Author Archive for Steve Kolowich

Arts Roundup: ‘Blame It On Fake Pirates’ Edition

Morning, folks!
D.C. musicians, take note: ReadySetDC is soliciting submissions for a 17-song playlist it will feature (with credits and everything) at the TEDxPennQuarter conference, a spinoff of the popular shotgun-style lecture series, on July 11. The deadline for submissions is a week from tomorrow. Bonus points if your song is a first-person narrative of a [...]

Arts Roundup: ‘Murder a-Go-Go’ Edition

Morning, folks!
Sad news out of the Go-Go scene: Washington’s homegrown art form continues to be tarnished by elements that have nothing to do with the music. A 16-year-old kid was shot in the head in Brightwood after leaving a Go-Go concert that had been cut short due to fights. Just over an hour later, a [...]

Arts Roundup: ‘A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Tweets’ Edition

Morning, folks!
Does anybody other than me and Kent Brockman feel this way about the World Cup? Fortunately, Magnum photos of people playing futbol are far more engrossing than the TV broadcasts. Plus, no fucking horns.
A photo is worth a thousand tweets! You know Shit My Dad Says, the Twitter feed Justin Halpern parlayed into [...]

Dave Rawlings & Co. at the 9:30 Club: The Exit Interview

In which Steve Kolowich and Ted Scheinman, who play together in a roots band of dubious authenticity, converse over e-mail.
Steve: Howdy, Ted!
Like that country vernacular? Sure, I'm a blue-blooded New Englander, born and bred. But if I learned anything from last night's excellent show at the 9:30 Club, it's that authenticity is as authenticity does. [...]

Can the Washington Folk Festival Make Room for D.C. Indie Folk?

A Rockville High School bagpiper, whose group is performing at the festival.
Last year, Phillips Saylor discovered that the Washington Folk Festival is not the venue for “orthopolytonal banjo singing.”
Saylor, the inventor of that technique and the frontman of the D.C.-based band Stripmall Ballads, had been asked to share the stage with three other musicians as [...]

Arts Roundup: ‘Minimalist Environmental Cinema’ Edition

Morning, folks! I normally do this thing on Mondays, but over the weekend I saw a trailer for The Human Centipede and have spent the last two days reconciling my sense of the world with the existence of such a film.
Speaking of horror flicks, the BP’s live feed of the ruptured oil well is [...]

Arts Roundup: R.I.P. Web Privacy, “Metropolis,” Ronnie James Dio Edition

Morning, folks!
In last Monday’s roundup I pondered whether the Facebook’s attempt to dictate its users’ Internet browsing experiences by forcing them to formalize their affinities and affiliations through the new “Like” system would discourage people from supporting their favorite artists through the popular social Web site. Little did I know that my post—like “Star Wars,” [...]

Arts Roundup: ‘Facebook Eats Your Brain’ Edition

Morning, folks!
Let’s talk about Facebook for a second. Yesterday I came across—via Facebook, naturally—this infographic, which shows the gradual un-privatizing of an ever larger proportion of your profile. With the link, the friend who had posted it had written, “Time to leave?” To which Paul Carr over at TechCrunch would no doubt counter, “No, time [...]

Arts Roundup: ‘Muse-ical Theatre’ Edition

Morning, folks! Brief roundup this morning. I don’t do clever when it rains.
David Muse, Yalie and associate director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, is going to be the next artistic director of Studio Theatre. For more on Muse, see this bio in WaPo—which it had to push in a pinch after our Trey Graham broke [...]

Arts Roundup: ‘Life and Death’ Edition

Morning, folks!
The Tallest Man on Earth show at the Black Cat on Friday was the best show I’ve seen all year. I wasn’t the only one floored by Kristian Matsson’s latest album; Metacritic has it at an 8.2, with users giving it a 10.0. Tallest, indeed. Don’t miss him next time he comes through town.
Speaking [...]