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Archive: January, 2012
Devoted poet/avid concert-goer/nerd-grrrl extraordinaire Jane Cassady’s weekly horoscopes run in this space every Friday morning.
Aquarius (Jan 21-Feb. 19): Make some space for yourself at the margin of things. Shush the peanut gallery of your past, your fears, your self-doubt, and spell out events in your own formation, according to your own interpretation. We promise it will be worth it.
Pisces (Feb. 20-March 20): On last week’s Parks and Recreation, Leslie Knope felt very conflicted about the idea of running a negative campaign ad about her opponent for city council. Like Leslie, find a way to point out the flaws of the situation and still be adorable about it.
Aries (March 21-April 18): “Your heart is both drunk and a kid.” (Marshall Erikson on How I Met Your Mother) Trust your heart and its adorable recklessness. Let it do the equivalent of jumping off the porch roof wearing a towel tied around your neck for a cape. Sometimes hearts land safely.
Jerry Blavat, the Geator, the first original Boss (the one with the hot sauce): it was a delight to see him spinning at the Philadelphia Art Museum’s Art After 5 event last Friday celebrating photographer Zoe Strauss with co-DJ mate King Britt. This weekend though Blavat shows off his finest hand when he commences the 10 year of rock ’n’ roll ’n’ soul master classes at the Kimmel Center. Crooner Ben E. King, New Jersey’s Shirley Alston Reeves of the Shirelles, original Latino pop superstar Chris Montez, and Philadelphia’s own girl group doyenne Darlene Love and disco brethren The Trammps join with Blavat for the Jan. 28 bash.
If anybody can make the Bard seem like a dirtball writer for Sin City it’s Philly PR guy Peter Breslow. Along with sending out splashy emails tagged “Rape, Murder and Decapitation coming to Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre Company” Breslow filmed bits of Aaron Cromie’s upcoming (April) take on Titus Andronicus and played up the bloody parts. Breslow also reminds viewers that the production “is rated R. Minors under the age of 17 will not be admitted without a parent or guardian.” Get your tix at phillyshakespeare.org.
Before it becomes a South Street brat-n-brew mini-mall (following an expansion into its neighboring furniture store), Brauhaus Schmitz and its chef Jeremy Nolen are going for big game (okay, little game). On Feb. 2, Nolen will mix it up with Top Chef Jennifer Carroll, Jeff Michaud (Osteria) and Peter Woolsey (Bistrot La Minette) for a meal of duck, venison, wild boar, hare and wood pigeon. Wood pigeon? Aww don’t hurt the wood pigeon. (I’m thinking of that Colbert Report joke on cat stew from the other night, the same show with Philly’s Terry Gross celebrating 25 years of Fresh Air.)
View galleryEvery week, Al Harris brings you the week's top five comedy shows.
Impressive permanent collections may have put our area museums on the map, but it's the rotating exhibits that keep visitors coming back. Every Thursday, Abigail Minor updates you on the newest and most browse-worthy.
“Worried” is not the usual fan-to-artist relationship but, for some Neutral Milk Hotel fans, Jeff Mangum’s decade-plus sabbatical often made us wonder if the guy was, you know, okay. He seemed to be doing just fine on Wednesday night.
Sprinting through a solo set of unforgotten favorites from 1996’s On Avery Island and 1998’s In the Aeroplane over the Sea, Mangum appeared to be a man comfortable in his own skin. Well, he did seem irked by the formality of the seated theater, and encouraged fans to record the show (audio only), crowd the aisles and sing along. That last part was a bit daunting as Mangum’s marvelously brassy voice was in fighting shape. When he was really cranking up the intensity (the long, bellowing “I love you Jesus Christ” intro to “The King of Carrot Flowers, Part 1,” for instance) it was easiest just to sit back and absorb the power and joy of the moment.
Though the tickets were purchased months ago in some sort of record-breaking R5 box office fury, and Mangum had already returned to public performance in short bursts over the last two years, the unlikelihood of the moment — seeing this perennial critics’ candidate for Greatest Living Songwriter again, the guy whose esteem snowballed with each passing year of noticeable hermitude — was an adrenaline rush. How strange to hear these songs again, to see Jeff Mangum again, when we’d long since learned to be happy with what we had (which isn’t much: two albums, some singles, a few years worth of bootlegs — all of which are being handsomely repackaged).
And if the man spent the 2000s writing new material, he didn’t share any of it at the Irvine Auditorium. For the singer and the listener, the evening was merely a chance to show how much each means to the other. Mangum was obviously humbled by the enthusiastic, if overly polite, outpouring from the 1,200 capacity crowd. (Neutral Milk Hotel’s only trip through Philly was, if memory serves, a sold-out show at the relatively tiny Pontiac Grille in 1998.) He likened his surprising and untended longevity to a message in a bottle set adrift some 15 years ago, finding the right ears despite the odds.
Chris Brown digs into our listings bin and pulls out a little something-something to do every day of the week.
Each week, Michael Gold breezes past those big-name theater companies to turn a spotlight on Philly's indie stages.
✚ MICROCRISIS
There are a few things to note after this morning’s announcement about the Bruce Springsteen E 
Street Band tour for his ragged and radically diverse (lots of loops, bits of hip-hop inspiration) album, Wrecking Ball, which is out March 6. After the tour’s March 18 start in Atlanta, The Boss will play two Philly dates, on March 28 and March 29 at the Wells Fargo Center (tix on sale Jan. 28) before going on to an April 3 date at East Rutherford, N.J.’s Izod Center (on sale Jan. 27).
Not-so-new news is that the E Street Band's members include Springsteen vets Roy Bittan (piano, synthesizer) Nils Lofgren (guitar) Garry Tallent (bass) Silivio Stevie Van Zandt (guitar, schmatah) and Max Weinberg (drums). Newer E-Street-er Soozie Tyrell is on board playing violin and guitar as is even newer member Charlie Giordano, playing keyboards. The biggest surprises come with the announcement that Patti Scialfa (guitar, vocals) is back, absent as Mrs. Springsteen was for most of the last E Street Band tour. And with the 2011 passing of Springsteen’s long-time sideman/saxophonist/brother-in-arms Clarence Clemons, rumors swirled about a possible replacement by nephew Jake Clemons, an able-bodied sax man who played last year with Eddie Vedder during the Pearl Jam-ers solo tour. This morning’s press notice said zip about Jake. Shame. Hope it changes.
"We Take Care Of Our Own," the album's first single, can be streamed at the same dot net where you can pre-order Wrecking Ball — brucespringsteen.net. Tickets will be available through all the usual Wells Fargo Center webs.
Reporter Meg Augustin takes you inside some of Philly's most fab dwellings to showcase our city's unique grasp on design and architecture.
For local artists Peter and Carolyn, finding the perfect house meant more than finding four bedrooms, two 
baths and a two-car garage. The couple, both painters and instructors at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, also needed studio space. After years of searching for the right spot, they purchased a corner unit in Manayunk with a small lawn and an interesting, two-story shack (pictured right) they thought could become the perfect studio space.
Looking at the original structure, though, one would be hard-pressed to find much comfort, let alone inspiration, in its decrepit bones. An odd mashup of garage and two-story work space, the hut was dark and dreary, and hardly the spot to create oil paintings. After years of putting the renovation off, last year’s blizzard finally gave them the push they needed. “If our inspiration was anything,” says Carolyn, “it was the snow covering the roof.” As the bones began breaking under the weight of frosty snow, the duo finally decided to get the transformation started.
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