The Surf Club still has not permanently regained an entertainment license allowing it to present live music and sell booze in the same evening, but the club’s owner James Byrum announced on the club’s website Monday that tomorrow's tribute show to what would have been Buddy Holly’s 75th birthday (the rock pioneer was born Sept. 7) [...]
Ed. note: It's Archers of Loaf Day, apparently! There are worse things.
It's a no-brainer to say an upstairs bartender at the Black Cat sees a lot of shows, both good and bad. So when not one but two of them remarks how incredible a show was...well, it's a safe bet the show was pretty incredible. What [...]
Kids, dogs, and many mainstays of the D.C. music scene were on hand last night to see power-pop and post-hardcore at Fort Reno. Leading Title Tracks, John Davis provided power-pop accompaniment for the dreams of those Tenleytown kids with a 9:30 p.m. bedtime. And J. Robbins' current band, Office of Future Plans, tore up [...]
Dinosaur Jr. played the whole of their 1988 album Bug at the 9:30 Club Saturday night. They had one opening act—the Keith Morris-fronted OFF!—but they also opened for themselves, sitting on stools while fellow '80s hero Henry Rollins interviewed them about Bug and the events that surrounded it. It was a powerful evening, from the size [...]
Chris Mills is one of the greatest contemporary singer-songwriter talents you've probably never heard. Mills has been steadily putting out incredible records since the late '90s, all the while building an loyal and adoring fan base with this driving, guitar-laden pop songs and smart lyrics. Promoting his recent 14-track retrospective, Heavy Years: 2000-2010, Mills hit the DC9 [...]
"We're not sure who all of you are," said Allo Darlin's Elizabeth Morris at the start of the group's Black Cat Backstage show last night, "as the last time we were here, I think our audience had six people in it. So we'd like to thank you all for coming." It's great that ears are finding their [...]
I was lucky enough to catch Sondre Lerche live at South by Southwest 2010's tribute to Big Star. Music can lift one up in times of sadness, and Lerche's aching rendition of "The Ballad of El Goodo" that night, four short days after the passing of Big Star's lead singer, Alex Chilton, was the perfect salvation [...]
Saturday's sold out show at the Black Cat Backstage was the last night of Ted Leo's current solo tour, and Leo seemed downright giddy. Leo regaled the audience with Paul Stanley quotes about concert participation, name-checked all of the cool bands who had opened for him this tour, led the crowd in an enthusiastic acoustic [...]
Agnes Bolt is smelling a little ripe. It’s hard not to notice the ripeness once you start crawling through the blue tube that gets you into the small plexiglass installation—sort of like a human-sized hamster cage, without the running wheel— in the middle of Philippa Hughes’ living room in her apartment just off U Street [...]
The youthful exuberance and the huge guitar sound of Surfer Blood took over the main floor of the Rock & Roll Hotel last night. Lead singer John Paul Pitts did all he could to ensure there was no boundary between band and audience on what was his 24th birthday. He left the stage more than [...]
