Phawker

OBAMA/BIDEN CAMPAIGN:  Bruce Springsteen is coming to Philadelphia this weekend to perform an acoustic set at a rally on the Ben Franklin Parkway in order to assist the Obama campaign’s voter registration and volunteer recruitment efforts. The concert will take place on Saturday at Benjamin Franklin Parkway between 20th and 22nd Streets. Gates open at 2:00 and the program will begin at 3:30. DEVELOPING…

UPDATE: Rolling Stone just asked me to cover this, and TIME is literally on the other line and wants to know what I think about the bailout. I am not making this up.

[Ticket info after the jump.]

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From our partners in New Media crime over at ScrappleTV comes this new bi-weekly night life feature hosted by Bob Concordia, who doesn’t let the fact that he is, like, 82 keep him from getting his rock on.

FRESH AIR

The new documentary Religulous offers a satirical — and very critical — look at the world’s religions. Directed by Larry Charles, the film features Bill Maher posing undercover as a man seeking spiritual guidance from various religious groups, including Christians, Jews, Muslims and Mormons. In a recent New York Times article, Maher described religion as “the ultimate hustle,” and likened his role in the film to that of Toto, the dog who pulls back the curtain to expose the shortcomings of the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. Maher is best known as the host of the HBO show Politically Incorrect, while Charles’s credits include Borat (which he directed) and the TV programs Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

NEW YORK TIMES: “I truly believe that unless we shed this skin, mankind is playing with real fire here,” [Bill Maher] said. “Because there’s nuclear weapons in the world and because there are suicide bombers and there are so many people who are anxious to get to that next world. They don’t look at the end of the world as a bad thing. That’s pretty scary. Until rationality is enshrined again and this magical thinking is marginalized, I’m a little nervous…[Organized religion is]  just the ultimate hustle,” he added. “It’s just selling an invisible product, and so if I can be Toto in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ pulling back the curtain, which is how I see religion, great, that’s fine, I’ll do that and get off the stage. I’m not looking to be the anti-messiah. [...]

“Anyone who’s religious is extremist. See, we’re just used to religion. It’s like what Matthew Arnold said about a tree. It’s not that there are no miracles. A tree is a miracle. You’re just used to it. And conversely religion is something we’re just used to. So the notion that God had a son, that he’s a single parent, and the son went on a suicide mission, and you’re drinking his blood on Sunday, that a man lived inside a whale and that the earth is 5,000 years old — all the essentials of religion that are in the Bible or the Koran — we’re used to them. But it doesn’t mean they’re not crazy, doesn’t mean they’re not ridiculous. And so to be religious at all is to be an extremist, is to be irrational.”  MORE

RADIO TIMES

Hour 1
Winning Pennsylvania. We talk about the latest polls, what Pennsylvanians care about and the political party’s strategies to appeal to voters in the upcoming presidential election. Our guests are ROBERT GLEASON, Chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania and T. J. ROONEY, Chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3
Hour 2
In years gone by, Americans idolized Cary Grant as the ultimate in masculinity – now it’s Adam Sandler, the consummate boy-man. In his new book “Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity,” cultural historian GARY CROSS examines the shift in masculinity that has given rise to this concept of the boy-man – a guy who would rather prolong the pleasures of youth than embrace the demands of adulthood. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3

CNN: PHILADELPHIA – Sarah Palin partook in an established political ritual on Saturday night when she headed to Tony Luke’s in south Philadelphia to order a pair of cheesesteaks with whiz and onions. But as the kitchen sizzled and orders were barked out, Palin found herself talking politics, calling McCain’s debate performance “awesome” and taking questions from a voter about the hunt for terrorists in Pakistan. MORE

CNN: WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain retracted Sarah Palin’s stance on Pakistan Sunday morning, after the Alaska governor appeared to back Sen. Barack Obama’s support for unilateral strikes inside Pakistan against terrorists. “She would not…she understands and has stated repeatedly that we’re not going to do anything except in America’s national security interest,” McCain told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos of Palin. “In all due respect, people going around and… sticking a microphone while conversations are being held, and then all of a sudden that’s—that’s a person’s position… This is a free country, but I don’t think most Americans think that that’s a definitive policy statement made by Governor Palin.” MORE

PHAWKER: Pakistan Shmakistan. What the people REALLY wanna know is: Pat’s or Geno’s?

ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION: Time and again, she has shown no real familiarity or comprehension of national or international policy. In fact, her interview with Katie Couric is destined to become political legend. Afterward, one McCain aide tried to explain Palin’s performance in that interview by claiming that Couric had asked Palin “a series of trapdoor questions.” They weren’t trapdoor questions, they were basic questions, and simply put. Things got even more absurd this week after a voter in Philadelphia asked Palin whether US forces ought to chase terrorists across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Absolutely, Palin said, thus taking a position identitical to that of Barack Obama and contradicting that of John McCain. Here’s how the conversation with the voter, Michael Rovito, played out:

“How about the Pakistan situation?” Rovito asked. “What’s your thoughts about that.”

“In Pakistan?” Palin responded.

“What’s going on over there, like Waziristan?”

“It’s working with Zardari to make sure that we’re all working together to stop the guys from coming in over the border,” Palin said. “And we’ll go from there.”

“Waziristan is blowing up,” Rovito replied.

“Yeah, it is,” Palin said. “And the economy there is blowing up, too.”

“So we do cross-border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan, you think?” Rovito asked.

“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said.

It’s hardly unheard of for a vice presidential candidate to express views different from that of the presidential nominee. Joe Biden has already done so on occasion. But in a later interview with Palin at his side, McCain claimed it was somehow “gotcha journalism” to have reported Palin’s response. Gotcha journalism, to report accurately a vice presidential nominee’s public response to a voter? Here’s the interview. Note also how McCain and Palin try to mislead viewers about the nature of the exchange with the voter. MORE

DAN RUBIN: For two weeks, Fumocrats Jim Kenney and Frank DiCicco have found their public – and some private – moments captured on videotape by Ed Kirlin, a consultant for Local 98 of the electricians union. Kirlin, you might remember, is the guy the city Ethics Board has accused of being behind flyers that questioned then-mayoral candidate Michael Nutter’s motivations for leaving the Catholic Church. After the Sept. 18 session, when DiCicco walked over to Committee of Seventy head Zack Stalberg and youth advocate Shelly Yanoff, DiCicco warned them they were being watched by a Local 98 operative. Kirlin said, “Actually I’m a private citizen who’s doing a documentary on crooked politicians with bad toupees.” DiCicco said he had no idea what Kirlin was up to. Or what he was talking about. “I’m not a corrupt politician,” he told me, “and this is my own hair.” MORE

CHRIS BRENNAN: In the latest chapter, [Latrice] Bryant attacked Fox 29 in an apology to Goode while saying that her behavior had been “inappropriate and inexcusable.” That refers to signs she held up in Council that read “Fox 29 News are racist,” and equating a reporter with the Ku Klux Klan. Bryant noted that Fox 29 had been “stalking me” during Council’s three-month summer recess. “And this was a period in which I was not even contractually required to work,” Bryant wrote. Anne Kelly-King, Council’s chief accounting officer, said that that claim is not accurate. Full-time Council employees must work 37.5 hours each week, including the summer, unless they use vacation time or sick leave. Bryant again injected race into the issue when she complained that Fox 29 reported her salary. She said that she remained “just as steadfastly opposed to Fox 29′s implications that an educated 36-year-old African-American woman with nearly 15 years of city work experience should not earn a decent salary consistent with what white males (who do less work) commonly earn.” While Goode and Bryant have thrashed about, no one in city government has offered any serious criticism of their actions. MORE

INQUIRER: A 32-year-old man was fatally shot early this morning in West Philadelphia, police said. The man, whose name was not released, was shot multiple times around 1 a.m. at 55th Street and Baltimore Avenue, police said. He was transported to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and pronounced dead.

The more they stay uncannily the same? Or do they?  CLICK TO ENLARGE

TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama’s senior aides believe he is on course for a landslide election victory over John McCain and will comfortably exceed most current predictions in the race for the White House.Their optimism, which is said to be shared by the Democratic candidate himself, is based on information from private polling and on faith in the powerful political organisation he has built in the key swing states. Insiders say that Mr Obama’s apparent calm through an unusually turbulent election season is because he believes that his strength among first time voters in several key states has been underestimated, both by the media and by the Republican Party.

Mr Obama has come under fire from within Democratic ranks over his message and his tactics. Critics say he has failed to connect with the blue-collar workers seen as crucial to winning the election, and too reluctant to make direct attacks on Mr McCain. But his aides are convinced that he has a strong chance of winning no fewer than nine states won by George W.Bush in the closely contested 2000 election, including former Republican strongholds like North Carolina, Virginia and even Indiana, which have not voted Democrat for a generation.

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, said last week that Obama had “a lot of opportunity” in states which Mr Bush won four years ago. But in private briefings in Washington, a member of Mr Obama’s inner circle of policy advisers went much further in spelling out why the campaign’s working assumptions far exceed the expectations of independent observers. “Public polling companies and the media have underestimated the scale of new Democratic voters registration in these states,” the campaign official told a friend. “We’re much stronger on the ground in Virginia and North Carolina than people realise. If we get out the vote this may not be close at all.” MORE

TALKING POINTS MEMO: In a development that could have a significant impact on the presidential race, the rise in registered Democrats has far outpaced Republican registration in many key swing states, giving Dems a clear registration advantage in a lot of them, while wiping away one-time GOP registration advantages in a couple others. We compiled these registration numbers mainly from the secretaries of state in the battlegrounds — and they are are striking. You can view them in our chart below. MORE

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NEW YORK TIMES: Girl Talk, whose real name is Gregg Gillis, makes danceable musical collages out of short clips from other people’s songs; there are more than 300 samples on “Feed the Animals,” the album he released online at illegalart.net in June. He doesn’t get the permission of the composers to use these samples, as United States copyright law mostly requires, because he maintains that the brief snippets he works with are covered by copyright law’s “fair use” principle (and perhaps because doing so would be prohibitively expensive).

Girl Talk’s rising profile has put him at the forefront of a group of musicians who are challenging the traditional restrictions of copyright law along with the usual role of samples in pop music. Although artists like the Belgian duo 2 Many DJs have been making “mash-ups” out of existing songs for years, Girl Talk is taking this genre to a mainstream audience with raucous performances that often end with his shirt off and much of the audience onstage.

On a sweltering July afternoon Mr. Gillis, 26, who lives in Pittsburgh, opened his laptop on the bar at the Knitting Factory in TriBeCa and discussed how he builds songs out of samples. Clad in a black T-shirt, jeans and a blue sweatband to tame his long hair, he looked less like a club D.J. than a member of a rock band. Mr. Gillis, who said he saw “Feed the Animals” as an album of his own work rather than a D.J. mix, spent several months testing out ideas during live performances, then several more matching beats and polishing transitions. He estimates that each minute of “Feed the Animals” took him about a day to create. “I want to be a musician and not just a party D.J.,” he said, “and like any musician I want to put out a classic album.” MORE

[Illustration by DRUNKPUPPY]

SMIRKING CHIMP: Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she’s a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed middle-American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin’ Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else’s, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV -and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation. MORE

POLITICO: Of concern to McCain’s campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin’s interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing. The Palin aide, after first noting how “infuriating” it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions. After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.  There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence. MORE

RELATED:  “As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” – H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE (2007, directed by Alex Gibney, 106 minutes, U.S.)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC

Everything I know about politics I learned at the movies. Take torture. It was watching all those WWII movies with my older brother that introduced me to the U.S. policy on torture and war, especially prison camp films like The Great Escape, The Bridge On the River Kwai and Stalag 17. In each of them, the U.S. soldiers were left fairly unmolested, forced by dumb luck to wait out the war in lousy P.O.W. camp conditions. Occasionally a Japanese or German commander would slap an Allied soldier in front of his men and the troops would become outraged at the enemy’s disdain for Geneva Conventions and the cause of fair play. “See? That is where we’re better then them” my brother would point out. “We won’t stoop to the enemy’s level.”

While the reality of war is undoubtedly uglier and more complicated then old Hollywood films, it was a seismic shift in policy when post 9-11, the Bush administration began to describe the protections offered to prisoners by the Geneva Conventions as “quaint.” Suddenly a duty the President swore to uphold is merely “quaint”? Alex Gibney’s Oscar-nominated documentary Taxi To The Dark Side painstakingly maps out where this newly slippery slope has gotten left us and it makes for one of the more disturbing evenings you could spend in the theater. It’s like Saw 4 with a more profound mindfuck at its root.

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[Photo by AMY Z. QUINN]

JUST LIKE BUDDY HOLLY: Weezer, Susquehanna Center, Saturday Night

BY AMY Z. QUINN  I was pretty sure I’d made it through Saturday night’s Weezer show without feeling too old when on the way back to the car, niece Jenny turned to me and said “Who is Buddy Holly, anyway?” Cue that wah-wah-waaaaah “Thank you for playing!” sound effect.  Of course, I was happy to tell her all about the Texas rocker, about the nerd-sex glasses and “Everyday” and “Peggy Sue” and The Day The Music Died, though I stopped short of going into why I still think Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” video is the best thing I’ve ever seen. She’s only 13 and was born well after “Happy Days” went off the air and has no idea about The Fonz. But judging strictly by the number of kids her age in the audience — mostly packs of longish-haired boys — at the Venue Formerly Known As The Tweeter Center in Camden, we likely weren’t the only ones having a conversation like that after the show. [Continued after the jump]

WEEZER: Buddy Holly

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BY JENN W. On Saturday my aunt Amy, who is the Editrix here on Phawker, took me to the Susquehanna Bank Center formerly known (and what my friends still call) the Tweeter Center. we went to see one of my favorite bands, Tokyo Police Club. My aunt got me into them. They are really great and I never expected them to come to tour in Philly. I knew a few songs by Weezer and the other band Angels & Airwaves. I got some songs from the Blue album by Weezer and listened to them for like two weeks straight. I originally did it just to learn a few words but I found myself dancing around my room to “Buddy Holly” and “Undone (The Sweater Song).” The week before the show I kept saying to my friends, ‘The show is on Saturday. I can’t wait!.’ I could tell they were ready to duct tape my mouth shut. [Continued after the jump]

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WALL STREET JOURNAL: A bipartisan group of U.S. House lawmakers defeated a $700 billion rescue plan for Wall Street on Monday, rejecting pleas from the Bush administration and congressional leaders from both parties of the potential dire consequences of policymakers not acting to help financial markets. The 205-228 vote against the plan sent stocks plummeting, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down around 500 points as news of the vote spread through Wall Street. The defeat came despite House leaders holding open the vote for well beyond the 15-minute time limit, supporters were unable to convince enough members of either party to switch their votes against the proposal. The defeat is a massive setback for the Bush administration, specifically the Treasury Department, as well as lawmakers who have been working throughout the last week on the legislation in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings as well as the government’s bailout of American International Group Inc. and its takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. MORE

NEW YORK TIMES: Stocks took a dramatic plunge on Monday afternoon after the government’s bailout plan — touted by its supporters as a balm for the current market stress — failed to pass the House of Representatives, setting off a fresh wave of anxious selling. In yet another day that has shaken the embattled canyons of Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials fell to a nearly 700-point deficit in the moments after it became clear that the legislation could not muster the support it needed to pass the House. After recovering slightly, the Dow was again down by 700 points shortly before 3:30 p.m. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the steepest, deepest Dow Jones plunge in recorded history.

[Source: BUSINESSWEEK]

POLITICO: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked. The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy. Shortly before the vote, McCain had bragged about his involvement and mocked Sen. Barack Obama for staying on the sidelines. “I’ve never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I’m not going to stop now,” McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “Sen. Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn’t want to get involved. Then he was monitoring the situation.” McCain, grinning, flashed a sarcastic thumbs up. “That’s not leadership. That’s watching from the sidelines,” he added to cheers and applause. MORE

OBAMA: “This is a moment of national crisis, and today’s inaction in Congress as well as the angry and hyper-partisan statement released by the McCain campaign are exactly why the American people are disgusted with Washington.  Now is the time for Democrats and Republicans to join together and act in a way that prevents an economic catastrophe.  Every American should be outraged that an era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and Washington has led us to this point, but now that we are here, the stability of our entire economy depends on us taking immediate action to ease this crisis,” said Obama-Biden campaign spokesman Bill
Burton.

FRESH AIR

Once known mostly for his sweetly tentative portrayal of awkward, sexually anxious teenager George-Michael Bluth on the cult TV hit Arrested Development, Michael Cera became a bona fide movie star in 2007 with his winningly geeky performances in the hit comedies Juno and Superbad. As an actor, Time magazine’s Richard Corliss notes this week, Cera “has the gift of appearing both wise beyond his years and not at all happy about it … as if he’d received a vision of what life has in store for him, and it worries him sick.” Next up for Cera: Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, a music-fueled teen love story shot largely in the Manhattan clubland where its band geeks and It girls posture and play. He plays Nick, a teenage bass player nursing a broken heart after his pretty but shallow girlfriend dumps him. Cera talks to Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross about his latest project, about the singularly idiosyncratic playlist that is his career so far, and about the “new movie phenomenon” of the regular-guy leading man. Among the anecdotes: making his Arrested Development audition tape in his mom’s bedroom, in front of a bedsheet.

ALSO, most people generate an immense amounts of digital data during a single day — often without a second thought. But Stephen Baker, a senior writer at BusinessWeek, warns that the information generated by email messages, credit card purchases, cell phones calls and Internet shopping is being monitored by a group of entrepreneurial mathematicians, who are poised to use it to control human behavior. Baker’s new book, Numerati, examines the “mathematical modeling” of humanity — and its potential consquenses.

ALSO, Oscar Award-winning actor Paul Newman died on Sept. 26 of complications from lung cancer. Over the course of his decades-long career, Newman starred in dozens of hit films, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, The Color Of Money and The Road To Perdition. Newman grew up in Ohio, where his father owned a sporting goods store. He began working in the store when he was 10. Later he ran a laundry business and took a turn as a door-to-door salesman peddling Fuller brushes — jobs that honed the business acumen Newman would later use to become a salad-dressing entrepreneur.

In the early 1950s and 1960s, Newman studied alongside James Dean and Marlon Brando at Manhattan’s Actor’s Studio. At the time, he didn’t realize that he would be a part of a new generation of acting. “I don’t know at the time that you really know that you’re part of something new,” he told Terry Gross in a 2003 interview. “You just know that you’re part of something that’s really exciting, and I certainly did feel that. Although I must say, I had no idea what I was doing until maybe 10 years ago.” Newman viewed his early roles with a critical eye; he remembered his first big-screen gig in the biblical epic The Silver Chalice as “real wreckage,” and he lamented the fact that he “was always working awful hard [in his early roles]. … I take a look at all that stuff that I did previously [and] wish I had another chance to take another crack at it.” This interview was originally broadcast on Oct. 2, 2003.

RADIO TIMES

Hour 1
We talk with representatives from the presidential campaigns about the candidate’s economic policies. MARK ZANDI, is an unpaid economic advisor to the McCain presidential campaign and Chief Economist and co-founder of Moody’s Economy.com and JARED BERNSTEIN, Informal economic advisor to the Obama presidential campaign and Senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3
Hour 2
In his new book “Autism’s False Prophents,” CHOP pediatrician and infectious disease specialist PAUL OFFIT defends the safety of vaccinating children in response to beliefs that vaccines may be linked to autism-related disorders. He talks with Marty in the studio. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3

THE WORLD CAFE

The Ting Tings‘ debut album, We Started Nothing, has propelled the British duo to worldwide fame on the strength of some of the catchiest pop songs in recent memory. Blending looped guitar and synthesizer riffs, layered vocal harmonies and powerful drum beats, the pair has crafted a slew of danceable tunes, including the sassy punk sing-along that topped the U.K. singles chart, “That’s Not My Name.” The duo performs songs from We Started Nothing in a session with World Cafe guest host Michaela Majoun.

TING TINGS: Be The One

RELATED: Be The One will be released on CD and coloured 7″ vinyl in the UK on 13th October. A special download bundle will be available through iTunes from 12th October.  

PREVIOUSLY: The curiously named Ting Tings are fronted by a blonde-wigged glamazon with a CBGBs-redux wardrobe and a demonstrable willingness to fight for her right to party, who could pass for — depending on how much you squint — either the daughter of Edina Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous or Deborah Harry circa “Rapture.” She is known by many names, precious few of them accurate. For instance, they call her ‘hell’. They call her ‘Stacey”, they call her ‘Jane’. That’s not her name — Katie White is her name. They also call her ‘quiet girl’, or so she says, but believe you me, she was a riot Wednesday night at way-sold-out Johnny Brendas where the Ting Tings put on a short, sharp and electrifying set that put the lie to the post-modern self-deprecation implicit in the title of the band’s debut album, We Started Nothing. If nothing else, the Tings Tings started a good time.

The second half of the Ting Tings duality is drummer/guitarist/singer Jules De Martino, usually seen wearing a hoodie and aviator shades that hide his small, squinty eyes and amplify his matinee idol cheek bones. Last night he was a perpetual motion machine, an always-in-the-pocket groovemeister and impressive multi-tasker — at several points he played guitar and sang while simultaneously keeping time on the kick drum and hi-hat, a display of one-man band aplomb not seen since Hasil Adkins. And during the encore, a ripping spin through the feral funk of “We Started Nothing”, De Martino just plain beat the drums like he wanted them dead. But for the bulk of the night, the Ting Tings were all slow-burn cool, finally boiling over on an ecstatic rendition of the altogether sublime “That’s Not My Name” and a put-your-hands-in-the-air run through “Great DJ”, writ anthemic by White’s chugging, nicked-from-Eddie-Money guitar line. Hot fun in the city, indeed. MORE

NPR: Ting Tings Live At The 9:30 Club In D.C.