District of Cacophony

I hit up the H Street Festival largely to see what was up with DC music legend H.R.

This is pretty much what he is up to:

It was close to what I expected, but he played a tiny bit of punk as an encore:

The whole thing was pretty fun. H.R. draws an interesting crowd.

I tend to find out about new music from the randomest sources these days. One of them is WFMU and their stunningly good website, plus its affiliated Free Music Archive. Last spring I really got into this set of music from a California garage rock band called Bare Wires. You should check it out! Download it! It is excellent!

So I was pretty stoked to see Bare Wires in the listings for the Velvet Lounge. I somehow managed to get a couple friends to go with me on a Monday night to see these guys, that is just how stoked I was.

I hadn’t been to a Velvet Lounge show in ages, aside from a few ill-begotten nights like a blurry Windian Records showcase that I couldn’t remember enough about to write up. Everything starts really late at the Velvet Lounge. There also tend to be lots of young people there that spit beer on bands. And punks! I don’t know, I am just a little too old to be hanging out at shows there, though I like the downstairs bar a lot.

The openers were Maybe Baby, part of that same local Windian scene. I think I might have seen them before. They were sort of like a blur of noisy punk-pop. Fun, but again, you know, I am not that into beer-spitting. And I was looking at my watch, wondering when Bare Wires would go on, if ever.

Next were a band called Gestapo Khazi. I don’t remember much about them. It was late on a Monday, ya know? Hard to concentrate on these random noisy bands. I would have been a lot more into this stuff when I was ten years younger. I think they were on tour with the headliners, the ones I was trying to stay awake for.

Finally we got to hear Bare Wires. Good stuff! They remind me a little of the Strokes, and I really think that they could turn out to be pretty big. The songs are tight, and they sounded pretty good live, to the extent that I was not nodding off on my feet. Of course, I already expected them to sound good, since they had been smoking on that WFMU show. This is the kind of music that even parents would probably like. I honestly think this band could blow up and be pretty popular, and if they do I will get to tell the story of how I talked to the singer after the show and bought their CD. The CD is good, too, though not essential. But go see these guys, everyone! Support them! They deserve some success, more than a lot of the terrible bands getting popular these days…

In the past few years I have mostly stopped listening to new indie rock music — a combination of me getting older and also having a whole internet worth of music to explore. Nowadays I get more excited about listening to old-school rockabilly or German folk-punk or classic country as opposed to, like, the new Grizzly Bear. One of the few exceptions, though, is for the Arcade Fire.

This band has all the hallmarks of being the kind of thing I won’t like: popularity, pretension, expensive concert tickets, etc. Oh, and they aren’t edgy at all! They barely even rock. But each of their first two albums wormed its way into my brain, and I eventually had to give in. I do like these guys. Sigh….

Their third album, The Suburbs, had just come out a few days before this show, and I listened to a streaming version of it several times in advance of the concert. It seemed awfully mellow… but potentially good. My judgment was still reserved, and the first two albums had been slow-burners, after all.

It was my second trip to Merriweather of the summer — better than Jiffy Lube Live, at least. We made it through the rush-hour traffic in time to chug a beer or two and go see openers Spoon. I have never paid much attention to Spoon, though they do have one song I sort of adore (“That’s the Way We Get By”). There is nothing to dislike about them. But there is nothing that really grips me about them either. They are consistently pretty good. Which was cool and all for a live concert, but not enough to make me care too much on a nice summer evening when there were friends to randomly bump into and (more) beers to buy. Opening acts at outdoor summer concerts have it tough… it is just hard to care very much when it isn’t even dark outside.

So I only really paid half-attention to Spoon.

I paid way more attention to Arcade Fire, but I am not really sure what I thought of the performance. I’d seen them once before touring on Neon Bible. That had been a great show at a terrible venue. This one at Merriweather seemed to lack something, too. I guess I am just at a point where I find it hard to be very impressed by elaborate, passionate arena shows. The Arcade Fire are glorious in some ways, and I really do like their music a lot. But I am not really into the shared experience of a big-time show. If this band was made up of friends of mine, and I could see them perform in a tiny club for like 20 people, dripping passion and sincerity, playing their guts out for their art, well that would be one thing. But sitting with 15,000 people and singing along to anthems is not really my thing. In some ways I had more fun watching the Scorpions on the same stage a few weeks earlier.

But it’s not like the show was bad. It just wasn’t quite right for me. I was mildly bummed that they mostly skipped over Neon Bible, and a little tired of the first album and its epic scale. The new one seems good, and I enjoyed hearing it live, but the crowd wasn’t super into the new stuff. The new songs aren’t the most arena-friendly, which is sort of interesting since the band itself is now arena-sized in popularity. I admire that, and I am impressed at their changing styles, and it is refreshing to see a band that is neither cynical nor boring.

I will keep an eye on these guys… maybe I’ll check them out again next time around. But I might be more interested in a weird Win Butler solo project a few years down the road at some little venue. I bet he could do some pretty awesome rockabilly or German folk-punk or classic country…

Here’s a Washington Post review, and some videos:

I have rambled on about Medications before, and I’m doing a ridiculously belated review, so let me just quickly go over what I remember about this show.

The first band on the line-up was Hume but there is some kind of karmic law that almost always prevents me from seeing Hume perform live. I forget what happened, but I missed them at this show, too, it probably had something to do with it being a really early performance.

Anyways, I got there post-Hume but with enough time before the next band, Deleted Scenes, to stroll about the U Street Music Hall for a bit and assess the place. It was my first time there and I was impressed! Even startled! I remembered the ok-but-not-anything-special bar that was in the same spot on U Street a few years ago, but the U-Hall is a whole ‘nother thing. (Not crazy about the name, though).

It wasn’t clear just how impressive the venue was, though, until Deleted Scenes started playing. This is a band that has been kicking around DC for a long time, but I’d never paid much attention. Apparently I have seen them before at Fort Reno, but I don’t really remember. They turned out to be ok, sort of inoffensive ’00s indie rock. I liked it well enough, but got a little bored by the end, but this is nothing really against the band. I feel the same way about, say, The National and almost every other popular indie band from the past 5 or 10 years. I would watch them play again but not seek out their music.

But oh my god, was the sound system great! The U-Hall sounded jaw-droppingly good. One of the guys in Deleted Scenes himself made a comment about Hume, something like “I don’t know if they are the best band in DC or if this is just the most amazing sound system in DC.” I was a little awestruck by the sound quality, it is way better than any rock venue in the city. Maybe the Kennedy Center’s is better? I am not sure. I was sort of jealous, wondering how my own rinky-dink music might sound on such a world-class system.

Once Medications went on, I realized that the excellent sound depended a bit on where you stood in the club. Since it’s primarily a dance/dj venue, it was optimized for being out in the middle of the floor; when we went up to the stage to watch the band closely, the sound got muddled. So it wasn’t perfect in every way, but moving 15 feet back from the stage isn’t really a supreme sacrifice.

Medications were great, similar to the previous time I’d seen them. In the meantime I had gotten their new album Completely Removed and so I knew all the new songs, which was mostly what they played. The crowd liked it, and the friend I took along who never knew them before was really into it. I even bought a t-shirt, feeling sort of obligated to support them but already owning all their recorded music (including Faraquet).

I am not sure what lies ahead for Medications. I heard that Chad moved out of town and I believe Devin got married? (I somehow know way more about this kind of info than I do about, like, the Duchess of York or whomever). They are sort of a relic of DC past, and I have grown to really like their new album, but they aren’t a good fit for the modern NPR-indie world. They’re like one of the last stegosaurs in a landscape of boring little (modest?) mice.

I got into indie rock in the mid-’90s, but I was never a hardcore kid. During the early-’90s era when hipper kids my age were into hardcore, I was listening to Queensrÿche and later Alice in Chains.

So then I came to DC for college and got into post-hardcore via Fugazi, then other DC bands, then, to some extent, band in similar scenes from throughout the east coast.

This is a long way of getting around to saying I never listened to Cap’n Jazz before going to see their reunion show at the Black Cat. I never listened to any of those midwest post-hc/emo/indie bands, including the various Cap’n Jazz spin-offs. Ok, I know the Promise Ring a little bit, but I haven’t listened to Joan of Arc or any of those bands. And honestly, I never thought I would like them very much.

But one of my friends, who was more into hardcore earlier on, had some tickets, and I was curious enough about this gap in my indie knowledge to go check it out.

The opener was another reunited midwest band from the same time and era called Gauge. I liked them, and I’ve been vaguely wanting to find some music by them ever since. It was energetic and reminded me slightly of their contemporaries Hoover. They were the type of band that probably had some killer 7-inches back in 1993 or whenever.

Cap’n Jazz soon enough hit the stage to an adoring audience. It was a little weird, a little uncomfortable even. I’m not really devoted to particular bands in the way that some of the fans were, not so passionate about individual songs or albums. I love all music! But I don’t have such an intense connection to bands from my youth. Also, I guess I felt a little left out.

But I liked Cap’n Jazz more than I expected to. They reminded me a lot of Sunny Day Real Estate, though I am surely only 15 years behind the times in noticing the resemblance. Davey von Bohlen had a weird scarred head from his brain surgery or whatever, and also had amusing stories to relate, including his trip to DC being so delayed and having to get Eric Axelson to pick him up by motorcycle and take him directly to the Black Cat. Tim Kinsella came across as kind of a dick, and it was interesting to see the two of them interact, or fail to interact.

But I wasn’t really invested much in the soap-opera dynamics of this band that I didn’t really know. The music was more compelling, and I definitely enjoyed it.

Here are some photos at BYT and a good discussion by the WCP bloggers.

And here are some so-so vids:

So I moved to DC a few years too late to ever see Unrest, the flagship act of Teenbeat Records, but the label itself was still thriving back then, in the mid-’90s. Teenbeat still exists, it still puts out interesting music, but much like its friendly neighbor Dischord, it doesn’t have the cultural impact that it did in the DC area during the ’90s (for one thing, label head honcho Mark Robinson moved to the Boston area a while ago). I gradually learned to really enjoy Teenbeat and its artsy, goofy aesthetic, and I wish there was more music around this town today that incorporated whimsy and humor, that made people look around nervously, wondering “is this a joke?” Teenbeat always seemed like a big friendly family of eccentric people, and over the years they have had lots of events that amount to family reunions; I’d never attended one, but the prospect of seeing Unrest for the first time, and Versus again, make me decide it was worth the potential weirdness of lurking around someone else’s party, not really being privy to all the inside jokes.

I needn’t have worried. I ended up actually getting most of the inside jokes, anyway.

I went with an old friend who introduced me to the Teenbeat scene in the first place, ages and ages ago. We missed openers Bossanova but saw the rest. A Teenbeat spokesman named Patrick acted as MC, doing little pieces of shtick between bands like acting as a corporate executive for the Teenbeat Corporation. Oddball Jonny Cohen did a capella songs from time to time. All of that stuff was quirkily entertaining.

The first band we saw was The Rondelles. I had never listened to them before, and they were a bit of a revelation. I remember them being around, and I was maybe even hanging out at the same parties as them a decade ago, but somehow I never got around to checking out their music. It was pretty kick-ass. They were sloppy and charming, not having performed in ten years, and at least the hott bassist Yukiko Moynihan seemingly not having played music at all in the meantime. I thought they were rad. I don’t remember ever seeing the standing-drumming-and-mashing-a-keyboard-with-a-drumstick technique before.

Here’s a video via kickbright:

The day after the show I got a copy of the Rondelles’ Fiction Romance, Fast Machines (also good!) and will gradually work my way through their discography.

I didn’t need any introduction to the discography of Versus, though. This was my second time seeing the newly-reunited version of the band, all violin-ed up. They are really an amazing band, and sounded really good on the old songs. They were in some ways the best band of the night — they can turn on a dime from soft/pretty to noisy/chaotic as well as any band. But I think the new stuff lacks the power of the old; it is more in keeping with the last “old” Versus album, Hurrah.

Sasha Frere-Jones recently wrote the following about Pavement: “In later albums, the beauty remained but the tension did not.” That would be a good description of Versus, too. Their brand-new album, On the Ones and Threes, was not yet released at the time of this show, but it turned out to be pretty yet not gripping. I will write a full review of it sometime.

I still really love Versus and will gladly go see them again whenever I get the chance, but more out of nostalgia than as an active, going concern. Though hopefully they will prove my (minor) doubts wrong. They can certainly put on a good show, still!

Here they are doing “Circle”:

And a new song, “Into Blue”:

Finally, after more offbeat interludes, we got to Unrest. They certainly made things interesting. I don’t know how many people in the crowd were aware that Unrest was doing a multiple-reunion deal, reuniting several different line-ups (details and setlists are here). Early Unrest is a lot different from later Unrest. I had never heard any of it before, and I don’t think too much of the crowd had either. There was no explanation of what was going on, unless you were savvy enough to follow along with Mark Robinson’s change-up introductions: for the first version he said, “Hi, we’re Unrest from Wakefield High School,” followed later by “we’re Unrest from Arlington, Virginia” and ultimately “we’re Unrest from Washington, DC.”

So yeah, the concert was a little complicated and slow-starting.

When the earliest incarnation of the band played odd experimental tracks and Bertolt Brecht, I overheard some younger attendees behind me talking about “indie rock.” They clearly didn’t know Unrest, but they were confused by the weird spectacle, noting that the high-school-era Unrest didn’t sound much like Modest Mouse or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Ah, indie rock. So baffling!

I was a little thrown off, too, by that earliest version of the band. They were sort of amusing. But when they switched over to the second incarnation I started to honestly enjoy the show. I had never listened to this version either, sort-of “mid-career” Unrest. I was intrigued by it and since then have started buying some of those albums, like Malcolm X Park (still looking for a cheap copy of Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation). They are good. In hindsight, this era of Unrest (from around 1988-1990) was promising and making interesting music.

Finally the crowd gave a cheer of excitement and/or relief when Bridget Cross hit the stage to take over on bass and play the semi-popular Unrest songs from their classic period that almost everybody was there to see. It was fantastic. We were close to the stage and they sounded really impressive; the songs from Perfect Teeth and Imperial hold up great, the fans were loving it, and the members of the band seemed to be having a good time. I hadn’t really listened to those albums in a long time, and I kind of forgot how many excellent songs there are.

Words don’t really do justice so we are lucky to be in the youtube era:

“Angel I Will Walk You Home”:

And “Make Out Club”:

It was one of my favorite performances in a really long time. My personal favorite was “I Do Believe You Are Blushing” and when I got home later that night I figured out how to play it on guitar. Not too hard! But then I tried to do “Cath Carroll” and about wore out my wrist. How does he strum so fast?!

This was a super memorable show, and even writing it up so much later is great. Here is a more contemporaneous review from dcist. This one is ending up on a lot of year-end best-ofs, I bet. Maybe mine too.

I haven’t abandoned this blog, and have been regularly been keeping track of shows that I’ve seen in recent months. I am writing them up and will still publish them, with a kind of quick wrap-up post.

Not sure if I can back-date the postings so they make a sort of sense, but I don’t think anyone is poking around here too often…

Here comes the first batch.

In this unusually ugly and hot summer, we have had occasional gemlike days in the 70s. One of these happened to be Thursday, July 1. I had dinner plans with some relatives, but things happened to work out that I was done in time to head to Fort Reno. It was such a nice night that I biked up from downtown, met up with a friend under a tree, and watched the bands. I didn’t really know anything about them in advance, though I had glanced at the info on their respective myspace pages.

First up was a young group called Gangland Buries Its Own — they were actually playing when I got there, but I would guess that I saw most of their set. Good band, I liked them. Sort of an artsy post-hardcore sound, not really anything I haven’t heard before, but with screaming female vocals. Typing this up, I am tempted to download their album but it seems sort of expensive, $10 at CDBaby. They need to get on the bandcamp bandwagon, I would buy it for like 4 or 5. I’ll think about it.

I found some flickr photos from the show, here is Gangland, borrowed from flickr user dalesun:

The headliners were Sleeper Agent! — they discussed how there was another band out there called Sleeper Agent, so theirs is the one with the exclamation point. This band featured John Stabb (from ’80s DC punk band Government Issue) and I feel like such a bad excuse for a scenester because I thought John Stabb had died a few years ago but actually he was just badly injured in an assault and clearly still alive. Anyway I have listened to GI before and it is ok, but not something I get all excited about.

Sleeper Agent! were pretty fun to listen to, though. It wasn’t particularly punk, more like old post-punk or new wave, a la the B-52s. The friend I went with also commented that it sounded a lot like The Fall and I can’t disagree with that.

The show was a little sloppy, with rambling conversations from Mr. “Not Dead” Stabb, but fun to sit and listen to on a rare pretty evening. Totally gemlike.

Here’s a photo of Sleeper Agent!, also borrowed from flickr user dalesun:

I waited a long time to see Lightning Bolt a second time.

The first time I saw them was around 9 years ago and it was pretty close to a life-altering event. It was by far one of the very best concerts I’ve ever been to. In fact, when people really press me on the topic, like “you’re practically an expert, what are the best shows you’ve seen?”, I tend to mention either that amazing show (with Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, Orthrelm, and Avey Tare & Panda Bear!); or else maybe Paul Flaherty & Chris Corsano or Fugazi.

Ever since then, I have been listening to Lightning Bolt on and off, picking up all their albums, occasionally listening to live performances. But I haven’t seen them live again, and I could scarcely believe it when, a few months ago, I happened to look at the concert listings and saw them listed at DC9. I was all like, “wait, really? THE Lightning Bolt??” and rushed to a computer to buy a ticket.

So it was gonna be hard for them to live up to my massive expectations.

At least there was intriguing music leading up to their Wednesday-night show. I caught part of the show opener, a solo performance under the moniker Macaw. I liked it; I found the following video on youtube that says that Macaw is one of the guys from Hume:

I thought Macaw had cool vocal effects and was a worthy way to chill out in advance of Lightning Bolt. After his performance was a very interesting guitar orchestra coordinated by Buildings. Buildings are pretty much my favorite local band lately, and it was cool to see what they pulled off: a 15-guitar line-up playing minimal pieces. I think they should do it again sometime, though the logistics must have been a nightmare. It was just a short set and it sounded really cool — mainly the guitarists were just picking one note at a time, making simple harmonies in pretty simple rhythms. I was impressed they were even all (basically) in tune, and that they almost all could fit onto the stage.

In a dcist interview before the show, the Buildings guys said they wanted to do the opposite of Lightning Bolt: instead of very few people making maximal noise, they were gonna be the maximal amount of people making minimal noise. Great idea, and I’m glad I saw it.

The Buildings Guitar Orchestra set was so quick that it seemed too early for Lightning Bolt to go on, but suddenly, there they were! Drummer Brian Chippendale appeared to be wearing a handmade Darth Maul t-shirt inside-out! It was on!

I was ready for some serious pounding noise-rock, ready for some facemelting riffage and sick, jawdrop-worthy beats. I even wore earplugs, which is an extreme rarity. I was arguably willing to dance and jump around. But I wasn’t really prepared for the moshing. The last time I saw Lightning Bolt, we didn’t really mosh. I think we may have been too stunned to even move very much — it was sort of like deer in the headlights. But the fans that turned out at DC9 — many of them seeming very young to me, like how old would they have been when I saw LB before? 9? — were all set to mosh.

I am not really against moshing; I sort of enjoyed it a few times in the past. But yo, I am old. Screeching noise is one thing, but dodging flying elbows and flying high school linebackers is not really my style anymore. I had to gradually ease my way out of the thick of the crowd. I was there for the music, not to slough off extra testosterone by thrashing into random large people. Again, I am old, gotta preserve the testosterone I still have left… Besides, I wanted to pay attention to one of my favorite bands.

Anyway despite the weirdness of all the moshing and flailing, I totally loved the show. It’s no wonder the youngsters were all pumped up. I haven’t listened to the new LB album, Earthly Delights, all that much, or even the one before that, Hypermagic Mountain, so I didn’t recognize too many songs. I thought the band sounded a little different compared to when I saw them way back when. Now they came across as a little more metal, a little more (strange to say) straightforward. Less spastic. Most of all, I thought that the first time I saw them, it was more like an equally impressive performance by Chippendale and the other Brian, bassist Gibson. This time, it seemed more like the drumming was the focus of everything. At times, it was like Gibson was just playing quite simple bass parts while Chippendale went insane, solo-ing manically all over the place. It sounded cool, and maybe it is intentional, just a little bit different in emphasis. The old stuff just seemed to be a lot wilder and more exciting from the bass-playing perspective. Either way, though, this band is so inventive and powerful that it is super impressive.

I couldn’t find any videos for the performance at DC9, but here is a good one from a couple days later that seems almost identical. And check out some photos at the Sockets Records blog where you can see Brian Chippendale’s Darth Maul shirt.

The reviewer at DCist said it was “easily” the best show she’d ever seen at DC9. Well, I wouldn’t go that far. (The best show I’ve seen at DC9 was clearly Rah Brahs!) But it was surely awesome. Just unable to quite live up to my unrealistic hope that it would not only equal, but surpass my first Lightning Bolt experience.

My friend Yulia had a photo show at the DC Photo Co-op in Shaw, and she invited the local band the Cornel West Theory to perform. They were nice enough to accept.

I had seen these guys once before at the Sockets Showcase, and I liked them well enough. For the photo show, they put on a smaller-scale performance, just drums and bass and two vocalists. It was really good! Better than I expected, honestly. The sound was not that great (the vocals never really were able to get loud enough), but I was impressed by these guys’ energy and dedication to the performance, even in front of a small crowd.

I think maybe the first time I saw them, I’d been too tired to really get into it. But maybe the stripped-down version was actually objectively better anyway. At some point I will see them again and make a more definitive pronouncement. Anyhow they all seem like great people and I will keep cheering them on.