The Young Dubliners MONDAY >> The Young Dubliners -- well, youngish -- bring their Emerald Isle-by-way-of-the-Golden State nu-traditional celt-folk to the the Birchmere. Locals Scythian open. 7:30 p.m., $20. >> Can you earn a spot in the Weekly Music Agenda on the strength of your name alone? So it would appear: The Artist Formerly Known as Six Finger Satellite, now doing business as The Juan MacLean, is at the Black Cat. With Edie Sedgwick... [continue]

Back in the second Clinton administration, when No Depression proudly billed itself as "The Alternative Country (whatever that is) bi-monthly magazine," no band seemed to carry more potential to bring this music into the mainstream with its integrity intact than Old 97's. Solidifying its four-man lineup in Dallas in 1993, the band -- an amalgamation of the Meat Puppets, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, The Replacements, Merle Haggard, and yeah, okay, The Beatles --... [continue]

It's written right here in subsection 218 of the "Sacred British Cows" chapter of the (Semi)Professional Rock Critics' Catechism and Field Manual that any discussion of former Jam and Style Council frontman and prolific rock-folk-soul journeyman Paul Weller must mention that he's Huge in the U.K. and more of an Anglophile footnote in the U.S. So did y'alls hear that? In the mother country, he's a Hyde Park-filling megastar; here in the colonies, he's... [continue]

Carrie Fisher bares all, metaphorically speaking, in her autobiographical one-woman show, Wishful Drinking. A long time ago (Oct. 21, 1956), in a galaxy far, far away (Burbank, Calif.), Carrie Fisher, the once and future Princess Leia Organa, was born to pop crooner Eddie Fisher and Singin' in the Rain starlet Debbie Reynolds. Fisher dumped Reynolds (and his baby daughter) a couple years later for Reynolds' former BFF, Elizabeth Taylor. But it was George Lucas,... [continue]

Rock 'n' roll has always been lousy with dudes who dance like women, but Craig Finn — the high-school-math-teacher-lookin' frontman of The Hold Steady, as if you didn’t know by now — is possibly the only guy in the game who dances like a five-year-old girl: Elbows in. Forearms out. Knees high. Eyes squinted shut. Beatific grin. Jazz hands all over the place. Most of us are only capable of executing moves like that... [continue]

More star wattage, more choice, more tough choices. V-Mo Fest V. 3, Part II offered more of the same, and in this case, that's a very good thing. In addition to the words and visuals you saw yesterday, today we've also got audio of several on-the-spot interviews Chris conducted at the festival. Copious sound + vision follows! 8/10/08 5:04 PM -Michelle Stafford of Headcount - Chris Klimek Ace photographer DCist Kyle kicks it off: I... [continue]

TUESDAY >> Just Another Band from East L.A.? We think not. Los Lobos join Los Lonely Boys to tear up Wolf Trap's Filene Center stage. $22 and $40, 8 p.m. >> Three Stars alums The Moderate bring their humid Carolina alt-country back to the Black Cat backstage. With our own music editor Amanda's favorite local alt country singer, John Bustine. $8, 9 p.m. >> If you're a fan of the TV show Lipstick Jungle —... [continue]

Whether you're a little bit Iggy or a little bit Moby; whether you breathlessly await each L'il Wayne mixtape or whether pop music ceased to interest you the year the Beatles stopped touring and Dylan went electric (in which case, congratulations on figuring out this old Internet), there was something to your taste at the third edition of the Virgin Mobile Festival this weekend. Not just something, actually: A lot. With a big assist from... [continue]

Photo from the 2007 Virgin Mobile Festival by firegal Virgin Mobile Festival is like the two-party system, except you can vote in the other party's primary and even change your vote mid-set. (I'm dismissing the Dance Tent the way most people dismiss third parties.) Herewith follows (with apologies to DCist Cinephile-in-Chief Ian Buckwalter) a wholly arbitrary, hardly comprehensive, but probably alphabetical listing of the acts I'm keenest to see. Chuck Berry and the Silver... [continue]

U-who? We're not too high-minded to praise Coldplay's performance at Verizon Center last night as "Ballsy." One strives to avoid the wholly predictable, but sometimes you just can't stave off the obvious lede that fate fairly dangles above your head: Coldplay grow some balls. Coldplay deliver ballsy performance. Coldplay counter critics with raw ballin.’ Meaty, Beaty, Big and Pricey: Coldplay's Balls of Technicolour Fire. Viva la Balls, or Death and All His Balls. (Okay,... [continue]

The Old 97s made their triumphant return to the 9:30 Club last night. Photo by Lisa Johnson. Our Nation’s Capitol has seen a lot more of the emancipated Rhett Miller in recent years than it has of his band, Old 97s. Miller may write most of the songs for the hard-charging country-pop-punkabilly quartet, but somehow he’s only about one–eleventh as interesting when he doesn’t have Murry Hammond singing harmony and Ken Bethea blasting out those... [continue]

Jonathon Church as the Marquis de Sade in Forum Theatre's Marat/Sade. Photo by Melissa Blackall. Asylum director Coulmier personally welcomes you as you step into the septic green confines of the bathhouse at Charenton, silently congratulating yourself on the liberal Enlightenment values that have brought you here to watch Coulmier’s lunatics perform a history-play penned by his most notorious patient, Donatien Alphonse François de Sade. It’s therapy, for them and for him, this playacting.... [continue]

Hey, David Gaines! It's not you, Baby. It's me. Gaines is the gifted mime and movement artist who reduces Akira Kurosawa's epic 1954 masterpiece The Seven Samurai to 45 minutes and a cast of one in 7 (x1) Samurai. He is by any standard an estimable man with a list of credits longer than Toshiro Mifune's katana. He evokes distinct characters using only his body and his voice (though he utters but a single English... [continue]

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund exists to help comics artists and merchants who fall victim to dubious obscenity law prosecutions, like the one that anchors the premise of David Johnson's Busted Jesus Comics. While the Fringe Festival isn't supposed to have an ethos, really, Busted Jesus still feels like an ideal piece of material for it: The show is initially abrasive, almost daring you to form an lazy judgment of both the playwright and... [continue]

You know John Hefner, even if you don’t know him. He’s a total geek — a costume-dressing, trivia-spouting, shows-Ravenous-to-all-his-first-dates geek. I mean that in a friendly, even admiring way. He seems to be under the impression that his geekdom is an out-of-control malady that exacerbates his dating woes, but really now. We live in the Age of Geeks. The jock-jerk in the White House is as despised as any U.S. president has ever been. Those... [continue]

Anacostia, Rhode Island Avenue, and Congress Heights all make the list of 10 Metro stations that will be receiving new surveillance cameras over the next six months, Metro Transit Police said yesterday. The Post reports today that the District is kicking in $225,000 towards the effort. Transit Police have recommended that Maryland and Virgina install additional cameras at stops in their jurisdictions as well, especially at stops at the ends of lines. The only Metro... [continue]

It's tempting to call Austin, Texas country-rocker Alejandro Escovedo the Forrest Gump of indie rock, but he deserves to be associated with a much better movie. In 1978, his first band, San Francisco punkers The Nuns, opened the last-ever Sex Pistols show prior to the Pistols' brief mid-90s reunion. He was living in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City when the Pistol's' Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen checked in; Spungen would... [continue]

it was 232 years ago today / Tommy Jeff, he taught the band to play . . . Flickr user Brandon-J asks: What could possibly be more patriotic than Declaration author Thomas Jefferson at a (sparsely attended) Washingon Nationals game? And what're the odds he's packing heat under that red coat maroon frock? Happy birthday, America! EXIF.... [continue]

Phindile Mkhize as Rafiki in that little-show-that-could, The Lion King. Photo by Joan Marcus. Drama lovers, a word: Here in the lavishly appointed ahr-eee Theater cubicle of DCist’s state-of-the-art underground headquarters, we have what you call an ethos. For us, casting arbitrary, semi-informed judgment on the bustling stage traffic of Our Nation’s Capitol is about a lot more than just getting free tickets to the latest hot offering from reliable companies like Catalyst or... [continue]

Sorry, Flickr users, today's Photo of the Day comes from a local whose achievement in the field of biological, if not photographic, excellence dusts all y'all suckers. This is an ultrasound image belonging to friend of mine. It is not a joke; it is not a fake, and yes, of course I obtained her permission to post it here with the quite understandable proviso that I remove her name from it. Those of you... [continue]