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(11/29/07 5:00am)
If you've walked by Williams Hall this year, you've probably seen "Ron Paul" scrawled in large chalk letters across one of its brick walls. No slogan, just the name: a kind of modern-day "Frodo Lives." On first view, its guerilla aesthetic practically cries out for a subtitle: "Google It," "Wiki It," "ask a friend."
(11/01/07 4:00am)
God bless Neil Young. At 62, he's as earnest as ever - supremely confident in his well-worn niche. In 2007, it takes some kind of self-assurance to sing, without a hint of irony: "I'm just a passenger / On this old freight train."
(09/13/07 4:00am)
If there is one thing hip-hop loves more than expensive cars, loose women, and the occasional drive-by, it's a highly publicized battle involving its biggest stars. This time around fans will be delighted to know that this one won't be settled in the street, but in the record stores, as Kanye West and 50 Cent battle over your hard-earned cash with the simultaneous release of their new albums, Graduation and Curtis, respectively, on September 11th. As the receipts are tallied, we give you our take on who came out on top.
(09/13/07 4:00am)
Mulatu Astatke
(04/05/07 4:00am)
Freud once said, "Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average." Nowhere is that more clear than on Penn's great libidinal playground, Locust Walk. It's the place to see and be seen, for unapologetic exhibitionism and unchecked aggression. In short: flyering for campus organizations. So as temperatures and skirt lengths rise, Ego helps you make it through this paper minefield in half the time - and with half the psychic trauma.
(04/05/07 4:00am)
As baseball season gets underway, one man looms larger - much larger - than most: Barry Bonds.
(02/01/07 5:00am)
For 40 years, Penn students have traveled by bus to Washington, D.C. to use their voices and their bodies to try to change the world. Last Saturday, some 140 Penn students, faculty, and West Philadelphians went to do it again.
(01/25/07 5:00am)
Around 9:30 on a Tuesday night, the Ortlieb's jam session is up and running. It's a smaller crowd than usual, but it's still early. On stage, a quartet: Doug Hirlinger on drums, Sid Simmons on piano, Mike Boone on bass, and Pete Souders, the club's owner, on tenor sax. They play the kind of jazz that seems most fit for a crowded, smoky late-night club: a mid-tempo, shuffling drum beat, loping bass lines, a sax part more assiduous than manic.
(11/30/06 5:00am)
"Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above"
(11/09/06 5:00am)
Luke Jenner, singer-guitarist for the Rapture, looks serious in a cramped dressing room downstairs at Pure nightclub. Music bleats through the walls. "Here, nobody knows the history of disco," he explains. "I mean, Saturday Night Fever is fucking awesome, but there's a lot more to it than that."
(11/02/06 5:00am)
In 1974, drinking buddies John Lennon and Harry Nilsson decided to make a record. The Nilsson-penned, Lennon-produced result was Pussy Cats, equal parts riotous sing-along and nostalgic meditation. Nillson irreparably (and secretly) damaged his vocal cords during recording, so the album acts as a chronicle of the loss of his voice's high registers.
(11/02/06 5:00am)
The Rapture are back.
(10/12/06 4:00am)
In the shadow of the massive success of his former band, Pixies frontman Frank Black has been diligently recording under his own name since 1993. His latest, Fast Man Raider Man, was released earli er this summer. It marks his second stint recording in Nashville with a who's-who of session musicians, including Steve Cropper and Spooner Oldham. In the middle of a supporting tour, Black chatted with Street about the solo life.
(10/05/06 4:00am)
By all accounts, life on the road is nasty, brutish and long. And on the eve of a North American tour, Islands' Nick Diamonds is sick in a Toronto hotel room, speaking in low tones to protect his voice. But for the most part, the Canadian singer-songwriter seems unfazed. Last night's show went well.
(09/14/06 4:00am)
From the time I left campus last spring until June 14, I had Radiohead on my mind. Mine was an obsession that verged on downright mania, transforming my usually tepid opinions into axioms and outright platitudes. I can't recall ever throwing around the words "brilliant" and "genius" so often in my life. Anytime I tried to chalk it up to it being "just a phase," I found myself on YouTube, transfixed by Thom Yorke dancing his way through "Idioteque" like a holy fool.
(04/20/06 4:00am)
Tony Luke's may not be the destination of choice for the cheese steak cognoscenti, but necessity is the mother of invention ... and at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night, after a (few) trips to the Biopond, those bright neon lights beg you to throw elitism to the wind. Tony Luke's got everything you need. Comically over-staffed by comically imperturbable employees and decorated in the 1950s style of some alternate universe, this stoner mecca offers a hearty helping of the surreal with its meaty fare. And then there's the man himself -- if that dude's picture doesn't mesmerize you for hours, you obviously pussed out on that last bong hit.
(04/13/06 4:00am)
In the wake of Ashlee Simpson's lip-synch debacle on SNL nearly two years ago, Kelefa Sanneh wrote a diatribe against its most strident critics in The New York Times. "The Rap Against Rockism" asked "Could it really be a coincidence that rockist complaints often pit straight white men against the rest of the world?" (A rockist, of course, being a subscriber to the creed of authenticity and a strict guitars-drums-bass worldview.) In other words, is "alternative rock," in all its monikers, yet another white boys' club defined by its own exclusivity?
(03/23/06 5:00am)
Saturday night, on a relatively bare stage at the Harold Prince Theater, sat the two classic staples of stand-up comedy: a mic stand and a wooden stool. The no-frills set of Simply Chaos's spring show, "Non-Prophet Com-ics," reflects the philosophy of Penn's only stand-up comedy group: a commitment to honing its craft. Simply Chaos offers young comics "a relatively risk-free way to do stand-up comedy," reflects sophomore Collin Beck. "We're getting a lot of the trial-and-error experience out of the way without having to live out of a box and [do] open mics in New York."
(02/23/06 5:00am)
Hopping the pond makes for strange bedfellows. Though the Subways had an early U.S. breakthrough this fall on that great cultural arbiter, The O.C., a February release date has lumped their debut with the latest wave of British musical exports. So, despite sometimes sharing space in the same breath as the wildly popular Arctic Monkeys, the Subways may in fact be one of the least British rock bands to emerge over the past few years. Their music, if anything, harkens back to the sort of stripped-down, straight-ahead sound of bands like the Vines. Lead singer Billy Lunn's voice (often entrenched, ‹¨« la "Get Free," in unwavering strain) shares few of the trademarks, in lyric and delivery, that make his contemporaries so culturally specific.
(11/10/05 5:00am)
On their way to the bathroom on a flight to Seattle, the Black Keys spotted the lead singer from Train in first class. "He looked like a 40-year-old toddler," drummer Patrick Carney recalls. Should the plane crash, they realized, their names could be uttered in the same breath for the rest of time. From his front porch in Akron, Ohio, Carney laughs. "Our non-existent legacy would be gone forever."