Fans of live music in the District tend to have a real soft spot for the Velvet Lounge near 9th and U Streets NW. It's a tiny venue with a reputation for hosting experimental acts no one else will, and for employing one of the best sound engineers in town in Rob Curtis. But no one who tries to keep track of who is playing at the Velvet Lounge has ever had a single nice thing to say about their web site. For at least the last four or five years, the bar's web site been a stark, all-black background with an ordered list of dates and band names, without a single other piece of crucial information included, like say, set times or prices. The only other item on the page was the following text at the top: "NOTE: Please be patient while we redesign the website!" We had long since given up on the idea that anyone had any intention of redesigning the site.

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day. The new owners of the Velvet Lounge have launched a redesigned web site: Behold. Clear, easy to read listings that include revolutionary things like: links to bands' web sites! Both set times and door times! Prices!!! Forgive our extraneous exclamation points here, but when you've been trying to gather rock show information from the Lounge for as long as we have, this is more or less an occasion for a champagne toast.

All in all, it's a clean, professional looking web site, and we applaud Abdul Kayoumy and Haile Berhane for finally getting it done, and Clavius Productions for their design. It appears that a gallery of photos has yet to be added, so we look forward to that being updated as well.