City Paper music contributor Sarah Godfrey, I’m thrilled to report, is a finalist in the music-criticism category in the 2008 AltWeekly Awards. Take a look at the three pieces that earned her the nomination:

“Half the Man He Used to Be,” July 19, 2007 (On T.I.’s T.I. vs. T.I.P.)

“People, People, Why Are They Fighting?” Sept. 19, 2007 (On Kanye West’s Graduation and 50 Cent’s Curtis)

“Hug Life,” Oct. 24, 2007 (On Trey Songz‘ Trey Day and J. Holiday’s Back of My Lac’)

According to Washington Post blog Going Out Gurus, Fort Reno Park, site of the long running annual summer concert series, is closed after the United States Geological Survey discovered high levels of arsenic in the soil. Snow fencing was apparently erected around the park’s perimeter early this morning. There’s no word yet regarding when the park will reopen or whether the concert series will take place at an alternate location.

Needless to say, this is a is pretty devastating blow for D.C. music culture.

Time spent at the concert: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

Time spent in the car getting to and from the concert: 6 hours, 50 minutes.

Cost:

• 2 tickets - $66.50 each.
• 1 parking ticket for the only available (metered) space in my neighborhood when I got home at 1:30 am - $30.
• 1 ruined pair of shoes.
• 1 even more ruined pair of socks.
• Seeing Liars’ set.
• Any chance that I’ll ever go to Nissan Pavilion again.
• The credibility of Radiohead’s self-righteous prattling about the benefits of getting to the show via carpooling and/or public transit.

And apparently, I was one of the lucky ones.

Dear People at the Next Table at HR-57 on Saturday Night:

I understand the perception that jazz is background music. In some places, that’s quite true. A jazz club, however, is not one of those places. At a jazz club, jazz is what you might call the whole fucking point.

One would think that you knew that, having paid fifteen bucks to get in. However, Eric Lewis’s name on the bill was clearly not a big motivation for you, since you were talking at the top of your lungs all through his set and causing people in the front row to glare back at you. If anything, your motivation was the empty bottle of Maker’s Mark on your table. (For which I grudgingly respect you guys—I’ve never seen anyone, even a large group, finish a bottle of Maker’s Mark in one sitting.)

Still, it might have occurred to you that the other people who paid $15 a head DID want to hear the music. They probably weren’t that interested in your discussion of Barack Obama’s foreign policy platform. Which is why by the end of the night people were choosing to leave their seats and stand against the wall, packed in like sardines, rather than listen to you anymore. Not that it helped, as your decibel range was in the high hundreds.

However, when it comes down to it, the joke’s on you. What you missed was one of the most astonishing musical performances of your lives. Lewis played an astonishing repertoire of classic songs, obscure rock music, and his own compositions, and he did it all with great sturm-und-drang and hands that I’d never believed could move so fast over a keyboard–at least with any reasonable degree of accuracy.

So I don’t even have to tell you to fuck off. You already pretty well did.

Cheers,
MJW

On May 16, Joe Lally will be hitting the road, opening his huge tour in Pittsburgh. He’s scheduled to play the Black Cat on May 28. Dischord has the dates. [Label needs to learn how to spell Pittsburgh correctly].

For a few days, I was tasked with researching the life of Christopher Savage. Savage had moved to D.C. from Bakersfield, Calif. in the hopes of starting a new life. After five days in the District, he ended up dead. The cause of his death remains a mystery. His life is a different matter. He tended to wear his life on his sleeve. You can read the full story here.

But one thing that struck me–aside from everything else–about Savage was his dedication to being a punk rocker. He came here with three jean jackets emblazoned with shoutouts to his beloved Turbonegro. He also brought with him only one CD: a best-of Motorhead compilation. And for his new friends, a sack of Crass buttons.

Savage was 36. It’s just a long time to be a punk rocker. I don’t think this is so rare anymore. The Internet certainly helps. He lived on the Turbonegro fan message boards. And just about any band has some sort of forum for other fans to communicate with each other–trade bootlegs, merch, set lists, and just feel like they are a part of something. So few scenes feel like scenes anymore. Except on the Internet. Pitchfork makes a point about this today with its review of the new No Age record–a band very much rooted in a city and in an all-ages space.

Maybe with the music shake-up in Mount P, things could change here as well.

No Wave is kind of hard to describe using actual words. One generally has to rely on onomatopoeia like skree and krang to effectively capture the chaos and dissonance that defined the music. But in his book No Wave Arlington music writer Marc Masters does a good job of characterizing the movement without resorting to a Thurston Moore-invented vocabulary. If you want to check it out in person, he’ll be doing a reading and signing tonight at Crooked Beat Records around 7 p.m. If that leaves you curious as to what No Wave music actually sounds like, Masters will also be DJing tonight at Marx Cafe (located at 3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW) from 10 p.m. to 3 am..

Yes, yes, when you hear people talking about going to see Iron Man this weekend, they’re probably talking about this Iron Man—or as I call it, Another Damned Comic Book Movie. But there’s another Iron Man in DC this weekend: the Gaithersburg-born doom-metal band, which headlines Velvet Lounge Saturday night.

The name, as you might guess, comes from their origins as a Black Sabbath cover band; their sound is drawn from those days too, specializing in the sludgy darkness that Ozzy, Tony, and the boys brought to life in the ’70s. Here’s a CP cover story on the band’s history from about three years ago, courtesy of the ever-reliable Mike Kanin.

It’s a 10 p.m. show, with two openers (Baltimore’s Revelation and Pennsylvania’s Pale Divine, and it’s only 8 bucks. Bring your black clothes; spiked collars, full goatees, and black eyeliner optional.

There’s a whole wide spectrum of interesting international music events in the D.C. area this weekend. While there’s no denying that some international music is marketed to 50-something white guy NPR listeners, here in the D.C. area many international concerts are instead aimed at emigres from the respective countries. That’s the case with many of this weekend’s shows. But whether or not one fits into a targeted demographic, these shows are worth checking out.

Friday night May 2nd brings the first of a trio of May salsa shows. Orquesta Guayacan from Colombia meshes polished, romantic vocals with booming horns and a percussive clave beat. They’ll be with Los Internacionales del Vallenato con Wilmer Manga & Pete Rodgers at El Boqueron II, 1330 East Gude Drive, in Rockville. Advertised only in the Spanish-language media, expect the club’s large dancefloor to be filled with dancing couples (many familiar with the group from back home).

Meanwhile, back in-town at the Kennedy Center, Luciana Souza, a Brazilian female singer most recently heard on Herbie Hancock’s Grammy album of the year, brings her folk, bossa nova and jazz stylings to the Center’s Family Theater for two shows at 7:30 and 9:30.

Nothing ever starts early at Zanzibar on the Waterfront, but if you’re willing to wait around till well after midnight Friday night (Saturday morning), longtime Jamaican sweet-voiced crooner Luciano headlines a reggae triple-bill. His latest “Jah is My Navigator” has received much acclaim.

Saturday night May 3rd offers a tribute to an artist, the late Andy Palacio from Belize, whose 2007 CD did impress those middle age American world music tastemakers and fans. Sadly, the 40-something Palacio suddenly died in January just as he was preparing for a U.S. tour. So instead Lisner Auditorium will be offering a free homage at 8 p.m. to Palacio’s pop, which combined West African, Arawak Indian and European influences. The show will feature Palacio’s band the Garifuna Collective, all women group Umalali, and others.

Sunday May 4th is the 2nd salsa show of the month–the Spanish Harlem Orchestra at the University of Mayland’s Clarice Smith Center at 7:30(the third one is El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico on May 17th at the Dulles Expo Center). This frequently touring ensemble that includes “salsa dura” (hard salsa) trombonist Jimmy Bosch, is sneered at by some purists simply because they play more crossover gigs and get more Anglo media attention than other salsa combos, but don’t hold that against them. Plus, I’ve seen folks dance in the aisles at the Clarice Smith Center, so this may just as lively a function as the other weekend Spanish-language gigs (none of which have received any Cinco de Mayo related publicity, by the way).

Hey hey, there’s a live chat with Travis Morrison this morning at Washingtonian.com. Ask him about the New York City tap water, or maybe how it feels being a “predecessor to the dance-rock movement,” or his days as a cab driver, or even something about computers. He knows a lot about computers.