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 […]
THE OHIO PLAYER: A Q&A With Kelley Deal
Photo by CHRIS GLASS BY JONATHAN VALANIA A word of warning: This intro is gonna be one of those pieces where I go on and on about my little monkey shines with famous alt-rock personalities. Millions of people love it when I do that, but others seem to get very, very angry about it, stomp their feet and write mean letters that hurt my feelings. If that sounds like you, stop reading right now. I’m serious. I don’t want to even see you in the second paragraph. The year is 1994. The Breeders had just broken huge, and somebody had […]
KOCH SUCKER: Q&A With The Man Who Punked The Governor Of Wisconsin & The Koch Brothers
EDITOR’S NOTE: To mark the inauspicious occasion of Wisconsin governor/Koch Brothers puppet Scott Walker declaring his candidacy yesterday, we dipped into our archives to bring the encore edition of our 2011 interview with then-Buffalo Beast editor Ian Murphy, the man who successfully punk’d Walker by calling up his office and pretending to be Tea Party sugar daddy David Koch. The complete audio recording is posted below. This Q&A first posted on March 31st, 2011. BY JONATHAN VALANIA When Buffalo Beast editor Ian Murphy called up the governor of Wisconsin late last month pretending to be David Koch — AKA […]
Q&A: Talking Love & Mercy With Brian Wilson
Photo by MARK HANAUER via Rock Paper Photo BY JONATHAN VALANIA Brian Wilson is not a big talker. Music, glorious music, is his gift, not gab. He partnered with a lyricist for his greatest works — Tony Asher on Pet Sounds, Van Dyke Parks on Smile and Mike Love on “Good Vibrations.” He’s not one of those artists who like to use the celebrity interview format to deliver expansive ruminations about the world according to Brian Wilson. In fact, having interviewed him several times over the years, it is patently obvious that he sees talking to the press as a […]
MIKE LOVE NOT WAR: Q&A With A Beach Boy
!NOTE: This picture comes from a photo-sharing site where it was posted without attribution but with the caption ‘My mom backstage’ BY JONATHAN VALANIA In the psychedelic American fairy tale that is The Beach Boys — who play Camden on Saturday as part of a tour celebrating 50 years of endless summer — Mike Love is invariably cast as the villain. The pre-maturely balding Philistine. The counter-revolutionary company man. The sexist greed head who saw the band as little more than a singing ATM machine. The one who blanched at any and all attempts to move the band past past […]
LIFE OF BRIAN: A Q&A w/ The Beach Boys Auteur
EDITOR’S NOTE: A version of this Q&A originally published on October 10th, 2013 BY JONATHAN VALANIA Teenage symphonies to God. That’s the phrase Beach Boys auteur Brian Wilson used to describe the heartbreaking works of staggering genius he was creating in the mid-’60s, when his compositional powers were achieving miraculous states of beauty and innovation even as his fevered faculties skirted the fringes of madness. With the 1966 release of Pet Sounds, The Beach Boy’s orchestral-pop opus of ocean-blue melancholia, Brian clinched his status as teen America’s Mozart-on-the-beach in the cosmology of modern pop music. Less than a year later, […]
TRUTH & CONSEQUENCES: Q&A w/ Marc Maron
Photo by Larry Hirshowitz UPDATE: Marc Maron on Fresh Air BY JONATHAN VALANIA Marc Maron pretty much wrote the book on how not to write the book — the book on how to win friends and influence people, how to succeed in showbiz without really trying, how to enjoy harmless recreational drugs like cocaine responsibly. Whatever his books about those topics (in truth, there are no books like that, but stick with me I’m going somewhere with this) tell you to do, do the exact opposite. Unless you want to find yourself on the far side of 40, bottomed out […]
Q&A w/ Comedian John Mulaney, Ex-SNL Writer, Stefon Co-Creator, Couldbe TV Sitcom Star
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published back in September of 2013, in advance of his appearance at Oddball Fest. Mr. Mulaney will be performing at the Merriam on Saturday, hence this encore presentation. Enjoy, and check back tomorrow when we will be giving away a pair of tix for the show. Why? Because we love you! BY JONATHAN VALANIA As co-creator of the ever-popular Stefon (‘New York’s hottest club is…’) sketch on SNL, comedian John Mulaney is probably better-known for his work behind the camera than in front of it, but that will change soon. Last Friday we got Mulaney […]
THE BEST JUSTICE MONEY CAN’T BUY: Q&A w/ William Ciancaglini Esq., Candidate For Judge
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Attorney William Ciancaglini, aka Billy C., thinks the pay-to-play method of electing judges in this city stinks on ice. He should know, he’s an underdog candidate for Common Pleas judge. The source of that stink, he says, is the funny money you have to pay into the Dem Machine to become a judge in this city. That’s right, seats on the bench don’t go to the most qualified, they go to the highest bidder. Just to get into the game will cost you $35K, money Ciancaglini doesn’t have. Even though he’s a trial lawyer, Ciancaglini considers […]
EXCLUSIVE: Q&A With Neutral Milk’s Jeff Mangum
BY JONATHAN VALANIA 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 Pet Sounds or My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless or Love’s Forever Changes, 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 […]
FINE YOUNG CANNIBAL: Q&A w/ Hannibal Buress
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Comedian Hannibal Buress has played a homeless man on 30 Rock who was NOT masturbating to Tina Fey, a second banana on The Eric Andre Show, and a nitrous huffing dentist/fuck buddy on Broad City. But no matter how glorious a career he goes on to have, he will forever be remembered as The Man Who Unmasked Bill Cosby, in the bit heard round the world, delivered, let us not forget, at the Trocadero (just a few hours after this interview first published on October 16th, 2014). Which confers on Philadelphia the dubious distinction of being […]
REWIND 2014: The Year In Questions And Answers
If armies run on their stomachs, blogs run on their big fucking mouths. We’re no exception. But we’d like to think that, on a good day, we put all that hot air to good use when interrogating visiting dignitaries in advance of their triumphant arrival into the City Of Brotherly Love. We’ve never pretended to have all the answers but we do know all the right questions. And we’ve never settled for easy answers to hard questions. Sometimes feelings get hurt and sometimes new connections are made. Sometimes painful truths emerge and sometimes we actually learn something. And sometimes we […]