Dumbek's Random Stuff

French Toast - tonight at The Black Cat.

They're opening for Hard-Fi, who I know very little about, other than I hear they're pretty good.

French Toast doesn't suck. You should go.

(Warning - cranky, tired, old-man alert)

There oughta be a law that says if you're a headlining band and you're playing to more than 500 people you MUST play for at least an hour. I don't care if you play b-sides, cover songs or kazoo solos - you should have an hour's worth of material. If you can't bother to come up with an hour's worth of music, you better damn-well play every song off your new album.

And while I'm at it...I got to the show last night at about 9:40. I could hear the music from down the block as I was walking towards the club. I couldn't hear the girl at the door when she spoke to me. I figured The Spinto Band was just playing long, but no. I walked into the main room and discovered it was the DJ music between sets. Hey 9:30 - turn it the f--k down. People shouldn't need to wear earplugs BETWEEN bands. It was a little better in the balcony, but the main floor was WAY too loud, considering there was no band on the stage.

Other than that, The Arctic Monkeys were terrific. The set was short, but sweet. It's impossible to live up to the ridiculous amount of hype they have, but I was pretty impressed.

'99 Red Balloons' Video to Air for an Hour

(blatantly cribbed from yahoo)

NEW YORK - They're kidding, right?

VH1 Classic will present a full hour of the English and German music videos for the 1984 hit "99 Luftballons," aka "99 Red Balloons," by German rock group Nena.

The music video presentation, to air Sunday (2 p.m. EST), caps off the cable channel's "Pay to Play for Hurricane Katrina Relief," which raised over $200,000 for Mercy Corps, a humanitarian relief organization.

Viewers could request one video to be played on VH1 Classic for every $25 donation. For a $35,000 donation, they could select an hour's worth of music videos from the 1960s through the early 1990s.

However, one viewer chose something different for his allotted hour, requesting continuous playing of "99 Luftballons," said VH1 spokeswoman Maura Wozniak.

"99 Luftballons" is a Cold-War era protest song that tells the story of 99 red balloons floating into the air, triggering an apocalypse when the military sends planes to intercept them.

Get your minds out of the gutter.

Ray Davies - one of the greatest songwriters of our time - is doing a rare solo gig at 9:30 tomorrow night. He's promoting Other People's Lives - his first true solo record.

True, there was Return To Waterloo before this - But that was the soundtrack to some made-for-tv-movie thing he did back in the 80s. It's only a total of 9 tracks - 3 of which come from the Kinks' Word of Mouth. And according to an amazon review, the lineup for this was basically The Kinks minus Dave. Not much "solo" going on here.

There was also The Storyteller, which is him telling stories along with performing some of his older songs. Interesting concept, eh? Yeah - VH-1 stole the idea - right down to the title.

Everyone knows who The Kinks are, but I don't think most people fully appreciate how important they were. They did it all during their career. They were at the front of the original British Invasion, they did a few...ummm...interesting rock-operas, they hit the height of arena rock success, then sunk into near obscurity as they later failed to sell tickets and records. The onstage-fighting with his brother, Dave, is legendary. They made those Gallagher boys look like a couple of twits. The whole time though, they never failed to put out great records. Just because you never heard those doesn't mean they sucked.

And Ray even got shot in 2004. How's that for street cred?

My guess is that the show will consist of mostly of the new record and a bunch of Kinks songs. But the new record is very good and the chance to see him in a club is too good to pass up. He's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for cryin' out loud.

Here's a handful of Kinks songs. No real theme here other than this is what I fell like listening to at the moment. It's my blog. I can do that. They'll only be up for a few days. If you like what you hear, go buy something. A good chunk of their catalog has been re-released with a buttload of bonus tracks at a bargain price. Go get 'em.


Celluloid Heroes (live) - easily my favorite Kinks song.
Till The End Of The Day (BBC sessions)
Village Green Preservation Society (BBC sessions)
Prince Of The Punks - an old b-side, re-released on the Sleepwalker reissue.
Around The Dial - remember when you were young and actually had a DJ that you liked?
Muswell Hillbilly - just a great country-ish tune

And go buy his new record here.

As soon as the weather gets warm, one thing always pops into my mind - Grateful Dead Spring Tour. God, I miss those days. The Capital Centre was almost always included - if not the opening spot for the tour. If not Landover, Philly was right up I-95.

As it turns out, I managed to catch the Dead 4 times on St. Patrick's Day. As if Deadheads needed another reason to party it up a bit. But the St. Patrick's shows were always kind of special. There was always the rumor of them breaking out St. Stephen on St. Patrick's Day (although it never happened). We were usually treated to a rarity or two. Even the more jaded heads seemed to be a little more festive on St. Patrick's Day. It's a day for fun - and the fun was in full swing.

My favorite of the 4 shows I saw was probably the first - 3-17-91 at the Cap. Centre. The first show of Spring Tour '91. The band was still recovering from the loss of Brent the previous summer and Bruce Hornsby was currently a full-time touring member of the band. That always lit a bit of a spark under Jerry. "New Speedway Boogie" was played for only the second time in about 18 years. (The return of NSB came a few weeks earlier in Oakland. I was there too :-) ).



But the highlight of the night was the debut of "Rubin And Cherise". It was an old Jerry Garcia Band tune that The Dead had never played before. Hell - Even the JGB rarely played it. It took everyone completely by surprise. Another perfect example of why people went to show after show. Anything could happen.



I remember exactly what was going on when they pulled out that song. My friend Steve decided to run downstairs after "Queen Jane". He got about halfway down the steps when Jerry hit the first 3 chords of the tune. Steve stopped in his tracks, turned around and gave me one of those "Is this what I think it is?" looks. Jerry hit the same 3 chords again and Steve came bounding back up the steps, jumping up and down, WOOHOOing the whole way and gave me a big ol' hug when he made it back to our seats. Nobody really got it until Jerry started the lyrics - then the place just exploded. One of my all-time favorite Dead moments. They only played that song 3 more times before retiring it forever. We managed to see it 3 of those 4 times.

And that was just the first of 7 shows we saw that tour. Gone are the days...

Here's the show.



Grateful Dead - 3-17-91 Capital Centre - Landover, MD

Hell In A Bucket
Sugaree
Walkin' Blues
Peggy-O
Queen Jane Approximately
Rubin And Cherise
Let It Grow

China Cat Sunflower
I Know You Rider
Women Are Smarter
Crazy Fingers
Truckin'
New Speedway Boogie
Drums
Space
The Wheel
All Along The Watchtower
Black Peter
Around & Around

U.S. Blues


Here's an audience version of Rubin and Cherise from the same show. Sometimes soundboard tapes don't quite make you feel like you're there.

I just got totally busted playing air-drums in my office to Mission of Burma's "That's When I Reach For My Revolver".

On a similar note, I got busted singing "Scarlet Begonias" on Rockville Pike the other day. 80 degrees...windows down...I'm just belting it out while sitting at a traffic light. I look to my right and there's a whole bus stop of people laughing at me.

How fun is this?

A spelling bee that has live bands, bar tabs as prizes and encourages heckling.

http://www.dcbee.blogspot.com/

Nick P & Juhi B along with the Warehouse Theater present:

The DC BEE

Spell for fun! Spell for glory! Spell for drinks! Spell rhododendron!

The best and worst spellers compete for the Grand Prize to be awarded
on June 5th: A killer trophy, cold hard cash, bragging rights, and
prizes from the areas finest bars, restaurants, boutiques, record
labels and more....
Preliminaries are every other Monday at the Warehouse Theater starting
on March 27th.
Compete for bar tabs courtesy of the Warehouse and a spot in the Final
on June 5th!

With weekly musical performances by:

The Aquarium
Benjy Ferree
Damien and Matthew Taylor
Brandon Butler
Shortstack
Revival
French Toast
and more

for more information (and an actual schedule - D):
www.DCBee.blogspot.com

SPONSORED BY (as of 3/15):

# WAREHOUSE THEATER
# ARTHUR MAGAZINE
# BOX THEORY RECORDS
# CROOKED BEAT RECORDS
# DOUBLING CUBE RECORDS
# GYPSY EYES RECORDS
# HARP MAGAZINE
# LOVITT RECORDS
# PLANARIA RECORDINGS
# PLEXIFILM
# SCIENCE CLUB
# TRANSFORMER GALLERY


and a whole lot more sponsors coming soon.... we mean a LOT!

The bf's birthday was yesterday, but the real celebrating begins tonight. We're kicking off Birthday-Weekend with a trip to The Green Lantern. It's Thursday. You know the deal. Come on out. Drinks are on me from 10-11. :-)

OK - Probably not my new all-time favorite, but this showed up in the mail yesterday and I'm completely blown away. Love. It. So veerrry slooooowww. Dreamy. Powerful. Moody. Dark. Lush and sparse at the same time.

Wow. How could I have missed-out on this for 15 years?

Thanks.

Blogger is acting screwy today. They're aware of the problems and are working on it.

I'm not a very good patient. Thanks to the bf for taking care of me/putting up with me while I was sick over the weekend. Note to self: Don't eat anything in the refrigerator that's over 6 months past it's expiration date. Sorry to anyone I told we would be at Remington's on Saturday. We were literally heading out the door before things took a turn for the worse. Trust me - you had a better night than I did.

In happier news... the Buzzcocks have a new disc out. Even Entertainment Weekly likes it, so you know it must be good. According to their website there's a US tour to come, but no dates have been set yet. The Buzzcocks can still bring it. Check 'em out.

I got this in the mail over the weekend:



I guess someone likes the new beard.

The Pogues (including Shane) return to DC this week. We'll be there Friday. I haven't seen them in nearly 20 years. I'd encourage everyone to go, but tickets are looking pretty scarce. Apparently, people are coming in from all over the country for this very brief tour. I didn't realize they were that popular. Maybe due to Shane being back? Dunno. Should be a fantastic time though. I predict at least a few people will be tipsy.

I just realized I have no Neil Young on my iPod. Must fix that immediately.

The bf's birthday is this week. We still haven't decided how to celebrate yet. We were going to go to NYC, but a quick look at our wallets told us that wasn't the best idea. We'll probably stick to having a nice dinner somewhere and heading out and about this weekend. Any suggestions?