […]
Win Tix To See Father John Misty Tonight @ UT
I have come here today to hand out lollipops and tickets to see Father John Misty perform solo and acoustic at Union Transfer tonight, and I’m all out of lollipops. To qualify, all you have to do is sign up for our mailing list (see right, below the masthead). Trust us, this is something you want to do. In addition to breaking news alerts and Phawker updates, you also get advanced warning about groovy concert ticket giveaways and other free swag opportunities like this one! After signing up, send us an email at FEED@PHAWKER.COM telling us a much, with […]
TEN YEARS AFTER: All Things Must Pass
Photo by AUTUMN DE WILDE EDITOR’S NOTE: Elliott Smith died 10 years ago today. In remembrance, we are re-running this piece that was originally published in the pages of MAGNET MAGAZINE back in 2004. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Something terrible happened on the night of Oct. 21, 2003, in the cozy, box-like bungalow at 1857 1/2 Lemoyne Street in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles where Elliott Smith lived with girlfriend Jennifer Chiba. In Chiba’s version of events, the couple had an argument that grew so heated she locked herself in the bathroom. At some point, she heard Smith scream […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Sigur Ros @ The Mann
Sigur Ros’ never-ending, globe-trotting tour began at the Mann almost exactly one year ago, trailing the release of the band’s sixth studio album, the ambient mellowness that is Valtari, and carries on in the wake of the release of its harsher, more rockist successor, Kveikur back in June. We have a pair of tickets for tomorrow night’s show at the Mann with the mesmerizing Julianna Barwick. To qualify, all you have to do is sign up for our mailing list (see right, below the masthead). Trust us, this is something you want to do. In addition to breaking news alerts […]
WORTH REPEATING: Dream Weaver
EIGHT MILES HIGH IN THE LAND DOWN UNDER In the last year Tame Impala auteur Kevin Parker has gone from trippy bedroom Lonerist to beloved global psych savant. MAGNET journeys to the Land of Oz to press an ear up to his inner speaker. By Jonathan Valania Kevin Parker, the one-man-band psych-rock wunderkind who records under the name Tame Impala, lives across the street from a professional magician (and sword swallower) in a quaint cul-de-sac of houses ringed with lemon trees in Freemantle, a charming seaside town of 25,000 in Western Australia. He shares a granny flat with Melody Prochet, […]
BEING THERE: Wassup Doc?
Moby’s house, Hollywood hills, Tuesday 1:46 PM by JONATHAN VALANIA MOBY: A few weeks ago Wayne [Coyne] and I spent the day making a video for ‘The Perfect Life’. then at the end of the day we broke out an acoustic guitar and gathered all of the extras on a rooftop overlooking L.A and sang an unrehearsed, impromptu version of the song. Please keep in mind we had no idea what we were doing. Wayne Coyne and I ended up doing a duet on ‘The Perfect Life’: we sing the choruses together, and then go back and forth on the […]
FLAMING LIPS: Do You Realize?
Live at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, 2011. With Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. LOS ANGELES TIMES: In the center of Hollywood right next to the Paramount Studios lot lies the Hollywood Forever cemetery, which, in addition to housing to the bodies of, among many others Cecil B. DeMille, Art Pepper, Yma Sumac, Johnny Ramone, John Huston, Virginia Rappe, Bugsy Siegel and Fay Wray, also serves as an outdoor film venue, art exhibitor and concert venue. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, the burial grounds will be loaned to Oklahoma psychedelic rock band the Flaming Lips, who will perform two classic […]
EXCERPT: In Bob We Trust
SCALPING THE GURU In the time it takes you to read this Robert Pollard will have written and recorded three brilliant albums and disbanded Guided By Voices again. MAGNET stages a Beer Summit to find out how and why. BY JONATHAN VALANIA No light or air or hope gets past the front door of Desmond’s Tavern, a grungy windowless taproom in midtown Manhattan that looks like a VFW hall crashed into a sports bar and smells like a frat house at low tide, and the afternoon crowd seems to like it that way. They like to do their drinking […]
THIS JUST INNI: Sigur Ros @ The Mann 9/20!
Sigur Rós announce the ultimate U.S. leg of their globe-spanning tour, which will consist of a final, 20-show including their return to the Mann in Philadelphia on Friday, September 20th. The tour began at the Mann almost exactly one year ago trailing the release of the band’s sixth studio album Valtari, and will continue following next week’s release of its hard-rocking successor, Kveikur (out June 18th). Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 AM! NEW YORK TIMES: The concert lasted two hours. It introduced some strong new material from the band’s album “Kveikur,” to be released on XL Recordings […]