A few months ago, a music website called The Talkhouse was unleashed on the Internet. It might have gone unnoticed amid the detritus of blogs and online startups that litter the cyber-commons were it not for its unique mission: to revolutionize music reviewing as we know it.
Edited by legendary rock journalist Michael Read More
Love Has Come for You, the new album by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, came about unexpectedly. But it feels almost inevitable.
Two years ago, a musical partnership was formed at a party, when Mr. Martin asked Ms. Brickell to write lyrics for a tune he’d composed on the banjo. The process went well, and Read More
When Rex Reed published his now infamous review of Identity Thief, which referred to actress Melissa McCarthy as “tractor-sized” and “a hippo,” it provoked an intense reaction from readers. In fact, it was the most intense in Observer history, with more than 10,000 Facebook shares and countless hate-filled comments directed at Mr. Reed in defense of Ms. McCarthy. Read More
Two years ago, Blake Whyte stumbled upon a piano on Stone Street in Lower Manhattan and discovered Sing for Hope, the non-profit organization founded in 2006 that scatters 88 pianos throughout New York’s five boroughs for weeks at a time.
A singer, actor and musician, Mr. Whyte was moved to get involved with the organization and began to apply his skills by performing in schools, hospitals and disability centers around the city as part of Sing for Hope’s year-round mission to bring people together through the arts. Read More
The New York Times published a scathing editorial yesterday in the wake of the N.S.A. phone surveillance scandal titled “President Obama’s Dragnet.” It declared, conclusively: “The administration has now lost all credibility.”
Since then, however, the editorial, which appears in today’s paper, has been tweaked. “The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue,” the line now reads (emphasis ours), with additional sentences related to new reports published by The Guardian, which broke the news of the domestic surveillance, and The Washington Post. Read More
The writer Rob Sheffield and his wife, Ally, had just wrapped up a rousing rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” made famous by Bonnie Tyler, when we realized what we were up against. The bar had been set—this was going to be a serious karaoke party.
Earlier in the day the Transom had committed Read More
Last Saturday in Soho, teen rapper Keith “Chief Keef” Cozart parked his SUV as a lick of marijuana smoke snaked from a half-rolled-down window. Inside, a smiling face wrapped in mini- dreadlocks: Chief Keef was in town for a headlining show at the Best Buy Theater.
The car inched up the block to the Beats by Read More
Every few years, I like to buy a new hat. Not a baseball cap or anything so prosaic as that, though I do enjoy wearing a cap every once in a while. What I mean is something stylish, something one might consider daring—a hat to make life more interesting.
Call me a dandy, if you’d like. Baudelaire might have. Read More
Well, it took long enough, but the warm days have finally arrived. For some, that spells languorous subway rides and hot and sticky walks to work. For others, it means a chance to capitalize on the city’s outdoor resources, and how better than by taking advantage of the plethora of musical performances put on in Read More
Maxwell’s, the legendary Hoboken rock venue and restaurant where, in 1985, Bruce Springsteen filmed the video for “Glory Days,” will shut its doors at the end of July, according to an article by Tris McCall of The Star-Ledger.
Todd Abramson, the club’s owner and booking agent who also books the Bell House, in the Read More
