Closing out our series, we asked the members of the Borf Brigade to collectively reflect on the state of the arts in 2008:

2008.  The international year of planet earth for the moment. Art is dead, and this dead horse sure can run.  So, when the Borf Brigade, a group of dilettantes, trouble-makers, and anti-socialites was asked to write about the past year for the City Paper, we had a good chuckle. In keeping with the usual boredom and posturing of the indoor art industry, we decided to flex our art review jargon and report on the notable… uh, stuff… of this year in “art.”

This year saw the end of local stronghold for miscreants and youth, the Bobby Fisher Memorial.  Located just blocks from the former Crispus Attucks Museum and Youth Center, this majestic palace, which had been semi-squatted on a tenuous lease since 2007, was the site of many dingy punk shows, as well as some of the city’s finer wall scribbling exhibitions. Powered by generator and wired by extension chords, our Acropolis hosted a single MC battle, the first east coast appearance in five years by legendary slop-punk band The Bananas, the 7 foot signature of Cool Disco Dan, and top of the line non-art-market affiliated “art.”

The “Best Graffiti Crew” title goes to the D.P.W. (Department of Public Works). Graffiti is usually thought of as the illegal application of paint or re-facing surfaces without the approval of a property owner. Since the passage of mayor Fenty’s aggressive abatement measures in 2007 the D.P.W. has been doing it best.  But only this year did they come into their own and show their true colors, (usually burgundy and grey). Their beautifully hand painted squares on public and private property transcend the conventions of the hastily sprayed nicknames of disempowered youths, leaving us wondering… how do they get away with it?

The best painting of 2008 was realized by local kid, Malorie Something-Something, when she snuck out late one November night with a gallon of flat black latex paint and a cheap brush.  Alone, she painted an entire playground black. When asked about her intentions behind the piece, Malorie said she did it because “flat black is the best color.”

Easily, the best political performance piece of the year was executed by the “Big Three” of the auto industry.  Utilizing relics from a time long past, the CEOs arrived in Washington via private luxury jets, a very hip and retro comment on the bourgeois excess of the now archaic age of American capitalism.

Wait, what about when Nick’s dog shat on Donald Rumsfeld’s lawn?

Yeah, that too.

To finish off the year of the potato, the city sadly decided to close one of our favorite permanent installations, the free distribution of bus transfers.  The bus transfer exhibit was easily the most socially moving exhibit the city had to offer.  It moved us freely to and from all corners of the city.

The Borf Brigade is an arts collective that claimed responsibility for a wave of vandalism in the District and other cities that ended in the arrest of founder John Tsombikos in 2005, as well as a series of video communiques and an art exhibition.  Their gallery space, the Bobby Fisher Memorial Center, closed this year.

All contributors to this series were guests on DISSONANCE, a DC punk oral histories show on Radio CPR. John Tsombikos and the Borf Brigade’s interview can be heard here.

Fifth in a series of 6, we asked DC’s favorite recording engineer Don Zientara for his take on the state of recorded music in 2008.  He responded in limerick form (and in an interview at his studio in Arlington):

There once was an audio format called mp3
Where parts of the digital word were sent off to sea.
The data was minced,
for the song that convinced
us that vinyl more pleasing, you see?

Don Zientara is owner of Inner Ear Studios, and has engineered records for such bands as the Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Rites of Spring, Scream, Nation of Ulysses, Fugazi, Lungfish, Jawbox, the Dismemberment Plan, Q and not U and many others.  He also writes and performs his own music, and has released two solo albums, Sixteen Songs and Clocks & Watches.

All contributors to this series were guests on DISSONANCE, a DC punk oral histories show on Radio CPR. Don Zientara’s interview can be heard here.

Fourth in a series of 6, Dag Nasty’s Dave Smalley presents: “Top 9 Things That Rocked in 2008″

photo: LegendsMagazine.net

9. Bill Harris artwork in Fredericksburg

Harris is a painter who does stunning, often subtly dark works in lovely little Fredericksburg. He’s a talented artist who creates beautiful still lifes, yet does some understated, twisted works as well. He’s a master of color and line, and the subject matter often makes you think. He paints a lot of portraits and nudes, sometimes with something melancholy or even brooding about it–like “Invisible Sum,” where a nude woman halfway out of a bear costume stares forlornly into her purse. One wonders what the backstory was for that one. Or “Alone Together,” where a tattooed girl stands singing into a microphone in the middle of a restaurant, with no one paying attention. Some of his stuff can be seen on his Web site: wcharris.com. He’s often in his studio at LibertyTown Arts Workshop. Two big thumbs up. For those not in the know, Fredericksburg boasts an amazing art scene, with a host of artists and galleries doing really cool stuff.

8. Comic book movies

I’m a serious comic book geek, most especially into Marvel titles, but also some DC, from the early days of the Fantastic Four battling the Mole Man to about the ‘90s, when the costs of comics started to skyrocket and the artwork/stories started to suck. (Killing Captain America?! Heinous.) In the New World Order, Marvel and DC have shifted their genius quota to the movie side, and this year’s releases of The Dark Knight and Iron Man were easily deserving of all-time-top-movies status. Everyone’s written about Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight, and he is brilliant in the role, but the whole film is perfectly paced, thoughtful, and disturbing–a tribute to the dark side of the Dark Knight. Christian Bale is equally brilliant as Bruce Wayne. As for Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. simply IS Tony Stark–he nails every nuance of the character perfectly, and the armor is ubercool. They even brought in the Dude as Obadiah Stane–a master stroke.

Read More “DC Punk 2008 Part 4: Dave Smalley” »

Third in a series of 6, Allison Wolfe of Bratmobile presents: “Top Five Things in DC That Keep Me From Losin’ My Mind!”

1. Girls Rock! DC!

As Sleater-Kinney ax-woman Carrie Brownstein so succinctly put it in her foreword to the recently published Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls book, “Everything at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls takes place in a single week. For anyone out there who’s ever tried to write a song, start and finish a painting, or make a film, you know one week is nothing. One week is the time it takes for an adult to think about what we have to do: prepare and procrastinate, produce a draft, doubt we are capable, fail, and start again. But one week is all it takes for young girls, some of whom have never strummed a guitar chord in their life, held drum sticks in their hands, or stepped foot on a stage, to come together with complete strangers, form a band, and write a song that will blow your mind…and to be surprised, to truly be caught off guard, by something so unselfconscious, is to realize that a lot of what we believe to be bold is really quite tame. Bold is not a wanky guitar solo at Madison Square Garden that lasts five minutes while hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of lights and pyrotechnics tell an audience when to applaud. Nor is bold a bassist jumping from the top of a kick drum and doing a scissor kick in the air at the end of a song. Bold is learning how to play the drums on Monday and performing in front of five hundred people on Saturday. Bold is screaming into the microphone, or merely talking into one, when you didn’t even know you could. Bold makes the hair stand up on the listeners’ necks, gives them a lump in the back of their throat, makes them happy to be alive.”

Right on! So there was some talk post-Ladyfest (DC) to do a girl rock camp as a follow-up, but these fine ladies really blew it outta the water. With the first meeting in October of ’07, the labor of this musically-minded female collective culminated in a well-oiled machine of a camp in August ’08 that changed the lives of young 8- to 18-year-old girls in swamp town. As part of the worldwide Girls Rock Camp Alliance, Girls Rock! DC consisted of up to 20 core organizers, 50 volunteers, 48 campers, 8 newly formed bands, and 2 DJs. I know for a fact it ain’t easy being a girl in this city, but a girl like me’s gotta get psyched about a final GR! DC showcase that boasted 600 people in attendance, not to mention Eddie Vedder! Next stop, Madison Square Garden? (“Where is your next show? In Honolulu! Where is your next show…”)
Get psyched: girlsrockdc.org

2. Hear Mount Pleasant!
Yay to Hear Mount Pleasant for fighting the insanity of the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance in my ‘hood. Mt. Pleasant used to be so fun, interesting, REAL, and culturally vibrant ‘til rich people took over with their uber-entitled “quality of life” demands and crushed its spirit like a bug. I know we all play a role in gentrification, but I tried fighting the power for years, but just couldn’t take the straight-up hatred and steamrollering anymore. Mass thanks to the more diplomatic mouths of HMP for organizing to try to bring back something culturally/artistically cool in our neighborhood, to promote more constructive conflict resolution, and to expose the few wealthy homeowners’ agenda, which privately controls our business strip and absurdly gets cemented into law. I love Don Juan! I love Haydee’s! Gimme back my neighborhood!
Get real: hearmountpleasant.org

Read More “DC Punk 2008 Part 3: Allison Wolfe” »

Second in a series of 6 articles, movie buff John Stabb of G.I. on his favorite film and show of 2008.

Best film: Iron Man. Surprisingly a far better comic book superhero story than the latest Batman one, The Dark Knight (even though Heath Ledger’s wonderful portrayal of The Joker was creepy-crawly cool!) which could’ve been as good as Batman Begins. I’m not down with the comic book live action genre, but this one won me over. Robert Downey Jr. turns in his best acting job in eons as the cocky moneybag industrialist playboy who invents a big-ass iron outfit to take on the villains.

Read More “DC Punk 2008 Part 2: John Stabb” »

We asked several local harDCore figures to weigh in on the state of the arts in 2008; punk rock or otherwise. First in a series of 6 articles, Dance of Days author Mark Andersen recounts his favorite shows of 2008:

In 2008, the ghosts of DC’s punk past were out in full force: Dave Grohl returned to play the Virgin Festival with his Grammy-winning Foo Fighters, while Government Issue reunited to headline a multi-band show that ran to the early morning hours at the Rock and Roll Hotel. Gray Matter powerfully evoked the spirit of Food for Thought shows and Revolution Summer with a reunion show at the Black Cat’s 15^th Anniversary celebration. For its part, Good Charlotte managed to evade the Hollywood gutter press for long enough to play a sold-out show at the 9:30 Club. Henry Rollins brought his mix of humor and social commentary to the Birchmere on election eve. The next night, trailblazing Afro-punks Bad Brains returned to the stage at 9:30, reminding the audience just how mind-blowing they had been when their singer, HR, was still able to focus and channel the immense power of the band and their insurrectional songs.

Read More “DC Punk 2008 Part 1: Mark Andersen” »

Many a touring band has faced the same dilemma: you’ve managed to secure a one year cultural exchange visa to the United States, a country with which your government has had no diplomatic relations since the overthrow of the Shah and hostage crisis of 1979. Though it is illegal to distribute your demo tape without prior approval from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, you were able to play a few gigs here and there under the lenient eye of the previous reformist administration. However, a new conservative government is in power, and it has clamped down on both rock musicians and draft dodgers. Your drummer and bassist must stay behind to complete their mandatory military service; your keyboardist will have to return early to return money he borrowed for the state’s student travel deposit. What do you do?

The answer, of course, is to pack your guitar and trombone and tour as a two-piece. Tehran’s 127, already the first Iranian rock band to play in the United States, is now the first Iranian band to do a follow-up tour, albeit with a smaller lineup.

On July 13, they returned to the belly of the beast, the Black Cat. This time, they brought with them the international media, with an Al-Jazeera camera crew capturing 127’s bouncy fusion of punk, prog, and jazz and the bilingual stage banter of Sohrab Mohebbi (guitar) and Salmak Khaledi (trombone). Al-Jazeera’s English-language affiliate was tipped off by D.C.’s the Cassettes, who had played 127’s previous Black Cat show two years earlier. This set up an unusual interview for the Qatar-based satellite network, known more for their coverage of sectarian strife in Lebanon than punks in sweatboxes. A segment on an Iranian rock band is “not that common,” acknowledges Al-Jazeera producer Sophia Qureshi, but “we try to balance hard news with human interest stories.” Given the glut of stories on tensions between the U.S. and Iran, the 127 segment “is a way of humanizing and understanding what’s going on from other people’s points of view.”

So what is the music scene like in Iran? Information is spotty and experts are of dubious credibility. “Twenty percent of the Iranian people are interested in modern music,” says Mohammad Pazhutan, author of a 2001 article for Empty Words webzine, “Metal in Iran.” “They generally enjoy every style of music, listening to techno in their cars while joyriding through the streets. People listen to rap, hip-hop and pop music, and when they talk about rock, they mean Pink Floyd and Dire Straits, they aren’t interested in Rush or Led Zeppelin.” Metallica, too, is popular, although unfortunately only “the albums after 1991.”

127’s Mohebbi confirms that Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull are big influences, after someone smuggled their records into the country. “Before the Internet it was harder. Now that you have access to peer-to-peer networks its very easy to get music from other countries” – which, we hope, would at least point them in the direction of Metallica’s pre-Black Album material. But before Thomas Friedman starts spouting off about MySpace making the world safe for Western liberalism, Mohebbi reports that in Iran at least, the world is not yet flat. “We don’t have broadband.”

There is also the problem that most non-traditional music is still illegal, going back to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against rock and roll (which, legend has it, inspired Joe Strummer to write “Rock the Casbah”). “There’s no written law that says what you’re not allowed to play,” says Mohebbi, which leaves much arbitrary discretion to the censors at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Most issues arise from bands’ lyrics, which must be submitted to the Ministry in advance for any state-sanctioned shows or recordings. Some metal bands such as Khatmayan get around this by simply recording instrumental albums. Others like 127 go underground, playing house shows exclusively. “You invite people you trust,” says Mohebbi. “We invite five friends, and they each invite five of their friends.” As a result, shows are attended by insular cliques of Web-savvy music nerds who all know each other, go to the same shows, and start bands with each other. Not unlike a normal night at the Black Cat.

Sunday’s crowd was no typical shoegaze-revival or dance-night audience, however. In addition to Al-Jazeera, 127’s high energy show attracted a packed house that—given the jokes in Farsi that everyone except this reporter seemed to get—looked to be drawn largely from D.C.’s Persian community. The reception has been similarly enthusiastic throughout 127’s five months-and-counting nationwide tour, even in cities with little to no Persian connection. “In Pittsburgh there were no Iranians. But it was good anyway.” Mohebbi attributes this to both positive press and the popularity of “new wave-gypsy-punk” —which is apparently an entire genre of music, despite comprising only one band you’ve ever heard of (Gogol Bordello), and Mohebbi is confused as to why 127 gets lumped in with them. “Maybe it’s the brass factor.”

Whatever it is, the crowd loved it. The novelty value may wear off, but 127’s earnest goofiness is about as foreign to most jaded Pitchfork readers as their music is to the Ershad. We can hope they won’t smuggle back everything they picked up on the US indie circuit, and Iran will be spared the scourge of MacBook DJs, fixie bikes, ironic facial hair and Sparks. God willing.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the Kennedy Center’s Salute to Leonard Slatkin except Leonard Slatkin. Rather than savor the one night everyone was sure to be nice to him, the outgoing National Symphony Orchestra music director looked like he was in a rush to get it over with. Slatkin hurriedly shuffled between the conductor’s stand and offstage, at one point cutting off the audience at the start of a standing ovation. He never said a word until the end of the program, and even his brief remarks were less than upbeat, acknowledging the cloud under which he was leaving after his contentious 12-year tenure. He referred to both his supporters and those who wrote him “sometimes not so wonderful letters,” and “some…who questioned what I was thinking at the time.”

“What was he thinking?” was apparently also the subject of the video tribute to him after intermission, featuring a photo montage of Slatkin wearing silly hats and some of his more famously gimmicky performances (cramming 10 grand pianos on stage for “Piano 2000”) that wowed audiences and made some critics cringe. Read More “Review: A Salute to Slatkin: National Symphony Orchestra With Yo-Yo Ma” »