Some more Sockets goodies: A local fan of the label posted some glacial remixes of seven Sockets tracks. And Imperial China has a new video for "Limbs," off its new album How We Connect:

IMPERIAL CHINA – "Limbs" from Sean Peoples on Vimeo.

A Love Song for Bobby: TBD goes behind the counter at Black Cat's Food for Thought, run by Bobby Ferrando, the father of club owner Dante Ferrando.

The Day the Music Died: The final D.C. Jazz Loft show at Red Door is upon us!

Yesterday on Arts Desk: The Washington National Opera finally gets its Ring (Cycle). Thank you, papa Kennedy Center.

Diogo Nogueira

DANCING

Tomorrow night at U Hall, DJs Tittsworth and Klever make their debut as—wait for it—Kleavage. It should be a respectable evening of brandy-swirling and a sing-along 'round the family piano. 10 p.m. $10. 21+ without advance tickets.

If you'd rather stray from the tats and caps, maybe check out The Singles Club at DC9 with DJ Heartbreak Beat and longtime Razzmatazz DJ William Alberque. Expect to hear Britpop, electropop, and girl pop, which I didn't realize was a genre. 9 p.m. Saturday. $5, or free before 10:30 p.m. 21+.

Sunday, rock promoter Sasha Lord debuts a new monthly at Cafe L'Enfant in Adams Morgan called Redeem Your Soul on Sunday. From her email blast: "Think swampy, that new/oldish garage sound, girl represented, arty, soulful heartache, that space age sound, Parisians in love, danceable beats and head nodding." With DJ Baby Alcatraz. 9:30 p.m.

DANCE

When British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon was creating a new Swan Lake for the Pennsylvania Ballet in 2004, he photocopied pictures of every Degas dance painting he could find and plastered the images all over the studio walls. Saturday, the Phillips Collection puts that creative process in reverse. The museum has 30 real Degas works hanging on the walls, and while you can’t see dancers in the flesh, you can attend a screening of Wheeldon’s Swan Lake, as performed in 2009 by Germany’s Badisches Staatstheater Ballet. The screening coincides with the final weekend of the museum’s special exhibit, Degas’ “Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint,” which closes Sunday. The exhibit features ballerinas in less-than-flattering positions, stretching, flexing, and futzing with their shoes. “What struck me most of all was how accurate all these paintings are in their depiction of the rehearsal process and how things haven’t really changed,” Wheeldon says in an interview with Wall Street Journaldance writer Robert Greskovic. The Swan Lake showing also opens a Wheeldon-heavy ballet season in Washington: In April, the New York City Ballet will perform an as-yet-untitled new Wheeldon work, and on Feb. 1, American Ballet Theatre will give the Washington premiere of his Thirteen Diversions. Guess who will be the starring dancer? Sarah Lane, Natalie Portman’s Black Swan body-double. Because in the ballet world, Swan Lake is never more than a few steps away. The film shows at 2 p.m. at the Phillips Collection on Saturday. $10-$12. (Rebecca J. Ritzel)

FILM

Karp came together for two principal reasons: 1) Jocks fucking suck, and 2) There’s nothing else to do in Tumwater, Wash. A target for bullies in high school, Chris Smith started a newsletter called “Kill All Redneck Pricks.” He borrowed the name for his band, Karp, which was hatched later in a note exchanged with his buddy Jared Warren. The band, wrote Smith, “would probably be set up like this: You, bass. Scott, duh. Me, vocals. But at times everyone needs to pukishly scream.” After a period practicing in a three-walled shack behind Warren’s mom’s house, Karp went on to become one of Washington’s best and loudest post-grunge bands. Bill Badgley’s 2011 film, Kill All Redneck Pricks: A Documentary Film About a Band Called Karp, tells the trio’s story, beginning with its unassuming origins as a clique of angry, dorky kids who had no idea how to be rock stars. Karp’s first national tour, with the rising star Beck, was awkward: Three kids recently out of high school didn’t know they weren’t supposed to break into bands’ dressing rooms and steal their beer. They later struggled through crises—Smith attempted suicide and got hooked on heroin—and disbanded in 1998, splitting off into other groups. (Warren even went on to join The Melvins. Rock ‘n’ roll wishes do come true.) In 2003, drummer Scott Jernigan died in a boating accident on Lake Washington. Badgley’s documentary brings together a cast of Olympia musicians eager to tell stories about Karp’s onstage antics and ear-splitting shows. But despite the aggro act, their roots showed: Kathleen Hanna had Karp pegged for high-school outcasts right away. The film shows at 8 p.m. Sunday at Black Cat Backstage. $6.

Addendum: PUNK

This punk-rock announcement comes forwarded from our dear leader Jonathan L. Fischer: Venomous World Fest is happening tomorrow in Petworth, with a slate of bands that hearkens back to the Wilson Center's golden years—only with online ticketing. It's so punk, it's listed on Craigslist. (But it's not too punk for Facebook.) $8 for eight bands. 4 p.m.

The article has since flown about social media, causing many a sad emoticon and, apparently, excessive vomiting. The jab is all the more painful because there is some truth to it–D.C. is damn expensive, and we don't have as many entrepreneurial opportunities or as much cultural cred as, say, New York. That's not exactly shocking news, since New York is the biggest city in the country, with more than 10 times the residents D.C. has. But it's still frustrating to hear so much haterade tossed at your town when all kinds of artists and musicians are busting ass to make some really cool stuff around here. Speaking as a proud local resident, musician, and arts journalist, I think Yglesias—while he's not totally off base—sold our fair city short.

First, there are bizarre references to the murder rate, which is both irrelevant and inconsistent; are cities with a lower murder rate "cooler?" If so, how does he square that with his argument that D.C. was most culturally important in the '80s, when the murder rate was significantly higher than today? And besides, does anyone think places he mentioned like Cincinnati or Kansas City are significantly cooler than D.C.?

But what really hit home for me was this line: “...if you're a semi-employed artist or guitar player it's much more expensive than Philadelphia or Baltimore and still smaller and less interesting than New York City, which has less than one-third our murder rate.” Again, I’m not sure how the murder rate is germane, but the cost-benefit ratio to the creative class is a pretty big deal. Speaking as a “semi-employed guitarist,” I have to admit he’s partially correct. If you’re in a rock band and simply need a hub from which to tour, both Baltimore and Philadelphia are generally more affordable than the District. They have cheaper rent, more artist studios, and more practice spaces.

But if you’re looking for a city with a decent grant system, a slew of great venues, a consistent dedication to making the arts accessible, and a strong sense of community, I would argue D.C. easily tops those two.

We have a gloriously free art culture here. Look at events from the Smithsonian hosting music & art shows with folks like John Davis and Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, to summer concerts series like Fort Reno, Fort Dupont, and the National Gallery’s Jazz in the Garden. There are the regular pay-what-you-can nights at theaters like Woolly Mammoth, the cheap or free boundary-pushing exhibits at Artisphere, and access to world-class art museums that don’t cost a dime. Those "large sums of money" that Yglesias says are handy for going out to dinner in D.C.? In New York, you'd be dropping them to visit the MOMA, instead.

D.C.'s cultural strength comes precisely because the city isn't in the business of manufacturing coolness. Unlike New York or L.A., we aren't drowning in ladder climbers and mercenaries. It's generally assumed you have to work another job as a musician/artist/actor in D.C., and there’s a certain spirit of collaboration that’s not fraught with opportunism. You can go to Fort Reno and fraternize with hardcore veterans like Ian MacKaye (and sometimes Henry Rollins) and expect a relaxed, supportive atmosphere. While there are musicians for hire in D.C., it’s equally common for people in the music scene to simply collaborate for art’s sake. There may not be the same networking opportunities in D.C., but as a result, there’s not the kind of cut-throat competition and careerism.

The DIY, punk rock spirit in D.C. still supports bands without managers, fosters affordable shows, and encourages community activism. Is there a New York equivalent to Positive Force? Since 1984, the activist collective has and continues to host benefit shows for local charities, featuring big-name acts like Ted Leo and Titus Andronicus alongside myriad locals. Are there many prominent all-ages venues in New York? 9:30 Club is consistently ranked among the best clubs in the nation and doesn’t require patrons to be of drinking age (nor do the Black Cat or the Rock and Roll Hotel).

So sure, if you’re a penniless artist or musician looking for endless dirt-cheap housing options in non-gentrified areas, Philadelphia or Baltimore is probably a better bet. If you’re willing to hunt for an affordable spot (there are still a few left), though, D.C. has a slew of cultural benefits, a grassroots music community, very little pretense, and a long history of creative success.

Of course, we also have more than our fair share of wonks writing contrarian pieces for the Internet. But hey, no city's perfect.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Willy Turner, everyone was relieved to learn last week, is still alive. After the news spread, some folks even started gathering music and boomboxes to give to the man known around 14th Street NW as Black Cat Bill.

Amid all the excitement, however, comes some bad news. Last Friday, Turner was moved from Deanwood Rehabilitation and Wellness Center to critical care at Prince George's Hospital Center. Hospital staff couldn't share any details about Turner's illness due to HIPAA regulations, and I haven't been able to get in touch with Turner's family, but I did visit him yesterday. He was unable to speak, but could respond with hand and foot movement. It appears his condition, whatever it is, is stabilizing.

Luckily, he's got a boombox in his hospital room, and staff have been playing some of the funk mixtapes donated by supporters. Andy Bowen, a local writer and activist, has been coordinating music donations and visits. (Email him at andymbowen@gmail.com to help out.)

When Turner gets back to his room in Deanwood, he'll have some pretty cool stuff to listen to. Word of Turner's condition and affection for James Brown reached the sister of the Godfather of Soul. Deanwood resident Sherice Muhammad found my original story on a local listserv, and reached out to her friend Fannie Brown-Burford, James Brown's younger sibling. Muhammad writes: "When I read the email requesting the James Brown cassettes for Mr. Turner, I called Fannie because she has cassettes of James' music. She was enthusiastic. So, she's putting a special package together for Mr. Turner."

Check back here for any updates on Turner.

D.C. fans of African sounds have a tough choice to make tonight. Tuareg guitarist Omara Bombino Moctar and his band bring their desert psychedelia to the Black Cat with local pan-African openers Sahel, while Nettle, an international band including two Moroccans plus Jace Clayton (aka DJ Rupture), Andy Moor from The Ex, and others, will be at the “Africa is Not a Country” party at the Marrakech Lounge along with several DJs spinning sounds from across the motherland.  Nettle is celebrating the release of its new album, El Resplandor: The Shining in Dubai. Bombino and Clayton discussed their projects via email.

Thirty-one-year-old Bombino was born near Agadez, Niger, and with his family, he fled at age 12 to Algeria from the violence of the Tuareg uprising against Niger. In Algeria, he acquired a guitar for the first time. When peace temporarily returned to Niger in 1997, Bombino and his family moved back, and he continued playing, inspired in part by Tuareg band Tinariwen.  Early in 2007 Bombino and his band were recorded for the 2009 Sublime Frequencies release, Group Bombino – Guitars from Agadez, Vol. 2. But later that year, in the midst of a second Tuareg rebellion, the Niger military would ban the guitar and kill two of Bombino’s bandmembers.  Again the guitarist fled, this time to Burkina Faso, before returning to now-calmer Niger in 2010.

Bombino now lives in Niamey, Niger, with his wife and daughter, but travels often to Agadez. Bombino says he currently performs at weddings and other Tuareg functions “all the time when I am at home and in Agadez.” He's also working toward having the Tuareg language of Tamashek taught in schools. It’s “slow to be honest," he writes. "It takes a lot of effort, time and patience to get something like this moving in Niger. But I will continue to champion this issue and we'll make progress little by little.” On his new album, Agadez, his fingerwork melds his region’s droning axe sound with influences from Jimi Hendrix to John Lee Hooker. One benefit of international touring, Bombino writes, has been meeting other six-string players. “I love Vieux Farka Toure, and this was the first year I got to play with him and see him live in concert," Bombino writes. "I also got to see Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds which was really cool. Finally, I really enjoyed seeing Pete Townshend play when we did Jools Holland last month in London.”

Nettle’s new album is the soundtrack for an imaginary remake of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining set in a luxury hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The band includes Clayton on synths and laptop, Moroccan Abdelhak Rahal on violin, the Scottish Jennifer Jones on cello, Moroccan Khalid Bennaji on guembri, American Brent Arnold on cello, the English Andy Moor on guitar, and Canada's Lindsay Cuff on vocals. Together, they blend electronic beats and avante-garde noise with traditional North African folksong and percussion playing.  Clayton says Nettle “grew out of my longstanding interest in Maghrebi music. In 2002 I moved to Barcelona, a city with a strong Moroccan musical community.  Slowly I became involved with it, and a few years later I was working regularly with a violinist, Abdelhak Rahal.   Nettle existed before I met Abdel, but it was primarily a solo project. With him I decided to turn it into a group, to make my involvement with Moroccan music more of a collaborative work.”

While Nettle’s mostly instrumental sound has its out-there aspects, Clayton says it can reach fans of more traditional sounds. “Nettle played a free concert in Tangiers recently and it was well received! We make an effort to connect. There are avant sounds, sure, but, for example in Tangiers, Lindsay learned to sing a Berber song.  When she opened her mouth and Berber words came out , the audience was floored, so happy. We approach everything with a lot of respect, and a lot of emphasis on translation.”  The album has also gotten some attention in Dubai.   Clayton excitedly notes that there have been “several interviews and some interest in bringing us over to perform it in 2012!! I hope it happens.”

“Africa is Not a Country”  features Nettle along with  DJ sets by Bent and Mothershiester showcasing anthems from Mozambique, South Africa, Kenya, Congo,Nigeria, Madagascar, Ghana, and North Africa—plus a glut of "pirated" Kenyan Pop mp3s that dj Bent found online. Free. Nettle plays at 9 p.m. at the Marrakech Lounge, 1817 Columbia Rd NW.

Bombino and band with opener Sahel perform at 9 at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St NW.  $20. (202) 667-4490.

Everyone's Talking 'bout Black Cat Bill: First, make sure you read Ryan Little's WCP revelation that, contrary to some posts on local blogs last week, Black Cat Bill is indeed alive. Then check out the corrections and apologies it inspired. Then, check out the media criticism that followed. Then, bring William "Willy" Turner some tunes.

Everyone's Still Talking 'bout Michael Kaiser: I can't believe we're still on this. In a Huffington Post column, contributor Rob Bettmann responds to the responses (including ours) to Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser's recent ham-fisted HuffPo column about the withering state of arts criticism. What does Bettmann say? Essentially, he defends the gate-keeping, canon-defining role of critics, quotes a bunch of New York Times essays, fails to address any particular criticism of Michael Kaiser, confuses the editors of the New York Times' Book Review with its editorial board, attempts to invoke behavioral psychology, lambasts the Internet for being too big, and wraps up by plugging an initiative by the magazine he edits. To borrow some words from one of my favorite critics: "It stinks! It stinks! It stinks!"

Today on Arts Desk: More on Black Cat Bill. How D.C. fared in the Grammy nominations.

"The Black Cat Man is still hanging in there."

That's what William "Willy" Turner told me yesterday afternoon when I visited him at the Deanwood Rehabilitation and Wellness Center on Nannie Hellen Burroughs Avenue NE, and it was a nice thing to hear several days after a handful of local blogs declared him dead.

For more than a decade, the man known to locals as Black Cat Bill greeted showgoers lining up outside the Black Cat with the call "Black Cat, Black Cat! A little change for the homeless?" Regulars knew him. The club sometimes helped him out with food. He was a neighborhood fixture who helped keep trouble away from the 14th Street NW venue. "It's a match made in hell with Dante," he told Washington City Paper in 1997, referring to both the Italian poet and club owner Dante Ferrando.

These days, Turner isn't in great health, he's lost a fair amount of weight, and he no longer makes it out to the club. He's been living at the Deanwood residence for about two years, and before that was in and out of shelters. He told me he enjoys visits from his daughter and granddaughter, and he regularly watches old movies on the small television set by his bed.

The rumor of his passing began with a tweet from a former Black Cat employee, and quickly spread around social media and sites like DCist and We Love D.C. The false reports filled Facebook feeds; some folks even asked me if my band wanted to perform at a benefit concert in Turner's honor. According to Black Cat's talent buyer, Vicki Savoula, "Rumors like this start up every six months or so."

Still, Turner said he appreciated the outpouring of support. He said that if anyone wants to catch up with him, they're welcome to stop by during visiting hours, and that he would appreciate the company. He added that he’d love to listen to music in his room, so if anyone has a spare boombox and some James Brown cassettes, he'd be happy to give them a new home.

LISTEN: Black Cat Bill – "Black Cat, Black Cat"

Phantogram

Washington City Paper: What was the recording process like for Nightlife compared to Eyelid Movies?

Sarah Barthel: It was a little bit of a different process for us to do it. When we recorded Eyelid Movies, Josh and I were pretty much trapped in one room the entire time, always together and always just surrounding ourselves with the same room and the same pieces of equipment and bouncing ideas back and forth in the same room. But for Nightlife, it was a little bit different because we wrote some of the songs a couple of years ago and we just had to sit on them because we were still waiting to make Eyelid Movies. So we had some new songs we were working and we thought, “OK, might as well record them and get them down and maybe someday we’ll be able to release them as a bonus track or a free track online.” Some songs we wrote separately and sent our ideas back and forth via email and recorded on our own. One song we finished on the road with recording in hotel rooms and stuff. It was all over the place.

WCP: Did your influences change at all for the EP?

SB: I think we were more influenced by writing songs that had more, I guess, dynamics and that really build at parts and were really soft and quiet at other parts. We weren’t able to do that with Eyelid Movies. We wanted to but it was more about the process of getting the music out there, we wanted to be heavier and more emotional, we wanted it to really capture a certain emotion and scenario, whatever type of connection we could make with our fans. It’s definitely a little bit more mature-sounding, so we’re definitely happy and think we’re going in the right direction.

WCP: You obviously do a ton of live shows, but is it difficult to make your music translate to a live set?

SB: No, because we have a live drummer now! It’s not just the two of us anymore, so we’re able to pull it off a lot better. We also have an incredible sound engineer and lighting guy and we’re able to pull off the entire feeling and emotion that we want to portray.

WCP: I know you and bandmate Josh Carter have known each other for quite a few years. Were either of you in bands before or is this your first time?

SB: I wasn’t but Josh was, he was in a band, he was in a couple bands, actually—funny as it is, he was the drummer for a metal band. He was known as The Machine. He was an insane drummer. Unbelievable. After that, I didn’t see any of his music from that, but he was also in a band with his brother for a few years called Grand Habit and I saw them play a couple of times before we started working together. As for me, this is my first band.

WCP: How is it?

SB: It’s great! It’s fun, Josh and I have a really good energy going and we’re on the same page on so many different levels and it’s really the only way we can work, we both have the same ideas of what we want.

WCP: Since you’ve had some experience touring now, do you have a favorite city to play in? Do you have any especially crazy tour stories?

SB: We were in Europe for four months, which was wonderful, I loved playing Switzerland and France. We also got to play the Dominican Republic which was fun and also we just played a show in Mexico City, which was amazing—the people and their energy there was astounding, they really make you feel loved. I felt like I was Selena! It’s really a different culture. Oh, and Josh got roofied a couple weeks ago in Madison, Wisc. That was pretty crazy and fucking weird. It came out of nowhere and he didn’t drink too much—he drank three beers and we literally couldn’t get him off of the floor. It was really bizarre.

Phantogram performs tonight at 8 p.m. at Black Cat. Sold out.