THE ATLANTIC: If you were an adherent, no one would be able to tell. You would look like any other American. You could be a mother, picking leftovers off your toddler’s plate. You could be the young man in headphones across the street. You could be a bookkeeper, a dentist, a grandmother icing cupcakes in her kitchen. You may well have an affiliation with an evangelical church. But you are hard to identify just from the way you look—which is good, because someday soon dark forces may try to track you down. You understand this sounds crazy, but you don’t […]
Jimmy Kimmel Pays Tribute To Fred Willard
PREVIOUSLY: Fred Willard Was The Obi-Wan Kenobi Of White Male Cluelessness
REST IN POWER: Comedian Fred Willard Was The Obi-Wan Kenobi Of White Male Cluelessness
Fred Willard as Elvis Presley on SNL circa 1978 NEW YORK TIMES: Fred Willard, the Emmy Award-nominated comic actor best known for his scene-stealing roles in Christopher Guest’s improvised ensemble film comedies like “Best in Show” and “Waiting for Guffman” and on sitcoms like “Modern Family” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” died on Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86. His death was confirmed by his agent, Mike Eisenstadt. No specific cause was given. Mr. Willard made an art of playing characters who, as The New Yorker once noted, are “gloriously out of their depth.” There was Buck […]
THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: The Beatles At JFK
[Photos of The Beatles backstage at JFK by BOB BONIS courtesy of NFAgallery.com] EDITOR’S NOTE: Sad, sad news. We received word on Sunday that Tom Sheehy, aka The Colonel — longtime Philly music publicist/scenester/historian, storied music biz vet, barroom philosopher, perennial guest list fixture, late-blooming recipient of a Ph.D. in 20th Century American History from Penn, colonel in the ‘MMaRmy, and frequent Phawker contributor — passed away this weekend. This week we will honor his memory by re-posting some of his greatest Phawker hits. Today we’re re-posting The Colonel’s 2011 remembrance of seeing The Beatles at JFK in 1966. MORE […]
THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: Me & Keef
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sad, sad news. We received word today that Tom Sheehy, aka The Colonel — longtime Philly music publicist/scenester/historian, storied music biz vet, barroom philosopher, perennial guest list fixture, late-blooming recipient of a Ph.D. in 20th Century American History from Penn, colonel in the ‘MMaRmy, and frequent Phawker contributor — passed away this weekend. This week we will honor his memory by re-posting some of his greatest Phawker hits. We begin with his beloved Rolling Stones and the time he snuck into Keith Richards hotel room in New York in 1969. We will also be re-posting his remembrances of […]
RIP: Eric Taylor, A Folksinger’s Folksinger
BY JONATHAN HOULON FOLK MUSIC EDITOR In the midst of all of “this,” it would be a shame for the recent death of one of America’s best songwriters to come out of Texas or really anywhere to go unnoticed. And other than a wonderful obit in the NYT by Bill Friskics-Warren, it appears to have. I first caught up with Eric Taylor in a Quaker meeting house in Phoenixville, PA. I’d been hearing about him for years: Vietnam vet, ex-junkie, second wife was Nanci Griffith, came out of the same Houston folk scene of the late 60s/early 70s that produced […]
RIP: Fountains Of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger, Novelistic Pop Auteur, Killed By Covid19 Pandemic
NEW YORK TIMES: Adam Schlesinger, an acclaimed singer-songwriter for the bands Fountains of Wayne and Ivy who had an award-winning second career writing songs for film, theater and television, died on Wednesday in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was 52. The cause was complications of the coronavirus, his family said. In Fountains of Wayne, which was started in 1995, Mr. Schlesinger [pictured above, second from right] and Chris Collingwood perfected a novelistic form of hummable pop-rock in a style derived from the Kinks and from 1970s groups like Big Star and the Cars. They chose northern New Jersey and boroughs outside Manhattan […]
REST IN POWER: Bryan Dilworth (1968-2020)
I don’t know how common knowledge this is, but countless times back in the ’90s, when some up-and-coming band that Bryan booked had been stiffed at the Khyber, he would wind up paying their meager guarantee out of his own pocket so they’d have enough gas money to make it to the next town/gig and live to rock another day. I remember sitting with him at the bar one night when some band I can’t remember the name of that we all liked but nobody in Philly had heard of/cared about was playing for the sound man, and Bryan, in […]
RIP: Terry Jones From Monty Python’s Flying Circus
via GIPHY NEW YORK TIMES: Terry Jones, who earned a spot in comedic lore as a member of the British troupe Monty Python and also had success as a director, screenwriter and author, died on Tuesday night at his home in the Highgate neighborhood of North London. He was 77. His ex-wife, Alison Telfer, confirmed the death. Mr. Jones announced in 2016 that he had primary progressive aphasia, a neurological disease that impairs the ability to communicate. Mr. Jones, four other Britons — Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese and Graham Chapman — and an American, Terry Gilliam, formed Monty […]
IN MEMORIAM: Kill Your Sons
BY JON HOULON When David Berman hung himself on the eve of his first tour in over ten years – with new moniker Purple Mountains replacing his former Silver Jew tag – the outpouring was incredible. And as one might expect for this most literate of indie rockers – DCB had an MFA from U.Mass where he studied with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate as well a connection with the highly regarded Charles Wright during his undergrad years at UVA – the stuff written in the wake of his death was both moving and beautifully written. I was particularly taken […]
IN MEMORIAM: The Devil And Daniel Johnston
Artwork by Daniel Johnston BY JON HOULON When I lived in Austin in the early 90s, Daniel Johnston hovered over the place like a ghost. He made his name there in the 80s but had since been institutionalized after clubbing a friend with a lead pipe or baptizing himself in a fountain on campus. Equally felonious, perhaps. But I didn’t know any of that back then as I puzzled over his hand-labelled cassettes in the local music section of Tower Records on Guadalupe. I couldn’t be bothered at the time. I wish I had. Like many, I found my way […]
RIP: Ric Ocasek, New Wave Architect, Dead @ 75
NEW YORK TIMES: From 1978 to 1988, Mr. Ocasek (pronounced oh-CASS-eck) and the Cars merged a vision of romance, danger and nocturnal intrigue and the concision of new wave music with the sonic depth and ingenuity of radio-friendly rock. The Cars managed to please both punk-rock fans and a far broader pop audience, reaching into rock history while devising fresh, lush extensions of it. The Cars grew out of a friendship forged in the late 1960s in Ohio between Mr. Ocasek and Benjamin Orr, who died in 2000. They worked together in multiple bands before moving to Boston and forming […]
IN MEMORIAM: Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Kurt Cobain rocking a Daniel Johnston T-shirt @ the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards BY JOSH PELTA-HELLER Daniel Johnston died of a suspected heart attack on Tuesday, at his Texas home. He was 58. For most of his life, the unlikely rockstar struggled with mental illness, battling schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, and admirably surmounted these formidable hurdles to be able to write and perform his own work for the large fandom that he garnered, and leave a legacy on the craft with an influential voice uniquely his own. When I met him in 2012, he was lounging in his Union […]