Category Archives: TVD Washington, DC

The first time I ever laid eyes on the band Social Distortion was in the documentary video Another State of Mind. My good friend Pat brought the VHS tape to my house and said we had to watch it. The video featured footage from two punk bands on tour in 1982, Youth Brigade and the now-iconic Social Distortion. I remember footage of Social D’s front man Mike Ness talking to the camera looking through a mirror as he got ready to play a show, smearing black mascara down his face from his eyes and spiking his hair. 

From that day forward, for one reason or another, it seems that Social Distortion has had an ever-present part in my own music collection. Social D is one of those bands that you can always go back to, and they seemingly never change.

When they’re in town, it’s well-known that they always put on a good live show, and they always have an overwhelming stage presence. You can bring your best girl and sing along to classic songs like “Ball and Chain,” and if you’re really lucky, you can lay your ears on more classic tunes from the bands arsenal, like “Mommy’s Little Monster” or “Prison Bound.” Whichever era of the band’s catalog that you fancy, Social Distortion always delivers a little bit of everything.

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If you’re looking for a down-to-earth show full of some slow-cooked Americana, this is just for you.

Country caravan Son Volt are coming to the 9:30 Club, and we’ve got a pair of tickets to giveaway. It’s crazy easy to get in the running, so if you dig on some hearty folk music, you’ve got no excuse to miss out.

Singer-songwriter Jay Farrar started Son Volt in 1994 after the demise of Uncle Tupelo, the alt-country band that also counted Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy as a principal songwriter. Through the mid- to late-’90s, Son Volt created a name for themselves with no-frills folk/country spanning an aesthetic gap from Bob Dylan to Crazy Horse.

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On Tuesday night, Of Monsters and Men played to a welcoming crowd on a beautiful summer night at Merriweather Post Pavilion, their indie pop harmonies and theatricality well suited to the vastness of the space. Openers HAIM added enough just enough rebelliousness and grit to the night to keep things grounded.

Of Monsters and Men takes their production seriously, with nearly every detail of the show seemingly planned. Taking the stage with a white sheet obscuring the stage and the band members just shadows illuminated by purple lights, the band quietly started into “Dirty Paws.” As the song picked up, the sheet dramatically fell and the audience immediately transitioned from cheers to singing along.

The five piece Icelandic band, which expands to seven members when on tour, was quite a spectacle on Tuesday night. Standing center stage, singer and guitarist Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir vaguely resembles Bjork; her seemingly-innocent face was framed by the turquoise she dyed the ends of her hair. Her co-singer and guitarist Ragnar “Raggi” Þórhallsson, sported a porkpie hat, while another guitarist donned a full tuxedo.

It was definitely odd and eclectic, but somehow endearing at the same time. Their bassist, drummer, piano player, and piano/ accordion/ trumpet player rounded out the group on stage. Backed by oversized, brightly-lit domes, it was the kind of enchanting backdrop that I wish I could recreate at home.

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There are some great musical collaborations out there. John Legend and The Roots (and now The Roots and Costello), Jay-Z and Kanye, and who could forget Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead? I know I can’t. Well, another great collaboration you should have picked up on is AM & Shawn Lee—and luckily for you, we’ve got a pair of tickets to their show at U Street Music Hall, presented by 9:30 Club on Tuesday, June 18, to give away.

Lee has collaborated with indie artist AM since 2011. Their debut as a touring duo was at a showcase at SXSW in Austin, Texas in the same year. After AM heard Lee’s Music and Rhythm album on the radio in Los Angeles, he decided to reach out to Lee through the Internet. The two became quick friends, sharing a common love for ’60s psychedelia and ’70s Italian soundtracks.

In September 2011, AM & Shawn Lee released their debut album Celestial Electric. When Rob Garza from Thievery Corporation heard the collaboration, he signed the debut album to his record label on ESL Music.

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As we covered last January, it’s often quite difficult to nail down a venue for the DC Record Fair. Apparently DC has a dearth of spaces large enough to accommodate 40 or more record dealers, with 40 or more tables, hundreds of crates of records, and often the 700-1,000 enthusiastic crate diggers who descend upon the event.

Then there’s the DJ set up, the bar, the food, and the random other surprises that make the DC Record Fair a special community event. Our friends at the Fillmore Silver Spring put together this piece that outshines any descriptive copy we could conjure up:

Mark your calendars! 
THE DC RECORD FAIR
Sunday, June 30, 2013 at Penn Social, 801 E Street, NW
11:00–12:00, Early Bird Admission $5.00
12:00–5:00, Regular Admission $2.00
RSVP at the Facebook invite!

The DC Record Fair is brought you by Som Records, DC Soul Recordings, and us!
Our thanks to Eliza Childress for the killer poster!

The White Mandingos are, no shit, the most exciting “progressive punk”-hardcore-hip hop hybrid to come our way since The Beastie Boys. LA emcee Murs, Bad Brains guitar legend Darryl Jenifer, and ego trip co-founder, editor, and artist Sacha Jenkins are set to release their debut album, The Ghetto Is Tryna Kill Me, which they aptly describe in the title track as “Hard core hip hop with some punk in it.”

A concept album about one Tyrone White, a black punk trying to simultaneously negotiate the white and black worlds, The Ghetto Is Tryna Kill Me is simultaneously musically hard-edged, touching, courageous, occasionally obscene (“Sarah Silverman is a fucking cunt”), and chockfull of deep insights about contemporary black-white relations in the Land of the so-called Free.

With such kicking punk/hardcore numbers as the title track, “Warn a Brotha,” “Mandingo Rally,” and “Rubbertracks Meltdown,” not to mention a surprising cover of Minor Threat’s “Guilty of Being White,” The Ghetto Is Tryna Kill Me is one of the most bad-ass guitar albums I’ve heard in eons. The axes aren’t just loud, they’re monstrous.

While Jenifer provides the sonic boom, Murs comes through with some of the sweetest rhymes to ever address black and white differences, especially in “My First White Girl.” Then again, he performs some real love-hate tunes too, like “I Don’t Understand” with its razor-blade guitars and chorus “I can’t stand this bitch.” But his finest lines attempt to transcend the color barrier through music, as in this rhyme from “Black N White Revised”: “Does this shit sound black?/Does this shit sound white?/Can it just be sound?/Can that be all right?/You should listen with your heart/You shouldn’t listen with your eyes/Never listen with your ears/Because the heart never lies.”

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In a match made in indie heaven, The xx and Grizzly Bear have set up a string of dates to co-headline together. We’ve got a pair of lawn tickets to see the two bands at the Merriweather Post Pavilion. How can you get your hands them? It’s easy!

The quartet known as Grizzly Bear are busy enough in their own time, spawning all sorts of side and solo projects. When they get together to create their work, they build musical monuments to American folk, jazz, electronica, and psychedelia, all cleverly wrapped in a pop package. 2012 saw the release of the bands 4th studio album Shields. The effort bolsters a heady take on song composition backed by dense musicianship over a variety of instruments and sounds. The results lands Grizzly Bear with an even longer track list of songs that should be witnessed live.

The xx are known for a lean sound that sits somewhere between indie rock and english post-dubstep. Lauded for their restraint, The xx brings to light that it’s not always the notes you play, but sometimes it’s the ones you don’t. 2012 saw the release of their second album Coexist, a focused effort in minimalist composition fleshed out through reverberating guitars, gridlocked drum programming, and breathy vocals.

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The National played to a very impressive crowd considering the rainfall that began just before they were to take the stage.

They treated fans to a setlist comprised heavily of material from their new album Trouble Will Find Me. In all they played 11 songs from the record including the first single “Don’t Swallow The Cap,” “Heavenfaced,” “Graceless,” and “Fireproof.” New on this tour is the addition of a digital projection screen which enhanced the lighting to make for an interesting visual component.

The band left the stage after 19 songs, only for vocalist Matt Berninger to return and explain to the crowd the true need for show encores, “piss breaks.” They played a 5 song encore which ended with two songs from their previous record High Violet, album opener “Terrible Love” and an acoustic version of “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks,” the last track off of that release.

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