Music
Split Kicks and bobbing heads
There are very few opportunities -- unless you are showering with them -- to hear a bassist singing.
Online Extra: Michael Franti and Spearhead/Ziggy Marley concert review
The Electric Factory is plastered with red, gold and green posters that invoke the spirit of peace, tolerance and reggae music.
Online Extra: Simple Plan concert review
As it is at any concert featuring a band that has recently been on Total Request Live, the average age of those attending the Simple Plan show couldn't have been over 16, and that's including the small upstairs 21-and-over bar area.
Online Extra: Broken Social Scene concert review
For their third visit to Philadelphia, Broken Social Scene invited their brass section (members of Stars, the night's opening act) on stage for a sultry night of indie rock.
Editors' picks
Tami Fertig: The Magnetic Fields Get Lost Lest we forget, Magnetic Fields mastermind Stephin Merritt was making records long before 69 Love Songs. That one was okay, but c'mon.
What if we all did have flying bicycles?
Dave Scher wishes people would dance at shows like they used to. One half of the duo that makes up California-based All Night Radio, Scher remembers his upbringing in Long Beach, California as a time when people danced at shows.
Albums
Lou Reed Animal Serenade Warner Brothers Lou Reed's 5,000th live album, Animal Serenade, shows that the 62-year-old legend can still put on a great show.
Conspiracy theories
Jazz has long subsisted as an underground music -- an esoteric, impervious art form sheltered from consumer politics.
Behind the Broken Social Scene
Back in 1999, Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew decided to turn their friendship into Broken Social Scene.
Albums
Carina Round The Disconnection Don't let her minor keys and tormented lyrics fool you: Carina Round is one happy camper.
Lazy Journalism. Whatever.
What are you looking at right now? I am looking out the window at my next door neighbors' yard.
Editor's picks
Tami Fertig Q Lazzarus "Goodbye Horses" Y'know that scene in The Silence of the Lambs when serial killer Buffalo Bill tucks his crotch between his legs and dances naked to an obscure '80s synth-pop song before sewing a suit made of human skin?
Not your average walkman
Hamilton Leithauser, lead singer of The Walkmen, isn't buying into any of the buzz. To him, the New York rock revival is nothing more than a press creation. "I don't buy any of that shit," he explains. Leithauser and bassist Peter Bauer left The Recoys in order to join The Walkmen, a group founded by three former members of Jonathan Fire*Eater -- Walter Martin, Paul Maroon and Matt Barrick. Fire*Eater was a critical success, and one of many "next big things" to never actually make it in the mainstream.
Spear-mint
Michael Franti is 6'6" and thin -- wiry, some might say. Long dreadlocks peek out the front and back of the hat he customarily wears onstage, but they never seem to stay contained.
Albums
Robbers On High Street Fine Lines Every up-and-coming band is touted as the new Smiths, Joy Division or Velvet Underground.
Albums
Various Artists 50 First Dates Soundtrack This soundtrack to Adam Sandler's latest movie recruits a number of today's pop, rap and reggae artists in an attempt to put a modern spin on 13 '80s love song classics, but succeeds only in destroying the music of a decade.
Get into the groove
@Street Text:I try to make it funky," Philadelphia singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Mike Brenner tells Street over a cup of coffee in Old City.
Editor's picks
Tami Fertig: Smokey Robinson Smokey is Motown. Listening to him sing those timeless love songs in that easy-on-the'-ears voice of his, I almost consider paying the $5 billion dollars to see him play live at Trump Plaza --the Atlantic City venue that caters to the octogenarians of New Jersey.
Albums
Incubus A Crow Left of the Murder At any given Incubus show, a concertgoer could run into a vicious teenage headbanger, a 30-year-old, beer-drinking male and an 11-year-old girl enamored with Brandon Boyd's exposed abs.
