Eight years ago, Bill Ricchini released Ordinary Time, which still stands as one of the finest collections of pop music to ever emerge from the 215. After attempting to transition out of music and get some credit in the straight world, Bill wisely realized that he is a lifer and got back in the game with a new band, Summer Fiction, and a swell self-titled debut. You can check it out HERE. Bill will mark the CD’s release with rare appearance at Johnny Brendas tomorrow night. In the mean time, check out this groovy-cool video for the album’s catchy lead-off […]
WHISTLE BLOWING: Wikileaks Plans To Do To Wall Street What It’s Done To The Pentagon & State Dept.
[Illustration by AARON MITCHELL] FORBES: Early next year, Julian Assange says, a major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out. Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings. The data dump will lay bare the finance firm’s secrets on the Web for every customer, every competitor, every regulator to examine and pass judgment on. When? Which bank? What documents? Cagey as always, Assange won’t say, so his claim is impossible to verify. But he has always followed through on his threats. Sitting for a […]
LISTEN LIKE THIEVES: The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” Deconstructed Track By Track
The folks over at Dangerous Minds have posted a series of must-hear YouTubes that deconstructs the classic mix of “Gimme Shelter” track by track, so you can just hear Jagger and Merry Clayton’s vox, or Keef’s guitar track, or Bill Wyman’s bass or Charlie Watts drums. It’s sorta like peeling back each layer of paint on a Picasso. Fascinating, Captain. Check it out HERE. RELATED: A lucky few New Yorkers got to see legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards in conversation with music writer Anthony DeCurtis at the New York Public Library this fall. Tickets to the event sold out […]
A.P. TICKER: Piggy Of The Week
People like you and me are never, repeat NEVER, going to join the ranks of the rich, because the game is rigged against people like you and me. But the moneyed class like to perpetuate the illusion that we are all just a few lucky breaks away from becoming independently wealthy to create voter sympathy for massive tax cuts for people earning more than a bazillion a year — because, ‘Hey, I could one day be one of those people making more than a bazillion a year and then that tax cut is gonna come in handy.’ And the moon […]
TONITE: Webb Of Intrigue
Webbmedia Group CEO Amy Webb is an author, speaker and future thinker, adapting current and emerging technologies for use in communications. She has spent more than 15 years working with digital media, founding several web-based companies and now advising various startups, retailers, government agencies and media organizations as well as Webbmedia’s clients all over the world. She will be the featured speaker at tonight’s meeting of Philadelphia Initiative for Journalistic Innovation which starts at 5:30 PM at the Tuttleman Learning Center at the corner of 13th Street and Montgomery Avenue on Temple’s main campus. (Map) Amy began her career as […]
KITCHEN BITCH: Leftoverture
BY MAVIS LINNEMANN I, like you, am still eating turkey and I’m starting to get sick of it. I decided last night that I wanted to make something very homey with my leftover turkey in the spirit of the holidays, something comforting but not at all related to Thanksgiving. In moments like these, there’s only one place to turn: mom. My mom was (still is) the queen of comfort food. Since there were so many mouths to feed in my family (triplets + me and my dad), casseroles were a staple in my mom’s culinary repertoire, and it’s no wonder […]
EARLY WORD: NPR For The Jeff
In the wake of his hard-hitting Daily Beast piece on the Kensington Strangler and the gloves-off editorial he wrote for Phawker railing against the Philadelphia police departments’ unspoken policy of ignoring allegations of sexual violence against prostitutes, Jeff Deeney has been invited to discuss all the above on Radio Times tomorrow at 10 AM.
BOOK REVIEW: Jay-Z’s Decoded
BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD One thing is clear about Jay-Z’s new book, the memoir-cum-rap-treatise Decoded: He didn’t write it for the money. There are two “cash cow” stories he completely left out of the book. In the 334 pages documenting his life experiences, the names Nas and Beyoncé appear no more than once each. He never discusses his marriage with the R&B superstar and doesn’t even allude to his well-publicized and oft discussed feud with his Illmatic New York foil. So, if you are looking for a gossip-filled book of big-booty sexploits and MC pissing contests, you’ll be fully disappointed with […]
WHISTLE BLOWN: Massive Wikileaks Dump Of State Department Cables Sets World Of Diplomacy On Fire
THE GUARDIAN: The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as February this year. At the start of a series of daily extracts from the US embassy cables – many designated “secret” – the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN leadership. These two revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world. But […]
RIP: Leslie Nielsen, Duke Of Deadpan, Dead At 84
EW: The master of parody boasted a talent for delivering the most ridiculous lines in the straightest way possible, cloaking outright absurdity in straight-faced obliviousness. Ironically enough, the foundation of that earnest gravitas was built early in his career as a dramatic actor: After serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force and studying at New York City’s famed Actors Studio, the Saskatchewan-born Nielsen popped up on early ’50s TV. He received his first big film break playing sturdy Commander J.J. Adams in the 1956 sci-fi flick Forbidden Planet. Over the next few decades, he established himself as a reliable, handsome, […]
Ex-Inquirer Editor-In-Chief Bill Marimow Debuts New Investigative Reporting Role With Damning Piece On School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman
INQUIRER: In a highly unusual move, city School Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman interceded to remove a contractor from a $7.5 million, no-bid emergency project and then awarded the work to a small company to install surveillance cameras in 19 dangerous schools, according to sources with extensive experience in district business operations. IBS Communications Inc., the Philadelphia firm that was awarded the project, was not on a state-approved list of contractors eligible for emergency work. Without explanation, sources said, Ackerman summoned key aides to a meeting Sept. 23 and ordered them to award the work to IBS, a minority firm, without […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Foxy Shazam At The TLA
BY PELLE GUNTHER “If I had a genie, all three of those wishes would be that tonight was THE BEST SHOW EVER,” Eric Nally, front man for Ohio’s Foxy Shazam, screamed into his mic before raging through their single song set and leaving the stage with a nice “Thank you for having us, we’re Foxy Shazam.” Although they were thankfully cheered back on for an hour long “encore”, even that single song wouldn’t have disappointed. With Nally’s mic stand tricks, and the band’s various acrobatics and stage antics the show was as much a theatrical act as a concert with […]
FREE WILLIE: Busting Willie Nelson For Possessing Pot Is Like Busting Firemen For Wearing Helmets
[Painting by MILO] ROLLING STONE: Willie Nelson was arrested yesterday at a border patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas after agents reportedly found 6 ounces of marijuana on his tour bus. Mickey Raphael, Nelson’s longtime harmonica player, tells Rolling Stone that the singer, who posted a $2,500 bond was freed by 1:30 p.m. yesterday, is in good spirits. “He said he feels great — he lost six ounces.” Raphael says Nelson, 77, was traveling without his band from California, where he spent the Thanksgiving holiday, to Austin, TX, where he owns a ranch. The El Paso Times reports that agents […]