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?

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...