The inimitable, erudite, and clever Englishmen of Squeeze captivated a sold-out audience at Wolf Trap in a recent show that was big on hits but also contained a few rarely performed gems.
Squeeze along were a tremendous draw, but they shared the stage with The Psychedelic Furs, another British band, for a marvelous evening of quite intelligent pop music.
Earlier this year, the Brian Jonestown Massacre and its idealistic frontman Anton Newcombe released The Future Is Your Past, the band’s 20th studio record. And the psychedelic rockers recently performed some of the new songs as part of a splendid setlist at 9:30 Club.
Nalinee Darmrong was there to photograph the Brian Jonestown Massacre and openers Dot Dash!
During the pandemic lockdowns, Billy Idol recorded and released two pretty damn good EPs — The Roadside (2021) and The Cage (2022).
Speaking of The Roadside at The Atlantis in DC recently, Billy explained the song “Bitter Taste” was about his infamous motorcycle accident in 1990: “I didn’t know what the future was going to be. It was uncertain. I was in the hospital for a month; I had seven operations. It was horrible.”
He added: “I thought maybe if I write about that, it will resonate.”
It’s become a standard practice in the nation’s capital for avid concert goers to watch a European act on the rise in an intimate setting akin to a living room thanks to the small venues that regularly book musicians from all over the world.
As spoiled as DC might be in this regard, the experience doesn’t seem to get old as both currently operating spaces and those of the past have made the nation’s stop essentially a destination visit for any band or solo performer able to travel overseas or internationally.
Artists put their best foot forward, revel in the night with fans and share the emotion of performing in a place they could only imagine doing so when they first started out.
Oracle Sisters — a psychedelic folk-rock outfit from Paris — sold out DC9 this past Sunday night and dazzled the packed second-floor crowd with a transportive set of music that more than validated the buzz this group has generated since it began putting out singles back in 2018.
Night Beats is an outlaw R&B band from Texas with a vintage psychedelic tinge. The band is currently on tour supporting their recent release, Rajan. A quarter of the way through the tour, they found themselves in DC at Black Cat.
The recent show opened with a solid performance from The Moonwalks, a trio from Detroit, Michigan. Their spacey psych sound was a great match for the Night Beats.
Kix: Walkin’ Away: The Final Show
Sept. 17, 2023
Merriweather Post Pavilion – Columbia, Maryland
It is with a sense of melancholy today, as I write these words. Last night one of my favorite bands called it a career after more than forty years of rock n’ roll music.
That band is Kix — Steve Whiteman, Brian Forsythe, Jimmy Chalfant, Mark Schenker, Bob Pare, and Ronnie Younkins.
Cannons really showed up at 9:30 Club recently, and the sold-out house was really there for it.
Looking like Barbarella fronting a couple of cowboys, Cannons quickly demonstrated how they have gotten to be a really good — and a pretty big — act after 10 years of paying their dues.
During Patti Smith’s recent performance at The Anthem, David LaMason (who shot the pictures accompanying this post) said to me, “She hasn’t lost any of her magic.” The “poet laureate of punk rock” hasn’t slowed down at all with age. Her once-black hair may now be silver-white, but Smith still has the same intensity and passion she’s always had. Some people have what they call “star quality”; you can’t take your eyes off of them. Patti Smith is one of those people.
Smith is known for rocking hard, but her band understood their job on this night. They didn’t overdo the volume, letting Smith’s vocals come to the front of the sound. A lot of bands could learn from this show about playing so that the singer and lyrics are emphasized, rather than washed out by the instruments.
Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson, better known as Tove Lo, released Dirt Femme, her fifth studio album, last year, and she’s been on the road promoting her new songs. Her touring took her to a smaller-than-usual venue recently, where 450 lucky folks caught her at The Atlantis, the little sister to the famed 9:30 Club, in DC.
Katherine Gaines was there to photograph the show!
People often ask Gary Louris, principal songwriter and lead vocalist for Minneapolis-based band The Jayhawks, where they got their name. At The Birchmere recently, Gary explained it came from the Hawks, who backed up rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins. You may not know them as the Hawks, but you certainly have heard of them under the name they later adopted after working with Bob Dylan: The Band.
Robbie Robertson, the guitarist and principal songwriter of The Band, passed away not too long ago. The Jayhawks paid tribute to him at The Birchmere with a cover of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
