Tix to the Jicks...

...in an effort to answer the eternal question, Who the fuck is Stephen Malkmus?

Featuring former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss.

Sold out.

This is NOT a Fugazi Concert...

...though it was a reunion of sorts. Ian Mackaye and Joe Lally rubbed shoulders off stage along with the likes of one Henry Rollins before Monday night's Fort Reno concert.

Met up with Butch and Gary pre-show at Paradiso, pounded down a few pints and a pie as a primer, then took a familiar route, climbing out of geetown via 34th to Wisconsin Avenue and up to the highest point in deecee, Tenleytown. Caught up with Donna and Jason almost immediately, locked up the bikes, took a few pix of the local punk luminaries milling about the park, then staked out a spot on the grass to the left of the stage. Not long after we settled in, Gwadzilla strolled up, Karate Monkey trundling along quietly at his side like a disciplined dog, and hung out with us a bit before slipping off to mingle and snap some pix of his own.

Joe Lally took the stage first. It was to be his final DC show, at least for a while, as he has plans to roll up his roots and move to Italy, apparently. I confess: I haven't heard any of Joe's music, and the concert was no place to really develop a taste. A heavy bassline dominated most of the songs (no surprise there), and it seemed like good shit, but who the hell knows without hearing it more than once? (Put your hand down, it was rhetorical.) I'll leave the review to Pitchfork and their ilk, whose rating system seems to match my own about as often as the local meteorologists' "forecasts" are in line with Lady Nature's machinations.

Next up were The Evens, whose music I am familiar with (alas, their latest disc, Get Evens, is jammed deep in the belly of my truck's CD player and has, to date, resisted all attempts to gently tease it out. Next up on the scene: needle-nose pliers and a couple of ham-fists). Good stuff—lyrics: political (as with Lally's bass-ridden tunes, no surprise there); instrumentation: less-is-more (hey, it's a duo!); vocals: largely toned down with occasional punkish outburts (redolent of..um...Ian's previous band).

A flawless performance before an appreciative crowd of all ages. In the middle, Mackaye made a cryptic reference to some nebulous event from a previous show (something about being sued for something he said last year that wasn't clear then) and tossed out a remonstration or two to potential hooligans in the crowd for some unauthorized porta-potty pytrotechnics that happened at this time last year and that resulted in the removal of said receptacles from the venue. Flanked by two makeshift living-room lamps whose stark appearance prompted in me a (no doubt) false association to "Furniture", The Evens ran through an impressive array of songs from both albums and managed to avoid the technological problems that interrupted last year's show.

A few pix (and yes, I asked Henry if he minded me taking the picture; he did not)...










More pix can be found here. I'm still adding to the set.

Old Punks Never Die...

Ian Jams: a teaser shot from Monday night's Fort Reno show, featuring The Evens and Joe Lally. A great show matched by perfect weather.

Rollins even wandered through. Three legends of the DC hardcore scene, all for free. Hard to beat.

Many pix, few keepers. More to follow. A decent camera does not a photographer make!

Even the Score...

The Evens (Ian Mackaye, Amy Farina) are teaming up with former Fugazi bassist Joe Lally to play Fort Reno this evening. No word on whether these local legends will actually share the stage at the same time.

Show starts at 7:15, runs until about 9:30, and is free. Ride your bike to it or take the metro (Tenleytown-AU Station). Gasoline-powered vehicles are strictly verbotten and will, on sight, be upended and set aflame with their own fuel.

A recent Washington Post article on The Evens.

Power's Still Raw!...

Met up with the Outlaw last Thursday evening at the 9:30 Club and pedaled over to trendy hipster Adams Morgan to hit The Reef for some preshow beer and eats. Zack managed to join us, and the three of us threw down several pints (Maredsous, Allagash Dubbel, Bell's Two Hearted Ale) and a bison burger before heading back down U Street and splitting up near the Club. Zack went his own way, and Joe and I locked up the CrossChecks outside and headed in for the show.


Iggy Pop turns 60 this month. But with the energy and physique of someone half his age, he delivered almost 90 minutes of raw power, highlighted by a couple of trademarked stage dives into the pulsing horde and backed by some of the original Stooges and the venerable former Minuteman Mike Watt on bass.



The voice was strong, the presence formidable and unrelenting, and the volume knob cranked to 11. If I had been rendered deaf before the show and could only witness the visual spectacle of this octo(soon to be sexa)genarian, it would have been well worth the price of admission. Even with the midnight start time.


Indulge in the audio portion now, courtesy of NPR.

The show set drew heavily from the Stooges latest release, The Weirdness. Memorable verbal interludes include:

"Turn those cheesy lights down, asshole!" (14:25 on the NPR recording)

"Sometimes, in the course of human events, people will say that you're fucking dirt."

"Fucking thanks for fucking showing up. We are...the fucking Stooges. We're happy—very, very happy—to be here; we'd be happy to be fucking anywhere!"

"I can't stand this bullshit anymore...I want a crazy invasion! Get up here, get up here...c'mon, break this shit down!...I want action! Action!"

Below are the best pix of the lot. Low light, a shaky hand, and an at times fiercely moving target conspired to render execrable (okay, shitty) my efforts to capture the magic. Gary, where the hell are you when I need you?

Myths and Multiforms...

"To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explained only by those willing to take risks. This world of the imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense. It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way — not his way. We favour the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth… "

— Mark Rothko (w/ Adolph Gottlieb), Abstract Expressionist Manifesto

Some Rothko works are currently on exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Hop on the bike and culture yourself. Take someone you love along with you.

(Reminds me, I need to get to work designing the next Bootlegger's Bliss logo; got a nice concept in the hopper...)

Wine, Advocacy, Beer, Affinity...

Four words that pretty much sum up the little holiday shindig the fine folks of WABA put on last Thursday evening in the tight quarters on the third floor of an unassuming office building on Connecticut Avenue, NW.

I biked there—tracing part of my usual commuter route—with an empty stomach and no idea of what kind of people I'd meet. For no valid reason, I had the impression that the place would be packed with NIMBY yuppie types, prefigured by an array of resplendent Litespeeds triple u-locked in the foyer. Shit, I don't know, preconceptions encroach no matter how much you try to guard against them and I guess I just figured that, the historical gravity of unions and solidarity notwithstanding, any alliance of cyclists operating out of Chocolate City had to be a bit on the soft side. Not true.

I arrived close to 7:00 and locked up at one of four WABA-supplied, inverted u-stands sprouting from the pavement just outside the door. The sidewalks were pulsing with people trucking through town, enjoying the abnormally warm temps brought on, no doubt, with the help of that schoolyard bully to the bicycle, examples of which zoomed by indifferently, taillights all aglow with accidental holiday spirit.

I entered the building and hiked up to the third floor, where two adjacent rooms separated by a short hallway were humming with cyclists, some dressed for the part, some not. Saw beer in a few hands, and made out a lone cooler in the corner of one room. Made my way over amid random introductions, past the snack table, grabbed a Wild Goose Winter Ale (tasty!), and proceeded to chat it up on the obvious topic with one of the directors of WABA. Amid the conversation, I took in the new headquarters. Cycling memorabilia everywhere. A couple bikes adorned the walls, bedecked in twinkling lights. One of them was a nice IF fixie that belongs to WABA Executive Director Eric Gilliland, an incongruously young and unassuming guy with an equally incongruous penchant for tobacco, or so it would seem. Beyond the bikes, the open windows gave way to Connecticut Avenue in the front—the city writhing in all directions with traffic—and in the back, to the shadow-soaked roofs and walls of surrounding buildings, where fire escapes slipped away overhead into the cool night sky.

About ten minutes after I arrived, King Blog walked in, unmistakable at well over six feet and sporting a Dirt Rag woolie. Gwadzi quickly worked the crowd, engaging people with the speed and ease of a weathered politician. We hung out in our respective impromptu cliques for about 15 minutes before we ended up introducing ourselves. We talked for a while about bikes and racing and single speeds and fixies, our mutual friends and the whole blog thing. Gwadzilla was hitting the red wine with mean intent; meanwhile I had discovered the cooler of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale in the next room. Beers begat beers and it wasn't long before I was feeling a nice warm buzz taking over, suffusing the road-weary muscles in my legs and generally taking advantage of my otherwise empty stomach. We talked on, mostly about off-road fixed gear riding (Gwadzi thought it odd that anyone other than elite riders—the fast and the skilled—would bother with it), but also about other bike-related topics interjected by partygoers who occasionally entered the conversation.

Later in the evening, I found myself hanging out with S— (ed. note: name removed by request), WABA's Membership and Development Manager, who jokingly summed up her profession by saying “my job is to get money from people.” S— has a Masters in English, so there was a natural affinity there. We talked bikes and books for a good part of the evening—there was mention of Debord in there somewhere, and, of course, Nabokov (the usual plugs when feigning erudition) and, from her, John Berryman and The Dream Songs (wow, two suicides in that tight little list)—hanging out near an open window for a glimpse of late night cyclists brave enough to challenge the nonstop motorized frenzy that is Connecticut Avenue, and doing our part to make sure there were no liquid leftovers come time to leave. In the meantime, Gwadzilla had managed to cadge a pair of WABA socks for each of us from Eric—shwag earned, presumably, for joining WABA two seconds after RVSPing for the party that afternoon. Eric had been kind enough earlier to pedal out for more beer, slipping back in with a six of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for the degenerates still hanging around for one last cold one. The sounds of Jawbreaker's Boxcar filled the room, and I felt all right.

Time rolled on on skinny tires. More than two hours after the scheduled "end" of the party, we all shuffled out to our bikes to head home. Gwadzilla had departed a little while before, saying he'd already pushed his play time one hour past his self-imposed limit. By my admittedly unreliable accounting, he'd managed to kill enough red wine to glut Bacchus himself. Then again, he's a big dude.

Outside, the night air was brisk, but by no means frigid, especially for this time of year. I unhitched my bike and hooked up my light. Meanwhile, S— saddled up, having agreed to shepherd me to M Street. She took the curb cut down onto Florida Avenue; me, well, I hopped the curb in pursuit, landing a few seconds behind her and a few yards in front of an oncoming car that clearly had the right of way. A blast of the horn, a burst of nervous laughter from me, and we were off, pedaling faster than we had a right to down Connecticut Avenue.

It wasn't long before we arrived at M Street. We said our goodbyes, and a few blocks up M it occurred to me that food wouldn't be a horrible idea, especially since Pizzeria Paradiso was looming up ahead on the left like a godsend. Fifteen minutes before the oven was cued to shut down, I stumbled in and made for the Birreria in the basement. Downstairs, I looked around and recognized no one. No matter, it's late, my stomach's empty, my blood is full, and it's the kind of clean, well-lighted place that would make Hemingway gush in his beer.

I asked about food and was told that there was still time. As I was about to order an Atomica pizza, my eye caught a black tap handle. Unibroue. Chambly Noire. Damn. I assayed the level of alcohol surging through my veins, figured what the hell, and ordered a glass, along with the pizza. One more couldn't hurt, right? The liver is a very forgiving organ.

Nursed the Noire (damn fine!), ate the pie, and was told that it was last call. The bartender offered to buy me another round, and somehow the Ghost of Workday Future appeared and gave me a little lecture on hangovers and sleep loss and the like: for the first time in my life, I turned down good beer. I gathered my stuff, thanked the 'keep, headed up the stairs, and made it out to the bike. Once in the saddle, everything pulled together nicely, and I rolled with the dwindling traffic, catching a rare green light onto Key Bridge. From there it was up through Rosslyn and Clarendon and Ballston, where I paused long enough on Fairfax Drive to snap a shot of what looked like a diminutive enchanted forest, a spectral copse of brilliant cobalt glimmering in the midnight darkness. Once home, I fell into bed and slept like the dead. With only five hours of sleep left on the clock and a ten mile ride into work after that, it was going to be a rough Friday.

Fixed in Time...

Six Day Bicycle Race documentary showing tonight at the Arlington Cinema 'n' Drafthouse.

Jazz Age hardcore—a time when cycling ruled the sports world and a bowl of oatmeal with a cup of joe were about as close to performance enhancing drugs as you could get.

Here's your chance to see the early greats who have since passed into spectral obscurity, and to down some drafts while you watch 'em draft.

Interested locals should avoid embarassment and pedal there!

Night of the Living Dread...

Last Thursday, after splitting a bottle of Stone's 10th Anniversary Ale and helping ourselves to a little homebrew, DT and I pedaled over to the State Theater in Falls Church, where we met up with my girl to take in a show. The Easy Star All Stars, of Dub Side of the Moon fame, were performing their latest derivative masterpiece: Radiohead's OK Computer; re-imagined, of course, with a liberal splash of reggae. Dubbed (ha ha) Radiodread, the CD is about as fantastic and precise a piece of work as its predecessor and right up there with the original.

And the show did not disappoint either, the songs sometimes transmogrified to such an extent that the only way to identify them quickly was to be familiar with the track sequence of the original (alas, they stopped short of the last two songs, "No Surprises" and "The Tourist"). Arguably the best performance of the night had to be an incongruously upbeat rendition of "Let Down" in which the music (replete with brass) and get-happy vocals belied the otherwise dismal lyrics of the original track.

We even got to down a couple glasses of D(r)ead Guy Ale while we took it all in. Well, without further ado, some pix, in no particular order...