Local musicians remix each other to benefit local organization HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive).
As a general rule music festivals give a pretty poor representation of a particular city’s music climate and as such, no real sense as to how that city might receive a band or group of bands. Yet, Raleigh’s Hopscotch Music Fesitval is unlike most music festivals. Whether due to the big names that play the city plaza or the heavy focus on experimental music (Thurston Moore was this year’s improviser in residence), Hopscotch draws people from anywhere in a seven hour radius. Still, there’s a strong local focus and a large percentage of the crowd drove thirty minutes at most to catch these shows. What’s more, the festival is still small enough so that unlike, say, CMJ or SXSW, there are no more than five bands playing opposite each other at any given time. As such, this year’s Hopscotch Festival provided perhaps a more accurate picture of D.C. bands’ reception outside of the D.C./Baltimore the comfort zone.
U Street Music Hall owner and DJ Will Eastman transforms one of The Caribbean’s more laid-back tracks into a bona fide dancehall house jam.
Check out the track “Imitation Air,” from The Caribbean’s brand new album Moon Sickness.
Are you a local band? Did you release a full length album in 2011? Did we forget to review it? If you answered yes to the first two questions, the answer to the third is probably also an affirmative. Oops. Our bad. We’re sorry. We’ll do better in 2012. Still, since “we’ll do better” doesn’t sound much like a retroactive “we’ll review your album,” relax. We’ll do that, too. Here are some brief thoughts on the local LPs that we’d meant to analyze earlier.
Photo and story by DCist contributor Valerie Paschall Leave it to Travis Morrison to throw a CD release party, but forget to order CDs. Morrison shrugged it off, offering up several suggestions of places online (including a half-kidding nod to Napster) from where the audience could pick up his latest release, All Y’all. It’s this quirky charm that makes his live show so engaging; Saturday night’s show at Iota would’ve been worth the ticket price…
FRIDAY: >> Starting tonight, George Mason Stadium plays host to the region’s annual D.C . College Cup. The soccer teams of George Washington, American, Howard, and George Mason will square off in two rounds of games. Though the tournament is conspicuously missing national powerhouses UMD and UVA, the event will still showcase some of the best young talent around. GW and AU kick off tonight’s slate (5:00 p.m.), with Howard and GMU rounding the night…
FRIDAY: >> We will be hard pressed to find a better drinking buddy this Friday night than Freddy Noe, son of Booker Noe and great-grandson of Col. James B. Beam. For those not in the “Noe,” this is the family that gave us Jim Beam. Whiskey fans can pay homage to Freddy, Master Distiller Emeritus and Jim Beam brand ambassador (uh, where can we apply for that job?), from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on…
>> Fort Reno has The Caribbean, Len Bias and The Ardennes. But the National Weather Service has a Severe Thunder Storm Watch from 2 to 9 p.m., so you might want to hedge your bets and make a back-up plan. >> Ohio’s alt-country rawkers Two Cow Garage stop by the Red and the Black tonight, with Minneapolis’ Birthday Suits and Richmond’s Clint Maul for what should be a loud, fun show all around. $8,…
Matthew Byars is trying something different. The band member of local rockers and former Three Stars act, The Caribbean, has launched his own micro-record label. Pitched as “B-sides only,” the Baltimore-based West Main Development plans to release a series of albums by local artists that highlight all of the tracks unworthy of a typical release. It is intended to be a raw sampling and a more intimate perspective of the music making process. In retrospect…
