PHILLY POST: [Ori] Feibush might be a hero, because he did something that needs to happen more often in Philadelphia: He saw a mess. And he cleaned up the mess. This being Philadelphia, of course he’s in trouble. The mess, you see, wasn’t Feibush’s to clean up. The debris-filled lot at 20th and Annin streets is owned by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority: Feibush owns the coffee shop next door. By his own estimation, he spent $20,000 to have 40 tons of debris removed from the site, and created what’s essentially a pocket park in its spot. In a better world, […]
RIP: Steve Sabol, Poet Laureate Of The NFL, Dead At 69
Photo courtesy of NFL FILMS INQUIRER: Steve Sabol, an art history major and football star in college who combined those two passions to help transform the family business, NFL Films, into a modern mythmaking marvel, died Tuesday at 69. Mr. Sabol had been battling brain cancer since 2011. An inoperable tumor had been discovered just days after his father, Ed, the NFL Films founder, was elected to Pro Football’s Hall of Fame. A lifelong Philadelphia-area resident who never lost his accent or his boyish idealism, Mr. Sabol forever changed the way Americans view their sports. The theatrical instincts that grew […]
ABOUT LAST NIGHT: Cherub Rock
Sigur Ros, Skyline Stage at the Mann, last night by JONATHAN VALANIA It’s official: The Mann’s just-unveiled Skyline Stage is now the go-to concert venue when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars and you and 5,000 of your closest friends want to see/hear widescreen, state-of-the-art indie-rock on the grass, under the stars, with yummy food trucks and ice-cold craft beers and a panoramic view of the emerald city skyline over your shoulder. That Sigur Ros should break the seal on this newly-minted venue is kinda like a teenage boy losing his virginity to a […]
OUR PRAYERS ANSWERED: Philly Opening Of The New Wes Anderson Movie Moved Up To June 8th
FRESH AIR Director Wes Anderson has many credits to his name — The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, Bottle Rocket and Fantastic Mr. Fox among them — but Moonrise Kingdom is his first film to open the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Starring Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Bruce Willis and Edward Norton, the quirky independent picture tells the story of a 12-year-old girl and boy who fall in love and then make a pact to run off into the woods together. Anderson tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross that the movie, set on a remote (and fictional) island off the coast of New England, is what he calls “a memory of a fantasy.” “I […]
REVIEW: Jeff Mangum At Irvine Auditorium
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER In 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel released an album of hallucinatory folk-rock called In The Aeroplane Over The Sea that is, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, nothing short of a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Like My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, it is lightning caught in a bottle, one of those rare perfect albums that come along maybe once a decade. Or once a lifetime. In 1999, Jeff Mangum — Neutral Milk’s singer, songwriter and primary guitarist — disappeared from public life without explanation, declining all entreaties to perform or discuss the album […]
OFFICIAL: Santa Claus* IS Coming To Town
*By ‘Santa Claus’ we of course mean Bruce Springsteen What we told you way, way back on Jan. 19th has just been officially announced: The Boss will be at Wells Fargo Center March 28th. Tickets go on sale January 28th. Details after the jump…
How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Bob Dylan
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY MIKE WALSH Let me make this clear up front: I’m not a Dylan-head, Dylan-ite, Dylan-phile, Dylan-ologist, or any other kind of extreme Dylan fan. In fact, I never bought a Dylan record or CD until just a few years ago. I never saw the need. Growing up in the ’60s, Dylan was on the radio all the time —“Blowing in the Wind,“ “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right,“ “The Times They Are a Changin’,“ “All I Really Want to Do,“ “It Ain’t Me Babe, “Mr. Tambourine Man,“ etc., etc. Plus, many other bands had hits […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Bon Iver At The Tower
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER At the risk of sounding like the 21st century equivalent of the guy who booed Dylan at Newport for going electric, I should disclose up front that I am not a fan of the super-dense seven-layer cake of sound of Bon Iver’s new self-titled album, though not for lack of trying. For me, the beatific, naked-bulb bedroom folk of 2008’s For Emma, Forever Ago remains definitive proof that less is more. Bon Iver mainman Justin Vernon is in full possession of the most heartbreakingly beautiful falsetto to emanate from a hairy guy in blue […]
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, […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Adele At The Electric Factory
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER It is a fitting coincidence that Brit ‘It Girl’ Adele launched her much-anticipated stateside tour the same weekend that “Bridesmaids,” Team Apatow’s rowdy girl-centric answer to “The Hangover,” opens in theaters across the country. The former is a budding superstar, the latter is a burgeoning box office hit, and the common ground is that Adele is the celebrated maker of mass-appeal music that could aptly be described as chick-flick soul. Her calling card, of course, is that voice: Big, bracing and acrobatic enough to wow the nattering class that tunes in weekly for “American […]
CONCERT REVIEW: TV On The Radio
[Photo byPIUMROSSA] BY PELLE GUNTHER Brooklyn’s experimental Afro-rockers TV On The Radio have always caught my fancy, with their fascinating mash-up of prog and indie-rock, all tied together by the raw vocals of Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe, and the six-string genius of Dave Sitek, but Friday night’s Electric Factory performance just didn’t quite make the grade. The band has great stage presence, and their songs are very solid, so it definitely had more to do with the actual performance, low energy level and a cloudy sound mix. As such, songs like the ever-popular “Staring at the Sun” didn’t have […]
SIDEWALKING: If It Quacks Like A Duck…
Delaware and Race 1:27 PM by JEFF FUSCO RELATED: The tug-boat mate in last summer’s deadly duck-boat accident was talking to family members on his cell phone about his son’s life-threatening emergency moments before the July 7 crash, according to an investigative report released Monday. The report from the National Transportation Safety Board said Matt Devlin, first mate on the tug Caribbean Sea, made or received 21 cell-phone calls during the 2.5 hours leading up to the accident. One of those calls began five minutes before the tug pushed a barge into the duck boat and continued until one minute […]
REVIEW: Jonathan Richman At First Unitarian
[Illustration via EDGEART] BY JONATHAN VALANIA If Jonathan Richman didn’t already exist, we would have never thought to invent him, which is a testament to both his originality and the shortcomings of our collective imagination. For more than 35 years, Richman has been a tireless advocate of hopeful romanticism, rugged individualism and unyielding optimism, travelling the world like some post-modern Jimmy Stewart with a guitar telling anyone that would listen that, despite all the hard-bitten cynicism that surrounds him, it’s still a wonderful life. He is, in short, the immaculate heart on the dirty sleeve of rock n’ roll. Performing […]