Truth Hurts: Did the Washington Post ruin this touching story by running an enormous correction on top of it? TBD's Andrew Beaujon says never mind—it needed to be done: "The correction's not there to make you feel bad," he writes.

Harpin' on it: Click Track talks to D.C.'s very own vocalist/harpist, Rashida Jolley. So, how do you play a harp and sing at the same time—while on a worldwide tour with Lady Gaga? Well, now you know.

H Street Great Street: NBC4 personality Pat Collins grew up on H Street NE. He remembers when those trendy bars used to be five-and-dimes, people.

Yesterday on Arts Desk: Margaret Bowland v. The United States of America; meet David Hintz, the area's most prolific rock concert reviewer.

WaPo Style leads off with a preview of tonight's Birchmere show by Joe Boyd and Robyn Hitchcock. Boyd, the New Jersey-born English rock producer started playing with Hitchcock at 2007's South by Southwest. Expect versions of songs by Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Incredible String Band, and Bob Dylan.

Malitz saw Yelawolf at the Rock 'n' Roll Hotel on Monday, writing that Eminem's Southern prodigy "opts for simple self-assurance over superstar swagger."

The Kennedy Center released its 2011-2012 schedule yesterday, and Sarah Godfrey and Maura Judkis go all Statler and Waldorf on the more youthful dates on the calendar. First up is The Roots with John Legend. Really? Roots, we love you. You make Jimmy Fallon more palatable and you invited The Dismemberment Plan to your picnic. But seriously, what is the deal with John Legend? Am I going to have to stand outside the KenCen holding a boombox over my head blasting these songs?

Midwestern artists are joining the fight in Wisconsin. And NPR was hoodwinked into hot water.

Our Band Could Be Your Life celebrates its first decade as the punk-rock bible next month, and Ryan Little weighs going to the anniversary show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York.

And Click Track agrees that is R.E.M.'s Collapse is listenable, but all the "best album since the Clinton era" hype might be exactly that. It's R.E.M.'s best album since their last album.

Our deliverance from iTunes is only a day away, thanks to David Lynch. Internet, that's winning.

Nolen Strals, the singer of the abrasive Baltimore art-punk trio Double Dagger, has what he calls “a weird sort of internal conversation” whenever he's commissioned to do graphic design work for a large media outlet or corporation.

"Doing work for these major labels and these big corporate entities, there's part of me that's like, ‘Hell yes! This illustration? It's gonna be eeeverywhere’” says Strals, who started the design studio Post Typography in 2001 with Double Dagger's bassist, Bruce Willen. “But at the same time, it's kinda like, ‘Oh yeah, a major label, these are the machines that we rage against,’" As the studio’s profile has risen in recent years, Post Typography has earned commissions from The New York Times, Wired, Esquire, Time, and The Washington Post (disclosure: I work there as a copy aide). The studio recently worked for Columbia Records on the cover of The Roots and John Legend’s album Wake Up!

But Strals’ internal conversations aside, it’s not exactly productive to apply the tired debates over "selling out" to Double Dagger's members because they worked with a major label as part of their day jobs. Says Willen: "I think we try and view things in shades of gray, and not just be like ‘major labels bad, indie labels good.'"

On the 2009 song "The Lie/The Truth," they cast this gray area as the space wedged between what some consider to be unshakable absolutes: "In your perfect worlds of black and white/where talk of gray is treason/the compromiser is crucified/and no quarter ever given/You may make it easy to divide us/when you exaggerate the meanings of meanings/until everyone is defined as the righteous or the demons."

But it's also inaccurate to say that for Strals and Willen, Post Typography's corporate commissions are compromises. Their design work, from show posters to mass media, is known for being clever and witty. (Mary Murphy, vice president of design for the high-end textile company Maharam, a Post Typography client, describes the studio's style as "modern with a twist.")

In particular, the studio often bends and warps letters and numerals, the most basic units of written communication, to challenge ideas of how we see and interpret the printed word. "With lettering, part of the attraction for me is that letters, at their root, they are transmitting information," says Strals. "But since they are these abstract shapes that have been given this other meaning, they're flexible. So you can take those abstract shapes and you can bend them and rearrange them to carry more than just the information."

Double Dagger also plays with the parameters of their music: The group is capable of three-minute gut punches and more spacious, nuanced explorations of the punk idiom. The band formed in 2002, and over the course of three albums has gone from a stripped-down garage sound to its current state, a combination of thunderous and precise drumming from Denny Bowen, who joined the band in 2004, and buzzy, distorted bass from Willen in place of a lead guitar. Strals often enters with sung-spoken verses and choruses containing aggressive, full-throated wails. It’s a brand of punk that moves in boom and bust cycles of sonic explosions and melodic progressions.

"Things have just been progressing where it's like, we're not just writing songs verse-chrous-verse, then the end of the song anymore." says Willen. "We're adding other parts and not necessarily having a sort of typical pop song structure as much."

Bowen, who has no affiliation with the studio, did the best job drawing a parallel between the work of Post Typography and the music of Double Dagger. "When you guys were just doing primarily show posters and to the work you guys do now, you guys are making the audience use a different part of their brain and think differently with the visual palette," he says to his bandmates. "And I think that you're doing the same thing in Double Dagger, with the palette being rock."

"I like that," says Willen.

"That's a good quote," says Strals. "That's gonna be a pull quote."

Double Dagger performs with Imperial China and Tiny Bombs at 8:30 p.m. tonight at the Black Cat. $8.

He wasn't the only one.

I made no secret of my disgust for the saccharine, manipulative ballad in my review of the film for the current issue of City Paper. While Guggenheim is trying to fix public schools with "great teachers," Legend, with lyrics like "Can't eat if we don't feed them/can't read if we don't teach them," must think what today's kids need is an extra dose of schmaltz.

But I don't want to be mean. My favorite teachers taught me that the best criticism is constructive, so in response to Legend's misfire, I'd like to offer up a musical selection that better suits the two-hour meditation on public education that is Waiting for "Superman."

One of the film's proposed solutions is to raise expectations for teachers. Belle and Sebastian have that covered:

Some people don't like co-ed schools. Spinal Tap makes a case for all-girls institutions:

A good education, Guggenheim reminds us throughout the movie, is a pillar of the American dream. Yeezy agrees:

MC5 had some thoughts on high school back in 1970. Forty years later, have we made any progress?

Guggenheim's most forceful argument comes with his repeated pleas for better teachers, but better acts than John Legend had songs to offer on that topic. Once upon a time an English teacher named Gordon Sumner got a bit too close for comfort with one of his students:

The tension between teacher and student can run both ways, as Van Halen pointed out:

Once in a while, as Waiting for "Superman" argues, students get that teacher who really transforms their lives. But wait, they already made a movie about that! In 1967!

While Guggenheim focuses on public schools in his movie, we shouldn't ignore the fact that private and parochial institutions can be troubled. Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys wasn't taken with his upbringing in his Catholic schooling.

One of the most important statistics for schools is their college acceptance rate. But Animal Collective offered a differing opinion on their 2004 album Sung Tongs:

Despite the thinness of his answers, Guggenheim wasn't wrong in his bleak assessment of the state of public education. There are many potential solutions—charter schools, more testing, breaking the teachers' unions, Michelle Rhee. The list could go on and on. But when all else fails, maybe we should just listen to The Replacements:

Anyone who owns a Stetson tips their hat to the classic drifter, Hank Williams. The country icon wrote some of the most beloved tunes around, and his grandson is proof that rambling runs in the blood. Here, Hank III performs his gramps' classic "Ramblin' Man."

Crooner John Legend has made clear in his work that fidelity isn't his forte, yet he can't resist romance. The dashing pop star woos the crowd while begging a lover not to fall for him in this Sérgio Mendes tune. It's reverse psychology but it works.

Local heartbreaker Olivia Mancini lets a potential lover down easy in her tune "Ricky." Olivia's good looks and charming voice have won many swoons in the District over the years, and if you think you can handle it, on Saturday, she'll be playing Rock & Roll Hotel with her mates.

Sunday's rally for climate change legislation rolled on undaunted by the difficulties that the passage of said legislation is currently encountering, and was even given a boost by unexpectedly beautiful weather. The Roots played what felt like a headlining set midway through the afternoon, and then proceeded to play the role of backup band for every high-profile performer remaining, including Sting (pictured above), John Legend, Mavis Staples and more.

Photo overload after the jump, and even more at the full gallery.

Willie Colón:

Passion Pit:

Jimmy Cliff:

Bob Weir:

Maria Menounos:

Gene Karpinski, League of Conservation Voters:

Dhani Jones, Cincinnati Bengals:

Jesse Jackson:

The Roots:

Mavis Staples:

Joss Stone:

Robert Randolph:

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.):

John Legend:

Trudie Styler:

Sting:

More crowd shots:

Full gallery here.

Legend’s little brother, Vaughn Anthony, was the first opener, and it’s well that he was not so presumptuous in his selection of a stage name as big brother. Anthony’s songs seemed primarily vehicles for conveying past sexual conquests in anticipation of future ones. Apropos, he shed articles of clothing as his set progressed, revealing a physique that was more well-developed than his musicianship. His voice was fine, but not terribly interesting—a mixture of crooning vulnerability and blunt sexual confidence. It would not surprise me if he makes piles of money.

India.Arie, the sporting what might be the first Gmail-inspired stage name, sought to restore purity to those besotted by Anthony’s laciviousness with a series of life-affirming, thoroughly unsexual spirituals. She was graceful in song but decidedly awkward in between-song banter, where she gesticulated stiffly like a malfunctioning robot while holding forth in jejune terms on "the sort of, you know, interconnectedness of all things." (This might have been what she was getting at...) Her songs were more articulate, professing a philosophy of positive thinking, personal strength, and self-love. While Arie's lyrics occasionally resembled what you might find in the spiritual/self-help section of your local Barnes and Noble, her earnesty and lack of image consciousness was refreshing in light of Anthony's striptease/kiss-and-tell (and, to an extent, Legend's messianic theatrics); the only article she shed during her performance–in a revolt against affectation–was her dreadlocked wig.

Legend, for his part, struck a subtle balance between his brother's lechery and Arie's righteousness in a performance that was anything but subtle. Dressed all in white, Legend appeared in the audience beneath a Biblical pool of light (and surrounded by cherubim in the form of three enormous bodyguards) and kicked off the show with "Redemption Song" — an implicitly Obama-inspired tribute to a forebear whose legend is a matter of status, not surname.

But this brief nod to politics gave way, in short order, to monstrous dance grooves. "Forget about the news / let's put on our dancin' shoes," Legend proposed on "Slow Dance," a smooth, Temptations-style tune off his second album, Once Again. He led by example, beckoning a smitten audience member to the stage to join him for a meta-dance. Other times he left the dancing to the rest of us, jamming on the piano as his band kicked up a whirlwind. Legend's guitarist–a stoic whale of a man whose name I'd mention if I could find it on the band's Web site–gave a technical clinic while managing to appear completely unimpressed with himself.

Legend's music, for the sake of convenience, is often described as R&B. But Friday's show demonstrated the folly of pigeonholing him. At times, the performers summoned a maelstrom of rock-'n'-roll so epic as to overwhelm the modern R&B trope–particularlywhen "I Can Change" suddenly exploded into the Beatles' "She's So Heavy." Others songs, particularly those featuring Legend at the piano, assumed the form of Burt Bacharach-style parlor pop , with the singer showcasing his effortless command of the instrument with twinkling mid-verse fills. More often than not, Legend would source multiple styles within a single song. All hung together by the common thread of his voice: a chesty tenor, adroit enough to preclude any suspicions about studio voice-doping but with just enough strain to sing, "we're just ordinary people..." and have us buy it.

He's underselling, of course. John Stephens might not be a Legend yet, but I'll grant him extraordinary.

• An Evening w/ King Sunny Ade & his African Beats. 9:30 club. $25. All ages.
• The Paulverizers, Idle Americans. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Oleta Adams. Birchmere. $39.50.
• Novalima, Pistolera. Black Cat. $18/$22. All ages.
• Lovvers, Small Doses, Cigarbox Planetarium. Comet Ping Pong. All ages.
• John Legend, India.Arie. Merriweather Post Pavilion. $36–$109.
• Hello Society, Marbin, Lucky Dub. The Red & The Black. $8. +21.
• Stellastarr, Wild Light, The Postmarks. Rock and Roll Hotel. $12/$14. All ages.
• BLDGS, Screen Vinyl Image, Cobalt & the Hired Guns, The Water. Velvet Lounge. $8. +21.
• Danny Harris (Fatback DC): Mashed Potatoes. Cafe Saint Ex.
• Eastern Music Festival Piano Program. Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Free.
• Friday Nights Out Back w/ Chopteeth. Strathmore. $10.
• Aural Tapestry: An Evening w/ All Our Noise, feat. Seas, Typefighter, John & Paul Thornley (of US Royalty). Fort Fringe. $10. See Fringe & Purge for WCP's take on the best and worst of CapFringe thus far.

Saturday

• Emmet Swimming, The Dreamscapes Project. 9:30 club. $15. All ages.
• Jenn and the Tonics, Jeff Carmela. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Bill Kirchen & The Hammer of The Honky Tonk Gods, Ruthie & the Wranglers. Birchmere. $25.
• Emarosa, Our Last Night, In Fear and Faith, Burden of a Day, I See Stars, Broadway. Jaxx. $13/$15. All ages.
• North of Canada, Typefighter, Maple. The Red & The Black. $8. +21.
• Drop Electric, Hypernova, Funk Ark, Dangerosa. Rock and Roll Hotel. $10. All ages.
• Beatnik Flies, Sleeper Agent, Pup Tent, Caustic Casanova (upstairs); DJ Busca, DJ Pascal (downstairs). Velvet Lounge. $8. +21.
• The Birdman. Cafe Saint Ex.
• AP Chemistry: A Night of Hip Hop, feat. Disturbed Individuals, Flex Matthews, Arda Mus. Fort Fringe. $10.

Sunday

• Rocknoceros, The Great Zucchini. 9:30 club. $15. All ages, esp. the kiddies.
• Blues Jam w/ the Idle Americans. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Tortoise, Grey Reverend. Black Cat. $20. All ages.
• Future of the Left, Mount Vicious. DC9. $12. +18.
• Knot Feeder, The Maida Vail, Sun Tornado, Gordon Withers. The Red & The Black. $6. +21.
• Strangers Family Band, Speck Mountain. Velvet Lounge. $7. +21.

Novalima photo via MySpace.

***

Raphael Saadiq and Dr. John are both on tour at present, peddling different brands of regressively delightful music to packed, loyal audiences. The Doctor (Mac Rebennack, to get technical) and Saadiq (né Wiggins) wear their influences on their sleeves and dress in full-on vintage: Rebennack in voodoo regalia, Saadiq in a chickadee-yellow suit and oversize horn-rims.

The distinction, of course, is that Saadiq's throwback pose is provisional; the Doctor's is dynastic.

Headliner John Legend has been filling houses for Saadiq during the pair's national tour that closed two days ago. That's fine, if it means more people listening to Saadiq—but mainly it means sitting through most of Evolver after the livelier performer (with the better band) has already left the stage. Legend struts and takes his cheese seriously; Saadiq dances and seems to acknowledge that the salvation/procreation dyad of contemporary R&B is about as synthetic as a modern soulman who channels Curtis Mayfield.

Dr. John dances too, in a sense—if that's what you call the frenzied Dixie wobblings that ensued whenever the sexua-(nearly septua-)genarian stood up for a break from the ivories. "Pull ya pants up...ooh, that's just unnecessary," drummer Herman Ernest III chided as Dr. John demonstrated an unusual two-step for the audience. "I know: it's hard with the prosthetics." These moments were special, but also left the band lacking the dirty-ass center of its sound—Dr. John's swampy piano, without which the group regressed into a generic species of funk. The high point of the set was the funereal, "Ballad of a Thin Man"-type take on "When the Saints Go Marchin' In"—as fine a eulogy for the Doctor's Katrina-ravaged home as anything on City That Care Forgot, the critically admired disc behind which the Lower 911 is touring.

Saadiq's recent Katrina tribute—"Big Easy," which gets a nice treatment from the Rebirth Brass Band on the album—shined on Tuesday night, courtesy of some beautiful, warbly trumpet. But Saadiq reserves his grooviest arrangements for a more playful subcategory of the fuck anthem than anything in the Legend songbook—such that when he tells a girl that he "want[s] some sex" and proposes a walk outside, it's not background music, nor some cosmic event: it just is what it is.

...and what it is has a hell of a lot more to do with Dr. John singing "Makin' Whoopee" than with Legend on "Take Me Away."

Photograph by Brian Reed

Photograph by Brian Reed