“Do not. Remove. The matchbox.”

That was the advice Aaron Leitko, Hugh McElroy, and Sean Peoples received five years ago when they bought their white, nearly windowless 1995 Ford Econoline 150—a hulking, utilitarian shell of a vehicle that had spent much of its previous decade hauling some of D.C.’s most tour-hardened indie-rock outfits across the country.

Here’s a partial list of those bands: the Make-Up, Faraquet, Trans Am, the Warmers, HiM, the Sorts. And here’s a partial list of shit found in the van at the time of its death three weeks ago: a basketball; some cassettes; a mic stand; numerous parking tickets; an even dollar in change; a pink, rainbow-adorned Care Bear.

And, of course, the matchbox, which had sat on the dashboard ever since the van’s original owner, successful indie-rock manager and former Warmers bassist Juan Luis Carrera, placed it there some 15 years before, when he bought the van on tour in Arizona.

"The matchbox is a mystery,” says McElroy, an ex-member of defunct Dischord outfit Black Eyes. “It was pointed out to us that the matchbox had to stay in the van—that there would be consequences to the matchbox leaving the van.”

Despite the van’s exhaustive repair history—written partly on a Crownhate Ruin flyer—the totem must have served the Econoline well. “[I]t was really in good shape until it wasn’t,” says Leitko, an editorial aide at the Washington Post, freelance music critic, and purveyor of druggy-sounding post-disco with electronica duo Protect-U.

The van, whose health had been declining in recent years, met its end the way it probably should have: on the highway, coming back from a show.

McElroy, who’d been road testing his new group Cephalopods in New York and Philadelphia, was returning to D.C. on I-95 when, around Baltimore, the van began to wobble. The band pulled over and smelled burning rubber; that night they made it back to D.C. on back roads. Several days later, a mechanic told McElroy that repairs to the brakes would cost around $1,200.

“It was sort of a not-worth-it situation,” says McElroy. The van’s insurance was about $1,000 a year; it was a magnet for parking tickets; the owners had been using it less.

So they signed the vehicle over to the auto shop and walked away from this unassuming artifact of D.C.
music history.

“My most resonant memory of the van is how decadent it was,” says former Warmers drummer Amy Farina, who now plays in the Evens. “Especially for a band like us. It wasn’t like we were paying the bills.”

Decadent? Only if you’re in an indie band, for which cramped transportation with unidentifiable odors is de rigueur. The Econoline was stripped-down—but also new. “After being on tour with a few bands the years prior and lacking the mechanic’s ‘touch,’ I wanted something reliable,” Carrera writes in an e-mail. During one period in which he left the van unlocked but with a Club on the steering wheel, would-be thieves left strange objects inside it. One time, he found someone sleeping in it.

Once, when Warmers guitarist Alec MacKaye was driving down 16th Street NW after a show in Philly, two teenagers in a coupe pulled up next to the Econoline at a red light. “This kid in the passenger seat was giving us this hairy eye, just being this aggro kid,” MacKaye recalls. “He was really young. I gave him a look like, ‘What’s the problem?’” The light turned green and MacKaye drove on. The teens just sat there. “They’re behind us, and they just floored it.” MacKaye stopped at the next red light. “And they just drove right into the back of the van, at maybe 40 miles per hour, and just destroyed the front of their car....They had lights hanging out and wires—man, it was weird.” The teens sped off.

The van was basically unharmed, and the band returned home to Mount Pleasant, then walked to a 7-Eleven and reported the incident to a policeman there. “And immediately he got the call back that they stopped the car and they have some suspects,” MacKaye says. The Warmers followed police to where the teenagers were being interrogated. The band identified them, and the driver was arrested. The cop decided to let the passenger—the aggro kid with the hairy eye—go. “They told him tonight’s your lucky night, and the kid’s like, ‘How do I get home?’....And the cop says, ‘Why don’t you ask these guys?’”

“I can’t remember if we give him a ride; I don’t think we did,” MacKaye says, laughing. “But we might’ve.”

The Warmers broke up in 1997, but by then Carrera was operating a record label and managing bands. He frequently lent the Econoline to other groups. The Make-Up took it out on one tour, although frontman Ian Svenonius can’t remember which. “[I]t was...necessary since renting is so expensive (and often impossible for the marginally employed) and...most groups aren’t going to lend their wheels,” Svenonius says via Facebook. “For a while Make[-U]p was proud that we had a ‘shorty’ or more diminutive Chevy van but as soon as we opted for a full size bass rig we had to find another one.”

Trans Am has less fond memories. Someone tagged the van in Montreal during a tour around 2000. “Just to let you know, Trans Am is traditionally a Chevy band,” writes the group’s Philip Manley.

Faraquet borrowed the van several times before member Jeff Boswell, now the operations director at Washington City Paper, bought it in 2000. The group used it for only around 20 shows before breaking up in 2001. The van then became Boswell’s main ride. In 2002, he packed it with Dischord merchandise to sell on a Fugazi tour. That was the year of the Beltway snipers—who were initially described as traveling by plain white van. “Every time I drove around I felt like someone was watching me,” Boswell says.

In 2005, Boswell sold the van to Leitko, then an editorial aide at Washington City Paper who played in A Day in Black and White, and Peoples and McElroy, who were playing together as Hand Fed Babies. A Day in Black and White did some touring in it but soon broke up; Hand Fed Babies barely drove it. Leitko then used it for a noise project, for the group SPRCSS, and Protect-U; McElroy and Peoples used it for their respective labels, Ruffian and Sockets, as well as other projects.

“In my own world, it had a new life. It became the Fatback van—it was very helpful with that,” says Peoples, referring to the vehicle’s role in lugging around gear for the popular funk and soul dance night he helps run. “It’s as if it mirrors the D.C. musical trajectory, which is less and less well-known bands and now these dime-a-dozen DJ nights,” he says, only somewhat jokingly.

Leitko, McElroy, and Peoples never opened the matchbox until they had to clear out the van. Says McElroy: “Inside it’s got a number of small objects. I guess I shouldn’t say—well, small wooden cylinders wrapped in thread. Maybe small, tiny effigies?”

The Econoline’s former owners “got their money’s worth,” says a mechanic at Adams Morgan’s J&N Auto Body, where the van was deposited. If a band could swallow the $1,200 bill, he says, the van probably has another tour or two in it, despite its odometer reading of more than 200,000 miles. “Honestly,” he says, “it’s not that big of a repair.”

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

Movies aren't the event's only draw. If packing a picnic basket is too much trouble, there's eats from competitive barbeque team-cum-caterers Smokin' Somethin', as well as quintessential summer fare like hot dogs and Italian ice. Local DJ collective Fatback again provides the tunes. The event's rain or shine, so if tonight's forecast doesn't keep you away, you'll still probably want to wear something waterproof.

NoMa Summer Screen takes place every Wednesday through July 28 at the grassy lot at L Street NE between 2nd and 3rd Streets, one block from the New York Avenue Metro station. 7:00-11:00 p.m. Free.

Nice timing, Fatback. The guys behind the funk and soul dance party just posted a free mix in advance of their Tender Loin Valentine's night this weekend. Therein: steamy, sensual numbers from Cameron, the Isley Brothers, Bobby Womack and other purveyors of silky, sexy soul. Don't ask questions: Just let the magic happen.

The film chronicles Dylan's rise to superstardom, from being booed by Guthrie purists at the Newport Folk Festival to getting mauled by fans in London. Scorcese culls footage from Dylan's 1961-1966 performances and press conferences, and interviews the ever cryptic icon. What emerges, despite Dylan's best efforts at obfuscation, is a portrait of the artist broader than D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back (1967), yet more focused than Todd Haynes' I'm Not There.

NoMa screenings are held Wednesdays, 7 p.m.-midnight, on the large grassy lot on L Street between 2nd and 3rd Streets NE, one block from the New York Avenue Metro station. Series highlights include I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (on July 8) and Dig! (July 29).

While gathering info for my piece "Beats Working" (featured in this week's 2008 Music and Arts in Review issue), I spoke with several DJs and promoters who had very interesting things to say, though space constraints prevented their quotes from making the print. Good thing we've got this spacious Internet to stretch out in.

Over the the next week or so, I'll be posting a series of Q&As, quotes, and other additional insight from D.C. folks who are hard at work in the city's dance culture.  The series will serve as a supplement to the article—which on its own is by no means an exhaustive survey of all the many great dance nights that are currently happening around the District.  Principally, I intended to spotlight the most successful stuff from '08, and promising stuff from '09 in the no-dress-code, no-holds-barred side of the D.C. dance scene. Hopefully, these posts will add to that scope.

First up is a full Q&A from Sean Peoples: In addition to running the Sockets CD-R label, Peoples is co-creator of the monthly funk and soul dance night Fatback (mentioned at the beginning of "Beats Working"), which celebrated its one-year anniversary last Friday. He already tipped us off to his some of his favorite things from '08, but here's a more in-depth look at the progress that led Fatback from its origins at Local 16 and Dahlak to a packed house every second Friday of the month at Red Lounge, seven DJs strong. Follow the jump for the full text.

Fatback took place at Dahlak for a while before moving up to the Red Lounge. How did that space work out for you?

Dahlak's great—it's a restaurant, first and foremost. I think one of the things about Fatback was that we didn't really want it to be a pretentious dance night at all, and having it be in a restaurant for the first 6 months is definitely one way to go about that, because you get up, you show up early, you've got to pull all the tables out, you've got to set everything up—there's really no set up already there, besides a couple speakers. So you really have to change the space into something that's different from what you walk into. But the owner, Daniel is really great. I think he's found out that his space is really well located, and he's trying to get more people to come through, and he's found that DJ nights and bands are one good way to do that.

Well the Red Lounge seems to fit you more in terms of size, but do you think you'll have to expand to larger venues in '09?

I think we're gonna try to do some more special events outside of the regular Fatback night. But I think right now we're pretty comfortable at Red Lounge—we don't really want to grow it more. I mean, I think if you start to grow it too large, the only way to go from there is to peter out, so we're trying to keep the same energy at Red Lounge as long as we can. But it's definitely a topic of conversation each time, because we don't want to alienate people in one way by saying, "hey we're gonna stay at this venue," but then the people that want to come have to stand outside—that's something we're trying to prevent. But just in terms of trying to do bigger events, we're gonna be doing a big inauguration party, and we're also doing a huge Valentine's Day thing with Brightest Young Things. So we're trying to do these things that are taking the name and join forces with some other people to have parties that are located in bigger venues so we can draw on different crowds. But now we're trying to cultivate and keep the people we have, and match Red Lounge's space a little better.

It's weird though, because we've all been smacked in the face by this. So now we have to get organized, and it's funny to hang out with your friends, but then have to do a business meeting. It's something that all our DJs are trying to get used to.

One of the things you mentioned was that you didn't want Fatback to be pretentious. Is there a large amount of pretension at other dance parties in D.C. that you've seen firsthand? Is that one of the reasons you started Fatback? How does pretension get in the way of a good dance party?

It's not necessarily something that we've seen firsthand. One of the things that all our DJs love to do is dance at a house party. House parties are so much fun because—at least in the terms of the ones we've throw in the past three years—you know there's gonna be great music, and people that you want to see. And that atmosphere is sometimes hard to translate over to a club. So it's less about reacting to what we've seen, and more about trying to replicate what we know we like. We just love dancing. There is a lot of pretension in terms of having the DJ up off the floor, and there being a limited contact between the DJ and the people who are consuming the music. But for us, it's less about the DJs and more about what we're all creating. That sounds really dorky, but I think that's what we honestly try to do. We have the DJs and turntables set up really close to the dancers—it's like we're on the same level. It's just the stuff like, us being able to feed off the energy of the people, because they give off a lot. That's the whole idea: We want to make them dance, and we want to flip them out.

In terms of other dance nights around town, does Fatback fill a particular niche? How does it fit into the overall scene?

Hopefully it fits the house party niche, the one that's not staid, or too buttoned-up. It's tough to find a space, but we've lucked out in terms of the spaces that we've gotten. Some of the nights I've been to, one month's it's OK, and the other month it's off the hook. And I feel like that can happen to any night, but it's been really good each night at Fatback. I mean, even if 50 less people showed up at ours, it would still be fun.

Where do you see Fatback going in 2009? Is there a threshold you want to reach? How do you see it growing?

"We want to keep going. We want to keep the momentum that we've had behind our backs. Early in 2009, we're trying to do two big things: The inauguration party, which is gonna be off the hook, and this Valentine's Day thing. We've got all these ideas that we don't know what to do them—we definitely have a lot of stuff that we want to do. But you don't want to over-saturate, you know? I think it's a testament to us wanting to be cautious, but grow at a good pace. We don't want to burn out the star too quickly. But yea, going into 2009 we're really excited, because I think we've got a lot of good opportunities to do stuff that'll hit a lot more people, because we're gonna try to get some sponsorships and hook up with groups like BYT, to really grow our niche. But yeah—with cautious optimism, we're really happy to go into next year.