Parklife DC

Food Park: Grand Opening @ SpinFire Pizza — 5/5/15

Food Talk

Mickey McCarter

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May 7, 2015

Food Park: Grand Opening @ SpinFire Pizza — 5/5/15

SpinFire co-owners Fouad Qreitem and Pierre Garçon (Photo by Joy Asico)

The gregarious and gracious Pierre Garçon, Washington Redskins wide receiver, greeted guests personally inside his new SpinFire pizzeria (1501 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, Va.) during its grand opening party Tuesday evening.

The renowned football player was joined by his partner in the pizza business, Fouad Qreitem (founder of Paisano’s Pizza), as well as fellow Redskins Ryan Kerrigan and Ryan Grant. The Redskins teammates were happy to sign autographs on footballs and pictures, charming more than 500 people who passed through the doors of the pizzeria, the second SpinFire location.

SpinFire offers specialized individual pizzas, salads and calzones at a very reasonable price, starting at $9 for most selections. The pizzeria centers on a process by which its pizzas are made in 90 seconds in its specialized pizza ovens. Guests also can enjoy gelato, fountain drinks and several bottled beers from local Port City Brewing Company (3950 Wheeler Ave, Alexandria, Va.)

During the grand opening celebration, I had the opportunity to sample several of the “classic” pizzas off the ready-to-order menu, and they were delicious. I tried the Meat Lovers Pizza — with classic red sauce, shredded mozzarella, sausage, pepperoni, meatballs, smoked ham and oregano — and the Prosciutto Arugula Pizza — with arugula, prosciutto, olive oil, fresh mozzarella, ricotta and citrus vinaigrette. The Meat Lovers was heavy and filling while the Prosciutto Arugula was light and zesty. Both pizzas bore a crispy crust and a softer middle, an apparent signature of their 90-second cooking process.

SpinFire’s Meat Lovers Pizza

SpinFire’s Prosciutto Arugula

I also enjoyed sampling several gelatos, including standouts cookies and cream, peanut butter cup and stracciatella.

With its rapid pizza firing, and convenient Metro-friendly location in a block that’s really been booming with the additions of restaurants like the Heavy Seas Alehouse, SpinFire is sure to be a hit for lunch and dinner alike for anyone working in or passing through Rosslyn.

The first SpinFire opened in Ashburn, Va., in October 2014; this second eatery opened last month in Rosslyn. For more information and to see the full menu, visit http://www.spinfirepizza.com.

Teammates Garçon, Kerrigan and Grant signed autographs and posed for photos with partygoers. (Photo by Joy Asico)

Submitted for Your Approval: Bandsintown Mobile Concert App

Jeremy Bailey

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May 6, 2015

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Submitted for Your Approval: Bandsintown Mobile Concert App

Bandsintown Concert Cloud

Here’s a cool mobile app: Bandsintown

The app will scan the music on your mobile device and find all upcoming live shows and concerts of those artists in your area.

It presents the upcoming artists in a Concert Cloud.

You can also slide the Concert Cloud scale to show just ‘Tracked Artists’ or to move it up and let Bandsintown add ‘Recommended’ artists based on what it previously tracked.

If not all of the artists you listen to are on your device at the moment, you can search for artists to add.

There is also a calendar listing of all your tracked/recommended artists.

Yet, if you’re curious about ALL shows in DC (or any city, if you’re traveling) happening every day, there is a feature that will list ‘All Local Shows’, including many of the smaller, intimate venues in the city.

The final cool thing is you can set-up notifications for when any of your tracked or added artists announce a new show in your area.

Check it out!

Music Park: The Juan MacLean @ U Street Music Hall — 5/1/15

Live Review

Jeremy Bailey

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May 5, 2015

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Music Park: The Juan MacLean @ U Street Music Hall — 5/1/15

John MacLean and Nancy Whang of The Juan MacLean

Anticipation. That’s what happens before a The Juan MacLean show.

Doors opened at 10:00pm at the U Street Music Hall for the modest line that had formed outside. Once inside, the sign at the ticket counter hinted the band was scheduled to go on at 11:30pm.

With time to kill, with a drink and a conversation, one could groove to Tommy Cornelis owning the DJ booth. He gave the growing crowd, many fitted with full backpacks, amble reason to dance.

And dance they did, because 11:30 came and went. Tommy kept the momentum going. Finally, just after midnight, the members of The Juan MacLean, including it’s namesake John MacLean, took positions. After building even greater anticipation, Nancy Whang, formerly of the disbanded LCD Soundsystem, appeared on stage and began to sing in earnest.

Yet it was as if the sound was on mute. Singing was evident, but none of the lyrics escaped the stage.

Partway through the second song, something snapped and the sound came alive. The crowd let out a riotous cheer. Dancing took over, and unconvinced head nodding was a thing of the past.

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Submitted for Your Approval: The Avengers and the Best of Policy in Washington

Submitted For Your Approval

Mickey McCarter

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May 5, 2015

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Submitted for Your Approval: The Avengers and the Best of Policy in Washington

It’s a difficult thing to accept there was nothing you could do to help someone in a life-threatening situation — much less hundreds of “someones.”

But you and I aren’t an Iron Man, a Captain America or a Thor. For my part, I arrived to witness the destruction at the Pentagon on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, in less than 15 minutes after terrorists crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into a newly refurbished wedge.

You see, in my day job, I’m a security communicator. As an independent reporter, I spent the next 10 years exploring the question of what could we have done to save those lives, and what can we do to prevent or mitigate future catastrophes of a similar scale?

Here in Washington, DC, teams of people got to work on different aspects of the problem, and some policymakers produced the National Response Plan, a policy that emphasizes the protection of lives and critical infrastructure.

It’s rare that the developers of such policy are the ones who also carry it out, but in the movie world of the Avengers, characters like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers get to do just that. They are fictional superheroes who get to represent what is best in all of us as viewers and readers. As a long-time comic book collector, I know and appreciate their world as well.

And so it’s absolutely refreshing that these movie characters appropriately put a great emphasis on avoiding the loss of human life. Spoilers lie ahead for Avengers: Age of Ultron.

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Don’t Miss: VinoFest DC @ Storey Park, 5/9/15

Around Town

Mickey McCarter

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May 5, 2015

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Don’t Miss: VinoFest DC @ Storey Park, 5/9/15

A pour in the winetasting room at VinoFest DC 2014 (Photo by Sung J. Shin)

After a successful inaugural year in a lot at Union Market, VinoFest, a celebration of music and wine, moves to Storey Park (1005 First St. NE, DC) in NoMa for its second year. More than 1,800 wine and music appreciators attended last year, and the festival aims to grow beyond that in its new space this year.

Vinolovers, an e-commerce and festival experience company, hosts the VinoFest Wine and Music Festival in addition to providing an online wine subscription service with monthly wine deliveries.

The headliner of VinoFest DC 2015 this year is none other than globetrotting DJ Questlove. Here is the full lineup of performers:

Questlove
Trouble Funk
White Ford Bronco
Alison Carney
Alma Tropicalia
Black Masala
DJ Adrian Loving

VinoFest DC 2015 will offer wines from around the world, including local Virginia wines, and classic wine regions such as South Africa, Italy, France and California, in addition underappreciated regions like Brazil, Romania and Greece.

“Most of these will be summery wines… high acidity, lighter alcohol, very easy to drink of a beautiful spring day,” said the organizers of VinoFest.

The festival also will team up with charities, including Make A Wish Foundation Mid-Atlantic, DC Central Kitchen and Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, each of which will receive a portion of the proceeds from the festival.

Tickets are available online. Today, May 5, is the last day for general admission tickets!

Use the hashtag #VINOFESTDC to discuss your experience on social media.

VinoFest DC 2015
Storey Park
Saturday, May 9, 2015
3-10pm
GA, $59.99
VIP, $84.99
Designated driver, $30
21+ to drink

Music Park: The Wombats @ 9:30 Club — 4/30/15

Live Review

Mickey McCarter

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May 4, 2015

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Music Park: The Wombats @ 9:30 Club — 4/30/15

Matthew Murphy of The Wombats performs at the 02 Academy in Oxford, England on April 15, 2015.

“We have a roadie named Grossman,” said Matthew Murphy, the lead singer of The Wombats. “He eats four chocolate muffins a day.

“He’s the only man who can eat four chocolate muffins a day and still get thinner!” Matthew declared.

The audience caught and ran with the irreverent banter about Mr. Grossman during the sold-out show at the 9:30 Club on Thursday evening. At various points throughout the evening, they would shout, “Grossman!” — both spontaneously at the beginning of a song or at the behest of the lead vocalist.

“Actually, Grossman isn’t even his real name,” Matthew said later. “We keep calling him that in hopes that it will stick — like Reek in Game of Thrones.”

Erudite and entertaining, Matthew had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand as he led his band through a merry romp of songs from the three albums by The Wombats to date, including the latest Glitterbug, released last month. The new songs were very well received, and much of the audience already knew the words to quite a few of the songs.

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Music Park: Daryl Hall & John Oates @ Warner Theatre — 4/29/15

Live Review

Mickey McCarter

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April 30, 2015

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Music Park: Daryl Hall & John Oates @ Warner Theatre — 4/29/15

Daryl Hall and John Oates during a show in Austin in February 2014.

Because their kiss is on your list, Daryl Hall and John Oates sold out the Warner Theatre again Wednesday night!

The talented gentlemen from Philadelphia brought along a six-man band to play 14 time-honored tunes from their catalog, including “Kiss on My List,” from 1980’s Voices. By the time they hit that number in their second encore, much of the audience in the orchestra had spilled into the aisles and lined up around the stage to dance the rest of the night away. It’s become expected that people will simply dance, regardless of where they are seated, at a Hall & Oates concert, and the folks at the Warner were pretty cool about letting the audience do its own thing.

Hall & Oates did their own thing as well, crooning through a well-received collection of ‘70s and ‘80s songs that everyone in the house loved. When I say they played these songs, I should instead say they emoted them! They jammed the night away. So when you hear they played 14 songs, they made a very respectable 90 minute set out of those 14 songs.

I was excited right away as Hall & Oates and their band walked to the opening notes of “Maneater,” the classic from 1982’s H20. They followed that up with a personal favorite song of mine, “Out of Touch” from my favorite album by the duo — 1984’s Big Bam Boom. Their blue eyed-soul was awash in the rising tide of new wave by 1984, and the blending of styles brought out some remarkably catchy creativity to my welcoming ears.

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Music Park: Spandau Ballet @ 9:30 Club — 4/28/15

Live Review

Mickey McCarter

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April 29, 2015

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Music Park: Spandau Ballet @ 9:30 Club — 4/28/15

Tony Hadley sings in New York City on May 2, 2015.

Wow, Spandau!

Golden-voiced Tony Hadley jumped to the stage of the 9:30 Club Tuesday night and nailed the lyrics of more than two dozen amazing songs by his band Spandau Ballet into the collective consciousness of everyone within earshot.

In the process, Tony and his bandmates *almost* had more fun than the audience at the very so nearly sold-out show. And they most certainly made certain that after a decades-long absence from the United States that they would not be forgotten here generally or in DC specifically any time soon.

Buoyed by the confidence of a band in the thick of strong friendships and camaraderie and confident in a catalog of songs unmatched in their strength and appeal, Spandau Ballet stormed the 9:30 Club with soulful new wave tunes that left men and women aged 20 to 50 screaming for more.

Spandau Ballet weren’t just good — they were superb.

Tony hit the right note immediately with new song “Soul Boy,” also the title track of a new documentary Soul Boys of the Western World, about the band, premiering tonight, April 29, at the IFC Center in Manhattan with the band’s participation. During the song, the audience gets its first taste of the indefatigable Steve Norman on saxophone.

Steve is everywhere — almost always with his trademark sax in one hand — appearing on bongos in one song, slinging a guitar in another and trading his sax for an oboe in a big finale. The man is a one-man band, and perhaps the strongest player in Spandau Ballet if not the entire history of rock and roll. (If that sounds like glib hyperbole, I dare you to watch him in action and then challenge me on that statement.)

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Music Park: Marrow @ Black Cat — 4/23/15

Live Review

Jeremy Bailey

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April 29, 2015

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eNITD0v6pg&w=560&h=315]
“She Chose You” and “Mother of Maladies” from Marrow’s Two EP

Marrow, hailing from Chicago, played an inspired show in the Black Cat’s Backstage to a small, but enthused crowd.

Lane Beckstrom, on bass and vocals, chatted with the crowd on whether Bill Cosby’s mural was still displayed at Ben’s Chili Bowl, claiming that he was still going after the show either way. Someone said ‘there will be tears’, to which he quipped ‘Delicious tears’.

That fit the mood of the show as well. An entertaining set, but not nearly enough people to fill out the venue.

They performed a good cover of Mott the Hoople’s, “All the Young Dudes”, noting that they loved David Bowie (who wrote the song) too much not to play it. And they were right.

Marrow’s first full length album, The Gold Standard, will be out soon. The mellow two-song EP they previously released, Two, will be remastered and included in the album. These songs and “Paulson”, the first single from the new album, give the focus to the sultry voice of Macie Stewart, on keyboard and vocals. The pattern of the video for “Paulson” flows like a weird work-out tape, but the song itself is about loss and how relationships don’t always last. Maybe?

All and all, a fine show and worth your time to check out the band when you have the chance.

The Black Cat marked the end of their multi-city East Coast tour, but be on the look out for when they visit DC again. Or if you’re in Chicago.

Phantomweight, a local DC band, started off the night with an infectious bit of funk, showcasing their two-piece horn section with a trombone and a saxophone. They’ve played recent shows at DC9 and Galaxy Hut.

Don’t Miss: Hall & Oates @ Warner Theatre, 4/29/15

Live Review

Mickey McCarter

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April 28, 2015

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Don’t Miss: Hall & Oates @ Warner Theatre, 4/29/15

John Oates visits the Berklee College of Music on April 14, 2015.

Daryl Hall and John Oates, the dynamic duo who kept breaking records since their first album in 1972, return to DC to perform at the Warner Theatre on Wednesday, April 29.

I last caught Hall and Oates, as they are colloquially known, at the Warner on Oct. 2, 2013, in a damn fine show. The gents and their band raised blue-eyed soul to a whole new level that night, as they ran through about 14 songs in their catalog with a heavy focus on their material from the 1970s.

In that show about a year and a half ago, Hall and Oates performed “She’s Gone” from platinum album “Abandoned Luncheonette” with so much power and passion that it literally brought the entire audience to its feet. The entire house literally responded with a standing ovation to the ever-popular and equally passionate “Sara Smile.”

The duo made me happy as well when they hit some of their tunes from the 80s, including “Private Eyes” and “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do).” Their six-man band rose to the occasion, particularly sax player Charles DeChant, who has been performing with the guys for many years (and who proves to be a draw himself).

Dig Charles DeChant’s sax solo in the video for “Maneater” below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRYFKcMa_Ek]

Tickets are available online and at the box office. Based on my last time seeing Hall and Oates, you absolutely shouldn’t miss this show. Soul and reggae singer Mutlu, who hails from Philadelphia like our heroes, opens the show.

Daryl Hall and John Oates
w/ Mutlu
Warner Theatre
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Doors @7pm
$73-148
All ages