“Phil Spector, Al Pacino and Keith Richards…” sounds like the beginning of a really good joke — or at least, a pretty booze-filled one. The HBO premiere of Pacino and David Mamet’s biopic “Phil Spector” proved that the controversial but legendary producer can still bring legends together. Richards — who, as The New York Post…
“Lulu,” the unlikely collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, rapidly went from being one of the year’s most anticipated releases to being the most reviled album of 2011. USA Today called it “arty sludge” and gave it one star. Writing in Grantland, Chuck Klosterman lambasted it as “a successful simulation of how it feels to…
Each Thursday, The Arty Semite features excerpts and reviews of the best contemporary Jewish poetry. This week, Jake Marmer introduces four poems by Alicia Jo Rabins. Songwriters who are also known as poets often only become so once they receive a degree of popular acclaim for their music. Cases in point include Bob Dylan and…
How Yiddish poet Itzik Manger brought midrash to the Megillah. Bob Dylan, Brandeis University, 1963: Coming soon to a record store near you. In other Dylanalia, Bob’s upcoming Asian tour now includes stops in both China and Vietnam. David Kaufmann on new poetry by Adrienne Rich. The Hebrew University is putting Albert Einstein’s archives on…
For those accustomed to seeing Lou Reed as the snarling badass of the New York music scene, his first directorial effort, “Red Shirley,” will come as something of a shock. Far from touching on the trademark obsessions of his Velvet Underground days — sadomasochism and drugs, to be precise — the film is a loving,…
On the new record by the Israeli quintet Fogel and the Sheriffs, Jesus packs a gun, the Pope is a woman, and the Second Coming occurs in the bedroom. One song calls the Holocaust a “soiree”; another orders a Muslim woman to “put on a burka, baby” to hide her body, from her head to…
When I phoned Gary Lucas this week he was right in the middle of renewing his Forward subscription. “I’m a religious reader,” he punned effortlessly. He also had his cell phone pressed to his other ear, waiting to buy concert tickets. It comes as little shock that the prolific composer, songwriter, guitar legend and musical…
100% of profits support our journalism
