I didn't plan on staying for all of last night's sold-out Guided by Voices show at the 9:30. While I own the band's 2004 release, Half Smiles of the Decomposed, and like it OK, I never quite understood the seemingly fanatic excitement that so many people have for them. So I assumed I was going to shoot some photos, stay for a couple more songs, and be home by 10:30 p.m.

It's a funny thing when you assume. The neon "The Club is Open" sign flashed on, the "classic" GBV lineup hit the stage, and an incredible slap of raw, melodic power came roaring from the stage. Lead singer Robert Pollard danced an odd smash edit of Riverdance jigs, jumps, and high kicks that could make a Rockette jealous, while intermittently grabbing beers from the Igloo cooler the band had onstage. Forty songs and two hours later, Pollard was rather tanked, the crowd was a sweaty mess, and I had seen the light: It's the live show, stupid, it's the live show.

The rest of the photos from the GBV show can be seen here.

(The balcony shots were made possible thanks to the nice lady and the two young guys...Didn't get your names but thanks for helping me get some great shots!)

Because I wrote about Title Tracks' versions of songs by The Flamin' Groovies and The Merseybeats earlier this week, and because Bob Dylan's truly atrocious new disc of Christmas standards leaked yesterday, I've been thinking a lot about covers.

Let's put aside the illustrious history of ill-advised tributes (read: the entire Me First and the Gimme Gimmes oeuvre). A good cover can both satisfy a simple, dorky impulse—to hear one artist you admire spin another in an interesting way—and prove rather instructional. For example, it can tell you that Title Tracks frontman John Davis is probably a sucker for semi-obscure gems (he is), as well as a student of infectious, pop-classicist hooks. With that in mind, I've collected some recent covers by local artists.

My short list, after the jump, is fairly folk- and indie-centric, and by no means complete. Tell me what I missed in the comments.

These United States and Vandaveer—the folky side project of  TUS's bassist, Mark Heidinger—contributed cuts to Dylan Mania, a French tribute compilation that slipped under the radar when it dropped in May. Vandaveer's take on "The Man In Me" is fairly straightforward, if not nearly as creepy and self-satisfied as the 1970 original. These United States' version of "To Ramona," meanwhile, is more animated and unhinged, benefiting greatly from a galloping rhythm and some thickly applied pedal steel. You can hear both songs on the groups' respective MySpace pages.

Ugly Purple Sweater has a cover of the Woody Guthrie-penned folk standard "This Land Is Your Land" up on its MySpace page. No surprises here, really—except that the duo has tweaked the title a bit, and decorated the song with a fairly silly falsetto. Which, strangely, is pretty awesome.

Last Tide—whom I wrote about in this week's One Track Mind—includes a swirling, eerie cover of Talking Heads' "Memories Can't Wait" in its live set. Cover Me—a blog that, yes, covers covers—has an mp3 of the song from the band's recent appearance on WMUC’s Third Rail Radio program. Also, Last Tide frontman Nate Frey's other band, Detox Retox, does an, um, interesting cover of Joy Division's "Transmission":

The gloomy art-punk outfit Screen Vinyl Image taps one of its sonic forebears in this live cover of an early Slowdive B-side. Bonus! The woozy video quality and seizure-inducing lights are straight out of any shoegaze music vid circa 1989:

Ted Leo doesn't make music in the District anymore, but I like his tense, crescendoing cover of Robert Pollard's "The Numbered Head"—from the recent Score! 20 Years Of Merge Records: The Covers! comp—enough to include it here. You can stream the song at the Merge Records online store. It's got nothing, though, on the all-adrenaline cover of "Suspect Device" that Leo played at Fort Reno a few years ago.

Yo La Tengo hails from Hoboken, N.J, but the group played a pair of (kinda) D.C.-related covers at its 9:30 Club show recently: "Firecracker, Firecracker," by Half Japanese, and "Nervous Breakdown," which L.A.'s Black Flag wrote about three years before the District-born Henry Rollins joined the group. Rollins' provenance was a shaky excuse for Yo La Tengo to play the song, but the crowd was happy to forgive the trio. You can stream the entire set at NPR.

No, I'm not a Guided By Voices fanboy geekin' over another Bob Pollard incarnation; the real cause for excitement (well, for me) is the presence of Miami-based madman Rat Bastard's nebulous Squelchers unit, one of the most unpredictable outfits in all of noise's underbelly. A founding member of the despicable To Live and Shave in LA, Mr. Bastard (Frank Falestra to Mom) has been cracking heads, bursting eardrums, and causing structural damage in shitty clubs for decades, most recently with his sprawling International Noise Conference, which touts: "No droning, no mixing boards, no laptops."

I had the opportunity to see the Squelchers at last year's No Future Fest in Chapel Hill, NC, where a burly man with black-rimmed glasses and beanie (Rat Bastard) hurled his static-spewing amplifier into the faces and chests of audience members. It looked something like this:

You can imagine my intrigue then, at the juxtaposition of such confrontational guitar trash and hook-laden pop-punk for Saturday's bill, though it makes a bit more sense after some Googling and a visit to the Squelchers site. Pollard and Finestra have actually collaborated before — back in 2003 for Pollard's Motel of Fools EP. And since the "Laundry Room Squelchers" are basically anyone who can/will tour with Mr. Bastard at the time, the lineup for Saturday will consist solely of Finestra and local guitar/electronics whiz Chris Grier, also a collaborator with TLASILA. Given that this is basically an indie rock showcase, I imagine the Squelchers set will be significantly less violent and involve a more stationary guitar assault similar to this:

But you never know, heads might roll.