Census findings earlier this year that the District's black population had slipped to barely 50 percent seemed to set off a competition among local news organizations (Washington City Paper included) to refer back to the 1975 Parliament album Chocolate City as often as possible. What, then, to make of the announcement that George Clinton and [...]

The Mothership Has Landed: Well, a mothership has landed. Chris Richards reports that the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, set to open in 2015, has acquired the prop space ship that Parliament-Funkadelic used in its live shows. This isn't the original mothership, which was dumped in a Prince Georges County scrap [...]

Channeling late '70s bands like the Jam and the Beat, D.C.'s Modest Proposal was a fixture of the city's early-'80s mod and ska scenes, and the group performed for several years before disbanding in 1986. The few songs it committed to vinyl, on several singles and compilations, are charming, catchy examples of a movement that—with [...]