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

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.

Saturday night at the Lincoln Theatre’s jazz concert “Duke, Ella, and Beyond,” Charlie Fishman, founder and executive producer of the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, announced the lineup of the 2008 festival.

This year’s festival will be held October 1-7. It will be the last autumn festival; beginning in 2009, DEJF has been given a permanent slot in the first two weeks of June on the city’s event calendar.

The lineup, with other performance information where available:

• Monty Alexander (performing at Blues Alley)
• Dee Dee Bridgewater (performing at the National Mall)
• Edmar Castaneda
• Chopteeth Afro Funk Big Band
• Anat Cohen
• Benito Gonzalez
• Conrad Herwig’s Latin Side Project
• Ramsey Lewis (2008 NEA Jazz Master recipient)
• Taj Mahal
• Christian McBride
• Jeremy Pelt
• Grady Tate
• La Timbistica
• Turtle Island String Quartet (performing at private opening gala)
• McCoy Tyner (performing at the National Mall)

Tickets go on sale May 1.

“The whole thing seems designed not to let Sonny talk,” said my companion last night at the event that Washington Performing Arts Society advertised as “A Conversation with Sonny Rollins.” Perhaps the more accurate “An Evening of Jazz Scholar/XM Radio Host Dick Golden Telling Irrelevant, Self-Serving Stories and Occasionally Asking Sonny Rollins to Respond to Them” was too long for the handbills.

During the 90-minute program at the Freer Gallery, Rollins spoke for perhaps 25. Five minutes was occupied by audience questioners; the remaining hour was a waste. Golden filled it by recounting his own encounters with Tony Bennett, Count Basie, Gary Giddins, and others; these were often connected to some tenuous end, Golden turning to Sonny and saying “How did YOU feel about him?” Mostly, though, they emphasized how well-traveled Golden was in jazz circles and how much he loved hearing himself speak.

Even more dubious, Golden frequently paused to play recordings–none of which were Rollins’, but were instead by Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Frank Sinatra–assumedly because these had greater value in understanding Rollins’ musical development than, say, Rollins actually discussing his musical development.

Despite these concerted attempts to trivialize him, Rollins had some interesting things to say. He talked about the importance of growing up in a musical family, and in Harlem during its Renaissance. Asked about his creative process, he discussed it in terms of the burden he places on himself when he goes onstage: “It’s not about whether the audience is good or bad. It’s up to me to give them something good or bad.”

In this case, however, it was also up to the evening’s host to give us a good or bad experience with Sonny Rollins. By that standard, it was a train wreck.

Last night, WHUT-TV was screening a pretty good documentary, entitled Sam Cooke: Legend. More or less: A lot of the time, WHUT was actually broadcasting from its studio, doing its pledge “break.” A long, long break.

“It’s so important to give your financial support to WHUT,” they’re saying, “so that we can keep bringing you outstanding programs like Sam Cooke, and programs about other great artists and great music.”

…So how come the only time they broadcast these great music programs is during the pledge drives?

Last evening’s concert at the Kennedy Center turned out to be two separate acts, the Dave Brubeck Quartet followed by the Ramsey Lewis Trio, rather than the monumental duet concert I was expecting, but there was nothing disappointing about it. Each delivered a phenomenal set–Brubeck a program of standards and surprisingly contemporary sounds, Lewis one of his own gospel roots and gospel-tinged originals, capped off by their respective hits, “Take Five” and “The In Crowd.”

During both, I was sitting in a side tier with a charming lady, perhaps in her late sixties, who told me stories between sets of seeing Brubeck, Stan Getz, and others on the West Coast Jazz scene of the 1950s. When I told her that I was a freelance music critic, she got a funny smile on her face.

“Do you know a fellow named Ian MacKaye?” she asked.

“Of course,” I replied.

“My daughter lived with him for about 20 years,” she said. “He’s an amazing man, and he really encouraged her in her own art.”

I was sitting with the mother of Cynthia Connolly–longtime Dischord promotions director, D.C. scenester, and author of Banned in DC: Photos and Anecdotes From the DC Punk Underground (79–85).

Between that and the two divergent pianists on the stage, I can only conclude that the Kennedy Center has a unique ability to bring people together.

You’ve got to hand it to Dave Brubeck. He’s 87 years old, and put bluntly, can’t even walk up two steps without a helping hand. But when you sit him down in front of a keyboard, the guy’s got fingers fleet as the wind and an imagination to match. And this weekend, you can have your fill of him down at the Kennedy Center.

Brubeck’s hitting the stage on Sunday night for a duet concert with fellow piano icon Ramsey Lewis, whose 1965 instrumental version of “The In Crowd” was one of the last bona-fide hits in jazz (and was recorded, by the way, at Bohemian Caverns). Sunday afternoon, he won’t be playing, but telling stories: he’ll sit down with Billy Taylor and other special guests for a conversation panel called “The Real Ambassadors,” commemorating Brubeck’s State Department-sponsored world tour 50 years ago. What more do you need?

Charlie Fishman, founder and executive producer of the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, will host a birthday concert for the late, legendary Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, featuring local jazz talents, at the Lincoln Theater on Saturday, April 26.

The concert features three acts: Jam on U All-Stars (featuring frequent U Street jazz luminaries such as saxophonist Antonio Parker and drummer Nasar Abadey, with conductor Bobby Felder); Will Smith and the W.E.S. Group with Special guest vocalist Cynda Williams; and the DC Bass Choir, featuring Herman Burney, Jr. and Steve Novosel.

At the concert, Fishman will also announce the theme and lineup for the 2008 Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, scheduled to take place October 1-7.

Tickets are $20 and available at the Lincoln Theatre box office at 1215 U Street, NW. (202) 328.6000.

Nobody in the English-language music press seems to be reporting it–even at Pitchfork, which is usually on top of these things–but Klaus Dinger, cofounder of krautrock greats Neu! and La Dusseldorf, died of heart failure on March 21. He was four days shy of his 62nd birthday.

Dinger was a composer and drummer, most responsible for the “motorik” rhythm that defined early Kraftwerk, Neu!, and much of the small “krautrock” movement. He and the other half of Neu!, Michael Rother, also anticipated the remix trend when they ran out of money for their second album and simply filled one side with versions of two previously released songs that they had manipulated by speeding up, slowing down, and warping tape.

Dinger’s second band, La Dusseldorf had a tremendous influence on the work of Brian Eno and David Bowie, particularly their “German” collaborations on Low, Heroes, and Lodger.

Still, Neu! remains Dinger’s definitive work. The below video isn’t terribly interesting to look at, but does feature the band’s signature song, “Hallogallo.”

So long, Klaus.