Results tagged “walnutst”

What kind of octogenarian would you like to be? Us, we’ll be Merce Cunningham please. At 89 the famous choreographer is not only still creating works, but continues in his tradition of pushing the technological envelope by combining dance with accompanying music in unique and often fantastical ways (dude’s had Radiohead compose for him. That we’d love to see). Merilyn Jackson has a wonderful article tracing some of his collaborations and technological innovations in the Inquirer, which has served as a yummy appetizer. You see, we are lucky enough to be going to see the Merce Cunningham Dance Company when they perform at the Annenberg Center tomorrow and Friday nights. And our iPods are already in a flurry of excitement.

It's the holiday season, so many of us are in a charitable mood. Certainly, there are good feelings to be had from performing acts of selflessness, and we at Phillyist encourage you to donate your time, money, or a toy this holiday season. Sometimes you get the opportunity to contribute to a good cause and have a lot of fun at the same time. Thursday night, you'll get one such opportunity. WXPN is presenting a...

This Sunday, a music legend comes to the World Cafe Live. And he's not just coming to play. Bob Mould (MySpace) will take part in a special Q&A session before performing an intimate acoustic set. Then he'll step aside for a screening of his first concert DVD, Circle of Friends. If that doesn't sound cool, there's something wrong with you. Bob Mould is, of course, the mastermind behind punk/college rock band Hüsker Dü and...

It's not exactly the kind of album that's going to get you up on your feet and dancing, but Force of Light, the most recent release from Barbez (a band led by New York guitarist/composer Dan Kaufman) is definitely an interesting and haunting piece of music, and we wanted to mention it here, since the band will be playing a free event called Diaspora Kristallnacht at the Rotunda this weekend with Philly's own Oscuro Quintet. Diaspora Kristallnacht is part of the Diaspora Series and its purpose is to highlight music written in the prison camps of World War II. Force of Light fits this theme because it's based on the work of the celebrated poet Paul Celan, a Romanian Jew who spent nearly two years in the camps and lost his parents there. The effect of these experiences is always present in Celan's poetry - sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. Force of Light is a series of lengthy, contemplative, moving orchestral pieces - a few instrumental, but most accompanied by readings of Celan's work by Scottish playwright and poet (and former girlfriend of Kaufman) Fiona Templeton. The music has a strange and intriguing feeling of the fantastic and the dream-like about it. Quite a variety of instruments come into play, including electric, nylon-string, and lap steel guitar; theremin; vibes; marimba; clarinets; bass; drums; cello; and violins. As we said, it's not exactly a fun, upbeat kind of album, but it is an effective and beautiful one.

Hotel Lights and Ben Folds Five - hey, remember Ben Folds Five? That was a cool band...) and Clint, Michigan with Amy Bezunartea.

Pianist Gary Graffman turned a right hand injury around into a brilliant career performing repertoire written for the left hand alone. Hear him play works by Bach, Brahms, Scirabin, Corigliano, and more.

We can't say we're entirely proud of ourselves for this, but we have to admit we're totally loving Black Fingernails, Red Wine, the third album and latest release from Australian trio Eskimo Joe (MySpace). Sure, it's pop. But it's also totally fun (one might even say irresistible), infectious, danceable pop rock with a New Wave (sometimes almost Depeche Mode-ish) flavor, and a piano often tinkling in the background. Download two of our favorite tracks off the album below:

The Opera Company of Philadelphia finishes its run of Verdi's timeless and tragic Rigoletto.

This Phillyist is a Libra, a sign that is characterized by indecisiveness and the desire for nice things (Linda Goodman describes us as "pink, fluffy clouds"). It is with great rejoicing then that we greeted the news that Lush (purveyor of bath bombs the world over) on Walnut is a Libra too, and will be celebrating its first birthday in spa-ish style. They're offering goodies throughout the day, complimentary chair massages from 5-8 pm, and a goody bag if you RSVP. Giving out gifts at your own party. Now that's class! (And for anyone agonizing over birthday gift giving, Phillyist thinks the Think Pink bomb is divine).

Former band-members of Luna, Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, known as Dean & Britta, will be performing at World Cafe Live this Thursday, March 8th. Maybe I'm crazy, but I've never heard of the band Luna, even though they released seven studio albums, including a "Best Of." Regardless, I was intrigued by their music as I visited their homepage and MySpace. They classify themselves on MySpace as folk/lounge/psychedelic, but to me, it's just good "chill" music.

Tomorrow night, The Slip, New England's quickest-rising stars (not named Matsuzaka), are hitting Philly for a headlining show at World Cafe Live. If you're a fan of bands like Umphreys McGee, you'll be blown away by these three dudes.

Ah, Valentine's Day: refuge of the uninspired lover and bane of the singleton's year. Fear not! We present our annual offbeat V-day guide, guaranteed to add some flair to the red-heart holiday (whose idea was it to put a celebration of love and relationships smack in the middle of the great gray beast February anyway, we ask you?).

Countering all the claims that electronic music took a sharp dive in the mid to late 90's has been the continued quality of composition from producers like BT (Brian Transeau), a Berklee College of Music dropout who began his electro-dance music career working with his DJ friends Deep Dish in Washington DC on the way to earning international fame as a trance music pioneer.

We like the idea of a good time for a good cause, so we're pretty excited about the Third Annual Philly Bands Together that's taking over the entire World Cafe Live, upstairs and down, tonight at 7:30PM (doors open at 6). A TON of artists - including Grey Eye Glances, Hoots and Hellmouth, Lili Anel, and Red Heart the Ticker - will be there playing music (you can find a detailed schedule and band list here), and the price of your ticket will go to support WXPN Musicians On Call, a non-profit that brings live music, CDs, and CD players to patients in area hospitals. If you've got any "gently used" CDs, bring them on down to the event and you can donate them. Of course, you could also just contribute directly to the cause here. But music and giving are both good for body and soul, so why not enjoy both together?

Teitur Giveaway
12/3/06-12/4/06

Kristoffer Ragnstam (also on MySpace, natch) is playing a free show at World Cafe's Upstairs Live venue this Friday night at 7PM, and we wanted to let you know it might be worth dropping by to check him out. He's from Sweden, but you'd hardly know it when you listen to him sing on his latest EP, Do you want a piece of me. Sure, he's got a slight accent, and there's that one song where he mentions Stockholm, but otherwise his music is pure American rock - sometimes in the classic, quasi-Rolling Stones variety, other times flavored with funk, indie, or dance/electronica - but rock all the same. The standout track is definitely "Breakfast by the Mattress" (mp3), a catchy pop track about stars or something. We're not clear on that, but the chorus is super-fun. Our favorite line is from the chorus of another of his songs, though: "I woke up left-handed." Wow! That was a bad night. But we bet you'll have a good night listening to Mr. Ragnstam this Friday.

ALL WEEKEND - Sherman Community Arts Says Goodbye to The Cinema: Sherman Community arts is giving The Cinema (3925 Walnut St.) one last hurrah with a weekend of cheap and/or free film events, including screenings of Dünyayi kurtaran adam (The Turkish Star Wars), Bad Brains Live CBGB, Let's Scare Jessica to Death and more. For information on admission prices (where applicable), features and show times, visit the Sherman Community Arts Events page.

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Free Fringe: Don't forget it's Fringe season, and several shows are free. Friday "Irish Rasta Pirate Music!": Albert Einstone with Amy Pickard and Rebecca Zapen at The Green Line Cafe (43rd & Baltimore). $5 suggested donation. 7:30 PM Panoramic Poetry: Open mic at October Gallery (68 N. 2nd Street) at 7:30PM. $7 Saturday Beastie Boys vs. Beck: The School of Rock presents The Music of the Beastie Boys vs. Beck at the World Cafe (3025 Walnut St) at 2PM. $10 Sunday Hey, Hey, They're (Not) The Monkees: Monkees tribute band, 7PM at The Tin Angel (20 S. 2nd Street). $10 Mexican Independence Day: Cultural festival at Penn's Landing, noon to 8PM. Khyber Open Bar Sundays: DJ Eric Tomorrow and all you can drink for $10. Beginning at 9PM at The Khyber (56 S. 2nd Street). (21+) Got a frugal tip? Don't be stingy! Send it here and share the wealth!

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Friday bowerbird presents: Berndt / Bailly Duo, Tweeter & The S-2-Boyz at The Cinema (3925 Walnut St.) at 8PM. $5 A Night of Funk: Fisher, The Ross Brown Project & Dr. Ketchup at The World Cafe (3025 Walnut Street) at 9PM. $8 Saturday Dirty Diamond: Naughty Neil Diamond cover act, Dirty Diamond, plays the Khyber (56 S. 2nd Street) with Nitty Gritty, Howard's Dilemma & Stucco Lobster...

We love Megan over at Canary Promotions. That's because she tells us about all the cool stuff happening around Philly and sometimes gets us in to them for free. She's also just an all-around cool person, so far as Phillyist can tell.

Bside, the folks who ran the cool website for this year's Philadelphia Film Festival, are running a different festival through Philly tonight - the Bside Roadshow, a travelling film and music festival also sponsored by MySpace and AMD. Of course, it's rather a small festival, as it features only one film and one show, and lasts only one night at World Cafe Live, but still. The movie is a documentary/comedy called The Outdoorsmen: Blood, Sweat and Beers that covers an actual competition for something called the Outdoorsmen Cup. Events include "classic Pacific Northwestern woodsmen events" side-by-side with "high-speed beer chugging." The movie will be followed by a performance by local band Bridges and a Bottle, who are eager to show off tracks from their new album, Trojan Horse. What with a band with "Bottle" in the title, and a movie about speed-chugging with "Beers" in the title, we expect there will be plenty of drinking and plenty of fun.

disguised as of some of Philly's best-known jazz, funk and dixieland musicians"), but we're betting they'll sound pretty foreign to most of you. That's because they play a traditional Jewish style of music called Klezmer, but spice it up by fusing it with jazz, funk, Latin sounds, and outer space, thus ending up with something that's a little bit nerdy, a little bit hippie (in the out-there, quasi-mystical kind of sense), a little bit silly, and a little bit just plain fun. We're saying this after having given a number of thorough listens to the disc they're celebrating the release of this Sunday, Blue Suede Jews.

Tonight at World Cafe Live you can catch a performance by two former members of other bands who've joined together to form a mellow, bland, vaguely countrified folk rock outfit. We're talking about Isobel Campbell from Belle & Sebastian and Mark Lanegan from Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age. They're on tour behind their new album Ballad of the Broken Seas, which was released a week ago. Phillyist has to admit we found the disc a bit boring. It certainly has atmosphere - old, whispery, shadowy, smokey atmosphere. And ocassionally it gets a bit menacing, which is interesting. But generally it's all in a low key, and not particularly imaginative; it makes us want to go to sleep, and we prefer music that wakes us up. Like say, just as an example, Queens of the Stone Age. But if you're a big fan of these folks, or you really enjoy somnolent folk rock, then by all means head on down to the World Cafe Live tonight.

Attention all Moms & Dads: if you thought you had to hand in your dancing shoes once you began bronzing those of your offspring, think again. The first Sunday of every month is Baby Loves Disco at Fluid (613 S. 4th Street) - where a DJ will spin for you and your little ones in a smoke-free, child-friendly environment from 2-5pm. Not only will you be able to get your groove on to some grown-up music from the 70s & 80s...but when your kid reaches the terrible teens and complains you never let them do anything cool, you can say, "Are you kidding? I took you clubbing when you were !" Baby Loves Disco is $8 per person, or $30 for a family (including 2 adults and up to 3 children). You and your toddlers can next shake what your mammas gave you on Sunday the 4th.

This week, we're highlighting an activity beyond our city borders. But as it's (a) easily accessible by PATCO and (b) for a good cause, we'll brook no complaints.

We kinda like Michael Penn. There are many reasons, but the first one in our mind is that video for "Try." You know the one - one-take, down the hallway, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The song was on the Boogie Nights soundtrack and we've had a little crush on Penn ever since.

Art Spiegelman, author and artist behind the ground-breaking, best-selling, Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel , will be speaking about the history of comics and their changing role in society and popular culture. (And, we hope, explaining why he insists on spelling the word "comics" as "comix." Phillyist is a fan of Speigelman and has great respect for him as a storyteller and innovator - but we're not altogether sure that his Pulitzer gives him the right to change the spellings of words willy-nilly.) The program starts at 8PM, and costs $8 ($5 for students).

Continue reading "Frugal in Philly - Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret"

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Tonight at North3rd (3rd and Brown Streets in Northern Liberties), Skeletor - professional thorn in He-Man's side turned stagebound crooner - will be perfoming for your free listening pleasure. (Phillyist is a sucker any event where cartoon characters step out into the real world. Blame it on repeated viewings of ). Afterwards, stay for films from local and independent auteurs at the weekly local film showcase, Fancy Pants Cinema. The shennanigans begin at 9PM.