Congrats to the Web site Fuse for the clever idea of celebrating July Fourth by setting up musical slapfights between acts from each of the 50 states. Did you know that Idaho has bands? It’s true!

The fine folks at Fuse forgot about D.C., though, denying locals the opportunity to choose between, say, Duke Ellington and Wale. Picking up the slack, the Boston Phoenix is attempting to start a Fugazi-vs.-Marvin Gaye-vs. Orthrelm battle. (Via)

I admire Britannica for doing more online, especially now that the entire world is literally conspiring together to put the encyclopedia publisher out of business. But if it keeps blogging nonsense like Robert McHenry’s post today, they get everything they deserve. McHenry is the former editor-in-chief of the encyclopedia—surely the job of a fearsomely intelligent man—and he’s careful to insulate his assertions with an admission that he doesn’t keep up. But still: “It seems as though sometime in the 1950s the golden age of songwriting came to a quiet close.”

And worse: “Surely one of the primary reasons that the Beatles hold such an eminent place among contemporary popular musicians is that they, meaning chiefly John Lennon and Paul McCartney, had a strong sense of melody and wrote songs that could be played, sung, and listened to with pleasure by others.”

It’s been a rough go, lo this many decades after Let It Be, finding music that can be “listened to with pleasure,” but somehow we’ve muddled through.

If the band Gestures were an actual physical gesture, it wouldn’t be a come-hither motion, a wave goodbye, or a middle-finger-fuck-you. It’d be one big old shrug that says, “I don’t know what the hell is going on.” The electricity-free, Washington, D.C.–based sextet features two drummers and four horn players—including trombone, flute, clarinet, and tuba—and the musical result sounds like the sloppiest marching-band practice ever recorded to tape. Whether it’s an act of improvisation by an accomplished group of classically trained musicians or an attempt at Slits-esque geniusness by a bunch of n00bs who just bought whatever instruments they could find at the thrift store remains to be seen. But Gestures has an undeniable (if goofy) charm, one that is sorely needed in a music scene in which artistic experimentation has seemingly given way to dime-a-dozen pop bands. Gestures performs with Bellman Barker and the Moderate at 7:15 at Fort Reno Park, 3950 Chesapeake St. NW. Free. (202) 355-6356. —Matthew Borlik

Black Plastic Bag is expanding its stable of music writers. We’re looking for locals who can riff on albums, give our readers a heads-up on shows, bring the news, tell a good joke, and generally help us tell the story of the D.C. music scene. Interested? If so, show us what you’ve got—drop a line to blackplasticbag@washingtoncitypaper.com letting us know what you’d contribute to the ‘Bag. Include links to a few samples of your work—print, Web, blog, vlog, podcast, whatever you have, we want to see it.

Saturday:

There are usually two kinds of band reunions: the kind in which a band plays the hits from its heyday, and the kind in which a band attempts to pick up where it left off, writing new material. Seminal Bostonian post-punk act Mission of Burma is doing a bit of both. Formed in 1979, the band released only one full length, Vs., before calling it quits as a result of guitarist Roger Miller’s tinnitus. In 2002, the band reunited and has since toured regularly and recorded more full-length albums than in its original incarnation. On Burma’s current tour, titled “Definitive Editions,” the band members are breaking from their usual blend of old and new to please their more nostalgia-hungry fans. They’ll play Vs. in its entirety throughout the tour, showing that, while they’re not living in the past, they’re not afraid to look back. Mission of Burma performs with Versus at 9 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $15. (202) 667-7960. —Matthew A. Stern

Sunday:

Washington, D.C., won’t have Leonard Slatkin to kick around anymore. The National Symphony Orchestra’s longtime music director is off to Detroit after the Kennedy Center decided against renewing his contract, but not before a proper send-off. D.C.’s dwindling and increasingly geriatric classical music community was at best ambivalent about the 63-year-old conductor: His 12-year tenure was marked by grousing from the Muppet Show balcony critics, who bemoaned both the declining interest in classical and the NSO’s earnest but sometimes embarrassing efforts to reverse this (see “Video Games Live!”—classical renditions of songs from Halo and World of Warcraft). Nevertheless, Slatkin left his mark. He revived interest in Russian, British, and American composers in a field dominated by Austrians and Germans, and he knew how to connect with an audience, if not with Statler and Waldorf. In this program, Slatkin will highlight some of the best of his repertoire—Shostakovich, Elgar, and Bernstein—and will be joined by master cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The performance begins at 7 p.m. at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall, 2700 F St. NW. $25–$150. (202) 467-4600. —Michael Paarlberg

H.R. has a new album finished—Hey Wella comes out in September, and a handful of the tracks are streaming on his MySpace page. Respect is due and all that, but my attempt to do some quick math on the album’s reggae-to-punk track ratio led me to “You Got a Girlfriend,” a mess of loping beats and ka-chunk-ka-chunk guitars that almost made me miss Sublime. So, figure half and half, but stick with Rock for Light anyhow. Best to remember Bad Brains this way:

Or perhaps this way:

Still, if you want more, he headlines Velvet Lounge Friday, July 11.

Read it here.

Harp magazine is back. Kinda. The Silver Spring-based music magazine, which ended its run in March, has relaunched as an online-only publication, Blurt, that includes a “digizine”—a digital magazine that includes all the contents of a typical music magazine. Accessing new content is easy! If you want to read EIC Scott Crawford’s editor’s note about the mag’s new direction, here’s all you have to do:

1. Go to www.blurt-online.com.

2. Click on the magazine cover at top right.

3. Click on the “next” button.

4. Again.

5. Again. Hurry, there’s an ad for an Amy Ray solo album!

6. Read pull quote: “The question on a lot of bloggers’ lips—laptop screens–right now is, is print really dead?”

7. Realize that you can’t copy and paste said pull quote. Or e-mail the article. Or provide a direct link to it.

8. Note that, while print may be having a death rattle, ungainly Web-print hybrids are dead from the start.

In the comments, the folks at Smash Records mention that tomorrow night, June 12, the store will host a screening of Vinyl Scrapyard. The film, a documentary about the decline of the indie record store, is directed by Billups Allen, a former Smash clerk and Darkest Hour bassist. John Metcalfe profiled Allen in City Paper in 2003, following the publication of his first novel, Unfurnished.

On June 17 eMusic will release Super Gold Greatest Hits, the first full-length album by Mingering Mike, the mysterious D.C. resident and self-declared soul superstar. (Jeffry Cudlin wrote a fine piece about Mingering Mike’s story and fascinating record covers last year.) Four of the album’s 11 tracks are now available on the Mingering Mike Web site. (Click on “MingerPlayer.”) The album was apparently recorded in the late ’60s—which means, on the evidence of “Darlene, Come on Back,” dude invented beatboxing.