• Full recap of TV on the Radio and Beck lat­er, w/ photos
• Reviews of The Sci­ence of Sleep and Marie Antoinette, too

[Philebri­ty got me!]

• New Coffins album just in time for Halloween!
• Links updat­ed to include Paper Thin Walls [news and sin­gles] and Noise­week. A must!
• Live review of Sat­ur­day’s sold out Griz­zly Bear/TV on the Radio/Save Dar­fur show at Starlight Ball­room. [Caught 60 Min­utes & read NYTimes today. Dar­fur, def­i­nite­ly not saved by MySpace ben­e­fit shows. Not sure Amer­i­can mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion would help much either. See Iraq for fur­ther details.]
• Tonight it’s Beck w/ Spank Rock at Tow­er Theater.

Con­sid­er this a eulo­gy for an arts space and a venue, right in the bar­ren waste of Cen­ter City, with no neigh­bor­hood sup­port for the arts, no colon­nade of crap shops and bars lin­ing the street as you approach; on the con­trary, noth­ing but an emp­ty park­ing lot greets vis­i­tors as they approach the Gilbert Build­ing’s loom­ing facade. It’s stark appear­ance and spar­tan inte­ri­or made it ide­al for any num­ber of out, free acts that came to the City, and in a town where L & I either makes you or breaks you, it was no mean feat. After all, the talk about the con­ven­tion cen­ter expan­sion has been going on since the Ren­dell admin­is­tra­tion, and was a key ele­ment in the ongo­ing “revival” of down­town in the NTI. It goes with­out say­ing that when one oppos­es “urban renew­al” it means that you stand in the way of progress. In so many ways, it’s an absurd coun­ter­point and an even more bizarre achieve­ment: if the com­plaints [about the exist­ing con­ven­tion cen­ter] are about union work rules, then why don’t we just make it bigger…That’ll work, right? It’s Field of Dreams, as told by Philly’s busi­ness class and polit­i­cal elites, the main dif­fer­ence being that the Black Sox were less crooked.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Quick psych, met­al, windswept Aus­tralian folk, drone & dub/twostep roundup:

• Goji­ra — From Mars to Sirius
• Jutok Kaneko/Takahisa Kikukawa — Wedged Night LP [pic­tured]
• LSD March [show review forth­com­ing; sam­ple here]
• Kode 9 + Spaceape, Bur­ial, Var­i­ous, any­thing with dub/trip-hop/t­wostep feel
• Grails — Black Tar Prophe­cies vols 1, 2, & 3
• Dev­as­ta­tions & The Drones, still.
• Cru­cial Blast, espe­cial­ly Skull­flower and The Goslings

In progress:

• Sen­si­ble sum­ma­tion of thoughts on sup­posed teem­ing punk hordes, wait­ing at the post-Bush era gates, and if they mat­ter, or is it all just his­to­ry as mar­ket­ing, or vice ver­sa? Prob­a­bly at Cult­Punk, though maybe the sort of chin­scratch­er best reserved for new “rip­pling” at EMP-type out­let, tbd. Sweet con­cen­tric cir­cles! So ele­gant­ly mistaken!
• A sto­ry owed Marathon­packs on a 1996 Smash­ing Pumpkins/Garbage show at the Spec­trum that invokes both the Phillies and the Fly­ers with a bruised back to show for it!
• An essay enti­tled “I Wan­na Be a Philis­tine” on new Amer­i­can cin­e­ma vis-à‑vis Hol­ly­wood-in-cri­sis. Oh dear Marie Antoinette, there are so many who’d so glee­ful­ly replace you now [and have it made as real­i­ty tele­vi­sion, set to air imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Super Sweet 16.]
• Pen lovelet­ter to WOEBOT, who does the Lord’s work in a total­ly sec­u­lar way.

For 2.0:

• Sym­pa­thy for the Under­dog pod­cast [final­ly!]
• inter­views with artists & authors
• more & more often.

• Tomor­row night. TV on the Radio, w/ Griz­zly Bear. Sold out. Pics and sto­ry to follow.
• Lis­ten in: I Was a Lover
• You have plans Sun­day night too. Vox Pop­uli is mov­ing, thanks to a wrong­head­ed expan­sion of Philadel­phi­a’s Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. What was eas­i­ly one of the most com­fort­able, most inter­est­ing, and best sound­ing venues in Philadel­phia will be clos­ing it doors, and mov­ing to a new loca­tion, tbd. Pro­ceeds to defray the cost of the move…and you get a beer or two in the bar­gain. Not bad, eh?