Sarah Gamble is from North Carolina. In the past year her house was struck by lightning, set aflame, and then broken into. Her car was nearly destroyed by vandals after it was involved in two separate hit and runs. She went to the hospital with bronchitis, lost her job and won the Pew. She hopes to see you at her exhibition. 

Opening reception  Friday, July 3rd 

6:00 to 10:00pm

1001-1013 N. 2nd St/Ste.7

The Piazza

[DOWNLOAD AS PDF]

Live at the Minotaur release party in London, June 15.

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BY SYDNEY SCOTT Our obsession with vampires seems to be as deathless as the undead. Images of pasty-faced bloodsucking sophisticates with miles and miles of style epitomize our notions of the vampires thanks to the lurid prose of Bram Stoker and Ann Rice. But with the sudden and, arguably, undeserved success of her ‘tween hit Twilight, Stephanie Meyer has flipped the script for a new generation. I managed to avoid reading the book for a while, but eventually I succumbed to the hype when my old roommate kept urging me to read it. It took me two months to finish the book, because I kept stopping and trying to convince myself that the end would be worth it — it wasn’t. Meyer’s story about a teenage girl named Bella who moves to a dreary Washington and falls in love with a “vegetarian” vampire, Edward Cullen, is told in the most wooden of prose. The dialogue is weak and a lame parody of what Meyers believes teenagers sound like. The book drags on for what seems like years before anything eventful happens and the events are all rather predictable. Bella being hunted down by a vampire? Yeah, didn’t see that coming. The characters aren’t any better. Edward and the rest of the Cullens are PG teen-friendly vampires. But unlike the vampires of yore, they don’t die when exposed to sunlight, they sparkle. The Cullens do not sleep in coffins, they don’t drink blood, and they go to school! Um, excuse me Mrs. Meyers, but you just drained all the bad-ass coolness out of vampires. However, Meyers has undoubtedly found a formula that works,’tweens plus sparkling vampires plus a ridiculous love story equals hit! The phenomena that is Twilight does not look like it will be dying down anytime soon with toys and perfumes hitting the shelves of your local Hot Topic. Sad to say that may mean the dawn of a new sparkling vampire empire and the end of Dracula’s reign as the Prince Of Darkness. Pity, that.

INQUIRER: Another proposed hike in parking meter rates in downtown Philadelphia has been canceled because the first increase worked better than expected. A day before rates were to increase to $3 per hour, Philadelphia Parking Authority officials said Wednesday that rates will stay at $2 , and some will even be reduced by 50 cents. The parking authority already doubled the downtown rate from $1 to $2 on Jan. 1 to discourage all-day parking. The plan worked. The parking space vacancy rate went from 2 percent to 17 percent, making it easier to find a spot. MORE

BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer you towards the gooey center. Why? Because we love you!

ON THE COVER

CP: In an interesting counterpart to the “city employees” spread from a few weeks back, CP shows us the names, faces and stories of locals who are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Though deliberately cursory and intended to give a broad cross-section of local soldiers, it still presents the hopes, beliefs and economic circumstances that go along with military service. Take Rob Pomroy of Fishtown, currently in Iraq, for example.

“I was working three jobs,” Rob Pomroy, who was born in Fishtown, says over a pay phone from Iraq, “and I never really saw my little girl because I was too busy working to put food on the table.” Pomroy was living with his girlfriend and her mother in Chalfont when he decided to visit the recruiting office. After he signed his contract, his 3-year-old daughter, Zoey Rose, had health insurance for the first time in her life. Before long, Pomroy was in Schweinfurt, Germany, awaiting deployment. In the winter of 2008, he gathered with his company outside their barracks; his sergeant read off, “Pierson: November 27, Pomroy: November 27. … ” When written orders followed, he called home to Zoey. “Daddy has to go far away, for work, to beat up the bad guys,” he said.

It’s unnerving how many of the featured soldiers are my age or younger, and the rash of post-9/11 militarism that determined the fates of many of my high school classmates is present in many of the stories. At the time of the attacks, Matt Brennan was a sophomore in high school, and Tim Stanton was in fifth grade; both decided then to join the military. Laura Golembiewski puts it even more succinctly: “I just wanted to fly the planes and bomb the motherfuckers.” Incredibly, these feelings are still smoldering and have been for longer than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been going on. From the beginning, we’ve tried to win over hearts and minds abroad; I worry about our own.

PW: Well, it’s a little hard to address this one head-on: a tribute issue to the late Steven Wells, PW staff writer and longtime music critic and culture warrior. There’s first-person reflections from other PW staffers both current and former, and they’re heartfelt, personal and funny all the way around. Some musical heavyweights even pay tribute: check this from Billy Bragg.

His writing was a kind of performance art, a skill he picked up from his years as a ranting poet. They were a rum lot, the ranters, more wind-up merchants than poets, if truth be told, taking on audiences with a bit of humor and a lot of balls. Swells excelled at the job. He was provocative, polemical and laugh out loud funny.

Seething Wells was his poetic pseudonym and the name under which his first journalism appeared in the NME in 1981. Later on in his time at the paper, he also wrote reviews under the name of Susan Williams, seeking to subvert the ladish world of rock journalism. Politics were important to Swells. A supporter of the Socialist Workers Party, his critique of bands and colleagues was often couched in class war rhetoric, but he had too much of a sense of humor to be a real Trotskyite.

He was at heart an iconoclast. Put anything on pedestal and Swells couldn’t resist taking a pot-shot at it. Nobody was spared. He was one of my earliest supporters in the music press, shared my idealism, yet continually referred to me in print as “Bilious Braggart,” even when he was praising my output.

Star turns aren’t the norm, though; I liked the short, pithy ones from Matt Prigge and Tim McGinnis best. Tim’s dead-on: every writer needs an editor to tell them, at least once, to completely rethink what they’re doing. But in the end, it doesn’t matter what I think of these tributes, or of Wells’ writings for PW, because his accomplishments speak for themselves. He found his own style, voice and approach, had his say, and stuck to his guns to the very last. None of us could ask for a better role model.

INSIDE THE BOOK

CP: Moon: At least it’s not about somebody dropping trou. Bike power won’t make you a rockstar. Star bartender talks “testicular fortitude.” Obama misses the point on needle exchange.

PW: The audacity of P.O.P.E. Free jazz? I’ll take it! John Dillinger at the movies: More than a passing reference in High Fidelity. “Springtime for Hitler” during summertime in Philly. Go figure.

WINNER: PW takes the title this week, though I’ll say I wish they’d run Steven’s last column in print. One last by-line would have meant one last promise of something really incendiary.

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UPDATE: Police sources tell KTLA that they’re making preparations for a massive public memorial for Michael Jackson Tuesday morning at Staples Center.

CNN: Many of his fans had hoped they’d get a chance to pay last respects at Neverland Ranch, which Jackson purchased in 1987, filled with animals and amusement rides, and named after the fictional world in J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan.” Gregory Son, a 31-year-old musician, was among many fans who had planned to ride to the ranch to say goodbye to Jackson. “I think he was a modern-day prophet,” Son said outside Grauman’s. “We kind of lost our father.” Next to him, 26-year-old Sean Vezina, wearing sunglasses and a fedora like Jackson’s, stood silently. Vezina said he made his living as a Jackson impersonator, but was mourning too much to display any moves. MORE

ZIMBIO: Michael Jackson has turned the deed to his financially plagued Neverland Ranch over to a company that he has a partial stake in, effectively ending his reign as the King of the House That Pop Built. Then again, one could wonder what took so long. Jackson hasn’t spent any time at the Los Olivos, Calif., estate he bought in 1988 since being acquitted of child-molestation charges in 2005-crimes he was accused of committing on his 2,500-acre property, which in its heyday featured a working petting zoo, amusement park and various other kid-friendly attractions. Jackson nearly lost the whole kit and caboodle to foreclosure in May, but an eleventh-hour reprieve from L.A.-based real estate company Colony Capital, which bought a $23.5 million loan that the Thriller artist had been unable to pay back, saved Neverland from the auction block. MORE

LA TIMES: For his part, Jackson seemed to consider Rowe, whom he married in 1996, little more than a baby machine. When their daughter, Paris Michael Katherine, now 11, was born, he snatched her and “just went home with her with all the placenta all over her,” leaving Rowe behind in the hospital, Jackson told ABC News in 2003. When their son, Prince Michael Jr., now 12, told the interviewer, “I haven’t got a mother,” Jackson assented: “That’s right.” Jackson said the children would not benefit from contact with Rowe because “she can’t handle it.”She also appeared to love Jackson, even though their marriage was established for the sole purpose of bearing him children. Jackson rewarded Rowe with large sums of money for forsaking the children, and money appeared to be a concern when she later tried to obtain custody of them after the singer was accused of child molestation in 2003. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: THE RESURRECTION OF MICHAEL

Former Inquirer Pop Music Critic & Rolling Stone contributor, current NPR commentator and author of 1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die. We talk about the death of the music industry, the death of newspapers, the death of criticism and how he picked the songs you simply must hear before your own death. More fun than it sounds. Look for it Friday.

INQUIRER: Three men who were filmed being beaten and kicked by Philadelphia police last year were found not guilty today on charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault and conspiracy. Dwayne Dyches, 26; Brian Hall, 24; and Pete Hopkins, 20, were charged in a May 5, 2008, shoot-out in the city’s Feltonville section in which three people were wounded. The three men allegedly led police on a 21/2-mile chase that ended when police yanked them from Hall’s Mercury Grand Marquis near Second and Pike Streets, then beat and kicked them as a Fox29 helicopter captured the scene on tape. MORE

PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009, directed by Michael Mann, 140 minutes, U.S.)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC

It should have been a natural: action director Michael Mann and the Dillinger legend.  Tommy guns, fedoras, prison breaks and the final gundown in the streets of Chicago; it is easy to imagine the tough-minded Mann making one of his most compelling films out of these elements.  Such a film may be easy for Mann fans to imagine it but somehow thepossibilities have completely escaped Mann himself, who has against all odds served up a joyless and unmoving portrait of the final year of The Great Depression’s Most Wanted Bankrobber.

Feeling tremendously over blown at two hours an twenty minutes, Public Enemies’ long list of problems begins with its humdrum script, co-written by Mann and Irish screenwriter Ronan Bennett.  Telling the story of Dillinger’s pursuit by G-Man Melvin Purvis,  Public Enemies is a series of interchangeable bank robberies and narrow escapes strung  together in an entirely random manner, rolling on without form or structure until Dillinger’s luck inevitably runs out.   Mann strays from facts when it suits him (supplying the robber some romantic last words he never uttered) yet he refuses to give his story the momentum and the personal detail it needs to sweep us up in the tale, instead mounting familiar re-creations of gangster scenarios we’ve heard and seen countless time before.
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Standing L-R: Tito Jackson, Randy Jackson, Michael Jackson, Marlon Jackson, Jackie Jackson. Seated L-R: Joe Jackson, Leon Huff, Kenneth Gamble.  Photo taken in 1976 in Mr. Gamble’s office at Philadelphia International Records.

WIKIPEDIA: In 1975, Joseph negotiated a new recording contract with CBS Records, who offered a royalty rate of 20% per record, compared to Motown’s standard 2.8%; and would allow the Jackson brothers to write and produce their own records and play their own instruments. After unsuccessfully attempting to talk the group into staying on the label, Motown sued for breach of contract. Although Motown eventually let the group go, The Jackson 5 were forced to change their name to The Jacksons, because Motown retained the “Jackson 5″ trademark during the settlement of the lawsuit. The Jacksons also replaced Jermaine with the youngest Jackson brother, fourteen year old Randy, since Jermaine chose to stay with Motown and his father-in-law Berry Gordy (In 1973, Jermaine married Gordy’s daughter Hazel). Randy had been an unofficial member of The Jackson 5 since 1972, playing congas onstage as part of their live act.

After losing The Jacksons, Motown would not have another success of their caliber for the duration of Berry Gordy’s ownership of the label. Gordy often said of The Jackson 5 that they were, coming after the label’s most famous acts, “the last big stars to come rolling off the [Motown] assembly line.”^[5] In summer 1976, CBS television signed the Jackson family (including Michael, Marlon, Tito, Jackie, Randy, Rebbie, LaToya, and Janet) to appear in their own variety show, to compete with ABC’s Donny & Marie. The Jacksons debuted on June 16, 1976, and ran on CBS until its cancellation the following March. The show was the first variety show hosted by an African American family.

As part of CBS’s Philadelphia International Records division, and later moving over to Epic Records, The Jacksons continued releasing popular singles such as “Enjoy Yourself” (1976), produced by Philadelphia International’s Kenneth Gamble & Leon Huff. After two LPs produced by Gamble and Huff, The Jacksons wanted artistic control, and produced their next LP, 1978’s Destiny, on their own. MORE

EDITOR’S NOTE: According to Randex Communications, PIR plans to release archival video footage of the aforementioned recording sessions. Full press release after the jump.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following was posted in the COMMENTS section last night by Bdogg.

I have been living in the 215 for a stretch now & you know what I rep…i’m a L.a nigga & all that hateing add up to nothing. I had some run ins wit philly niggaz since I been here & i’m still standing, had 2 put a lil work in but let me stop becausa a nigga aint fin ta snitch on himself & no disrespect but philadelphia is a playground compared to L.a even tho philly was the murder capitol for a couple of years blood. My peoples from right here in philly seen a program on tv & told me that it stated some murders in L.a are not being recorded so that the city can make the murder rate lower & so the people won’t move away from cali & to keep people moving in. In L.A in da hood people can’t just walk around in any hood like you can in philly…you’ll get smoked right away blood! 1st day homey! if you don’t have a pass & a strap aint enough…it aint gon serve you but here in philly I been in every neighborhood, flamed up wit red rags, L.a fitted cap by myself & had no problems from no nigga for roaming around. I hold my own like a man str8t soldier even tho i’m not active in the gang life anymore…the landscape might change but the nigga remains the same & we aint trying to recruit any nigga from philly, gangbangin is a westside…my badd BESTSIDE thing palm tree’s & bomb weed. I know all niggaz in philly can’t be ridin the mob but majority of deez niggaz that I run accross eatin joey merlino’s dick, niggaz like that get’s no respect…& on the coast merlino! get’s no pass, we don’t ride on nobody’s jock but on the other hand I have some respect for your city because i’m a real nigga & it’s foul to dis a niggaz city but fuck the bustas fake phoney niggaz in philly dissin on the coast, all those disrespectful comments you can shuv str8t up your asshole homey! you bitch niggaz might like it. No dis 2 my real niggaz in the 215 & I know only the haters will send a diss, we call em busta & marks I expect a response from you on some weak shit because bitch niggaz are in every city even L.a & I know your type so handle your business but after this serving there will be no sequel…I said my piece & it’s real, some time you can lie to yourself but when the real prevail…the truth hurts! back home in L.a & in other states that I been in & I been in most, philadelphia aint even on the radar…anyway BPS Black P Stone Bloods, west L.a Crenshaw district, Baldwin Park homey, we don’t hate…wherever we go we dominate! Str8t like dat!