Last month, mid-90s emo rockers Sunny Day Real Estate announced a reunion tour in support of their first two albums LP2 and Diary, both of which are being reissued by Sub Pop in September. (More on those special reissues at the band’s new official site.) The good news for Midatlantic emo junkies is that the tour will include a September 30 show at the 9:30 Club (buy tickets here).

New to Sunny Day Real Estate? Try “In Circles” (video below) off Diary. And for the latest from SDRE lead eccentric singer Jeremy Enigk, listen to “Mind Idea,” which Stereogum released in March. 

Some 14 years after their first big hit, No Doubt is still a far bigger draw than I would have imagined, nearly selling out the 25,000-capacity Nissan Pavilion. After watching their stage show, that fact becomes a bit more comprehensible: these are incredibly professional entertainers with hit song after hit song after hit song to draw from. And they treat their fans well, particularly one whom Gwen Stefani pulled up onstage for a hug and a quick photo of the two of them with tens of thousands of cheering fans in the background.

Paramore, who in a lot of ways are the new generation’s version of No Doubt—complete with their own rabid and rapidly expanding fan base— were a fitting opener alongside Swedish new-wavers The Sounds.

Check out more photos after the jump or the full gallery at Flickr.

Read More “Photos: No Doubt @ Nissan Pavilion” »

Skate rock (Think Sublime’s genetic material crossed with that of Minor Threat) is a lot like milt. Some people get a mouthful of the creamy white stuff and think, “So this is fish sperm. Not bad!” Other people take a bite, move it around with their tongues, and then say to themselves, “Oh god, I just put fish balls in my mouth.” They panic. They look for a trash can, a napkin, maybe some condiments to amend the taste. They crunch up crackers and squirt cocktail sauce directly into their gaping, fishy maws.  When that doesn’t work, they spit what’s left into their hands and shove it in their pockets.

Read More “White Trash Renegades: The Supervillains, Authority Zero, Pennywise, and Pepper at the 9:30 Club” »

Miami-based Cuban-American rapper Pitbull performs at Ibiza tonight, touring in support of his chart-climbing, video-fave single “I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho).”  Mr. 305’s parents may have made him memorize the works of Cuban poet José Martí, and he may have a few socio-political songs on albums such as “El Muriel” and “The Boatlift,” but his emphasis is on odes to women and uh, parts of women, over fast-tempoed blends of Miami bass, crunk, hiphop, techno and reggaeton.  “Want Me” is a straight-ahead club dance number with a bilingual 1,2,3, 4 countoff, a touch of acoustic guitar, and a sampled beat that first appeared in  a  ’90s techno song, “The Bomb.”

Pitbull at 9 p.m. Thursday April 23 at Ibiza, 1222 First Street NE, Washington, DC

Katy Perry is a consummate entertainer with a mega-hit pop song, and the 9:30 Club seemed like a pretty small venue for an artist of her standing. I heard that last Friday’s show sold out in less than 15 minutes, which seemed about right just judging from the sheer enthusiasm of the audience (people apparently started lining up at noon to get in!).

More photos etc after the jump, or see the full set here, including shots of The Daylights, who opened.

Read More “Photos: Katy Perry @ the 9:30 Club” »

Yeah, that’s right. Had enough of SXSW coverage and all that damn hipster music? Armed with photo pass and camera and ready and willing to destroy any last vestige of my music-snob credibility, I joined thousands of fans, parents and curious observers for the biggest concert in town last night, Britney Spears and the Pussycat Dolls at the Verizon Center.

Photos of the Pussycat Dolls are in this Flickr gallery; for contractual reasons I have to post the Britney Spears photos right here on the blog, so you’ll find a huge number of photos after the jump, as well as some brief thoughts on the little bit of the show that I saw.

Read More “Photos: Britney Spears @ the Verizon Center” »

This past weekend, we learned that former Washington City Paper music critic Rickey Wright had died. I put together a tribute of sorts made from Wright’s blog posts and WCP pieces, tributes from friends and colleagues and family.

On Saturday afternoon, I had the fortune of talking with Nicole Arthur. Arthur served as Washington City Paper’s Arts Editor in 1994 and 1995. It was around that time that Wright began reviewing records for us. This was a time when people wanted to be rock critics, when there was space for such writing, when there was competition to review the big records. And Wright reviewed his share of the big records.

But Arthur was more than just an editor to Wright. She was a friend. The two had struck up a friendship in the ’80s. Of course, it started over music.

On Sunday, Arthur e-mailed me some of her many memories of Wright:

“I met Rickey in Richmond, Va., in 1987. I had written a record review for VCU’s student newspaper, which I’m pretty sure was the first thing I ever wrote for publication, and he wrote me a fan letter. He had already graduated at that point, and he was working at Peaches Records & Tapes. We met soon thereafter and were fast friends; I think it was our shared reverence for Love’s “Forever Changes” that sealed the deal. But back to that fan letter — turns out it was completely in character. Rickey had an amazing generosity of spirit; he constantly encouraged other writers and he was a tireless cheerleader for his friends. If you happened to fall into both categories, you were very lucky indeed.

Unlike most critics, Rickey was not a music snob. He would gladly discuss Nick Drake for hours (and it would be hours — he *loved* to talk), but he would just as gladly discuss Def Leppard. He never wrote anything off because it was “uncool.” I once complained about my daughter listening to the Wiggles, and he leapt to their defense: “They’re a classic four-piece pop combo!” This is not to say that he was not discriminating, he was. He once wrote a John Mayer review so brutal, the story goes, that Mayer cited it in interviews as an example of his being eviscerated by the press.

Rickey was a master of the soon-to-be-lost art of making mix tapes; he had a great instinct for implausible-seeming combinations that somehow complemented one another. I’m looking at the list of artists on one of the tapes he made me — the Raspberries, Professor Longhair, Love and Rockets, Roger Miller, Prince, Roseanne Cash. And it’s amazing; I’ve been listening to it for 20 years.”

Former Washington City Paper music critic Rickey Wright is dead.  Wright passed away at 4:31 p.m. on February 19 in Seattle after suffering from a series of small strokes. At the time of his death, he was working on a book about John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

Wright was probably one of the most prolific talents the Washington City Paper has ever had perhaps on par with Jenkins, and the great, beloved Joel S. I never met Wright but I was around when he was around in the mid-to-late ’90s. I marveled at the fact that he could write on just about any band or genre and not appear to sweat it. (Most of us sweat it).

Wright’s prose was effortless and to the point. He didn’t mess around with silly metaphors. Nor did he make you feel stupid (he never loaded his pieces with arcane references to deep cuts, alternate Replacements b-sides, etc.). He just wrote and wrote.

“He was a save-your-ass kind of writer,” recalls former Washington City Paper Arts Editor Glenn Dixon. “If someone didn’t come through, and there were constantly people who didn’t come through, Rickey would do the job. He’d write it well. He’d get it in on time—always. He was never without ideas and he could cover any kind of music. I can’t tell you how rare that is. I’m really sorry.”

Wright penned pieces on everything from Travolta to Ben Lee to all of pop music in 1997 to Metallica and Soundgarden to R.E.M. to Charles Mingus to Johnny Cash to Led Zep to Curtis Mayfield and Millie Jackson to Luna and Teenage Fanclub to Wesley Willis to British ska to all of ’90s rock to G. Love to Boston to the Shangri-Las to the Replacements. Wright’s final posting on his Facebook page was a list of his 12 favorite Beatles covers; he included two remakes of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

Idolator had this to say about Wright’s passing:

“Wright was an editor for Amazon for some time (that job brought him to Seattle), and his work appeared in publications like USA Today, the Village Voice, Blender, Harp, and the Seattle Weekly. He also won the 1999 Rhino Music Aptitude Test, a fact that seems somewhat trivial at first glance, but if you’ve actually seen the test or some of the people who have failed it miserably, you realize what a testament to his musical knowledge that accolade really is.”

Ned Raggett wrote up a nice obit. Fred Mills has a tribute to Wright in Blurt. Matos has a deeply personal post on Wright as well. Here’s a portion of what Matos had to say:

“Rickey passed away this afternoon at 4:31. Last week he’d had a stroke–apparently more than one, all small, over a period of time–and went to the hospital for treatment. He had surgery and underwent another stroke on the table; he spent most of his final week in a coma. Our friend Rachel and I visited him yesterday. It was not as awful as I’d feared it might be: he still looked like himself, which was encouraging even if everyone knew he wasn’t going to make it. It’s hard not to second-guess how much of this I should be saying, mainly because Rickey was the kind of person who deserves whatever honor you can give him, especially in passing. I’ve seldom known a kinder person, or a better listener, or anyone more enthusiastic about music or film or whatever–and even better, his enthusiasm was catching. When I’m excited about something I yell without meaning to, or just become obnoxious about it. Rickey never did that. He didn’t have to.”

If you’d like to read more of Wright in his own words, you can check out his blog.

Wright’s last blog post had been a hopeful one. It is dated Feb. 4. It was about Obama. He titled it “I love my president.” This is what he had to say He uses the post to print a quote from Obama:

“In the past few days, I’ve heard criticisms that this [stimulus] plan is somehow wanting, and these criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place . . . I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.”

There is an obit from his former employer the Virginian-Pilot:

“‘He had quite a following when he was here and was influential in the local music scene,’ said former Pilot writer Earl Swift. ‘I’ve never known anyone with a more encyclopedic knowledge of music.’”

There is still lots more from his friends and fellow critics. Here’s a really personal recollection of Wright (I’m just quoting a small portion; you should really read the entire entry):

“Rickey used to literally rock and roll. He never stopped moving. Either his leg was always tapping or he’d rock back and forth in his chair like a baby trying to comfort himself. He had a repertoire of postures. Always leaning forward with his hand on his thigh, fingers pointed in and elbow pointed out. He used his hands when he talked, flipping his palms upward in a gesture of offering.

Rickey always looked cool. He was a rock critic and looked the part. He always had a good haircut. He always wore the cool black ankle boots with the pointed toes. He knew how to wear a suit. He walked on his toes a bit which sort of accentuated his little belly. He always had just the right rock ‘n’ roll button on his bag or his jacket.

Rickey loved his cats, Chet and Kettle. When Chet was sick, he went through tremendous lengths and expense to try to keep him alive. When Kettle ran away, he consulted a pet psychic to find her, and found her. He used to talk about what a good soul Chet had and how you could see it in the little cat’s big eyes….

Rickey and I only ever talked about two things: music and love. Our last conversation was about the latter. It occurred around the beginning of January….”

Read More “Rickey Wright R.I.P.” »

“I’m like a sugar bomb,” Lenka Kripac sings in “Skipalong,” and that about sums it up.

The former vocalist/keyboardist for Australian post-rockers Decoder Ring played a decidedly un-post-rock set at DC9 last night. In sharp contrast to her old band’s material, Lenka’s solo writing is basically straight-up indie pop, and almost relentlessly upbeat—even the breakup song (”Knock Knock”) is bouncy. She’s the kind of artist many of the folks at BrightestYoungThings would totally lose their shit over, and even I—as a grumpy City Paper curmudgeon—found myself caught up in the feel-good vibes.

Read More “Photos: Lenka @ DC9″ »

I’m pretty much happy to ignore this year’s Grammys completely: Kokayi didn’t win, Stevie Wonder suffered the indignity of sharing a stage with the Jonas Brothers, and I won’t even get started on the bizarre Chris Brown/Rihanna incident that took place the night before the ceremony.

But there’s one moment of Sunday’s telecast that I just can’t get out of my head.

While accepting one of the skrillion Grammys that Coldplay nabbed, Chris Martin said, “We’re not, of course, the heaviest of rock bands, you may have noticed. We’re kind of the limestone of rock bands. Not as hard, but still charming.”

Gotta love the Brits and their self-deprecating “humour,” but c’mon-limestone isn’t exactly granite or anything, but isn’t it used in the construction of buildings? If Martin is going to try to be all cute and self-effacing, he should go all out: if he wants to compare his band to a soft rock, he should really reference the softest rock known to man.

But what rock would that be?

Because my science schoolin’ ended in the 10th grade, I turned to the Reston-based U.S. Geological Survey, our country’s foremost authority on minerals and rocks, and asked for help.

Read More “Science Supports Coldplay/Limestone Comparison” »