Friday's episode of Portlandia on IFC had no shortage of indie-rock cameos: Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock attempted to donate some bad records to an elite preschool (Talk Talk, Temple of the Dog); Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, did a runway walk in a proposed new cyperpunk uniform for the Portland Police Department.
The comedic duo of Carrie [...]
Numbers Talk: Urban scholar Richard Florida has his say in the debate over whether D.C. is a good place for artists to make a living. He looks at the concentration and incomes of different types of artists in the D.C. region, New York, Philly, and Baltimore, and concludes that "D.C. seems like a not-so-great place for [...]
On Wednesday, Slate published a piece by Matthew Yglesias about why D.C. is, essentially, a terrible place for young, creative people to live.
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 [...]
"Playing music is like handwriting," says Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye. "If you play a song over and over, it starts to evolve."
For my feature this week on Fugazi's new online archive of live shows, I discussed some of the subtle changes you can hear in live version of the song "Repeater." Since then, I spoke to [...]
In 2009, a 45-minute MP3 of audio from Fugazi concerts cropped up on punk and indie-rock blogs. But it wasn’t a musical recording: Instead, James Burns, the fan behind the file, had cobbled together choice clips of outrageous stage banter. The collage not only affirmed the band’s reputation for hardline punk diatribes (“Would the gentleman in [...]
Remember when you paid $5 to see that life-changing, all-ages show where Guy Picciotto hung upside down from a basketball hoop? Or when Ian MacKaye stretched out the insanity of "23 Beats Off" for just a few minutes more? It's time to relive all those memories, folks...
In news that should make Phish jealous, The New [...]
The A-side, "Warble Factor," has one of those surging 4/4 rhythms (call it "the post-hardcore head-nod") and Ian MacKaye's quick-chop guitar playing is gratifyingly familiar. But Amy Farina's vocals are the show here: She's passionate and serious, befitting what seems to be a meditation on somebody's death. What's that line at the end? "Look at [...]
I reported last week that the Occupy D.C. encampment seems to have become something of a DIY space. It turns out it's a pretty good DIY space. Local acts Priests, Lenorable, and The Cornel West Theory some other groups gathered for a generator-powered show in McPherson Square, and attracted a pretty solid crowd [...]
Art Overload: Lenny Campello reviews the ongoing Artomatic Frederick, and offers a theory as to why critics—other than him, of course—are so quick to dismiss the entire enterprise. (Ahem.) Campello writes, "The real reason that most 'regular' critics don't like AOM is because they lack the formation and depth to see beyond what is hanging [...]
It's been five years since the last record from Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina's low-key punk-folk duo The Evens, and they're back on Nov. 21 with a new 7-inch on Dischord. The A-side is called "Warble Factor" and the B-side is "Timothy Wright." (Could the latter be about the late gospel singer? Cool.) According to [...]
