is here. [HT: Idolator]

A few days ago I was walking past Crooked Beat Records with some friends and one of them pointed out the promo poster for Nothing Is Underrated, the sophomore solo album by Fugazi bassist Joe Lally. He mentioned the image’s similarity to Phil Collins‘ scarlet-tinted, egg-shaped visage as it appears on the cover of No Jacket Required–Collins’ Grammy-winning third solo effort, which spawned such rockin’ radio singles as “Sussudio” and “Take Me Home.” At first I wasn’t convinced, but after referencing No Jacket Required’s cover, I’m not so sure. I don’t think Lally will be hearing from Phil’s management any time soon, but they certainly have something in common–the faint red light, the neckless head hovering alone above a bottomless darkness.

Well, I guess I can scratch “Played the Last Show at the Wilson Center” off of the short list of musical accomplishments I oh-so-casually mention when wooing the womenfolk at the Black Cat’s Red Room or telling well-worn tales of indie-rock glory to a wide-eyed showgoer who has absolutely no idea who I am or what venue I’m blathering about.

According to Positive Force co-founder Mark Andersen, the Evens will perform this Sunday night at the former Wilson Center—now the Capital City Public Charter School. (Doors are at 7:30; the Evens perform at 8 p.m. If it’s been so long that you’ve forgotten where the building is located, it’s at 15th & Irving Sts. NW. $5 gets you into the show—which, of course, is all-ages.) The last-minute announcement came after the original venue, All Souls Church, had to cancel due to an accidental scheduling conflict. After a brainstorming session, Andersen says in an e-mail, MacKaye suggested that they look into booking the CCPCS. (The last show at the Wilson Center was more than six years ago in October of 2001; the lineup, if I remember correctly, featured Strike Anywhere, Q and Not U, Crispus Attucks, Kill the Man Who Questions, Pg. 99, Virginia Black Lung, Del Cielo, Trial By Fire, Teddy DuChamp’s Army, and Tim.)

“It was a total long-shot, but I went by and peered in the window (a bit like a burglar casing the joint, I am afraid!), and Ian was right, the space had a stage, was decent sized, all in all looked like it could work. Nothing to lost by trying, I figured. I found the number to the school and did a ‘cold call’ to receptionist, was passed along to Anne Herr, their executive director, who turned out to be a member of All Souls and eager to help,” Andersen says. “I explained who I was, what the mission was… and to my surprise, Anne was somewhat aware of the special significance of the multi-purpose room of her school in D.C. counter-cultural history. Even more astonishing she was willing to consider the request, as they had not had their space used by an outside community group yet, but wanted to make it available in this way to worthy events.”

Andersen then provided Herr with copies of both the Evens CD and Dance of Days (which Andersen co-authored); the CCPCS board was supportive and—after what Andersen describes as “much back’n'forth between Ian/Evens and Anne/CCPCS…with me as the intermediary”—“[a]gainst all odds, the Evens show at CCPCS/Wilson Center (with six days notice) was go!”

The show—sponsored by Positive Force D.C.—is a benefit for Neighbors Consejo and Anne Frank House, which Anderson describes as “two great groups that provide essential services to the homeless and the formerly homeless in the Columbia Heights/Mount Pleasant/Adams-Morgan communities.” Attendees are encouraged to “[p]lease bring peanut butter, whole grain cereal, or canned veggies for the We Are Family food bank to be delivered to low-income community seniors.”

Perhaps the best—or only good—aspect of Lungfish’s “not currently active” status is that singer Daniel Higgs is releasing solo records at an impressive clip. In just 13 months, the Baltimore trance-punk act’s heavily bearded frontman has released three full-lengths, one of which, Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, comes with a hardcover book of his psychedelic artwork.

Higgs’ droney, acid-folky latest, Metempsychotic Melodies, which is out now on the excellent Holy Mountain label, is more or less essential for Lungfish fans. But, for the uninitiated, it is no better an entry point than any other record in the Higgs canon.

In his new book Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff writes about artists like Higgs, musicians who seem to do nothing but work toward a single idea. “Many great musicians—Ali Akbar Khan, Björk, James Brown—essentially create their art as chunks of an ongoing discourse,” he writes. “The stronger the work is, the more it becomes a matter of sound rather than notes.”

Not too long ago, I wrote something similar about another Holy Mountain act, Om (a band that shares its name with one of John Coltrane’s later records).

By and large, the two songs on Om’s second full-length, Conference of the Birds—a title borrowed from Dave Holland’s ’70s free-jazz classic—offer mere variations on [the band’s first record] Variations. [Al] Cisneros seems to write the same bass line over and over again, which works because, hey, it’s a really good bass line. Loopy without being static, Cisneros’ playing twists and winds and folds back on itself, making Om’s five songs to date seem less like distinctive compositions than details from a larger work. The effect is of a band always playing somewhere—probably on a mountaintop or near something monolithic.

The same could pretty much be said of Lungfish and Higgs. To my mind, though, no one has written a more definitive piece on Charm City’s finest than my pal Joe Gross. This passage from his Chicago Reader review of the band’s 2000 album Necrophones gets at the very essence of this cult act and its otherworldly frontman.

Imagine a gnostic Ramones or an AC/DC peopled by Kabbalah scholars. Perhaps taking too seriously the old Lou Reed dictum that anything over three chords puts you into jazz territory, the Baltimore-based quartet has built whole, mesmerizing albums out of four or five notes. And as a lyricist, front man Daniel Higgs, at least according to Alan Kaufman, editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, is nothing less than the intellectual heir to poet Kenneth Patchen. (Memo to R. Meltzer: if you’re still looking for visionary postbeat rock music in the 21st century, buy the entire discography tomorrow.)

A veteran of the late-80s and early-90s performance-poetry scene, Higgs is 36 going on infinity. He cuts a striking figure with his rabbinical beard, myriad tattoos, and head-to-toe heavy clothing (he’s been known to wear two pairs of pants at once). Onstage, in front of the pathologically repetitious guitar-bass-drums drone of Asa Osborne, Nathan Bell, and Mitchell Feldstein, he’s riveting; if he’s not standing stock-still, he’s fiendishly contorting his face or trying to climb an invisible ladder. Sometimes he’s a preacher, preaching the gospel according to the plants and the animals; sometimes he’s the flowers themselves, opening their mouths and screaming.

Of all the guy’s attributes, the thing that is perhaps most impressive is Higgs’ ability to reduce the most cynical music fans to uncynical adoration. This puts him in excellent company. Tom Waits and Scott Walker–to name but two–do pretty much the same thing. Are they the real deal or jackdaws in peacock’s feathers? Of those who have seen him perform, what do you think about Higgs?

According to one of yesterday’s posts on the Baltimore Sun entertainment blog, Dischord founder and Evens frontman Ian MacKaye is very much alive:

A phone rings at 6:08 p.m. in Arlington, Va. A 45-year-old man picks up. The caller doesn’t even have the chance to offer a greeting.
“I am still alive,” reports Ian MacKaye, the frontman of such punk acts as Minor Threat and Fugazi, and the founder of Washington’s Dischord Records.
This would not be news except that The Sun and apparently many other organizations had been told that MacKaye was, in fact, dead. We were told that he died Monday night at Baltimore’s St. Agnes Hospital. A call to the hospital found no evidence of such a patient. We followed up with calls to Dischord (left a message) and to MacKaye’s home.
“I am happy to report that I am not dead,” says MacKaye. He and the record company had been blasted with calls, he says, after premature reports of his death were posted on MySpace and Wikipedia. He says he hasn’t been able to find the MySpace reference, but had the Wikipedia posting removed — and then re-removed, once someone reinserted the false news.

Joe Lally has been quietly working on a new album, and Dischord recently revealed some juicy details. The album will be called Nothing Underrated and boasts of some of D.C.’s finer musicians, including: Ben Azzara (The Capitol City Dusters, DCIC), Andy Gale (Haram), and Eddie Janney (Rites of Spring). Most awesomely, Lally jams with Fugazi bandmates Guy Picciotto and Ian MacKaye (who recorded the album).

His Fugazi songs were always standouts. But reading City Paper’s 2006 feature on Lally last year, you couldn’t help but feel that the transition from integral band member to frontman had been difficult. His first solo album, released last year, was a surprisingly contemplative affair. It will be interesting to see what Lally comes up with after spending a year touring, jamming and growing into his role as chief songwriter and the guy everybody stares at.

These are bleak times we’re living in. War, environmental cataclysms, stuff like this.

So it’s good to know that dreams can still come true–as long as you’re willing to open up your deepest desires to public scrutiny via blog.

Local musician and City Paper contributor Justin Moyer has made no secret of his love for Philadelphia post-punk band S PRCSS.

“S PRCSS is the number one band probably I ever wish I’d been in, which is ironic, because they kept losing bass players, and I play bass, and we’re all from Philadelphia, but for whatever reason (pick one) they wouldn’t let me join,” wrote Moyer last October on an older incarnation of his Iceland blog.

He also wrote this: “And finally I’d say to Bob [Doto] and Daneil [Mazone], if you ever get back together (though I know this is unlikely) and need a bass player, get in touch.”

Lo and behold, S PRCSS heard Moyer’s pleas and have decided to reunite. Furthermore, they have graciously fulfilled one of Moyer’s long standing ambitions by asking him to play bass.

You can witness the result of this touching gesture tomorrow night, when Moyer performs with S PRCSS at 9 p.m. at the Hosiery at 9 p.m., 441 Eye St. NW.

Over the course of the week I’ve had occasion to leaf through two separate books of photography–Pat Graham’s Silent Pictures and Glen E. Friedman’s Fugazi: Keep Your Eyes Open–that document indie music in and out of D.C. through the ’90s and into the early part of this decade.

I’ve come to this conclusion: D.C. of 2007, your bands are fucking boring. What happened!?

I’m not advocating that everybody should strap on a wallet chain and move into a bike-house or contort themselves on top of the monitor speaker at Black Cat–but jeezus people, there are pictures of Tortoise in here that look more animated than most of the groups I saw at Fort Reno this summer.

D.C., you need to make like House of Pain.

(Full Disclosure: Bands that I have been in have not helped to resolve this dilemma.)

OK. A bit of old news that we should have gotten around to months ago: Singer/songwriter John Bustine has an album coming out in mid-September on Gypsy Eyes. The local label, whose output is now being made available via Dischord’s Web site, was kind enough to release the tracklist for Bustine’s Waltzes and Pleas and post a few MP3s, which you can listen to here and here.

This blog and this blog beat us to it.

On Sept. 4 Akashic Books will publish Silent Pictures, a collection of photos by Pat Graham that documents the D.C. rock scene in the ’90s, and also features acts like Modest Mouse, Bikini Kill, and the Shins. (Akashic makes sense as the publisher of choice: it was founded by Girls Against Boys‘ Johnny Temple.) It’s a fun nostalgia trip for anybody who was paying attention to indie rock in the ’90s, or who just wants to learn what the fuss was all about. Graham spent much of the decade in D.C. (he now lives in London), and the book has a few casual, relaxed shots of iconic indie-rock musicians at the time–Unrest in a Bethesda yard in 1993, the Make-Up strolling through foggy London in 1997. But Silent Pictures is mostly made up of band photos like the one above, of Fugazi at St. Stephen’s Church in 1992–serious and intense action shots that expose Graham’s knack for capturing musicians at their fiercest, vein-popping-est moments. (On the same page as that MacKaye shot is one of Ian Svenonius flailing on the Black Cat stage in 1993 and Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein in San Francisco in 1994, when she was in Excuse 17. Elsewhere is a shot of Lou Barlow hoisting his guitar in such a way that makes the mope look suprisingly, impossibly badass.)

In her afterword to the book, Cynthia Connolly notes that Graham often had trouble getting his due:

Pat was always the nice guy. He was constantly helping people out, taking photos, giving photography advice to people like me. When he started getting all these jobs shooting photos for bigger magazines, he had problems, as do most photographers, with getting paid and receiving credit for his work. One year, for a gift, I letterpressed him some business cards with big words that said, PHOTO CREDIT: PAT GRAHAM.

Graham will be in D.C. to discuss the book on Sunday, September 23, at 6 p.m. at the Dupont Circle Olsson’s.

Photo used with permission of Akashic Books.