The Real World DC premiered last night to mixed reviews, but that hasn’t discouraged three local musicians who are hoping to gain some national attention from the 23rd season of the MTV phenomenon.

“I’ve never watched The Real World before this year,” said Will Whitney, a Takoma Park native and the drummer for Real World cast member Josh Colon’s band, Wicked Liquid. ”But I hear it’s huge in the Midwest, so that’s where we are going to try to tour.”

At a premiere party at Tattoo Bar last night, Wicked Liquid, which has recorded a four-song EP and played one show, said it hopes that interest in the band will grow as The Real World airs.

Read More “With Wicked Liquid, Local Musicians Hope for Real World Fame” »

It’s your last chance to meet the D.C. Real World cast before it ascends to the plane of reality celebrity. The Real World premiere party is tonight at Tattoo Bar, and for just $5.00 (or $20, for “VIP” access) you can watch the premier alongside cast member Josh Colon. Of course, if you’re an aspiring hanger-on, you’re too late: Real World filming wrapped in October, so your make-out session with sultry Ashley will never air. However, party attendees will be treated to the (unintentionally?) retro sounds of Colon’s band, Wicked Liquid, whose EP will be pumping through the sound system.

Read More “Tonight: Real World D.C. Premiere Party with Wicked Liquid” »

If folk music’s prime currency is authenticity, Langhorne Slim might well earn some crooked eyebrows. Classically trained at the SUNY-Purchase conservatory, Sean Scolnik donned loafers and floppy hat and named himself after his hometown in the tradition of all those rail-hoppin’ ramblers who used to do that. The blogosphere gobbled up this aesthetic and and have cast Slim in the role of Guthrie-Dylan inheritor he came dressed to play.

Really, Slim doesn’t make music like that at all. His music is much more poptimistic, with an evangelical energy that has led some critics to call his music religious (and not in the way Bob Dylan equated Woody Guthrie’s music with religion). Slim’s lyrics lunge, albeit passionately, with a blade that is shinier than it is sharp. Cat Stevens, with his spiritual conceit, is an apter analog—or the Avett Brothers, with whom Slim has toured.

Read More “Tonight: Langhorne Slim @ Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel w/ Dawes” »

On Daisy, Brand New is still providing soundtrack material for countless unwritten bildungsromans, the kind set in suburban high schools, dorm rooms, and first apartments, and which feature protagonists who didn’t have it rough growing up, and don’t have it all that rough now, but who, deep down, would rather feel pissed off for no reason, than feel, you know, just so so.

Incidentally, Brand New front man Jesse Lacey has implied this might be it. If true, Daisy’s glumness and cacophony are both a touching coda to the group’s own confused youth (fighting with other bands, bitching about neurotic fans, living on Long Island) and a melancholy disclaimer that adulthood does not guarantee equilibrium. (Lacey still lives on Long Island.)

Read More “Reviewed: Brand New’s Daisy” »

According to one Nick Green, “Screamo bands covering Top 40 songs [is a] full blown epidemic.” He’s right: Lil Wayne. The Fray. The Postal Service. The Knack, for Christ’s sake (personally, I love that last one–it’s good background music for shot-gunning 16-ounce Natty Lights). In an ongoing special over at Decibel’s Deciblog, contributors put 16 screamo covers head to head in what will go down in history as the greatest Mallcore bracket ever made.

In the opening salvo, I played Drop Dead, Gorgeous‘ cover of “Swing” against I Set My Friends On Fire’s (pictured above) cover of “Crank Dat Soulja Boy.”  In the same post, Axl Rosenberg of Metalsucks (featured in Amanda Hess’ column this week) measured Brokencyde’s cover of Flo Rida’s “Low” against A Static Lullaby’s cover of Britney Spears‘ “Toxic.”

New brackets will be posted throughout this and next week (today’s post features a screamo cover of Santana’s “Smooth” so insipid that I spread the mustard in my mouth), so check back often!

Your sacred cows mean nothing.

That, at least briefly, was the message of Los Campesinos! last night at a packed 9:30 Club. “I never cared about Ian MacKaye,” sputtered Gareth Campesinos!, the Cardiff, Wales-based group’s frontman, in “The International Tweexcore Underground,” surely aware of the lyric’s particular application. Not that the audience — whose average age couldn’t have exceeded 18 — noticed or cared. Throughout the evening it returned the septet’s considerable panache in triplicate, pogoing and mouthing along to each sarcastic word, even when the group’s schoolyard accents and entropic arrangements swallowed the vocals whole. Energy overpowered attitude, and for a while, that was fine.

Read More “Stick With The ‘Rubbish’: Los Campesinos!/Girls @ 9:30 Club” »

From tonight’s pick by Caroline Jones: “One part kitsch, one part political satire, and one part glitter, the Kinsey Sicks, describe themselves as “America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet.” The group returns to D.C. on Saturday night with a new set of parodies, skewering everyone from Condoleezza Rice to Vanna White. What began 15 years ago with four guys attending a Bette Midler show dressed as the Andrews Sisters is now an off-Broadway revue that’s traveled around the country and the world.”

Read the entire Kinsey Sicks pick for details.

A belated answer key to our Rolling Stone: Parse that Platitude contest!

• There is a difference between people who sing and those who take that voice to another, otherworldly place, who create a euphoria within themselves. PLATITUDE REFERS TO: Elvis Presley
  
• You know a force from heaven. You know something that God made. And [blank] is a gift from God. PLATITUDE REFERS TO: Aretha Franklin
  
• There’s a lot going on in [blank]’s voice. A lot of pain, a lot of life but, most of all, a lot of strength. PLATITUDE REFERS TO: Etta James
  
• [Blank]’s unhinged aggression presaged punk rock. PLATITUDE REFERS TO: Jim Morrison
  
• I can’t compare [blank]’s voice to anything — [blank] had such an unusual breadth of influences, from Sonic Youth to Edith Piaf. PLATITUDE REFERS TO: Jeff Buckley
  

Commenter “Elisabetta” wins for accuracy, with a 20% accuracy rate. Commenter “Dean Steve” wins for most original entry, with an 80% humor rate.

Winners entitled to free copy of City Paper, redeemable at any of our many distribution hubs across the greater D.C. metro area.

Brokencyde’s new music video, “Freaxxx,” has been making the critical rounds, taking its first bashing at The Stranger’s Slog, and another lickin’ on Videogum. I’ve imbedded the video below in hopes of inspiring a few more reader submissions for Washington City Paper’s year-end music video write-up.

Brokencyde – Freaxxx (Music Video) from Eat Cake Films on Vimeo.

Brokencyde is a popular act in the growing genre of screamo electronica. Mark Athitakis hates them. You probably will, too. I’m tempted to give them the same treatment that I did a similar act, but I kind of like them (especially their screamo cover of Flo Rida’s “Low”). Despite being vapid and generic, the music is fun and the screaming is top-notch.

And seeing as my iTunes library is 65% emo (think Brand New & TBS, not Rites of Spring), one could successfully argue that I’d be heaving stones from the parapet atop my glass mansion.

Feel free to unleash your anti-screamo/crunk invective in the comments.

This weekend, DJs from across the nation will be gathering in D.C. for the Million DJ March. The event will feature a panel discussion, a celebrity basketball game, and performances on and speakers on the National Mall. The organizers hope the event will help unify DJs to assert their rights in the entertainment industry. What they organizers lack in substance they make up for in lofty goals. I don’t even think there are a million DJs in America, but we will see how many turn out this weekend. Featured speakers/performers – KRS One, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Joell Ortiz, DJ Geometrix, Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz, DJ Kool and many many more.

Schedule and info is at the Million DJ March Blog