DC History Rocks

( 7th Street NW circa 1921)

Washington D.C. has seen its share of important events, and a lot of people have come here to make history, but not a single president was born here. Marvin Gaye was born here as was Duke Ellington, but they found their fame in places like Detroit and New York. I think the award for true Washingtonian has to go to Bob Berberich who was not only born in Washington, but the Berberich family has been here longer than anyone I know- including my own clan.
And Mr Berberich has been rocking this area for quite a while- his drumming days include gigs with The Hangmen and Grin. (Check out this link for a great little piece by local film maker Jeff Krulik) But Bob is still a powerful force on the music front and is now in the transfixing trio known as Ottley! with ex-Slickees' master of guitar, Marshall Keith and slayer singer, Martha Hull.

Be part of it. You can watch history in the making THIS FRIDAY night when the "Birthday of the Dead Celebration" takes place at the always intimate Velvet Lounge. The line up includes Ottley! as well as the venerable Beatnik Flies -a band with its own history and staying power around here- four musicians that can still deliver the goods and how. Plus Pup Tent will round out the bill bringing on more psychedelic garage band kind of brain-rock.

(Note to self and readers: Do I ever write about jazz or country or easy to label music?
Answer: No.)

Who Is He?

(Photo by Tom Shea)

Marshall Keith might be best known as a founding member of one of Washington's most celebrated local bands, The Slickee Boys, but he has remained extremely active in the music scene for many years in other bands and as a solo artist. His two solo CDs are out of print but much sought after. Look for them. Part singer, part song writer, part chameleon he is all musician and a heck of a guitar player. Lately he technically reinvented the instrument by utilizing a baritone neck on a rhythm guitar thus enabling him to play bass, rhythm and lead all at once with Ottley- the group he is in now.

Things have changed in this town since Marshall arrived almost fifty years ago. And things are changing again. Change for the good. Marshall reflects on the good, the bad and the sometimes really ugly in his piece for Washington My Hometown.

You can catch Marshall playing live next week- November 26- when Ottley plays the Quarry House in Silver Spring. And don't miss The Slickee Boys reunion gigs just after Christmas. Stay tuned to this blog for details.

Spectacular Shindig of the Summer

(Martha Hull of Ottley!)

The Surf Club. You might mistake it for a strip bar-it's a windowless unassuming little building right there on Kenilworth Avenue, but walk inside, and you'll find a spacious dance floor replete with disco ball, tables, chairs, a full sized bar and pool tables. This former honky tonk is THE place to be on July 12th -Saturday night.
Why? Because it's the biggest show since The Slickee Boys, Beatnik Flies and Prabir event last winter. If you missed that- at least you can catch a lot of the same players this time.
The shbang kicks off with the antics of Shortstaxx who turns a talent for burlesque into true performance art. Then Ottley!- which includes former Slickees Marshall Keith and Martha Hull, plus Bob Berberich, drummer to the stars.

Next on the line up are the venerable Beatnik Flies who will be dusting off their old surf instrumentals to go along with their outstanding original material. Both of these bands know how to deliver the goods and how.


And as if that weren't quite enough thank you, like icing on a three layer chocolate cake, here comes the band I'd let stay with my brother-no kidding--the man of a 1,00 faces- Prabir and the Substututes. Life is full of disappointment, strife and woe, but this band provides the antidote.
I have never been disappointed by these guys. Ever.
In fact all three of these bands-plus Ms Staxx- never fail to make me happy because they have something- and they want to share it with you. Ten dollars for all this talent. No excuses.
Things get going around 9.
Be there.

I am psycho I mean psyched about this Friday night when TWO of my favorite bands Prabir and The Substitutes and Ottley play The Quarry House. I know I rave about Prabir and The Substitutes ad infinitum, but not all of you are listening. And the last time I recommended this band to someone I mentioned that they are the only band to ever make me want to scream. (I am not a screamer. I shriek now and then, but rarely full out screaming. The last time I remember really screaming involuntarily was when I was in labor with my first child which is another story.)
Anyway this person wrote me back and asked- would that be good screaming or bad screaming?

Good point I thought.

Well, it's good screaming- a scream of joy. Prabir tends to have an infectious scream like other people have infectious laughs- and the whole band gives all they've got whether it's a full room or an almost empty room which is a beautiful thing to do.

And Ottley. Ottley puts me in a trance. A really good trance- a rock and roll psychedelic up to the stratosphere and back down to earth kind of trance that takes three ace musicians to produce- Marshall Keith, Martha Hull and Bob Berberich. If you don't know who they are- just look 'em up in the Bible of Local DC Rock. (i.e. here on my blog)

The Quarry House can only hold so many people and so much talent so if I were you I'd get there early and please-save me a seat!

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

Penny Dreadful Part One... or HoW The Slickee Boys and The Beatnik Flies Came to BE

In the early 1970s a lot of music was going on around here- on the radio, out in the clubs and in many a teenage boy's bedroom.
Marshall Keith remembers it this way:
I was hiding out in my room in Wheaton, MD in the 1970s playing guitar and making tapes. I didn't have a good guitar or amp, so I tried to make up for it by doubling, quadrupling, and octupling tracks of guitar (and whatever keyboards I could borrow from my friend, Charles). I liked to mess around with speeding up, slowing down, and reversing tracks- anything to make them sound unlike some guy... with a guitar... in his bedroom.

Meanwhile not so far away in Bethesda, Joe Dolan was in HIS room, listening to Beatles' records with his friends, Larry and Kenny. Joe says: Back then I used to write songs on a four string tenor guitar. In those days, Kenny and Larry would join in playing table tops, beer cans, you name it, anything we could get a sound out of. Kenny eventually found a used bass guitar, which he would play through the record player. Other rockers would never take us seriously, so we ended up performing at coffee houses. We even played at the Cellar Door's Hootenanny. We were rockers at heart, but we became known as folkies.

Then Marshall met Martin. A mutual friend thought Martin looked somewhat out of place hanging out at Montgomery Mall, and she sought him out. (Anyone who has ever seen The Slickee Boys can say amen here.)
Martin's room, Marshall recalls-was like somebody had packed a museum into a bedroom. Not only did he have thousands of oddities everywhere, he had a million records in nice neat stacks. There were some Dali-esque oil paintings he had done. He was very enthusiastic about showing us everything. "This is a Coca Cola from India. I don't want it opened, so whatever you do don't accidentally open it." I think he was nervous that we were even looking at it.

He was enthusiastic about his records too. He had all this stuff we had never heard of-I can't exactly remember what it was, but like: Mexican Mersey beat, Japanese 1960s punk, Indian movie soundtracks. It was so different than what we listened to, it was hard to even relate to it.
About a year after meeting Marshall, Martin wanted to make a record with Marshall. He asked Martha Hull to sing, Andy Von Brand to play bass, and Chris Rounds to play drums. Martin's brother, brother Thomas (who was 14) was going to play bass on one song, too.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's exciting episode entitled "How The Boys Got Out of Their Rooms" or "When Slickees Fly" to find out what happened next.

And don't forget you can see these fine local musicians plus relative new comers Prabir and The Substitutes at the now ephemeral establishment Chick Hall's THIS FRIDAY.
The perfect antidote to cranberry overload.

Farewell Childe

I don't know how many times I heard Rodney the bartender bellow last call at the Childe Harold, but it's more than I care to count. Another Washington Institution is gone, and this one at a relatively young age considering it opened in 1967.
(Man, what is it about 1967 this week?)

Everybody knows that Springsteen and Emmy Lou Harris played there long before they were big wigs; they even named sandwiches for them, but not everybody knows that The Ramones played there as well. And lots of local acts like The Insect Surfers, Razz, The Nurses, Catfish Hodge, and The Bad Brains. (Nobody named a sandwich for them.)


Marshall Keith of The Slickee Boys remembers this:
"Since it was a tiny club, it made it really exciting, because people were packed in and falling all over each other. I saw The Ramones there. There was no punk rock in DC then. They were inspiring. Their stage moves seemed choreographed to me, which at first was disconcerting, but it was so effective that they were great. They (and anything punk) was panned in the Washington Post. It took a few years and Joe Sasfy before favorable punk reviews made their way into the mainstream.

(Marshall Keith/photo by Jim Moon)

The Slickee Boys played there a lot. Our friend Ed Cox played theremin during "love in". He was plugged into Kim Kane's amp, and couldn't hear himself, so he kept unplugging Kim.
There was a turning point in our career at a benefit concert with several bands when we finally "went over" as well as the "rootsy" bands. Urban Verbs played there once, and I couldn't get in because it was packed."

Root Boy Slim and The Sex Change Band was also a frequent performer. Slim would change clothes between sets wearing anything from zoot suits to hippie togs. Sometimes he had strippers with him just in case his show wasn't wild enough on its own which is hard to believe if you ever saw him.

(Root Boy)

The music ended long ago, unfortunately, and the guy who started it, Bill Heard Jr. is gone as well. So are Rodney and Root Boy Slim. Maybe they are off some place-all having a drink together where there is no last call.


(Rodney- last call circa 1986)

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been --

A sound which makes us linger; -- yet -- farewell!

-Lord Byron from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Rock out Rockville This Thurs/ Oct 25

(Ottley! named themselves for this guy
Hangman,Dave Ottley)

Once upon a time there was a Band, or maybe I should say once upon a time there was a Garage which begat a band called The Reekers which begat a band called The Hangmen which were so dang hot they locally knocked the Beatles off the charts according to Garage Hangover: "What A Girl Can't Do knocked the Beatles' We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper out of the top spot of the charts for Arlington radio station WEAM on Feb. 7, 1966."

How's that for deep cut trivia?

If you don't believe it, you can ask Bob Berberich himself this Thursday night when he plays with Ottley! at the big rock show that Joe Lee (of Joe Lee's Record Paradise) and Damian Einstein are putting on. Bob was there- playing drums with The Reekers and The Hangmen, and he's here now keeping the beat in Ottley! with Marshall Keith and Martha Hull of Slickee Boys fame.

But that's not all. The Beatnik Flies and The Howling Mad are also on the bill. I could go on and on, but all three of these bands played last summer at the d.c.space reunion at the 9:30 Club, and I can testify that all these veterans can still kick you know what-and are quite possibly better than ever.

So how much would you pay to see these local legends?

(Three of these guys are in The Howling Mad)

Twenty? Fifteen? Would you believe a mere 8 clams gets you into this extravaganza?
(And you can spread the love-take the kids- and get another generation going-it's an all ages show- just $5 for the student set)


(The Flies took their name from this song.)

When I was a kid I thought Rockville, MD was pretty much nowhere, (and the way things have turned out, it still pretty much is) but this Thursday, October 26 should prove the exception.
It's all happening at 7 p.m. at El Boqueron II, 1330 East Gude Drive.

Come out and see Rockville rock.


(I can only guess where The Howling Mad got their name.)