Icepack

Amorosi on the news, nightlife, gossip and bitchiness beats.

by A.D. Amorosi

I'm having a hard time getting "Watch the Mummers Strut" out of my head. Performed by Tony Luke Jr. and Tacony Funk Machine — and assistant-engineered by Tommy Stinson of The Replacements — the song is on repeat in my brain. Worse than any OCD loop. I'm not even sure that's a bad thing. Welcome to 2010, Icepackers, where good and bad feelings mix and mingle in an unhealthy stew but with soft, CoQ10-drenched skin. Example: Is it good that Rich Wexler gives up his Sherman Arts Web site/booking gig to head to school, and find personal happiness? It's luuverly for Wexler, but sad for the community. (I'm a crammer: everything all at once.) The just-out All Creatures Sherman compilation (37 artists!) celebrates 10 years of weird quietude with a release gig at Green Line Café (Jan. 15) featuring Eliza of Buried Beds, Stephen Bluhm and more. There's also a Sherman cabaret starring scads of Wexler pals and film bits hitting National Mechanics Jan. 11. He's passing Sherman Arts' Web and booking to Emily Bate, West Philly muso and booker of The Mitten. She seems a sweet applicant for the Sherman spot — not replacement. No one fills Wexler's shoes. Sob.

►'Member Andy Hurwitz? I told you the Ropeadope/Mad Dragon label runner was booking MarBar. Well, it's re-opening Jan. 13 and Hurwitz brought Electric Factory/Live Nation in for three shows a month. "It's owned by a cool family, the Borishes, who really want MarBar to be the boutique, small-music venue in Philly," says Andy. He throws EF bookings like Foreign Born/Free Energy, Kid Sister and Beach House at me. Sweet.

► Is Chestnut Street's Grey bar bringing the Jersey Shore kids in for a party before month's end? That'd be a situation.

► Eating your veggies gets easier: Thoreau vegetarian grill opens Jan. 22 at 1033 Spring Garden. Mike Jackson from Blue Sage in Southampton does wonders with a squash. And the Piazza at Schmidts farmers market opens Jan. 16 — though I dare say I'll be coming by for M&B Farview Farms' sausage.

► Looking to catalog West Philly's nu-avant-garde, Dan "Redbeard" Baker (Radio Eris, Apogee) started recording "the Oracle Sessions" at Main Street West Studios with the area's formidably furry freak improvisationalists, and will release new cuts monthly. Volume 1 features Ed Wilcox (Temple of Bon Matin) and Da Comrade!'s Adam Fergurson, amongst others and can be had for $5 (redbeardorama@gmail.com) or by hitting Oracle's first event with Audible Eye, Erode & Disappear (Northern Liberties solo project) and Oracle Orchestra during Patou's First Friday gig Jan. 8.

► This is just a nice thought to start the day: Recently deceased local guitarist Jack Rose is buried in the same cemetery as one of his heroes, king of the oddly tuned blues guitar Skip James: West Laurel Hill Cemetery. Though Nehemiah Curtis James was born in 1902 in Bentonia, Miss., he died in Philly in 1969. Rose was a big fan.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

►Seems like everybody’s writing and tweeting about the Khyber being for sale. No shit, Sherlocks. Icepack clued y’all in weeks ago. That’s OK. Here’s something good and positive we wrote rumors about during our Autumn ’09 Music Issue: TuPhace. The Philly rapper/host extraordinaire just signed on the line which is dotted at Epic. More soon.

► File this under “strictly a rumor”: The Fire on Girard Ave. may be up for sale. Or it may not be. Derek Davis, manager and talent buyer says it’s not. “It’ll reopen before January’s end,” he claims. “A definitive date will be announced soon.” Yay to that.

► Between going to print for NYE and the days after, two sad passings occurred. First there’s the lady-heavy J&J Trestle Inn at 11th and Callowhill. When I worked a so-called day job at a one-stop on Buttonwood Street at the dawn of the century (that’s how long ago THAT WAS. Do one-stops in the record biz even still exist? Ah, Matty Singer and Bruno Gidaro.) the Trestle was THE place to go at post-time. Then there’s Pink Rose, the Fourth Street suite for sweets which just went down days ago. Maybe it hasn’t been the same since the ’80s. But then again, what has?

► WHOWHATWHERE: Atlantic City from New Year’s Eve to that first Saturday of 2010 was a load of laughs. Mariah Carey hit the Borgata’s mur. mur to see her husband, Nick Cannon, spin, after she sold out the big room. I hear when Leighton Meester got to her (standing and screeching) gig at Dusk on NYE she supposedly wanted two tables for her pals or else she wasn’t going to sing the song she was scheduled to. (OH MAN THIS IS WHERE YOU WISH WE WERE THE MANAGER OF DUSK!) Rumor has it that Gossip Girl Meester got an offer she couldn’t refuse: one table, as planned. She sang. Ugh. Less of a hassle, Brendan Fraser, star of the new Extraordinary Measures, stayed at the Four Seasons after screening his new flick at the Prince.

► BOOK MOBILE: Book Bombs, a collabo between artists Mary Tasillo and Michelle Wilson that re-contextualizes public spaces, started on Jan. 8 at places like LOVE Park and the park in front of Christ Church. They’re making prints from used materials throughout the next several months, with their efforts culminating in March with the release of a similarly named zine.

► Lastly, literary procurer David E. Williams says that “after years of threatening,” his GERM will sell books online (abebooks.com/bookseller/germbooks). “Do friends give you a hard time for shopping here?” Williams says regarding his shop’s brick-n-mortar location. “That’s OK. We don’t like them, either.”

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)