Icepack

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

by A.D. Amorosi

	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: Jul 27, 2010

This has been a cruel summer for those we love, those we know, those we hardly know but get what they meant to those around them. They're all senseless, every murder. Somehow, the tragic deaths of Sabina Rose O'Donnell and now Rendell Miller aka DJ Randy Flash seem doubly nebulous and absurd: a bike robbery, a home invasion. Good people gone. Flash's murder hits close to home. Though I knew him as a house king, an ever-promoting spinner, he was also the procurer of the goods, a salesman and buyer at Sound of Market, one of Philly's last oversize bastions of DJ stuff. I did that as a kid, sold at the SoM. Same thing at Third Street Jazz. You're the pusherman. This sounds corny, I know, but there's love in turning listeners and peers into fans who'll then go forth and do likewise. When you give or sell a DJ a song he's never heard and then you watch him do the same to a room full of people, ah, there's nothing like it. Flash did that. He'll never be forgotten for it. Lee Jones, Dirty and more host a remembrance and benefit for Flash's fam's expenses July 29 at Octo. It'll be a breezy night. Go.

► How about I turn you on to something? Thom McCarthy is a baby-faced gent from central PA coal country ("between an amusement park called Knoebel's and a burning town called Centralia," he says) who recorded the clever I Lost Half of My Album & My Favorite Hat in the '92 Flood with renegade Mad Dragon cats. Sounds as if Van Dyke Parks arranged a Devendra Banhart record at his most soulfully raunchy. Live, McCarthy raises Elvis' ghost with a foot-stomping howl. Currently he's recording again with some Disco Biscuits on N. Third. Wherever, whenever, be where McCarthy is.

► Philly food on TV? Union Trust's steak-men Chaz Brown and Quincy Logan take on Food Network chefs Aarón Sánchez and Chris Cosentino on that food channel's Chefs vs. City, and the UT hosts its preview bash Aug. 13 in The Mezz. Days later, blocks away (Aug. 17, the Troc), Tony Luke Jr. begins filming his new WPVI-TV 6 weekly jawn that'll commence airing Sept. 11. He ain't serving frozen steaks — it's a football show called Eaglemania, with its own house band led by Skip Denenberg (who scored Luke's flick The Nail). If you saw TLJr's cameo in Invincible, you know what's possible.

► Speaking of mozzarella, old pal Joe Annaruma ends his longtime lit-bop-hardcore band Throttle with a bang, a "farewell to harms show," July 30, Tritone. Chuck Treece and Calvin Weston will be part of the fray. There'll be cover tunes that'll surprise and disgust many. "I may even throw in a little Puccini for our clown show," says Big Joe.

► You can find Ursula Rucker working on her fourth album. You can find her on the new Incognito release. And tonight, July 29, through Aug. 5, you’ll find Philly’s wordiest rapping hood teaching Poetry for Camera workshops (they won’t turn out like those Clean Up Philly ads, promise!) at Scribe Video Center. Sign up. The workshop culminates in the video documentation of participants’ new poetry accompanied by guitarist Tim Motzer. That’s right — Motzer’s part of the deal.

► Over the weekend our friend and bon vivant Harry Jay Katz wrote to tell me that he and his longtime gal-pal Debra Renee Cruz have three favorite restaurants: The Palm, Chops and The Prime Rib. The first two aren’t carpeted, so Katz chose the latter so to get down on one knee and propose to Debra on their sixth anniversary. Congrats. No date is yet set. Word to Chops and Palm: Buy rugs.

► Diplo isn’t just the proud recipient of a beverage named after himself at PYT (the Diplo Key Lime Shake with Keke Beach Key Lime Liqueur, Gosling’s Dark Rum, vanilla ice cream and crumbled Graham Crackers). Or a film director whose debut Favela on Blast will be out in August. (“Film takes time and money,” Diplo told me last week. “To make one is a challenge I’ve never faced in music.”) Or a Major Lazer, whose new EP dropped the other day. He’s a franchise. He and his Mad Decent crew, whose block parties down by his HQ/mausoleum are highly regarded (next one July 31!), are all about outreach. There will be block parties in New York City, Chicago and L.A. in August and surely other towns that love backyard carnivals. Check maddecentblockparty.com.

► WHOWHATWHERE: Philly soulstress Jill Scott hit Chris’ Jazz Café on Saturday to catch a set by saxophonist Chris Farr, one of her ax men. After I left the Chromeo gig on Tuesday night, a white and holy light was spotted at the Four Seasons. It was Aretha Franklin returning from her Mann Music Center gig with Condi Rice. Cue angel music. In between those two things, Steve Adler was seen hanging around the tour bus and smoking cigs in the kitchen of the Mill Creek Tavern where Adler’s Appetite and Chip Z’Nuff played. Adler is the Guns N’ Roses drummer who was ousted for being too high, made a name for himself on Celebrity Rehab, then wrote a book about the experiences My Appetite for Destruction.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Video Drones
Philadelphia Dance Day
2nd Street Festival
DooWop Car Show and Street Festival
The Black Women's Arts Festival
PhillyIMC
Life During Wartime
Randy Flash
Planet Earth with the Philadelphia Orchestra