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Sacre bleu: Georges Perrier wants his name back. The French chef who sold Le Bec Fin to Nicolas Fanucci was pleased last year that the new owner wanted to keep Perrier’s flame burning with a namesake basement boite, Chez George. This year, not so much: Word has it that Perrier needs his name back for his own business concerns and enterprises, vite vite. With swift dispatch, the recently re-done room will now be known as Le Bar.
Philly boxing giant Joey Eye is taking over Harrah’s Philadelphia Casino in a big way starting Jan. 26. The cut man/promoter has a huge lightweight bout brewing between Lebanon PA’s Esteban Rodriguez and Victor Vasquez. Eye will fill that bill with seven other matches, starting at 7 p.m. Put up your dukes.
Shake Shack, Danny Meyer’s burger chain (number one at 20th and Sansom is still packed daily), is indeed opening its second Philly link as the cornerstone of Drexel’s Chestnut Square complex along the 3200 block of Chestnut. Students can get the shake on by autumn 2013.
As you'll see in tomorrow's paper, we're pretty excited about Mystery Science Theater 3000 creator Joel Hodgson performing his one-man show "Riffing Myself" (aka "Sunday in the Dark with Joel") at the Trocadero. Would you like to go? We'd like to send you. So
1. Draw a picture of one of the MST3K robots
2. Send it to pat@citypaper.net by 4 p.m. Thursday, with GIMME JOEL HODGSON TICKETS as the subject
3. We'll choose our favorite two or three pics and set the winners up wih a pair of tickets each.
AMATEURS ENCOURAGED! Just have fun with it.
"Riffing Myself," Sun., Jan. 27, 4 p.m., $22.50-$39.50, The Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-6888, thetroc.com.
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LOVE NOTE RECIPIENT: John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum
I AM: Christian Hunold, a full-time college professor and part-time wildlife photographer.
MY LOVE NOTE:
Hopefully you saw Neal Santos' awesome Birdie Busch photo on our cover last week — and read A.D. Amorosi's interview. Well, then you know what you should do tonight.
The Philly Opry and album release party for Birdie Busch and the Greatest Night, Fri., Jan. 18, doors at 8 p.m., music at 9 p.m. sharp, $12-$15, with Joy Kills Sorrow and Jason Loughlin, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com, birdie-buschmusic.com.
This week in loss is a big hard one. Tattooed love boy/burly chef Matt Levin left Walnut Street’s Square Peg but not the Cohen/Gutin fiefdom as he will still make elegant fare for their Brulee catering concept.
Legendary free rock radio jock/folk singer Michael Tearson was sadly let go from his decade-plus WMGK-FM gig with no goodbye-shift yet thankfully can still be heard on Sirius XM.
Dan Gross. Ah Dan Gross. He jumped from his gossip spot at the Daily News and Philly.com (full disclosure: I work there, too) as well as his head position at the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia to do God-knows-what. I’ll miss Dan there, it was nice knowing that I had someone solid reporting on the same beat as I.
Apparently City Paper is not the only crowd of folks who know April Mae and the June Bugs are a lot of fun. This Saturday night, one of their regular venues is giving them six hours to bring in fellow artists to throw a variation on the ol’ rent party theme, officially titled a Get Outta Town Party. The rent here is for that houseboat on wheels, the Boogie Bus. April Mae and Catfish are rolling that converted coach south to Mississippi and Alabama for two big recording sessions and a spot at the International Blues Challenge. Their friends — bands like the Missing Keys, Midnight Shift and Blue Cat Blues — are playing for free. The catch is, all would like you to show up and invest in your musical future by taking part in the silent auction. Pennsylvania Blues Festival has kicked in a pair of tix, Bucks County Blues seems to have shipped down everything they’ve got: blues CDs and books, plenty of merch as they say.
Why a funder now, given that the bus has been converted to bio-diesel and there is no shortage of fried food in the direction they are heading? The band has some big recording sessions coming up on the trip. April Mae is cutting with the International Blues Women Project in the heart of blues country, Clarksdale, Mississippi. Up river a bit both compete in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, TN. After that they have a session booked at the original Sun Studio.
Sat., Jan. 19, 6 p.m.-midnight, Red Hot and Blues, 2175 New Jersey Route 70, Cherry Hill, NJ. More info here.
Ever since I came across this Tip Of My Tongue post on Reddit, I can't get this song out of my head. Anybody know who the artist is? Sounds a little like Frazey Ford, but I'm not sure. The clues are few (it came from an old SXSW sampler, maybe?) and Shazam and Google have turned up nothing.
UPDATE: I asked Jolie Holland about it via Facebook. She doesn't recognize the voice.
UPDATE 2: The mystery arist is San Francisco singer and songwriter Indianna Hale. Big thanks to Stuart Woods for solving this and letting me get on with my life.
I’ve been to a lot of these “live version of a TV show” shows in recent years. They’re a mixed bag. Always Sunny was impressive at the Tower, with the stage version of the “Nightman” episode feeding off the energy of the crowd. Portlandia Live, meanwhile, was… depressing, relying on awkward, time-sucking crowdwork. I remember liking the Aqua Teen Hunger Force show at the Troc, but I also think the main action got outshone by a wonderfully bizarre intermission vocalist called Puddles the Clown.
So I know how these things tend to go:
1) It’s more of a talent show of unrelated bits than a cohesive production.
2) Ample video clips — “you guys are getting to see this a whole week before it airs!” — and audience participation segments are used as padding.
3) The relative fame and charm of the performers is expected to make up for any line-flubbing and inelegant transitioning.
4) It will cross your mind, at least once, for at least a minute, that you have been suckered. (Even if you got on press list.)
Nobody who left Archer Live on Friday night seemed to feel suckered.
Yes, the show was only about an hour long.
Yes, we’d been subjected to several (five? six?) t-shirt-gun breaks to the tune of “Danger Zone.”
And yes, crowdwork carried a fair amount of the burden.
Usually, that was a good thing, as Aisha Tyler and H. Jon Benjamin, seasoned stand-up comics, knew how to keep things moving while still acting like they didn’t give too much of a shit. They are generous, quick-witted performers. Chris Parnell, on the other hand, was largely silent throughout the evening (surprising, given his years on SNL). Lucky Yates and Amber Nash were very funny. Executive producer Matt Thompson was not funny at all, and he picked up on none of the clues from the boisterous crowd or his sighing stars that he was bombing.
Maybe “boisterous” isn’t a strong enough word. The evening felt like a drunk comic con panel. People were loud. There was some loud, good-natured booing here and there. There were some desperate cries to be heard by famous people. Funny parts were shouted over on occasion. References were made from the stage. References were yelled back to the stage. Texted questions were answered. The planned stuff worked, for the most part: The live script-reading, the acted-out bits, the video snippets. And I had a good time. I did. But I might be done with these kinds of shows.
La Salle grad Sam Fran Scavuzzo, is a 26-year-old Roxborough resident and organizer of a monthly show called A Bunch Of Improv, at the Grape Room (105 Grape St.). After coming through La Salle’s illustrious Improv 101 troupe, Scavuzzo was ready to start his own improv team, Cock Hat (as in, a chicken with a hat on!) with Stephan Clanton, Frank Farrell and Kate Linsner. Scavuzzo found time in between his full time gig as publication manager for Yellowbook to sit down with LOL With It for a few one-word-suggestions.
LOL With It: Formation?
Sam Fran Scavuzzo: We launched about one year ago. This upcoming Jan. 15 show will be our 12th, so we’re ready to celebrate our first birthday in February. In August 2011, I formed the improv team Cock Hat (as in a chicken with a hat on!) with Stephan Clanton, Frank Farrell and Kate Linsner. We performed for La Salle University’s Improv 101 team but were new to Philly comedy scene. In addition to booking gigs, we were looking to establish a steady show. I covered the Grape Room (105 Grape St.) as a reporter in Manayunk, and through those connections successfully pitched the idea of a monthly improv show.
It’s cool because there’s not a lot of comedy going on in Manayunk, and I think we’re attracting different crowds than at shows in other sections of Philadelphia.
LOL: Venue?
SFS: Because the Grape Room is usually a music venue, we’re blessed with a great stage, lighting and tech equipment, if we want it. The show started on the Grape Room’s second floor, but we moved downstairs a few months ago and now have full range of the venue. For the show itself, our idea was to blend a few mediums and give newer acts a chance to perform, as well as established groups. A comic hosts the night and gets to do a set, in addition to the four to five improv acts. Additionally, at recent shows we’ve featured video shorts from Web Cereal, an online monthly comedy website created by Dan Angelucci.
LOL: Memborable?
SFS: Philly Comedy Month listed us as a spotlight show in November, so we tried to go all out for that one. That’s the month we featured the most acts (Gross Butler, Bad James, Rookie Card, Kait and Andrew, Chaperone, and Dan Scully) and drew the biggest crowd. More selfishly, we hosted a show one month that had several La Salle-centered acts. Comedian Dave Terruso hosted and Ryan Barry, of Jersey-based Helicopter Dance Off, performed — so that was probably the most fun for me.
LOL: Upcoming?
SFS: Our Jan. 15 show features PHIT house team Hot Dish, Apocalips, and Angry People Building Things, in addition to Cock Hat — now featuring Hannah Datz, Matt Lamson and Sunny Kanneganti. Lamson will also MC. Doors open at 8 p.m. $5 cover (21-plus, kids!).
Check out Cock Hat on Facebook for updates on the show, which happens third Tuesday of every month.
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