MONDAY >> Those looking to kick the month off with a bang might be out of luck, as it looks like there’s not a whole lot going down tonight. Still, it’s not a total wash, as all the usual suspects — the Black Cat, DC9, the Velvet Lounge and the Rock and Roll Hotel — will have their bars open and waiting for the District’s disillusioned masses. >> DJ Jahsonic has a new Monday night…

Franz Kafka ordered his friend Max Brod to burn his incomplete novel The Trial after his death in 1924; Brod edited and published it instead. Although written more than 80 years ago, the book was so prescient in its portrayal of a idly malevolent bureaucracy that it feels timeless. Christopher Gallu has written a new adaptation for Catalyst Theatre Company (where he is Producing Artistic Director), and here he steps into some mammoth shoes:…

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…

MONDAY >> This ain’t not J-Pop, we swear. If you want good old-fashioned Japanese rock ‘n’ roll (OK, it’s true, we don’t really know what that’s supposed to sound like either), The Captains from some place in Japan (the city name on their MySpace page uses Japanese characters) will drop by The Red & The Black tonight. They will be supported by Sugarcane Crawl, formerly known as Blues Hammer, and D.C.’s The Bourbon Dynasty. 9…

2001 was a good year for Radiohead clones. Muse released their second album, Origin of Symmetry, to the fanfare of British rock critics. Coldplay finally attained mainstream success in the United States. And Travis cemented their international popularity with the Nigel Godrich-produced The Invisible Band. Meanwhile, in Denton, Texas (about as far away from Oxford as you can get), five jazz students at the University of North Texas released an EP under the name Midlake….

If Thursday’s show at the Red and the Black was any indication, this year’s 6 Points Music Festival looks to be a good one. The local fest, in its fourth year but only its second with a wider reach, aims to someday be a D.C. version of South by Southwest and helped its cause by bringing a diverse indie bill to H Street NE. The show began with Brooklyn’s The Lisps, followed by Chicago’s Scotland…

Deep in the incestuous (professionally speaking) world of indie rock, there is Rilo Kiley. Based out of Los Angeles, it isn’t that much of a surprise that the band was founded by two former child stars, Jenny Lewis of Troop Beverly Hills fame, and Blake Sennett, aka Salute Your Shorts’ Ronnie Pinksy, aka Joseph ‘Joey the Rat’ Epstein from Boy Meets World. More interesting is the number of popular side projects on which these…

We know that rock ‘n’ roll has now been around long enough to be the subject of serious academic study. We can accept college level classes devoted to the cultural impact of punk, the influence of the artistic fringe on the work of the Velvet Underground, and the inventive and complex harmonies in the collected work of the Beatles. But doesn’t there have to be a line somewhere? What I really want to know is…

There isn’t a more arresting falsetto in rock right now than TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone’s. This would be a feat in itself, were he not in constant harmonization with lead singer Tunde Adebimpe’s intense vocals — taking TVOTR’s sound to another level of cool. In fact, were these two not harmonizing, perhaps TVOTR would be just another trip hop, art-rock, doo-wop, retro-funk, Brooklyn-based mash-up collective. To put it another way, this band is…

FRIDAY: >> In “sucks but it’s true” news, the H Street NE scene, while awesomely fun, can still be a dangerous part of town. Argonaut bartender Luis “Quike” Morales was reminded of that fact the hard way late last month, when he was shot in the head while walking home from work. Amazingly, Quike survived, but his mounting medical bills are more than any service industry salary could handle. So head on down to the…