Yearly Archives: 2009

Sometimes the Movie Is as Good as the Book: Nick Hornby Interviewed, Part the Second

Nick Hornby photographed by Sigrid Estrada

I spoke with the the great novelist and essayist Nick Hornby about a month ago, just prior to his swing through Our Nation’s Capitol to promote his swell new novel Juliet, Naked, which we discussed at some length. His other current release, the film An Education, for which he wrote the screenplay, opens here in DC at the Landmark E Street Cinema tomorrow. I haven’t seen it yet, but the great and good Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune and At the Movies tells me it’s “awfully charming.”

Herewith, the second part of our conversation, wherein we discuss his thoughts on the movies derived from his books, favorite music of the moment, and wither The Believer. Continue reading

Three Guys Walk onto a Non-Metaphorical Dock: Quotidian Theatre’s “Port Authority”

Port Authority

James Flanagan, Steve Beall, and Steve LaRocque in Quotidian's Port Authority.

Conor McPherson’s unshowily devastating three-hander Port Authority is stocked with premises that are, summarized in their most reductive forms, utterly familiar: I Love Her But She Loves Someone Else, I Loved Her But the Flame Has Cooled, I Loved Her But She Died. So it’s a credit to McPherson’s humane, observant pen — and to the three adept actors who illuminate his material in Quotidian Theatre‘s local premiere of his 2001 play — that even when nothing much is happening, it feels like everything’s at stake.

Like so many other contemporary dramas out of Ireland, Port Authority is a tale told in cross-cut monologues. Continue reading

Live Last Night: The Gaslight Anthem at the 9:30 Club

The Gaslight Anthem

Look, Bruce Springsteen and Joe Strummer didn’t invent this stuff, either. The greased hair and the leathers and the overdriven takes of Mad Men-era rock standards already had a blanket of dust on them a generation thick by the time The Boss and The Clash got around to them.

Jersey pomade-punks The Gaslight Anthem are the most persuasive current exponents of this tradition, and they don’t hide it. Hell, they called their latest album The ’59 Sound. At a sold-out 9:30 Club last night, they ripped through that nostalgic long-player in its near-entirety, frontman Brian Fallon balling up his handsome face to yowl about Redemption and car crashes and good girls in trouble with archaic-sounding names like Gale and — of course! — Mary. Continue reading

People (Don’t) Change: Nick Lowe at Wolf Trap

Nick Lowe

The great Nick Lowe was in reprise mode at the Barns of Wolf Trap last night. You can hear an NPR podcast of his September 2007 set at the Birchmere here, which is pretty much the same show he performed at the Barns, with the small exceptions I noted in my DCist review. Good show by a great songwriter, but I’d have preferred more variety, and more songs.

About that: Lowe spent way too much time apologizing, to my mind, for slipping one new song into his 20-tune, 70-minute set. One! He asked us if, when we hear a performer say he’d like to introduce some new material, “Does your heart sink? Because mine does.”

Really? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the dilemma of the artist with the large, beloved back catalog struggling to make his audience accept his new work. Continue reading

Diamond Hard, Osmium Heavy: Them Crooked Vultures at the 9:30 Club

photo_01_tn

As long as John Bonham and Kurt Cobain stay dead, there’s probably no more intriguing a musical home* for their former bandmates John Paul Jones and Dave Grohl, respectively, than Them Crooked Vultures, newest and superest of the supergroups.

At the 9:30 Club last night, rock’s own Justice League stuck to what’s been standard procedure since its debut two months ago, performing 85 minutes of unfamiliar, tempo-sliding, sternum-rattling rock, diamond-hard and osmium-heavy. Classics in waiting, possibly, but no covers. No encores. No compromises.
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Blue is the Color of Steve Martin’s Grass

Steve Martin's The Crow

We know what you’re thinking: Oh, great, another celebrity banjo album.

Actually, yes. The Crow, the collection of banjo tunes written (save for one) and performed by Steve Martin — uh-huh, that one — is truly wonderful. It says so right on the cover. And our opening joke is an, er, homage to one that a barely-legal Martin had in his stand-up routine in the mid-60s, way before Saturday Night Live or the movies or the New Yorker essays or the Kennedy Center honors.

“You’re thinking, ‘Oh, this is just another banjo-magic act’,” he’d quip. Back then, he banjo-ed out of desperation, lacking enough surefire jokes to fill out his contracted 25-minute set. Continue reading

The View from the Future with Mike Birbiglia

Mike Birbiglia, dressed for success.

Mike Birbiglia, dressed for success.

Mike Birbiglia remembers when the room was a lot smaller. He’s headlining Saturday night at the Warner Theatre, where he’ll tell some stories he’s considering for inclusion in his next one-man show. But he cut his teeth at the DC Improv in the late 90s, while a student at Georgetown University. By the time he was 25, he’d done the The Late Show with David Letterman and had his first album and Comedy Central special.

Birbiglia’s act grew more distinct and involving a couple of years ago, when he began to segue from traditional stand-up into more personal storytelling. Continue reading

Live Last Night: Los Lonely Boys & Alejandro Escovedo

There’s no single, foolproof test for diagnosing musical overconfidence, but hiring Alejandro Escovedo as your opener is a definite risk factor. Escovedo is a songwriter’s songwriter, an alt-punk-country-etc. warrior who nearly had to die of Hepatitis C six years to begin to get his due. His albums since have been the most vital of his three-decade career.
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Talking Male Fragility Blues with Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby photographed by Sigrid Estrada

Few writers have managed to pin the millennial male ego under glass the way Nick Hornby has. In his comic novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and the new Juliet, Naked, among others, Hornby picks apart our vanity and insecurity in ways that are as scary as they are entertaining. He’s also written loads of great nonfiction about his love of soccer, literature, and pop music.
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Live Last Night: Regina Spektor

ReginaSpektor_Fidelity

“So that’s what you look like!” roared The Voice halfway through Regina Spektor’s set at Constitution Hall last night, when the Russian-by-birth, adorable-by-design songstress rose from her piano to play keyboards on “Dance Anthem of the 80s.”

Rude, yes, but also baffling. Spektor is a wellspring of quirk, and her Dadaesque lyrics offer metaphorical cover without limit. But the stripped-down show gave her no place to hide. Continue reading

Forum’s “Angels in America,” preview’d

Michael Dove

And that handsome guy right there is Michael Dove, artistic director of Forum Theatre and director of Angels in America: Perestroika. They’re doing that one, which is Part II, and Millennium Approaches, which is Part I, in rep, together.

Ballsy. Expensive. Etc.

I’ve got all the details in today’s Examiner.

U2 360 at FedEx Field: Faraway, So Close!

U2 get anthemic.  Photo by Martin Locraft.

U2 get anthemic. Photo by Martin Locraft.

And that’s just about gonna do it for writing about U2 this year, I think. My review of last night’s U2 360 gig at FedEx Field is up on DCist, with photos by Martin Locraft. Tough love = real love, y’alls.

And I gotta give it up to the Post’s Chris Richards for penning a funny and insightful notice on deadline last night.

Live Last Night: Pink

Pink

Never to break up with Pink! She’ll do an album about it (last year’s Funhouse), it’ll go platinum, and pretty soon she’ll be in the middle of 10,000 people at the Patriot Center, just like she was for two lusty hours last night, telling God and everyone how much she doesn’t miss you. Continue reading

Oh, and Did We Mention There’s a U2 Concert Tomorrow Night?

U2 2009

It’s true! If U2′s uninspiring performance of “Moment of Surrender” on Saturday Night Live scared you off, perhaps my Examiner preview, offering a bit of historical context for the 360 Tour, can win you back. Because U2 really, really need the attention.

I’ll reviewing the show for DCist. Meanwhile, my sometime colleague Catherine Lewis digs into the curious phenomenon of a cappella groups covering U2 tunes. She’s a braver woman than I am.

Shut up. You know what I mean.

Bigger than the Sound: Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the 9:30

Karen O at the 9:30 Club, 9.25.09

Karen O at the 9:30 Club, 9.25.09

DCist has my review of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Friday-night 9:30 gig, but the real attraction is the phantasmagorical photography of The Artist Formely (?) Known as Information Leafblower, Mr. Kyle Gustafson, who shot the hell out of the show like he always does.

I wish the YYY’s were opening for U2 tomorrow night instead of Muse.

Discographically Speaking: U2 (part two)

Mr. MacPhisto & U2, 1993

Wherein on the occasion of U2′s latest ginormous roadshow descending upon our Nation’s Capital — well, Landover — your humble narrator attempts to quantify the relative merits of the U2 discography, minus live albums, compilations, EPs, soundtracks, side projects, mixtapes, or bootlegs.

Continuing from yesterday’s lesson RE: U2′s seventh through twelfth-best albums, we resume our countdown with No 6, after the jump.
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Discographically Speaking: U2 (part one)

U2

You might think that assessing the relative merits of every album by my favorite band since childhood would be no thang for a seasoned pro like me. That’s where you’d be wrong, Bono — er, boyo. Rating the U2 catalogue turned out to be as difficult and time-consuming as it is pointless.
Continue reading

“Died Young, Stayed Pretty” at the Corcoran

Austin poster designer Rob Jones in Eileen Yaghoobian's documentary, "Died Young, Stayed Pretty."

I chatted with artist and first-time documentary filmmaker Eileen Yaghoobian for a piece about this week’s DC premiere of Died Young, Stayed Pretty, her movie about gig poster artists. I’ve written about our local gig poster scene here in DC more than once, so it’s a subject close to my heart, and her flick is a lot of fun. It screens Thursday night at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Details here.

Firecracker, Firecracker: Yo La Tengo at the 9:30 Club

13-Yo-La-Tengo

Last night was my first time seeing Yo La Tengo, the second-most-famous musical institution out of Hoboken, NJ. Head over to DCist for the review, with photos by Francis Chung.

Dan Deacon brings his “Explosion Show” to a Building Near the Washington Times Building

DAN DEACON by Josh Sisk

I did a little preview of Dan Deacon’s free show in Kenilworth tomorrow as part of a weekend-long KIA Motors promotion that also features free gigs by Wale (tonight) and MGMT (Sunday).