Lists are inexplicably difficult yet undeniably crucial for music nerds. We have to sum up the events of the year with numbers and bullet points or our brains melt and our hearts explode. Sad but true. It's been in fashion of late to be more eclectic with lists, including everything from drone-core to bubblegum pop [...]
Ted Leo And The Pharmacists cover Tears For Fears
What constitutes a good cover? Over the last five months, the endearingly opinionated commentariat over at The Onion’s A.V. Club have publicly debated their merits and pitfalls below each installment of Undercover, its 25-week web series. The premise: Bands cram into a quaintly claustrophobic studio to perform selections [...]
Ooh yeah, we're back for another week. Know your history. If you're too lazy to click on that link, here's the gist: Last week we described Far Out vs. Hot Dang as "a weekly assemblage of whatever we hear rattling around in D.C.’s cultural chasm." The cool side is still cool, but a little funky, [...]
Good morning, D.C.! City schools started up yesterday: How's it feel to say goodbye to summer and get back on that education grind? Godspeed to all Teach for America instructors, really.
The Howard Theatre turned 100 to much fanfare this weekend. Yesterday, the Comcast commercial starring everyone's favorite independent cafe without a liquor license dropped. Aaron Morrissey finds it [...]
You'll probably see this posted everywhere, but I linked to Ted Leo's essay-length teaser about his forthcoming musical-theater career change, so I owe you a follow-up. Here's Leo's punchline: "Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: The Brutalist Bricks (No Refunds); a Reginald VanVoorst Production!"
Two must-reads and a should-read. Here's the should-read—Ian Svenonius' essay in Vice, "On the Misuse of Music." The first point in his argument that music ought to be banned? Music kills:
And while musicians’ deaths are so commonplace that news of one invokes yawning, these other “normal” hard-partying people don’t just fall down dead every day. There [...]
UPDATE | 1:04 P.M.: He ain't retiring—just doing what he's been saying he'd eventually be doing for a while: cooling it. Leo writes on the Pharmacists' website: "One thing I don’t want to have happen, is to wake up turning 50, and have to just be starting this conversation then. I’m looking at things realistically, [...]
If you're on the 9:30 Club's mailing list or frequent its message board, then you know this already; if you're not, you may be out of the luck: The venerable club turned 30 this year, and on Monday it's hosting a free Memorial Day bash to celebrate. District son Henry Rollins, of Black Flag and [...]
Ted Leo never stops moving. Years of what seems like endless touring have proved he's one of the hardest-working forces in the business. On stage and in the studio, his songs are catchy as hell, urgent as ever, and often fraught with political angst—The Brutalist Bricks, his most recent release, only furthers his fiercely maintained [...]
Undoubtedly, the D.C. independent record store has made something of a resurgence in recent years—even if conventional logic tells us that those brick-and-mortar shops are ultimately doomed. (Although there's some recent evidence that they may not be.)
So it's a bummer that for Record Store Day on April 17, some of D.C.'s indie labels have no [...]
