Sunday, May 6
• Preview/Interview: Siriam Gopal on Rusted Root [DCist]. At the 9:30 Club.
Articles
• Local profile: 20kUnderDC talks to Sockets Records head honcho Sean Peoples.
• Support the local scene: Jazz blog Capital Bop puts together the D.C. Jazz Loft Series during the DC Jazz Fest in early June. They’ve recently launched a Kickstarter project to help defray costs; check out their blog post about it and then head on over to their Kickstarter page to check out the prizes, which include tickets/VIP passes to the festival and a private lesson (in bass clarinet performance or just general jazz appreciation) from Todd Marcus.
• Listen: Nathan Salsburg stopped by NPR’s DC office for a Tiny Desk Concert.
• We promise we didn’t make this up: There’s gonna be a David Simon Battle of the Bands in New Orleans on 5/11, pitting the cities of Simon’s two HBO series– Baltimore (The Wire) and New Orleans (Treme) against each other [DCist/WTOP].
Last night, I went to the Black Cat and saw British twee band Allo Darlin’. I wouldn’t ordinarily identify as a fan of twee, but I do really dig the Field Mice and Camera Obscura, and I find Allo Darlin’ to be very much in line with those two bands. (Also, I recently reviewed the band’s latest album, Europe, for the Washington Post). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the show was packed (and packed with people who knew a lot of the band’s lyrics, too!). Live, the band really captures that “just exuberant enough to be slightly off-kilter” brand of indie-pop; I don’t think the bassist stopped jumping up and down for the band’s entire ~45-minute set. Another pleasant surprise: frontwoman Elizabeth Morris’s solo ukulele song “Tallulah” during the encore was performed to….complete silence! So great to hear DC crowds keeping quiet after a whole slew of chatty shows.
An unrelated story from last night’s show: I got an iPhone a few weeks ago, and I’m still warming up to it– sure, some of the apps are cool, but I’m not a fan of its email functionality, and that’s what I want a smartphone for, more than gadgets and doodads. Anyway, last night at the show, one of those apps came in handy: a flashlight app I’d recently installed helped a woman find her contact lens on the floor of the Black Cat. I kind of wanted to ask if she actually planned on putting it back in her eye– no amount of rinsing could possibly get nightclub grime off of that thing.
• Interview: Metal Chris talks to Evan Harting, co-founder of Maryland DeathFest [DCHeavyMetal.com]. You can either listen to the interview via MP3 (~20 minutes) or read its entire transcript (or both!). Metal Chris talks both about festival logistics (parking, food) as well as the merits of downloading (Metal Chris rightly points out that many of the bands on the DeathFest schedule wouldn’t be known enough to come to the U.S. if not for the availability of their music online). Teaser from this cool interview: I think having at least some of your music available online for free is great and it gets your word out there. If you’re in metal to make money then you’re doing something wrong anyway.
• Local band profile: Stephanie Williams on Heavy Breathing [DC Music Download].
• Watch out for disco balls! In April 2010, a woman was allegedly hit by a falling disco ball at the Franconia Moose Lodge in Alexandria. Now she’s suing [Washington Post]. The horrific incident happened in April 2010 at a Sweet Sixteen dance, according to Robert M. Somer, the lawyer who filed the suit. He said the victim, Ana Guevara Blanco, suffered a concussion, a fractured nose and facial bones, was hospitalized, and ran up about $15,000 in hospital bills. After some plastic surgery, her nose still doesn’t look the way it once did, Somer said.
Last night was a concert double-header for me. I started out at the Hamilton in Penn Quarter– it was my first time there, and that place is seriously cool. The obvious comparison is that it’s most similar to the Birchmere, because both venues are seated with tables and you can order food. The Hamilton is wider, though, and the stage is curved so the tables all come out like rays instead of being perpendicular or parallel to it. There’s an entire restaurant attached to the venue, but the venue is downstairs, so there’s no interference between the two. I was also surprised that the menu was different in the venue than it was in the restaurant– you can see the venue menu here and the restaurant menu here. There’s some overlap between the two, but I was disappointed that the venue menu didn’t have the falafel sandwich that the restaurant menu had, as I generally tend to keep vegan when I can, and there didn’t seem to be any vegan options at the venue. I had the wild mushroom pizza instead, which was also quite good. (Note that the venue charges for refills of things like lemonade!). The sound was good and the stage was really pro– there was quite the lighting display during the bands. Opening the show was Baltimore’s Cris Jacobs Band, who mentioned that they’d just finished recording a new CD, so that should be out “in a few weeks”(!), they said. The headliners were Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds, a 9-piece funk/soul band from Brooklyn that features siblings Arleigh Kincheloe (voice) and Jackson Kincheloe (harmonica) alongside a 4-piece horn section. They were a lot of fun– you could tell that the crowd really wanted to dance, but there wasn’t a lot of space for that.
Then, since that show got out early (10:30), I hopped in my car and headed out to Fat Tuesday’s in Fairfax where there was a metal show going on. There was a ton of traffic because the Caps game got out at the same time– plus the inevitable construction on 66– but I got there in time to see stoner metal band Caltrop who were great live. Bizarre to see them playing in that New Orleans themed dive bar, but with the Corpse Fortress gone now, there are fewer DIY spaces for metal bands like that to play. You can download a free song on their Facebook page if you’d like to hear what they sound like.
Wednesday 25 April
• Preview: Christopher Porter talks about the Forward Festival [Washington CityPaper]. Check out the festival’s entire lineup here.
• CD Review: Lucero: Women & Work – Reviewed by Mark Jenkins [Washington Post]. At the 9:30 Club.
Sunday 15 April
• Preview/interview: David Malitz talks to Lambchop [Washington Post]. At IOTA.
• Preview/interview: Nancy Dunham talks to the All-American Rejects [Washington Examiner]. At the 9:30 Club.
• DC’s used record stores are catching a break this week [Washington CityPaper]. While record stores with some used inventory, used book stores, and vintage and antique shops do have to obtain a secondhand business license—as opposed to the less restrictive general business license—they’ll have more than seven days to do it. And regulators at DCRA are taking a close look at the secondhand business license’s more onerous requirements.
• DC writer Marc Masters and NC writer Grayson Currin have written another edition of their column The Out Door [Pitchfork]. In this edition of our monthly experimental music column, “The Out Door,” we discuss the storied career of Swans and Rhys Chatham-collaborator Jonathan Kane of the band February, look at the inventive, underrated legacy of San Francisco band rRope and provide you with an alternative Record Store Day shopping list. But first we explore recent diverse experiments in spoken word.
• Listen: Novalima stopped by NPR’s DC office for a Tiny Desk Concert.
• For Sale: King Giant guitarist Todd Ingram is selling the Flying V he played in the band’s “Appomatox” video. It’s got classic 57 pickups and an ebony fret board and was purchased specifically for the video. Check the link for how to contact TI if you’re interested in this piece of DC metal history.
• Metallomusikum continues her countdown to Maryland DeathFest with a profile of Bloody Phoenix.
• Trisha Yearwood will be following in Lisa Loeb’s footsteps with a cooking show on the Food Network [Washington Examiner]. “For me, cooking is very connected to my family and friends,” said Yearwood. “Every recipe on the show carries wonderful memories with my loved ones. … I really see this as a tribute to my mom [Gwen Yearwood] who passed away last year.”
The big event this weekend is the chickfactor 20th anniversary show at Artisphere in Rosslyn. The shows are tonight and tomorrow night, and full information, including tickets, can be found here. Lots of press to round up on this event!
• The Washington CityPaper has a huge article on the zine chickfactor.
• Interview: Stephen M Deusner talks to Frankie Rose [Express], who’s performing tonight.
• Interview: David Malitz talks to Black Tambourine, who performs tomorrow night.
• Overview: The Vinyl District also recommends the show.
• Listen local: Jonathan L Fischer writes an excellent piece on whether being local makes something good (or worth listening to) [Washington CityPaper]. All the same, as someone who values a Washington whose cultural life is both distinct and worldly, I’m nervous about this sort of genre-agnostic focus on what area code artists happen to live in. Those who advocate for eating local make an environmental pitch that has to do with carbon footprints. Proponents of shopping local make an economic argument that has to do with the influence and labor practices of large corporations and the diversity of shopping opportunities. But in consuming culture, I’ve never felt “local” to be an inherent plus. Not exactly. What matters, or ought to matter, is whether something is interesting, forward-thinking, vibrant—and mostly importantly, good.
• Venue news: The Hamilton is no longer open 24 hours a day, reports DC.Eater.com. The Penn Quarter venue/restaurant will remain open until 1 AM on weekedays and 2 AM on weekends, with the bar open an hour later each day.
•: On musical instruments: Roland Flamini on the comparison between a Stradivarius and an instrument made by a modern violin makers [Washington Times]. When is a fiddle a violin? One day late last year, 17 experienced violinists gathered in a hotel room in Indianapolis to tackle the question. Each one in turn was blindfolded and played a few bars of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto on six violins — two made by Antonio Stradivari, one by Bartolomeo Guarneri del Gesu and three by modern violin makers. The challenge was to distinguish the three old master violins. According to the results of the experiment published in the January issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, only three of the 17 guessed right.
Notes from last night (and a request for feedback)
Last night I headed out to DC9 to see French atmospheric black metal/shoegaze band Alcest. (Apparently it was quite the week for atmospheric black metal bands in the U St corridor, since Liturgy opened for Sleigh Bells at the 9:30 Club on Tuesday). Their set focussed mostly on their newest album, Les Voyages de L’ame, which sounded great, despite the absurdly omnipresent smoke machine. (Seriously, it’s as if those guys were pumping enough smoke for a space the size of the 9:30 club). Oddly, the crowd seemed to be the biggest for opening band deaf heaven– either that, or people just pushed closer for the headliner’s set. Other openers were locals Black Clouds and Auroboros.
Hey, while I’m at it, it seems to be a SLDC Music Notes tradition to ask for feedback on the last weekday of the month. What do you like/dislike in this daily round-up? Are their things I could add or change? Feel free to let me know, either via a comment on this post or by email, showlistdc@gmail.com.
• Chris Richards muses on musicians who wear masks [Washington Post]. As the hyper-connectivity of social media pulls our planet into a tighter huddle, [Aaron] Jerome [of SBTRKT] is one in a growing number of vanguard pop artists flirting with the idea of anonymity. They often wear masks. Some conceal their names. A few refuse to perform in public altogether. Many make electronic music, including Deadmau5, the Bloody Beetroots, Redshape and Zomby. And although artists and authors have worked under pseudonyms for centuries, protecting one’s anonymity today feels like an implicit protest against our increasingly Facebookish society. These artists are asserting their power by refusing to be identified, asking us to like them without clicking “Like”.
• Local power metal band A Sound of Thunder has just released a music video for “Muderous Horde” (recommended if you like snakes!). The band’s new album Out of the Darkness comes out next week, and the band is celebrating with a CD release show at Empire in Springfield (formerly Jaxx) on Saturday 3/31.
• The Onion has ended circulation in DC [Washington CityPaper]. No great surprise from us (most of the Onion bins we saw were always empty, with the exception of the ones right outside the Columbia Heights metro station– the paper had clearly been cutting back its distribution this year).
Notes from last night:
Last night, I stopped by the modestly-attended free-jazz show of Denis Beuret (trombone, electronics) + Elliott Levin (sax, spoken word) + drummers Weasel Walter + Marc Edwards. I’d never been to The Dunes in Columbia Heights before, but I’m now in love with the space– it feels like the performance is happening in a living room, since the space/gallery is nestled in an apartment building in a very residential part of ColHts. Not surprisingly, Walter completely stole the show– he’s hilarious to watch, and his chatter after songs was entertaining as well, although the quartet did not deliver the 17 additional tunes that Walter initially promised. It was disappointing that the crowd started leaving less than halfway through the group’s hourlong set, which ended at 10:45 (not that late, even for a school night!), but so it goes. Spot the metalhead: Walter himself was wearing a Malignancy T-shirt.
Thanks for another great week, folks! Enjoy your weekend, and remember that you can add this blog to your RSS feed using the link http://www.showlistdc.com/more/feed
