UPDATE: 9353 Will Be M.I.A. TONIGHT

Straight from the band's mouth:

"This is a tragedy. We lost one of our own to the penal system yesterday morning. With this unpredictable turn of events and seriously bad timing gig wise,no one could have imagined this would have occurred. Every band has problems but this is off the scale completely. I am very sorry about this. Bruce and Vance vow to return as 9353 very very soon. It is no help with these gigs. We only had 24 hrs to work with. We've done it in 72 hours before, but 24 hours was not enough time to replace a member in. Not that kind of band. Real question we're stuck with today is: what kind of band is this? the answer:
You just can't get good help these days."

The Quarry House Pops This Weekend

The legendary 9353's 25th Anniversary Hometown Tour hits The Quarry House this Friday and Saturday nights. These two shows are the last chances this year to hear the band that FuzzLogic.com calls "paranoia pop." (And one of the most prolific poster plasterers this town has ever seen.) Four more bands will be joining 9353- a different line up each night:

Friday Night:
Puptent - "Pop-not-Pop"
Ironboss - a Baltimore band, very much not Pop

Saturday Night:

7 Door Sedan - their glam/psychedelic/rock and soul thing will wow you, but it's not quite Pop
New Standard - descendants of The Penetrators - (Does that sound like Pop to you?)

Try to make it out to two full nights-5 full bands-whether it's pop or not it's all local so please show the love.
xo
Lyn1 and Lyn2

Thirty Years and Back Again

prabir and the subs with the silver beats back stage

The Silver Beats sold out the 9:30 Club last Friday night turning the space into a roaring arena. But Prabir and The Substitutes rose to the occasion knocking out all of us who knew them, and grabbing the attention of everyone else with their charm and good looks.
(Oh, and they rocked the house down.)
The next night, back at 9:30, there was a smaller but still respectable crowd- older rock and rollers-some with youngins in tow. It was hard to believe that all six Thirty Years Over DC bands weren't the newest thing or haven't been playing together forever-as everybody was vibrant - each delivering a strong set. According to Mark Noone, show-biz guy-"Killer drummers were everywhere." A straw poll showed it hard to pick a favorite, but I thought Howling Mad put on their best show that I've seen. Michael Reidy was irrepressible as usual- making fun of the club's new panini sandwich. And Ottley might have to be the Who's who of DC's bands-all three are such veterans. Martha Hull's voice is still as bewitching as ever.
One of my favorite old time moments came when Dan Palenski (former Slickee Boy) sat in with Ottley and delivered his signature cover of I'm 18 while Boyd Farrell (Black Market Baby, Rustbuckit) was front and center in the audience singing along.
The evening ended with 9353, and I thought they were particularly mesmerizing and powerful. I don't know where I was, but I missed them at 9:30 last summer.


9353 /photo: Kathleen Hellington

If you missed this show, Ottley and The Rambling Shadows, plus other bands from way back when will be at The Quarry House later this month. Keep an eye on their schedule.

P.S. Thanks to Lisa and the 9:30 Club for making this particular show possible and for recognizing the importance of getting us together for the heck of it, and not for a funeral.
Hail hail rock and roll-
and life.

Party Party Weekend @ The 9:30 Club

Yes. It's Prabir and The Substitutes on Friday night AND a big rock show Saturday night BOTH at the The 9:30 Club, but what can you do? It happens. One is the future, one's from the past. And speaking of the past....


Mark Holmes, d.j./artist from the olden days at the 9:30 Club made schedules an art form. You can see an assortment of these framed in the basement of the new club where ghosts reside at the original back bar. (I sure have a boat load of memories there. My best friend once passed out and hit his chin on that bar twice in one night. Not to mention... well, don't get me started.) The 9:30 Club used to advertise itself as a place in time, and this Saturday night we can all get in that way back machine thanks to Marshall Keith (Slickee Boys, Ottley) who had a light bulb moment last summer at the DC Space benefit for Tom T:
I really liked the idea of a bunch of acts doing short sets. It kinda reminded me of those shows in the 60s where there would be a back up band, and then 10 acts would do 2 or 3 songs each. So Marshall grabbed the right person that very night, made his pitch, and now the idea is coming to life.
To all of us who were hanging out or playing in bands at the beginning of the DC new wave/punk scene, the 9:30 club is like Grandma's house. Makes me all warm & fuzzy.

Boyd Farrell (Black Market Baby, Rustbuckit) has a slightly different take on the old 9:30: The putrid smell of old beer and puke..I had to wash my clothes twice after spending just 5 minutes there.

Anyway.

Marshall especially wanted to get The New Standard on the bill since they missed playing the gig last summer. The New Standard emerged from a band called The Penetrators which formed in 1977 and played at The Atlantis- The 9:30 Club's first incarnation. In 1979 they opened for The Cramps at the LBJ Club - a gig listed in some music histories as DC's first true punk event according to George Dively, a founding member. In 1980 The Penetrators broke up, and George went on to reform the band as The New Standard with Mash LeGrande and Matt Makaio. As a three-piece 'power pop trio', we took quite a few people by surprise, playing songs at breakneck speed with complex chord changes and 'beatnik poetry' lyric.
The group has been on and off again over the years, but like a lot of these bands- they're seasoned musicians ready to throw it out there again. The 9:30 Club gig January 12 is an excellent opportunity for open-minded indie/alt music aficionados to revisit or discover one of DC's least-known 'great original bands'.

And the cover is $12- what a deal at just two bucks a band!!! (And don't worry the smell is gone- smoke free even)

Here's the low down from Marshall:

30 years over DC- The Resurgence: Limp records veterans in great new bands. We're doing condensed 30 minute sets so you hear la creme de la creme de la creme only. Former members of Razz, Penetrators, Slickee Boys, Black Market Baby, Velvet Monkees, Trenchmouth, White Boy, Crippled Pilgrims and more- Headlining the whole shBang is 9353. (our comrades from a couple of years later)
Doors open at 7:30.

8-8:30 The New Standard
8:45-9:15 Rustbuckit
9:30-10 Rambling Shadows
10:15-10:45 The Howling Mad
11-11:30 Ottley
11:45-12:15 9353

Click on the card below to read it and get a blast from the past-
Be sure to check out Sun 13

artwork by Mark Holmes 1981

Bittersweet SHow @ 9:30 Tonight

The posters that were all over town some 20 years ago are back- only this time they're in color. 9353 at the 9:30 Club. It's not deja vu; it's actually happening. If the posters read "with Black Market Baby," you'd KNOW you were dreaming, but that's sort of happening, too, in the guise of Rustbuckit. King Giant is also on the bill. They all played in July at the dc space reunion, and they all rocked. Twenty years or not.

But King Giant has an especially hard row to hoe tonight as they have lost their lead singer, Bob Dotolo. Shortly after the reuinon, a bunch of us found ourselves back at the 9:30 Club- only this time it was for bOb's wake. It was a rude awakening indeed. A lot of us don't see each other anymore, and bOb was definitely among the missing in many circles. It was good to see him again, and it's hard to know that that was the last time. BOb worked at the club way back when, and he was always a friendy, I want to say gentle guy- even though he was a door man. He smiled a lot. Even though so many hadn't seen him in so long, I think he would be surprised at how much he will be missed- and remembered. Tonight will be no exception there.

WATCH THIS SPACE

Space was the place
Originally uploaded by alex.DC

It happened before- it can happen again...
DC Space Reunion at the 9:30 Club- Sunday- July 29th, 2007 in conjunction with a benefit for the one and only Tom T. who is fighting cancer. Tons of performances: Ajax Joe Drayton, Amy Pickering, Beatnik Flies, Bill Warrell, Bobby Donovan, Rust Bucket, 9353, Ruthie and The Wranglers...

And that's just the top of the iceberg-more later!