Peter Margasak at our sister paper the Chicago Reader brings the news that the Black Cat will be hosting a pre-Inauguration Day concert on Jan. 19. The Big Shoulders Ball, as the name suggests, is a Chicago-oriented event. It was coordinated by Tim Tuten, co-owner of a great Chicago venue, the Hideout, and the lineup includes some of the city’s best acts: among those on the bill are Tortoise, the Waco Brothers, Eleventh Dream Day, the Mekons’ Jon Langford & Sally Timms, and Ken Vandermark. Tickets are $50, with proceeds going to various charities, including the D.C.-based Future of Music Coalition; they go on sale at 5 p.m. today through the Black Cat’s Web site. (Or at the Hideout if you’re reading this in Chicago—in which case, why aren’t you reading Margasak’s blog?)

According to Margasak’s post, the Hideout is corralling a few charter buses to bring fans to the festivities. Hope they’ve figured out where to park them.

There’s lots of interesting info in an update posted Friday on Crooked Beat’s MySpace page: Vinyl is now the big sales driver for the store, which is now dialing back the new CDs it stocks and getting more selective with its used CD selection as well. Excerpts from the post below. (But go read the whole thing. Thanks to Don Carr for the heads-up.):

For the second year in a row (2008) New & Used Vinyl LPs have outsold CDs at Crooked Beat. LPs now account for around 70% of our total sales. We will be increasing our vinyl selection even more in the coming months.

New CDs: Crooked Beat will continue to stock New CDs but on a more limited basis. Effective Immediately: we will now only primarily stock CDs from indie and import labels such as Touch & Go, Matador, Dischord, Merge, 4AD, Sub Pop, Numero, Bomp, Damaged Goods, Cherry Red, Secretly Canadian, Ace, Bear Family, Soul Jazz, Anti, etc….

Used CDs: We will now only carry Used CDs that mirror our selection of New CDs. e.g., Crooked Beat always stocks New CDs by artists such as Built To Spill, Magnetic Fields, Cat Power. Therefore, we will usually accept them as USED trade-ins provided they are in good condition.

If the New York Times figures it’s worth having Bill Kristol to have angry blog commenters kick around, then it only makes sense for the Washington Times to publish an Obama supporter every once in a while. Last week marked the debut of a column by country singer-songwriter (and former local) Mary Chapin Carpenter, who scored a big hit with a cover of Lucinda Williams‘ “Passionate Kisses,” and an even bigger hit with “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her”—a song that she co-wrote but sure sounds a heck of a lot like her cover of Lucinda Williams’ “Passionate Kisses.” In a press release announcing Carpenter’s new gig, WaTi’s Daniel Wattenberg said, “A column may be a new medium for Mary Chapin, but her voice — intimate, reflective and companionable — will be comfortingly familiar. Our readers are in for a treat.”

What readers got the first time around was a polite, unprovocative column about what it was like to watch TV during the election season, with a big plug for the band Hem. Any button-pushing was reserved for a bit toward the end: “”It brings me directly to what Barack Obama said at his Democratic Convention acceptance speech in Denver. We are our brother’s keeper, our sister’s keeper. We have a responsibility to watch out for one another, to do the right thing. Our better selves will seek out these opportunities because our present circumstances demand it.”

Pretty safe. But Carpenter’s column would still have to get a lot worse to compete with Stephen King’s ruminations on pop culture.

Thanks to Steve Kiviat for passing along some sad news: Chick Hall Sr., longtime owner of P.G. County roadhouse Chick Hall’s Surf Club, died Tuesday. The release from the Washington Area Music Association:

On Tuesday, November 18, 2008, Chick Hall Sr. passed away. He was a musician of enormous talent and a humble man.

Chick Hall Sr. was a country-jazz guitar virtuoso who made Armed Forces Radio records with Glenn Miller. Around 1953, he began playing with his own band, the Chick Hall Trio. After playing for a few years at the Surf Club, on Bladensburg Road in Colmar Manor, Chick decided that he’d like to make the club his musical home, and so he bought the place in 1955 and began playing there 6 nights a week.

The Surf Club transitioned from Jazz to Country Music, and many of the country greats visited, including Jim Reeves and Lefty Frizzell. Patsy Cline sang her heart out at the Surf Club. Jimmy Dean, Roy Clark, Charlie Daniels, dropped by to jam. It was around this time that the Colmar Manor/Cottage City area was in it’s heyday, with numerous clubs such as the Crossroads, Rusty Cabins (which turned into Burt Motley’s), the Dixie Pig, Angelo’s, the Wheel, and Basin Street, mostly all offering live music 7 days a week. There was always a party going on.

Things change gradually. Chick got married early on and had two sons – Chick, Jr. and Chris. In 1975, a developer made a good offer on the Surf Club, so Chick sold the club property, and built another one up the street at 4711 Kenilworth Ave (at the corner of Kenilworth Ave and Crittendon Street), He is survived by his wife of 67 or so years, and his kids Chick and Chris.

I have a hard time imagining that anybody who enjoyed Alex Ross‘ excellent history of 20th Century classical music, The Rest Is Noise, wouldn’t also get something out of Hallelujah Junction, the entertaining, occasionally punchy, memoirs of composer John Adams. The two books complement each other well—Ross forcefully argues that music history was a chaotic mix of ideas, not a straightforward march from Stravinsky to Serialism to Minimalism, and throughout his book Adams offers a similar defense of the same notion. (Ross is credited in the acknowledgments, too.)

Plenty of listeners tend to think of Adams primarily as a Minimalist—he matured as a composer in San Francisco in the 70s, studying the same experimentalists that Terry Riley and Steve Reich did—but he knows his Wagner and Webern, and he’s not afraid to take a few whacks at some of his contemporaries. Philip Glass, for instance, gets a mild spanking: “[I]n general I have had the feeling that he rarely troubles himself much with delving into new possibilities or combinations for the many different instruments that he writes for.” His harshest critiques, though, are reserved for the many critics who came out during the performances of his 1991 opera about the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, The Death of Klinghoffer. Adams has little patience for folks who appreciated how “evenhanded” he was in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (”I did not keep a running account of how much ‘noble’ or ‘beautiful’ music was accorded to the hijackers as opposed to how much was given to the hostages or to the Jews”), and he fires both barrels at Stravinsky scholar Richard Taruskin, who wrote an article in the New York Times after 9/11 that Klinghoffer should never be performed again. Adams’ neat trick is to let Taruskin’s own words undercut his argument, befitting a composer with a fine understanding of subtlety and counterpoint. That’s not to say that Hallelujah Junction was written to settle scores, just that it’s a spirited work from an artist who obviously bears a few scars from being called upon to defend every new idea he has.

Adams reads tonight, Nov. 12, at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW. Call (202) 364-1919 for more info.

Need a reminder that George W. Bush is still president? Here’s news about the latest addition to the National Council on the Arts, which is empowered to advise the NEA about arts policy. Via the Los Angeles Times:

Lee Greenwood’s main claim to fame is writing and singing the hit patriotic hymn “God Bless the U.S.A.” Soon Greenwood’s blessing will matter on the American arts scene — at least the part interested in tapping into federal largess via grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Appointed by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate, the Nashville-based country singer is scheduled to be sworn in Nov. 17 as one of the 14 regular members of the National Council on the Arts. Council members advise the NEA chairman, and their portfolio includes reviewing and making recommendations on applications for grants from the $145-million-a-year federal agency. Greenwood will serve a six-year term.

This has “fraternity prank” written all over it. I’m picturing a coin flip: “OK, heads Lee Greenwood, tails Thomas Kinkade.” And in the same way that Kinkade keeps painting his horrible, horrible mind-destroying paintings, Lee Greenwood keeps recording the same song over and over. Here’s his latest, “USA Today”:

Gannett should sue. It could use the cash.

What is David Byrne interested in as a musician? What does he like, and what makes him cranky? There’s probably no multiplatinum-selling rock frontman who’s more deliberately Sphinx-like—he’s usually had some complaint or other to make about consumerism, but he’s more likely to soak those messages in abstraction (”Heaven”) or irony (”[Nothing But] Flowers”) than in anything resembling outrage. Saying that he’s a tough guy to figure out, though, is not the same thing as saying he’s disinterested. For an hour and 45 minutes at the Warner Theatre last night, he played an energetic set that was drawn largely from his collaborations with Brian Eno, from their new album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today back to their work with “other musicians,” as he said at the start of the show. Maybe saying the words “Talking Heads” is what makes him cranky.

Read More “David Byrne @ the Warner Theatre 11/9″ »

Via Pitchfork, I learn that Lance Reddick—better known as Lieutenant Daniels on The Wire—has recorded an album of jazz vocals. Painfully smooth, soporific jazz vocals. I suppose this is in keeping with the horrible track record that former Wire actors have had with their careers. But it’s still sad to experience the aural equivalent of having stale honey poured on your head. Also: awful album title. Contemplations & Remembrances? What’s wrong with A Man Got to Have a Coda? Or Jukeboxing the Stats?

To clear the smooth sounds of Reddick out of your head, try M.I.A. and Blaqstarr’s cover of “Way Down in the Hole”:

Update: This is the best post We’ve ever read about Lance Reddick’s eyes.

Sagely, Thrill Jockey records has made Extra Golden’s “Obama” available as a free download. As Brent Burton pointed out in his review of the D.C./Kenya band’s most recent album, Hera Ma Nono, the president-elect played a role in helping the band tour the United States. You can watch a video of the song here:

… for “Victoria,” is online at MTV’s Subterranean Blog; it airs on MTV2 Thursday. Check it out below: