Dr. Funkenstein. The Godfather of Funk. The cool ghoul with the funk transplant. Whatever name you know George Clinton by, when he and the massive collective that makes up Parliment Funkadelic come to town, especially to Washington, D.C., "One Nation Under a Groove" takes on a higher meaning. And on Tuesday, the 71-year-old Clinton and [...]
Wild Flag @ Black Cat
We covered a lot of music in pictures this year, but some truly stood out.
The indie corner of the Internet went nuts Monday after WaPo's David Malitz published a piece about the recent rediscovery of a rare Elliott Smith recording. The story went that a former WMUC DJ Ben Weisholtz found a copy of a 1996 live radio session—"Misery Let Me Down"—in an old MiniDisc player he sold on [...]
Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, played to a sold-out 9:30 Club last night, pairing her ethereal voice with off-kilter indie-pop melodies full of sometimes-frantic beats and a bass sound so big it would have made Chuck D jealous. From the start of "Surgeon" to the finale of "Your Lips are Red," she had the crowd in the [...]
"You know when you have the same dream for 740 nights in a row?" When Swedish singer/songwriter Jens Lekman asked this question to a sold-out crowd at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue last night, he phrased it so sincerely that you almost re-examined whether you actually had. Out supporting his EP An Argument With Myself, Lekman [...]
Elvis Costello rocks his hits is not as especially pulse-quickening headline. The perenially touring provocateur-turned-crooner-turned-Colbert Report bit player still releases new music at a harrowing clip, but as with most rockers of his demo—he’s 57—his concerts tend to emphasize material from the first decade of his career. At the Warner Theatre last night, his [...]
The sun shone bright Saturday at this year's Virgin FreeFest at Merriweather Post Pavilion, and while the grounds were a bit muddier than last year, at least the Dance Forest wasn't as dusty. It was the first nice afternoon in weeks—as well as the day before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and the start of [...]
Marginal Man, one of the early bands on Dischord Records, played a one-off reunion show to a packed Black Cat on Saturday night. "When [Government Issue] did their reunion show back in December, [Marginal Man drummer] Mike Manos and I sat in on a couple of Marginal Man songs with Set to Explode, who opened [...]
Right now, a hall in the Indonesian Embassy is filled with boxes containing a total of 5,000 angklungs—an ancient Indonesian instrument that, when played en masse, might remind you of your elementary school bell choir. On Saturday at 4 p.m., Indonesian Embassy officials will hand them out on the National Mall just north of the [...]
Alejandro Escovedo is one of those artists who has lived three or four lives in the space of one. He's seen what most have only read about in books, and thankfully, puts these experiences into his songs for us to hear. Escovedo brought his genre-spanning catalog to the 9:30 Club stage on Sunday with his [...]
