In the Mix

Bon Iver, that is. Justin Vernon and the shirtless men of his four-piece band played the First Unitarian Church last night. Sultry does not begin to describe it. It was at least several hundred degrees. "I don't think I'd be any wetter if I was swimming," Vernon said. Doug Wallen's review runs in the Inquirer on Saturday. Here's Vernon singing "Flume," from For Emma, Forever Ago.

Excellently named Chicago DJ duo Flosstradamus are at Mur Mur at the Borgata in Atlantic City on Friday. Brooklyn twosome Matt & Kim play the Trocadero next Thursday with the Go! Team, CSS and the also excelllently named Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. Here's a Flosstradamus remix of Matt and Kim's "Yea Yeah."

Well-traveled Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco is at the Electric Factory on Sunday. Here are the videos for "Paris, Tokyo," and "Hip-Hop Saved My Life" with Nikki Jean of Philadelphia rap-rockers Nouveau Riche.

You've seen the iPhone ad, and thereby heard The Submarines' "You, Me and The Bourgeosie." Tonight, the L.A. duo of Blake Hazard and John Dragonetti, who have also worked the TV-is-the-new-radio model by placing songs on Weeds and Nip/Tuck, embark on a two-night stand at the World Cafe Live opening for Aimee Mann, who, at times, Hazard sounds remarkably like. Here's a test to see if "You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie" seems as cool when it's just a song, and not an Apple ad.

Along with Robert Hazard, whose obituary is here, I'd like to take a minute to remember another Philadelphia rocker, Christopher Tucker, the Brit-pop influenced songwriter who died on July 25. Ryan Cormier wrote about Tucker on his Pulp Culture blog here. Joey Sweeney at Philebrity, where Tucker was a contributor, paid tribute to him here. Royce Epstein at Philly Girl about Town wrote about him here.

I didn't really know him, but Tucker, who was 37 when he died, used to email me to keep me apprised of his doings with The Situation, who broke up in 2006, and his new band, Orphan Family, and he always seemed like a sweet prince of a guy. In June, we got to chatting about Coldplay, whose Viva La Vida he reviewed for Philebrity, making the excellent argument that it is pointless to compare U2 and Coldplay because "U2 is like a resurgent country. Coldplay is a more like a department store."

Tucker told me "I've recorded 35-40 songs in the last two years, solo, with just an m-box and a rode NTK1. .... I'm trying to figure out a way to post my entire catalogue on line for free." Some of those, including "Porcupine," which he, in a gross underestimation, thought was "pretty strong," can be heard on the Orphan Family MySpace page.

Tucker also explained there why the band was called Orphan Family: "because that’s what it feels like when you are with your best friends - you are orphans to each other, unrelated, but you are a family and that is a splendid dichotomy. the songs are about these things: devotion, f-, drugs, apathy, and the universal struggle between heart and mind. orphan familiy supports the definition of rock-n-roll, a phrase which initially got its name as a metaphor used to describe the way you rock and then you roll when you’re f- in the bushes. we’re all just a bunch of orphans."

In the video above, Tucker talks about, and sings, The Situation song "Latchkey Kids."

Country music firebrand Miranda Lambert, recently cleared of assault charges that she shoved a female fan who messed with in a Texas barroom, comes to the House of Blues in Atlantic City tonight. Here's a link to the interview I did with her on her tour bus when she was opening for Toby Keith last summer. Below is the video for "Gunpowder & Lead," the locked and loaded current single from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, one of 2007's best album in any genre, country or otherwise.

You won't be able to play Ms. Pac Man at the Trocadero tonight, but perhaps the members of the Brighton, England collective The Go! Team will dress up as ghosts and chase around Ninja, the group's aerobic instructor/singer. See the video below. And if you miss The Go! Team at the Troc, where they will share the bill with CSS, Matt & Kim and Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, you can catch them on Friday at the All Points West Festival in Jersey City or at the Virgin Mobile Festival in Baltimore on Sunday.

A memorial service for '80s Philadelphia rocker Robert Hazard, who died on Tuesday, will be held at the First Unitarian Church at 22d and Chestnut Sts. next Friday August 15th from 6 to 8 p.m.

Cyndi Lauper, who had a megahit with her 1983 remake of Robert Hazard's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," checked in to say: "I was very sorry to hear. He was a very talented song writer. My thoughts and prayers are with his family." Rob Hyman of the Hooters added this: "I'd proud to say Hazard, the Heroes, and the Hooters helped put 80's original rock on the Philly scene and beyond. HIs move to country and folk was just as surprising, and equally musical."

Below is Hazard's "Change Reaction" video from the early '80s, and here's a clip of "Escalator of Life," performed last year with students from the Paul Green School of Rock.

yesterday: "

Bob Dylan plays the Electric Factory tonight. Next weekend the Neverending Tour returns to the area, at the Borgata in Atlantic City. In between, he'll be at the Virgin Mobile Fest in Baltimore on Sunday, along with that hip-hop New Dylan, Lil' Wayne.

This "Like A Rolling Stone," is from Newcastle, England, in 1966.

This was supposed to be the weekend of the Vineland Music Festival in South Jersey. But alas, it was not to be. So instead, I spent Saturday and Sunday looking for another giant music festivals to fill the void. Lo and behold, there were two. The All Points West Festival in at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, and the Virgin Mobile Festival at Pimlico Racetrack in Baltimore.

The pictures below are from All Points West on Saturday, where the headliners Radiohead, who play the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden on Tuesday. More on both All Points West and the Virgin Mobile Fest in Tuesday's Inquirer.

Radiohead.

The Roots.

Kirk Douglas of The Roots.

Animal Collective.

Balloon Dragons.

Kings of Leon singer Caleb Followill.

Kings of Leon.

Sia.

Somalian-Canadian poet-rapper K'naan.

Do Lab sculptures on the grounds at Liberty State Park.

The big city in the background.

Up on his high horse, on the A Cavallo carousel.

Lady Liberty.

Thom Yorke and the boys were pretty great at the Susquehanna last night. (Is that what we're calling it? The Tweeter was so much easier.) My review is here. Here's a clip of "No Surprises," and a set list from Tuesday's show. And there's also this bit of news, about the band scoring the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke.

15 Step
There There
Morning Bell
All I Need
The National Anthem
Videotape
Weird Fishes/Arpeggio
The Gloaming
Where I End And You Begin
Faust Arp
No Surprises
Jigsaw
The Bends
Idioteque
Climbing Up The Walls
Nude
Bodysnatchers

First encore

House of Cards
Lucky
Go Slowly
Just
Street Spirit

Second encore

Reckoner
Planet Telex
Everything In Its Right Place

Among other things, the late great Isaac Hayes - co-writer of "Soul Man" and "Hold On, I'm Coming" with David Porter, seller of 5 million copies of the deliciously seductive 1969 bedroom soul mind blower Hot Buttered Soul and of nearly as many chocolate salty-balls as Chef on South Park - was the star of Wattstax, the 1973 concert movie that captured a concert held to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965. The Mel Stuart-directed movie also features Rufus Thomas, Johnny Taylor, Jesse Jackson, the Staple Singers and Richard Pryor. In honor of Hayes' death, it airs tonight at 8 on VH1 Classic. Here's a clip from it of Hayes doing the Oscar winning "Theme From Shaft."

1. Melody Gardot, Friday at the World Cafe Live.

2. Mastodon, Friday at Susquehanna Bank Center

3. The Lee Boys, Friday at the Philadelphia Folk Festival

4. Allison Moorer & Steve Earle, Saturday at the Philadelphia Folk Festival

5. Herbie Hancock, Saturday at the Borgata

'Twas a beautiful weekend to park your lawn chair on a Schwenksville hillside, and the sun was surely shining on Jesse Lundy and Rich Kardon, the new and first-ever non in-house bookers of the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Lundy and Kardon aimed to put a spring in the step of the Philadelphia Folksong Sopciety's 47th annual shindig, bringing in ukulele whiz Jake Shimabukuro and Moldy Peach Kimya Dawson to go with old standbys like Judy Collins and Tom Paxton. Their well-intentioned (and solidly executed) efforts might have been in vain if the Fest got hit with a wave on thunderstorms as it did in '07. But instead, it was frisbee flinging, guitar pickin' weather all weekend long, and on Sunday, when Philly folks Hoots & Hellmouth and society's child Janis Ian and accordion squeezer Terrance Simien all played, Lundy reported that attendance was "definitely up."

On Saturday afternoon, the Old Pool Farm was pretty sweet place to be. A 40 minute drive from Center City took you to a world away. (Even if it was a world where Ben & Jerry's and La Colombe coffee were on sale 'round the way from the tie dye and Hanna tattoo stands.) Well-dressed Alaskan boy-girl bluegrass band Bearfoot (pictured below), who come back to the area to play Juniata College in Huntington on Oct. 25, were making a high and lonesome sound in the cozy tent off to the side of the main entrance. And down the hill on the main stage, country stunner Allison Moorer was singing Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home."

Soon enough, Moorer's husband Steve Earle came out sporting his Civil War beard, looking just like that ex-junkie drug counselor Walon he played on The Wire. Except he was toting a Martin guitar with his name on it, and putting over achingly understated acoustic ballads like "My Old Friend The Blues" and "Goodbye," the latter from 1995's Train A Comin', which Earle, fresh out of jail, was touring behind the last time he played the Folk Fest.

Earle sang "Sparkle & Shine" about Moorer, then brought her out to duet on Washington Square Serenade's "Days Aren't Long Enough" and kept her around to argue for an open border policy on "City Of Immigrants," before ordering the assembled folkies to sing along on the Pete Seeger-deidcated "Steve's Hammer." And as un-pholky as it may sound, DJ Neil McDonald, who supplied moderately interesting backing beats on the Tom Waits' Wire theme song "Down In The Hole" and "Oxycontin Blues," didn't cause a zeitgeist shifting cultural upheaval on a par with Dylan going electric at Newport in 1965.

Earle, Moorer (and McDonald) play the Grand Opera House in Wilmington on Sept. 6.

Here's a bunch of yellowy cell phone photos from around the Fest, of Earle and Moorer, Bearfoot, and a caricature of beloved Fest host Gene Shay.

.... That old Spectrum will never die. Well, actually, it will. But not just yet. Neil Young is playing the due-for-demolition South Philadelphia building on December 12. Tickets go on sale Sept. 19th. Here's a "Hey Hey, My My" from Japan in 2001.

Now that Michal Phelps has revealed that the true secret of winning eight gold medals was listening to Young Jeezy's "Go Getta" - see the video, with R. Kelly, here - the Atlanta rapper has declared that Phelps is "like the Young Jeezy of the swim world." Jeezy, who's not-so-upbeat-sounding The Recession comes out on Sept. 2, is not all that amphibious himself, though "somebody once threw me in the pool and I had to work it out." The MC, who like you and me, needs a "Vacation," also reveals that he is a devotee of dead-tree media, telling Rolling Stone that when he couldn't follow Phelps' Olympic exploits on the TV, "I just pick it up in the newspaper."

1. Marvin Gaye, "The Star Spangled Banner." The Nike ad featuring Gaye's soul takeover of the national anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game with footage of the U.S. men's basketball team is in heavy rotation during NBC's Olympics coverage. Here's the original, sans LeBron.

2. Nico Muhly. The 26 year old whiz kid classical composer, gourmand, New Yorker profile subject, and string arranger for Bonnie Prince Billy and Bjork plays the First Unitarian Church Friday night, in support of of his album, Mothertongue. He blogs here. Here's a video for "It Goes Without Saying" by Una Lorenzen.

3. Rod Stewart. Rod the Mod plays Friday and Saturday at the Borgata in Atlantic City. Here's a brown haired Stewart doing "Maggie May" with the Faces, including Ronnie Wood, Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones. from 1971.

4. Pacific!, "Hot Lips." From Reveries, debut album by Gothenburg, Sweden duo of
Daniel Hogberg and Bjorn Synneby, who blend breezy Beach Boys sunniness into their Air-y electro-pop.

5. Laura Marling, "Night Terror." Kinda scary folk-goth from Laura Marling, the self-possessed teenage Brit singer-songwriter whose excellent, Alas, I Cannot Swim is out this week. She plays the Side Chapel at the FU Church with Johnny Flynn on Sept. 17th.

Liz Phair plays the TLA, doing her 1993 grunge-era feminist rock landmark Exile In Guyville in its entirety. It's a great album. Below are videos for "Never Said Nothing," and a trailer for a mini-doc about the album which is included in the Guyville anniversary edition which came out in June.

"One kid dreams of fame and fortune, one kid helps pay the rent," goes the lyric. "One could end up going to prison, one just might be President." I suppose Barack Obama's strategists couldn't resist that one. And as we all heard over and over again on TV this week, Obama needs to reach out to attract white working class voters loyal to Hillary Clinton if he's going to win in November. But did he have to go with a Brooks & Dunn song as corny as "Only In America" as his post-speech music in Denver last night?

Earlier in the week, the rumors had it that Bruce Springsteen would be taking the stage after Obama. And really, I can't blame the Boss for backing out, if he was ever in. That would have been a tough act to follow at Invesco Field last night. But instead of Springsteen - and after Stevie Wonder signed up the "Signed, Sealed & Delivered" uplift earlier in the evening, and Sheryl Crow, Jennifer Hudson and Will.I.Am also entertained - the evening was closed out with a dose of red state country.

At first, that sure seemed like a disconnect to me, coming from Obama, an vowed fan of Wonder (whose "Isn't She Lovely" played when Michelle Obama came out for her speech on Monday night in Denver), as well as Springsteen and Miles Davis.

But on closer inspection, the use of a couple of country cowboys to put the finishing touch on a Rocky Mountain convention made strategic sense. (And it sure beats Melissa Etheridge singing John Lennon's "Give Peace Chance.") A good part of Obama's speech was about showing that he too can be a tough guy, and stand up to John McCain on national security as well as domestic issues. And the whole point of the Democrats holding the convention in Denver was an effort to take Western states like Colorado and Nevada that have recently voted red, and turn them blue.

So pulling out Brooks & Dunn's "Only In America" - see the band's original multicultural video for song here - was a way of saying that the Obama campaign means to compete with McCain on all flag waving levels, even if it means employing a country song that George W. Bush used on the campaign trail in 2004, played by a band that performed for the G.O.P. at the Spectrum in South Philadelphia during the Republican convention in 2000 and again in New York in 2004.

And to be fair to B & D, while "Only In America" is filled with populist lyrics unsubtle enough to be ideally suited for a Presidential campaign - "We dream as big as we want to/We all get a chance/Everybody gets to dance" - the song doesn't offer a completely pat happy ending story. It's newlywed couple head to L.A. to make it big, but are likely to wind up back in the heartland, happy to spend their lives as regular folks in the good old U.S.A.: "They just might go back to Oklahoma, and talk about the stars they could have been." And the Obama campaign hopes, consider voting Democratic this time around.

1. The Hold Steady, Friday at the TLA with Sonic Youth. The Brooklyn bar band extraordinaire play from a New York rooftop in this Pitchfork TV clip.

2. Del McCoury Band, Friday at the Salem County Fairgrounds at the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival. Read Steve Klinge's interview with McCoury here. And here's the high and lonesome singer and bandleaders's take on Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning."

3. Brad Paisley, "Online." The country guitar slinger whose mostly instrumental album Play is due in November headlines at the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden on Saturday, with star-dancing Julianne Hough and Jewel also on the bill.

Brad Paisley - Online

4. Does It Offend You, Yeah?, "Let's Make Out." British electro foursome open up for Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails at the Wachovia Center on Saturday.

5. Black Landlord, "Do The Hack Tao Right Now." Soul-rap revue fronted by ringleader Maxx Stoyanoff-Williams, formerly of The Goats and Incognegro. At the Unofficial Fringe Cabaret party at the New Alhambra on Ritner Street in South Philadelphia on Saturday with the Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret and Peek-A-Boo Revue, and in Rittenhouse Square on Wednesday night. Both shows are free.