The show flyer isn't quite a dead medium yet.

You still see some flyers taped to the bases of streetlights around town, and piled inside the Black Cat. But you could hardly call the flyer the dominant method for spreading the word about underground rock shows these days. That'd be Facebook.

Local author and journalist Willona Sloan aims to recapture the cut-and-pasted, photocopied past in a new ebook, Come to Our Show: Punk Show Flyers From D.C. to Down Under.

Sloan became a fan of punk in the early '90s while growing up in Herndon, and she developed an adoration for show flyers. "At the time you only heard about shows through the flyer, so I would save them," she says. Sloan became pretty involved in the punk scene and wanted to find a way to get her own voice out there. She wrote a letter to Al Quint, the editor of the zine Suburban Voice, who suggested she start her own fanzine.

In the late '90s, Sloan launched the zine Scorpion. "It was punk, it was feminist, it was anti-racist," she says. Sloan published everything from record reviews to collections of art—typical punk zine fare on the surface, but all of it channeled through the perspective of a young, African-American female. "Being an African-American, I wanted to represent people of color," she says. "So I started asking people in other countries to send me their flyers and to send me their fanzines too." Sloan used Book Your Own Fuckin' Life—Maximum Rock 'N' Roll's DIY directory—to reach out to like-minded punks around the world.

Sloan published Scorpion when she could, but she wanted to do something bigger with some of the mail she received. "I had this idea I wanted to do this huge flyer book," she says. But she stopped making Scorpion in 2001 and put the flyer book on hold to focus on writing a novel. (The finished, unsold manuscript is still under her bed.) But she'd collected flyers and letters from Peru, Israel, Singapore, New Zealand, South Africa, and Chile, and eventually revisited them. "I really wanted to do something with them and I started scanning them a few months ago," she says.

On Saturday, Sloan released Come to Our Show as a free download from on blog, DC Scorpion Girl. The 87-page ebook includes flyers from the last several decades, and has a large selection highlighting D.C. punk gigs and benefit shows. (Positive Force's Mark Andersen gave Sloan a large number of flyers.) Following a short intro from Sloan, there's hardly any text in the book—one reason is Sloan didn't want to misidentify some of the more specific locations on the flyers. She says she also wanted them to stand on their own as works of art. It's easy to see the meticulous work, love, and care that went into making the flyers, whatever their backstories are. (Los Crudos singer Martin Sorrondeguy shared some of his collection to Sloan, but asked she not copy the back sides of the flyers, as some them contained personal letters.)

Come to Our Show has caught on in the short amount of time it's been online, thanks to coverage in places like Maximum Rock 'N' Roll and The Daily Swarm: Sloan says that 600 people downloaded the book on Tuesday night alone, and that she hopes it plants the idea in other's heads. "I'm not trying to own punk flyers," she says. "We all have scanners and we all have Internet. I want people to share them."

But first, some background: This past November, WAMA board member and musician Diana Quinn asked me to suggest some nominees. Each year, WAMA members select most of the nominees, but the organization also contacts "experts" for additional assistance.  I sent her an extensive list of local performers and recordings in the areas of rap, pop, rock, EDM, world music, blues, soul, jazz, roots rock, and metal, and included links from a variety of publications covering those artists and recordings. On the jazz front, I urged her to contact Washington City Paper critic Michael J. West and DJ, writer, and recording engineer Larry Appelbaum.

Quinn said she'd bring my suggestions to WAMA's board. She said WAMA compiles the votes of its dues-paying members, and if there are not enough nominees in some categories, they consider the suggestions of the experts, which have to be seconded by someone in WAMA to make it on the ballot. As for the number of experts contacted this year, WAMA president Mike Schreibman says "anywhere from 2 to 10 depending on the category."

Obviously, I'm pleased to see some of my suggestions made it. For the first time, rapper Fat Trel, experimental-pop act Bluebrain, Mariachi Los Amigos, and eclectic indie label Sockets Records were nominated. Oddisee, Zenizia Allstar, Orquesta La Leyenda, The Caribbean, Deleted Scenes, Kid Congo Powers, and Edie Sedgwick also are included. The Wammies will be that much more diverse this year. The addition of these artists helps make the rapper, electronica artist, record company, Latin duo/group, and pop/rock duo/group categories more reflective of what D.C. had to offer in 2011.

Now for the bad news. The go-go categories almost entirely ignored younger musicians, such as popular and critically lauded bounce beat groups like TCB, XIB, Reaction Band, TOB, and ABM. (I suggested go-go talker Killa Cal, but he didn't make the list.)

The omissions continue. Maryland-based Haitian band Rafrechi may have played Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage recently, but they weren't nominated. Maryland soul singer Jim Bennett won a southernsoulrnb.com award, but he didn't make the cut, either. There is no heavy metal category. Sockets Records got a nomination, but indie-rock acts associated with that label, like Hume and Laughing Man, were not (nor was the Sockets hip-hop band The Cornel West Theory). Few of Michael J.  West’s favorite local jazz musicians are included—where are Brian Settles, Nasar Abadey, and Brad Linde? Volta Bureau , Protect-U, and Outputmessage released acclaimed EDM recordings, but they're not applauded here. I've made the case for many of these musicians in earlier articles on the Wammies, but WAMA doesn't seem interested.

Real talk: In the end, my complaint isn't that individual artists I like are ignored by the Wammies (although plenty are), but that the Wammies need to reach out to a truly wide variety of experts, and do a better job demonstrating they care about all styles of music. It was nice that Quinn reached out to me and included some of my suggestions this year, but it's still disappointing how much impactful local music—much of which is heralded by local media—is ignored each year. While time and time again, WAMA insists it does its homework and that it's the responsibility of skeptics to become paying members of WAMA if they feel a sound needs more attention, the hit-and-miss nature of this year's ballot shows that WAMA's approach is not working. After a quarter century, WAMA has not convinced many local musicians that it is worth it to join the organization.

To get a sense of WAMA's biases, look at the general music awards at the bottom of the ballot. WAMA’s “musician of the year” nominees include roots rockers, folkies, and a klezmer musician, but no modern jazz, reggae, R&B, go-go, metal, or indie-rock players. It should probably go without saying, then, that the category is disappointingly homogeneous—it includes 10 white men and one white woman. Since the Wammies include a wide range of genre categories honoring musicians from all walks of life, you'd think the "musician of the year" prize wouldn't seem limited to such a narrow few.

But that is WAMA. Dues-paying members  have until Feb. 5 to vote for their choices.

*correction-This blogpost originally said there were no metal bands nominated.  While there is no metal category, Periphery was nominated for best modern rock group, and Pentagram for best modern rock recording.

Double Dagger, from left: Strals, Willen, Bowen

Last month Baltimore post-punk trio Double Dagger announced it was breaking up after a little more than nine years together. The six-paragraph note on the band's site sums up the bittersweet nature of Double Dagger's demise, which is taking place simply because, in their words, it's just time.

Followers of vocalist Nolen Strals, bassist Bruce Willen, and drummer Denny Bowen still might think their split is premature: Double Dagger has morphed its calamitously cathartic punk-rock riot into something positively pop-ready over the course of several releases through last year's Masks EP. Throughout the band's evolution, it's lured fans with chaotic live shows, in which Strals spends most of the show on the floor, screaming inches away from concertgoers' faces, wriggling on the ground, and jumping all over the place while Willen and Bowen kick out some thundering, bombastic punk. It's an act rarely seen and hard to beat.

But Double Dagger has chosen to go out in style, building an eight-date minitour that ends with one final hometown blowout on Friday in Baltimore. Before setting out, Strals and Bowen took some time to discuss the timing of the breakup, their posthumous work, and the band's relationship with D.C.

Washington City Paper: The note you left on your website explaining why you're breaking up you mentioned that a big portion of it was timing. Why is now the right time?

Nolen Strals: Well, the band is still popular, we still like the music, and I think we would rather stop when other people still like it, more importantly when we still like it, then have it sort of drag on. The band is still something that we choose to do and I don't think we want to keep going if it felt like an obligation.

WCP: You have other songs you're recording, too. Have you decided what you're going to do with them?

NS: It's probably gonna be a handful of songs, so we're not sure about the format. It might just be a seven inch. We think we know who's going to put it out, but we're not sure, we just haven't had time to have a formal talk about it. We're going to record that in November. We have this friend who works in film, and he said he wants to come with us to tape our last string of shows. He wants to make a short little documentary. That was his idea. We're not really sure how it's going to come out or who will put it out just because that idea it just came together sort of last-minute, just really spotaneously. So hopefully there will be the last record and possibly a little documentary, too. You're the only person I've told that!

WCP: As far as the final tour, you mentioned that these are your favorite places to play in. Why these cities?

NS: Well, not to knock Detroit, but we've only played there once and we're only playing there because it gets us to Chicago. We've always had a great time in Chicago and the other cities, and those are the cities where we seem to have the strongest fanbase, if you want to use that word. It just made sense, if we were only going to play a handful of these kind of shows, they should be places that we really like, but also that has a good audience. There are a lot of shows where you have like 20 people at, that would be kind of a bummer at the end of a long streak.

WCP: D.C. is one of the shows, it's right around the corner from Baltimore, and you guys have often gotten compared to being a Dischord band. How has playing in D.C. factored into your career as a band?

Denny Bowen: I don't know, I guess the only thought is it was important to try and play there even though there was a period of time when we were so frustrated with the shows we would play in D.C. After a certain point it started getting better and better. It just seemed really important to try and play something that close. There should be more bands doing that regularly because, why not? Two cities could afford to be a little bit more symbiotic in their relationship musically I think sometimes.

WCP: What was so frustrating about those first shows you played in D.C.?

NS: The first couple years it was hard just to get a house show. Early on we didn't even much care playing there just because just to get on even some bad show was just to get at full speed. But then we started to have more stuff there, but even then it's just the old cliche at D.C. shows, everybody stands so still.

DB: Obviously it's changed now. The D.C. shows we've played have been pretty rowdy, which is awesome. I think also the standing still thing was something that then was a reaction to even before I was in the band. Kind of early on that was kind of the normal behavior at shows, people just kind of standing still, observing what's going on...Nolen ended up breaking that wall, making such in-your-face movement and remarks that we kind of had to pay attention or you'd look like a fool.

WCP: You mentioned the connection between D.C. and Baltimore needs to be a little stronger. Since the Baltimore scene came up midway through the last decade has there has been a stronger connection made between bands within the two cities? Is it still something that needs to be improved upon?

DB: I think there's definitely some inroads being made, and it can always be strengthened.

NS: With D.C. bands Hume and Imperial China, they both actively persue the Baltimore audience.

DB: Oh yeah, I mean I see Brit from Hume in Baltimore quite a bit. It kind of makes me feel bad, I kind of feel that the ball's in our court for a lot of Baltimore bands to try to just do stuff right down there.

WCP: Are Hume and Imperial China the two D.C. bands that you guys have maintained a strong relationship with?

DB: Hume played my house in the Copy Cat when I lived there a few times. That strengthened that relationship, at least on my end.

NS: There are, well, those two bands from there we really have a good connection with.

WCP: Once you're done and finish up in the studio and put everything out, what projects do you have in the works? I think I heard a little of Denny's new project [Roomrunner], but that's about it.

DB: Yeah, I have that new band where I'm playing guitar. I play all the instruments on the recording, save like a guitar track, but I've been working on writing stuff over the past year or two and I don't know, I always need some kind of outlet. I happened to get hooked up with a really good drummer through Brett so that obviously is awesome to me. I rarely get to not play drums and having someone really awesome play drums.

NS: Some friends of mine are more in the punk-slash-hardcore scene, we've been talking about starting something up towards the end of the year, but there's nothing really solid there. I think all three of us, we'll still be making music, just not together and hopefully we can play on the same shows and stuff.

DB: Yeah, I'm sure we'll help each other out and stuff like that. Even during all of it, we've all been busy doing one thing or the other, even throughout this past year, I played drums on Future Islands' record and Dan's [Deacon] new record. I'm always pretty busy, but without Double Dagger it's going to be interesting to go about things without trying to find a new outlet that's going fill that same speed, but I think it'll be easy to do, it'll be awesome when we get to share our new stuff together.

WCP: As far as the final show in Baltimore, is there anything that D.C. listeners should be aware of if they want to trek out to that as well as the D.C. show?

NS: As for the D.C. show, we're gonna play a slightly longer set than the normal. Actually, I don't know that was, but it'll be like much longer than usual. And the Baltimore show that's probably gonna be the longest that we've ever played. It's gonna be pretty epic. We might be dead at the end of it.

DB: That's actually in the setlist.

NS: At the final song we're gonna stop halfway through just because all our bodies are just gonna shut down.

Double Dagger plays with Imperial China and Holy Ghost Party Wednesday at the Black Cat.

Edsel photo by Tim Owens

Next week Universal will reissue Nirvana's Nevermind to celebrate the album's 20th anniversary, which will put a nice cherry on top of the grunge-nostalgia sundae folks seem so eager to devour lately. But as anyone who lived in Seattle in the late '80s and early '90s—or anyone who spent a couple hours Googling bands after watching Hype!—could tell you, grunge was bigger than Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Sub Pop. Plenty of musicians helped build the scene and the "Seattle sound."

Edsel was one of those bands, but in Washington, D.C., not Washington state. On Monday, New Jersey label Comedy Minus One digitally reissued a couple of the band's albums: 1993's The Everlasting Belt Co. and 1994's Detroit Folly. History hasn't been so kind to the group (see Andrew Beaujon's TBD piece "Edsel will reissue its albums to prove it existed"). In Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkins' local punk history book, Dance of Days, Edsel is merely described as "former members of teen-core bands Kids for Cash and At Wit's End...[who] had moved beyond that aesthetic to create a Wire-y art-punk style with spare lyrics." Hopefully, these reissues will help flesh out that memory a little bit.

As a bonus, the music rips. As the band says in a new write-up for Everlasting Belt Co., the Edsel sound evolved beyond Wire worship to combine arty guitar licks, D.C. post-hardcore-funk, and a smattering of shoegaze. The songs on Everlasting Belt Co. are muddy, they pulse and swell in odd angles, and they're more similar to Jawbox than Wire, especially on the album's lumbering opening tune, "Checkering." Edsel cleaned things up a bit for Detroit Folly, but kept the headstrong, often molasses-paced propulsion of the first album. It's daunting to jump into both records at once—Everlasting Belt Co. alone has 18 songs—but it's easy to get immersed in them.

So what caused Edsel to slip through the cracks? It could be that, though the group's sound lends complexity to D.C.'s late 80s/early '90s scene, it never conformed to what's known as the "D.C. sound." Which is what makes these reissues feel all the more special.

Edsel – "Buckle" by comedyminusone
Edsel – "Draw Down The Moon" by comedyminusone

Leading this assault on easy listening is Jeff Surak, the soft-spoken but always ardent champion of Sonic Circuits. Since the first festival in 2002, Surak has continued to bring the brightest stars in the experimental firmament down to D.C.: Merzbow, Faust, Jandek, Matmos, Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Rat Bastard, and so on. But Surak the curator is also a creator called Violet; here his “Incapacitated by the Sun” is a steady, minimal drone, like one of Merzbow’s monoliths spiked with a nip of Mr. Bastard’s fuzz.

Meanwhile, Blue Sausage Infant’s “Gemüsemaschine” is pure kraut—feisty, filling, and highly fermented. In his recent review of BSI’s first-ever long player, Negative Space (put out by Surak’s Zeromoon imprint, no less), City Paper’s Joe Warminsky noticed the same precision-engineering care of guests Jeff Barsky on guitar and the motorik percussion of Jason Mullinax. And since D.C. is kind of a small town, both Insect Factory (Barsky) and Pilesar (Mullinax) show up on District of Noise Vol. 4, as well. I’ve long sung praises of Barsky’s unique textures, and I’ve been nodding in assent to Mullinax’s jams since our college days at the University of South Carolina. That said, their contributions (“Slow Bloom” and “Spider Bait,” respectively) sound more deliberate, more mature than anything I’ve yet heard from them. As Surak’s festival programming confirms, experimental music has a canon now, and the work of Chester Hawkins (a.k.a. Blue Sausage Infant), Barsky, and Mullinax are gunning for inclusion.

Of course, experimental music is often precisely that. Many times, the results fail to yield anything qualitatively good. I could do without the forced collaboration of TL0741 and Anthony Pirog on “Busy Bees.” Individually, I like both very much (in fact, I’m quite eager to hear what Pirog does with Terry Riley’s indefatigable In C at this year’s festival), but this meeting does neither party any favors. Likewise, I’ve heard better from Pirog’s other partner in crime, Janel Leppin. To be fair, we don’t see any visuals from her “Music for a Film, The Recipe,” so it’s hard to judge too harshly. Then again, Music From the Film’s “Animal Friends” succeeds because it’s playtime narrative let’s us make up our own. After all, not all experiments are serious experiments.

It maybe be a little early to call—like most releases of its ilk, the District of Noise compilations need time to percolate—but I think Borborites’ “Sunrise in an Opium Den at the End of the World” is my favorite cut. There’s a forward motion to its tainted slab of synth and treatments that compels an active listen. Just as Thomas De Quincey learned to appreciate the subtleties of opium, there’s plenty of nuance to Borborites’ sun-baked apocalypse.

"The band always had an aura of excitement and energy surrounding them, which only seemed to grow during their five years of activity," says Andy Low, who runs Robotic Empire. The Richmond label's inaugural release was a PG. 99 record: Low recently re-released two of the band's albums on vinyl, Singles and document #8. The latter, which came out 10 years ago, is a fan favorite, and it's just one part of what's helped the band's audience grow postmortem. "Since disbanding, I think rumors and legends slowly developed and word sort of continued to spread," Low says. "I've seen it happen with some bands where they become more popular after disbanding, but with PG.99 they just seemed to maintain a healthy following."

The group's legend is rock history-worthy: PG. 99 became known for raucous, cathartic live performances; the group would sometimes perform with more than a dozen people; it cranked out 14 releases, toured hard, and sometimes partied a little too hard before burning out.

All the newfound attention surrounding the group's reunion has been a little surreal for Mike Taylor, PG. 99's guitarist and principle songwriter. He attributes fans' growing interest to timing as well as mystery. "We did a whole lot really quick, made all these albums, and then just disappeared," he says. "leaving in the time the Internet was picking up ... that had a lot to do with PG. 99's ability to come back and still have interest."

Another reason is that a new guard of bands are reviving the style. Groups like Pianos Become The Teeth, Touche Amore, and The Saddest Landscape are at the peak of the new-old screamo scene.

Actually, the Saddest Landscape is an even closer peer: They started up 10 years ago in Boston. Frontman Andy Maddox recalls catching PG. 99 early on in the decade. "When I first heard them, honestly they kind of seemed like a mess to me, but really kind of entertaining," he says. "They would show up and there would just be this force, these amps and these people that would take over basements. It didn't matter to me that they were messy." But Maddox saw the band grow out of that messiness and into a tighter group, with document #8 as its pinnacle. He says that PG. 99 became something of a Fugazi-like band in its scene. Touche Amore singer Jeremy Bolm welcomes the comparison. "When our band started, we threw that out there pretty often," Bolm says. "That was the intention of that sort of style, pretty much '90s screamo hardcore."

PG. 99's also offers a kind of appealing sincerity. "Everyone into this type of punk rock or post-hardcore can definitely see when a band is being honest," says Pianos Become The Teeth guitarist Mike York. "They meant it 110 percent." It's that passion that's part of the appeal for York. "That's one of the coolest things of this kind of music," he says. "It's an honor to be included in it."

As much as today's torchbearers admire PG. 99, Taylor certainly appreciates their work, too. "It's definitely really cool because it gives us a platform to come back and do it again and it still has meaning," he says. A quick look at YouTube videos of the group's first reunion performance last week in Richmond during Best Friends Day demonstrates that.

"It was incredible, it was pretty overwhelming," Taylor says. "But at the same time it was kind of funny cause it didn't hit me that we were doing this PG. 99 show until I was checking out the shirts." Taylor has been playing with his PG. 99 cohorts Johnny Ward and his brother Chris in the dark folk project Pygmy Lush, so their time together preparing for the reunion didn't feel like it was out of the ordinary: While inner turmoil caused the band to break up in the first place, Taylor says that PG. 99's members made their friendship a priority, and it's part of why getting back together was pretty easy.

Taylor says the band had gotten offers in the past, but it wasn't until a festival organizer named Curtis Grimstead, who runs Rorschach Records, asked him in January. "I asked him and he said 'haha, that's really funny,'" Grimstead says. "Later that night he said 'actually maybe we could do that.'" Taylor says, "We liked the idea, so Curtis didn't really have to do much convincing." When all 1,000 tickets to their Best Friends Day set at Canal Club sold out, the band decided to schedule a second show in D.C.

After months of planning and learning all of document #8 for the show, the band delivered a 30-minute set that still affects Taylor. "It seemed more real and authentic to just get up there and make a whole bunch of blistering noise, and that's kind of what happened," he says. "It was beyond my expectations. I didn't expect us to play as well as we did. It was really something special, the crowd and the band kind of wrapped itself into one yet again."

That sets a pretty high bar for tomorrow night's show. The band won't play document #8 again, at least not in order, but Taylor doesn't want to skimp on the performance. And this could be a deciding factor in whether or not PG. 99 plays another show soon. For Taylor and the rest of the band, the future seems pretty up in the air. "I guess we'll just let this D.C. show come and pass and see how that feels."

PG. 99 performs with Circle Takes The Square and Thou tomorrow at 9 p.m. at Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW.

Marginal Man, one of the early bands on Dischord Records, played a one-off reunion show to a packed Black Cat on Saturday night. "When [Government Issue] did their reunion show back in December, [Marginal Man drummer] Mike Manos and I sat in on a couple of Marginal Man songs with Set to Explode, who opened for GI that night," said Marginal Man guitarist Kenny Inouye recently. "It was a fun time, and it got even more folks hitting us up to do a reunion show."

There may have been a general age difference of 20 or 30 years between the crowd in the mosh pit for Marginal Man and the crowd for the opener Strike Anywhere, but the ferocity and power was intense across the board. Signs reading "No crowd surfing or stage diving allowed" were nothing more than decorations.

All proceeds from T-shirt sales went to the Shirts for a Cure, an arm of the Baltimore-based Syrentha J. Savio Endowment, which provides financial assistance to underprivileged woman who cannot afford the expense of fighting breast cancer. SSE's Mark Beemer said the Marginal Man shirts from Saturday will be available for mail order shortly; look for an announcement on the Marginal Man website and Facebook pages.

All photos from the Marginal Man show can be seen here.

But there's another recent Fugazi interpretation the Post missed: "Not Playin'" by Charlotte, N.C., rapper Stranger Day. For the track, Philly producer Emynd sampled Fugazi's "Blueprint." According to URB, Ian MacKaye cleared the sample, too.

The Fugazi part sounds a little strange when matched with Stranger Day's rhymes about girls with "pretty tans" and turning parties out. Nevertheless, in his description for the song's video, Stranger Day writes: "the video will show how we get down in the south (fugazi samples, moonshine, skateboarding, chicks, 71 riviera and partying!..."

Fugazi and Moonshine?! Now we've heard everything.

You can grab the EP Barstool Bounce for free at Stranger Day's website.

Clockwise from top left: Rashad Dobbins, Tim Hicks, John Moon, Yvonne Gilmore, Katrina Starr, Sam Lavine

It’s Monday night at the Kennedy Center, and the cocktail crowd is confused. On many evenings, programming on the arts center’s free Millennium Stage skews toward background music for patrons killing time before Wicked. But at this particular moment, there’s no exchanging of pleasantries.

A front line of poets performs sharp-elbowed verse while prickly guitars, percussion, and bass overwhelm the grand corridor. A laptop and MPC-2000 dispense chaos; samples are dropped and manipulated live. What starts as combative testosterone becomes manic performance art: There’s Thom Yorke-like limb flailing, James Brown shuffling, yells, whispers, echoes. Before delving into a scathing, self-serious verse on the song “Patriotic Me,” frontman Tim Hicks wraps his dog tags around the mic stand. “Distance is the gun of the resistance,” he rhymes. “So we pledge allegiance to the poor and the war-torn streets.”

Volunteer ushers are the first casualties, plugging their ears even though the band’s manager says the group is playing more quietly than usual at the Kennedy Center’s request. But despite the on-stage ruckus, between songs the proceedings take on the polite vibe of a policy lecture. The MCs stand there awkwardly. Onlookers squirm in their fold-outs.

The Cornel West Theory is used to this. Since 2004, the hip-hop band has been a mainstay of the area’s show spaces, re-imagining its genre as a thick soup of spoken-word patterns, traditional flow, densely arranged beats, and frenzied instrumentation. They’re poised to become a rare local rap export, though you won’t see them at open mics on U Street NW. You will see them performing for horn-rimmed socialites at the Black Cat, punks at Fort Reno, jazz heads at Bohemian Caverns, and socially conscious bohos at Bloombars.

They’ve worked out raps on the mixtape circuit, but capturing their live show in the studio has been grueling. They’ve scrapped one album and gone on to resent another. They’ve split with their label. Most members are in their 30s and harboring toddlers.

But the title of their new album plants an ambitious flag: The Shape of Hip-Hop to Come. Trouble is: They’re running out of chances to transform into something sustainable.

First things first: winning back the Kennedy Center set. As the show winds down, rapper Rashad Dobbins does his best imitation of an anti-drug PSA asking the crowd, “Any questions?”

Concert becomes panel discussion, and the first query is easy to predict: Are you really affiliated with the Cornel West?

—

It happened at a book signing in 2004,when Hicks, the band’s chief beat-maker and lead MC, asked West for his blessing. The name was probably happening either way, but paying tribute was the right move. “I asked him about the style and substance,” says West, the controversy-prone public intellectual who teaches at Princeton’s Center for African American Studies (and who’s released his own hip-hop albums). “I was honored, humbled by a younger generation of highly talented creative and visionary artists.”

The group, whose members are all D.C. natives, initially formed around American University. Dobbins, poet Yvonne Gilmore, and drummer Sam Lavine were students who bonded over their misfit taste in music; Hicks met Dobbins in a pick-up basketball game. Eventually, two of Dobbins’ former classmates from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, poet Katrina Starr and electronics utility player John Moon, suited up. The band supplements its live game with guest musicians.

The nascent group wasn’t simply interested in being a hip-hop band. And the conscious-rap subgenre had grown too clown-like for their taste. “It’s sort of the way Bruce Lee hated kung fu movies because there was too much dancing and not enough fighting,” says Dobbins, who’s not just a fan of free-jazz legend Ornette Coleman (who made The Shape of Jazz to Come) but also the defunct Swedish post-hardcore band Refused (who made The Shape of Punk to Come).

They make it a point to blindside journalists with widely diverse name-checks: On the first day I meet Dobbins, he invokes Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead, the Kardashev scale, transhumanism, and Mortal Kombat (Dobbins’ first rap alias was “Scorpion”). The band’s booming urban sprawl brings in all kinds of sounds, and meditates on all manner of societal ills. “We’re into Bad Brains, we’re into krumping,” Dobbins says. “We’re into a very physical live show.”

After ditching an album it finished in 2008, the band released 2009’s self-recorded Second Rome on local label Sockets Records, which is mostly known for dispensing vinyl from art rockers. It was the label’s most successful release at the time, but given the limited run of 1,500 CDs, it’s doubtful the band made more than four figures, which it then split among its many members. A 2010 mixtape followed, and this year the band booked time to record at Arlington’s legendary punk studio Inner Ear.

—

Yvonne Gilmore spends a lot of time going inside the brackets: “One of the lines I use on the new album is, ‘We’re training hip-hop not to stutter.’ Stuttering is a rhythm you outgrow in order to connect with more people.”

She spent the night driving from Columbus, Ohio, where she’s a pastor with the Disciples of Christ. It’s Saturday morning at the Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library downtown, and Gilmore is leading a poetry workshop for sharp-tongued teenagers. After this, she’ll drive to Baltimore for the Roots Festival; the band is billed just beneath Talib Kweli.

Gilmore presents Maya Angelou and Marc Smith to the teens. There’s background, reading, analysis. The kids loathe rapper Common, but Gilmore finally connects on the topic of gentrification. Sort of. The kids lament the recent closing of a trusted Pizza Hut on U Street NW. The workshop is a mirror of the band: They use expression to disseminate information; they’re a dogmatically D.C. outfit that often raps about parochial conditions. Thing is, the agenda is kind of a mess.

Moon is an Americorps veteran who has taught in D.C. Public Schools. “Each of us has a different slice of the pie,” he says. “Yvonne being very committed to religion and feeling that it plays a part in social change. Rashad is about reflectionist art, about anarchy. He’d say we’re just taking in information, putting our spin on it, and putting it back out. Tim is into revolutionary ideas. Katrina is into paganism. I’m more into grassroots D.C. activism.” The clashing is minimal, because they’re all left-leaning bohemians.

The members call West their uncle. He pops in every three months or so, guesting on stage or on records.

The band’s name means two problems: reacting to West’s high-profile opinions, and not embarrassing him. In April, West called President Barack Obama “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs,” and the band had to answer for it to friends and peers. “We deal with it all the time, ‘What do you think about what he says about the president?’ He’s a living legend and can speak for himself,” Starr says. “But his mother gave him that name. We remain mindful that it’s not some sort of life gimmick.”

—

Hicks loves to defer questions and share shine, but he’s the alpha dog. For the new album, Hicks had West lecture while the tapes rolled. “We were specific about what type of character or personality we wanted to get out of him,” Hicks says. “Everything was done from the top of his brain. Present him with a topic and he can expand right on the spot.”

West laid down tracks in Columbus following a speaking engagement at Ohio State University. “It was just describing what was in my heart and soul,” West says. “We got song after song usually done in one take.”

Great—except the band parted ways with Sockets in late spring. “It made sense for them to keep profits and not add another piece in the overhead,” Sean Peoples, Sockets’ owner, says. “They’re one of the D.C. bands that can be exported, but they have six people. They have a manager. I’m not adding much beyond, ‘Hey we’re on a label.’”

The band says the Sockets split was necessary to bankroll the album, and that they’re grateful to Peoples. But it also marked the first time that the band has made a compromise in the interest of business.

Second Rome garnered praise from figureheads like Chuck D, whose Public Enemy tapped The Cornel West Theory to open at the 9:30 Club. Still, the album lacked the technique and budget to showcase the live band. Moon, whose role has blossomed to include heavy lifting on the studio boards, speaks of Second Rome like it’s an ex-love and the biggest barrier was bad timing. “Maybe it went over people’s heads,” he says. “Once you put it out you have to let it go. It was done in a very simply tracked manner. [The Shape of Hip-Hop to Come] was a much bigger production: more instrumental overdubs, it’s brighter and punchier.”

The album drops July 19—the band is self-releasing 5,000 copies—and Starr says she’s praying for a windfall. Dobbins echoes a similar need for the money to get right. Four members have kids, which mostly limits the band to regional touring. Hicks isn’t worried. “The only thing that can break us up is the creator,” he says. “Moses was called at 40 and didn’t go into Israel until he was 80-something. If it was meant for you to do it’s going to get out.”

The Shape of Hip-Hop to Come won’t compete on the pop circuit, but in a landscape that allows Jay-Z to sign ill mathematics mystery men like Jay Electronica or tap weirdos like Frank Ocean for hooks, anything is possible on the heels of a lucky tweet.

The band calls its stuff Type I music, after the Kardashev scale’s measure of civilizations. A Type I civilization has mastery over the resources of its home planet. The outer-space angle is sort of bullshit. The band makes smart, highly poetic, unguarded rap-rock. They’re often backed on bass by an older session type named Ezra, who does not look classically cool because he’s probably in his early 60s, but he’s a terrific bass player. That truly expressionist commitment to telling stories via the clearest available channels is much more remarkable than mission statements and academic associations. And the goal is simple: “The plan is to tell the world about D.C. hip-hop,” Dobbins says.

—

Back at the Kennedy Center, Dobbins is fielding more questions: about West, about the new album. For some reason, the band is asked about the recent death of Gil Scott-Heron. Dobbins is warm and transparent, clarifying lyrics.

Think circles surface as folks file out. Four college kids combine forces to buy the band’s old CD. They’ve been converted. “You can upload it at the house,” one of them says. “We only need one copy.”

The Cornel West Theory performs Thursday, July 14 at Fort Reno Park; Saturday, July 16 at the Baldacchino Gypsy Tent at Fort Fringe; and Saturday, July 30 at U Street Music Hall. Photos 1-4 by Darrow Montgomery. Photos 5-6 by Yulia Graham.

Correction: The article originally misspelled Sam Lavine's name.

Things got pretty confusing when we received an e-mail announcing the forthcoming release by a DIY act called The Gift. That's because the most recent issue of the City Paper included a "One Track Mind" about a song off the debut album by a local DIY trio called, yes, The Gift. The band celebrated the release of Mostly in Sickness at the Black Cat almost two weeks ago. Something didn't add up.

Turns out, this e-mail described the latest effort by a band from Portugal, not D.C. It turns out they play light, airy synth-pop, and their new album is called Explode and comes out in September. Oh, and they've been around since 1994. 

The Portuguese group may have the locals beat in age—the D.C. act started up in '09—but we prefer the harsh, heart-pounding tunes from the hometown crew. But take a listen to both acts and decide for yourself:

The Gift (Portugal) – "RGB" (off Explode):

The Gift (D.C.) – Mostly in Sickness: