X: Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom, Jon Doe, and D.J. Bonebrake, pictured sometime well in advance of their current 31st anniversary tour. As unabashedly retro, amphetamine-spiked rocksoulpunkabilly two-fers go, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than pioneering Los Angeles punkers X, with garage-rock archeologists the Detroit Cobras on the undercard. Billed as X’s 31st anniversary tour, (though their recorded career began with 1980’s Los Angeles) this greasy double bill pulled into the 9:30 Club Wednesday......

When the once dominant Rawkus Records, and the East Coast generally, fell on hard times earlier this decade, hip-hop’s underground-loving backpack brigade was left without a label to champion. Perfectly positioned to pick up the slack was an imprint from Los Angeles led by a guy who called himself Peanut Butter Wolf. Wolf (aka Chris Manak) started Stones Throw Records in 1996 when he released an album he’d recorded three years prior with his close......

The cold weather - and holiday festivities - descended upon Gothamist. The Rockefeller Christmas tree was lit, Broadway stagehand finally ended their strike, and NASCAR decided to run their victory lap through Times Square. There were disturbing photographs revealing the working conditions in which many city manholes are produced and ninjas were also a hot topic, either robbing homes or entering into alibis. But the city was really rocked by how Rudy Giuliani's visits......

>> The Black Cat's backstage is going to be pumping out the punk noise tonight as Antelope stops by, with Thank You and The Andalusians. $8, 9 p.m. >> DC Scores, a local nonprofit that provides innovative after-school programming to Washington kids, is hosting its 10th Annual Poetry Slam tonight. The event will feature 300 of the District's public elementary and middle school students competing for the coveted Golden Mic trophy -- obviously it......

Have you followed Eddie Argos' instructions and formed a band? Have you been looking, but just not finding, the perfect way to celebrate Hannukah this year? Are you free on December 8? The Eight, a concert presented by JDub Records, and Taglit-birthright Israel, is a worldwide Hannukah party happening simultaneously in 9 cities: D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Rio and Moscow. JDub, home to bands such as Balkan Beat Box,......

In Los Angeles, LAist most definitely celebrated Thanksgiving like no other. After all, one has to keep up all the energy to keep on walking the line at the Writers Strike and fighting the unfortunate return of the wildfires in Malibu, which single handedly destroyed over fifty homes within the first 24 hours. National outlets may be covering the fires, but CNN also found it is easier to buy a gun than fruit and......

This weekend the Capitals decided not to add a great goalie to pull them up from the dregs of the standings. After losing seven of eight games, the Caps were in last place. This gave them the first chance to pick up Ilya Bryzgalov, a goalie placed on waivers because he didn't enjoy playing backup on the Stanley Cup champion Anaheim Ducks. Two years ago, Bryzgalov posted one of the greatest playoff shutout streaks in......

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the......

Monday >> If you’re not a Springsteen fan, the place to be Monday night is the Black Cat for an evening of dance-punk. Kentucky’s VHS or Beta (pictured) are supporting the recent release of Bring on the Comets along with Los Angeles' Moving Units, whose catchy 2004 single “Between Us and Them” is reason enough get you up and moving. Local favorites Soft Complex will be opening. $13, 8 p.m. Tuesday >> The Austin Chronicle......

We knew it was just a matter of time, but sure enough, there in our inbox this morning was the first announcement of an online petition begging D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty to change his mind about the $4 taxicab flag drop fee. A group calling themselves D.C. Residents for Reasonable Taxi Fares claim that the fares proposed by Mayor Fenty will mean that taxi fares in D.C. will be the highest in the country--higher than......

We've written at length about England's The Go! Team and their fantastic live shows. The last time they were in town, they drove the Black Cat crowd into a frenzy, and now they'll be doing the same thing at the 9:30 Club tonight for a late show (10 p.m. doors). We recently spoke to Ninja, the band's energetic female MC who serves as the live show's focal point, on the phone from Los Angeles where......

Hollywood, rock and roll and reality TV are all subject to artist Jeremy Blake’s critical eye in Wild Choir: Portraits by Jeremy Blake. The Corcoran Gallery of Art, where the show opens tomorrow, calls his work “psychological pop portraits” — trippy digital videos depicting the lives of cultural figures. Flashing images, voice overs, music and explosions of color are typical in the three videos on display — 2003’s Reading Ossie Clark, 2005’s Sodium Fox, and......

Gothamist learned about the craziest urban nightmare come true: A huge python found in the bathroom pipes. It was also a nightmare for some Yankees fans, as manger Joe Torre declined to come back and manage the Bronx Bombers. At least the city's attempt to give some direction to subway riders was interesting, pranksters went shirtless at the Fifth Avenue Abercrombie & Fitch and the I Heart Brooklyn Girls calendars came out. And just......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: Lake of Fire Michael Moore may have grabbed all the press where high profile documentaries are concerned, but it's Tony Kaye's Lake of Fire that is being quietly talked about as the most powerful documentary of the year. Which is remarkable considering its subject is one of the most talked about and analyzed issues on......

As of this morning, The Red Derby showed very little evidence of its upcoming grand opening this evening at 6 p.m. The only thing separating itself from the laundromat and carryout on either side is a red logo painted above the doorway. The painting is so simple a child could have drawn it – is it a zit? A misshapen condom? Or perhaps the rear shot of a sleeping hippo? It’s actually a derby......

As it gets closer to Halloween for LAist, a contributer recollects her tale of staring down the serial killer, Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the Night Stalker. Must think happy thoughts -- okay, free organic chocolate chip cookies for Los Angeles -- now that's a happy thought. Other happy Los Angeles thoughts include an interview with Jack Kehler of The Big Lebowski (he was the Dude's landlord), a beautiful and magical photographic moment in Venice......

LAist began the month with a new food series exploring the popular and unknown late night eats around town. If a Top Chef winner opened up a late night spot in Los Angeles, denizens would flock it, yet the LA Times and other media might be wary. Turning to sports, the Dodger season was quite memorable in the way that it imploded and the LA County Sheriff's Department made some games of their own such......

We mentioned the nearly completed documentary film about the award-winning Ballou High School marching band, called simply Ballou, in a previous, less up-beat post about some fights that broke out there during the first week of the school. The film is still in its final post-production stages, but while the filmmakers are busy mixing audio tracks, the student musicians who are featured in the film are getting ready for a visit from The Ellen......

This week, Phillyist saw the waters of a landmark fountain run red for a Showtime marketing stunt, the Phils pull ahead, and some serious nostalgia. They also got a chance to review an awesome tribute album, reminded folks to see the King, and appreciated their beautiful skyline. Chicagoist knows what it's like to like the Cubs. But naming your kid Wrigley Fields? At least they can breathe a little easier now that Grossman's out and......

Say you’re part of that very vocal contingent that is unmoved by, or else just plain hates, Under the Blacklight, the heavily Fleetwood Mac-ified new album from L.A. indie-twangers Rilo Kiley. Maybe you were afraid that the rapturous reception to Rabbit Fur Coat, frontwoman and chief songwriter Jenny Lewis’s solo disc from last year, would spell the end of the band. Or else that Blacklight -- with its not-always-convincing depiction of sexual perversity in Los......

Of the numerous romantic notions surrounding the writing life, perhaps none dies harder than that of the solitary, ink-stained wretch plugging away at his or her latest work in some dilapidated garret, alone and unnoticed and oblivious to what's going on around him or her. Writing may be a solitary act, but as any intellectually honest writer can tell you, writers need communities: first, because the realities of today's writing life necessitate that one be......

As if we needed another study to tell us D.C. area traffic is awful and getting worse -- a report released yesterday has pushed us into a solid three-way tie for second place in the contest for the Worst Traffic in the Nation award. So congrats, D.C. You are tied with drivers in Atlanta and the Bay Area as you burn time inching along I-395 in your car. Only Los Angeles can boast more......

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and......

For anyone living in Washington who grew up in the West, the dearth of authentic Mexican food in this city is likely a constant complaint. D.C. is the home to several sizable ethnic groups, Salvadorans among them, and while we applaud the ready availability of authentic, and delicious, Salvadoran cuisine, the attempts by these same lovely folks to cook Mexican food is almost uniformly terrible. They use the wrong cheeses. They don't know how to......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-a-verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

Download the original attachment Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration......

Rock 'n' Roll has been around long enough for there to be a number of iron-clad certainties associated with it. Sgt. Pepper will likely top every critic's list from here until the end of time. The good will die young. Keith Richards, on the other hand, will never die, period. And, as was proved once again last night at the 9:30 Club, during the period of time between Neko Case's entrance onto a stage and......

Can't anyone get D.C. right? Today the Post's Reliable Source reports that Nicole Kidman's newest thriller, The Invasion, makes a number of relatively amateur mistakes in trying to use the District as a backdrop, even though a good part of it was filmed here. Among those: - Kidman, who plays a D.C. psychiatrist, buys magazines at one of those big sidewalk newsstand kiosks -- the ones all over New York but not on any corner......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......