Even if you somehow failed to notice the half-dozen men toting shoulder-mounted cameras, it was patently obvious that something was amiss at last night’s Rock and Roll Hotel show. For one thing, no one had ever heard of the headlining band, Wicked Liquid, though two of D.C.’s big crowd getters, Once Okay Twice and Politicks, were opening. For another, Wicked Liquid had about three roadies setting up the stage for them–a luxury few local bands can afford. But the most obvious sign that we’d entered the topsy-turvy world of “reality” television was the fact that Wicked Liquid had no merch.
Read More “The “Real World” Cast: D.C.’s New Indie-Rock Darlings?” »

I recently reported that monkeys like Metallica. In continuing animal-music news, it turns out that Barry White puts sharks in the mood for love.

Workers at a London aquarium played Barry White for a reluctant zebra shark named Zorro, and it was so effective, Zorro’s violent and amorous overtures to other sharks apparently disturbed some visitors.

Read More “Sharks Like Soul Music” »

If you want to mellow out a monkey, play him some Metallica.

That’s the surprising result of a new study by Charles Snowdon, a
University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor. The researchers played clips of music— including Metallica’s
“Of Wolf and Man,” Nine Inch Nails’, “The Fragile,” Tool’s “The
Grudge,” and Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”—for cotton-top tamarins.

Read More “Study Finds Metal Soothes Monkeys” »

The other day, I beat a few thousand spry college kids to stand at the front of the stage at the Charlottesville, Va., Wilco show. Unfortunately, that was only the first leg of the general-admission triathlon. The second: Maintaining my position–and staying awake–during the monotonous opening act. Though there were times when I wanted to give up and sit on folding chairs with other geriatrics, I remained standing through several two-chord jamfests. Here’s how:

Good posture. You, too, can make it through terrible opening acts back-pain free by standing with your feet shoulder-width apart. Bend your knees slightly, and feel your body’s weight through your heels. Lift your head and chest as if a string is pulling you up from the sky.

Stretching. Take the opportunity between songs to clap for the bad opening band with your hands above your head. Then, pretend that you are scanning for friends in the crowd, and rotate your torso. Finally, touch your toes and retie your shoes.

Music games. Turn a less-than-enthralling show into an opportunity to sharpen your music-perception skills. Guess the tempo, in beats-per-minute, of the current song, and then check yourself against a watch. Predict the number of chord changes in the upcoming song and bet your friend.

Cell-phone entertainment. As a last resort, break out your cellphone and text
friends about how boring the show is. You can also download and play Chuzzle, a very addictive cell-phone game, that’s somewhere between Snood and a Rubik Cube.

With these strategies, I almost emerged victorious: I made it through the opening act and watched an excellent Wilco set while standing feet away from Jeff Tweedy. Sadly, I came just short of winning the third event of the general admission triathlon, as Pat Sansone’s guitar pick sailed right past me and into the clutches of some UVA frat boy.

The other night, Lissy Rosemont of Junior League, the subject of this week’s One Track Mind, came over, chain-smoked on my window sill, and explained how her solar-panel-powered house led to songwriting advice from Death Cab for Cutie. (However, she’d only do an interview if I agreed to name her many band-mates: Dale Manning, Devin McGaughey, Rob Blunt, Martin Thomas, Alex Platt, Elias Cohn, and Kailin Yong.)

Read on for more from the cutting-room floor.

When “Pennies” starts out, it has a nice, deep clarinet-ey sound. Is that just you singing?
Yeah, that’s me humming. Well originally we had done the hums to help the fiddle player know the rhythm. It’s so slow, we didn’t want to use a click track. Rob [Byers], the audio engineer…suggested that we go ahead and keep the hums.

Who played the accordion?
Kailin…He has just been so supportive, helping me become ready to write. That was a really hard time for me, after Rosemont [Family Reunion] broke up, where I didn’t know if I was a songwriter or how to write songs…He was very affirming, and I was able to catch up with his own belief in me.

Where did you come up with that melody?
I just heard it in my head. It was sort of a series of events: The last band broke up, and then I had a really fun time with Death Cab for Cutie. They were in town at Constitution Hall, and my housemate knows their manager. And so they were at the house–I live in this solar panel green house thing. Mike who owns the house wrote an op-ed for the Post. It’s one of the first green houses and we don’t get any electricity from Pepco or anything. And Andy, his best buddy from home, is one of the managers of Death Cab. So they were in town and they wanted to tour the house. So…I started to pick Chris Walla’s brain, the guitar player, about songwriting.

What did you get out of talking with him?
I knew how I needed to write songs. I wanted to try to be the ability to be abstract–tell a story like a country song, but also keep it loose enough so people can bring their own interpretations. I also knew I didn’t want to write a space-jam-band out-there kind of thing, where you have to be in Phish to understand what it means…I had a big old folder of my favorite words. And then I take a melody I hear in my head. It is sort of like catching them. I was in Barcelona, my sister and my grandmother and my godmother, we all were traveling and touring cathedrals and I had just started to hear the beginning of Pennies and I had brought my microphone and my Mac to record what I heard.

To hear you came up with that tune in while you were touring cathedrals is interesting because the drone in the background has a monk-like quality for me. Was that in your head from the beginning?

I knew I wanted it to be really, really slow. It is, probably, the only love song on the record that is just a straightforward love song; that is not demented in some capacity. It is the love song on the record so I wanted a simple melody…I wasn’t thinking about monks and monasteries as much as just that sort of meditative serious place of true affection. I wanted the music the match.

It’s not a happy song though; it’s got a mournful sort of sound to it. Where does that come from?

Probably from failed love….Perhaps if I was in love at the moment, it would be, um…

A polka?

Exactly. But I kind of like that it is–I don’t think as much mournful as tense, you know, and probably expecting the complications that come with the feelings of love. It is not always happy. That felt very right. It’s a love song; it felt right to keep it extremely sad.

Can you compose catchy keyboard riffs and sing backup? Would you describe yourself as “catted-out?” Then you might be just what The Dance Party is looking for. Details on that and more from my recent One Track Mind interview with lead singer Mick Coogan follow.

You sing about a “zombie rock mistress with jet black lipstick.” Do you know anyone like that?

Chicks in D.C. that are totally catted-up–the name that our band gives girls like that are Renegades. That is lingo for us: Just like a girl you meet at a party that is not the average Arcade Fire fan.

All three of you sing, but you’re the lead singer?

Actually, all those vocals are mine…All the harmonies–yeah–I do all the harmonies. I did all the vocals for the whole album. Nobody else sings in the band. We used to do that but none of the other guys sing live now.

How come?

They’re not really great singers. We had this performance on the radio at the University of Maryland and it was awful. After we heard that on tape, we were like: OK, we all don’t need to sing. We are trying to work people into it now, get someone to sing harmonies.

So when was this University of Maryland show where you decided everybody shouldn’t be singing anymore?

It was maybe like two years ago, and we had just we played a big show at this bar in College Park, and then the morning after we went and did this radio show and we were really hung over. We lost half of our gear the night before; we just didn’t have it together. We were singing and they recorded us for the radio, and it was like, Danny [Hoag] and Kevin [Bayly] were trying to do harmonies and it really wasn’t working out too well. After that show we realized we weren’t ready to sing yet. Plus Kevin is such a badass guitarist he should be rocking out, he doesn’t need to sing.

Who plays keyboard live?

We don’t have a keyboardist. We need a girl who can play keyboards because our shows are, it’s like watching a football game. There are too many dudes up there being masculine, or something. We want a girl keyboardist so that she can sing the high harmonies.

In ["Lipstick"] you sort of disparage new wave and indie. But that seems like your core audience to me.

We’ve been on the scene in D.C. and played all those clubs and stuff for a couple years now but we are not really part of it. You know, we’re from P.G. County and we don’t claim we’re from Mt. Pleasant…Honestly the record isn’t really for indie people–people who are into Pitchfork or anything like that. It’s for everybody, it’s for driving to the beach. This is not going to give us any indie cred, this record. It’s poppy, it’s catchy.

So, you’re The Dance Party. And you’re always telling people to dance, in this song. But D.C. audiences are famously inert. Have you found that to be true?

Oh, absolutely. I was at this show last night at Black Cat, The Detroit Cobras, with this great female front-woman playing this soul–’50s, Chuck Berry rock. It was so great, but people were doing the whole shoegaze thing. At our shows–those people don’t come to our shows. It’s usually kids and our friends and they are wasted…They have no pretensions; they just come and rock out.

Martin Royle, Washington Social Club’s frenetic frontman, has a lot to say about D.C.’s dating scene, comic books, and new additions to the band. Unfortunately, it didn’t all fit into this week’s One Track Mind column. So, here are some gems I swept up from the cutting-room floor.

—

In your e-mail, you said that when you wrote “Close the Roads,” you were inspired by lonely nights at the Black Cat.

That is correct.

When were these lonely nights, approximately?

It was pretty much like after the Catching Looks, came out in 2004. …The album came out and we had this “next big thing” thing, and that didn’t so much happen. It kind of happened in the District but it didn’t really happen nationally, so it was kind depressing.

So I just went to the Cat to try to be positive and try to be part of a scene.

One of those nights in there you thought you found the girl of your dreams, but she was engaged.

That actually like five times. It was fucking driving me insane.

DC is all political people and I’m not like that, I have hair to my shoulders. Trying to find people who are chill is kinda difficult.

One time at the Cat I met this chick and she was awesome but she was, of course, engaged. And then at this party I met this other girl and I was like, “Oh my god, awesome.” But then: married, negative.

Married women love to flirt, don’t they? Have you ever noticed that? Married women love to flirt because they can.

But your song was so optimistic, where did that optimism come from?

There’s this comic book called “The Sandman.” And they have this whole elaborate thing that the one thing you truly cannot destroy is hope. And I think it’s funny that when you are really alone, when you’re really hopeless, is when you can be the most hopeful. But when everything is great…it’s actually harder to be optimistic.

How’d you get hopeful again about music too?

Well, it just kinda came back around…People discovered that album on their own and it ended up finding fans. The band keeps getting more people into it, so that is pretty encouraging.

Are you still a trio?

We are a five-piece now. We actually added two brothers to our band…They both play guitar.

Was it a buy-one-get-one-free deal? How’d you end up with both?

It kind of was. I arranged with their parents–it was like a white slavery thing.

You used to play guitar, right? What’s it like not having a guitar on stage?

I love it. I love it because I can jump around and go crazy…If I’m just playing guitar I am a pretty good guitar player. And if I’m just singing I’m a pretty good singer. But when I sing and play the guitar, it slows down a little bit. I can’t quite do both at the same time.