Aimee Mann never seemed like one of pop’s 500 likeliest candidates to release a Christmas album, but last year’s One More Drifter in the Snow was a tasteful, minor-key treat, and her “1st Annual Christmas Show” at the Birchmere last December was one of the best concerts of 2006. As she promised she would at the end of last year’s freewheeling interfaith revue, she’s hitched up the sleigh again this year for a monthlong yule-tour…

Outside of her relatively small but loyal following, the United States has not seen much of Sinéad O’Connor over the past decade, though she has continued to release albums and perform. Despite having a massive hit with the Prince-penned “Nothing Compares 2 U,” she is remembered equally for the controversy she generated with her infamous appearance on Saturday Night Live and her refusal to have the national anthem played before a concert in New Jersey….

The phrase “review-proof” usually denotes some property so universally recognizable and demonstrably saleable that no amount of critical huffing and puffing can possibly derail its commercial invincibility. Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind is something else. Yeah, it’s an established property, at least in Chicago, homebase of its creators, the Neo-Futurists. (Think the Groundlings, except less obsessed with getting on Saturday Night Live.) The hometown show has been up and running for at…

By DCist contributor W. Jacarl Melton “Tell the truth, James Brown was old ‘Til Eric and Rakim came out with ‘I Got Soul’. Rap brings back old R&B; And if we would not, people could’ve forgot.” —Stetsasonic’s “Talkin’ All That Jazz” That quote captures how RAMP went from 1970s R&B/soul/funk jazz obscurity to having one of the most sought-after albums in the history of hip-hop sampling. If you’re not familiar with the group, you’re more…

Well, there’s Rick Foucheaux in a chair playing a dead guy again. And look — Sarah Marshall is acting crazy as only she can. And come to think of it, this is another Sarah Ruhl play that concerns itself with the afterlife. Is there anything original happening here? Yep. Pretty much everything, actually. Dead Man’s Cell Phone, the world-premiere Ruhl now onstage at Woolly Mammoth, tests your patience a bit in the early going,…

Here’s one you might reasonably assume you’d misheard: “I doubt I would ever have gotten into stand-up comedy if not for 9/11.” The speaker is Tissa Hami, one of the five subjects of Stand-Up: Muslim American Comics Come of Age, local D.C. filmmaker Glenn Baker’s almost too-brisk profile of a loose group of comics who have banded together to challenge the perception that all Muslims are humorless fundamentalists. While Hami is the only one of…

Okay Washington, so the news from this weekend isn’t so cheerful. Maybe it was the thousands of war protestors on the Mall, or the hundreds of disgruntled Sufjan fans denied tickets at the Kennedy Center Saturday morning. Or maybe it was that crazy wind last night. In any case, we’re really reaching for the good news this morning. Cause Sugar’s Not Enough: In another entry to the “Why Most of the World Thinks We’re…

Let’s look back at a week in which no site in the -ist network adopted anyone from Africa… -Austinist reveled in the dumb antics of some U.T. law students and posted some great audio from former New Orleans natives who’ve decided to stay in Austin. But the best news for Austinist? They were voted Best Local Entertainment Web Site by the local Austin alt-weekly. Congrats, Austinist. -DCist gloried in being told their musical tastes made…

Last week, they brought the roof down at The Red & The Black, literally. OK, not really literally. We can’t blame the Brindley Brothers for the crumbling ceiling which closed off the upper level of the H Street Corridor’s version of DC9 last week (it’s hopefully fixed by now, we’re trying to find out). What we can tell you is that the quality and dedication illustrated in their intimate acoustic set confirmed why they…

Written by DCist Theater Reviewer Missy Frederick. When doing a live show, performers inevitably have to contend with slip-ups and unforeseen circumstances. Sometimes, these mistakes can provide the opportunity for an epic recovery that outshines the original material: think of Gilbert Gottfried’s masterful telling of the infamous “Aristocrats” joke after his 9-11 humor was bombing at the Friar’s Club Roast of Hugh Hefner. Other actors aren’t quite as quick on their feet, and flubs devolve…