Slave Ambient

MUSIC

Former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello is at Birchmere under the moniker The Nightwatchman. His album World Wide Rebel Songs isn't as headbanger-friendly as Rage's self-titled debut, but he's still doing the heady politics thing. 7:30 p.m. $25.

The Black Cat celebrates its 18th birthday tonight with a stage full of local bands; The Max Levine Ensemble headlines. 8 p.m. on the mainstage, $5. Backstage is Party Lights, everyone's favorite girl-group and garage dance party. 9:30 p.m., $5.

HR from Bad Brains will play an acoustic set tomorrow night at The Fridge. The event, a fundraiser for a documentary about the musician himself, will be hosted by Chuck Treece from McRad. Thomas Blondet DJs. 6 p.m.

One of the best outdoor Labor Day weekend options may be the 23rd Annual Blues Festival at Carter Barron on Saturday. The event, hosted by the D.C. Blues Society, includes a musical instrument petting zoo for kids; guitar, harmonica, and vocal workshops; and an after-party for $12. Noon, free admission.

If you're a regular Arts Desk reader, you know we're fans of Volta Bureau, the dance music production team of Will Eastman, Micah Vellian, and Outputmessage. Tomorrow night, the ensemble plays a release party for its single "Hope," alongside local DJs Jay Simon, Chris Nitti, and Lxsx Frxnk. 10 p.m. at U Street Music Hall. $10.

Brazilian singer Luisa Maita is back for another show at Bohemian Caverns. If you missed her in November, consider rectifying that. 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Sunday, $15.

SKATEBOARDING

Pull your "Skateboarding is Not a Crime" t-shirt out of the bottom drawer for tonight's Thrasher magazine photo show at The Fridge. It's a one-night-only event in celebration of the skater mag's 30th anniversary. 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Free.

THEATER

The annual Page-to-Stage Festival kicks off tomorrow at Kennedy Center. All weekend, more than 40 local theater troupes will host open readings and rehearsals of works in progress. Admission is gloriously free. Check out the schedule on the Kennedy Center's website.

FILM

Tomorrow, THEARC hosts the East of the River Film Festival, a showcase of independent short films by local filmmakers. It's free all day from noon to 10 p.m.

You could probably spend the next couple days watching Irish films at the National Gallery of Art. This weekend brings showings of the 1952 comedy The Quiet Man and 1959's This Other Eden. Free.

SWIMMING

Brightest Young Things hosts its last pool party of the summer. The theme: back to school. Noon to 8 p.m. Saturday at the Capitol Skyline Hotel. $15.

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.

Washington City Paper: The Wilson Center has been around for 30 years but its use as a DIY space, a stage for punk shows, hasn’t been continuous throughout this period.  What’s the history?

Mark Andersen: The Wilson Center was first used for a punk show on April 4, 1981.  It was organized by H.R. of the Bad Brains, one of their last shows before they moved to New York.  Looking back, it was a historic show because bands that are looked to now as trailblazers played: Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Government Issue, Void, Scream, and others.  That kicked off a period of heavy use by the D.C. punk scene that lasted until 1985.

There was a break because those shows came to be afflicted with violence and were no longer welcome by the community. So the Wilson Center didn’t function as a punk space again until 1987, for Fugazi’s first show.

By 1992, there were so many community spaces that the Wilson Center wasn’t as central, though it continued to hold shows until 1996. Then, its primary use came to be an after-school program for the Latin American Youth Center. One of the decisions they made was to dismantle the grand old stage you see in all those old D.C. hardcore photos. At this point we all assumed punk history at the Wilson Center had ended.

As it happens, that wasn’t the case. By then, Fugazi had gone from a band that would draw maybe 300 people to a band that drew thousands. Any other band would have left behind this hole in the wall, but that’s not how Fugazi approached things. So they wanted to go back to the Wilson Center to do a lightly publicized 10th anniversary show. So I returned to talk to the staff, and they agreed to it pretty quickly. Fortunately we had a portable stage that we brought in. The show went well, and that could have been the end of things.

Then there was a shift in control of the Wilson Center to the Centro de Arte, run by Lilo Gonzalez. Lilo made it a crucial gathering point for the Latino community and particularly the nueva canción movement. He was someone who had a great deal of shared spirit with Positive Force. So we started to collaborate with him in 1998.

At the same time, there was a new generation of bands rising. A lot of the first bands to play there, early D.C. hardcore or Revolution Summer era, either weren’t around anymore or preferred to play clubs. At that point, Ryan and Wade Fletcher, the guys who ran the Brian Mackenzie Infoshop—named after someone who had a seizure and died at a Wilson Center show—became the main folks putting on shows at the Wilson Center. These were bands like Q and Not U, Kill the Man Who Questions, Strike Anywhere, Los Crudos, Make-Up, Most Secret Method, Bratmobile, The Suspects, The Goons, Crispus Attucks…

Then something very significant happened in 1999: the new Columbia Heights Metro station opened. With all the high density development that was projected, property values were rising rapidly and so were rents, and it became clear that it was going to end.  Centro de Arte tried to preserve it as a community space but it didn’t work. Eventually it became the Capital City Public Charter School. It hasn’t turned into a Starbucks or whatever the old D.C. Space became, or the old Positive Force house in Arlington that was turned into a McMansion. So in comparison, the transformation of the Wilson Center into a school is not that tragic. But by 2001, it appeared to be over.

Then in 2007, we were planning a benefit for Neighbor’s Consejo with The Evens at St. Stephens, but they were having a big Thanksgiving basket assembly at the time. So Ian MacKaye happened to walk by the old Wilson Center and looked in the window, and saw that they had preserved the space as a multipurpose room with a stage. So he said to me, “Wouldn’t hurt to call!” So I contacted the principal of CCPCH. To our amazement, they were open to it, and with one week's notice, The Evens played.

So you can say the Wilson Center has functioned as a DIY space for 30 years. Will it be a place where shows are put on regularly? I doubt it, because it’s an elementary school now, so it isn’t as available. Plus Positive Force is based at St. Stephen’s church now, we have a wonderful relationship there, and we want to build that as our home base. On the other hand, you never know. Positive Force is closely allied with We Are Family, and we’re building a relationship with students and staff at CCPCS for our outreach work with seniors.

One thing I want to make clear is that we’re not intending for this show to be creating too much nostalgia, or fetishizing the Wilson Center space. That space was extraordinarily important at different junctures, but it’s less about the space than the spirit, and that spirit can find a home pretty much everywhere.

WCP: Let’s talk about the relationship between DIY spaces and development. Obviously these spaces can’t exist where rent is too high. At the same time there’s a tendency of punks and bohemian types to act as pioneers, and bring in new businesses to an area once there’s a demonstrated market. Are these spaces victims of gentrification or harbingers of it?

MA: Well I think the responsibility is on those of us entering that community. If you’re here to be part of it, to mix with what was there before, I don’t see a problem with that, and think you’ll be welcome. If you come in with an agenda of what the community should be, you’ll approach it less as people and more as a problem. For example in Columbia Heights: Would I like to see the power of the drug economy ebb? See young people finding a sense of belonging outside the gang world? Of course I would. So I’m not foolish enough to think we can stop change, nor do I have the tunnel vision that everything should be preserved. The legacies of segregation, and the Central American wars are still very relevant here.

WCP: What’s the state of DIY spaces today?  Has the fate of the Wilson Center reflected the historical availability of those spaces?

MA: Clearly the context is dramatically different than it was in the '80s and '90s. The cost of living is dramatically higher here in Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan. These were places that were once more hospitable to a bohemian lifestyle.

Also history has moved on. There was a certain moment when an energy gathered around this particular cultural expression. Rock music has its own narrative arc in terms of what people believe it might mean. Do people believe that art can have transformative power? I know that it can—I’ve lived that. But it’s also true that certain art forms have their heyday and then…fade. I have no idea what’s ahead, which is why I talk about punk rather than punk rock. Because, for me, punk is a spirit, an attitude towards life that is relevant in many places. So it should not be tied to any particular form of popular music. That DIY spirit will continue to find its place, because it’s needed. And what form it might take, I don’t have any idea.

WCP: Will DIY spaces continue to thrive in the future?

MA: I think a certain part of the rock audience is less interested in DIY spaces now than in the late '80s, early '90s. Much of the punk or rock audience here is used to the club circuit now, and the intersection of alcohol and music. It’s more entertainment than revolution. And this is how it often goes. However, the fact that the DIY spirit persists and continues to be expressed in so many contexts is hopeful.

One of the big ideas early on was independence. You’re trying to create a liberated zone where you can express yourself, and envision a world you believe is better than the status quo. And you need a certain amount of freedom to make things happen. But that ethic can be taken too far. If you’re not careful, what it leads to is a little outpost in the subterranean nooks and crannies of society—which may be important to you personally and the other folks who share that space with you. But it can cut you off from the broader community, or from trying to genuinely transform society. For Positive Force, our important organizing principle is interdependence. Rather than “I need freedom,” “we need each other.”

A full day of programs on the Wilson Center's 30th anniversary takes place today; at 5 p.m., Ian MacKaye will speak on "The Importance of Community Hall Spaces," followed by performances by the Max Levine Ensemble, Birds and Wires, War on Women and Fell Types starting at 7 pm.  Show admission $5 – $10 sliding scale; food and clothing donations for charities We Are Family and Hermano Pedro encouraged.  At Capital City Public Charter School, 3047 15th St. NW.

D.C. was well-represented this year at South by Southwest, with a ton of local bands present at showcases like DC Does TX and others. Amid the massive festival's insanity, I caught a sampling of D.C. talent, from These United States and Wild Flag (featuring Mary Timony) to Ted Leo (hey, he lived here for a while) and Bad Brains. Shooting the Brains' whole set, without injuring myself or my Nikon as a mosh pit raged around me, will long remain an incredible (albeit slightly scary) memory.

These United States

Wild Flag

Ted Leo

Bad Brains

Additional photos from these sets, as well as for various other SXSW bands like The Kills, Duran Duran, and Wanda Jackson can be found here over the next couple of days.

This Sunday, you can find the HR Band and a host of other punks at the second annual Ain’t Scared Fest. The loud, angry gathering is set to take place at DIY space Hole In The Sky. The show starts at 3 p.m. and features sets from The Coits, The Screws, A Warm Gun, Nervous Impulse, Lapse, and more. It’s hard to say how long any underground show space will last, so enjoy the ephemeral punk pleasure while you can.

Artificially Sweetened is best treated as something akin to a The Death Set for Dummies: Clearly, the dudes in The Death Set are big fans of all the artists featured on the mixtape, and the brief selections and odd mash-ups of hip-hop acts and punk bands certainly show their mark on the frenetic punk act.

A few D.C. acts make an appearance on Artificially Sweetened. Black Eyes shows up early on, as track No. 7 fuses the screeching "Deformative" with Jamaican dancehall artist Buju Banton's "Circumstances." Fugazi's "Public Witness Program" remains almost untouched for most of the 1:07 cut that's included on the mixtape. That is, until the end of the tune,when Notorious B.I.G.'s voice shows up to drop some rhymes from "Hypnotize." Bad Brains' "At the Movies" shows up at the end of the mixtape, though it's not mashed up.

You can grab the rest of The Death Set's ADD-addled mixtape over at Mishka Bloglin.

"Why do I have to be a black rocker?" Kokayi asks in an interview. "Why can't I just be a rock star? We don't get a chance to just be us. I don't stick myself in one category."

"RoxTar," the first single from Kokayi's forthcoming Robots & Dinosaurs album, is an energetic electro-punk song with an impressive guitar solo from Stan Cooper and Kokayi's masterful cadence and word play. He salutes D.C. bands Minor Threat, Fugazi, and Bad Brains, not to mention Anthrax, Megadeth, and Stone Temple Pilots, among  other acts. "Puffin' on the Sevendust 'til I'm long in the tooth/I ain't Fugazi bitches, listen I am the truth," Kokayi raps.

If "RoxTar" is a preview of Kokayi's upcoming material, then Robots & Dinosaurs is a must-have when it drops. Either way, expect the unexpected.

Download "RoxTar" here.

Or you could sate your punk jones tonight next Thursday at Affinity Lab in Adams Morgan, where longtime D.C. activist Mark Andersen will be screening 70 minutes of footage he began collecting while working on his history of the city's punk rock, Dance of Days. It's not a formal documentary film, the Positive Force co-founder says, just a byproduct of his research.

"I’d been here for a significant portion of the time the book covers, but I wasn’t here from '76 to '84," he says. "And even the parts of the book I was here for, when you’re present for something your memories aren't always reliable... so documents and videos were terribly invaluable."

His footage, which he'll be providing commentary for, begins with shots of the trippy punk band the Slickee Boys with its original singer, Martha Hull. From there, Andersen says, expect video of performances by Half Japanese, Minor Theart, S.O.A., Rites of Spring, Fugazi, Dag Nasty, Embrace, Bikini Kill, and others.

He also has video from Positive Force's 2005 Counter-Inaugeral Ball, a concert which then spilled out into a march, and then a "minor riot" (of which, he says, he did not approve; almost 80 people were arrested).

Andersen says he'll also show some rare video from 1980 of Bad Brains performing, while young Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye look on. "It's one of the holy grails," he says.

The evening is free, but donations will benefit the senior-outreach non-profit Andersen runs, We Are Family. It takes place 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. tonight at Affinity Lab, which is at 2451 18th St. And it's not the only Positive Force-related activity this next weekend. June marks the group's 25th year, and it has a whole host of events planned. More on it later.

Not many novelists reviewed in the New York Times are writing about Bad Brains shows in Washington, D.C., circa 1979. But Jennifer Gilmore, with her new novel Something Red, has somehow written a popular work of fiction in which H.R. is a minor player. We asked Gilmore, who's in town this week for several readings, about basement shows, radicalism, and Washington's memorable foliage.

Are you from D.C.?

Yes. I grew up in Chevy Chase, Md., and went to BCC most of my life.

So, you've got a lot in common with Vanessa. [Vanessa, Something Red's adolescent protagonist, behaves badly in and around D.C.'s nascent hardcore scene.]

Not really. This book takes place in 1979. That's before my time. I was super young then. The music is different, and the time is different.

Why did you decide to ficitionalize this era?

I started the book because I wanted to write about how radicalism has declined over the generations, and wanted to look at that phenomenon through Jewish history. I'm very interested in the way history plays out in families.

During that time, there was so much going on with music. There was disco, there was the Dead, and there was punk...Music is the way people express dissent. I wanted [Vanessa] for the first time to experience what it's like to to go a Bad Brains show. I never saw them—they had left for New York by the time I would have been old enough—but they were literally from D.C., and I liked writing about someone who was at the edges of punk rock...and [Vanessa's brother] Benjamin is a jock in high school, but heir to his grandfather, who is a Lower East Side socialist...[Benjamin] finds that radicalism in the Grateful Dead at Brandeis.

Do you think it's strange to be a Jew in D.C.? [The author, whose grandfather is Jewish, isn't Jewish himself, but is still one of the most Jewish people he knows in this WASP-y town.]

When I was growing up, I remember going to a lot of Bar Mitzvahs—high-end Bar Mitzvahs with senators' kids. But I didn't grow up particularly religious. We went to the high holidays. We went to Temple Sinai. I didn't have a Bat Mitzvah...It wasn't until I went to Brandeis, where there were all these people from New York City and Long Island, that I was surrounded by Jews. These Jews were different.

In what way?

They grew up in really Jewish community. People I knew from Teaneck, N.J., did not not have friends that weren't Jewish. I came to realize a lot later that experience—having a diverse group of friends—is unique to Washington.

You're writing about a music scene that's not well-documented, at least in the mainstream media. How did you research that world?

I don't write a lot about the facts of it. I've been to punk shows and my experience seeing Dag Nasty or Minor Threat is similar to what Vanessa experiences. The experience of being in a basement—that experience I understood. There's a book called Punk Love with pictures by Susie Horgan, who I met later in Miami. You can get oral histories in some ways. I'm in no way trying to write about that scene or claim to know anything about that scene. It was about a character getting her feet wet in something, and for her, that feels natural.

Do you have anything to say about the scene now?

I don't really know it. I don't want to claim to be someone I'm not. I went to shows sometimes and was overwhelmed by them—the energy of it, what it was like. You always have that sense in any scene, whether you're following the Grateful Dead or Dag Nasty. I was always on the outside, always kind of watching.

What was the identity that stuck for you?

I don't feel like I had a particular identity. It's hard growing up, but now it's incredibly useful, to be a person who's not only one kind of person...I feel the other you get, the more specialized you become. On the inside, we're all teenagers. I'm a writer. A lot of my friends are writers, so I'm not conversant in that. I teach, so I have this unique experience of having college students in my life. My sister is a visual artist. I'm married to a painter. My life is the cultural life of New York.

Do you miss Washington?

I grew up there, so all of my complicated memories of childhood are associated with that town. I grew up in the Reagan/Bush years. It's the kind of town that's informed by who's in office. I mean, there were jelly bean stores when Reagan was in office. I'm not not interested in politics, but I'm not a political person. Honestly, it's such a beautiful town—my memories are of driving by the Watergate, of all the trees...I don't have that experience being connected to the visuals of a place now. I miss that—feeling so close to the mechanisms of government...Of course, we were as far away from that as anyone else. But that proximity was interesting. That's what I've chosen to write about.

Do you feel like stakes are lower than they were in the 1980s?

At college at Brandeis, I had a feeling that I had missed the '60s. That I'd missed this amazing time...but looking at Obama and the way people rallied, knocking on doors in ghettos of Philadelphia...I've been really revitalized by that. But that was fleeting. I'm not sure if that's related to our time or technology... everything feels purposeful and completely purposeless. You get attached to something online, and it's gone in 10 minutes.

You need people for a revolution. So many people are online, I don't know how they get together. I really wanted to deal with the decline of radicalism. I wanted to say that what radicalism means for each generation is really different. I think that there are people who, very much, think they are radicals in some ways. 1960s radicals might not agree, but it is what it is.

Gilmore reads tonight at 7 p.m. Politics & Prose. She also reads Thursday at 11 a.m. at Chevy Chase library and Sunday 2 p.m. at Borders in Bailey's Crossroads.

When I saw Bad Brains perform at 930 Club on election night they sounded really tight, except for HR, who hit the stage with all the vigor of a worn out elastic band. His vocals were barely audible and he smiled a lot, maybe too much. At any rate, it wasn't really something that's gonna stand up very well next to a talking head shot of one of the Minor Threat's Lyle Preslar calling them "the inspiration."

So, if you're hiding some ancient Betamax tape of HR throttling Henry Rollins, maybe you should get in touch with these guys.

Preview after the jump.

Bad Brains_teaser