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A couple weeks ago, I watched directorial duo The Harrys shoot a video for Kurt Vile's "Never Run Away." I wrote about it for today's paper. Below are my (amateur) shots from the shoot.
Never question Hova. Though we found out here that Made in America 2 was all but a done deal the day after MIA 1, you had to wonder what the sequel would look like bill-wise since Jay-Z is playing with Justin Timberlake throughout late summer (including stops in Philly and NJ). By now you know that Jay, Live Nation and Budweiser has two Philly dates, Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, with Beyonce, her sis Solange and Nine Inch Nails topping the bills. Along with announcing MIA2 news, Hova dropped a new tune today on his website is response to Congressional hassles with his Cuban links.
Billy Weiss, the co-owner of Woody’s, just opened his Rosewood lounge on 13th and Walnut, a Hollywood-themed cocktail spot done up in purples and golds with lots of chandeliers that you can enter on Walnut or through Woody’s.
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First off I've got to say that the cheapest beer at Johnny Brenda's is a three dollar Kenzinger which I'm going to have to imagine is not nearly cheap enough for L.A. skate punk shredders FIDLAR (ICYMI - fuck it, dog - life's a risk).They opened with a sick set complete with stage diving cameos from Wavves' Nathan Williams and a Descendents cover.
Though the mood of Wavves' latest Afraid of Heights is considerably less beachy than say, King of the Beach, their set was all about good times and summertime vibes in a hot and sweaty Johnny Brenda's. Oh and that Sonic Youth 100% was kind of the best thing ever.
Deadline: 5 p.m., Tuesday, April 16
Fiction: $5 entry fee per story. Stories should be 3,000 words or less and previously unpublished. No more than three fiction submissions per author.
Poetry: $5 entry fee per five poems. No more than 10 poems per poet.
Prizes: Winners get all the money — minus the judges’ honorariums — and have their work printed in City Paper. Runners up, also chosen by the judges, get posted online. Hopefully there will be a reading, too (but we said that last year).
The first Hidden City festival in 2009 opened the doors of several usually inaccessible buildings to the public, from the fairly well-known, like the Inquirer Building's tower, to the obscure, like Tacony's Disston Saw Works, to the truly spectacular, like the broken-down stage of the former Met-franchise opera house on North Broad. Each space had a specific art or music installation somehow related to the building's history.
So they're doing it again from May 23-June 30, they announced this morning, and they need a lot of volunteers and cash to pull it off: Nine (probably) projects across eight sites, each with its own separate Kickstarter-like thing to route donations of money, man-hours or specific items (tools, old musical instruments, etc.) to whichever project the donator is most interested in.
While the partner artists are mostly well established - Ars Nova, Data Garden, King Britt, the Dufala Brothers - I'm not embarrassed to admit that I'd heard of only one of the sites, Washington Square's Athenaeum, where the press conference was actually being held. The other sites were a pretty interesting scatter plot around the city: A in Germantown, a South Philly synagogue that's going to be slowly covered by textiles from Andrew Dahlgren's knitting machines, Frankford's Globe Dye Factory. The only place I could even picture off the top of my head was the building at Lancaster and Powelton in West Philly, which will be turned into what sounds like a giant pillow fort minus the pillows.
The sites will be open Thursday-Sunday over the stretch of the festival. Unfortunately, it's still a little pricey — $25 for single tickets, $150 for a pass to everything NOTE: That's what they said at the press conference, but just got an email update:
We’re offering special discounted deals on the Festival tickets and passes to Hidden City members. The regular price for a one day Festival pass is $20; a weekend pass $40; an all Festival pass $70. Members will pay only $15, $30, and $50 so we encourage you to become a Hidden City member today.
I need an ab-soul cleanse after the Made In America smarm. So, here, check out the 2013 Ladyfest Philly lineup. It's June 7-9. Go here for more info, including the workshop lineup.
- 3Jane
- Amanda X
- Attia Taylor
- Aye Nako
- Batty
- Big Mouth
- Black Wine
- Blizzard Babies
- US Girls
- Ghost Ship (Rosali Middleman and Mary Lattimore)
- +HIRS+
- In School
- Kate Ferencz
- Mindtroll
- Parasol
- Peeple Watchin’
- Potty Mouth
- Priests
- Screaming Females
- Shady Hawkins
- Trophy Wife
- Void Vision
- Whore Paint
The lineup for 2013 Made In America (brought to you by Budweiser, because fuck Yuengling) is being announced (via Spotify, because fuck artists). Oh geez this is annoying. They're announcing them one by one.
EDIT: Okay, the highlights: Nine Inch Nails, Solange, Beyoncé, Emeli Sandé, Kendrick Lamar, Wiz Khalifa, Deadmau5, Public Enemy, Queens of the Stone Age.
Here's the full lineup:
- Nine Inch Nails
- Solange
- Gaslight Anthem
- Emeli Sandé
- Schoolboy Q
- Jesse Rose
- Kendrick Lamar
- Fitz and The Tantrums
- Wolfgang Gartner
- AlunaGeorge
- Haim
- Wiz Khalifa
- Nero
- Ab-Soul
- Feed Me / Crystal Fighters
- GTA
- Jay Rock
- 3LAU
- Imagine Dragons
- Calvin Harris
- A$ap Rocky
- Miguel
- Redlight
- Rudimental
- Phoenix
- Porter Robinson
- 2 Chainz
- Macklemore
- Robert DeLong
- TJR
- Public Enemy
- Queens of the Stone Age
- Deadmau5
- Beyoncé
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: The Butterfly Project
GENRE: Family theater
GROUP: Wolf Performing Arts Center
ATTENDED: Mon., April 8, 7:30 p.m., Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: The play by Celeste Raspanti, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, based on the book of the same name, uses the art and poetry from the children of Terezin [Concentration Camp] to tell their story of courage and survival. ... a young Jewish girl enters the concentration camp alone. Just when all seems lost, she meets a hopeful teacher who helps her and the rest of the children express themselves through art and poetry.
WE THINK: More a testament than a play, I Never Saw Another Butterfly reveals the terror and dismay felt by children sent to the Terezin concentration camp; of the more than 15,000 who passed through, only 100 survived World War II. Wolf has performed it for free 40 times all over the area over the 2012-2013 season at community venues and schools; on Holocaust Remembrance Day, they got to do it in the Kimmel Center.
An eloquent love story narrated by a survivor is framed by the stark historical facts, staged with brutal simplicity: directors Tim Popp and Bobbi Wolf fill the stage with children who are gradually marched off to death camps until only one is left. At the end, though, Lorna Dreyfuss' colorful tapestry of over 4000 handmade butterflies expresses hope with a triumphant burst of color.
Unfortunately, the Holocaust Remembrance Day performance I attended was marred by camera-wielding parents, who treated this poetic and solemn play about one of history's great tragedies like a TMZ celebrity ambush. Some didn't even have the sense to turn off their flashes, which are useless with stage lighting but are maddeningly distracting to the rest of the audience. We know it must be exciting, but seriously: Just turn off the gadgets and be there. Pay respect with your undivided attention.
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: Freude, schöner Götterfunken, tochter aus Elysium! Wir betreten feuertrunken — himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Here's the latest video by loud and grungey Philly band A Crucifying Feeling. They sound a little Nevermind-ish on this one. They've got a goofy Dave Grohl-esque streak in the video. I'm digging it. Play it loud.
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
(Full disclosure: CP arts editor Emily Guendelsberger is a member of Mendelssohn Club and sang in this concert; the writer of this review was not aware of this.)
SHOW: The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
GENRE: Music
GROUP: The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia / Mendelssohn Club
ATTENDED: Sun., April 7, 2:30 p.m., Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: Journey to a historic moment in time with a program that commemorates the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989, leading to Germany’s reunification.
WE THINK: “Strange bedfellows” is how conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn described his pairing of Scorpions’1991 hit “Wind of Change” with Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. As symbolic and beloved as the song is, it’s a kitschy rock ballad, and orchestrating it along with tenor Adam Frandsen performing vocals and two projection screens displaying the Berlin photography of James Abbott only emphasized how overwrought the anthem is.
After that opener, Solzhenitsyn (whose father is indeed that Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, who was mistreated, imprisoned and eventually deported by the Soviet Union for his human-rights activism) spoke at length about his own memories of the fall of the eastern bloc. Then the concert truly began.
First was Smirnov’s ominous Epitaph for the Victims of Communism, which trickled away on plucked strings so subtly one hardly even knew it has just passed — a penetrating evocation of how thousands of people passed into silence, unacknowledged.
Finally, the 9th — and for all of us philistines whose collective memory had reduced it to nothing but the famous choral fourth movement, the first two movements came on like a force of nature, each shift in tempo and variation in theme containing a thrilling suddenness. And to hear hints of the famous “Ode to Joy” theme in the second movement was to be surprised by it all over again.
Still, the fourth movement was ecstatic, with the choir on their feet and bobbing, the four soloists soaring, the orchestra obviously animated in their playing and Solzhenitsyn with a forward lean in his body, hands conjuring both choir and orchestra. The last note had hardly sounded before the audience was on its feet in sonorous applause, where it stayed for several minutes.
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: A… postmodern flamenco gynecologist? It’s cool, it made sense at the time.
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