WQHS FARTED

LOVE,

JORDAN

Unexpected Flashback

I expect that most know of Phantom Planet and have heard their hit song "California" and perhaps "So I fall again".  But fewer know of their selt-titled album of 2004 or that Jason Schwartzman was a former member.  Putting all highschool associated thoughts aside, this album is a solid rock/pop experience.  I am always amazed at how each song is catchy.  Listeners might find similarities between the dense production and reverberating vocals of Phantom Planet and the Stroke's Is this It.  Have the Strokes ever disappointed you with their sunny protocol?  (If you answered yes to this question, don't read any further).  

    To break the comparison a bit, Phantom Planet's catchiness comes from a more rock infused sound that uses big rhythm breaks as chorus makers.  Also Alex Greenwald, lead singer, sings brighter and with more variety than Julian Casablancas.  Plus, Gang Vocals!  Listening to this album will be good times for your vestigal 90's soul.  Track 9: first 30 seconds thinking (am I listening to the Cure??).  Thanks for reading, don't believe anything that I say,

 Margot

the armchairs are back!!

resident faves the armchairs are back on wqhs tomorrow evening! they'll be joining me again on-air from 6-8, and i can't wait to have them. if you had the chance to listen to the show last time, you know how much fun they are, and how good they are. if you missed it, well now's your chance to hear them. they're playing friday night at millcreek (hello yummy) and we couldn't be more excited to have them visiting west philly again... so listen in!!

6-8pm on WQHS.org.

ALSO. see that sweet picture right there of the armchairs? i know you looked at it and thought damn, those are some badass colors. i love that picture. well, guess who took it? the guest on my show last week, rob patterson of plastic pancake and the silicon syrup
(formerly slothra). both bands played our april show at danger danger gallery and kicked ass. check them both out and redeem yourself if you weren't there, or enjoy again!

The Best Fest

Greetings fair readers.

Are you feeling the summer blues? Lazy and bored and searching for a delightful way to fill up a Saturday afternoon? Well tomorrow June 7th from 1-7 PM at Clark Park in West Philly all the forces of awesomeness that this fair city has to offer shall convene in a massive celebration of rock & roll known as BEST FEST.



Check out their website at http://www.myspace.com/bestfest and see the ridiculous amazingness that their set list has to offer.

Want pretty singalong 50s-rock? The Chimeras have you covered. Acid-washed genius-rock? (Note: I made up that last term). Kurt Vile is here. Foot-stomping mountain-rock? The Citywide Specials move out of their hipster hideout Fiume for the afternoon. How about intricately-arranged harmonious...rock? Soft People will be playing just for you. And if you're feeling a bit more aggressive, Badmaster mainstays Drums Like Machine Guns (you can probably imagine) and Serpents of Wisdom (some math attack for the thinking part of your mind) will be along as well. Plus the bands that I'm just not cool enough to know much about: L'Ananas, Crestmont Steppers, Club Lifestyle, Beatjams, Vice Versa, Stinking Lizaveta, and the Extraordinaires.

So strap on your walking shoes and your sitting pants. Make it a picnic! Enjoy Clark Park Park! And check http://www.phillycollegeradio.org for the exclusive Best Fest review.

Until next time....

Righteous tunes, bro

I traded in a weekend in Philly for one on Hunter Mountain in New York where I rode the waves of tie-dyed and dreadlocked groovitude, buzzed off good vibes and Bud Light. Here's me, loving life and broing out:
Yes, my friends, I went to a jam festival this past weekend, chockful of Dead covers, prolonged breakdowns by prog rockers with goofy names (RIYL: Umphrey's McGee, Electric Apricot), and the ever present background whispers of slang terms for drugs on Shakedown Street, the name given to the festival's main road of vendors as well as the 1978 Grateful Dead album produced by Lowell George, of Little Feat fame.

Mentioned in May's issue of Rolling Stone's list of the best summer festivals that are "worth the trip" (Oh, you, Rolling Stone), May 30th-June 1st marked the fourth installment of Mountain Jam, the northeast festival hosted by Warren Haynes & Co. in the beautiful mountains of Hunter, NY. And while I take Rolling Stone, the magazine that puts out the same groundbreaking list of the best songs/artists/albums of all time nearly every month, as seriously when it comes to music as improvisationally challenged jam sessions that pass the 15 minute mark, I cannot lie to you. Peppered in between the usual jam-band festival staples was a lot of great music that would please jammers and nonjammers alike. And since it's summer and I'm still feeling pseudo "free love" right now, I'd like to share with you the music that kept me stomping and grooving all weekend:


Felice Brothers
Hailing from the the Catskill mountains of New York, the Felice Brothers are a folk/country band comprised of Ian Felice on lead vocals and guitar, Simone Felice on vocals and drums, and James Felice on vocals, accordion, organ, and piano as well as Farley on washboard and fiddle and Christmas on bass guitar (Fun fact: Wikipedia tells me that Christmas once got by as a "traveling dice player".) They are boys from the neighborhood, just 10 minutes outside of Woodstock, NY. And while they may not hail from my neighborhood or your neighborhood- the tales they tell of hookers and heroin- they wield the same magic power Springsteen has in convincing you for a split second that you hail from New Jersey. When my close friend asked me what the Felice Brothers sounded like before they came on, I replied, "They sound like something you'd want to hear while swigging a bottle of whiskey with old friends from back home". Sure enough, by the end of their set, we were both singing along, completely at home, stomping and singing along with the crowd, "I put some whiskey into my whiskey, I put some heartbreak into my heart."

RIYL: Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, Guy Clark, early Bruce Springsteen

Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings
Sharon Jones is the female equivalent to James Brown. Introduced by the Dap Kings, true sultans of suave, Sharon Jones danced her way to the front of the stage, her steps saying "Fellas, I'm ready to get up and do my thing." And by the end of her set, moneymakers were shaking- mine included- as Jones and the Dap Kings took the audience back a few decades in their time machine of soul. If you've ever once thought, "They really just don't make music like they used to," they do and it's best served live.
RIYL: Betty LaVette, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles


Levon Helm
I have seen the Last Waltz- the legendary Scorcese documentary about the Band's last hurrah probably over twenty times and twice within the past month, so seeing Levon Helm live for me was like seeing the Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1965. Alright, maybe I'm exaggerating, but after he opened with "Ophelia", I couldn't help but become engulfed by an overwhelming sensation of Bandmania. And while the Band's heyday has long past, Helm's hasn't. His voice has aged gracefully and he sings and plays with the same fervor that you see in old tapings of the Band on tour with Bob Dylan. But unlike seeing Dylan live for the sake of seeing Dylan live now, seeing Helm live isn't as depressing because the old sound of the Band is maintained. Helm's Dirt Farmer was a grammy winner this year, and after seeing him play with a new cast of characters, it was clear to me that the spirit of the Band will continue to live on through Helm until he plans a "Last Waltz" concert of his own, which I hope won't be anytime soon.

RIYL: The Band

I may be an old soul, but good music is good music. Plus, it's summertime.

Free love and good vibes,

Lauren

WQHS has been Popped!

Popped! Philadelphia is back June 20-22, and now in its second year the festival has grown to feature a full range of both national and local exceptional artists. WQHS will be there, and it's gonna be sweet, so come say hi to us in between checking out the ridiculous amount of great bands (seriously, this lineup is ridiculous):

Vampire Weekend
Daniel Johnston
Mates of State
Crystal Castles
Dan Deacon
The Capitol Years
Gogol Bordello
The Ting Tings
Tickley Feather
Cheers Elephant
The Swimmers
and more!


Tickets are on sale now at ticketmaster.com. For more information and a full lineup, check out poppedphiladelphia.com.

The Writers Club on WQHS tuesday night!

hello pretty faces!

i'm excited to say that philadelphia's the writers club will be visiting WQHS to join me on the first of installment of my summer show this tuesday evening (the 20th), 6-8p.

the writers club is literally a club - a group of writers and singers of various styles coming together to create some beautiful music and art - but it centers around the efforts of patrick welsh (also of tell me, bycicle and the bastilles). his work is earnest, honest accoustic folk, and throughout its stories is a subtle yet incredibly tangible nationalism. but this nationalism isn't the freedom fries-type of pride you may be tempted to assume i mean which we've become so unfortunately accustomed to in the last seven years; this is a near-nostalgic love for the essence of american identity and the spirit of its beginnings, the fabric which makes american land a unique moment in time and space.

so check out the links to the pages above and try this out, and if you like what you hear (which i suspect you will), tune in on tuesday night to hear patrick play a few songs and talk more about his music and life as a philadelphia musician. also! i believe someone will be taping the session, in which case i'll post the video here.

listen in!!

tuesday may 20th
6-8pm
the writers club visits WQHS

much love, katonah.

Mike posts something - an album worth your time

So I thought I should actually post something on here, now that it’s been up-and-running for almost two months now. I couldn’t really think of any hip or awesome Philadelphia-related things to write about, maybe because I’m square and technically foreign. As such, I decided to write about an album we have at the station that comes out today in England, and was first self-released in these United States at the end of 2007. The album is For Emma, Forever Ago, by Bon Iver, the stage name of Wisconsin folkie Justin Vernon. I used to review records back in high school all the time, but it’s been a while since I’ve tried to think about how I feel about a record. This album, though, really made me want to write about music again. I listened to it on a whim one day at the station, without having really read any reviews of it, beyond what the promotional sticker blurb on the front said. What I was greeted with was the wonderfully bleak record about a world seemingly so detached from my own. The emptiness that pervades its songs is haunting, but inviting. From the opening track, “Flume”, you can hear creaks from the wood cabin in the sticks of Wisconsin it was recorded in, and the sparse instrumentation of a single man alone in a bungalow. I saw the loneliness of Vernon’s echoing voice not necessarily as adding a depressing quality to the music, but rather as a sort of audible manifestation of the surroundings the album was created in. Vernon apparently spent four months out on his own, after departing from DeYarmond Edison, his previous band. There are some easy comparisons that I can make of similar sounding artists, namely M.Ward, My Morning Jacket, and Band of Horses, but these are really just because the singers all sound pretty similar. The vocals often remind me, bizarrely, of TV On The Radio – especially on “The Wolves (Act I and II)”. Vernon staggers the overdubs of his vocal tracks, making me think of tracks on Return To Cookie Mountain. In terms of the music, though, it is similar in instrumentation to early Devendra Banhart – I’m thinking particularly his lo-fi stuff, like The Black Babies – or even Neil Young’s eponymous debut from 1969. Vernon also sings in a sort of falsetto, but I wouldn’t really compare it to Young’s style. Then there’s the occasional drum, horn and slide guitar that return this record firmly to the modern indie-folk ilk, such as those on the title track.
The album was picked up by Jagjaguwar, a hip little label from Indiana, of all places, and was re-relased with a new cover (both are nice though, as I’ve shown) on February 19th. So I guess I’m not being wonderfully current – I didn’t want to write about the new No Age or Portishead albums, or God forbid, the new Death Cab album that comes out tomorrow. I chose to write about a good album that I’ve found deserves some respect, and one that you can take seriously (unlike Vampire Weekend), but don’t feel like you are doing it because the internet tells you so (unlike Radiohead). Granted, Pitchfork gave For Emma a good review, as did the A.V. Club, CMJ, and a whole bunch of other credible review outlets, but (other than Pitchfork) they all did it after Bon Iver had built up some hype on his own. Now that this record is old, unhip news, I really suggest you all check it out. It’s the best reason I’ve come up with to date to want to go Wisconsin, because we all know that Vermont has better cheese.

PCRC

Get Ready for the rise of PCRC, Philadelphia College Radio Collective

really, you need to check this out.

(photo: The Shackeltons by Shana Novak)

you know those days when you just really, really don't want to get out of bed? when you wake up with a glass of water and a piece of bread on your nightstand and you have no idea who put them there? or who put you to bed (it was my roommate, thank god)? the kind of day when you realize that it's 7pm and you still haven't left your room except to refill your glass of water? that's the kind of day i've had today. i wasn't really feeling doing anything, let alone walking the 11 blocks to the south street bridge to do my show tonight. but after i managed to put on some actual clothes, throw my dirty hair back and make the epic journey, i realized some things are worth getting out of bed at 7:30pm for.

what things, you ask? well, i'm glad you did. these things:

the shackeltons
i'm not even really sure where to begin with this band i love them so much. granted, they really don't need my plug...they've been impressing the shit out of people at rolling stone and spin, seattle's kexp, and chris walla. if you haven't heard them, listen to a song, and i bet you'll want to listen to a few more, because this is music that makes you feel like its epic rawness and urgency have grabbed you by the ear and thrown you inside the bass drum. and maybe that last sentence didn't actually make any sense, but in a world with the shackeltons as the soundtrack, it makes more sense than peanut butter and jelly. oh, and if they weren't badass enough already, they're from chambersburg, pa (read: the middle of fucking nowhere music-wise), yet they kick ass like they're scraping for money to pay next month's rent for their williamsburg loft. sarcasm intended.
RIYD: the pixies, early white stripes, aggressive arcade fire, fugazi, television, yeah yeah yeahs

the lisps
millcreek tavern (42 and chester) is a pretty great place. a fantastic brew selection and two blocks from my apartment (sweet brah), they also have great live music pretty frequently. a couple weeks ago i had the distinct pleasure of stumbling upon brooklyn's the lisps in my travels there. though i had gone to see drink up buttercup (see below), the lisps seriously caught my attention with their set of quirky folk. go their myspace now. play "brackish water." it is probably my favorite song i've heard this month. the rest of their stuff is a little more playfully dynamic, with the two vocalists - one petite darling female and one tall curly-haired baritone-y male - bantering back and forth through the lyrics, which is cute, especially cause they're exes. it's quite lovely, and they say they'll be back to visit us philadelphians this fall. which means you should get excited now, especially because they wear really cool costumes.
RIYD: banjos, streams, dinosaurs, trees and forests of musical goodness

drink up buttercup
imagine, if you will, if a clockwork orange's alex delarge had been the fifth member of the beatles. now think about what that music might have sounded like, if it actually existed. OH WAIT. IT DOES. bucks county's drink up buttercup is what that band would have been, except minus the ultraviolence and plus a few barely out of high school way-too-good-for-their-age boys. their drummer is 17, but these boys put on a show way beyond their years. i was seriously trippin out, and i don't take hallucinogens. listen to it now, cause they are starting to get some serious attention. the best part? they sound exactly like this live.
RIYD: trash cans as instruments, man man, bands that get off the stage and play in the middle of the crowd at the end of the show and make everyone stomp their feet for the rhythm section

the armchairs
as if i don't talk about them enough. but seriously they're just so great, and really wonderful guys - my favorite philly band. they were amazing at our show at the danger danger gallery april 18th, and everyone was freaking out to their greatness. about 15 people asked me about them afterwards. they're playing a free show at the trocadero balcony may 19th, and there will be free cookies, so if you're not there, well i don't know where you are, because it's the only place to be. listen to what they have up, but know that no recording can do any justice to how good they are live. it's like waking up on a sunday morning when you're 11 years old and mom bringing you a plate of nice warm cookies and milk, AND dinosaurs is on. that's how good it is. cookies!
RIYD: the kinks, of montreal, the zombies, sunday morning cartoons

...
it's always worth getting out of bed if there's something good to listen to.

Beautiful World Syndicate

Hello friends and listeners. The other day, in celebration of the mighty fine weather we've had here in Philadelphia, I decided to take a walk through the neighborhood. And since I hadn't gotten too much new music lately, I directed myself towards the Beautiful World Syndicate, on 48th and Pine.

Open for about a year now, the Beautiful World Syndicate is a record collector's paradise- they specialize in hard-to-find records and almost exclusively stock vinyl. Professional DJs and producers have been known to spend hundreds of dollars on a trip to the store (or the South Philly location, at Tasker and Passyunk). The guys who stock their records are very good at what they do, and even if the focus is a little narrow what the store lacks in breadth it more than makes up for in depth and quality. All the records are in superior condition, and the selection of jazz and soul records is comprehensive. 

On my recent trip I got three albums- Oliver Nelson's "Blues and the Abstract Truth," Jackie McLean's "Hipnosis," and Herbie Nichols' "Bethlehem Years." The last one is rare enough that I couldn't find a picture on the internet, but I got it in VG++ condition for $5- the going rate online is closer to $20. The fellow behind the counter (in all my trips there, I've only seen one guy) is quite helpful and will play any record you want to hear before you buy it. I could turn this into a record review (all the albums were stellar), but you should just go on over and find your own.

Save yourself some money, enjoy a nice walk, support a great local business, and get some sweet new tunes. And tell 'em WQHS sent you.

Great Movie, Stellar Soundtrack: Buffalo 66

If you haven't seen this movie, you should.  If you haven't listened to the soundtrack, you should.  Vincent Gallo wrote, directed, starred in, and composed the music for this unusual film.  His music is eerie, full of noise, bells, dissonance, pain.  And then, his father croons.  In between, are some great songs from Yes and King Crimson and the album opens with Stan Getz making you feel like you are in the most magnificent hotel lobby ever.  

     -Margot