Although I have lived here for about 12 years, somehow every long holiday weekend I forget, the non-natives leave. What should be a packed bar or nite club is never so much so on any one of the 4-6 'Monday' holiday weekends. That said, having adopted DC more than a decade ago myself, I reveled in the local this weekend, only to transcend it and realize it still continues to suprise and impress me.


Fist off, the Friday, August 30, 2002. Washington Post REVIEW-ed The Grandsons: Live at the Barns, The Legendary Wolf Trap Recordings, Volume One, The Grandsons latest recording. I did not get to read the review until Saturday, yet to quote the review's author, Mike Joyce, The Grandsons have "a flair for often keeping the crowd guessing and dancing at the same time." This reminds me why it is the LIVE component of local music that keeps me coming back.

So, on the surface the band seemed to start off just relaxing into the Visions set, saving energy for the IOTA show that nght. After a bunch of quieter, woeful, semi-acoustic cowboy songs, played in deference to those patrons in the theater, Alan set down a real vamp on "Long Gone Lonsome Blues." I've often thought that Alan has one of the most versatile voices in the area. He's a cowboy crooner who can also convincingly belt out a gospel-like dirge. The hear him playing around with 'the vamp' only strenghtens my opinion. [Perhaps I should mention, that one of the eccentricities of music at Visions, is that the band or DJ is positioned so they have to watch a film on the large videe screen at the end of the bar. This Friday was an all John Water's offering, it could have been a one time thing of the VAMP, enriching the CAMP.]

At this happy hour, my friend J. pegged what makes The Grandsons repertoire of cover songs more than the "novelties" and "vintage" that Joyce touched on in The Post. She coined it "A Grandson's Trifecta". After her request of "Audubon Zoo, a New Orlean's style march, the band followed it with the 1920's "If Youse A Viper", a reminder of where and what Jazz: America's Music, grew up from. The beautiful thing, is that The Gransdson's rarely use a set list so the "Trifecta", with all the excitement of a horse race, was completd with saxophonist, Chris Watling's original composition "Zulu Queen", found on 1994's It's Hip to Flip with the Grandsons...". Zulu Queen is like being pursued by a Jame's Bond villan at Carnivale it's so strong and suspenseful, that to IOTA, I had to go.

Now, apparently, I go to IOTA alot, because before the show had a chance to start, while I an not a muscian or a techie, I immeadiately noticed IOTA's new sound system. So while I don't know what it is or how it works, I can say, dang, it sounds good, and I am very glad I got to hear the The Grandsons christen it.

About midway through the first set at IOTA a familiar face, who knows I am always at the Vision's Happy Hour asked, "so is it the same set?" which gives me a great lead in to tell you "NO, it wasn't." The first set at IOTA had almost no repeat songs. Alan lost the vamp, and for the paying public carressed a whole different bunch of music with gorgeous tremolo vocals. Steve Sachs, upright player, would stand where John Young, who had played upright and electric bass at Visions had earlier, but what a different sort of pleasure it was to watch Sachs and druumer Matt Sedgley work a smooth bop-lounge rhythm over the course of the evening.

On the break, I was treated to a new fan looking fo rthe CD with Alan's yet unrecorded "Party With The Rich", a testement to local life and the fact that rarely are artist's paid their due and will always be on the outside. While this song is a relative newborn in Alan's 15+ years of songwriting, lines like "I don't care what my friends at Greenpeace say/the rich are just as right as a rainy day" or "the postman brings a hand addressed note/'Repondez Vous' it says to Foxhall Road" capture the trickle-down survival instict it takes to just make do in this town. I did not have to be born in DC to grasp the full meaning and enjoyment of these lyrics.

While a very tired band would close the night appropriately with version of "Rock Around the Clock", the second to last song "Is Anybody Going To San Antone?" was my request from earlier at Visions, fulfilled before the night closed. So sad a song with so much flavor (and an accordian) would make anyone happy, local or not.

As it turns out, I would not go to IOTA to see Canyon on Saturday, August 31, 2002 , They will play there again I am sure, or at least I hope so. Instead, I would do something unusual, lay down $30.00 to see a movie premiere and three bands at the Lincoln Theatre on U Street. The film was "The Pocket: the DC Go-Go Movement" and the bands The Uncalled 4 Band, Q and not U, and Little Benny & the Go-Go All-Stars. This was a complex evening, both theoretically and personally, but isn't it funny that sometimes when you are looking for an opening, it's actually closure that you find. It may take me a while to write something about this six hour oddessy-of-a-show, so stay tuned.

P.S. my apologies, as it may also take me a while to put in links, but you're smart, find them yourself.