Capital Swamp: The DC Resource Thread

Added some more. But may do an experiment next year and not nominate anyone.

The @TheMusicianShip @wammiesdc finalists were announced. Carly Harvey is nominated for best blues artist, best folk artist, best pop artist, best soul song, best pop song . But Bad Moves, Coriky, Bartees Strange & numerous acclaimed rappers didn’t make the finals. ...It’s a dumb system where The Wammies DC pick for the finals whatever 7 nominations in each category get the most people to register & vote for them. So C. Harvey can get in countless categories & encourage votes .

During the last week of the Wammies DC nominations period, I made 23 nominations but didn’t vote. Congrats to Selamino, Kino Musica, Hailu Mergia, Bacchae album, Anthony Pirog-Pocket Poem album, that made the finals. Some of my nominations didn’t make it.

Our interview w/ @HowardWuelfing is out now! Forced Exposure, Creem, Meltzer/Bangs, DC scene, integrity in PR. For perspective, dude played in Half Japanese & was reviewing Can records in '73! Available everywhere. @JimDeRogatis @ByronColey1 @robtned https://t.co/aXc3FnX6Jx

— Rock Writ (@rockwritpod) February 13, 2021

Howard Wuelfing was in Slickee Boys, Nurses, Underheaven, and did zines like Dcenes , Discords, and wrote also for Village Voice, Washington Post, & other zines

https://www.nbcwashington.com/entertainment/the-scene/iconic-dc-jazz-club-blues-alley-looking-for-new-location/2574801/

Blues Alley , that has been in Georgetown since 1965, may have to move. 124 seat place often had high cover prices, plus food/drink minimum, but if you splurged you could often see a great show in that small place

https://www.facebook.com/events/good-hope/go-go-dc-official-music-celebration/272030267691207/

Celebrating go-go’s 1 year anniversary as DC official music with a 2 to 7 Friday online event with a panel plus Junkyard Band, Sirius Company, Ccb, big g, Weensey

Mary Timony video stream filmed by Brendan Canty March 4 for here reissued album Mountains.

On her Bandcamp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSnj-kY5Mcs

Awesome 1985 Junkyard Band in Georgetown footage. Wearing short shorts & playing actual junkyard paint buckets and such

Jeff Heavy Metal Parking Lot Krulik's latest film is not a music one, it's about suburbia in Bowie, Maryland and references racial covenants and civil rights protests, plus has some funny footage from a German company made in 1967

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/bowie-maryland-documentaries/2021/02/16/686511b0-7072-11eb-b8a9-b9467510f0fe_story.html

Wpfw radio turns 44 today

https://dcist.com/story/19/01/14/after-uproar-from-musicians-d-c-council-revisits-its-quest-to-limit-noise-in-the-city/

Here they go again, 3 DC Councilmembers introduce bill to limit amplified outdoor music ( upscale condo owners who have moved to entertainment zone areas like gallery place and 14th & U complaining)

Mary Timony and band doing her Mountains solo album live is still available on Bandcamp till Friday March 5 at 9:30 pm et I think

The ABM bouncebeat go-go stream is on the long live go-go YouTube page

my god i just stumbled into that "19th & M" video

Pretty awesome footage of young Junkyard Band

Not exactly a music focused doc, but 17 Blocks covers 20 years in the life of a DC family starting in a sometimes rough hood 17 blocks from the US Capitol building
https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/510215/city-lights-17-blocks-paints-d-c-life-over-20-years/

More re Tales of Belair at Bowie md doc available for free on pbs website

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/510438/city-lights-tales-of-belair-at-bowie-takes-aim-at-60s-maryland-suburbia/

https://www.capitalbop.com/dc-council-amplified-noise-bill/

New re amplified noise bill. Article up thread is 2019 Dcist one

Sirius Company new song “She Ready “ has a bit of a bouncebeat flavor

Sirius song has a TikTok dance contest going too.

Other new dc stuff - 93 years old gospel singer Spencer Taylor has an autobiography out ( co-written with 2 others). Spencer & the Highway QCs have a new single out too

https://giftofdoubt.medium.com/eddies-blues-d3ae9820b5f1

Fascinating and a bit bittersweet story about the time in 1985 that DC punk scene kid with a guitar got approached by a guy named Eddie who asked if he wanted to jam. Eddie also said he had played with Funkadelic

https://dcist.com/story/21/03/16/mobile-music-studio-artists-outlet-during-pandemic/

It’s a mobile DC studio

WHUT public tv will also be showing the hand dance doc @ 1 am Tuesday morning & The Jewels , dc r’n’b group doc @ 1:30 ( dvr it or watch it then night owls)

"Leave the Door Open" a movie doc about when the teenaged Ertegun sons of the Turkish Ambassador (who later started Atlantic records) set up jazz jam sessions in their fancy Embassy residence (and at the DC JCC) despite DC being segregated, will show online to APril 8; & @ Arlington Cinema Drafthouse Sunday April 4 @ 4 pm | DC Independent Film Festival 2021

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/513681/city-lights-leave-the-door-open-dciff/?fbclid=IwAR1VNw1muHailG1h5Ju44vQo0NRqnittyUNeUpv4wFGwNxGorlLFDOftthI

https://rettman.substack.com/p/interview-chris-thomson-pt-i?fbclid=IwAR0MrXgd8Pok1iIPfsCFc4TzbXYoE-gwAMtsBIJZFbPklugm-fAXhtHNdkc

Chris Thomson interview pt 1 re how he discovered punk, met Dischord band folks etc

https://www.pbs.org/video/fatboy-the-billy-stewart-doc-hvdpjt/

Billy Stewart doc

Make Go-go Forever Emancipation Day Friday April 16 stream w/ Backyard Band, Experience Band , & new Soul Searchers, on their social media.

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/514533/city-lights-watch-fat-boy-the-billy-stewart-story/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMexYLNDd/

Junebug came to dc and did some bouncebeat gogo TikTok dances

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/514806/bouncebeat-go-go-gets-a-wider-audience-thanks-to-tiktoks-junebug-challenge/?fbclid=IwAR0N0llcfx8SqeP_as_hEkjmoeqtTNjlJQ-OJkd5HV_Q1hW5plnzWcJJkTo

London-born Bowie Md rapper IDK getting Complex mag coverage for new video/song Shoot my Shot , w/ guest Offset. Catchy but as sexist as The Rolling Stones

Was Glenn Close reciting a script at Oscars or does she really know all about Sugar Bear, EU, Da Butt , Spike Lee School Daze and the Backyard Band ?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/04/26/glenn-close-da-butt-oscars/

Too good to be true: Glenn Close dancing to ‘Da Butt’ at the Oscars was scripted https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021-04-25/oscars-2021-glenn-close-da-butt-dance

Hold up.

You're telling me that entertainment industry may in fact have been selling us an illusion?

I am shocked, SHOCKED

‘A lady her age, doing Da Butt like that?’ E.U.'s Sugar Bear on Glenn Close’s Oscars rump shake https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-04-26/glenn-close-da-butt-oscars-2021-eu-sugar-bear

You have a favorite song about butts besides “Da Butt”?

Well, “Da Butt” is my favorite song of all time.(…)

She likes "Da Butt" and she cannot lie.

Sugar Bear was on the radio doing an interview with Donnie Simpson yesterday afternoon and was apparently talking to reporters all day. Nice to see him get that coverage.

Alona got good quotes from Sugar Bear and Big G

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/515431/glenn-close-da-butt-left-eu-sugar-bear-speechless/

In bouncebeat go-go news , Yaddiya has now done Moechella s with TOB band in both Los Angeles and Atlanta

No go-go bands or high school marching bands in virtual funk parade this year. That makes me sad. They do have jazz, Hiphop, r’n’b at least

This may surprise you, but some intrepid soul put together a documentary about the DC punk scene!
I wonder if Ian MacKaye is in it... I kid but I am a sucker for these.

http://files.constantcontact.com/67e4e85b001/8a83d00c-be7e-4274-92a0-1fdb4627f47a.jpg

Punk the Capital: Building a Sound Movement
A documentary tracing the birth of punk rock in Washington D.C. (1976-1983)

Featuring Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Void, Rites of Spring, and more, with interviews
from Henry Rollins, Ian MacKaye, H.R., Jello Biafra, Joe Keithley, and many others

Premiering exclusively in Theaters and on Virtual Cinema nationwide beginning May 14th

DVD / Blu-ray to be released for National Record Store Day on June 8th via Passion River

Website: www.punkthecapital.info

For you folks actually in DC, there's a screening:
5/14 - Suns Cinema – Washington, DC

I wonder if Ian MacKaye is in it... I kid

Lol, nice. In college, a kid in my music theory class turned in a videotaped interview he conducted w/MacKaye for one of his projects (that’s how little it takes to get that guy in front of a camera).

I think he's just a nice guy.

I met him once backstage after a Fugazi show at the (now closed) Marquee in NYC back in the early '90s.
There I am telling him how much as a kid who spent formative years in Manassas, how important he was to me.
"I learned a lot from you," I said. Then I looked and noticed I had a beer in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.
"Well, not all of it took," I said sheepishly.

He laughed.

Haha

Ha.

So the Punk the Capital doc is worth seeing, and there’s an online screening Friday May 14 too. This doc’s 1976 to 1983 focus covers an earlier period than the other doc Salad Days. Though they both overlap in coverage a bit. Some great home movie super 8 footage in this one

https://www.musicinafrica.net/fr/node/15368

Earlier bio of Amha Eshete covering his years as a pioneering Ethiopian producer and label owner, plus touching on his later years after he fled to Washington DC and started the Blue Nile and the Ibex restaurant/ clubs. In a French website obit for Eshete it noted that Nina Simone visited and ate at Blue Nile.

The Ibex club had Ethiopian bands playing on one floor and go-go and old school r’n’b on another. Rip Amha Eshete

You know about Inner Ear likely closing, yes?

Inner Ear may be coming back in same location in the new building but as a nonprofit educational studio; or it may move. Arlington Arts folks got grief about the impact on Inner Ear, and so while they’re going ahead with new arts nonprofit building there, they are at least sort of giving lip service or more to the future of Inner Ear.

It is kind of LOLz that Arlington, in order to create a cultural district, may be displacing a genuine example of Arlington culture. Though it’s been a long time since Arlington was a hotbed of homegrown indie rock.

Speaking of Arlington, wera Arlington community radio vinyl vault show is interviewing Ian about records and stuff Thursday May 6 at 8 et online etc

Ian Mackaye not the notorious Ian S who has moved to Los Angeles