03 2016 by ICON Magazine

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march INTERVIEW

DR. DOG | 22 These bronze vessels, dated to circa 740 BCE, were found inside a wooden tomb chamber deep within Tumulus MM, the burial mound of a Phrygian ruler who was likely Gordios, father to King Midas. They were among many vessels used and then left from the funeral feast for the deceased ruler, whose remains were inside the tomb. The ancient vessels are part of the new exhibition, The Golden Age of King Midas, at the Penn Museum through November 27, 2016. Photo: Penn Museum

From the Bijou Café of Philly’s early ‘70s to the college bars of today, if a microphone is available, Kweder will sing/speak stories of want, need and woe in that forceful warbling voice of his—a survivalist troubadour who continues crafting his own uniquely Philadelphian vision

Untitled, Bronx Storefront, “La Rumba Supermarket, by Emilio Sánchez (1921–1999). Watercolor on paper, sheet and image: 40 x 59.5in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Emilio Sánchez Foundation. © Emilio Sánchez Foundation

10 | ART SHORTS Fleisher/Ollman Gallery Grossman Gallery, Lafayette College Travis Gallery 12 | EXHIBITIONS Allentown Art Museum Delaware Art Museum New Hope Arts Center

THEATER

32 | KERESMAN ON DISC Them Roswell Rudd & Heather Masse Francis Poulenc / Aleck Karis Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom 34 | SINGER / SONGWRITER Paul Burch Dion Delaney & Bonnie with The Allman Brothers & King Curtis Willie Nelson The Pines 36 | JAZZ LIBRARY Coleman Hawkins

DINING

14 | VALLEY THEATER

37 | The Palm at the Bellevue 38 | Farm & Fisherman

16 | THE LIST

FILM

MUSIC

14 | CITY THEATER

ENTERTAINMENT

THE BEAT 40 | CITY BEAT

VALLEY BEAT

18 | KERESMAN ON FILM The Witch

ABOUT LIFE

20 | CINEMATTERS A War

ETCETERA

26 | BAD MOVIE Hail Caesar

41 | Cutting the Strings 42 | L. A. TIMES CROSSWORD 43 | AGENDA

28 | FILM ROUNDUP Cemetery of Splendour High-Rise Knight of Cups The Wave 30 | REEL NEWS Jafar Panahi’s Taxi Room Trumbo Spotlight

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www.icondv.com PUBLISHER

ADVERTISING 800-354-8776

EDITORIAL Executive Editor / Trina McKenna Raina Filipiak / Advertising filipiakr@comcast.net PRODUCTION Designer / Richard DeCosta Assistant Designer / Kaitlyn Reed-Baker CITY BEAT Thom Nickels / thomnickels1@aol.com VALLEY BEAT Geoff Gehman / geoffgehman@verizon.net FINE ARTS Edward Higgins Burton Wasserman MUSIC Nick Bewsey / nickbewsey@gmail.com Mark Keresman / shemp@hotmail.com Bob Perkins / bjazz5@aol.com Tom Wilk / tomwilk@rocketmail.com FOOD Robert Gordon / rgordon33@verizon.net CONTRIBUTING WRITERS A. D. Amorosi / divaland@aol.com Robert Beck / robert@robertbeck.net Jack Byer / jackbyer@verizon.net Peter Croatto / petecroatto@yahoo.com James P. Delpino / JDelpino@aol.com Sally Friedman / pinegander@aol.com Geoff Gehman / geoffgehman@verizon.net George Miller / gomiller@travelsdujour.com R. Kurt Osenlund / rkurtosenlund@gmail.com Keith Uhlich / KeithUhlich@gmail.com

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MUSIC FEATURE 33 | NICK’S PICKS Ken Fowser Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Orchestra Charles Lloyd and The Marvels Dr. Lonnie Smith Roxy Coss

Filling the hunger since 1992

Trina McKenna trina@icondv.com

KENN KWEDER | 24

5 | A THOUSAND WORDS 6 | The Golden Touch / Penn Museum 8 | Our America / Delaware Art Museum

The intersection of art, entertainment, culture, opinion and mad genius

1-800-354-8776 • 215-862-9558

In 1999, Doug O’Donnell, Scott McMicken and Toby Leaman were hanging out in West Chester, having just conceived Dr. Dog and what it could be. Philly, and anything beyond that, was but a dream. That was then and this is now.

ART

ICON

ON THE COVER: Dr. Dog. Page 22

ART A THOUSAND WORDS STORY AND PAINTING BY ROBERT BECK

Endowment “Janet, come ‘ere” “Just a second.” Janet’s voice came from the other side of the room divider. “Did you see this painting of the blizzard, with the steam vent?” she asked.” “Come ‘ere,” said Brett, a touch of impatience in his voice. “That’s the second painting in here with a steam vent,” Janet said as she rounded the corner. “I wonder if he puts them in all his city paintings. Think it’s some personal thing? Or maybe he just . . . “ “Look at this,” Brett said, tilting his head toward a large painting. Janet stood next to him, hiked her bag on her shoulder, then took two steps back. “That’s a hell of an elephant,” she said. “Look at the guy.” “And a pretty good tiger.” “The guy’s naked,” Brett said, pointing at the painting without taking his hand out of his jacket pocket. “Yeah, so?” “Can he do that?” “Do what? Paint a naked guy?” “Paint his, you know, all of him, naked. Isn’t that, I mean, you can’t just paint that and put it where everybody can see it,” Brett said, hunching his shoulders. Janet looked at him with her eyebrows arched. “What?” Brett took his hands out of his jacket and waved one at the painting. “Come on, the only time you see a guy’s private parts is in museums or porn. You don’t see them in regular galleries.” Janet looked at him over her glasses. “You’ve never said that about paintings of naked women.” “That’s different,” Brett said, unconvincingly. He thought about it for a moment. “They never show the lower parts.” “Except in museums and porn? I think you’re spending too much time on that.” Brett hunched his shoulders again. “He’s holding a baby.” A pause. “Why is he holding a baby?” Another pause. “Shouldn’t it be a woman holding the baby?” he asked, plunging his hands into his jacket pockets again. Janet wasn’t listening. She walked up to the painting to look at the brushstrokes on the elephant’s trunk. “What do you think it means?“ Brett asked. Janet stepped back again. “I love the elephant,” she said. “They’re not all endangered animals,” said Brett. “At least not the moose and the owl.” Janet looked at him. “Or the guy with the baby. Or Robert Beck’s work can be seen at www.robertbeck.net.

his willy,” she said with a grin, wiggling her pointer finger at Brett. Brett gave her an exasperated look. “There’s got to be a connection,” he said. “What’s the title?” Janet looked at the wall tag and said, “Baptism.” “Baptism.” “Baptism.” “What does that have to do with showing his dick?” “Lower your voice,” Janet said. “What would you have him wear, cut-offs? Spandex? A suit? The artist had his own reason to paint the penis, Brett. Just let it go.” He shrugged. “The elephant would have been a great painting all by itself. Why did he have to muck it up with all the other stuff?” “Maybe he should have called you first,“ Janet said, taking her cell phone from her bag. “Shouldn’t you be able to understand a painting?” Brett said spreading his pockets out to his sides. “What, is it cool to be obscure?” Janet took a picture of the painting with her phone. “You sending that to Erika?” Brett asked.

“She likes elephants.” “Right,” Brett said with a chuckle. He turned to look behind and took a step back. “And they’re all standing in water—or something that looks like water.” He leaned his head to the side. “A naked guy with a baby.” He scrunched his face. “Baptism?” “Well let’s see,” Janet said, tapping the phone screen with her middle finger. Brett smiled. “You know, the polar bear is like the poster animal for climate change, but every time I see a picture of one I think of the Christmas commercials for Coke. Is that sick?” Janet read out loud: “Baptism: A person’s initiation into a particular activity or role, typically one perceived as difficult.” She turned off her phone and put it back in her purse, lifted the bag onto her shoulder, and walked over to the painting on the next wall. Brett stayed behind, motionless in front of the large image, staring at the child being held by the naked man with water up to his ankles. ■

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Art BY BURTON WASSERMAN

Detail of one of the three massive bronze cauldrons from Tumulus MM, tomb of a Phrygian ruler, probably the father of King Midas. The figure of a siren and the associated ring handle form one of four attachments on the cauldron. The cauldron probably once held an alcoholic beverage made of barley beer, grape wine, and honey mead, part of an elaborate funeral banquet for the deceased ruler. The cauldron dates to circa 740 BCE. It was excavated by the Penn Museum at Gordion in 1957. Photo: Penn Museum

More than 100 gold beads and pendants were recovered from one tomb, and 76 of them were restrung into this necklace. (Photo: © Ahmet Remzi Erdoğan, Photographer of the Anatolian Civilizations Museum)

the Golden Touch

THE DESIRE FOR ACCUMULATING huge quantities of gold has a long history in the human experience. This fact is well demonstrated by the myth of King Midas, the legendary ruler of ancient Phrygia, the current site of modern Turkey. Midas lived in the prosperous city of Gordeon when the great epic poem, The Iliad by Homer, was first written down. Because gold does not corrode, it became, early on, a symbol for immortality. However, since it is a rather soft metal, it was frequently transformed into harder, more durable alloys for use in such objects as storage vessels, drinking cups, jewelry, and working utensils. In modern times, drawn by questions about the region and the people who lived there, archeologists from the Penn Museum have been excavating the site where Midas is believed to have reigned. In 1957, they excavated a spectacular tomb called Tumulus MM (Midas Mound) the largest of about 120 man-made mounds of earth, clay and stone, used to mark important burial areas at Gordeon. Dated to about 740 BCE, it is believed to be the final resting place of Midas’ father, Gordeas. When the archeologists entered the tomb, they found the oldest standing wooden building and beheld an extraordinary sight: the skeleton of a king in what was left of a cedar coffin, surrounded by all the bronze bowls, standing vessels, wooden tables and food remains from a bountiful funeral repast. According to legend, Midas was the possessor of the Midas touch, the power to transmute whatever he touched into gold. One day, some of Midas’ farmhands brought him a satyr (a creature, half man and half goat). The king recognized him as an assistant to Dionysus, the god of the Vine and had him set free. The satyr was pleased because he had been treated with dignity. He said he would grant Midas whatever he might wish for. Midas thought to himself, if he could turn anything he touched into gold, he could have his royal treasury always replenished by the exercise of his touch. Dionysus asked if Midas was sure this was what the he really wanted. Without carefully thinking it through, Midas answered in the affirmative. In due course, he discovered what a foolish mistake he had made. It happened when he touched his daughter and she became a golden statue. Fortunately, Dionysus felt sorry for Midas and took back the power. 6 ■ I C O N ■ M A R C H 2 0 1 6 ■ W W W . I C O N D V. C O M ■ W W W . F A C E B O O K . C O M / I C O N D V

King Midas’ father, Gordios, had an abnormally elongated head, a mark of the elite in some cultures. His features were reconstructed based on the skull discovered in his tomb.

Supposedly, since then, we like to think we know better and would never stoop to such folly. Instead, we believe the ultimate value in matters golden consists of practicing the golden rule: to do unto others only what we would have them do unto us. Perhaps everything would be better in a universe where gods and mortals were allowed to co-exist and be measured by the same instruments. Incidentally, besides visiting The Golden Age of King Midas exhibition, on view until November 27, you might also enjoy a visit to the galleries there that focus on ancient Egypt, the Far East, pre-Colombian American cultures, Africa, historic North American societies, and Classical Greek practices and beliefs. Without question, there is no end to discovering what there is about the experiences of humankind on display in the Penn Museum. ■ Penn Museum, 3260 South St, Phila. (215) 898-4000. penn.museum

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Art BY ED HIGGINS

Our

America

“The Dominican York,” from the series Island of Many Gods, 2006. Scherezade García (born 1966). Acrylic, charcoal, ink and sequins on paper, sheet and image: 30 x 22 1/2 inches. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the R.P. Whitty Company and the Cooperating Committee on Architecture. © 2006, Scherezade García

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UST AFTER THE SMITHSONIAN Institute launched its travelling show in 2013, Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, the controversy began. Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott called the show “meaningless” because its title grouped all Latinos in the same category. To reinforce his point Kennicott wrote, “If we look at the art included in this exhibition, it includes everything from a Cuban exile who spent a lot of time in Paris and worked in a very cool, lovely abstract style to Mexican-American artists who were doing a very political kind of art in Los Angeles. And one begins to wonder if there is, in fact, a lot in common between what they are doing.” By the time the show got to Miami, critic George Fishman, writes, “[the exhibition] specifically examines the impact and context of Latino artists in the United States. It accomplishes this goal with bravura, humor and subversive poignancy.” Carmen Ramos, the curator, wants visitors to the exhibition to, “… come away with a kind of a fresh view of American art and culture. Latino art is usually thought of as outside American art, but this exhibition presents not only a broad view of what Latino art is, but that it’s part of American culture. I want them to see what Latino artists are saying about our culture…The relationship between Latino art and the larger world of American art in the post-War period is not simple or clear cut. Some artists, influenced by the activism of Latino civil rights movements, turned away from pure formalist discourse to tackle the pressing issues of the day. Other artists wholeheartedly embraced abstraction. An even larger group inhabited multiple worlds, infusing avant-garde modes with politically and culturally engaged themes.” After many writers and critics weighed in on the subject, Delaware Valley art fans will have their own chance for their two cents worth. Social media is awash with opinions. The exhibition opens March 5 at the Delaware Art Museum where it runs through May 29. It then goes north to the Allentown Art Museum where it will run from June 26 to October 2. Both museums will feature bilingual art labels. Arguments for and against using gender, nationality or race to denote categories of individual work have gone on ad infinitum and it’s more boring than enlightening. Still few complain about women’s, European or African-American art or question the differing styles of The Eight or even of the Impressionists. As Mark Twain wrote, you pays your money and you takes your choice! As to the art itself, there are several artists whose works stand out according to curator Ramos. Olga Albizu, who made the oil painting “Radiante” in 1967, is one of the early major figures profiled in the exhibition. She is Puerto Rican-born, came to New York in the 1940s, and became involved in the abstract impressionism movement. She studied art in Puerto Rico and followed her professor to New York. Her works—emotional, communicative, with persuasion of color—were very much informed by the same questions of other artists of that abstract expressionism. Melesio Casas, the artist of the acrylic “Humanscape 62” served in the Korean War and is originally from El Paso. He was like many American artists interested in abstraction. He had a strange encounter in a drive-in movie screening in which he saw larger than life characters off screen. He started a series called “Humanscape” which looked at media images and analyzed their impact on people that consume them. Elia Alba, who made the print “Larry Levan (snake)” in 2006, was born in the U.S. and is of Dominican origin. Her work looks at how Latino artists depict everyday common people. Most of her work is photography based. What she often does is take a photograph of someone and create a face mask which is worn by someone else that she photographs in a specific environment. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons was born in Cuba and came to Boston in the late 1980s. She works mostly with Polaroid photography in large scale and creates installations that present a whole group of these photographs together. This work, “Constellation,” depicts an aerial view of the artist’s head, and in the surrounding photographs her hair weaves throughout the composition. Both museums plan extensive public programs and an award-winning book with the same title as the exhibition by Ramos has been published to accompany the show. ■

Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington 302-571-9590 delart.org

Pariah, 1971-1972. Marcos Dimas (born 1943). Oil on canvas, 65 x 54 inches. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment. © 1971–1972, Marcos Dimas

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Art Shorts CURATED BY ED HIGGINS

Sarah Gamble and Jennifer Levonian Fleisher/Ollman Gallery While different conceptually and in their chosen media, the artists make for an interesting pairing as they each explore the bookends of the human psyche. If Gamble plumbs the unconscious realm of dreams and self-created mythological worlds occupied by a range of strange characters and foreboding landscapes, Levonian delves into the quotidian where the mundane is transformed

cusing on events that often go unnoticed, transforming them into humorously bizarre narratives. She lives in Philadelphia and has exhibited in major national venues. She received her BFA from The College of William and Mary and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She also has been awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, 1216 Arch St., Philadelphia. fleisher-ollmangallery.com. Both shows run through March 26.

Judy Pfaff The Grossman Gallery, Lafayette College

George Anthonisen Travis Gallery Hailed as “one of America’s outstanding figurative sculptors,” George Anthonisen’s work deals primarily with “the immutable essence of the individual, the family, and human society in a changing world.” Born in Boston in 1936, Anthonisen spent his early years in Vermont. At the age of eight, Anthonisen was identified as learning disabled and tutored by Elizabeth Clark Gunther, a landscape architect. Her husband, John F. Gunther, was an architect and painter. Anthonisen lived

Judy Pfaff was born in London, England, in 1946 and moved to the United States when she was 13. She received a BFA from Washington University, Saint Louis (1971), and an MFA from Yale University (1973). She is

Sarah Gamble, Untitled, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches.

into the fantastical, or at the very least, the hilarious. Sarah Gamble’s new paintings on paper and canvas in Vibraspace are marked by her trademark synthesis of patterned abstraction and representation where narrative cohesion is suggested, but always just out of reach. Gamble graduated from the Corcoran School of Art and received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She has exhibited widely in the United States and received a number of fellowships including a Pew and artist-in-residence grants, including one in Roswell, New Merxico. She was born and works in Philadelphia. In Shake Out Your Cloth, Jennifer Levonian, working in cut-paper animation, engages with everyday life by fo-

Jennifer Levonian, still from Xylophone, 2016, cut paper, watercolor, stop-motion animation.

the recipient of an Academy Member Fellowship, American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2013); MacArthur Fellowship (2004); Guggenheim Fellowship (1983); National Endowment for the Arts grants (1979, 1986); and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has had numerous solo exhibitions and group shows in major galleries and museums in the United States and abroad. Commissions include Pennsylvania Convention Center Public Arts Projects and large-scale site-specific sculpture in the Barnes Foundation. Pfaff ’s work is in the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Her work is often a combination of natural materials and machine-made objects. Pfaff also creates paintings, sculpture, prints. Of the work, she says “I’ve always done prints and drawings, always. No one buys those installations, so when you see things that are portable that I’m not attached to, they’re probably two-dimensional. If you get an installation of mine, you inherit [my assistant] Ryan, myself, a crew, the dog, the noise, the dirt. We wreck the house. So if you don’t want that, then you get prints and drawings.” She is presently on the faculty of Bard College. The Grossman Gallery at Lafayette College, 730 High St, Easton. galleries.lafayette.edu/grossman-gallery. Through April.

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Jennifer Levonian, still from Xylophone, 2016, cut paper, watercolor, stop-motion animation.

in the Gunther home for a number of months and it was here that he was first introduced to the world of art. After military service, Anthonisen studied at the University of Vermont. He moved to New York in 1961 to master his skills at the National Academy of Design followed by study at the Art Students League from 19621964. He returned to New Hampshire in 1967 to attend Dartmouth College Medical School where he studied human anatomy. In 1971, Anthonisen was named sculptor-in-residence of the Augustus Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire. In the same year, Anthonisen moved to Bucks County. His works are in the U.S. Capitol, Capitol Visitors Center, Washington, D.C.; the Woodmere Art Museum, the Curtis Institute of Music, the Berman Museum of Art, Collegeville, and the James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown. In May 2009, Anthonisen received a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Ursinus College, Collegeville, to whom he has bequeathed his estate. Travis Gallery, 6089 Lower York Road, New Hope. travisgallery.com ■

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EXHIBITIONS

Ann Hutchinson (b. Philadelphia, 1789–1848), The Hutchinson Family, drawn and painted by Samuel Folwell, dated 1806, two-ply twisted silk thread, ink, and paint; silk fabric. Allentown Art Museum, gift of Elizabeth M. Wister

Mair McClellan, Song for Source The Plain and Ornamental Branches: A Sampling of Pennsylvania’s Girlhood Embroideries Allentown Art Museum, 31 N. Fifth St., Allentown, PA 610-432-4333 AllentownArtMuseum.org Through May 29 Fifteen embroidered samplers and silkwork pictures stitched by Pennsylvania girls and young women. From elegant and exuberant to plain and neat, these embroideries reflect important aspects of the lives of their young makers—their educational accomplishments, religious convictions, and ties of kinship. Among the objects on view are eight embroideries ranging from 1802 to 1887 whose makers were related to Hope Randolph Hacker (1908–2002), an avid needleworker who generously donated her collection to the Museum.

Shoko Teruyama and Matt Kelleher, Hawk Teapot, 2015. Hand-built earthenware with sgrafitto decoration, 6 x 10 x 8 inches. Courtesy of the artists

Duality Delaware Art Museum 2301 Kentmere Parkway Wilmington, Delaware 302-571-9590 delart.org May 14–August 14 This community-curated Oulooks exhibition explores collaborative life-work partnerships. Heather Moqtaderi, Philadelphia-based curator and teacher, developed the concept for the exhibition and invited four artist couples—Gina Triplett and Matt Curtius, Shoko Teruyama and Matt Kelleher, Heather and Hitoshi Ujiie, and Trefny Dix and Bengt Hokanson—to create new works for Duality. Their paintings, ceramics, glass, and textiles reveal dual, and often complimentary, artistic viewpoints and technical skills.

Fiber, Fabric, Fashion New Hope Arts Center 2 Stockton Ave., New Hope, PA 215-862-9606 newhopearts.org Hours: Fri, Sat, Sun 12–5 or by appointment Reception with the artists, Sunday, March 20, 2–5 Through March 20, 2016 Invitational exhibition of contemporary textiles, showcasing the wide variety of methods and media worked by artists and articulated in fashion, accessories, jewelry, home decor, weaving, and design. Original pieces by 23 designers are on display. Professional couture and wearables, as well as wall art and sculptural installations express the latitude of the contemporary fiber arts. The pret-a-porter boutique and fitting room for fashionistas is featured.

Paulina C. Roth (b. ca. 1836), dated 1850, embroidered sampler

Mary Lea (b. Wilmington, DE, 1787–1810), embroidered extract-style sampler, dated MDCCCII, two-ply twisted silk thread, balanced plainweave linen. Allentown Art Museum, gift of Mrs. William P. Hacker

Gina Triplett and Matt Curtius, Still Life with Pink, 2015. Acrylic and ink, 15.5 x 12.5 inches. Courtesy of the artists

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Marian Schoetle, MAU reversible wrap dress.

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THEATER VALLEY Anna Deavere Smith Anna Deavere Smith is one of the smartest, boldest theater people around. For a quarter century she’s been acting her solo plays with dozens of characters based on her interviews with participants in major American issues: the aftermath of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles; the health of healthcare; the prison-to-school pipeline. She’s received a slew of awards, including a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, for her masterly command of languages, body languages and flowing, forking conversations. On April 8 Smith will perform in the Valley for the first time, adding her voices to “Voices of Conscience,” a Valley-wide series on civil rights. Her venue, Muhlenberg College, is the alma mater of Robert Saenz de Viteri, her audio script consultant for Let Me Down Easy, and the late Rich Hollabaugh, her stage manager for Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and Fires in the Mirror, a crucible of conflicts between blacks and Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. Her other local links include an honorary degree from Moravian College and a working friendship with actor Michael Bentt, a former heavyweight champion boxer who learned he needed to act at Northampton Community College. Fool for Love Mike Bentt’s first acting trainer was Norman Roberts, who for 35 years galvanized the Northampton Community College theater program with animal exercises, crossgender/racial casting, daring plays (a gay biblical drama) and daring updates of classics (“Romeo and Juliet” tilted toward a high-school massacre in Colorado). In retirement he founded Particle Theatre Company, a roaming unit that has presented such challenging fare as Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Particle’s latest venture is Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, a darkly funny, sneakily sinister tango between former lovers with a twisted history in a seedy motel in the Mojave Desert. Roberts plays the Old Man, a commentator/referee who fathered both lovers before ditching their separate families. (March 30, April 1, April 3, Unicorn Theatre, Gallery 415, Catasauqua) Passion Play Sarah Ruhl has written plays about how technology connects and disconnects and how vibrators made hysterical Victorian women less and more hysterical. In Passion Play she depicts the communal, cyclical staging of Christ’s death and resurrection in three different locations and ages: late 16th century England, before Queen Elizabeth I outlawed passion plays; 1934 Bavaria during the rise of the Third Reich, and Spearfish, S.D., from the Vietnam War through the Reagan presidency. (March 31-April 3, Muhlenberg College) Rattlestick Playwrights Theater For 21 years the Rattlestick company has been a Manhattan launching pad for over 80 works, a fair number by budding authors mentored by the likes of Edward Albee and Marsha Norman. This month it will make East Stroudsburg University a satellite for staged readings with neon names. Asuncion (March 21) was written by actor Jesse Eisenberg, who played Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the film The Social Network. Maggie Bofill’s The Hate Inside (March 26) stars Kathryn Erbe, formerly Detective Alexandra Eames on the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The spouses in Sarah T. Schwab’s Till Death (April 30) are played by Jeffrey DeMunn (The Green Mile, The Walking Dead), who received a Tony Award nomination for K2, and Karen Allen, who appeared in two Indiana Jones movies and The Glass Menagerie directed by Paul Newman. ESU will host a March 24 evening with John Lee Beatty, one of Broadway’s best scenic designers. He received Tony awards for Talley’s Folly (1980) and The Nance (2013). Pints Pounds & Pilgrims I’m an all-day sucker for comic character crashes. Little wonder, then, that I was sucked into Crowded Kitchen Players’ new play Pints Pounds & Pilgrims, where an Irish island is invaded by a terrible Irish tragedy from an English ensemble and an awful bedroom farce from an American dinner-theater troupe. Writer/director Ara Barlieb, a Crowded Kitchen co-founder, deftly juggled a baby sold for a drug fix, a cuckolded transgender spouse, a dictator director and a side-splitting Marx Brothers/Monty Python/Mel Brooks climax where rival actors ruin each other’s scenes. ■ —Geoff Gehman

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CITY Smoke Playwright Kim Davies, director Deborah Block and two pretty young things—a jaded artiste played by Matteo J. Scammell and an upwardly mobile college dropout played by Merci Lyons-Cox—smartly and smugly take on issues of power, rape and consent while at a private BDSM party until their cat-and-mouse snarkiness goes too far. Risky risqué business—and truly worth a trek to Exile’s intimate Studio X confines. Through March 13, at Theatre Exile, Studio X. Local Girls Playwright Emma Goidel brings her overall oddness to an all-lady scream punk rock musical with sets built by students at Germantown Friends. DIY LAMF. Through March 13, Azuka Theatre at the Drake. Liberty City Radio Theatre (and the end of the Society Hill Playhouse) Deen Kogen has been running her theater in Society Hill since the end of the 1950s with original plays, righteous revivals and fascinating cabarets and now—well, she’s had enough. Who could blame her? So, she’ll open the doors to producer Bill Arrowood’s Liberty City Radio Theatre for a live radio show—the ‘theatre of the mind,’ and then POW. Society Hill Playhouse, March 4-5. David Morse Master Class Just as Kathleen Turner had several weeks earlier, constantly working Philadelphia thespian David Morse (The Green Mile, Treme, Concussion, the new Outsiders television series) gives away his deepest secrets of the acting craft in conversation and question/answer sessions. March 21 at the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre. Peter and the Starcatcher This prequel to Peter Pan, based on a book by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, needs a dozen actors to play 100 roles. Being that I—in another lifetime—once acted in the original multiple-role comedy (Greater Tuna) all I can say is that this level of acting/changing, etc., is akin to the X TREME Speed Theater. Grrr. March 15 through May 1 at the Walnut Street Theatre. Spiritrials Text and stage creator Dahlak Braithwaite—the man behind The Living Word Project/Spiritrials—makes his way with poetic verse and layering characters as one would make a mash up hip hop album. Well, he did that with Spiritrials, then turned that record into a theatrical tour de force that doubly mashes up performance art and rap. March 19 and 20 at the Painted Bride Arts Center. An Octoroon Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins sculpted Dion Boucicault’s 19th century melodrama about race and made it into something current and fresh, while director Joanna Settle and Philly actor James Ijames threw in blackface, whiteface and redface until they were blue in the face. March 16–April 10 at the Wilma Theatre. He Who Gets Slapped This is not the BSM’s first shot at theater, but it is its most physical as the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts helps everyone concerned with a Russian tale about a circus and a sad clown. March 30–April 16, Philadelphia Artists’ Collective at the Broad Street Ministry. ■ —A. D. Amorosi

ICEPACK A.D. Amorosi on the news, nightlife and bitchiness beats

It is only apt in which to start a news and gossip page dealing with Philadelphia life and its own brand of cool and cattiness to discuss the end-of-February’s passing of Harry Jay Katz. Katz, who died of natural causes at age 75, was a bon vivant—for the longest time THE bon vivant—who lived life with snazzy panache and a joie de vivre that was always enviable. For better or for worse, successful and not-so, Katz did everything from attempting to open a Playboy Club on Broad Street (Frank Rizzo screwed that up when he was Philly’s Police Commissioner) to re-configuring the once-glorious Erlanger Theatre as a nightclub and theater venue. One of my first, most exquisite concert experiences was seeing Queen in all its glam glory at the Erlanger in 1975. Kudos, Harry. I believe it was around that same time that Katz—who always called me “young man”—dated Grace Jones, model, singer actress. Double kudos. He opened a steak house called Hesch’s in a spot where another, kitschier steakhouse now resides—Frankey Bradley’s on Chancellor Street. He opened something called the National News Bureau to keep his press credentials afloat after having been a columnist for the Drummer, a pre-City Paper alternative weekly paper. He opened the Philadelphia Film and Video Commission before we had a Greater Philadelphia Film Office, and used to give out Liberty Bells to visiting celebs who became pals such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Stallone Brothers, the latter of whom he tried brokering a deal to do Bruce Graham’s Rizzo script without getting all the go-aheads from Graham. I’m going to miss him Another thing I’ll miss—OK, for a year only, but still, is The Palm at the Bellevue which will close for around/about 12 months so that it can get a shining and a sprucing. What could have been disastrous for its wait and bar staff has turned around quickly and cheerfully as the soon-to-expand SugarHouse Casino will require 500 new employees, many for food and beverage jobs. With that, SugarHouse’s human resource department has offered those jobs first to The Palm’s staff. Training starts soon, as the new $164 million expansion—a live venue opening March 6, new bars and restaurants, including a high-end steak house—opens April 4. And for the record, that new SugarHouse steak joint, Hugo’s Frog Bar & Chop House from Chicago, gets a Philly boy at its helm with executive chef Terry White. Quite famously, White worked at Striped Bass and the Palm in Philly before running to the Palm in Chicago, then to Del Frisco’s in ChiTown and Manhattan before opening the grand but unsuccessful Union Trust steakhouse in Washington Square West with developer Joe Grasso. Because everything is cyclical in a small-big-town such as Philly, that same Joe Grasso long held the note on Philly’s historic Curtis Center (where he’s still a partner) at 6th and Walnut Street’s corner and has long been looking for a tony restaurant partner to set up shop. As I’m writing this at February’s finale, by the time you read this, word has the folk from the celebrated New York City saloon P.J. Clarke’s horning in on that corner action. One empty corner spot that we do know has been filled definitely is the Rittenhouse Hotel’s vacant Smith & Wollensky space. Scarpetta, a mod Italian restaurant based in NYC’s Meatpacking District will open shop this summer. Atza nize. Before bringing her Storyteller show to the Wells Fargo Center, one-time American Idol Carrie Underwood surprised and thrilled a local military family in a partnership with Operation Homefront to thank serviceman Jonathan Martin and his brood for their service. The singer brought the Martins backstage and Carnival Cruise Line surprised the family with a cruise. ■ Welcoming Carrie Underwood to Philadelphia moments before her Storyteller Tour performance at Wells Fargo Center (Feb. 22) are (from left) Comcast Spectacor’s Brett Reopell, Dir. of Booking; Comcast Spectacor’s Sophie Escoll, Marketing Comm. Coordinator; AEG’s Mark Acob, Dir. of Finance; AEG’s Donna DiBenedetto, Dir. of Touring; Underwood; Comcast Spectacor’s Chelsey Scalese, Marketing Comm. Mgr.; Comcast Spectacor’s Ben Schlegel, Event Mgr.; and Comcast Spectacor’s Michael Sulkes, Asst. General Mgr. Photo: Ike Richmond.

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The List MARCH CURATED BY A. D. AMOROSI

2 Wayne Hancock with TJ Kong The rustic literary songwriting king of the Texas Panhandle joins forces with Philly’s shabby chic boho overlords. What could go wrong? (Underground Arts) 3 Sutton Foster The favorite singer of ‘tweens (TV Land’s Younger) and Broadway doyennes (Thoroughly Modern Millie) alike does her large scale cabaret act. (Merriam Theatre) 5 The Three Tenors Who Can’t Sing Atza nize—all the references to The Godfather that Italian comic Vic DiBitetto uses to murder his audience. (State Theatre) 3–6 Dana Gould Didn’t this guy invent the observational comedy schtick that Seinfeld made his own, and millions from? (Helium Comedy Club) 4–28 Dust + Dignity This city’s best known DJs Rich Medina, King Britt, Cosmo Baker present the fine art of the disco album sleeve in exhibition form while providing an audio tour to Philadelphia’s funky past and present. (Painted Bride) 4 Wolfmother Australian metal band re-makes Led Zep’s greatest hits so that Page and Plant don’t have to. (Trocadero) 5 Katt Williams I don’t know if I always like the jokes that this prince of African American comedy lays down, but he’s got a fascinating array of hairstyles. (Liacouras Center) 6 Leann Rimes As a country singer, she’ll break your heart. As a woman, she’ll bust up your home (ask Brandi Glanville). (Sugarhouse) 6 Oak Ridge Boys You won’t have to ask twice for “Elvira.” (Sellersville Theater) 9 David Mayfield Parade The youngest, multi-instrumental son of the Mayfield bluegrass dynasty and an occasional member of the Avett Brothers does his own thing. (Boot & Saddle) 16 ■ I C O N ■ M A R C H 2 0 1 6 ■ W W W . I C O N D V . C O M ■ W W W . F A C E B O O K . C O M / I C O N D V

12 New Order Bernard Sumner got rid of his old bassist and re-united all of early New Order to record the majestic death disco of Music Complete and attempt a smile while playing live. Only the first part of the quotation has worked out so far. (Tower Theater) 12 The Fab Faux Members of Patti Smith’s backing ensemble and guys from the talk show circuit (David Letterman and Conan O’Brien’s bands) reproduce The Beatles’ repertoire, note-by-note-by-rote. (State Theatre) 12 Tribute to Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan: Toshi Reagon Reagon, a lady who usually sings the blues, curates and croons a night of Tin Pan Alley’s jazz-bo vocal finest. (Annenberg Center) 14 The Who Don’t bet the house on this 50th anniversary career closer being The Who’s last go-round as promised. (Wells Fargo) 16 Logic Everybody is a live hip hop band nowadays, but are you a dynamics-rich, jazzily complex hip hop band? Logic is. (Fillmore) 16 Trixie Whitley The catty rocking cabaret-ish daughter of the late great weird bluesman Chris Whitley and the one-time accompanist for U2 producer Daniel Lanois makes her own hot debut. (Johnny Brenda’s) 17 Pete Yorn I honestly didn’t even that the prettiest, rootsiest singer songwriter dude from Montville, NJ was still around. I didn’t think he was dead or anything. Just…. (TLA) 18 Lake Street Drive with The Suffers The jazzy vocalese vintage rock n’ roll outfit from Boston return. (Fillmore) 18 Ricky Nelson Remembered The Family Nelson dynasty continues on with the one-time hair metal duo, Ricky’s

sons Gunnar and Matthew. (State Theatre) 18 80s vs. 90s with Biz Markie The goofball rapper behind Just a Friend and The Vapors spends a night spinning vintage hip hop and talking trash. (TLA) 18 Tortoise The usually-all-instrumental act from Chicago just released its first new album in nearly a decade, The Catastrophist. (Underground Arts) 18 Agudos Clef The Trenton-based Latin hip-hop duo are releasing their debut full length and jamming good. (Trocadero) 19 Experience Hendrix with Billy Cox, Buddy Guy, Zakk Wylde, Kenny Wayne Shepherd With so many musicians on stage, I’m not certain how much time each guy will get to truly experience Hendrix, but we’ll wait and see. (Borgata) 21 Gaz Coombes of Supergrass I like that the All Music website calls the UK’s Supergrass “the giddiest of all Britpoppers.” That’s fun, even apt. Yet, who’s going to say a word about Coombes’ snazzy dashing full-blooded Civil War style muttonchops? Just me. (Underground Arts) 22 Scarface It’s hard to believe that this Houston gangsta rap avatar and Geto Boys MC is 45 years old. (TLA) 23 Joan Baez it’s hard to believe that this Staten Island folkie and goddess of American protest song is 75 years old. (Grand in Wilmington, DE) 23 Kirk Franklin Modern gospel’s slickest figure and recent Kanye West collaborator on The Life of Pablo hits Upper Darby. (Tower Theater) 30 Magma The French ambient progressive rock act makes a rare appearance anywhere, let alone Philadelphia. (Underground Arts) ■

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FILM KERESMAN ON FILM REVIEW BY MARK KERESMAN

The Witch

“This village had a virus shared by its people. It was the germ of squalor, of hopelessness, of a loss of faith. For the faithless, the hopeless, the misery-laden, there is time, ample time, to engage in one of the other pursuits of men: They began to destroy themselves.” –Rod Serling THERE ARE SOME MOVIES in which everything is explained and neatly wrapped up by the time the credits roll. The Witch is not one of those movies. This is nominally a horror film, but it’s a horror chiefly of suggestion, of nameless dread, dread that may have a name, and ambiguity of good, evil, real, and unreal, The Witch is set in Colonial America, circa 1600s in New England: A family of religious dissenters is banished from their Pilgrim community. Mother and father William (Ralph Ineson) and Katherine (Kate Dickie) and their three children, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), a set of fraternal twins, and a baby carve out a hardscrabble existence in the wilderness. Religion plays a role, almost another character—these characters are mostly stoic and stern, and virtually every moment of their existence has this family (most of them, anyway) praying to God, justifying what happens (it is God’s will), and apologizing to Him for just about everything. Naturally, if someone does something “wrong,” it must be the Devil’s Work. This family does not have an easy time of it—in fact, these folks put up with hardships that’d destroy most of us used to getting our lattes just-so. But things go from bad to worse—the baby disappears while under the care of Thomasin, and Thomasin is entering that phase of adolescence wherein she enjoys playing with/upon the fears of her younger siblings and being generally rebellious (at one point she calls her father a hypocrite). Combine that with hunger and grief, the family begins to slowly destroy itself. The titular witch? She makes the briefest of appearances, and it’s implied, though not confirmed, that she is behind the family’s havoc (at least in part), and—I kid you not—there’s a very scary rabbit, one that would give

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the one in Monty Python and The Holy Grail a run for its carrots. The good: The acting of all the players. These are people struggling to maintain their faith when the excrement collides with the proverbial fan and you feel for these people who are, after all, just trying to get by, but sometimes Faith and Reason make for a heck of a clash. Combine that with the dirty dealings of the briefly-glimpsed witch, and the stark, gray cinematography—even the outdoor scenes feel claustrophobic— and you’ve got a veritable festival of fright. There are a couple of moments when this writer felt a few jolts, yet the film isn’t overly gory. Like many of the films of Hitchcock, Roeg, and Lynch, what’s “seen” is nowhere nearly as scary as what is beneath the surface. The soundtrack, with its echoes of 20th century classical music, is effective in setting an unnerving mood. The ending: Ambiguous—some will find it perfect, others will shout or grumble, “I been robbed!” The not-so-good: The pacing; This movie has stretches where you may “wait for something to happen.” The acting is excellent, but aside from Thomasin, we’re not really given lots of personality—after a while, I felt, “OK, I get it, you are religious and forbearing, what else are you?” The dialogue is very true to the 17th century, and many times I wished there were subtitles. While I don’t feel that every little thing need be outlined, I wish there was more attention paid to the real witch of the plot. The trailer makes this seem like a typical horror film, and it is not—it is a historical drama with supernatural/folktale overtones—so if you are expecting horror in the usual sense, you will be disappointed. Overall, The Witch is recommended, but it says in 94 minutes— the perils of religious fanaticism, unrelenting hard times, paranoia, and the need to blame someone or something—what Rod Serling could say in less than 30. ■ Mark Keresman is a freelance writer and regular contributor to ICON, downBeat, Paste, SF Weekly, and Jazz Review, and has written liner notes to over a dozen albums of varied genres. He lives in Chicago.

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FILM CINEMATTERS REVIEW BY PETE CROATTO

TOBIAS LINDHOLM’S A WAR, an Oscar nominee for best foreign film, is a moody, introspective look at the costs of war—for those who participate and the loved ones left behind. With its lack of chest beating and its sympathetic, intelligent approach, I should adore A War. Yet it’s difficult to muster much enthusiasm because the movie’s dramatic strengths are obscured by its focus on everyday life. Most of the action volleys between a husband and wife separated. Claus (Pilou Asbæk) leads soldiers— mostly young, scared men—in Afghanistan. Back in Denmark, Maria (Tuva Novotny) struggles to raise their three kids, one of whom is openly disobedient. Claus and Maria are just trying to radiate strength. For Claus, this means going out on command with his men, which leads to Claus making a crucial decision while under attack. Lindholm (A Hijacking) presents us with a bevy of moral points to ponder. Claus is committed to saving people, but he must follow protocol. His decision, which he made independently, has regrettable collateral dam-

A War age. However, if he had stood pat, there would be another emotional burden to endure. There is no empirically right decision, which makes having a trial under these circumstances almost laughable—and painful. If Claus is found guilty, Maria faces four more years alone. It’s an outcome that makes her shudder. What’s frustrating is Lindholm does little to explore these issues—or the actions leading up to them. His pacing is more clogged than casual, and it grounds the film. Before Claus’ wartime actions, he flogs us with Claus and Maria’s respective struggles: each temper tantrum and clipped phone call reveals little additional insight into the couple’s emotional state. Even Claus’ questionable wartime action—which occurs at the halfway point—is curiously muted, as if Lindholm is committed to moving the audience only with resigned conversations, shadowy cinematography, and fatigued actors. Sometimes it’s OK to shout. I am far beyond craving battle scenes presented as shallow tributes to courage and patriotism, yet Lindholm’s delivery is so understated

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and straight-ahead that the human side of war rarely surfaces. I kept waiting for the moment where Lindholm would wallop me with the significance of the personal. His commitment to the everyday—and then courtroom procedure—prevents that from happening. Structural trumps the emotional. The funny thing is A War should be discussed because it provides a measured emotional response to people who get weepy when “God Bless the USA” comes on the radio or who view Donald Trump as an ass-kicker alternative after eight years of Obama cool. (To clarify, I don’t and I don’t.) Unfortunately, you have to labor to find the entry point, if not drill it yourself. I wish Lindholm had been more accommodating—he might have changed some minds. Instead, A War will get framed in the derogatory terms associated with “art-house flick.” I can’t say I disagree. It’s hard to deem a movie thoughtful if the filmmaker withholds proof. A War works in theory, but not in practice. [R] ■

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FEATURE A. D. AMOROSI

Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog returns to its first work, The Psychedelic Swamp

EFORE YOU LISTEN TO Dr. Dog’s ragged, soulful new The Psychedelic Swamp or head to its album release showcases at The Fillmore on March 17 and April 16, consider this: you’re being hoodwinked. The Psychedelic Swamp isn’t “new,” but rather a recently rerecorded version of Dog’s first barely-out-of-the-basement cassette recorded in 1999. And as for it being an actual album, The Psychedelic Swamp reads more like an amorphous, theatrical tale of psilocybin-laced bogs where hidden monsters (or at least, visions of those creatures) dwell. They even turned it into a weird, narrative (well, sort of) musical event, Swamp is On, in collaboration with Philadelphia’s avant-garde Pig Iron Theatre for 2015’s Fringe Arts Festival. In 1999, Doug O’Donnell, Scott McMicken and Toby Leaman were hanging out in West Chester, having just conceived Dr. Dog and what it could be. Philly, and anything beyond that, was but a dream. “Scott and I were friends, but still kicking around in different bands when the idea of this swamp thing just started happening in our heads,” says Leaman. “Each of us thought that the other guy had come up with the original concept, loose as it was, but we’re both pretty sure that Doug came up with that name.” Leaman says that as soon as they began recording this shaggy, lo-fi, avant pop mess, they thought of it as a personal masterpiece “because we loved it.” Psychedelic Swamp’s loosely knit (and even more loosely played) songs are about super creepy scary monsters in a Timothy Leary bog of the mind. “We loved it,” laughs Leaman. “It was the beginning of our whole way of thinking about things.” This is long before Dr. Dog became this tattered but shining harmonic act with regular touring schedules like My Morning Jacket or Wilco. “It was really freeing for all of us as we just wrote and played what the swamp told us to do,” says Leaman. “It could be anything. That gave us permission to be and play anything we wanted. We didn’t have to play by any rule or any style or genre. We didn’t even have to play at all. They were our rules.” A.D.: That’ll show them. TL: It’s true though. We could just record—not hustle, not tour—just chill. Be ourselves. Honestly, we didn’t hustle at all. Not to get labels to like us, not to get shows. Not to put out albums. We were just doing our thing. The attention, then, simply came to them. All they needed was to one day place a man named Phrases in an escape hatch—away from his humdrum day-to-day—heading straight to the Hellish Psychedelic Swamp. “It’s a simple story of a rock band who receive a cassette tape from another dimension, join forces with a gang of maverick scientists, and try to make contact with that other dimension, known as the Psychedelic Swamp, while shadowy government forces try to keep a lid on the event,” says Dan Rothenberg, the Pig Iron director who brought Swamp Is On to the Fringe Festival. Matt Saunders, a scene designer whom Rothenberg calls “a bona fide visual genius,” designed a cross between a radio telescope array and a tornado-hunter rig for the staging at Union Transfer. “I mean, the evening is all about receiving signals from another dimension,” he says, “and gathering the magnetism of the audience and the music—so it’s dominated by a large satellite dish to gather up all the energies.” McMicken claims that when Pig Iron approached the band with the idea, the ensemble was thrilled. Pig Iron’s Geoff Sobelle and James Sugg were early fans of the band. Dr. Dog musician friend Bradford Trojan played Samuel Beckett in the Pig’s James Joyce Is Dead and So Is Paris: The Lucia Joyce Cabaret (2003)—and the men of Dr. Dog saw and loved that show. “We think of Dr. Dog as poets and visionaries,” says Rothenberg. “The show was about communicating beyond, about finding something other,” says McMicken. Leaman says the old Dr. Dog worked on the original The Psychedelic Swamp in the same way that Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn worked on their collaborations—piece by piece. “One guy would go to sleep when another of us added to what he had come up,” he says of Dog’s working-together-not-working-together laissez faire vibe. Fast forward, past the symbiosis of Swamp is On into Dr. Dog’s new re-recording of The Psychedelic Swamp, and Leaman sees its music as something greater; something more integrated than a play with music or an old cassette tape they long loved. “We always considered doing something about The Psychedelic Swamp again, but the Pig Iron thing got us really thinking about it,” says Leaman. “We always wanted to turn it into something that could be about American pop music as a whole—something larger that perhaps looked sarcastically at the sounds that were hip and happening at the time. That, however, was a bitter pill to swallow as pop today is not so fun.” Instead, the Dog—now without O’Donnell, but with Eric Slick—made The Psychedelic Swamp just their brand of pop, only shinier. “It meant something specific to us when we first conceived it, and still now holds a special place in our heart,” says Toby Leaman. “The swamp is still a weird, happy place to be.” ■

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interview A. D. AMOROSI

KENN KWEDER Survivalist Troubador

KENN KWEDER HAS LONG been a friend and Philadelphia institution: for his smart verbiage, his cold poetry, his glam-to-folk musical inventiveness and his always effortless loquaciousness. From the Bijou Café of Philly’s early ‘70s to the college bars of today, if a microphone is available, Kweder will sing/speak stories of want, need and woe in that forceful warbling voice of his—a survivalist troubadour who continues crafting his own uniquely Philadelphian vision. For this, he just got his own biographical documentary, Adventures of a Secret Kidd: The Mass Hallucination of Kenn Kweder that premieres at International House on March 25. I love that your website advertises you as Kenn Kweder: Rock Star. Where is it that you got your chutzpah, your zeal, your utter confidence? Was anyone in your family as self-motivating? Primarily my glorious mother Nancy who was as close to a Judy Garland as you can get. No matter what she was doing, she was always “on.” I remember her spraying bugs with a can of Raid and in her very best Norma Desmond voice, commanding the bugs to “Die, die, die!” When I saw her doing that, the tiles on the floor exploded. Crash. She was totally in control of the universe that she was in all the time. Totally opinionated, and in her mind, always right. She would absolutely cringe at today’s “over sensitivity” craze; clearly a misuse of civilization. A misuse indeed. In addition to my mother it would have to include Monti Rock III and Captain Beefheart, both super confident and compelling characters with their very own individual force fields. What were the lowest points of your career and the highest points of your career? Clearly, the lowest point of my career would be in the period 1979 till 1984 where I was viciously bashed incessantly by folks in Philly that represented the punk “movement.” I was considered an over-the-hill pariah by all of them. They made my life miserable. Relentless hatred toward me. Relentless. I could not believe it. To this day if I cross paths with any of them, they still give me the evil eye. Even if I do a funeral of a former punk who was a friend-of-a-friend, it’s weird. I don’t even know who they were or are, but I can tell you almost all of them currently work for “the man.” So there—they’re jokers. Clowns. I never got over it. The highest point would have to be my Secret Kidds of 1977 when all the record labels were seeking me out, working with Chris Larkin, the Brian Wilson of Philly. The release of the Kitchen Folk cassette in 1985 produced by Ben Vaughn was definitely a comeback for me here. The Elvis show I did with a 17-piece band at JC Dobbs in 1989, performing with Tim McGraw when he was a young-un, working with Al Fichera on my Red Album in 1995. Al totally reignited my original creative juices on that project. Working countless nights with genius Mark Teague for a zillion gigs in front of college students since 1996. He has taught me endlessly and has totally extended my career. Playing the Hamptons in front of tons of young raving Kweder fanatics 2009 to 2014. All very good. You were very close to being signed to the majors which is a dismal failure as a business model in terms of paying its artists. What didn’t you like about corporate label deals? I did not and still do not like to be told what to do with my paint and paintbrush. They wanted me to dumb down my lyrics and fire my band. Anathema to me.

We’ve spoken personally of the importance of Dylan, of Philly poet Paul Grillo, of Leonard Cohen—but who is your favorite author that you don’t usually reveal? Thank God for Paul Grillo. An All Days Saint to me. An All Days Saint who once roamed this world and knighted some of us with a divine flashlight made of magical swords. A light bulb from the future. He opened up the once closed umbrella of ideas for me, and exploded it. Authors? I love Paul Fussell, Paul Bowles, Kerouac, Philip K. Dick, David Foster Wallace, Vidal, Waugh, Emily Dickinson, Tom Wolfe, Camille Paglia. What does it take to be a friend of Kenn Kweder other than truthiness? Be rare. Be authentic. Care and be aware of quiet survival. Touch stones. Touch people. Cry. Laugh. Create. Did you always wish to do a film on your life or did it just come about with this recent crew? Total serendipity. The idea of John Hutelmyer, brilliant, fertile filmmaker. John is so creative it’s insane. On his game times ten. I owe him everything. I left it all up to Hutelmyer. It was refreshing to stay out of the way of an objective producer. I was sort of a “neutral Switzerland” on the project. What was his pitch? Were you ultimately willing to go warts and all or did it have to be yanked out of you? Warts, yes. Truth, yes. Up and down and sideways. I know you’ve bounced around from house to house. Who kept all the archival stuff and where, and was it remarkable seeing and hearing it all splayed out? I have been given tons of stuff since the ‘80s. Kept in boxes all around town. Rarely watched. Rarely watched, because I have a voodoo fear of watching. Still frightened. Of Kweder. You retired the band thing in 2014 yet continue to carry on solo troubadour-like for college kids of all thirsts, literal and figurative. Why? Good question. I gotta be in some sort of present tense artistic equation. Otherwise I have no meaning. I don’t keep in touch with the weather for nothing. I am the weather. I need active binary relationships with reality and life. Otherwise being on a couch would slowly kill me. I’m the live music man as long as I can. Never STOP! Couches are way worse than first hand smoke. No one talks about that! Couches cause calcification. What was the most difficult part of you or your life to see on film? And the most joyous? It was great to see my glorious mother when she was young and immortal. She is the breath of Bible air and stories to me now. The rest of this film ain’t as hard as life. Life is hard. It all evens out. What do you think audiences will find in Adventures of a Secret Kidd: The Mass Hallucination of Kenn Kweder that they couldn’t find in a good night of drinking with you? Well…a night of drinking with Kweder still trumps all. ■

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bad movie REVIEW BY MARK KERESMAN

Hail Caesar

HE BROTHERS COEN ARE responsible for some of the best movies of the best couple of decades—Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, and Fargo are but a few of their gems. But even the best and most reliable teams miss the mark sometimes, and Hail Caesar is, alas, among the latter. Hail Caesar is historical fiction—the central character, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), was a real person (1891–1963), a 1940s Hollywood producer and fixer, a gent that specialized in getting a studio’s stars out of jams. In this film, there are a few fires he has to put out—a popular female star has a baby out of wedlock, a potential career crusher back then; Hollywood gossip columnists need to be both fed information and discouraged from revealing potentially disruptive news/innuendo to the public; an amiable but grammatically-challenged cowboy star appears in a sophisticated drama; and worst of all, the studio’s biggest star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), has been kidnapped and the big budget film he’s starring in is too near conclusion. Mannix threatens, cajoles, bribes, and negotiates away the problems of the fictitious Capitol Pictures. If you’re thinking the Coens are going to have their way with old Hollywood, you are mostly right—Hail Caesar is a movie with several makings-of-movies therein. But therein lies the problem—it’s as if the brothers were torn between doing slightly irreverent but mostly respectful tributes to Hollywood films, the kinds of movies the TCM channel shows (and AMC used to), and a satire of old Hollywood, the Tinseltown with

glitter-a-plenty on the surface and maggots munching beneath. The results are neither fish nor fowl—it’s not very funny; their targets are very obvious (for any movie fan over 30); and it’s got too many subplots and no real focus on or connection between any of them. The trailer is misleading: Mannix is heard imploring his studio’s stars to help him solve the problem of Whitlock’s kidnapping, but only one of his stars helps out and then only tangentially. Clooney plays the clueless beefcake star, evoking Charleton Heston and Victor Mature, who gets kidnapped by—wait for it—communists! These communists are right out of 1940s or ‘50s central casting—one of them looks and talks like Karl Marx and some seem like they’re trying to be Jay Ward’s cartoon enemy spy Boris Badenov. The marginally talented Channing Tatum plays a Gene Kelly-like actor/singer in an elaborate dance sequence inspired by On The Town and South Pacific that’s (surprise) not-so-subtly homoerotic. Trouble is, any of these subplots could’ve been eliminated and had no effect on the rest of the movie—there’s really not much to connect for them to be part of the whole film. This movie looks like it would be great—but, in fact, it has something I thought I’d never say or write about a Coen Brothers film: Style over substance. If you want to see a behind-the-scenes-of-showbiz satire with humor and bite, try The Big Picture or (especially) My Favorite Year. ■

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FILM FILM ROUNDUP

Cemetery of Splendour

CURRENT FILMS REVIEWED BY KEITH UHLICH

Cemetery of Splendour (Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul). Starring: Jenjira Pongpas, Banlop Lomnoi. The Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul has a great talent for finding the magical in the seemingly mundane. His latest takes place in a sun-dappled city—where the sound of a digging bulldozer is as mysterious, in its way, as the wind whistling omnipresently through the trees—and follows a volunteer nurse named Jen (Weerasethakul regular Janjira Pongpas) as she ministers to a soldier (Banlop Lomnoi) afflicted with sleeping sickness. There is no visible divide between fantasy and reality, or, indeed, sleeping and waking states of mind. Two goddesses in modern dress might suddenly appear and make conversation, or a giant amoeba may appear in the sky above, gently writhing beside the clouds. Even the most fanciful happenings seem completely natural in this context. The film proceeds like a dream, lulling you, much like Jen herself, into deeper states of insight and awareness. Pure bliss, from start to finish. [NR] ★★★★★

High-Rise (Dir. Ben Wheatley). Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Luke Evans. J.G. Ballard’s astringent 1975 novel comes to the screen courtesy Kill List and Sightseers writer-director Ben Wheatley, who certainly knows how to unsettle viewers. The story’s about the socioeconomically stratified residents of a London luxury apartment building (the lower, middle and upper classes are literally divided by floor), and the tensions between them that slowly boil over. Sad to say that the film lacks the book’s bite. A terrific cast, including Tom Hiddleston as middle-class protagonist Dr. Robert Laing (introduced eating his own dog) and Luke Evans as an especially rabble-rousing occupant (at one point he leads an army of children to take over the building’s pool), struggle mightily to put across this heightened lampoon of a microcosmic society coming apart at the seams. A few of the thorns prick, such as the high society party where a Portishead cover of ABBA’s “S.O.S.” plays in the background and the attendees are dressed like bewigged and powdered royalty. But this is mostly a feeble burlesque. [N/R] ★★

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Knight of Cups (Dir. Terrence Malick). Starring: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman. Beginning with his Cannes prize-winner The Tree of Life, writer-director Terrence Malick has applied his free-associative aesthetic (which eschews the comforts of most wide-release movies) to stories with very specific autobiographical shades. It’s again impossible not to see a lot of Malick in Knight of Cups’ protagonist, a screenwriter named Rick (Christian Bale) in the midst of immense creative and spiritual lethargy. (There’s a sense that the film is in large part informed by Malick’s twenty years in the wilderness between 1978’s Days of Heaven and 1998’s The Thin Red Line.) Rick moves fleetingly between pretty women (Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Freida Pinto and Imogen Poots, among them), while ambling in a generally narcotized, if still endlessly inquisitive state through the Los Angeles lifestyle of parties, photoshoots and Faustian dealings. Like much of Malick’s later output the film feels like both a reverie and a reckoning—endlessly rewarding if you are able to get on its very

particular wavelength. [NR] ★★★★★ The Wave (Dir. Roar Uthaug). Starring: Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp, Jonas Hoff Oftebro. This enjoyably straightforward Norwegian thriller takes place in and around the mountain pass of Åkneset, where a tectonically shifting fjord—so experts do actually believe— will one day create a tsunami and wipe away the nearby tourist village of Geiranger. For the purposes of this story, the giant wave does occur (thanks to some very terrifying F/X work), and it’s up to scientist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) to navigate the destructive aftermath and save his family. That proves to be a challenge since Kristian’s wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) and his teenage son Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) are trapped in the underground bomb shelter of a Geiranger hotel, with the water levels rising by the minute. Let’s just say this isn’t the best movie to see if you, like this writer, have an innate fear of drowning. [R] ★★★1/2

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FILM REEL NEWS RECENTLY RELEASED DVDS REVIEWED BY GEORGE OXFORD MILLER

Spotlight

Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (2015) ★★★★ Cast: Jafar Panahi, Genre: Drama-comedy Awards: San Diego and Denver Film Critics Awards, won Best Foreign Language Film. In 2010, the Iranian government convicted internationally-acclaimed, awardwinning movie director Jafar Panahi for “making a film against the regime.” The court sentenced him to house arrest for six years and banned him from making movies for 20 years. Undeterred, he made “non-movies” with a cell phone and camcorder in his home and slipped them out of the country. His Closed Curtain won Best Screenplay at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival. His latest creative endeavor takes place in the back seat of a taxi as he drives fares through the streets of Teheran. It’s like a to-go version of My Dinner with Andre where social commentary is the juiciest platter served. He and his “passengers” opine, argue, philosophize about the death penalty, crime and punishment, women and sexism, poverty, censorship. At one point the roles reverse and Panahi becomes the subject and the passenger the filmmaker. His 9-year-old niece pops out a camcorder to record him for her school film class. Whether scripted or spontaneous—no matter—we get a slice-of-life of the people, their daily

concerns and conflicts, and of a culture that embraces Sharia law on one hand and on the other the modern lifestyle where everybody with a cell phone is a movie maker. Room (2016) ★★★★★ Cast: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay Genre: Drama; Rated R Awards: Golden Globes, won Best Actress; Oscar nominee Best Picture, Actress, Director, Adapted Screenplay. For Jack (Tremblay), coming of age starts on his fifth birthday. He and his mother have been locked in a 10 x 10 shed all his life. His universe consists of a skylight, an old TV—and a mysterious stranger they call Old Nick (Bridges) who periodically makes late night visits. With this premise, the story could swerve toward horror and focus on abuse, sex slavery and psychological torture. Instead, we get a hair-raising struggle for freedom, and a life-affirming example of the nurturing mother-child bond. That’s just the first half of the saga. Assimilating after they escape presents as difficult a challenge as survival in the predictable, welldefined world of the Room. With careermaking performances by Brie Larson and the eight-year-old Jacob Tremblay, Room goes far beyond societal metaphors and

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emotional hot buttons and digs into the raw truths that shape the human psyche. Trumbo (2105) ★★★★ Cast: Bryan Cranston, Helen Mirren, John Goodman Genre: Drama; Rated R Awards: Golden Globes nominee Best Actor; Oscar nominee Best Actor. In the 1950s McCarthy era of anticommunist inquisition, paranoia swept the nation. The House Committee on UnAmerican Activities blacklisted all screenwriters with any indication of communist sympathies. Many, with a wink from the studios, wrote under pseudonyms, but most suffered silently as their careers imploded. Not Dalton Trumbo (Cranston), an Oscar-winning writer. Undaunted, he pounded out potboilers for the bat-wielding, B-movie producer Frank King (played brutally by Goodman), and salvaged the epic hit Spartacus for Stanley Kubrick and Kirk Douglas. But don’t expect a pitiful, persecuted celebrity movie. With flamboyant costuming, period settings, and bombastic acting, the story rollicks through the darkest of times with a larger-than life cast of characters. Cranston, Goodman, and Helen Mirren as a powerful rightwing gossip-columnist, storm through the tale with riveting, gaudy performances.

Spotlight (2015) ★★★★★ Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton Genre: Drama; Rated R Awards: Golden Globes nominee, Best Picture-Drama, Director, Screenplay. Oscar nominee, Best Picture, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Directing, Original Screenplay. Some stories scream to be told. Too often they disappear in the mindless noise of society, or worse they’re squelched by the powerful and corrupt. In 2002, the Boston Globe “Spotlight” reporting team hears whispers that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has a long history of covering up pedophile priests. Doggedly, they begin following a trail that starts with distressed parents and adults who had been victims. With an unflinching dedication to reveal the truth, the team rips down curtains hiding police, politicians, lawyers, and finally the dark secrets of the diocese. The suspense builds to a crescendo as the reporters ferret out the details until an overwhelming truth emerges from the shadows. One of the most dynamic ensemble casts in Hollywood immerses viewers in the torrid pressure of a newsroom under assault from every corner of the cultural forces that control society. ■

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MUSIC AN ECLECTIC ASSORTMENT REVIEWED BY MARK KERESMAN

Them ★★★★1/2 The Complete Them 1964-1967 Exile/Legacy Recordings The title is slightly misleading—the 1960s Northern Ireland band Them continued for a bit after their singer Van Morrison left for a distinguished solo career. But for most rock fans, the version of Them that counted was the version that introduced Morrison to the world. Them’s hit “Gloria” virtually became a rock standard (notably covered by Patti

Smith) but there was much more to Them. Morrison’s raw, impassioned vocal abrasives made the young Mick Jagger sound like a grade school lad futilely trying to sound “tuff.” While originality wasn’t their strong suit, The Complete Them is packed full of brash, sometimes punk-y British rhythm & blues with young Van doing his darnedest to emulate (to later assimilate) the soulful, raspy styles of icons such as Solomon Burke (also an influence on Jagger), Bobby “Blue” Bland, John Lee Hooker, and Howlin’ Wolf. It’s easy to discern how mightily Them influenced The Doors (especially) and Bruce Springsteen, not to mention hundreds of garage/nascent bands on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s cool to hear the young Van finding his voice (the lesser-known, beautifully soulful “Half As Much”), and (naturally) there’s a whole CD of studio outtakes and live tracks. If you’re a fan of Morrison or a student of the British Invasion (especially its rawer side), Them’s best stands with The Animals and the

blues edition of Fleetwood Mac. (69 tracks, approx. 202 min.) legacyrecordings.com Roswell Rudd & Heather Masse ★★★★1/2 August Love Song Red House Does the world really need another platter of standards, classics so familiar we could sing them in our sleep? In this case, yes, when played and sung by Heather Masse, a vocalist who’s immersed in bluegrass and folk music (as befits a member of The Wailin’ Jennys) and Roswell Rudd, a trombonist known for his affiliation with the avant-garde wing of jazz (Steve Lacy, Archie Shepp) but whose ‘bone skills take in the whole history of jazz. This foursome—with bass wiz Hark Helias and guitarist Rolf Sturm—play chestnuts like “Old

Devil Moon” and “Mood Indigo” with adoration, flair, and more than a touch of cheek. Masse has a gorgeous alto voice, closer to the husky stratospherics of Anita O’Day and Jane Monheit than Billie Holiday smokiness (though she’s got a bit of that, too). Rudd gets more sound out of his trombone than can most bands with a whole brass section—he conjures wahwah growls, gurgles, and blats a la Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington’s brass cats. Masse sings, too—wordlessly, without overdoing doobie-doo-wah scatsinging. The settings are satisfyingly streamlined so these tunes get remarkably fresh, roomy readings and there’s plenty of graceful, urbane swing (plus some nifty simpatico originals). Like standards but want them with a new coat of snazzy paint and/or thoroughly tres modern bands embracing the whole jazz continuum instead of going back no further

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than 1957? Partake. (10 tracks, 46 min.) redhouserecords.com Francis Poulenc / Aleck Karis ★★★★★ Music for Piano (1918-1959) Bridge Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was a French composer and pianist, part of the cultural zeitgeist that included Eric Satie, Jean Cocteau, and Maurice Ravel. Unlike some 20th century composers that sought to shake things up, directly or indirectly (Stravinsky, Webern, Schoenberg), Poulenc loved melodious sounds, yet he was not reactionary in the least. Perhaps

that’s why his Music for Piano is so immediately winning—one can hear the joy and turmoil of Paris and Central Europe of his time (he was in the French military in both World Wars—take that, Ted Nugent); the economy and wit of Erik Satie, the warmth of Mozart, and the mathematical brilliance of J.S. Bach in these bitesize pieces. Further, it’s easy (and downright pleasurable) to hear the roots of the rhapsodic, elegant styles of jazz keys-titans Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett and Fred Hersch in Poulenc’s piano music. Pianist Aleck Karis plays with dazzling, radiant, detail throughout. This is music that’ll transport you to his Paris, Woody Allen’s Paris, and a Paris of your own—count on it. (37 tracks, 64 min.) bridgerecords.com Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom ★★★★★ Otis Was a Polar Bear Royal Potato Family Like jazz drummer Brian Blade, drummer Allison Miller has played both sides of the proverbial street, with jazz cats in-

side/outside such as Mike Stern, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Marty Ehrlich as well as folk/pop doyennes Natalie Merchant and Ani DiFranco. For her fourth platter as a leader she’s amassed a hell of a combo: Kurt Knuffke, cornet; Ben Goldberg, clar-

inet; Myra Melford, piano; Todd Sickafoose, bass; and super-eclectic violinist (and fine singer/songwriter) Jenny Scheinman. Otis Was is that greatest of jazz discs that challenges the listener a bit while delivering some spunky, insidiously expressive jazz of the post-bop variety that isn’t a chore to listen to. Like Matt Wilson, Ms. Miller has the classy finesse of a great jazz drummer and the earthy audacity of a rocker—also like Wilson, she plays dandy solos. Melford has never sounded so good, even on her own very swell albums as a leader—she’s got the explosive impact of Don Pullen and Dave Brubeck and the cagey melodiousness of Herbie Hancock and (yes, again) Brubeck. Goldberg is a very modern clarinetist with a strong klezmer influence and a compelling sense of swing. Kurt Knuffke has got a rich, yearning tone and can make with brassy punch. What makes this set a joy to listen to is the convivial lyricism, varied rhythms from bluesy to Latin and hard bop, and thoughtful ensemble passages throughout—almost Ellington-like at times—even when the playing gets thorny they remember to bring it all back home. Damn, this is fine stuff. (10 tracks, 63 minutes) royalpotatofamily.com ■

MUSIC REVIEWS OF STRAIGHT AHEAD & MODERN JAZZ BY NICK BEWSEY

Ken Fowser ★★★★1/2 Standing Tall Posi-Tone After co-leading four records on the Posi-Tone label with vibraphonist Behn Gillece, tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser revs his own engine on his fast and furiously entertaining debut release, Standing Tall. A former University of the Arts student in Philadelphia, Fowser has crafted a free-wheeling gem, boldly exploring

harmonic grooves and smooth, textured rhythms with a fine band that seduces on ear-friendly tracks like “Head Start,” thrills with fleet changes on “Mode For Red,” and chills you out with the cool blues, “Filling In The Blanks.” Well-conceived and spirited in execution, his assertive compositions are punched up by his quintet of up-andcoming players and the in-demand pianist Rick Germanson. Fowser not only succeeds in making a terrific modern jazz record, he brings an original, contemporary voice and a resounding agenda to swing, along with fond echoes of early jam records made by Philly greats like Benny Golson, McCoy Tyner and Prestigeera Coltrane. (12 tracks; 59 minutes) Charles Lloyd and The Marvels ★★★★★ I Long To See You Blue Note A striking, post-bop saxophonist with an ethereal sound, grounded and defined by his unique spiritualism, NEA Jazz MasNick Bewsey is a member of the Jazz Journalist’s Association and votes in the annual NPR Jazz Critics Poll and Downbeat’s Critics Poll. www.countingbeats.com

ter Charles Lloyd once charted a new direction for jazz in 1965 with bandmates Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette. At 78,

he’s still proving that originality and populism are a perfect combination on I Long To See You, a modern jazz masterpiece with crossover appeal. Outfitted with a new band featuring guitarist Bill Frisell and called the Marvels, Lloyd has made an unexpected dream of a record, a rebirth of sorts that celebrates Bob Dylan, the blues, and ”the quantum mechanics of love,” as Lloyd says. Unlike the sonic tapestries produced during his long tenure at ECM, Long is a combination of classic and re-imagined Lloyd originals (the swinging “Of Course, Of Course”), earthy Americana (“Shenandoah”) and chanteuse Norah Jones on a luminous “You Are So Beautiful.” The album is indeed a stirring love letter to the joys of melody, collective storytelling, and the collaborative spirit of making music that will leave you spellbound. (10 tracks; 67 minutes)

trendsetting and their modern sound remains influential. The camaraderie is tangible on this live recording by producer George Klabin when he was 19 years old, and now restored to perfection—the superb sound puts you right at a front table at the Vanguard and the feeling is electrifying. Thad Jones is the former Basie trumpeter who leads the band like a revival meeting, shouting the jazz gospel with enthusiastic approval, calling out the solos on fun, crowd-pleasing tracks “Big Dipper,” “Mornin’ Reverend” and “Back Bone.” Jones is one of the best trumpet players ever; his solo on “The Little Pixie” is loose, swinging and brings a requisite soulfulness that’s unshakeable. An absolutely essential recording. (6 tracks; 47 minutes / 11 tracks; 74 minutes) Dr. Lonnie Smith ★★★★1/2 Evolution Blue Note Funky licks and blistering squeals are to be expected of organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, godfather of the Hammond B-3, whose output in the 60s helped define soul-jazz for the era. He’s rarely deviated

Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Orchestra ★★★★★

All My Yesterdays Resonance Records If jazz bands were like classic muscle cars, measured by power and torque, the high performance Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Orchestra was an inexhaustible engine that roared. February 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of this historic 18-member band and All My Yesterdays is the doubledisc recording that documents their debut performances in February and March 1966. Defined by super-sized swing, a bold brass section with the likes of Pepper Adams, Bob Brookmeyer and Joe Farrell, and a dream rhythm section (bassist Richard Davis, pianist Hank Jones and guitarist Sam Herman), the band’s precision, sophistication and style was

from his signature jazz and R&B sound and when he does—2003’s Boogaloo To Beck: A Tribute was a welcome detour—it comes in the form of a record like Evolu-

tion, a significant return to the Blue Note label and a tribute to his super-sized talent. The rails are greased by a crackerjack horn section, a pair of power drummers and pumped up guest spots by pianist Robert Glasper and, notably, saxophonist Joe Lovano on the dreamy ballad, “For Heaven’s Sake.” Guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg is Smith’s foil, delivering wicked, grinding riffs, jangling rhythmic support and lush, melodic solos. Evolution sets itself apart by letting Smith loose on updated originals and deep, percussive tracks like “Talk About This” and “African Suite,” that connect the dots from the pivotal early days to the present, where the Doctor takes the lead as a hip, dynamic authority of modern grooves and moves. (7 tracks; 63 minutes) Roxy Coss ★★★★ Restless Idealism Origin Records While saxophonist Roxy Coss may have model looks and unflappable poise, she’s also an utterly refreshing instrumentalist on her sophomore release, Restless Idealism. Having honed her talent as a member of trumpeter Jeremy Pelt’s band along with a three-year residency with her quintet at Smoke Jazz Club where many of these songs were born, this all-originals album favors listener-friendly tracks like the bubbly “Don’t Cross The Coss,” the mid-tempo swinger, “Waiting,” and a particularly sumptuous ballad, “Happiness Is A Choice.” Outstanding rhythmic support underscores the quality of Coss’s writing: pianist Chris Pattishall, guitarist Alex Wintz, bassist Dezron Douglas and Willie Jones III on drums create the kind of excitement and opportunities for interplay that make records like this so good. I watched Coss, a natural storyteller and leader, in front of a standing room only crowd at her CD release party at Smalls in New York in January where she mopped the floor with a killer combination of style, licks and technique—all of which is applied at full strength on this impressive record. Restless will please fans who adore early Shorter, Trane and Jazz Messenger’s-era Hank Mobley. Just hang on when she and guest star Pelt race through “Push,” a speedball of a tune where the pleasure is all about keeping up. (10 tracks; 57 minutes) ■

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MUSIC SINGER / SONGWRITER REVIEWS BY TOM WILK

Paul Burch ★★★★ Meridian Rising Plowboy Records More than 80 years after his death of tuberculosis at age 35, Jimmie Rodgers continues to influence and inspire musicians. Paul Burch creatively pays tribute to the artist known as The Singing Brakeman and America’s Blue Yodeler with Meridian Rising, a concept album that Burch calls “an imagined biography of Jimmie Rodgers.” It’s a successful blend of songs, instrumentals and the spoken word that makes Rodgers a three-dimensional character and showcases Burch’s talents as a songwriter.

“Meridian,” the opening track, serves as an overture, introducing the listener to the Mississippi city that shaped Rodgers. Burch’s music, a mix of folk, blues and Dixieland, calls to mind the black and white elements that made up Rodgers’ music. The swinging “Cadillacin’” is a slice of edgy rhythm and blues that references good times and mortality. “I’m going Cadillacin’ and I’m running out of time,” Burch sings, offering a reminder of Rodgers’ struggles with TB. “Black Lady Blues” serves as a cautionary tale of Rodgers’ infatuation with gambling and its consequences. Burch’s songs work on multiple levels. “Poor Don’t Vote” captures the miseries of the Great Depression but also reflects the frustrations felt by the working class in 21st century America. “The Girl I Sawed in Half ” evokes the spirit of the vaudeville circuit where Rodgers refined his act and has echoes of “Frankie and Johnny,” a song that he performed. While a successful album, Meridian Rising also has the potential to be a successful musical or one-man show about a legendary performer. 20 songs, 57 minutes.

Dion ★★★★ New York Is My Home Instant Records Now in his seventh decade as a recording artist, Dion DiMucci remains a potent performer and singer/songwriter who continues to challenge himself and his audience with excellent results. New York Is My Home is a Whitman’s Sampler of Dion’s artistry with forays into blues, rock ‘n’ roll and urban harmony. “Aces Up Your Sleeve” and “Can’t Go Back to Memphis” open the album with a pair of bluesy originals. The former features some slithering guitar work by Jimmy Vivino that references the trickery of the title. The latter is a celebration of the blues tradition of the Tennessee city with an acoustic instrumental coda that recalls the work of Furry Lewis. The title track, a duet with fellow New Yorker Paul Simon, pays tribute to the Big Apple as a life force, name-checking the Bronx, Hudson River and Central Park in the lyrics. “The Apollo King,” a Chuck Berry-styled rocker, honors the legendary Big Al Sears and the famed Harlem showplace. The freewheeling “Ride With You” would sound at home on a Bruce Springsteen album while “I’m Your Gangster of Love” is a tip of the cap to Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “Gangster of Love.” At 76, Dion still delivers the goods vocally, most notably when he interjects some doo-wop scatting on “I Ain’t For It,” and turns back the clock to his days with the Belmonts in the 1950s. 10 songs, 38 minutes. Delaney & Bonnie with The Allman Brothers & King Curtis ★★★1/2 A&R Studios 1971 Iconography In the early 1970s, FM radio stations began airing concerts featuring rock bands. It allowed groups to perform before a small audience while the music went over the airwaves to potentially hundreds of thousands of listeners at home. A&R Studios 1971 features the husbandand-wife duo of Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett with special guests Duane and Gregg Allman and tenor saxophonist King Curtis in a show that aired on WLPJ-FM in New York City on July 22, 1971. Delaney and Bonnie start the proceedings with a four-song acoustic set that spotlights the slide guitar of Duane Allman on Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen” and the traditional “Goin’

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Down the Road Feeling Bad.” It’s an easygoing, occasionally ramshackle atmosphere as when “Poor Elijiah” trails off without a formal ending. Still, there is a musical camaraderie throughout. That’s evident in the five-song electric set that features the full band. “Living on the Open Road” goes the musical equivalent of zero to 60 in a matter of seconds, aided by the band’s three-man horn section with King Curtis and the fiery guitar work of Duane Allman. “The Love of My Man” serves as a blues/soul showcase for Bonnie Bramlett, evoking the spirit of Janis Joplin. A nearly 18-minute version of “Only You Know and I Know” gives the individual band members, including Gregg Allman on piano, a chance to shine on an extended jam. There is a certain sadness in hearing in the music almost 45 years later. King Curtis was murdered at 37 by a junkie in Harlem just 22 days after the show. Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident in October 1971, just weeks before his 25th birthday. The recording documents a unique pairing of their talents. 15 tracks, 71 minutes. Willie Nelson ★★★1/2 Summertime: Willie Nelson Sings Gershwin Legacy Recordings Willie Nelson received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2015 in recognition of his songwriting achievements. It’s fitting for the country music legend to pay tribute to George and Ira Gershwin with Summertime: Willie Nelson Sings Gershwin. Summertime can be heard as a belated sequel to Stardust, Nelson’s 1978 album of pop standards that has sold more than five million copies. At 82, he shows he remains a strong interpreter of the Great American Songbook with his versions of some of the Gershwins’ bestknown songs. Nelson opens the album with a relaxed, jazzy reading of “But Not for Me.” On “Somebody Loves Me,” Nelson opts for a sprightly interpretation that suits the song’s lyrical optimism. “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off,” a duet with Cyndi Lauper, finds the singers in a playful mood with guitarist Dean Parks adding some jazz/blues licks to enliven the atmosphere. Nelson’s rendition of “I Got Rhythm” injects elements of Western Swing and spotlights the harmonica work of Mickey

Raphael. Nelson and Sheryl Crow team up for an intimate duet on “Embraceable You,” one of the Gershwins’ most romantic ballads, while Nelson brings a dramatic feel to the title track originally featured in Porgy and Bess. Summertime serves as a reminder of the durability of the Gershwins’ work and Nelson’s skills as a singer. 11 songs, 36 minutes. The Pines ★★★ Above The Prairie Red House Records The cover of Above The Prairie, the new studio album by The Pines, features the night sky illuminated by stars beneath a vacant home in disrepair. The scene captures both the permanence and temporary nature of life that is an underlying theme in the band’s songs, a combination of roots music with electronic touches.

“Aerial Ocean” sets the tone for the CD with a calming, almost mystical groove. “Lost Nation” and “Villisca,” a pair of instrumentals, have the feel of music made for a film soundtrack. The former conjures up a somber soundscape, while the latter captures a sense of yearning with the use of keyboards and uilleann pipes. With his forceful phrasing, vocalist David Huckfelt recalls a younger Bob Dylan on “There in Spirit.” The reflective “Where Something Wild Still Grows” has echoes of U2 with its layered sound and lyrics about a search for something better. “Here” features a New Age-style introduction that gives way to a country-styled guitar and fiddle with guest vocals by an ensemble that features Greg Brown and Iris DeMent. “Hanging from the Earth” features the piano work of Alex Ramsey and is the album’s most buoyant song. Still, the lyrics hint at an underlying anxiety with the declaration: “The past and future are tearing me apart.” It’s a dichotomy at the heart of the band’s music. 10 songs, 41 minutes. ■

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MUSIC JAZZ LIBRARY BY BOB PERKINS

COLEMAN HAWKINS THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO are ambidextrous, and can use either hand with equal facility, and there are those in music who are skilled in both classical and jazz. (History also tells us that toward the middle part of the previous century, there were jazz musicians in the swing era, who were talented enough to absorb a more modern form of jazz when it evolved. This new jazz somehow got the name bebop.) One of the musicians who made the transition from the traditional to the new music was saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. He was like a daddy longlegs, and for quite some years continued to have one foot planted in the swing era, while stretching his talent and swinging with more modern cats. For using his noggin to accomplishing this musical giant step, he earned the sobriquet, “The Bean.” One writer noted that Hawkins’ knowledge of chord structures and harmonies was encyclopedic. His other nickname was The Hawk. He is credited with not only popularizing the tenor saxophone, but playing it better than anyone else had, or for many years, could. He added an exclamation point to this recognition by recording a short, but definitive recording of “Body and Soul” in 1939. His rendition of the song became the talk of the jazz music world for many years, and The Bean became the yardstick by which all tenor saxophonists were measured, and he remained a leading voice in jazz for several decades. The Coleman Randolph Hawkins Story began November 21, 1904, in St. Joseph, Missouri. He began piano lessons at an early age, later switching to cello and ultimately to saxophone at age nine. He began his professional career at age 12, and a few years later played in a Kansas City Theater pit band. (This was after the family had first moved to Chicago and then to Topeka, Kansas, where he attended high school. The boy wonder claimed to have studied harmony and composition at Washington College while still in high school.) Hawkins’ first major gig was with Mamie Smith’s band in 1921. Two years later, he was a member of Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra, where he remained until 1934, sometimes doubling on other reed instruments. While with Henderson, he did some moonlighting, recording solo and with small groups. He made Europe his home from 1934 to 1939, working with jazz legends Django Reinhardt and Benny Carter in Paris in 1937. Upon his return to the States he formed a short-lived big band, but quickly returned to fronting smaller groups, one of which included Miles Davis, Max Roach, Thelonious Monk and Oscar Pettiford. Hawkins’ influence on modern jazz musicians was recognized when Miles Davis said, “When I heard Hawk, I learned to play ballads.” The Hawk’s association with more advanced jazz men continued when he toured with trumpeter Howard McGee and trombonist J.J. Johnson, and later with the Jazz at the Philharmonic troupe. By the late 1940s, Hawkins was dividing his time between New York and Europe, recording regularly and working as a sideman and leader. He continued working with swing era associates, but still exerted an influence on emerging modern saxophonists like Sonny Rollins. Father time and heavy drinking were beginning to take their toll on Hawkins. But even at a reduced speed, the great alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges said about Hawkins, “The older he gets, the better he gets. When you think he’s through, he’s gone right ahead again.” The last years of Hawkins’ existence were not pretty. He seemed to lose interest in life, he didn’t eat properly, and continued to drink heavily. He was once a powerfully built man, but began to waste away, physically. And the great musical mind that had

once earned him the title of The Bean also began to fail. But Hawkins had many credits to fall back on—his discography was long, and a couple of his finer works and collaborations include the CDs Prestige Profiled Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins, and Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster. He contracted pneumonia in 1969 and succumbed to the disease. In 1990, British jazz historian John Chilton authored a biography which chronicles Hawkins’ career. The book is titled The Song of the Hawk. ■

Bob Perkins is a writer and host of an all-jazz radio program that airs on WRTI-FM 90.1, M-Th. 6–9; Sun 9–1.

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foodie feature BY A. D. AMOROSI

The Old Guard Goes Away

There are Palm restaurants all over the country. Besides the food and drink, the restaurants have become famous for their murals that depict celebrities, cartoon characters and local bigwigs. This photo is of the Palm in New York. When it opened in 1926, it soon became a favorite among journalists and newspaper cartoonists. The restaurant's owners had no decorating budget, and the cartoonists of nearby King Features Syndicate often had no food budget, so they drew on the walls in exchange for meals.

Artist Zack Bird adds some finishing touches to a large mural in The Palm, Atlanta. Photo: Curtis Compton / ccompton@ajc

ON AN UNSEASONABLY WARM night toward February’s end, The Palm in the Bellevue at Broad and Walnut Streets, was packed. This wasn’t unusual, as a weekend at one has long been known as a Philly power broker spot, usually jammed tight. As always, the waiters were orderly and efficient—tony in their aprons—and quick with the Old World dining niceties of providing bibs and hot towels for those supping on shellfish. The steaks were rare and thick, the shrimp cocktails colossal—everything was how it should be. Soon however, this all would change, and could change forever, because at the end of the business day on February 29, The Palm closed for what was being billed as a major renovation that would shutter the hotel restaurant at least until early 2017. In a statement, the Palm’s parent company claimed that the new design would feature “intimate seating for 152 and a striking hand-painted feature wall of Philadelphia’s famous landmarks overlooking the dining room” with “a state-of-the-art audio visual system” and new private dining space. Gone—but changed into something more current—would be many of the famed local caricatures rendered by Zack Bird, a Philadelphia artist, whose family before him tackled the job of finding and painting the faces of local celebs and visiting diners onto the Palm’s walls. “The vibe will be the same when The Palm returns,” says Bird. “It will still be the place where important people dine and drink, just with a fresher, contemporary feel.” Bird goes on to say that, in the interest of authenticity, the Palm has commissioned an illustrator (“me”) to produce hand-drawn artwork for the walls, as he’s done for all 36 Palms across the country over the last 25 years. “The style is in keeping with that of the editorial cartoonists who drew all over the first Palms, years ago. The color is that of vintage DC and Marvel comic books, again referencing early illustrators.” Bird believes that some of the older portraits will migrate to the new walls. “The vast majority will be lost—not sure what they will do with them—and new faces will be added. Some of existing customers, mostly new customers and people who have kept association with the restaurant will surely return.” That any of the aged-out and possibly (probably) now unknown Philly characters will disappear is sad, as is the disappearance of the classic feel of The Palm. Just as the Four Season and its four-star restaurant The Fountain disappeared—thankfully giving way to something modern and smart in both its hotel (The Logan) and its steakhouse (Urban Farmer); just as Le Bec Fin was lost to a designer eyewear center along Walnut Street; just how Ruth Chris Steakhouse disappeared from its legendary spot along Broad Street’s Theater Row (its move to the Sonesta Hotel is now due in May): sure, these are the changes of time and a city’s tenor. Still, one can’t help but be a bit misty eyed over the loss of something sweet, atmospheric and, well, swank. Here’s hoping that—like, say, what Jose Garces’ Old Bar did with the bones of the Old City’s Bookbinder’s—The Palm won’t lose its dark walnut wood and dense, thick steak elan when it returns. And that its waiters will always bring hot towels. ■

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food BY ROBERT GORDON

FARM & FISHERMAN FARM AND FISHERMAN RECENTLY landed a #34 ranking on Philadelphia magazine’s “50 Best Restaurants in Philadelphia” list for 2015. Given its tumble from #4 in 2013, Farm and Fisherman might feel a bit disappointed. They shouldn’t. A tsunami of distinguished neophytes like V Street, Bing Bing Dim Sum, Bud & Marilyn’s, South, and Aldine, continue to sweep through the Quaker City, which the Washington Post ranks as the #6 city in the U.S. for dining. Specific rankings aside, Farm and Fisherman’s constancy in Philly’s upper echelon suggests substance, not flash, underpins its success. Husband-wife team Josh & Colleen Lawler own Farm and Fisherman, a 30-seat white tablecloth BYOB situated inconspicuously at 11th and Pine near the Louis Kahn Park. FAF experienced a quick ascendancy with its locavore/farm-to-table operation, whose inspiration derived from Blue Hill at Stone Barns, an acclaimed pioneer of the farm-to-table movement where Josh served as chef de cuisine. Manhattan’s tony set frequents Blue Hill at Stone Barns, sited on the Rockefeller family’s farm estate near Tarrytown. The current tariff for their prix fixeonly dinner is $218 per person. Tack on another $148 for wine pairing. Despite the sticker price, the waiting list is long. Lawler transported Blue Hill’s culinary approach, not its prices. FAF’s First Course choices range from $10 to $13; Second Course choices, from $12 to $14; and Main Course choices, from $27 to $30. The menu changes frequently. The focus is placed on fresh, sustainably sourced ingredients including meat, fish, and poultry. Lawler has a deft touch with vegetarian recipes as well. Bloody Beet Steak is masterful. An entire beet is cooked down in a cast-iron pan until the skin of the root splits and crisps. The beet nestles against roasted kale dressed with balsamic glace and white dabs of house-made yogurt—quite a memorable dish. American Red Snapper is a visually tantalizing slab of snapper poised atop vegetables interlaced with henof-the-woods mushrooms. A shellfish reduction sauces the snapper while a huge, paper-thin wafer of speck provides salty counterpoint. Visual appeal is a recurring motif. Viking Village Monkfish, a destination dish with its colorful arrangement of Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, cubed Asian pears, broccoli, and red cabbage pho is a case in point. It tastes as good as it looks. Spanish Mackerel appetizer Farm and Fisherman’s desserts are good. Apple Budino with caramel on house-made shortbread is a nice meal-ender. My favorite is their uncommonly moist Warm Persimmon Cake with candied pecans, pomegranate, and cream cheese. The stark simplicity of coffee-colored, sparingly decorated walls plays counterpoint to the complexity of FAF’s enjoyable, intriguing fare. But then, as the success of Farm and Fisherman attests, décor is not what keeps a restaurant perennially in the top 50 of the nation’s restaurants. ■ Farm and Fisherman, 1120 Pine Street, Philadelphia. 267-687-1555. thefarmandfishermanbyob.com

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S WA N

HOTEL Modern Cuisine h Classic Comfort Corner of Swan & Main Lambertville, NJ 609-397-3552

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the beat VALLEY BEAT

CITY BEAT

BY GEOFF GEHMAN

BY THOM NICKELS

The Philadelphia Antiques and Art Show will invalidate T.S. Eliot’s warning that “April is the cruelest month.” The half century-old show will be held at the Marine Parade Grounds at The Navy Yard, April 15-17. This is not Grandma’s old “stuff ”—it will feature 58 dealers with English, Asian and Continental material dating from the 17th Century. The vast array of artifacts includes period furniture, decorative and fine arts, silver, textiles, jewelry, Native American art, antiquarian books and prints and 20th century contemporary art. Guests will view a side exhibition on items that dealers collect and attend special lectures with speakers like Ellie Cullman, rated by Architecture Digest as one of America’s 100 top designers, and Nancy Moses, former director of the Philadelphia History Museum and author of Lost in the Museum: Hidden Treasures and the Stories They Tell. Moses will explore the shadowy world of museum politics and how museums care for works of art that are locked in storage. Co-chaired by Ann Hamilton and Nancy Kneeland, PAAS is presented by the Haverford Trust Company. The gala preview party on Thursday, April 14 is another reason why this year’s show will be the best in decades.

Filmmaker Beth Harrington came to Lehigh University to screen and discuss her documentary The Winding Stream, which untangles the tangled legacy of the Carters and the Cashes, country music’s first royal families. The movie is riveting from bow to stern. Prominent musicians—Mike Seeger, Roseanne Cash—describe crisply why the world was conquered by Sara Carter’s strikingly resonant voice, Maybelle Carter’s distinctively melodic rhythm/lead guitar and A.P. Carter’s keen collecting and adapting of traditional tunes, a process he called “fixing.” There are lively animated vintage photographs, excellent archival footage, a neat studio performance by John Prine, and a punchy, poignant interview with Johnny Cash, who died three weeks later. A Q&A revealed Harrington’s own winding stream. Two couples who love roots music gave her the money to finish her 10-year project. Her accompanying book helped secure a plaque to honor Lesley Riddle, the African-American musician who helped A.P. “catch” songs. She met Cash after he descended through the ceiling in a booth he christened “the Pope Mobile.” She saluted his ascension with a Christian blessing, which made him slap his knee in glee.

We had high hopes for the Headed to the White House exhibit at the National Constitution Center, but after a walk through we pinched ourselves: is this the same NCC that produced the magnificent Diana: A Celebration exhibit in 2009, and The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen in 2012? As Janis Joplin once crooned, “Baby, it just can't be.” While Headed offers widescreen newsreel clips from old Democratic and Republican conventions and 300 campaign buttons from 1832 onward, is this enough to interest adults? Most of the displays at this “family friendly” exhibition are child interactive—translation: Stick your mug in the face holes on the stand-up images of past presidents (then stick your tongue out); vote for the best president ever (!); create your own campaign commercial, or walk in a campaign manager’s shoes. Perplexed viewers wondered if NCC’s dumbed down approach pointed to a merger with the Please Touch Museum. Isn’t mixing adult interests with interactive exhibits for kids the kiss of death for museums? Despite our admiration for NCC President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen, we feel no dazzle for this Mister Rogers road show.

Billy Childs, the jazz pianist and composer, came to Lehigh to perform his arrangements of songs by Laura Nyro, the poet-priestess. Joined by six musicians, he threw a stoned soul picnic on a flying carpet. The concert began with “New York Tendaberry,” which won Childs a 2015 Grammy Award for vocal/instrumental arrangement. The impressionistic travelogue was followed by a call to feminism (“The Confession”), an elegy for an addicted friend (“Been on a Train)” and a hippie national anthem (“Save the Country”). All the tracks appear on Childs’ 2014 record Map to the Treasure, an all-star Nyro fest named after one of the first songs he learned on piano. Every number was a sweeping, shimmering suite. Childs played bracing chords, crystalline runs and weighty, weightless flourishes. Becca Stevens sang “And When I Die” with wondrous larkishness; Alicia Olatuja sang “Stoned Soul Picnic” with gospel guts. A guitar-imitating harpist and four Lehigh string players helped conjure the sounds of George Gershwin and Pat Metheny. It was the sort of exciting evening that turns jazz rookies into lifelong fans. Bethlehem is buzzing over the fate of two landmarks—one old, one tall, both dead too long. Opened in 1921, the Boyd Theater was an old-fashioned, much-loved movie house for four generations. I have fond memories of seeing Independence Day on Independence Day and greeting the projectionist’s dog. The Boyd has been sadly, painfully closed for repairs since 2011. On New Year’s Day the building was bought by Montgomery County developer Charles Jefferson, whose projects include the new Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts and the Leonard, a renovated vaudeville theater/speakeasy in Scranton that the public renamed after a popular nearby hardware store. Here’s hoping that he restores the Boyd as a film/arts center and ends its neighborhood’s long reign as an entertainment void. Opened in 1972, Martin Tower is the 21-story former headquarters for the defunct Bethlehem Steel Corp. The Valley’s highest building is an intriguing hybrid: a semimodern, quasi-sleek, remarkably pristine beacon shaped like a cross because Steel executives wanted a maximum of corner windows and great views. Martin has been vacant since 2007, a sad, painful sign of the Steel’s final glory days. In December, Bethlehem City Council voted to rezone its 53-acre site for extra retail space along with room for offices and residences. The agency also gave permission to demolish the building, a 2010 addition to the National Register of Historic Places. I side with all sides. I understand why merchants think council members granted an unfair advantage to developers, why developers don’t want to pay a fortune to remove asbestos, and why citizens think a missing Martin would leave a towering hole. If Martin is demolished, the redeveloped site should feature a Martin museum. Bethlehem deserves a shrine to a skyscraper built by the company that erected the Flat Iron Building in Manhattan, a treasured American landmark. ■

Thom Nickels at Floating Ink reception.

Geoff Gehman is the author of the memoir The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the Long-Lost Hamptons (SUNY Press). geoffgehman@verizon.net.

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Ed Fong’s E-Moderne Gallerie continues to impress. At his masterful Floating Ink: A Visual Feast of Contemporary Paintings from China exhibition, we watched an ink painting demonstration in the lower gallery. Later, Fong walked around and urged everyone to get a drink. “Where’s your drink? Come on, live a little! Get a drink!” At other city galleries the reverse is true; light bites have been replaced by pretzel sticks and miniscule wine pours. The change mirrors New York’s stingy art scene where guests pay for wine and are lucky if they get one potato chip. The Da Vinci Art Alliance shares Fong’s view that a great art opening should go beyond pretzel sticks.

Laura Krebs Miller, VP of Cashman and Associates, invited us to the opening of the rehabbed 12-story AKA Rittenhouse Square in Center City. We are not generally impressed with rehab makeovers, especially the “art” that winds up on the walls. New urban living spaces are the opposite of French salon style—no books stacked on coffee tables and no bookshelves, as if contemporary design was only about the installation of the latest techsavvy widescreen television. AKA bucked this trend with decent art (sketches in small frames), and homey rooms recalling an earlier era. The big bonus that evening was a rumor that Ed Rendell would drop by, so we looked forward to congratulating him on his condemnation of Mayor Kenney’s sanctuary city mandate. When the ex-governor didn’t show, we spotted City Councilman Mark Squilla. Squilla’s City Council bill to give police the right to approve or deny licenses for musical venues, caused us to get handfuls of pasta salad in preparation for a face throw—but we regained our composure when the sighting proved to be false. ■ Thom Nickels is the author of Philadelphia Architecture, Tropic of Libra, Out in History, Spore, and recipient of the 2005 Philadelphia AIA Lewis Mumford Architecture Journalism Award. thomnickels1@aol.com

about life BY JAMES P. DELPINO, MSS,MLSP,LCSW,BCD

CUTTING THE STRINGS MANIPULATION AND CONTROL OF others occurs in just about every relationship, from school to work and from home life to social life. The signs can range from the most subtle to the patently obvious. As with most issues that come to the consulting room, self-awareness is the first step. Knowing our own tendencies and vulnerabilities is key to developing the skills necessary to spot manipulation and control, and to avoid falling prey to these measures. Witholding approval is a strong tool for the emotional manipulator. Because the need for approval and acceptance is so strong, it’s one of the most universal experiences; it’s also required to some degree in every human transaction. The self-centered or narcissistic personality is especially prone to using manipulative techniques to get what she or he wants. A narcissist’s feelings are central at the expense of others, so injuring others is relatively easy. Ignoring, withdrawing and witholding are all attempts to control thoughts, feelings and behaviors. This is expressed in interpersonal relationships as, “If you really cared or if you really loved me you would...” (One way to test for manipulation in this scenario is to do or say what the other person asks. If it makes them happy and it makes for a positive change in the relationship, it’s not manipulation, it’s asking for a need to be filled. If it’s manipulation nothing changes in the relationship and it becomes a continual dysfunctional pattern.) Wanting attention can evoke negative attention. We frequently see children act out when they feel ignored or rejected. Acting out draws attention, even if it’s not the kind of attention that is helpful. When a partner feels unloved or ignored they may seek the attention of someone outside of the relationship. Giving special attention may also be a form of manipulating someone who feels lonely and ignored in other areas of life. When the need for attention becomes too strong, many people are willing to say and do things out of character. When someone is easy to manipulate they’re easy prey—they’re more likely to become victims of emotional manipulation and control. To understand this dynamic it’s important not to blame or judge the victim. It’s more important to assess what it is that makes a victim so vulnerable to being controlled. Aside from approval and attention, there’s the need to belong and accepted. Being too isolated from others is not good. We’re social creatures by nature and social deprivation harms us. The fear of being isolated or ostracized is universal. Societies throughout history have used various forms of ostracization to control people. Even our prisons use this to punish individuals with time in isolation. Consider the time and effort some college students are willing to go through to gain acceptance by a fraternity or sorority. Acceptance, approval and belonging are fundamental needs of all humans. The giving and withdrawing of acceptance, approval and belonging are the tools of the trade for the emotional controller/manipulator. Remaining aware of these hardwired vulnerabilities is each person’s best internal defense. Being aware when people use these tactics for different ends is the best external defense. A person who likes to please is an easy mark. A person who manipulates looks for easy prey just as predatory animals in the wild do. Pedophiles find children are easier to manipulate than adults. Being bigger, more powerful and more experienced gives them a decided advantage. When a teenager, for

example, has not received sufficient and healthy attention at home, they often seek ways to meet these needs by engaging in high risk behavior. A predator spots these behaviors and knows them to be outward manifestations of internal vulnerability. A manipulator customarily seeks more than average compliance by putting conditions on acceptance, approval and belonging. While this occurs at some level in all relationships, the manipulator/controller does so with more and harsher demands. Because at base a manipulator is insecure, they require more compliance to make them feel acceptance by another. When a person is an overly jealous type he or she may go to great lengths to control another person's behaviors. Sometimes this is due to fear of loss and sometimes it is attributable to a deep wish for power. The use of anger and intimidation is a frequent tactic against which people must stand guard. The use of insults and hurtful words is an approach to weaken a potential victim from within. The use of lies, twisting words and blaming are also attempts to control or manipulate. Demands and ultimatums, too, are common to the predator. Try to notice when these approaches are being used so that spotting them becomes integrated and automatic in your consciousness. Skills become internalized and improved with practice. ■

Jim Delpino is a psychotherapist in private practice for over 33 years. jdelpino@aol.com Phone: (215) 364-0139. W W W . F A C E B O O K . C O M / I C O N D V ■ W W W . I C O N D V . C O M ■ M A R C H 2 0 1 6 ■ I C O N ■ 41

The Los Angeles Times SUNDAY CROSSWORD PUZZLE

BILL SESSION By Ed Sessa Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Fours, on most Augusta National holes 5 Gauguin’s island retreat 11 Lowly glowworm? 20 Mine, in Montreal 21 Old block seller 22 Spy 23 Turkey’s affectionate peck? 25 Source of a fond melody 26 Prefix with arthritis 27 Sharer of the prize 29 D, for a driver 30 Spy mission, for short 34 News anchor Burnett et al. 35 Ross on a commemorative 3-cent stamp 36 Beach brawl? 41 Service station offering 42 Blue-and-yellow megastore 43 Snap back 44 Lens cover for a low Earth orbiter? 50 Merged labor org. 51 Letter-shaped bike locks 52 Bit of information 53 Chicken-king link 54 Former U.N. chief 56 Three times due 57 Far from choice 58 Adds a soundtrack to 59 Command to a boxer 61 French postcard word 63 Rips into 65 “Those are stone fragments, all right”? 69 What the god Mars’ symbol represents 71 New, to Dante 72 Vote in favor 73 Leave out 74 Some dorm accommodations 77 Ernest J. Keebler, for one 79 Arcade coin 83 Story opening? 84 Early cinema sex symbol 85 Makes fuzzy, as one’s vision 87 Actress Gardner 88 Mogul mishap? 90 Tie the knot 91 Ended a flight 92 Map abbr. 93 Slip while washing dishes? 95 Footnote ref. 98 Dirty money 101 Reform Party candidate

102 103 106 110 112 116 117 118 119 120 121

Perot Narrow inlets Orthodontic appliance Sources of heavenly strains? Halite extraction worker Warning about an escaped horse? Whatever number Port SW of Buffalo, N.Y. Reeded instrument Henry VI’s “O, God forgive my sins, and pardon thee!”? Stinging crawler Crow’s-nest support

DOWN 1 When repeated, a Samoan port 2 Cookie man Wally 3 Gen. __ E. Lee 4 Site of the world’s longest railway 5 Sudden death cause 6 Some window extensions, for short 7 Hesitant sound 8 Apple for the teacher 9 Nogales nosh 10 Where there’s a quill? 11 Mubarak of Egypt 12 Ivy League sch. 13 Marne moms 14 Fox’s title 15 PC interconnection 16 Curio case 17 Plumbing fixture uncommon in North America 18 Iris locations 19 Redistricting eponym 24 1924 co-defendant 28 Dander 31 Bus stop spot 32 Embossed cookies 33 Berserk 35 One in a wallet 36 Flaky mineral 37 Related 38 “Worthy Fights” co-author Panetta 39 Whodunit why 40 Grafton’s “__ for Burglar” 41 Comply with 44 Emulate Paul Bunyan 45 4 x 4, briefly 46 Language of southern Africa 47 Thing to fight for 48 Jessica of “Barely Lethal” 49 Ago 51 Blood amounts

52 55 57 58

60 62 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 75 76 78 80 81 82 84 85 86 89 90 91 93 94 95 96 97

“Pearly Shells” singer Up to now Yoga position “The Circus of __”: 1935 novel adapted into a 1964 Tony Randall film “Ditto” “What else __?” Sticks by, as a stickup man Court defense Bedroom community Soprano Lear Capital on Interstate 40 Tree-hugging greenery Out of control In bed, maybe Part of a foot Sound engineer’s device Political pundit Marvin Like some film geniuses Hoopster Archibald Jabba, for one Chinese steamed bun Prefix with call __-Myers Squibb: Big Pharma firm “For Hire” detective Son of David Mumbai mister DOL division Welles of “War of the Worlds” Grand on stage Biblical spy

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Fine china Biological incubators Proofing mark Ancient mariner’s story, e.g. 104 To be, to a Breton 105 Sneak attack 107 Self-named sitcom

108 Ones in a league of their own 109 Proofing mark 111 GI fare 113 Emmy recipient Arthur 114 Hosp. staffer 115 Put away

Answer to February’s puzzle, PRESIDENTIAL FIRSTS

Agenda CALL FOR ENTRIES Philadelphia Water Color Society 116th International Anniversary Exhibition of Works on Paper, at West Chester University, John H. Baker Art Gallery, Rosedale Ave. and High St., West Chester, Pa. Entry Deadline: June 10. Show Dates: September 6–October 14, 2016. Prospectus download from pwcsociety.org website in April, 2016 or send SASE to PWCS Entries, 13 Brandywine Dr., Elwyn, Pa. 19063. Two Entries, Includes pastel, water media, drawings, hand-pulled prints. Members $15.00, Non-Members $45.00. Juror of Selection: Mary Whyte, AWS; Juror of Awards: Stewart White, AWS, NWS. Prizes over $6,000. Philadelphia Sketch Club, 153rd Annual Exhibition of Small Oil Paintings. Entry Deadline: Sunday, March 20. Exhibition Dates: April 8–30, 2016. Reception: 4/17, 2–4. Prizes at 3 PM. Works Eligible: Open, juried competition for paintings where principal medium is oil paint, acrylic, casein, tempera. This is not a works on paper or water medium exhibition, although oil on paper is acceptable. Submisions: Max. size for any one dimension is 20" (excluding frame). Paintings must be framed unless framing is not intended for the work. All items must be wired for hanging (no hooks, brackets or holes). Entry Fee: Members: $1 first piece, $10 add’l works. Nonmembers: $20 first piece, $10 add’l works. Prospectus: sketchclub.org/wpcontent/uploads/2012/10/153rd-SmallOils-Prospectus2016.pdf Entry on-line: sketchclub.org/psc-official-online-submission-site

ART EXHIBITS THRU 3/20 New Hope Arts Center presents, Fiber, Fabric, Fashion; a contemporary textile arts exhibition. 2 Stockton Ave., New Hope, PA. Newhopearts.org THRU 3/20 Abbas: Children of Abraham. Children of Abraham presents 66 photographs of the monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, by renowned Magnum photographer Abbas. Arthur Ross Gallery at UPenn, 220 South 34th Street, Philadelphia. 215-898-2083. arthurrossgallery.org THRU 3/30 PSC Member Exhibit: Priscilla Bell, WestSide; Ellen LoCicero, Eastside. Reception 3/13, 2–4. Philadelphia Sketch Club, Stewart Gallery, 235 South Camac Street, Philadelphia. 215-545-9298. sketchclub.org THRU 4/9 2016 Winter Show, featuring Anthony Smith, Francis Beaty, Joe Billera, Edigio

Galgano, Katelyn Lau, and Ward Van Haute. Bethlehem House Contemporary Art Gallery, 459 Main Street, Bethlehem, PA. 610-419-6262/Cell: 610-390-4324. BethlehemHouseGallery.com THRU 4/16 Judy Pfaff, Somewhere After. Lafayette Art Galleries, Easton, PA. 610-3305361/5831. Galleries.lafayette.edu. THRU 4/24 Inside Out: Carol Tippit Woolworth, Catherine Drabkin, Pahl Alexander Hluchan, Colleen Randall, Daniel Jackson. Regional artists explore the concept of “place”—physical, emotional, and spiritual. Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Pkwy, Wilmington, DE. 302571-9590. delart.org THRU 5/1 Welcome Spring with an exhibition of landscape and still life: Dot Bunn, Janine Dunn Wade, Barbara Sesta, Sam Vokey, Theresa Pergal, Gene McInerney, Dorothy Hoeschen. Patricia Hutton Galleries, 47 W. State St., Doylestown. 215-348-1728. patriciahuttongalleries.com THRU 5/15 This Light of Ours, Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement. Free entry Sundays, see website. Allentown Art Museum, 31 N. 5th St., Allentown, PA. AllentownArtMuseum.org 3/4–26 2016 Art of the Flower. Exhibition of flowers in all mediums. Reception 3/13, 2–4. Philadelphia Sketch Club, Main Gallery, 235 South Camac Street, Phila. 215-545-9298. sketchclub.org 3/5-5/29 Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art. Organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Our America presents the rich and varied contributions of Latino artists in the United States since the mid-20th century, when the concept of a collective Latino identity began to emerge. Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, Delaware. 302-571-9590. delart.org 4/13-16; 4/20-23 Spring Open House featuring Bruce Lindabury. Ahlum Gallery, 106 No. 4th St., Easton, PA. 11-4 PM. AhlumGallery.com 4/23-4/24 ACE Studio Tour. Ahlum Gallery, 106 No. 4th St., Easton, PA. 11-4 PM. AhlumGallery.com 4/24–5/21 MUGA group show: Joann Goodwin; Armor Keller; Kay King; Leslie Ross Stephens; Judith Sutton; Patricia Tieman; and Janine Dunn Wade. Artists reception with refreshments 4/24, 1–4. Hours: Mon–Fri 10–8; Sat 10–2. The Conservatory, 4059 Skyron Drive, Doylestown, PA.

DANCE 3/18, 19 Dance, Ensemble, Concert, featuring a reconstruction of excerpts from Antony Tudor’s Dark Elegies. Act 1 Performing Arts DeSales University. Main Stage, Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, PA. 610-282-3192. Desales.edu/Act1 3/19 Moscow Festival Ballet, Giselle. A timeless classic about the power of true love. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem. ZoellnerArtsCenter.org

THEATER THRU 3/6 Elektra, by Sophocles. Adapted and directed by Wayne S. Turney. Act 1 Performing Arts DeSales University. Main Stage, Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, PA. 610-282-3192. Desales.edu/Act1 3/10 Stomp, A Broadway Sensation. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. ZoellnerArtsCenter.org 3/18 & 3/19 Sleeping Beauty, by Michele L. Vacca. Act 3 Children’s Theatre, DeSales University. Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, Schubert Theatre, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, PA. 610-282-3192. Desales.edu/Act1 3/30 New York Neo-Futurists. Williams Center for the Arts, Lafayette College, 317 Hamilton St., Easton, PA. 610-330-5009. AtTheWilliams.org 3/31-4/3; 4/14-17 Bhudoo, a fable, a choice, a game. An original work by the Touchstone Ensemble. Touchstone Theatre, 321 East 4th St., Bethlehem, PA. 610-867-1689. Touchstone@touchstone.org 3/31-4/3 Passion Play by Sarah Ruhl. Muhlenberg College Theatre & Dance, 2400 Chew St., Allentown, PA. 484-664-3333. Muhlenberg.edu/dance 4/12 Once. His music needed one thing: her. 7:30 PM, State Theatre, 453 Northampton St., Easton, PA. 610-252-3132. Statetheatre.org

DINNER & MUSIC Thursday nights, Community Stage with John Beacher, 8-midnight. Karla’s, 5 W. Mechanic St., New Hope. 215-862-2612. Karlasnewhope.

4/24 The Meistersingers of Southern Lehigh High School, dir. Matthew Wehr. Cathedral Arts, Cathedral Church of the Nativity, 321 Wyandotte St., Bethlehem. 610865-0727. Nativitycathedral.org.

Thurs.-Sat., Dinner and show at SteelStacks, Bethlehem. 5-10, table service and valet parking. artsquest.org

101 Founders Way, Bethlehem 610-332-1300. Artsquest.org

CONCERTS. 3/5 Danú. Williams Center for the Arts, Lafayette College, 317 Hamilton St., Easton. 610-330-5009. AtTheWilliams.org 3/6 An Afternoon with Mozart. Soloist Terry Guidetti, clarinet. Three works by Mozart: a Divertimento, Clarinet Concerto in A and Symphony No. 33. Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra, Christ Lutheran Church, 1245 W. Hamilton St., Allentown. 610 434-7811. PASinfonia.org 3/6 Vox Philia, dir. Dr. David McConnell. Cathedral Arts, Cathedral Church of the Nativity, 321 Wyandotte St., Bethlehem. 610-865-0727. Nativitycathedral.org. 3/13 Kenny Endo Contemporary Ensemble. Williams Center for the Arts, Lafayette College, 317 Hamilton St., Easton, PA. 610-330-5009. AtTheWilliams.org 3/20 2016 Spring Concert, Love Beyond Measure, The Passion According to Saint John. Pre-concert lecture by Greg Funfgeld at 3PM. First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem, 2234 Center St., Bethlehem. Bach.org. 4/3 Mnozil Brass, Yes, Yes, Yes. A world-famous Viennese septet. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem. ZoellnerArtsCenter.org 4/3 Touring Choir of the Lehigh Valley Charter Arts School. Arts at St. John’s, St. John’s Lutheran Church, 37 So. Fifth St., Allentown. 610-435-1641. Stjohnsallentown.org

FILM

4/5 Tom Dressler, organist. Arts at St. John’s, St. John’s Lutheran Church, 37 So. Fifth St., Allentown. 610-435-1641. Stjohnsallentown.org

4/1, 2 DeSales University Film Festival, 2016. Act 1 Performing Arts, DeSales University TV/Film. Gambet Center Auditorium, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, PA. 610-282-3192. Desales.edu/act1

4/12 John Arnold, classical guitarist. Arts at St. John’s, St. John’s Lutheran Church, 37 So. Fifth St., Allentown. 610-435-1641. Stjohnsallentown.org

MUSIKFEST CAFÉ

3/5 3/5 3/11-13 3/17 3/19 3/25 4/1 4/15

Beth Hart Eric Hutchinson Blast Furnace Blues Burning Bridget Cleary Glengarry Bhoys Eaglemania Rusted Root Comedian Dave Attell

KESWICK THEATRE 291 N Keswick Ave, Glenside 215-572-7650 keswicktheatre.com 3/6 3/11 3/12 3/13 3/18 3/24–26 4/2 4/3

4/6

Rachelle Ferrell Tina Karol Ron White The Tenors Temptations & The Four Tops Jesus Christ Superstar Giada Valenti A Conversation on “Making a Murderer with Attorneys Dean Strang & Jerry Buting Joe Satriani

EVENTS 3/11-4/10 Street Meet is a collaboration between Homebase Easton and local streetwear label, ABEmpire and serves as a platform for up-and-coming artists, musicians, entrepreneurs & the youth interested in street culture. Open to the public daily. Graphic design class & free events every Sunday. Homeless, 432 Northampton St., Easton, PA. Homebase610.com 3/12 Lehigh Valley Arts Council, Young at Art, an expo of creative camps & classes for kids & their families. Free. Penn State Lehigh Valley, Center Valley, PA. Lvartscouncil.org/young-at-art. 3/13 The 3rd Annual Friendly Sons of St. Patrick St. Patrick’s Day Parade, 3PM. Clinton, NJ. Clintonguild.com 4/9 Spring into Easton: A shopping and tasting crawl. 12–4. Downtown Easton. Enter to win prizes, including Downtown Easton Gift Cards by picking up a game card, visiting participating shops and getting it stamped. Visit EastonMainStreet.org/SpringIntoEaston for a full list of participating shops and restaurants.

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