Philadelphia

I understand that a strong community is important to you, even if a busy schedule and certain cultural disparities have kept me from truly being a part of it. I fully support your desire to have a block party every single weekend of the summer, to take over the streets with charcoal grills and picnic tables, Motown and soul. If I get annoyed at the noise sometimes, I remind myself that you are celebrating the… See more →

Late last year, my friend Scott added a Philadelphia-based band called Chromelodeon to the roster on his Bloodlink record label. The band initially piqued my interest with a nine-song EP called The Dark Sword of Chaos, which was dedicated exclusively to the music from Ninja Gaiden II, the second installment in the greatest video game series of all time. It was clear that these guys shared my enthusiasm for the game, and they brought its… See more →

The weather of late indicates that Spring is finally making a gesture of commitment to Philadelphia, and with it, my annual resolve is reborn to get the hell out of the house and find things to be excited about. I’ve been both busy and lazy these last couple of months (a paradoxical combination at which I excel), which, along with the temperature, has caused me to miss the first half of this year’s Philadelphia Film… See more →

The New Wave of British Heavy Metal survives in Philadelphia, thanks to the majesty of Wastoid, whose performance Saturday night at the Pontiac Grille made me feel like I was 13 again. The love of leather and swords and dazzling guitar heroics never left me, but this was a sublime rediscovery all the same.

Spaceboy Music got the new Tortoise album, It’s All Around You, nearly two weeks ahead of its release date, so I did too. I like it, and I expect to like it more as I listen to it more, but there are no great departures from the oft-imitated Tortoise sound to report, and nothing noteworthy about this newest assemblage of ambling, polyrhythmic post-rock that wasn’t already made noteworthy on one of the band’s previous outings.… See more →

BREDSTIK Entertainment made its second foray into frenetic weekend filmmaking, this time for the 48 Hour Film Project, on the weekend of the 19th–21st. Our randomly-drawn and decidedly unsavory genre options, Musical or Western, actually proved to be less of an impediment than the generally intensified circumstances; contrasting our last project of this sort, we had less time, fewer people, and for some reason, we devised a more complicated script. So the result, Lunch Break… See more →

Mike Patton and Rahzel visited the Trocadero and bored me to tears. It’s like this: these are two very talented guys whose respective bags of tricks are only so deep.

Patton, who should absolutely be commended for his below-the-radar noise experimentation and tireless commitment to collaboration, ultimately excels more in the field of mutated pop music, where the established conventions of the genre allow a much more forgiving space for him to repeat himself. His… See more →

The Dillinger Escape Plan played a super cheap four dollar show at the super small First Unitarian Church with the super great Kayo Dot and Medications. This was one of the best Dillinger performances I have seen, which I find myself saying just about every time I see them (and I’ve lost count of how many Dillinger shows I’ve seen). Such a distinction is especially rare amidst musicians of their jaw-dropping technical proficiency, whose opportunity… See more →

I’m not often interested in shows that could conceivably sell out in less than five minutes after tickets have been made available, so imagine my disappointment when that exact thing happened on Friday as I waited in line for Darkness tickets. Now it appears that my only chances at seeing what will probably be the best show of the year are spending upwards of $100 on eBay or winning a radio station contest, neither of… See more →

Okay, here’s a pretty charming concept: You’re a musician who combs estate sales for the personal slide collections of the deceased—family vacations, corporate presentations, educational slideshows, etc. You create stories from the photos, write songs to tell the stories, and project the slides on a screen as you perform their accompanying songs live. You sing and play guitar and keyboard, your wife runs the slide projector and designs the costumes, and your ten-year old daughter… See more →

Okay, here’s a pretty charming concept: You’re a musician who combs estate sales for the personal slide collections of the deceased—family vacations, corporate presentations, educational slideshows, etc. You create stories from the photos, write songs to tell the stories, and project the slides on a screen as you perform their accompanying songs live. You sing and play guitar and keyboard, your wife runs the slide projector and designs the costumes, and your ten-year old daughter… See more →

You know, neither my physique nor my personality suggests a similarity to any hibernating animal that I can think of, and yet, this site routinely falls silent at the beginning of winter, as if I had found a comfortable cave in which to reduce my vital signs and nap for a few months. If South Philadelphia hides any such caves, it hides them well, so unless business as usual is a mundane hallucination, it’s safe… See more →