Panda Bear designed this t-shirt. It’s a tribute to Maryland. I’d almost buy it.

If you’re feeling some Maryland Pride, you can purchase it here.

Via Gorilla vs. Bear.

It was nice to open up a story on CMJ in the New York Times and see a picture of Ponytail’s singer, Molly Siegel, smiling from up on stage, eyes closed, head tilted into the lights. It just looked cool. And nice to see the band make the Times. They are truly the best live band in the Baltimore or D.C.

You can check the story/photo here complete with condescending headline “This Is The Music Of The Blogs.”

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The festival layout made it convenient when traveling from one stage to another to take a sojourn at the ‘Dance Tent’. The above set from London based Erol Alkan was so jaw-dropping head-nodding fantastic I nearly missed Gogol Bordello’s start.

The 9:30 Club deployed its elite force of security personnel en mass at the Virgin Festival. Some sets warranted the special forces of music world security from the 9:30 (Lupe Fiasco) and some had to settle for regular rent-a-cop infantry (Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings).

The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus was a pleasant palate cleanser between shows. The traveling troupe and non-profit dazzled with sword-swallowing and high-wire antics.

I wanted to avoid making anyone at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall feel like a spectacle, so I ducked into the gift shop to jot down a few notes. In the lobby, mostly middle-aged Baltimore Symphony Orchestra patrons milled about in tie-dye t-shirts, teashades, and sunflower dresses. At 7:14 p.m. I had detected my first (and, sadly, only) whiff of marijuana, emanating from a group of youngish gentlemen hovering by a close-up photo of John and Yoko. Now a man was performing some kind of chi remedy on a guy with a broken wrist, cupping his hands and sending waves of healing energy through the afflicted’s arm. Carolyn Garcia—you may know her as Mountain Girl—chatted with folks, many of whom sheepishly asked her to sign their T-shirts. One of the T-shirts read “Deadheads for Obama,” and approximately two out of every three conversations included the phrase, “When I saw them back in 1977…” Meanwhile, a jester pranced around with a handful of flowers. “Every lady gets a flower,” he chanted. “Every pretty lady.” One such lady ingeniously converted her cleavage into a vase.

I surveyed the gift shop. A large woman with a hairnet and a dancing-bear muumuu was browsing. This was the world premiere performance of Lee Johnson’s Dead Symphony No. 6, “An Orchestral Tribute to the Music of the Grateful Dead”—not to mention Jerry Garcia’s 66th birthday—and the store’s silly musical trinkets and pretentious classical recordings seemed ill-suited to the evening’s proceedings. That is, except for one small novelty book, an edition of the “Wisdom from our Elders” series entitled Age Doesn’t Matter Unless You’re a Cheese.

Steve Harq–a short, smiling, gray-bearded man in purple tie-dye who was a beacon of ebullience as he bounced around the lobby–proudly embodied that philosophy. “Jerry’s what brought me here,” he said. “That was the best chapter of my life, 25 years on Dead tour. I think it’s great that someone took that spirit–the spirit of Jerry and Robert Hunter—and is using it, which is what Jerry would’ve liked. He was so diverse in his music. He—I’m sure he’s smiling and saying, ‘That’s fucking cool!’”

More on the concert, plus audio tracks, after the jump.

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The late April announcement that Transparent Productions was going on indefinite hiatus left a certain void in the world of high-profile free and avant-garde jazz groups making tour stops in D.C., though some pretty cool Velvet Lounge bookings have picked up a bit of the slack. Fortunately, we still have Creative Differences—even though this series is housed in Baltimore at An Die Musik on Charles Street, making the trek up there is a whole lot easier than going to Philly or NYC to get a proper dose of skronk. The highlight of the series this past spring was a monumental reunion concert from Tim Berne’s Bloodcount, certainly a mind-expanding experience for avant-jazz fans like myself too young to have witnessed the original band in the mid-1990s.

Creative Differences, curated by Bernard Lyons, takes a hiatus each summer, but some of the fall series concerts have quietly been added to An Die Musik’s calendar. To wit:

• Saturday, September 20 - Carl Grubbs & Salim Washington (John Coltrane birthday concert)
• Friday, September 26 - Marc Copland with Greg Osby, John Hebert and Bill Stewart
• Saturday, October 4 - Judi Silvano
• Saturday, October 11 - Steve Lantner with Joe Morris and Luther Grey
• Saturday, October 25 - Fred Van Hove
• Saturday, November 1 - Trio BraamDeJoodeVatcher
• Saturday, November 15 - Jamie Baum Septet

I’d imagine there is more to come since an official announcement has yet to be made (and probably won’t be for a little while longer). There are some names here I don’t recognize, to be honest, but one I can recommend is Trio BraamDeJoodeVatcher, a Dutch piano trio that played a great set at Twins Jazz a few years ago in a show sponsored by, you guessed it, Transparent Productions.

In Sunday’s Washington Post, Jason Cherkis checks in again with Jack Carneal, the Malian music enthusiast and label owner of Baltimore’s Yaala Yaala.

Cherkis and I tackled Carneal’s first trio of recordings almost a year ago in City Paper (“Griot Grand” and “Interview with Jack Carneal”).

Now Carneal’s got a fourth Yaala Yaala disc, a self-titled release from Yoro Sidibe, a Malian hunter and musician who is “around 70.” The album came out last week.

According to Drag City, the Chicago label that distributes Yaala Yaala, “the grooves are as uplifting as any pep talk could be. They’re low and hypnotic — and after an hour of them shaking and rattling, you too will be loose and ready for what may.”

Given that there’s no music on Yaala Yaala’s MySpace page, we’ll just have to take their word for it.

Baltimore gets “Best Scene” in the new Rolling Stone “Best of Rock” issue. Does this mean that the Baltimore scene is officially over?

This town needs a real music festival. We have tons of various film festivals. But no real week-long blow out ala SXSW. Someone needs to start organizing a music fest that showcases District-Baltimore talent. Wouldn’t it be cool to see the Evens alongside BackYard alongside Dan Deacon alongside Head-Roc?

This show–from last night–comes close. Or this D.C. band showcase which DCist writes up. In the meantime, the Lullabyes blog has pretty awesome MP3s of Beach House live at SXSW. [Note: you have to scroll down the site to find it]. Or you can just go here.

–photo courtesy of Lullabyes.

Gorilla vs. Bear has great footage of Beach House playing an in-store in Dallas. The performance–and film quality(!)–kill.

For more of a local vibe, check out this clip of the band performing at the Black Cat last spring:

Baltimore’s Wye Oak lands on the influential Stereogum. One of the best music blogs around steps to the duo, who have a gorgeous indie rock record coming out on Merge, for an interview. We learn that singer/guitarist Jenn Waster works as a waitress at the Golden West Cafe which earns her some serious cool points.

For more details, Merge provides. Wye Oak will be hitting the Black Cat on April 13. And you can watch them rock out here: