Kropp says there are plenty of recordings that get sucked into a black hole only to pop up at some point later, including some reel-to-reel promos for the station by The Beatles. In fact, he says he found a copy of that Elliott Smith session back in 2004. So, he did what any curious crate-digger would do: He ripped a copy of it. But Kropp "never thought to share it with any of my friends," and he didn't know that the recordings he found contained an unreleased song. He was just pleasantly surprised to find a copy of the session after hearing whispers about its existence.

The same goes for former WMUC live music director Chris Henry when he found a CD copy of the performance back in 2009. As live music director, Henry was responsible for running Third Rail Radio, the program Smith appeared on in 1996, but he discovered the CD before he ran that show. Henry wasn't even trying to find a recording of Smith's set when he decided to go digging through the archives, though he'd heard about it—he was actually hunting for a rumored WMUC performance by Will Oldham. But when he found it in a binder, he opted to do the same thing Kropp did some five years prior. "I had an engineer make a copy for me and I brought the copy back to my apartment and ripped it to my computer," Henry says.

Henry placed that CD back in its original file, where it probably still remains. ("It sort of surprised me that nobody touched the CD after that, which I think is kind of odd," he says.) He named the 10 tracks he ripped onto his computer as best he could, and gave the lead-off tune the title "Division Day, Take 1." That's because on the recording Smith began playing "Division Day" for about 20 seconds before stopping, mumbling, and eventually performing that impromptu version of "Misery Let Me Down." Like Kropp, Henry wasn't aware that the tune that followed his aborted take of "Division Day" was an unreleased gem. He learned that last Friday, long after he passed the digital files along to WMUC co-music director Vaman Muppala.

"It's always been a legend at the station," Muppala says of the Smith session. It landed in his lap in the form of a curious package from Weisholtz. As Malitz wrote, Muppala found a MiniDisc marked "Elliott Smith/Braid" in the package. But he couldn't do anything with it: Muppala hadn't seen anyone use a MiniDisc player at the station. Ripping the session from the disc got added to a future "to do" list, but nothing could be done then. That's where Henry came in.

When Muppala realized Henry had a digital version of the tracks—albeit a rip of a rip of the original MiniDisc—he asked him for a copy. Henry passed it along and uploaded the session to WMUC's digital music archive. In the wee hours of Oct. 17, Muppala sent an e-mail about the session's availability to the station's listserv with a subject that captured his rapt excitement: "Live at WMUC! on the music Archive and ELLIOTT EFFING SMITH." DJ Leila Mays played one of those songs almost two weeks later, and her public playlist helped lead to the realization that the session contained an unreleased tune.

Since the news of the session went viral, Muppala has been swift to try and set the record straight and give proper credit to Henry. That's because the session he uploaded to the digital archive didn't come directly from the MiniDisc Weisholtz sent him, but the copy of a CD copy Henry made in 2009. After Malitz's piece went live, Muppala wrote a humorous, scatterbrained post on WMUC's Tumblr explaining how the tracks got online and included a link to an edited version of the session. And the story keeps evolving: Muppala says that WMUC record librarian David Taylor is working on ripping the original session from the MiniDisc in order to obtain a higher quality version of the recording, and Muppala adds that Braid singer-guitarist Bob Nanna called the station to clarify that his band did not perform with Smith as Muppala's post indicates.

Discovery stories aside, Smith fans got their wish: a digital file of his WMUC show. Yet, it appears that new, slightly edited versions of that session dilute his set into listenable clips. (The above YouTube clip only contains the "Misery Let Me Down" cut, while the Click Track piece contains a slightly longer version with Smith introducing the tune saying "can I like warm up and play a song before we tape?") The reality of the performance is quite different.

"It's kind of a sad thing to listen to," Kropp says. Some on-air sets can be rough around the edges, but Smith's stripped-down show is messy to the core. He stumbled through the rest of the session after playing "Misery Let Me Down": He made two more attempts of "Division Day," a couple takes of "Say Yes," and also performed "Thirteen," "2:45 AM," and "Alameda." Along the way, you can hear him break-off mid-song, pause to fix his headphones, mumble, profusely apologize, and anxiously pick at his guitar. On Click Track, Third Rail Radio creator Eric Speck relates his impression of Smith, saying "He was SHOCKINGLY shy and it became clear he had on air jitters. He pretty much locked himself in the promotion office—alone—to tune and practice. He was super nice, but very sullen and soft spoken."

"I think he was wasted on cough syrup, this is how the story is told," Kropp says. In fact, between his first try at "Division Day" and "Misery Let Me Down," Smith mutters, "I just need to wake up. I took some Nyquil." That could also partly explain his erratic behavior during the session, and why "Misery Let Me Down" abruptly ends seemingly mid-song. Looking back on it, it's hard not to re-contextualize the event in regards to the painful personal issues Smith grappled with and his early death in 2003.

Needless to say, it's an interesting document, and perhaps one of many waiting to be dug up at WMUC. Muppala says there are plenty of recordings from now-legendary bands like Q And Not U sitting in the station, and he's heard rumors of a Fugazi MiniDisc floating around. "There's definitely more shocking MiniDiscs to be found," he says. And finds like the Elliott Smith session remind old WMUC members the joys of their own musical treasure hunts. "It's fun to see that happen, because everyone gets to relive that discovery," Kropp says. For Kropp, it's stories like these that help build a special mythos around the station. "It's like Hogwarts with music," he says.

Let’s say that June 18, 2011, is the only day in your life when you can see a Beatles tribute band. You can choose between "1964"...The Tribute at the Birchmere or RAIN at Wolf Trap. I’m the perfect person to help you: I have never seen a Beatles tribute band. Or a real Beatle perform solo. Or the Beatles, duh. In the realm of simulacra, ignorance is divine! With that in mind, and some cursory YouTube research in hand, I recommend that you see 1964. They stick to the “touring years” of the Fab Four, so the show is basically early-to-middle era hits, vintage guitars, and shag haircuts. RAIN was on Broadway, and its music—weighted toward the later years—is extremely polished. So, essentially, one is a “band” and the other is a “show.” Both seem slightly odd, but I’d take the “band.” Or maybe I’m not being counter-intuitive enough? Damn you, realm of simulacra!

"1964"...The Tribute performs June 18 at 7:30 at the Birchmere, 3701 Mt. Vernon Ave., Alexandria. $35. RAIN performs June 18 at 8 p.m. at the Wolf Trap Filene Center, 1551 Trap Rd., Vienna. $25-$40.

Yes! It's really a book!

First rock icon, now lauded author: Last night Patti Smith won the National Book Award for nonfiction for Just Kids, her memoir about her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe in the '60s and '70s. Some people are so talented I can hardly stand it.

In other book news, you know that memoir Roger Sterling's been working all the past season of Mad Men? Well, Sterling's Gold is available for real. For all the corniness of a biography from a fictional TV character, I'm semi-tempted to check it out. He does have the best lines in the show, after all.

It's inescapable if you have a Mac and you use Safari: The Beatles are finally on iTunes. Rolling Stone reports that they've been kicking some ass, with all 17 albums available on iTunes in the top 50, and three albums in the top 10.

Spoiler alert! The finale of Top Chef: Just Desserts aired last night, and the winner is [drumroll please]... Yigit! The young Turk was praised for his innovation and restraint in the four course dessert final challenge. I think I would feel this way had Morgan or Danielle won as well, but I've gotta say, the end was strangely anticlimactic. Maybe it's because I just don't find desserts as interesting as savory food–I'm the woman who defies stereotypes and really doesn't care for chocolate. Oh well. Top Chef All Stars is just around the corner (Dec. 1!) and you can bet I'll have some rooting interest in that.

But perhaps Fischer should have included a transatlantic steamship or something, because today the WaPo tastemakers are all over the big story that OMG! HOLY SHIT! EVERYONE IN ENGLAND IS GETTING MARRIED! The Post is agog over the announcement that Prince William and Kate Middleton are finally engaged to be married. There's a page on washingtonpost.com with a word cloud and roundup about the nuptials. In the dead-tree edition Robin Ghivan is already choosing Kate's wedding dress. And Monica Hesse's story in the A Section calls the big day—which will need to be scheduled around the Queen's birthday, the Queen's jubilee, the premiere of the next season of Doctor Who and possibly the 2012 Summer Olympics—"a rebirth for Britain." By the way, what the fuck is the Queen's jubilee? I only ask because read aloud the term sounds like a Long Island City sex party.

Also today in WaPo London: An interview with Hogwarts' resident nogoodnik Tom Felton.

Over at TBD, Sarah Godfrey was going to review Bob Dylan's show at GWU last weekend, but "Dylan's people" don't like show reviews. Or reporters and critics in general. Or cell phones that feature cameras. Godfrey nearly lost her phone to an I.M.P. usher (acting on Dylan's orders), but considering the revelation that "Dylan's people" attempt to deny ticket sales to self-identified reporters, she might be lucky she got in at all.

Meanwhile, Godfrey's fellow Albrittonite Allbrittonite Maura Judkis reports that Stomp is headed back to Washington in January to make up for the cancellation of its sister show Pandemonium last month.

Also from the London desk yesterday came Apple's announcement that you must buy The Beatles' entire catalog again or Steve Jobs will sit on a puppy. But the new iTunes selection of The Beatles does include their first American performance at the old Washington Coliseum, DCist notes. Yeah, the Coliseum was first. Take that, Shea Stadium.

Closer to home, Joe Warminsky, still gloating from his beloved Eagles' thrashing of the Redskins, found a new gem of a local ad on Monday night in Hyattsville's Afros Cut. Hopefully it'll still make Warminsky smile after the Giants take care of those pesky Iggles this week.

If you didn't vote for Bristol Palin last night on Dancing With the Stars, then you hate freedom, grizzly bears, baked Alaskas, pregnant ladies and America.

*NPR lavishes much-deserved attention on Jeff Campbell, the man behind D.C.'s Hungry for Music, which supplies underprivileged kids with used instruments.

*The D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities today announced the audition schedule for the 2010-11 American Youth Chorus.

*In the Post, Jonathan Yardley goes to bat for John Waters, who (he notes) "will be pulling Social Security checks any day now, leaning back in his Barcalounger and reminiscing about the good old days when porn was really porn and dog poop was on the menu." Yardley also calls the pencil-mustachioed auteur "a greater National Treasure than 90 percent of the people who are given 'Kennedy Center Honors' each December." (Waters' autobiography, title, is out now courtesy of FSG.) For further lively reading, check out Mike Riggs' excellent interview with the man himself from this past December. For EVEN MORE LIVELINESS, enjoy the video above. It's one of Riggs' favorites!

*ALSO IN THE POST: I haven't yet heard the new record from Bettye LaVette, but it's a beautiful concept: free-handed covers of the Who, the Beatles, and Zeppelin recast over gospel-funk.  (I've only seen LaVette once—at the "We Are One" Inauguration concert—and she was of course fabulous.) In any case, Geoffrey Himes has good things to say.

*This New York Times piece about the Great & Glorious Updike Archive is good reading. It also uses the phrase "lathe-turned."

Good morning! I feel old and I feel bloated, which is the perfect lead-in to two things I am very excited about:

1. The dance-focused U Street Music Hall is starting to book indie-rockish shows that start at 7 p.m. and end before the venue's usual oomph-oomph-ing gets going at 10. Look at the July 22 show: I'll be able to see locals Medications, Deleted Scenes, and Hume, arrive home in time to spend some time with that Swedish thriller that NPR and the New York Times keep telling me about, and then fall asleep to Man vs. Food.
2. Today is National Donut Day! I'm going to attend a company meeting about changes to our benefits that make no sense to me on paper, and then I'm going to down Krispie Kremes till I lapse into a coma. DCist and Borderstan have the deets.

Speaking of old people, I saw Paul McCartney and some other folks play from his Beatles and solo songbook at the White House Wednesday. I wrote about it here. Then I wrote about writing about it here. Now I'm watching this NBA ad in which Andre 3000 covers the Beatles' "All Together Now" that I could probably do without. Later, I'm going to lead WCP interns in a bawdy version of "Honey Pie."

Wandering Souls is a newish arts organization in D.C.—and it'll be staging Shakespeare's Twelth Night this fall for free in various neighborhoods where the arts are hard to come by. The organizers are raising money to make it happen. Groovy.

Or, if the whole art-selling-real-estate-selling-art thing is more your speed, there's this opening tomorrow and Saturday at a new condo in Shaw. The art ain't free, but the door and the vodka is. With an RSVP, of course.

Now casting! In Utah! The short film Garden City, whose central character is one Jonathan Fischer, "a lifeguard who takes a ... special .... interest in the lives of the people he saves." Uh? "Note:Without giving too much of the story away, the plot involves murder and violence. Nothing explicit or graphic but definitely on par with a PG13 rating." Time to start penning that cease-and-desist letter!

Image via scmikeburton.

Morning, readers! Short roundup today while your tireless City Paper arts staff slaves on the forthcoming 24th annual D.C. International Film Festival spread. It's gonna be off the chain! Keep an eye out for any and all blurbs by a certain J.L. Fischer. I think that kid's going places.

*Above, witness a dramatic little guitar solo by Prince.

*Been waiting for the Telegraph to label Henri Cartier-Bresson "a kind of salvage ethnographer"? Wait no further!

*In salacious new volume, Jad Adams reveals Gandhi was "sex mad." Which doesn't quite jive with some of Mahatma's more famous pronouncements. Take the following:

It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife.

*David Carr shows some well-deserved love to the Philadelphia Daily News, "an underdog newspaper in an underdog market with an underdog owner."

*Of course someone's staging a Twitter version of Romeo & Juliet. Of course they're calling it Such Tweet Sorrow. (Points for this last, actually.) But who knew the Royal Shakespeare Company would get onboard?

*Calling Mike Rhode and Glen Weldon: Someone's unearthed the Marvel Comics equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls! New Jack Kirby franchises, here we come.

*Now John Lennon can rest in peace: The Vatican, in an unusual, occasionally rhapsodic bit of prose, has publicly forgiven the Beatles for the whole sex, drugs, rock & roll, "bigger than Jesus" thing. Via the Guardian:

On the front page of the L'Osservatore Romano, the paper admits that the band once "said they were bigger than Jesus and put out mysterious messages, that were possibly even Satanic", but also asks: "what would pop music have been like without the Beatles?"

So I guess if praising a 40-year-old band doesn't distract the public from the buggering of altar boys, what's the Pope's next move? Canonize Prince?

Friday

• Suzanne Vega, Marc Cohn. Strathmore. $25-$48.

• The Sneaky Bastards, The Silver Liners. The Red & The Black. $8.

• C.J. Chenier. IOTA Club & Cafe. $17.

• Rebelution, Zion-I, Jah Works. 9:30 Club. $17.50.

• The Sometime Favorites, Farm Vegas, The Bootleg Gatsby, Carl & Carleigh. Rock and Roll Hotel. $10.

• Stealin' the Deal. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.

• Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet. Wolf Trap. $35.

• Invisible Hands, Andrew Cedermark, The Coastals. Velvet Lounge. $8. 21+.

• Marco Benevento Trio, Nathan Moore. Jammin Java. $15.

• Wanda Jackson, The Lustre Kings. Black Cat mainstage. $20.

• National Symphony Orchestra Pops: And the Winner Is... . Kennedy Center Concert Hall. $20-$85.

Saturday

• Hollis Brown, Scott Lucas & The Married Men. The Red & The Black. $6.

• Federico Aubele. IOTA Club & Cafe. $15.

• Lotus, Toubab Krewe. 9:30 Club. $17.

• We Were Promised Jetpacks, Bad Veins, Typefighter. Rock and Roll Hotel. $12 in advance, $14 at door.

• Deja Blue. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.

• The Association, Keegan Corbey. Birchmere. $35.

• A Tribute to Neil Finn/Crowded House: Naked Blue, Jon Carroll, Margot MacDonald, John Jennings, David Kitchen Band, King Teddy, Cal Everett, Victoria Vox, Deeme Katson, Luke Brindley, Todd Wright, Alfonso Velez, Harry Traynham, Bruno Loves Danger, Diane Rosenthal, Rocky Roberts. Wolf Trap. $25.

• Pet Parade, Art Daniels, Sal Go Shocks The Black And Blues. Velvet Lounge. $8. 21+.

• Punch Drunk Poets, Brainfang, The Resistance. Jammin Java. $10.

• Second Saturdays: Suns of Guns, Dark Sea Dream. Black Cat backstage. $8.

• Abrassive Actions, Engulfed in Flames, Orgy of the Damned, Gomorrah, Silver Cyanide, Invader, Undercurrent. Jaxx. $8 in advance, $10 day of.

• Greg Laswell, John Brodeur. DC9. $12.

• Valerie Vigoda, Brendan Milburn. Kennedy Center Millenium Stage. Free.

Sunday

• Barton Carroll, Machines on Vacation. The Red & The Black. $8.

• Next Big Thing: featuring over 20 local alternative and punk acts. 9:30 Club (and various other venues). $15.

• D.C. Record Fair: DJs Eric Hilton, Ian MacKaye, Geologist, Kid Congo Powers, Bluebrain, Casper Bangs. Black Cat mainstage. $2.

• Nile, Immolation, Krisiun, Rose Funeral, Dreaming Dead, Krass Judgement. Jaxx. $23 in advance, $25 day of.

• National Symphony Orchestra Young Soloists (competition). Kennedy Center Millenium Stage. Free.

• All You Need is Love Songwriters Circle—Tribute to the Beatles and Love Songs: Anthony Fiacco, Shane Hines, Todd Wright, Luke Brindley. Jammin Java. $10 in advance, $13 day of.

C.J. Chenier photo by James Fraher, via MySpace.

*Lady Gaga tweeted her newest sign of devotion to her fans: her nickname for them, "Little Monsters," freshly tattooed on her arm.

*It was announced that the best Beatle, Ringo Starr, will be getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next week. Ringo's reaction to the honor? "A star for a Starr — what an honor and a privilege it is to be walked on!"

*Duncan Sheik (the mastermind behind Broadway's Spring Awakening) will be the creative force behind the newly announced American Psycho stage musical.

*Zach Galifianakis announced on his Twitter that he'll be hosting Saturday Night Live on March 6. Awkward comedy fans rejoice.

*A new rendition of "We Are the World" was recently recorded at the Jim Henson Company studios with over 75 popular artists. Among them, Barbra Streisand, Usher, Harry Connick, Jr., Jeff Bridges ... Joel Madden and Justin Bieber? It certainly will be an interesting mix.

*Tonight in City Lights: Alberta Cross will be playing with Hacienda at the Black Cat.