CAT VET: Don’t Call Us Cute.
Text by Maddy Court. Images by Evan Kaucher.
It’s a quiet Tuesday night in Cedar Park. A dozen and a half people file into the Unholy Trinity House, which contrary to its contentious name, is a basement laundry room decorated with Christmas tree lights and a portrait of President Obama taped to the water heater.
Four bands are on tonight, including Cher Horowitz, a punk quartet from San Francisco who encourages everyone in the audience to take off their shirts (with limited success). After several rowdy performances in the sweaty room, West Philadelphia’s own CAT VET, the final act of the night, takes the floor and begins a rumbling session. All geographical biases aside, they get the crowd bouncing, slamming and head-nodding the hardest. Read more…
Banging Drums and Dancing Around a Bonfire. In The Heart of Philly.
Text by Caroline Newton. Images by Colin Kerrigan.
I tiptoe my way through the trees, carefully stepping over the plants that drape over the narrow dirt path. It’s dark, well after 10 pm. I see a bonfire in the distance, flickering between the dancing people. Following the sound of music, my buddies and I meander toward a small, circular clearing where at least two dozen people bangs drums and twice as many hang nearby, watching the activity.
For a moment, I stand off to the side. And then I join the festivities.
Instantly, I’m at ease. Although I don’t know anyone, no one knows everyone. Most of the people are strangers to each other. The ones who aren’t know only a few others. Read more…
Two Bands Enter. One Band Leaves.
Our friends at Mercury Radio Theater are releasing their new album, Kilroy, tonight at Johnny Brenda’s. Should be a good show from the theatrical trio of experimental/ instrumental/ surf punk rockers.
The new album is the final installment in the “Monster Trilogy,” and the guys are billing tonight’s show as a battle of the bands – werewolves vs. zombies (both are which are actually Mercury Radio Theater).
Find show details here.
The Sound and The Fury: The Legacy of Black Radio In Philadelphia.
Text by Tim Whitaker. Images courtesy of the Temple Urban Archives.
As a kid, I was a radio junkie.
At home, in the car, on vacation, I’d go up and down the radio dial, fishing for something new, a sound or personality that would take me someplace I’d never been. Almost always, my explorations would take me to the far right of the AM dial (“the ghetto,” as it was called in many radio circles).
There, no matter what city you happened to be in, you’d find the hippest disc jockeys on the dial playing records you’d never get to hear on mainstream radio. The jocks on these stations played the records they wanted to hear, and their enthusiasm for the sounds they put down on their turntables would blow right through the speakers. Read more…
Meet Patty Crash, The Pop Star.
Text by Kevin Stairiker. Images by Marie Alyse Rodriguez, photographed at the Nicos Gun loft. Styling by Madison Rupert.
In a past episode of her hybrid web show/video blog, “The Adventures Of Patty Crash,” the titular heroine recounts her excitement about being featured on the Gym Class Heroes song “Drnk Txt Romeo.”
She then drives to Target and buys the album, if only so that she can see the effects of her just-blossoming success: her name in the liner notes as a featured artist alongside other guests such as Busta Rhymes and Daryl Hall.
That was three years ago.
Despite other guest appearances on songs by Tyga and The Roots, among others, there hasn’t been a full-release from the Iceland-native who has called Philly home since 2006. She’s been forever stuck in a sort of self-enforced development hell.
“I’m finally working on one now!” Patty says. “For the past five years, I’ve literally been jumping from genre to genre, trying everything to figure out what I want to do. I haven’t put anything out for that specific reason.”
Now she knows: Patty Crash wants to be a pop star. Read more…
World-Class Music, in Intimate Settings, For Cheap!
Text by Tom Di Nardo.
Can you imagine hearing the world’s greatest artists, in venues scattered around the city, with their promoters actually insisting on ridiculously low ticket prices?
That’s been the mantra of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, an organization with a formal name but with the virtual patent on audience-friendliness. They presented 64 programs in their 25th season last year and they have 60 on tap this season, making them the largest promoter of their kind in the country.
Virtually every internationally-renowned pianist, violinist, instrumentalist, vocalist, major chamber ensemble and string quartet has cycled through Philly, happy to play imaginative and inspiring programs of Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Schubert and many other musical giants to enthusiastic houses. Intimate venues help too – the Kimmel’s Perelma
n Theater, the Port of History Museum, American Philosophical Museum, Fleisher Art Memorial, the Art Museum, Settlement School and Temple’s Rock Hall.
There’s a secret why the artists return: reverence and respect for the principles of founder and artistic director Anthony Checchia, who insists on relatively inexpensive ticket prices ranging from $16.50 to $23 (only the Perelman Theater tacks on an additional $4). Many of the touring artists and ensembles play the same program a few nights later at New York’s Carnegie Hall – for $65, $75 and $85, or more. Read more…
Toy Soldiers: Ron Gallo And The Texas Tornado Match.
Text by Chris Diehl. Top image by G.W. Miller III.
Toy Soldiers began as a joke.
“We would get drunk and go in to Ron’s old basement on Juniper Street and just write silly stupid songs,” says former member Mike Baurer. “Ron (Gallo) was in a band at the time, so we didn’t actually set out to do much with our joke songs. One day we actually wrote a song very randomly called, ‘I Die Blues.’ BAM! Toy Soldiers was born. “
Gallo was working at Black and Brew coffeehouse in South Philly at the time. A customer told him he looked like the kid in a painting by Antonio Mancini, Boy with Toy Soldiers, which is housed at the Philadelphia Art Museum.
The name stuck. Read more…
The Super Friends: Da Rezarekt Show How Funk, Hip Hop and Rock & Roll Live in Harmony.
Text by Lauren Gordon. Image by G.W. Miller III.
Cramped around the small Grape Room stage in Manayunk, a sea of partially-popped collars, fedoras and tight T-shirts use the last few moments of downtime between sets to order their beers.
Then Da Rezarekt takes the stage.
Marisa “Guitar Grrrl” Salazar, petite and clad in an Avenged Sevenfold shirt, begins shredding a lick that could put members of the aforementioned band to shame. Puffy D Miller slides in with a smooth funk bass groove, his light-colored dreadlocks whipping around frantically. Derek “Supa Star Dar” Gallagher keeps the beat on drums, as his formally serene demeanor morphs into a burst of pulsating rhythm. Front man Supreem spits lyrics with such force in his deep, gravely voice that he already needs to shed his thick Sixers jersey. Read more…
Josh Landow: Radio Survivor (and Champion).
Josh Landow started his career as an intern with Y100, the defunct radio station based in Philadelphia. After becoming a fill-in DJ, he quickly rose through the ranks to become a full-time DJ. Then the station shut down in 2005. He took his Y-Rock show to WXPN, a deal that lasted until July 2010. Our Jake Friedman spoke with Landow, who now runs the online radio station Y-Not Radio out of his home in West Philadelphia.
When did you first find yourself interested in music, more than just listening to good bands and going to shows?
I think really that’s still my level of interest in music. I mean I don’t make music. I just love to listen to good bands and go to shows. I also like to help turn people on to good music that they might not know about. Perhaps the question is when did I find myself more interested in radio than just listening to it. The answer to that would be when WDRE announced they were going off the air in 1997. That station was pretty much where I found out about all the music that I liked. Where would I find it now? Keep in mind that this was before music was all over the Internet. That’s when I got interested in being part of a radio station rather than just listening to it. Read more…
The Cut-off Ponytail from the Run-Down Everything.
Text by Keith Birthday of Norwegian Arms. Images from Ecuador by Gillian Grassie.
I’m probably half delirious.
Fifteen hours of airport the previous day, twelve hours late to our destination – Quito, Ecuador. Fuzzy-headed with the altitudinal change. Five hours of sleep, maybe. Bussed to the edges of town, poverty stricken, we are told. Looks that way.
A small, hot room with some people inside. A man setting up some PA equipment. Dark complexion, middle-aged maybe.
He walks up to us, speaks in Spanish. Our broken skills put it together: he makes instruments. He’s going to go get some right now. He lives next door or something.
He comes back with a black case, pulls out some homemade pan flutes, starts to play. They sound good, as far as I can tell. I don’t know much about pan flutes. We thank him and start getting our things together to begin our workshop.
To clarify our geographical location: the fourth stop of the South American ESLfolk tour. Myself and three others, funded to go to various cities along the Andes and introduce a self-written curriculum/textbook about teaching English through traditional American folk music. This is the first stop where we are being ushered around by the embassy staff. Read more…
JUMP: The Philly Music Project 