Chronologically, one of the last images in Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art, is a portrait of Bob Dylan taken in New York’s Tompkins Square Park in 1992. This one photo demonstrates what’s great about this exhibit, but also what’s problematic about it. On the one hand: it’s a picture of Bob Dylan made by Allen Ginsberg, one of the great voices of the counterculture as seen by another, a pair of aging veterans of a scene which by then had become positively mainstream, if not thoroughly commodified. But is it the visual art, or the cultural gravitas, that makes this an great photograph?
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…
While the week between Christmas and New Year’s is far from a dead zone for movies, most of the new fare that’s going to be brought out before year’s end has already come out, and those that the studios did save for Christmas day release look wholly uninteresting, from sequels to films that were horrible missteps to begin with, to overly earnest inspirational fare. Instead, we’ll join the living in the past bandwagon and revisit…
Just who does Bob Dylan think he is? There must be a truth, a real life story way down underneath the layers of the biography that Dylan has created, but where that truth lies is probably only known to Mr. Zimmerman himself. So how does one approach making a film about the life of a man who has made a career out of self-mythologizing and asking us to please pay no attention to the man…
Versatile instrument, the piano. The primarily guitar-based P.J. Harvey turns to it to help her write an album of sober, somber chamber music, while the Idaho-bred, Oberlin-educated, equally guitar-centric Josh Ritter uses it to help him loosen up. At least that was the way he made The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, his fifth album since 2000, but his first since 2006’s The Animal Years elevated him from being just another huge-in-Ireland singer-songwriter to someone…
We kid. Kind of. According to the Washington Business Journal, the Uline Ice Arena and the surrounding area may be the next frontier in development in the District. The arena, which is just north of Union Station and hosted the first Beatles concert in the U.S. in 1964, is being looked at by developer Douglas Jemal as the anchor for a new entertainment district along the lines of the popular East End/Verizon Center area. While…
>> Continuing their trend of showing only the weirdest awesome movies for free in this city, the Library of Congress’ Mary Pickford Theater will actually screen an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 tonight as part of their Screening Shakespeare series. Really. It’s the episode of MST3K where the crew is forced to watch a laughably bad German made-for-TV adaptation of Hamlet — as the press release rightly notes, “is that Ricardo Montalban as…
When the Drive-by Truckers rolled into the 9:30 Club on July 15, 2006, it was the closest I’ve ever come to actually losing consciousness at a rock show. The gig was beyond sold-out, more vacuum-packed with sweaty bodies than any other supposedly sold-out 9:30 show I can remember. On top of that, the show fell on one of those spongy, airless summer nights that that can make the period between Independence Day and Labor…
On an October evening in 2002, I found myself driving down picturesque Route 29 with two good friends. Mirah was on tour, but not stopping anywhere closer to D.C. than Charlottesville. And we simply had to see her. Five years later, the singular singer-songwriter with the beautifully delicate voice is on the road again, and while she’s stopping in D.C. this time, I can’t go, so I had to make a side trip to…
Alfonso Velez is an old soul. The former frontman from Monopoli recently stepped out of the indie rock scene and into the past, drawing upon various folk and blues influences in his solo career. He has the demeanor (and hair) of a young Elvis, the storytelling stylings of Bob Dylan, and the gritty vocals of George Harrison. These are but a few of the names that come to mind as you watch him on stage….
