The Scene

MusicDetour.com’s commentary on music, performances, and the DC metro area music scene

For those of you interested in the state of the music industry, tune into Soul City Radio this Friday at 10pm for the last of four panels on independent music. Yours truly will be participating in the panel with Teisha Marie and Casey Rae-Hunter with host DeWayne Alston. It should be an interesting discussion on the implications that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has on music as a whole. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post about the panel during and after the discussion. More details and the radio widget after the jump.

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From time to time I would like to use this space to theorize about the music industry. It would be great to get feedback from people interested in these ideas. This one is specifically trying to describe what P2P networks are. Leave your comments if you have anything to add.

In its infancy, the internet was nothing more than a few people with computers connected over some servers that allowed those people to gather information easier. Many of those first users (more…)

One of the great things about the internet is it’s ability to allow independent artists new ways to get their music out. Jah-I-Witness is one of those artists that is using the internet to get his music out there. Check-out this collection of videos that he put together on ReverbNation. (more…)

Even though we are still surrounded by the material evidence of winter, Amanda MacKaye and the crew organizing the Fort Reno summer concert series are already accepting applications for the 2010 edition.  Send them your demos!  Contact info is here.

The Fort Reno series is a highlight of the summer for many DCists.  It is in everyone’s interest that the eclectic lineup be as strong as possible.  For bands, these shows offer great exposure to potential fans who might not happen to ever stumble across a given act at a club or on their MySpace.

Photo credit:  Ron Akins

98 Rock hosts a local music showcase every Monday at Bourbon Street.  Unfortunately, they advertise the branded affordability of the night — $4.98 cover, $.98 open bar for the first 98 minutes, and $.98 drink specials after that — better than they advertise the schedule of bands.  I cannot find a listing of this week’s bands anywhere.  Maybe that’s the point.  You’re supposed to come for the cheap drinks and hope to be pleasantly surpised.  However, my sources tell me that this Monday, 2/22, the best line-up of Baltimore garage bands in months will take the stage:  The Expotentials, Fishnet Stalkers, and Lazlo Lee & The Motherless Children.  It’s a good thing the brick walls of The Quarter are bare, since these bands would peel the paint right off of them.

This is a melancholy week for Baltimore-area music fans, as two important sites are about to become memories:  the Glen Burnie Record & Tape Traders location and Friends bar in Fells Point.  Record & Tape Traders, as the name indicates, has been an important independent music retailer in Maryland for decades.  A few years ago they closed down several store locations in Annapolis, Rehobeth, Dundalk, and elsewhere.  After Sunday’s in-store wake, their only remaining store will be in Towson.

February also marks the final month for Friends in Fells.  Although not a live music venue, Friends has served as an important meeting place where Baltimore musicians have worked as deejays and bartenders while others have been regular customers, talking shop over beers.  Known for its late-night happy hour, Friends has made a great night-ender for folks who have spent their evening elsewhere, including live shows.  I’ll be saying goodbye on Wednesday the 24th, when DJ King Gilbert Partridge will host his final “No Rest For The Wicked” garage, etc., set while Matt Naas of The Expotentials pours drinks for one last time.  If you hear about the theft of Friends’ jukebox, loaded with the most amazing library of rock CDs imaginable, I will have had nothing to do with it.

Punk vaudevillian accordion player and former The Hold Steady keybordist Franz Nicolay is sweeping through our area while touring in support of his new solo album, Major General and EP, St. Sabastian of the Short Stage. Franz will play at DC9 on Saturday and The Ottobar next Wednesday, and he will hit Charlottesville and Richmond in between. In addition to his solo work, he is part of an a capella group with the new 7″ World/Inferno Presents: Vox Inferne, a Brooklyn publisher is coming out with the first of a series of his fiction chapbooks entitled Complicated Gardening Techniques, and Franz has several more projects in the pipeline. Somehow, this busy guy took time to respond to a few questions we had for him. Read our interview with Franz Nicolay after the jump. (more…)

Review By:  Johnny Kilroy at http://tenthmil.com/

That sound of disappointment, from a loved one wronged, burrows into your gut deeper than any tirade.

Reeling fury was what I expected, when I heard about two Kentucky boys named Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore who were making a whole album decrying mountaintop removal.  Riding home from work one day, I gave it a listen.  I felt like a little wounded calf, stroked and cooed to ease, and then fed a mercy bullet. For the rest of the review, click here.