Music Festival

Like the Woodstock Art and Music Festival, the touring Lollapalooza festival is billed obscurely - not as a rock concert per se, but as "a picnic for the mind and the eyes. " Besides great gobs of thrashing, bashing, anti-establishment music by bands such as Rage Against the Machine and Alice in Chains, there are other activities in a second staging area called the Village. They range from an Indian art exhibit and a temporary tattoo parlor to a "Cyber-Pit" where you can exchange thoughts electronically with other attendees.

At 82, Warren Mercer has been interested in fiddling and what he fondly describes as old-time music his whole life. At the 60th Annual Old Fiddlers Picnic on Aug. 13, Mercer will be honorary chairman once again, as he has been since the folk music festival moved in 1972 from the old Lenape Park in West Chester to Hibernia Park in West Caln and West Brandywine Townships. "I don't play the fiddle, but I get up there on stage and play my guitar with the musicians, as I have for the past 50 years," Mercer said.

David F. Tilman will be honored on his 25th anniversary as cantor of Beth Sholom Congregation with a Zimriyah music festival at 7 p.m. May 6 at the synagogue on Old York and Foxcroft Roads in Elkins Park. The program, "The Songs We Sang," will include four chorales of the congregation; a 35-piece chamber symphony orchestra; the Old York Road/Akiba Hebrew Academy Klezmer Band; the youth chorale of the Perelman Jewish Day School; the Mendelsohn Club; and the Delaware Valley Cantors Assembly Ensemble.

R&B classics like "Soul Man" and "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love," the stirring theme music to the 1992 movie The Last of the Mohicans, and selections from Jesus Christ Superstar will be among the tunes filling Valley Forge Military Academy and College's Price Hall today when about 80 musicians from across the country come together for the 32d Military School Band Festival Concert. The concert will cap a weekend of competition and collaboration for the cadets, who come from 11 schools.

Like the name of the festival she's playing tonight, for blues-rock singer/instrumentalist Grace Potter it truly is all about the music. "I'm living it, man," Potter said by phone this week. "There is nothing else for me. " Weaned on everything from Little Feat to Led Zeppelin, the 23-year-old Vermont native - who sounds far younger in conversation than she does on vinyl - is passionate about beltin' it out for a crowd, preferably one that doesn't yet know her music. "I don't think you can come to my show and not want to dance," Potter said.

WXPN, the area's preeminent alternative radio station, and the Philadelphia Film Society, producers of the annual Philadelphia Film Festival, are partnering for the XPN Music Film Festival, April 26-29, with most programs playing at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The movie titles in the Music Film Fest, a kind of expanded spin-off of the PFF's "Sight and Soundtrack" program, are being programmed by the PFF's Michael Lerman. Although opening- and closing-night titles have yet to be announced, the early lineup offers an eclectic mix of rock docs, fiction films, concert flicks, and a feature about Gustav Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony.

WHAT DOES little Austin, Texas, have that Philadelphia needs? Until now, a festival celebrating (mostly local) music and alternative films, in the vein of Austin's acclaimed South By Southwest (SXSW). But this weekend, that's changing, as the first Philadelphia Film and Music Festival , going by the equally catchy abbreviation Philly F/M, percolates in numerous locations in Northern Liberties, Fishtown, Manayunk, Old City, University City and along South Street, delivering almost 300 bands (indie, heavy rock, Americana and hip-hop predominate)

Sure, you could waste the weekend scouring the folk scene for your favorites - David Gray at the Tin Angel, the Asylum Street Spankers at the Point, John Gorka at Godfrey Daniel's, Lucy Kaplansky at Concerts Under the Stars - or you could simply buy in bulk at the Farm on Saturday. And also get, at this year's Appel Farm Arts and Music Festival, a 60-artist Crafts Fair, a didgeridoo-included Children's Village, "gourmet hot dogs," Richard Thompson, Jonatha Brooke and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

"What Lollapalooza has proven is that there is a serious market for a youth counterculture," says Perry Farrell, the sometime rocker (Jane's Addiction, Porno for Pyros) and founder of the marathon-length, anti- establishment music festival returning to Philadelphia Monday. "That's the bad news. The good news is that these people will sooner or later be in positions of prominence, and we have taken them to school. " And this year, it looks as if they're ready to graduate. Just as Woodstock came together 25 summers ago as a response to a radio and record industry almost oblivious to a new generation of progressive, underground rockers, so the touring Lollapalooza festival began four years ago as a celebration of young, modern rock bands ignored by the mainstream media.

Let me put it this way: Compared to Lilith, Eve was just another trophy wife. I mean, Eve was younger than Adam, and designed from the get-go to be more tractable, even submissive. She was created from Adam - talk about your biological role reversal - and for Adam. Of course, she eventually fed him one meal too many, but that's a story for another day. Lilith, on the other hand - now there's a woman after my own heart. In the medieval myth, Adam's first wife was created equal out of the same earth.

Mayor Nutter skipped an important beat in planning the star-studded Made in America music festival for this weekend. The two-day extravaganza on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway will attract as many as 50,000 people to the city. The featured line-up includes entertainers Jay-Z, Pearl Jam, Run-DMC, Jill Scott, Drake, and possibly a surprise appearance by Beyoncé. But how much will it cost this cash-strapped city to host such a spectacular event? There has been no indication whether the city will make or lose money on the venture.

A 35-year-old man was charged today in connection with a hit-and-run crash Saturday in Camden that left a New Jersey woman dead. Ronald Winzinger, of Hainesport, Burlington County, was charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident and hindering prosecution, according to records. He was placed in Camden County Correction Facility and held in lieu of $75,000 bail. Authorities believe Winzinger was behind the wheel of a black Nissan Xterra near Exit 4 on I-676 around 11:40 a.m. Saturday when it struck a Mazda M3S and Ford E150 van. Michelle Macinnes, 29, of Jackson Township, Ocean County, who was in the Mazda, was seriously injured and died at Cooper University Medical Center.

Jay-Z and Pearl Jam on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Metallica at Bader Field in Atlantic City. Jack White and the Black Keys in Dover, Del.   And scores of other bands besides. This summer, the outsize, multiday music festival that has held sway over the concert business for a decade — and has mirrored the genre-hopping tastes of fans in the digital age — is finally breaking big in the northeastern United States. Every year, fans are lured to destination gatherings such as Coachella in the California desert, Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tenn., and Lollapalooza in Chicago.

AT MONDAY'S news conference announcing Jay-Z's Budweiser music festival, a fan shouted out, "You're the best, Hov!" "I agree," he said. I don't. Not to sound like an old fogy, but hits of his such as "99 Problems" may be catchy, but I can't get with all the b-words and other misogynistic lyrics in Jay-Z's music. It felt bizarre to me to see the performer of such awful songs as "Big Pimpin'" and "Girls, Girls, Girls" standing with Mayor Nutter acting like some kind of hero.

With Mayor Nutter as his opening act, hip-hop mogul and rapper Jay-Z stood atop the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps. His theme: Made in America, the music festival - announced Monday morning - that will take over the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on Labor Day weekend. Jay-Z, whose given name is Shawn Carter, was saying he embarks on a venture only if it has potential to be great. Just then, a fan shouted, "You're the best, Hov!", a shortening of "Jayhova," one of the MC's noms de rap. Without missing a beat, Jay-Z answered back: "I agree.

Big Easy Express. Directed by Emmett Malloy (The White Stripes Under Great Northern Lights), Big Easy Express rides the rails across the western United States, chronicling a five-city tour with the simpatico folk bands Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Old Crow Medicine Show, playing and singing their own songs before climaxing with a cover of Woody Guthrie's "This Train Is Bound for Glory. " Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Zellerbach Theatre, Annenberg Center. Charles Bradley: Soul of America.

Il Portico (1519 Walnut St., 215-587-7000, www.il-portico.com ) is launching Pasta Mista Fridays. "Pasta mista" means "mixed pasta," and Il Portico's version, available for lunch or dinner, includes gnocchi, parpadelle, fettuccine, tagliolini and eggless bigoli tossed with fresh seasonal ingredients. Tomorrow from 5 to 8:30 p.m., Granite Hill, the restaurant at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, 215-684-7990, www.granitehillrestaurant.com )

WXPN, the area's preeminent alternative radio station, and the Philadelphia Film Society, producers of the annual Philadelphia Film Festival, are partnering for the XPN Music Film Festival, April 26-29, with most programs playing at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The movie titles in the Music Film Fest, a kind of expanded spin-off of the PFF's "Sight and Soundtrack" program, are being programmed by the PFF's Michael Lerman. Although opening- and closing-night titles have yet to be announced, the early lineup offers an eclectic mix of rock docs, fiction films, concert flicks, and a feature about Gustav Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony.

Music "Popped! Music Festival. " This festival moved from FDR Park to the Liacouras Center with its buzzed-about lineup of performers. Doors open at 10:30 a.m. Saturday for a schedule that includes Pretty Lights, Girl Talk, Foster the People, Rakim, Cults, Kreayshawn, Titus Andronicus, DJ ?uestlove, Nikki Jean, Sun Airway, the Budos Band, Patty Crash, Charles Bradley, Mates of State, Zee Avi, Black Landlord, and Anamanaguchi. The Food Bazaar moves to the Piazza at Schmidts from 3 to 9 p.m. Saturday with the Philadelphia Film & Music Festival-connected Girard Fest, which has its own full slate of bands including Cheers Elephant.

Special Events Day Off Program: Rocks and Minerals Participants will pull fossils, crystals and geodes out of the collection and learning about them Schuylkill Center, 8480 Hagy's Mill Rd.; Preregistration required: 215-482-7300 Ext 110. $45 members; $55 nonmembers. 9/29. 8 am-3 pm. Family Health & Safety Festival Fun & educational event featuring appearances by state officials, health screenings, entertainment & exhibitors. Fisher Park, 600 W. Spencer St. 9/24. 10 am-8 pm. Girard Fest Live music, crafts, food, family activities & more.