Photo by CRAIG MCDEAN via Interview EDITOR’S NOTE: A shortened version of this interview first appeared on VICE’s NOISEY website on February 3, 2016 BY JONATHAN VALANIA In 1982, VU architect John Cale recorded Music For A New Society, an album of wrenching, emotionally-shattered torch songs that prophesied a denatured dystopia, somewhere between Blade Runner and Metropolis, looming ominously on the horizon, full of vintage violence and hysterical laughter, homicidal mothers and greedy angels with broken wings exfoliating the crawling skin of God. Thirty-four years later, we may not quite be there yet, but you can see it from here. […]
ZERO DARK THIRTY: A Q&A With Investigative Journalist & New Yorker Staff Writer Jane Mayer
BY JONATHAN VALANIA William S. Burroughs famously said “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on.” Cold comfort for the likes of Hillary Clinton who was widely derided back in 1998 for claiming there was “a vast right wing conspiracy” leveraging its colossal wealth and powers of persuasion to bring down the Clintons and the liberal progressive agenda they had come to represent (if not quite embody). Dark Money, the latest must-read by acclaimed investigative journalist and New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer, reveals overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence that Clinton was in fact right. And then some. […]
CRITICAL CONDITION: An In-Depth Q&A With New York Times Senior Film Critic A.O. Scott
Artwork via collageOrama BY JONATHAN VALANIA A.O. “Tony” Scott has been the New York Times resident film critic for going on 16 years. He has a razor-sharp intellect, unimpeachable taste, the chops to formulate persuasive, deep-end-of-the-pool aesthetic arguments and advance them in elegant and indelible prose — no matter what Samuel L. Jackson says. His new book, Better Living Through Criticism, mounts a robust defense of the necessity of professional arbiters in the age of Yelp and Metacritic. In advance of his reading/signing at the Free Library tonight, we got Mr. Scott on the horn in Seattle during a rare […]
RATTLE & HUM: Q&A w/ The Feelies’ Glenn Mercer
BY JONATHAN VALANIA The Feelies are one of those inscrutable but beloved band’s bands whose influence far exceeds their royalty statements and, as a consequence, the period on the last sentence in their bio keeps turning into a comma. Borne of the suburban garages of North Haledon, New Jersey, they released Crazy Rhythms in 1980 to massive acclaim and minimal sales and then promptly split off into a myriad of minor side projects, only to resurface again in 1986 with the altogether wonderful The Good Earth, produced by Peter Buck, guitarist for REM, whose early sound is deeply indebted to […]
INQUEST: Q&A w/ Victor DeLorenzo, Singer, Actor, Songwriter, Drummer, Recovering Violent Femme
Photo by DOUG SEYMOUR 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 first floor of Burnside Hall at Moravian College. Crumpled cans of Piels litter the floor. The ashtray overflows with clove cigarette butts. On the turntable is the […]
THE MOUTH THAT ROARED: Q&A With Comedian Bill Burr, The Man Who Told The City Of Brotherly Love To Go F*ck Itself, Hard, And Lived To Tell
Photo by ANGELO KOURI WARNING: Strong language & adult situations BY JONATHAN VALANIA It was a day that would live in infamy. September 9th, 2006, was an unseasonably hot day in Philly and the crowd at the Susquehanna Center had been drinking for hours in the sun. The natives were restless. This was not good. The crowd vibed a little bar fight/date-rapey to begin with, lots of buzz-cut hammerheads in Eagles jerseys and jorts and calf tats and the ladies who like that kind of thing. There was a low hum of menace in the air, like things could go […]
HUNGER GAMES: A Q&A With Carrie Brownstein
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Some say Sleater-Kinney is/was the Nirvana of Riot Grrl, that early ‘90s punk-rawk insurrection of punk poetesses and feminist studies majors storming the ramparts of indie-rock armed with little more than jagged guitars, spastic rhythms, thrift store chic, and the radical notion that feminism means women are people, too. And that goes double for rock n’ roll. Carrie Brownstein would probably just say that Sleater-Kinney was the Sleater-Kinney of Riot Grrl, which is more or less the takeaway from Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, her fascinating and revealing new memoir about the chaos and confusion of […]
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: Q&A With Author, Essayist & New Yorker Staff Writer Adam Gopnik
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally posted on November 17th 2011, upon the publication of Adam Gopnik’s book The Table Comes First: Family, France & The Meaning Of Food. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Longtime New Yorker staff writer, author, essayist, children’s novelist and Philly homeboy Adam Gopnik will be delivering the keynote lecture of the Philadelphia Museum Of Art’s Object Lessons: New Thinking about Still Life symposium at 6:30 pm tonight — his talk is called Things that Mean Things: Objects and Inventory in American Art. Back in 2011, we got Gopnik on the horn and we discussed writing, food, crime and punishment, […]
EUREKA: A Q&A With Bill Nye, The Science Guy
Artwork via THE DAILY OMNIVORE BY JONATHAN VALANIA On November 9th, the Franklin Institute will host a conversation between Maiken Scott, host of WHYY’s The Pulse and Bill Nye, bow-tied science communicator, advocate for reason and critical thinking skills, wouldbe astronaut, bane of creationists and climate science denialists, not to mention superstitious kooks and cranks of every ideological stripe. Recently, we got Dr. Nye on the horn. DISCUSSED: Why he believes in evolution and you should too, Carl Sagan, marijuana, why he wouldn’t sign up for the one-way trip to colonize Mars, why better batteries and sea water de-salinization technology […]
ALL GOOD ZOMBIES GO TO HEAVEN: Q&A With Bassist Chris White, Songwriter, Odessey & Oracle
BY JONATHAN VALANIA A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away called the Summer Of Love, The Zombies created one the three or four baroque-pop masterpieces of the psychedelic era of the 1960s. And nobody cared. Though they had a couple hits, The Zombies were never cool like the Beatles and the Stones were cool. Their innate dorkiness probably didn’t help, though it would, years later, thanks to Wes Anderson, render them alpha males in the Land Of Twee. But still, they served with valor, bravely walking point during the British Invasion and proudly wearing the uniform: skinny […]
Q&A: Kyle Dunnigan, Emmy-Winning Comedian, Inside Amy Schumer Writer, Billy Joel Superfan
BY JONATHAN VALANIA For the last three seasons, comedian Kyle Dunnigan has worked as a writer/performer on Inside Amy Schumer, where he just won an Emmy for the boy-band pastiche “Girl You Don’t Need Make-Up.” In Trainwreck, he played “Kyle,” the obnoxious staff member of the equally obnoxious S’Nuff magazine that Schumer’s character writes for. He does a weekly podcast with fellow comedian Tig Notaro called “Professor Blastoff” which premiered at #1 on iTunes Comedy Podcast Chart, and consistently remains as one of the top comedy podcasts. He had a recurring role on Reno 911 as ‘Craig’ a.k.a The […]
ROMANCE, APOCALYPSE & MOON LANDINGS: A Q&A With Experimental Filmmaker Kate McCabe
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Though she currently resides on the high plains of the Mojave Desert near the “rock n’ roll heaven” of Joshua Tree, acclaimed filmmaker Kate McCabe was born and bred in the Northeast, went to school at Girls’ High and attended University Of The Arts. It was a U Arts project — a Russ Meyers pastiche called Go Go Rama Mama, told from the perspective of a go-go dancer making the rounds for tips, shot through with all the low-rent tragedy and comedy such venues engender — that marked her coming out as a filmmaker. From there […]
Q&A With Benjamin Booker, Blooze Hammerer
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally posted on October 20th 2014 BY JONATHAN VALANIA It’s been quite a year for Benjamin Booker, hand-picked opener for the Jack White’s Lazaretto tour, going electric at Norfolk, going crazy on Letterman — not bad for a 25-year-old community gardener from New Orleans. Booker broke onto the scene earlier this year with his righteous, trance-inducing blooze hammering self-titled debut, shot thru with dizzyingly ecstatic Delta blues demolition and the most shiver-inducing lupine howl heard since the day Tom Waits gargled broken glass and washed it down with gasoline when he was, like, nine. Sounds like […]