A crowd watching a show at the 9:30 Club! (Photo courtesy 9:30 Club)
The 9:30 Club is launching its own television show on public television in April. The music variety show will be called “Live At 9:30,” and it will air nationwide, owners of the club said yesterday.
Situated now in the booming real estate subdivision known as “North End Shaw,” the 9:30 Club has won quite a few prominent accolades as the best concert venue in the United States. With the television show, everyone will be able to see exactly why that is so, and not just those of us who live, work, or travel to DC.
“We’ve been approached countless times to do a TV show here, and we’ve always passed,” said Seth Hurwitz, chairman of IMP and co-owner of the 9:30 Club, in a press release. “But ‘Live At 9:30’ is a great opportunity to work with people we trust to bring music variety to life in a way no one has even attempted. When I said we had no interest in just another concert program, they totally got it. They have come up with a truly entertaining bunch of new ideas on how to change the way people watch live concert shows.”
According to the press release, “Each cinematic, one-hour episode of Live At 9:30 will feature a collection of acts from different genres, interspersed with insightful and entertaining interviews, short films, and comedic bits. In a word: variety; variety that people will be talking about.”
The show apparently will include performances from the club, among other acts. For shows in the club, film crews are filming unobtrusively with more than a dozen video cameras including GoPro cameras and an airborne cable camera.
Shirley Manson singing at the 9:30 Club during a recent performance by her band Garbage, Oct. 28-29, 2015. (Photo courtesy 9:30 Club)
The first season of “Live At 9:30” will consist of 12 episodes, featuring concert performances by Garbage, The Arcs, Tove Lo, Ibeyi, El Vy, MisterWives, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Frank Turner, MS MR, Cold War Kids, Youth Lagoon, and Jess Glynne. If as I suspect, these concerts were previously recorded in 2015, I was at quite a few of them myself! (Indeed, those of us at likely saw a bit of the Garbage performance on the big screens in the middle of the first floor during the 9:30 World’s Fair back in January.)
In another appeal to my Generation X heart, the 9:30 Club has hired Wayne White of Pee-wee’s Playhouse fame as art director for the show.
Funnyman Hannibal Buress (Photo courtesy 9:30 Club)
Contributing hosts for the first season also include some familiar names for many of us who spend a lot of time at the 9:30 Club:
- Henry Rollins: Former frontman for punk band Black Flag
- Bob Boilen: Host and creator of NPR Music’s All Songs Considered
- Hannibal Buress: Comedian, writer, star of Comedy Central’s Why? with Hannibal Buress and Broad City
- Jill Kargman: Creator and star of Bravo’s Odd Mom Out
- Ralphie May: Stand-up comedian
For more information, including some stills and a teaser real, visit the show’s website at http://www.LiveAt930.com. In the future, you’ll be able to watch the show on the website as well.
You also can follow the show on social media:
- Twitter: @LiveAt930
- Instagram: @LiveAt930
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LiveAt930/
And remember to tell your local public television station: “I Want My 9:30 TV!”