Bringin' it Back: Over at DCist, Brandon Gentry offers up a long retrospective on long-gone D.C. band The High-Back Chairs. Catch Cane & the Sticks—a newish band featuring High Back Chairs' Peter Hayes—at Artisphere this Friday.

Department of One-Liners: For anyone who didn't already know that City Paper sports writer Dave McKenna sometimes writes concert reviews for the Washington Post, well, get with it. Describing one of the costumes Britney Spears sported during her show at the Verizon Center, McKenna writes, "This wasn't a stringy low-riding number like she'd wear back in the day, but instead a more modest two-piece suit, a sort of bikini version of Mom jeans, that rode high enough on the abs to cover the tramp stamp tattoo that she used to flaunt." On Merle Haggard's continued ability to get people riled up about lousy politicians, McKenna concludes, "After hearing Haggard sing it, even Gandhi might want to punch that dude."

Today on Arts Desk: Everything you should be excited to read in this week's paper, which hits boxes starting today.

For years, whether in print or on the web, adoring City Paper readers have hearkened to the mellifluous prose of D.C.'s Dave McKenna—his rhapsodic treatment of Pop Warner football, his scherzo-like political musings, his epic riffs on the Dan Synder perplex.

Turns out he's not the only D. Mac around.

On Saturday, jazz geeks learned that Dave McKenna, the great Massachusetts ballad-boogie pianist, had died of lung cancer at the age of 78. In its obit, the New York Times included a nice encomium on his instrumental approach:

That style, rooted in the jazz piano tradition of an earlier era, was built around powerful bass lines, elegantly voiced chords and a loving approach to melodies, especially those of the Tin Pan Alley standards that were the foundation of his vast repertory. He liked to spin out long medleys united by a theme, like famous and obscure songs with “You,” “Stars” or “Spring” in the title.

“I don’t know if I qualify as a bona fide jazz guy,” he once said. “I play saloon piano. I like to stay close to the melody.”

See for yourself in the video below ("Serenade in Blue"). Touching stuff, but not exactly the musical equivalent of eviscerating Lou Dobbs.