Somewhere in Kenya, during a six-hour bus ride from Mombasa to Nairobi this fall, the Kenya-based, Uganda-born Doreen Baingana’s laptop was stolen. In an Oct. 21 e-mail, her devastation was clear: “I am in shock right now. I will just have to use my memory. Terrible.”
That laptop has every interview that Baingana, who for the [...]
For the past year, The Writer's Center in Bethesda has been home to the free series Story/Stereo, which pairs readings by local writers with performances by local musicians. This week the musician is Devin Ocampo, the D.C. music vet and post-punk force of nature known for his work with bands like Medications, Smart Went Crazy, Faraquet, [...]
Good morning! In what's totally a break from our usual coverage, there is a lot of local indie-rock news to discuss today! Such as: that new video right there. It's for "Siberian Eclipse," a song on Screen Vinyl Image's recent cassette on Fan Death records, which I think you should be excited about. It's out [...]
The Writer's Center's Story/Stereo series, our favorite free live-music program not set in the summer months, will begin its second season Sept. 3 with a performance from John Davis, the former Q and Not U and Georgie James member and current Title Tracks leader. And he'll be playing songs from all three groups. It's the [...]
Since its debut last September, Story/Stereo has hosted unlikely combinations of poets, authors, and musicians—from jazz poet Brian Gilmore to post-punk legend J. Robbins (Jawbox, Office of Future Plans)—and it's all been entirely free. It all takes place just outside the District at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, which curates the literature portion of the [...]
There's no question that J. Robbins can still rock-out–Jawbox's recent sorta-reunion proved that much (although NBC Universal seems to have stricken the video footage from the internet). But nailing the coffee house vibe? That's another mater entirely.
Friday night Robbins–accompanied by cellist Gordon Withers and the smallest drum machine I've ever seen–performed an all acoustic [...]
It's hard to imaging a quiet J. Robbins. His skill with booming drums and thrashy guitars–both as an engineer and as a member of the post-hardcore band Jawbox–has pretty much defined his career. But tonight, he's gonna turn it down a little. For the first time ever Robbins will perform unplugged, as part of the [...]
There's more to life than gigs.
A handful of area musicians are keeping that notion in mind this weekend, stepping outside their comfort zones for collaborative, one-night-only performances. There's Zomes, the drone-y project of Lungfish's Asa Osborne, which performs tonight at the Writer's Center in Bethesda as part of the ongoing Story/Stereo series. For the performance, [...]
Story/Stereo—a concert/reading series that pairs local musicians with local writers/poets—just announced two new events.
First, Asa Osborne—formerly of Baltimore gnostic/punk quartet Lungfish—will perform with his guitar/organ project, Zomes. Lisa Selin Davis will read. That's kind of a tough gig, though, considering the last person to put words in or around Osborne's music was Dan Higgs.
Then, in [...]
Combining literary pretensions with rock music can be tricky. Sometimes you get Leonard Cohen and everybody's happy—or at least content in their woe-tinged introspection. Other times, you get the Lizard King. But Chad Clark, leader of local rock band Beauty Pill and former proprietor of Silver Sonya recording studios, seems to know what he's doing. [...]
