Capital Swamp: The DC Resource Thread

Sigh.

i read your babbling dude!

i'd post here more but most of my contributions would be bitter sniping at mediocre/terrible local bands

Who writes about local bands worth checking out? Your bandmate at Going Out Gurus? Blogs I do not know about?

So did anybody join Wonkette and hordes of others at the $10 lets you see art and photos you could otherwise see for free at the Hirshhorn? You can buy beer too I hear and they had a NY dj...The Tillmans photo exhibit sounds like it might be worth seeing.

Jeff Nelson's new Toledo band (with some goofy name) just got an A in the W. Post Sunday Source section.

the gog blog is all right, but i get the impression my bro's a little restrained by editorial policy.

actually, i did see a pretty rad show @ kansas house in arlington on saturday. the points (caught them w/the black lips a few months ago but didn't really get too much of a chance to listen), and my friend's new band the sons of guns.

sons of guns is dudes from the twats, measles mumps rubella, thee snuff project and another band i can't remember at the moment. they were mostly heavy mid-tempo stoogey groove (really nice motowny bass and swinging drums in particular), sometimes a little more spacemen 3ish but much more anchored. i dug em.

the points were great too - keys/guitar/drums, reminded me of something like times new viking with a more explicitly punk, less indie aesthetic. hip-shakin spiky spiky spiky catchy short songs.

from the Post's Nightlife Agenda, this struck me as kind of amazing...

Hip-hop music continues to have a problem with homophobia, from Camron's "No Homo" comments to the endless anti-gay putdowns found on diss records, but you'd never know it from tonight's Black Pride party. Chart-topping rapper/producer Unk's gonna "Walk It Out" as part of Strictly Hip-Hop With a Twist, the annual Black Pride hip-hop club night at the 9:30 club. In addition to Unk's 2-Steppin', the place will be filled with male go-go dancers. There's a $25 cover at the door.

Shhhhh, don't tell Unk or others about the sponsor.

There are so many upscale go-go shows now--

"An All Linen Affair"-Suttle with DJ Ezzy on the Spirit of Washington for $65 (in advance)($75 closer to boarding time for the boat) Saturday June 2.

more go-go stuff:

That new Chuck Brown single "Chuck Baby Don't give a " (or whatever the actual title is) is getting lots of local radio play. I wasn't crazy about it at first but now it's really growing on me.

Great. 2 guys get in a fight at H20's Boxing match party, get thrown out and one of 'em goes to his car and gets a gun and kills the other guy outside, before being shot and wounded by a cop who he had then pointed his gun at.

Too many local sites whining about when the Fort Reno schedule will be posted. Um, I was curious and anxious too, but now the overkill just has me not caring about when Amanda Mackaye will finally get around to it. Plus, I guess I'm the only one who cares that the Fort Dupont schedule gets shorter every year. There's only one soul oldies gig there that interests me this summer. Hmmmm, I wonder who's gonna be at Carter Barron.

Some good oldies soul at Carter Barron in June and August, but there's virtually nothing booked there in July. Weird.

Hey Brian, any special late-night summer outdoor dj'ing events you know about?

Fairly new local band Julie Ocean kinda interests me (cuz of the various pop bands the participants were previously in)

I don't really know of anything. Hirshhorn might do some more stuff, but I'm not really into that. There's always Starscape up in Baltimore:

http://starscapefestival.com/

Is that Silver Spring place that was doing house music still around?

gah, i hope we get a ft. reno date after being rained out last year but i've got a premonition that we won't.

friends tell me that j. ocean was pretty good at their black cat date a few weeks back, but that the room didn't do much to help them (lots of vocal harmonies, which don't really come across well on the backstage). more rocking than the saturday people were, apparently.

Gallery in Silver Spring is still around but the promoters aren't doing events there and haven't been in some time - the typical owner/management/promoter rift.

There are some interesting things shaping up around town, though. The 88 crew is throwing a monthly techno night at Be Bar. Some new venues on the way, too.

Pretzel man, I saw some complaints in the comment section of a posting about Fort Reno at dcist.com (I think) that Amanda Mackaye has put an out-of-town (Louisville, KY)band on the bill for the 1st Fort Reno show, rather than just sticking with locals.

Here's what David Malitz posted at GOG for Fort Reno at http://blog.washingtonpost.com/goingoutgurus/2007/05/fort_reno_dates_trickling_in.html

June 18 -- Deleted Scenes
June 21 -- Let's French
June 25 -- The Engine Room
June 28 -- Julie Ocean
July 9 -- Statehood, Greenland
July 16 -- Beauty Pill, Len Bias
July 19 -- Carol Bui
July 26 -- Antelope
Aug. 2 -- Yell County

Buzzlife promotions is back in force now:

6/1 - White Party @ Five
6/9 - Buzz tent @ Starscape Festival
6/14 - Paul van Dyk @ 9:30 Club
6/30 - Steve Lawler @ 9:30 Club
7/3 - Firecracker @ FUR (DJ Dan, DJ Icey, Starkillers, Scott Henry, DJ Marky, Aphrodite, Markus Intalex, Bobby Jae, Tittsworth, Matt Nordstrom, Bob Jong III, Section 8, Mink Room, Ramiro, Catalyst and Charly C)
7/21 - Planet of the Drums tour (Dara, AK1200, Dieselboy) @ 9:30 Club
8/4 - Virgin Festival Dance Tent (Sasha & John Digweed, Danny Tenaglia, Felix Da Housecat, Sander Van Doorn, Miguel Migs, Booka Shade, Shout Out Out Out Out)
8/5 - Virgin Festival Dance Tent (Deep Dish, The Crystal Method, Infected Mushroom, Dieselboy and Andy C w/MC GQ and MC Messinian, James Zabiela, CSS, Girl Talk)

Huge lineup especially for the Firecracker, which used to be a traditional July 3rd party at Nation with amazing talent every year.

Aren't those mostly though just the same ol' same ol' names they always bring to town (except for a few of the ones at Virgin fest and the Firecracker).

Driving on South Capitol a few weeks back it was kinda weird seeing the partially standing, wide open at one end, sun streaming in Nation club. The wrecking ball had smashed some of it, but not knocked it all down at that point.

mostly, yes (except it's kind of a shock they outbid GLOW for Paul van Dyk). It's more interesting that they're putting on this number of events - I feel like they're ramping up to some sort of regular night again but I'm not sure what or where.

The nice thing about the Firecracker lineup is that it's got a depth of talent that they haven't really put on for years - there are going to be four rooms going with great stuff in each.

Also interesting to see the 9:30 club putting on more late night DJ events.

(I don't even want to tal about Nation getting demolished ;_;)

aslo, I *really* hope Booka Shade plays some virgin festival afterparty night.

Oh, I forgot to correct my earlier post about Amanda M. supposedly booking an out-of-town band for Fort Reno. Wrong band name it seems. She seems to have stuck with locals. There are plenty of tba's still on the schedule, so maybe Fake Accents still have a shot.

The Post Weekend section highlights summer events today (I'll be listing some more stuff on my yahoo group whirrled music e-mail thing next week)

Mingering Mike is at the Hemphill Gallery now! The Imaginary Soul Superstar in the flesh, along with his book and the record collector who found him and his lp and 7 inch sleeves.

I missed it, was getting ready to go review Aventura at the Patriot Center.

But Jeff Heavy Metal Parking Lot Krulik was there as was Ian Mackaye and Alec Mackaye. Other than my little mention of the event on last Monday's Dcist.com "weekly music agenda" (and my mentions of it on ilx and on my e-mail newsletter) it got little attention. The Hemphill gallery did not even list it for awhile (the details were on the mingering mike site though).

Finally bought the Critical Condition band go-go cd, the one with "Classy." I still need to order their p.a. tape cd with their Green Day cover.

Oh is that who does "Classy"? I hear that on the radio all the time, it's grown on me

Another correction from me--the City Paper did a late Friday afternoon plug for Mingering Mike online on their blog last week (so I wasn't the only one who plugged it). Whatever.

i'm thinkin i may hit up the black cat tonight to see kitty hawk, really good moody gauzy cass mccombs-type stuff and one of the few federal re$erve bands worth listening to

http://www.myspace.com/kittyhawkrock

Yea, the song on their myspace site has a nice folky-pop feel to it.

As for a completely different genre, I see that dj stereo faith is in Fader magazine. He may have remixed Matt Nordstrom and someone else whose name I forgot. I forget what it said in the Fader issue I was glancing at in Borders. They all have myspace sites I'm guessing. Stereo Faith seems to be both into spankrock hybrid dance stuff, as well as old dc hardcore punk and current rock.

kitty hawk were pretty great last night - they were all electric (i don't believe i've seen them do a totally electric set before) and the backstage's not-so-great acoustics actually helped them out by playing up the haziness and blurred edges of their newer jams. they're getting more psychey, which is a good thing as far as i'm concerned.

I wimped out. I saw that they were one of 3 bands playing and after running errands and stuff decided a late weeknight at Black Cat was not in my cards. Yea, I'm guessing a more psychey approach is better than a more twee one for them.

Maybe I will see Kitty Hawk at Fort Reno

yeah, i think i'm gonna go to that - also i'm planning on hitting dc9 (ugh) for the points and the hall monitors this evening.

so that was pretty fun - a ton of people there but i guess that's what national syndication'll do for you (the woggles, little steven's new signing, were headlining).

the hall monitors i hadn't seen before and i thought they were rather enjoyable. i sorta knew the gal in the band from her old group, federal city five, who my band played a rock 'n' romp with last summer.

they had an r&b/garage revivalist thing going on - i feel like maybe some of crypt's 90's stuff is a close parallel if you thrown in juuuuuuust a bit more slickness. definitely an 80's/90's garage revival slant, as opposed to an 00's one, if that makes any sense. their drummer kicked ass.

points were quality as always. they pretty much ARE times new viking as a punk band. confrontational, too - some bottle throwing, beer spitting etc. a pit broke out at one juncture, which was entertaining.

left two songs into the woggles. corny over-reverential "wild" revivalist stuff.

dc9 is quite possibly my least favorite club in this city. you're constantly getting hassled when you stand outside, they've got iffy sound, charge $3.50 for a fucking can of SCHLITZ and they always do that dumb "so who are you here to see?" thing at the door - tacky tacky tacky. oh well.

I guess that "so who are you here to see thing" is so they know which band is pulling in a crowd. I will have to check out the Points sometime.

I see that Jem Cohen's movie doc on Dutch band the Ex is showing Saturday night at 11 at the AFI as part of Silverdocs. There are a few other musc docs showing as well (in the newsprint supplement I found a listing for all the music ones, but the website is trickier to negotiate)

And DC9 has a TERRIBLE layout - the upstairs holds a couple hundred people but only half of them can be anywhere near the stage and you can't make it from the stairs to the bar to the restrooms when it's packed.

the "who are you here to see?" crap is actually the basis for how they divvy up money at the end of the evening. lame and a half, especially when they don't accept "i'm here to see everyone" as a response.

brian OTM re: dc9's layout

Anybody go to the Fort Reno opening show?