Photo by Dan Burn-Forti EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published on April 28th, 2012. To mark the auspicious occasion of Nick Lowe, backed by Los Straight Jackets, playing a SOLD OUT show at Ardmore Music Hall on Tuesday April 9th, we reprising it here. Enjoy. BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT Nick Lowe’s nearly-half-century-long career as a singer-songwriter, record producer, and all-around musical instigator is a one-man Village Green Preservation Society, to quote the Kinks’ 1968 mission statement. After brief spell in a Cream-influenced psychedelic rock band, Kippington Lodge, Lowe and his fellow UK mates, including future standouts in the late-’70s […]
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How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Love The Sonics
BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT As a buzz went through social media and the Philadelphia rock scene in the days leading up to The Sonics’ Sunday night appearance at the TLA, I found myself feeling shamefully out of step. It seemed all of my friends would be there, all of my friends, that is, beside my quartet of fellow rock ‘n roll curmudgeons. I wanted to post some holier-than-thou thought on the matter, but that wouldn’t have been cool, not even by my standards. I wanted to pick up the phone and bitch to my friend Anthony, but he […]
SONG OF THE YEAR: Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”
BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT This is the story of how I learned to stop worrying and love Taylor Swift. The year just passed was one of the most challenging to date for me personally and professionally, but there was one song that got me through it. Let’s back up. One February evening I came home, announced I needed time alone, then lay on the floor to contemplate my ever-diminishing future. The company where I’d worked for the last 10 years, with core colleagues stretching back an additional 10 years, had been sold to a UK company. The unrest […]
BOOKS: Tied To The Whipping Post
BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT What makes a band a band and not just a group of musicians who play music together? Jazz musicians often play together, but they rarely form bands. Supporting musicians flow in and out behind a clear band leader, the way they did behind Miles Davis, helping to drive his many stylistic permutations. What’s the value of a band, why do people bother? In rock ‘n roll, countless collections of musicians undeniably exist as a band despite barely qualifying as musicians. Alan Paul’s oral history of the Allman Brothers Band, One Way Out, is a […]
REWIND 2012: The Year In Phawker Interviews
Talk is cheap, especially on the Internet, but at Phawker it’s totally free, baby — at least for you, dear reader. Trolling through the vast and dusty Phawker archives, we have dug up fat sack of conversations from the past year that are worth re-visiting: Dick Dale, King Of The Surf Guitar; graphic novelist Charles Burns, the Edgar Allan Poe of right now; photographer Joe Kazcmarek, who tirelessly chronicles the murder-scarred backstreets of North and West Philly; Jim Reid, lead singer of The Jesus And Mary Chain; Anton Newcombe, cult leader of The Brian Jonestown Massacre; Hardball host Chris Matthews; […]
Q&A w/ Nick Lowe, Elder Statesman Of Pure Pop
Photo by Dan Burn-Forti BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT Nick Lowe’s 45-year career as a singer-songwriter, record producer, and all-around musical instigator is a one-man Village Green Preservation Society, to quote the Kinks’ 1968 mission statement. After brief spell in a Cream-influenced psychedelic rock band, Kippington Lodge, Lowe and his fellow UK mates, including future standouts in the late-’70s new wave scene, got an early start on “preserving the old ways” in the Americana roots-rock band, Brinsley Schwarz. A big push to launch the band in the States flamed spectacularly, and in the US their records would be left for […]
INSTA-REVIEW: Bruce Springsteen Wrecking Ball
BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT The opening synth squeaks and electronic handclaps of “We Take Care of Our Own,” the kick-off single from Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball album, makes me wonder if Bruce and His E Street Band have been hi-jacked by Modern English. The mix further ups the play for a “contemporary” sound with tepid use of early ’90s-style vocal echo gently nudging along The Boss’ opening lines. Springsteen and His occasional repetitive synth riff songs (eg, “Born in the USA”) are strange birds in the catalog, but the repetition allows the “visionary” furor of His lyrics a chance […]
BACK TO MONO: The Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed
BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT How deep should first musical impressions cut? Is there more in a track than may have first caught my ear? Do I clutch too tightly to the romantic notion that no record should ever sound different than how I first heard it, or more accurately the collective power of the record’s first 100 spins? It’s not like I listen to my childhood vinyl on the same record player I had as a kid, but I run up against such questions any time I pick up a reissue of a beloved album that’s been remastered or […]
THE CONTRARIAN: Less Would’ve Been More
BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT They had to go and make it longer, didn’t they? The Rolling Stones couldn’t leave the legacy of the sprawling Exile on Main Street alone. In this newly remastered, expanded edition rock’s most notorious tax exiles add 10 previously unreleased/unfinished tracks. Shotgun-worthy Don Was helped shepherd these outtakes into the 21st century, with Mick Jagger writing new lyrics and adding new vocal parts, in some cases. Considering that the Stones have been reviving leftover jams as new material for more than half their career (e.g., “Start Me Up” had been sitting around for 6 years before being […]
INSTA-REVIEW: Robyn Hitchcock Propellor Time
BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3’s Propellor Time is an understated release that was recorded, mostly live, in a week’s time in 2006, between the recordings for two prior Venus 3 releases, Ole Tarantula! and Goodnight Oslo. Never having been the world’s greatest Robyn Hitchcock fan, I can’t be sure of the pulse of his fans today, but if anyone’s expecting a collection of jangly songs about the sexual lives of insects and fishes, prepare for a letdown. Hitchcock does not abandon all his patented silly, creepy crawly motifs, such as the verse in “Afterlife” […]
BEST OF: Our Favorite Albums Of 2009
LA ROUX — s/t The only reason I came to know of La Roux is because my disgruntled friend, Sam of Manchester, England, wouldn’t stop going on about how much he hated the album. We were going over sets for our next DJ event in Tokyo, discussing what kind of music to scrap and what to keep. “I can’t stand them,” he said of the British duo, “but Tokyoites eat it up. Throw it on, and they go nuts.” His eyebrows were furrowed, as always, forming a permanent scowl. “More proof that Japanese people have the shittiest taste in music,” […]
NP: Lou Reed Berlin: Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse
Now playing on Phawker Radio! BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT Each new release by Lou Reed promises a mix of beauty, truth, horror, and mostly unintended humor. That’s a big part of why I’ve hung in with the guy through so many stilted, hectoring albums, such as the spiritually rock-bottom Rock ‘n Roll Heart, the squirm-inducing Mistrial, and the prematurely acclaimed New York, an album that within a few years of its release played like a grainy rebroadcast of an outdated CNN current events show. Reed never ceases growing up in public, and when we catch him at a relatively fruitful stage […]
INSTA-REVIEW: Dear Science
Now playing on Phawker Radio! BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT It’s good to hear a band make something worthwhile out of the scrapheap of Yamaha DX-7 synths and Linn drum machines that was the ’80s. Whether sounding like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark on human growth hormone on “Halfway Home” or INXS with the shades pulled back and a window opened on “Crying,” human hands firmly guide the mouse. Unlike Gnarls Barkley, another practitioner of Silicon Soul, there’s a muscular sexuality at the core of TV’s productions. Like mid-period Roxy Music, you can take this band to a fancy restaurant […]