Photo of Titus Andronicus at South By Southwest by Valerie Paschall
One advantage to living in D.C. is that bands at all levels visit, sometimes often. The venues of national renown coupled with the city’s rich musical history makes the area an attractive spot for touring acts. (And, let’s be real. NPR is here, and everyone wants to do a Tiny Desk Concert.) As such, it’s not a rarity to hear of a band come through once a year, if not two or three times a year. What sets Titus Andronicus apart from many other acts that roll through town repeatedly is their ability to make every show worthwhile. They’re not at band to catch “next time,” so much as a band to catch every time. We can speak with authority on this subject because between the members of the DCist music staff, we’ve seen Titus every time they’ve hit D.C. In preparation for Sunday night’s Black Cat show with the So So Glos and The Max Levine Ensemble, we’ve assembled our favorite moments from their previous visits to D.C.
June 25, 2008 at Rock and Roll Hotel
Times New Viking is a personal favorite, so their headlining slot prompted this trip to Rock and Roll Hotel, but The Airing Of Grievances had come out two months before. Titus Andronicus blew away my expectations. They were a scrappy band from New Jersey that had not toured much, but their live show was headline ready. The floor controlled lighting was a cool visual element. Also, when I sang a few bars of “Titus Andronicus” with frontman Patrick Stickles I was told that I was “the only one who knew their lyrics outside of Jersey.” —Rohan Mahadevan
August 16, 2008 at The Red and the The Black (R.I.P.)
This show was just as incredible. The smaller room was filled with the band’s friends and family which was hilarious because it had seemed that they had blown up due to backing from XL Records and blog hype. The homemade lighting was still present, but while the set felt more ferocious, the band acted less like they had something to prove and as such, they were more talkative and comical than before. —Rohan Mahadevan
Titus Andronicus — and their homemade lighting — at the Red and the Black. Photo by Nestor Diaz.
April 19, 2009 at Black Cat
I’d been a big Lucero fan for awhile and decided the 2.5-hour drive down for their Black Cat show was well worth it. Titus Andronicus had been floating around music blogs for a while by then, but even before giving The Airing of Grievances a proper listen, that live show proved them a winner. By the time they got to the end of their blistering, raucous set with the bouncy, fist-pumper “No Future Part Two: The Days of No Future,” the crowd in front of the stage was bouncing up and down hurling themselves into each other with a sort of drunken blissfulness. Their set would prove to be a tough act for Lucero to follow. —Matt Cohen
October 11, 2009 at Rock and Roll Hotel
The New Jersey punks had received a fair amount of acclaim, but this cold Sunday night didn’t draw much of a crowd. Singer-main fixture Patrick Stickles cracked a joke about the Rock And Roll Hotel’s massive mirrors making the audience look bigger. The room wasn’t even a quarter full. But that smart-ass remark turned out to be a self fulfilling prophecy and that night was just one frustrating tour date. —Andy Hess
Photo of Titus Andronicus at St. Stephens’ Church by Kyle Gustafson.
April 16, 2010 at St. Stephen’s Church
This show was so wonderful, we couldn’t find the right words for another eight months. I’m not sure if it was the afterglow of The Monitor‘s sprawling punk prowess, the hypothetical passing of the punk torch (John Stabb of Government Issue shared the bill) or guitarist Amy Klein‘s cover of riot grrrl classic “Rebel Girl” that made this show feel that special. It was a coming out party in a series of coming out parties for the New Jersey band who went ended up on countless year-end lists in 2010. It’s easy to chalk it up to being at the right place at the right time, but actually, it was probably that cover. —Andy Hess
Titus Andronicus — “Rebel Girl” (Bikini Kill) from mehan jayasuriya on Vimeo.
September 24, 2010 at Rock and Roll Hotel
The Monitor is Titus Andronicus’ Born to Run; it’s everything that made their first album so infectious—raw, anthemic, overblown punk wrapped in literary screed—but much more fully realized. As such, the anticipation was high for their show at the Rock and Roll Hotel, and considering Titus was, at the time, the NPR “it” band, the show was way sold out; jam-packed with a subdued crowd intent on doing the standing still. That didn’t stop the band’s diehard fans from pushing their way to the front to scream along and cause a ruckus during their explosive set. By the time they closed with a powerful cover of AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way to The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n Roll) with openers Free Energy, it was pretty easy to distinguish which ones in the crowd actually wanted rock ‘n roll, and which were more interested in nodding along on the sidelines. —Matt Cohen
Photo of Titus Andronicus at the Rock and Roll Hotel (with Free Energy cheering them on) by Mehan Jayasuriya
This was Titus Andronicus’ first trip to the 9:30 Club, but they spent two nights opening for the Pogues. As such, they were playing for a crowd that was mostly there to watch a band that has been destroying livers since the 1970s. This might have thrown a different band off their rhythm, but Titus Andronicus played as if they belonged on that stage and as if the majority of the crowd was actually paying attention. —Valerie Paschall
Titus Andronicus opening for The Pogues at the 9:30 Club. Photo by Eric Uhlir.
April 27, 2011 at Black Cat
The crowd got rowdy immediately at this sold out show with Double Dagger, screaming and pushing in a rather large pit. Yet, one of the most memorable moments occurred when they slowed things down with bum-out anthem, “Four Score and Seven.” Groups of four and five people all locked arms and swayed at the song’s beginning and making their freakout more visible during the song’s blistering explosion of “It’s still us against them/And they’re winning.” It was poignant and perfect as was a well-timed cover of “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” dedicated to the recently fallen Poly Styrene. —Valerie Paschall
June 2, 2011 at 9:30 Club
It turns out that Titus Andronicus at reduced capacity can still rock harder than other bands at full strength. Guitarist Amy Klein had just rejoined their tour after suffering a concussion and frontman Patrick Stickles had a bandaged wrist as a result of a cat bite. It wasn’t possible to tell whether Stickles’ twisted visage was due to pain or the intensity of the performance, but it didn’t matter when he demanded, “Now, watch me” during his solo in “Titus Andronicus Forever.” Additionally, watching drummer Eric Harm, keyboardist Dave Robbins and bassist Julian Veronesi do their impersonations of Future Islands’ Sam Herring’s dramatic stage gestures outside the 9:30 Club afterwards was hilarious. —Valerie Paschall
October 24, 2012 at Rock and Roll Hotel
The songs from Local Business hadn’t burned themselves into the collective brains of punk fans in the way that The Monitor‘s had, but at the Rock and Roll Hotel, they finally made sense in context. Even Ted Leo, for whom Titus had opened in 2009, rushed over to the Hotel after finishing his own set at the Birchmere, watching from the sides and reveling at the joyous free-for-all on Twitter that kids know every word to every Titus Andronicus song. —Valerie Paschall
