“I love playing with my friends and stuff, but after a while it just felt like I didn’t know how to collaborate with other people and still maintain my own voice,” says Spector, 28.

So the Bethesda resident decided it was time to pursue her own thing. She borrowed a name from a Captain Beefheart song and started up Hothead, her journey into slightly terrifying solo territory.

“Hothead is kind of like my biggest fear,” says Spector, who plays guitar, drums and bass. “I can’t hide behind other people, I can’t hide behind the drums or whatever. I have to sing, I have to do everything. It’s been this tremendous boost to my confidence.”

On Hothead’s rangy debut — out soon on D.C. label Sister Polygon — Spector bounces around from hazy garage to borderline country, focusing on somewhat traditional songcraft, in contrast to her earlier, noisier bands.

“I’m really interested in figuring out how to write songs from a really traditional point of view — folk, blues,” Spector says. “I was just like, ‘I want to sit down with an acoustic guitar and play an old-fashioned song.’”

Lyricism doesn’t get short shrift, either, as Spector explores emotional territory she skirted around in previous groups — a direct product of her transformative time in therapy.

“The sound itself I think I’m still figuring out, but ultimately it’s supposed to be a songwriting project… where I really think about the [lyrics] and try to express feelings that I feel or that people I know feel,” the musician says.

The multi-instrumentalist brings her family into the project, too, using cover art inspired by her grandfather — who loved to doodle — and recordings of her grandmothers speaking and playing music. She says the focus on family symbolizes a ruling concept in people’s lives: love.

“Honestly, every single song’s about love,” Spector says. “But a universal kind of love, not some sort of romantic or possessive kind of love.”

Spector admits that she still finds it difficult to take herself seriously in her new solo format. But Hothead’s debut has prompted her to think optimistically.

“I was like, ‘OK, I did that in three months,’” Spector says. “Think what I could do in a year.”

Hothead plays Jan. 8 at CD Cellar Arlington.

The original version of this post said Hothead’s debut arrives Jan. 15. It does not have an official release date yet. The post has been corrected.

Nationwide this week is called Banned Books Week. At the D.C. Public Library, it’s called “Uncensored.”

Banned Books Week was established in 1982 to raise awareness of books that people want off the shelves. It’s not an issue limited to the McCarthy era — even now, parents, leaders and various interest groups rally to censor or remove books from libraries for all kinds of reasons. But the D.C. Public Library widens the scope of Banned Books Week, looking at any form of expression that’s been challenged, including music.

That’s why the library has made a playlist for Banned Books Week two years in a row, says Maggie Gilmore, a librarian in DCPL’s adult information services division. This year, the D.C. Public Library Foundation asked her to compile a list of songs with a dual theme: censorship and D.C. music.

Gilmore consulted her fellow librarians for ideas and solicited input from attendees at August’s D.C. Record Fair at Penn Social. This is the resulting playlist, streamable via Spotify and YouTube, below:

Bad Brains, “Banned in DC”
Chain & the Gang, “Free Will”
Parliament, “Chocolate City”
Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, “Run Joe”
The Evens, “Wanted Criminals”
The Cornel West Theory, “DC Love Story”
Ice-T, “Freedom of Speech”
Coup Sauvage & the Snips, “Don’t Touch My Hair” (JD Samson Remix)
Minor Threat, “Straight Edge”
Bikini Kill, “Rebel Girl”
Unrest, “Malcolm X Park”
The Blackbyrds, “Rock Creek Park”
The Roots with Wale and Chrisette Michele, “Rising Up”
Diamond District, “March Off”
Marvin Gaye, “Got To Give It Up”

The playlist comes across as a celebration of outspoken music — not hard to find in this town, Gilmore says.

“[D.C.] is a natural environment for people to discuss political issues,” Gilmore says. Plus, she says, the city’s constantly shifting population can aggravate local tensions.

“With D.C. having so many people moving in and out of the city, there’s always been tension in the various groups that are represented in D.C.,” Gilmore says. She cites D.C.’s signature funk sound as an example. “Go-go has always been challenged by those who may feel it’s obtrusive — and maybe not even the music itself, but the social scene around go-go.”

The playlist debuted at last Friday’s opening party for “Uncensored: Information Antics,” the library’s new exhibit in honor of Banned Books Week. The show remains on view at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library through Oct. 22.

Gilmore says “Uncensored” and this playlist are part of the library’s larger efforts to document and support local expression in all forms. DCPL’s D.C. Punk Archive has been in the works for a year now. Gilmore coordinates the library’s series of punk-rock basement shows, meant to highlight its punk collection. After this, the library focuses on archiving go-go, then jazz, Gilmore says.

“Trying to highlight local music, [D.C.’s cultural] history and current artists — that’s one of the main goals of the basement shows, to provide a space for bands to play,” Gilmore says. “So this was an opportunity to continue on that.”

Related: WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show airs a segment on Banned Books Week Tuesday at 1:32 p.m. Can’t tune in? The segment will be archived on kojoshow.org.

Warning: Some songs contain explicit lyrics.

Via Spotify:

“Who wouldn’t be [a feminist]?” Lyman says. “That’s beyond Square One. That’s like going up to somebody and saying, ‘Hey, I’m not a jerk.'”

So for Lyman — a former D.C. resident I’ve known since 2004, who’s played in D.C. bands Chain & the Gang and Measles Mumps Rubella — it’s a no-brainer that his Portland, Oregon, record label, M’Lady’s Records, would decide to give women customers a 23 percent discount based on their statistically unequal rate of pay compared to men.

“Mailorder for women living in America will now be 77% of the listed price, the current wage gap according to the Bureau of Labor Dept of Statistics [sic],” Lyman wrote via M’Lady’s mailing list Friday. (That percentage applies to annual earnings sized up in a 2011 report from the Census Bureau, and the gap is even bigger for many women of color.)

In the email blast, Lyman explains how his label’s discount will work: “1. You order things from us. 2. We refund you 23% of the pre-shipping price. 3. Everyone goes home happy. 4. Dudebros that grouse about this will have to pay double.”

An eight-year-old DIY label with about 20 albums and 30 punk-skewing singles in its catalog, M’Lady’s doesn’t wield much influence on a national scale. But Lyman views the discount as his way of chipping away — even just symbolically — at what he considers an overlooked problem.

“There’s been a lot of talk in the past 12 months about civil rights, and human rights, and all sorts of rights. And [the wage gap] always kind of keeps getting swept back under the rug,” Lyman says.

As NPR points out, M’Lady’s isn’t the only entity giving women this kind of discount: A pop-up shop in Pittsburgh did it recently, and so did a bar in Brooklyn. But women-only discounts can be illegal, depending on the circumstances and the court.

Take the tradition of ladies’ nights at bars and clubs, usually instituted in order to attract more women customers. Those have been banned in several states, based on the reasoning that they violate gender discrimination laws. But sometimes, lady discounts are fine — like in the case of a Los Angeles golf course sued by a men’s rights activist over its promotion for women during breast-cancer awareness month. The court sided with the golf course, as Law360 reports, because it determined the discount “was warranted by a compelling societal interest.”

“There’s been a lot of talk in the past 12 months about civil rights, and human rights, and all sorts of rights. And [the wage gap] always kind of keeps getting swept back under the rug.” — Brett Lyman of M’Lady’s Records

An article about unequal pay for women in Travis County, Texas, quotes advocate Freda Bryson as saying, “When I go to buy food or groceries, I don’t get a woman’s discount, I pay the same thing as a male pays. So why shouldn’t my wages be the same?”

Because Lyman can’t change what women earn at their jobs — not singlehandedly, anyway — he suggests that giving his female customers a discount is the next best thing.

“It’s the kind of problem that seems like no one individual or company could ever have any agency over, so nobody ever does anything about it,” Lyman says. “And obviously, this sort of theatrical gesture we’re doing is not going to do anything to change that, but like everything else, you just have to start talking about it.”

Lyman acknowledges that some customers could pretend to be women in order to get the discount, but he’s not sweating it.

“If somebody wants to go through all that trouble of creating a fake identity and getting a fake credit card so they can save $2 or $3 on a record, they’ve totally earned it,” he says.

So far, response to M’Lady’s wage-gap discount has been encouraging. “I got a couple hundred emails yesterday that were all really, really stoked,” Lyman says.

He’s also heard from a few angry folks. “Perhaps coincidentally,” Lyman says, “they were all male.”

What’s their beef? “[They’re] saying that this is discriminatory,” he says, “when really, the only reason we’re doing it is to use the rhetoric and apply the values of discrimination in order to highlight discrimination.”

Their arguments haven’t swayed Lyman. “If I hadn’t taken a logic and reasoning class in high school, I probably would see their side of it a little bit better,” he says.

His detractors have told him, “‘You’re part of the problem!'” Lyman says. “But it’s like, how could I possibly be part of the problem?”

Photo by Flickr user Peter Organisciak used under a Creative Commons license.

The former vocalist for Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Weird War and Scene Creamers has been on an anti-freedom kick for years. The 2009 debut from his now-main band, Chain & the Gang, was called Down With Liberty… Up With Chains! A song on its third LP, In Cool Blood, chanted, “I don’t believe in free will!” And this fall, Akashic Books publishes Svenonius’ latest book, titled Censorship Now!

But Svenonius doesn’t practice much self-censorship, at least not when it comes to art. He’s got several active creative outlets — a solo act called Escape-ism, various speaking engagements and writing ventures, regular gigs with Chain & the Gang and now, a (somewhat) new record: XYZ, his one-off synth project with France-based rocker Memphis Electronic.

The self-titled album first came out last year on Memphis Electronic’s label, Mono-Tone, and today Svenonius drops a limited edition on his own imprint, Radical Elite.

XYZ contains 10 tracks, most of them skeletal and sermonlike, with Svenonius fully in character. “Everybody wants to be poor,” he intones on the record’s eighth track. “But some people are rich. They can’t help it. That’s just the way they were born. Don’t judge them.”

It’s not always easy to square Svenonius’ philosophies when he vacillates between sincere and provocative, as I was reminded when I spoke to him on the phone Monday. He moves easily from decrying gentrification as “undemocratic” to calling himself “anti-democracy.” But Svenonius seems ever-strict on the idea of artistic value, and the importance of preserving what he thinks is left of it.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

XYZ

Ian Svenonius: When I play in France, I sometimes get to play with my friend’s band, my friend Didier [Balducci], aka Memphis Electronic. I’ve played with his band over the years, and one of them is this group Non! I’ve toured with them and I toured with another one of his groups called Dum Dum Boys, which are an historic French band. He lives in Nice, the French Riviera… the Cote d’Azur. It’s kind of like the Florida of France. It’s right-wing and beautiful. And weird, ’cause I think it’s a tax haven for English rock stars and stuff. And Monaco’s right there.

So he lives down there and it’s kind of anomalous because there’s not a lot of cool culture happening. The French don’t think of it as very cool. So it just seemed interesting to go down there and work with him on some songs. We have similar tastes, but maybe he’s more sophisticated than I am. He played with Kim Fowley, his bands played with Johnny Thunders back in the day.

You know, the French, they just love pointy shoes. Everything’s gotta have a little bit of sexy. They’re kind of like naturally camp, the French. They have a very particular perspective on rock ‘n’ roll and I think it’s interesting.

On this record, you have 10 interludes. What is the utility of the interlude?

Its supposed to create the ambience of being in an arcade. Didier is like a pinball champion in France, and there’s a little town that we visited right across the border right near Monaco in Italy. There’s just a lot of pinball and arcades down there because it’s a beach town. So the idea was just to create this ambience of a pinball arcade.

Wait, Didier is a pinball champion?

He’s a champion. I mean he’s not the champion. But he’s a pinball champion.

You always have so much going on. How do you keep track of all your ideas?

Did you ever see that Woody Allen movie [Crimes and Misdemeanors] where Alan Alda walks around with a dictaphone?

Yes!

“Idea for sitcom!” [Laughs] No, I don’t know… I think you have to write things down or record them, and then you can always go back to them when you’re feeling stuck.

Do you really do that — record your ideas into your phone?

Oh yeah, sure, of course. Or you just write ’em down. It’s so sad what they do to these people, though, these people they excavate your journal, like Kurt Cobain. Think of how horrible that is. Can you imagine that? Someone publishing your notes? That’s so disrespectful. Whatever scumbag vampire did that should really be haunted eternally. But it’s normal — it’s the treatment the artists get.

Are you worried that someone is going to find your thoughts one day? Ones that you didn’t want publicized?

No. I’m not too worried. First you have to have success.

“Right now everybody loves pop music. It’s kind of the vogue to be accepting, and not only accepting, but enthusiastic. But I feel like if you get involved in the conversation about the Grammys, you really should go see your therapist. ‘Cause that s**t is just horrifying.”

Did you read those comments from the Google executive who said we’re headed toward a “forgotten century” as our technology becomes obsolete?

I’ve been saying that. You know, I think that guy read some interview with me, because I’ve been saying that for quite a while, that exact thing. At this point, think of how many computers you already have that are full of things — photographs, writing, music, whatever. And it’s inaccessible. Because even if you had the plug, you have to plug it in, none of the operating systems are up-to-date and they won’t reveal what you’ve stored on there. It’s kind of like every computer is a house burning down. … So I definitely think that people are gonna look back on this era and see it as a void in culture.

If you think about the way we look at the Greeks, we look at Athens and we think, “Oh, they were so creative and wonderful.” And then you look at the Spartans, and they have very little to show in terms of achievements. But who knows? Maybe they had some incredibly rich oral histories or perhaps they had computers. And they were storing everything on computers, and Athenians were primitive and just made sculptures and stuff, so now we think the Athenians are the geniuses.

It seems like you’re playing a consistent character in your music. Do you have a favorite?

Well, maybe that’s just a lack of imagination. Or consistency. Either one. [Laughs] I think that when you make music, you need to make some rules. You meet these old punk rockers and they still have the same biases — they still hate Fleetwood Mac or something. And it always seems, “Oh, that’s a little stunted.” But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s really important to have these kind of rules. Because once you decide that everything has worth… Maybe that’s not good for the art. It’s important to have some kind of sophomoric prejudices against certain art forms.

What are some of your sophomoric prejudices?

Oh, you know. [Long pause] I don’t know. I just like dynamics. And I like a little bit of personality in the music… there’s some sort of discernible personality or the idea that the thing that you’re seeing has a point of view. Those are the things that turn me on. And the things that don’t turn me on are kind of like just — obfuscationist music.

I guess I don’t like all this modern music that sounds like The Lion King, you know?

Did you say The Lion King?

Like all the modern pop music, pop music and hip-hop that all just sounds like Disney, you know? It’s pretty horrible.

Sounds like Disney? I’m trying to think of what you mean.

Sounds like a Denny Elfman soundtrack, you know?

“We can’t rely on the state to censor the bad things, we have to rely on ourselves. We have to create a people censorship.”

I’m struggling to think of examples.

So much of it sounds like that. It’s kind of an epic, goofy — it’s horrible! It’s f*****g horrible. So yeah, that’s a sophomoric prejudice. Right now everybody loves pop music. It’s kind of the vogue to be accepting, and not only accepting, but enthusiastic. But I feel like if you get involved in the conversation about the Grammys, you really should go see your therapist. ‘Cause that s**t is just horrifying.

There was that New York Times Magazine essay about “poptimism.” The author was raked over the coals for it because it was seen as an elitist perspective, but basically the argument was that as a reaction against rockism, the poptimist emerged.

Yeah. I can see that. So much of what people announce as their taste has to do with… “I’m not one of those people.” But the end result is that you’re encouraging this culture — it’s an idiotic culture. It’s — ugh! Really bad! It’s the voice of Wall Street. To me, that’s all that music — ugh! Really! It’s terrible! [Laughs]

You almost seem like you’re at a loss for words.

That’s what my book says — Censorship Now! That’s what it’s about. Censorship. Censor it! We can’t rely on the state to censor the bad things, we have to rely on ourselves. We have to create a people censorship.

[We talk more about the book, but later Svenonius says he doesn’t want to discuss it publicly yet because he suspects someone will steal his ideas.]

This seems in line with some of the anti-liberation ideas you’ve been putting out there, especially with Chain & the Gang.

Yeah… Like I said, I’m just a one-noter.

Your “Devitalize” song, which took an extreme stand against gentrification, seemed philosophically similar. I saw some stupid reactions to that song. There was somebody in some comment section who said something like, “What do people like Ian Svenonius really want? Do they want urban neighborhoods to go back to what they were?” I thought that was a thoughtless reaction, personally. Do you think people understood what you were saying with that?

Well, the thing about music is, it’s based on an emotion. It’s poetry. It’s allowed to be a little bit absurd, or totally absurd. And that’s why artists are powerful, because it can say these massive things without parsing words or putting footnotes down. And that’s why, when people respond in ways like that, essentially they don’t understand rock ‘n’ roll at all and they shouldn’t be part of the conversation. …

It’s just pure rock ‘n’ roll. Everybody feels like that. When you see your city being erased, and the culture being erased, by people who don’t even live here — by investors and architects who have no relationship to the city, and you see not only neighborhoods being erased but the whole cultural history… You wake up one day and you jog down the street and it looks completely different. Who, who has a real emotional attachment to the place they live, wouldn’t be offended by that — when you realize nobody was consulted? It’s so undemocratic, you know? It’s just this money thing.

So you react emotionally to that, and then these people who don’t understand rock ‘n’ roll are like, [in a dorky voice] “Oh, this is not a feasible city planning [policy] —” [Laughs] It’s just extraordinary. People like that should really be put in jail.

“Personally I was into The Make-Up and the mission of The Make-Up. I think it was an interesting group that was ambitious. It wasn’t always good, but it was an ambitious idea.”

When your old band The Make-Up reunited, that was the most I’d read about you in national publications in a long time. Did you want to get The Make-Up back together?

Oh yeah, I definitely did. I was totally into it. Because I loved that band, and I felt like we could do a really good job. …

For me, selfishly, but also politically, I wanted to reform The Make-Up because in a way I think a reunion of a group serves the same function that a reissue used to serve. Reissues used to be a way of [reassessing] this group and think[ing] about it, and us[ing] it. But now there are so many reissues that that’s not really a thing. It’s harder for it to have the same impact as the Velvet Underground reissues in the ’80s. Or the Nuggets reissues in the ’70s. Those things were pivotal. …

Personally I was into The Make-Up and the mission of The Make-Up. I think it was an interesting group that was ambitious. It wasn’t always good, but it was an ambitious idea. I was interested in that. But it was hard.

Why?

Because you can’t do the thing where you’re listening to the music and you’re trying to imitate it. You really have to get into the spirit of what it is. So we only played like six shows or something, or seven shows. I think the first one we did — after the first one, after we got over the hump, it was like, “OK, I understand how to do this.” But at first I felt like I was imitating myself.

Back to the XYZ record quickly: Tell me about the lyrics you wrote for “Drum Machine.”

It’s just that dream of autonomy that everybody in a group deals with. Like, we all wanna collaborate and collaboration is what usually makes the music interesting, but then you’re like, “Well, could I collaborate with this machine? Could there be a relationship?” So in a way, it’s a lot of the same issues that lonely people feel with their erotic devices.

So a drum machine is like your vibrator.

Yeah, or the Real Doll or whatever people use now.

OK, one last question. What I’ve always liked about Chain & the Gang is you’re playing with all these young people. What’s it like playing with young people who haven’t been in a big touring band before? Has there been a learning curve?

Not really. There’s been a bunch of different people involved. Right now we have sort of an ideal lineup, and it’s really great. There were a few people where was like, “Oh, OK… they have different ideas about how to do this.” But I’ve always just played with people who were friends and who it feels right [with]. And people who are enthusiastic.

And ultimately, the people who are playing music who aren’t as precious about being the administrator, or the king of the hill, they’re typically younger. … I’m just lucky that the people I play with are really awesome. They really flesh it out. Because Chain & the Gang is a skeleton. It’s essentially a soliloquy. And then I have these amazing people who help me create this drama and add all this personality.

So there’s no question that you’re the king of the hill in Chain & the Gang.

Well yeah, I’m Chain. But it’s actually pretty egalitarian, beyond the fact that I’m the mouthpiece. But besides that, the decisions are more democratic than I would like. ‘Cause I’m anti-democracy.

Some of this year’s most unforgettable local songs didn’t come from comfortable experiences. They sounded fed up, and particularly urgent in a year marked by growing inequity at home and multiple slayings by police in places that didn’t feel far away.

In one of the year’s rawest rock songs, Thaylobleu cranked up its guitars to tell a personal story of police harassment. Chain and the Gang and Jack On Fire assailed gentrification with wit and hyperbole. Punk band Priests declared everything right wing. Two remarkable hip-hop works channeled frustration and fatalism among young black Americans: Diamond District’s Oddisee cried, “What’s a black supposed to do — sell some crack and entertain?”, while Virginia MC GoldLink rapped about all the glorious things he imagines happening to him — when he dies.

Not that peace and love felt impossible in 2014: In a touching song released two years after his death, Chuck Brown sang of a “beautiful life” enriched by the warmth of community. Promising newcomer Kali Uchis made us kick back with a soulful number steeped in giddy infatuation. Experimentation thrived in D.C. music: Young artists built on the region’s strong punk pedigree and expanded its boundaries. Mary Timony’s band Ex Hex embraced a classic sound and made one of the country’s best rock ‘n’ roll records. Local bands with shorter but distinctive resumes — like Laughing Man, Two Inch Astronaut and Deleted Scenes — sounded better and more creative than ever before. A Sound of Thunder and Gloom reminded us that the D.C. area is still a reliable producer of top-notch metal.

As expected, Bandwidth contributors faced hard choices while making this list of the year’s best local songs, and not only because it’s our first one. Up until deadline, we were still hearing new D.C. songs we wanted to include. But in a place where mounting wealth has created a challenging environment for art, that’s not a problem, really. It’s a testament to a music scene that perseveres despite long odds. —Ally Schweitzer

Warning: Many of these songs contain explicit lyrics.

The video corresponds with Olivia Neutron-John’s guttural, passionate track “death/tango.” Back in May, Nasty—who also plays bass in Chain & the Gang—traveled to Philadelphia with Cigarette‘s Richard Howard to film the single-camera visual. Nasty directed and largely choreographed; Howard helped film and edit. The back-up dancers come from SWARM, a Philly-based music and dance group. In an email, Nasty writes that the video’s main dance sequence was capped at three takes—and the team filmed the whole thing in a single night.

Nasty held quick rehearsals in Philly about a month before filming, and things just kind of worked out naturally. “Basically, I showed everyone the dance I had made for the song, and there were certain moves I imagined doing together, and other moves that were just for me to make,” Nasty writes. “We all felt it out and the dance came together as a group.”

Dance is a huge part of Nasty’s intense live performances—behind a Casio, the artist jumps, kicks and lunges—so structuring the video around dance seemed like a no-brainer. Nasty’s dance style and vocal delivery bear similarities: They’re excruciatingly raw, and in this case, both reflect suffering. “The video is another way of articulating the pain I went through when my best friend passed away,” the performer writes. “First through the song, then through the movement.” The video is dedicated to Nasty’s late friend, who went by Richie Terrific.

“I don’t really know how to talk about dancing, as I’m not a trained dancer,” Nasty writes, “but for me, dancing is moving in a way that only makes sense to you [and] letting your body be a violent reaction.”

Now, the artist is on a path toward a calmer state of mind. “I guess you can never know for sure, but I feel like this is the last manifestation of this feeling (of not knowing how to cope),” Nasty writes. “I feel a new beginning. I feel at peace with it now, ready to celebrate his life and what it meant to me.”

Olivia Neutron-John plays a release show Thursday, Sept. 18 at 8:30 p.m. at Meeps in Adams Morgan, and another show Friday, Sept. 26 at Comet Ping Pong.

The only time I’ve seen Ed Schrader’s Music Beat perform, it was at a novel gathering arranged by Chain & the Gang’s Ian Svenonius. Hosted at my friends’ Adams Morgan vintage shop Meeps, Club Lip-Sync was a show that required bands to play their own music without actually playing it. Ed Schrader’s Music Beat turned out the most transfixing performance of the night: a bizarre and expertly mimed rendition of their haunting song “I Can’t Stop Eating Sugar.” I was struck by how Schrader looked normcore but sung like Ian Curtis.

Sunday, the duo that’s now based out of Baltimore and Providence, Rhode Island—Rice moved north not long ago—returns to D.C. to play Black Cat with Chain & the Gang. In advance of the show, Rice and Schrader (particularly Schrader, a true ham) talked my ear off about the pains of touring, D.C.’s ever-changing punk scene, whether Americans value art and the tantalizing possibility of ditching punk and going dance-pop. Here are some choice snippets from our conversation.

Ed and Devlin tell the story of how a Louisville booker tried to pay them $10 to play a show:

Devlin Rice: The email [from a promoter] had a typo, and instead of $100 it said $10. And [the guy running the show] was like, “Here you are, here’s $10!”

Ed Schrader: We thought he was messing with us. We were like “Haha, oh yeah, he’s pulling our leg, I guess that’s how they do it in Louisville!” … [Then] I was like “I can’t leave until we get the $100 we’re supposed to get.” And he was like “Well that’s gonna be a problem!” And I was like “Is it going to be a problem?” And Devlin’s like “Whooaa” and I’m like, “I’m 140 pounds, maybe I shouldn’t start fist fights with people.”

DR: That whole night was like—maybe there was some sort of eclipse…

ES: A red moon. Yeah, well there were 10 bands, and it was essentially like Lightning Bolt was playing Louisville, which is a big deal, everyone in town wants to be on the bill. Totally understandable. But it ended up being like, 10 locals and then us and then Lightning Bolt. So they paid all the locals the same amount they would have paid them if they would have came from Miami. And then they paid us as if we lived in the basement underneath and just watched Spongebob all day and ate Pop Tarts.

DR: Even though that’s what we do on a daily basis.

ES: Yeah, well, that’s what we were doing before the show.

On the possibility of expanding the band someday:

ES: We’re in the groove right now and feeling good, and we have expanded to some degree, like on the album [Party Jail] for example, we had Jeremy Hyman, who plays with The Boredoms and Dan Deacon and Animal Collective. He came on board with us to kind of flesh out the drums a bit more for those more nuanced, quieter songs which I felt needed a wider berth for drums. [Note: Hyman also sometimes plays live with the band.]

Because I’m not an actual drummer; I play drums the same way that Bowie plays saxophone. It’s not that good and it’s supplemental… we’re also talking about a year or two years down the line having a drummer and having me move out front more. We want to kind of make this happen organically and not force it, and wait till it’s the right time. I feel like that’s how we’ve done everything so far.

On playing in a competitive and constantly changing D.C.:

ES: The venues in D.C. are in cool, but if you’re an established band. If you’re on your way to getting there, it can be tougher place to play. It’s perfect for a band like Future Islands or Wye Oak or Dan Deacon… You know, we’re still building and establishing ourselves, and we haven’t had the same type of press hype that those guys have had. So we depend on word of mouth, and if the scene is in a constant state of flux, that can be kind of problematic because it seems like everything changes a little bit each time we come back.

“Americans need to value art. We really do. And we don’t. We value musicians the same way we value jalapeño poppers at Outback Steakhouse.” —Ed Schrader

On D.C.’s young house-show scene and figuring out what punk means to the next generation:

ES: We probably seem like Huey Lewis and the News to those kids… Everything’s so fragmented and vague and totally confusing, which is probably how people coming up in the ‘60s felt like in the ‘80s when they’d go to shows. You know it’s just a generational thing and maybe I’m still trying to connect with all that. But yeah… it does seem fragmented.

‘Cause you know if you went to a hardcore show in Syracuse, New York in 1998, you knew what you were gonna get. Skinny, scrawny white dudes with black T-shirts and all the same flash tattoos… these days it seems like every kid’s kinda doing their own thing, which is cool, but it doesn’t cohesify things really. They need to be more uniform! They need to all get boots that are the same color and they need to start wearing berets.

I’ve been to a lot of venues like on tour, and I’m like “Oh what’s their thing here? Is this a venue where I can’t take my shirt off?” Sometimes I feel like the venues, it’s like “The parents are away, I’m in college, we just wanna have some weird thing happen at our house. You’re in town. Let’s do it.” It’s almost like the socializing and being at the show is more important than what’s happening…

[But] then there are the other places where people are obviously all about the music. Paper Sun [the now-closed punk house in Columbia Heights] was like that. You’d play at Paper Sun and everybody there was either in a band or knew everything about what was going on in the scene, and was excited about it, or they were music writers. Everyone was kind of involved. It’s kind of like Max’s Kansas City or something like that.

On the need for a punk-show handbook:

ES: It seems like back in the day there was an ethos and everybody was on the same page, like make sure the touring bands get paid, have someone at the door. Where it’s like now, and this is throughout the country, you go to a lot of places where people need a handbook. I think somebody needs to make a handbook to be like, “All right, we’re older, we’ve all got jobs, we’re not playing shows anymore but you guys are carrying the torch, here’s what you’ve gotta do.”

The other night I was at a show and it was out-of-town bands playing and someone had, like, a bucket for donations… but nobody was being aggressive about the donations. People weren’t watching the door, people would come by and put a quarter in the bucket. So I just picked up the bucket and was like “Come on man, three, five dollars, whaddya got?” And the guy running the show was like, “Chill out man!” And I was like, “Well I just made you guys $75.” And he’s like, “OK do your thing.”

So this is how you have to do it! You’ve gotta take care of touring bands because if touring bands come to your town and you don’t feed them or give them a place to sleep and you pay them $20, they’re not coming back… Americans need to value art. We really do. And we don’t. We value musicians the same way we value jalapeño poppers at Outback Steakhouse.

On the virtues of simplicity in music:

ES: The drum and vocal—I mean it was a product of necessity when I first started, but it was also kind of a statement. When I first moved to Baltimore, there were a lot of people who had like 100 pedals and crazy things going on, but they weren’t saying anything. … I wanted to show people that you don’t need your dad to buy you 100 effects pedals and have three laptops.

I think Devlin and I just want to show people that you can do this. And you don’t need to wear, like, crazy sequined outfits and have your dad buy you a tour bus… you don’t need to bury things in crap to make them work, you can just make things that work and they’ll work by themselves. Just work on the song being good rather than adding 20,000 keyboard players.

On their creative process:

ES: I’ve started making these crappy blueprints that I send to Devlin who then tries to cohesify into something that’s listenable. I’ll send him like, “Ohhh-da-do-da-do-da-do! And here comes the second part: Den-den-den-den!” And he’ll email back, “Doo-doo-da-doo-doo-deeter-da-ding!” He’s able to translate the insanity into something that somebody wouldn’t wanna throw a tomato at.

Bandwidth: Devlin, would you say you bring order to Ed Schrader’s Music Beat?

DR: I bring a certain level of organization. And a driver’s license.

On the followup to Party Jail:

DR: I don’t think the next record will have much of a common thread with the first one outside from it just being—a couple of the songs will be still only two and a half or three minutes.

ES: And there’s that chanty element, that dirge element that’s always in the mix. But I’m making these new ones and kind of putting these song sketches together, and I find that I’m leaning towards something that’s more dance pop, and I don’t know where it’s coming from or why I’m doing it… In the ’80s it was all about going big… and I think that’s always been in my blood.

I think on this next one, I would love to be like, “Let’s make a frickin’ dance-pop album and see what happens!” Maybe I can change my outfit and go in drag or something. I’m 35, I’m not gonna look good in drag in five years. I might as well just go for it now.

Organized by ex-Tropicalia booker Jim Thomson, Capital Fringe’s music lineup threatens to be almost as out-there and eclectic as its theater slate. So… what to hear?

Tonight

Stop by Fringe’s famous Baldacchino Tent Bar tonight and you’ll catch “Transglobal Express,” a promising showcase featuring the locally based Malian griot Cheick Hamala Diabate. Pop sensualist, trombonist and nudity champion SMOOTA—recently interviewed by Bandwidth—rounds out the bill with New York’s Karikatura and D.C.’s Sol Power All-Star DJs. 7:30 p.m. Free.

Friday

Avant-rock trio Heavy Breathing evolved from one of the most thrilling live acts D.C. had in the early aughts: Apes. The trio—consisting of Apes members Amanda Kleinman, Erick Jackson and Jeff Schmid—seems to take seriously the art of a wild performance (not to mention insane music videos). Friday, the envelope-pushing ensemble plays the tent bar alongside silly cover act The Dangles and D.C.’s Mundy. 7 p.m. Free. Note: The Fringe website lists the wrong time. This show begins at 7 p.m. tonight, not 5 p.m.

Saturday

Saturday brings a fantastic-looking left-field electronic-music show called Cybertrax, which will host the New York-based “cosmic synth” outfit Forma in addition to two local acts: Rory O’Connor’s chillwave-esque Nitemoves and (my pals) Protect-U. 7:15 p.m. Free.

Thursday, July 17

For those put to sleep by folk music: Um, have you tried turbo folk? That’s the kind of mania peddled by Baltimore ensemble Orchester Praževica, which borrows its ideas from a handful of traditions, particularly Hungarian czárdás, Slovak folklore, gypsy swing, American jazz, and good ol’ fashioned drinking music. In the tent bar next week, the band plays a show billed simply “Turbofolk.” 9 p.m. Free. Note: The Fringe website lists the wrong time. This show begins at 9 p.m., not 7 p.m.

Saturday, July 26

D.C. “crime-rock” band Chain & the Gang, returned recently from a European tour, plays the Baldacchino Tent Bar the night before its show at Black Cat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen singer Ian Svenonius play a boring show—not in this band nor his previous ones I wasn’t too young to see—and the chance of a funny, spirited performance from the city’s most magnetic frontman seems about as inevitable as a swampy August in D.C. 8:30 p.m. Free.

See Capital Fringe’s complete music schedule at capitalfringe.org.

“When I first started [shooting], I had the cheapest camera,” he says—a Canon 60D that he used with a “bootleg flash” and a battery pack. Shooting five shows a week with his heavy equipment, the 26-year-old photographer began to feel pain in his right arm. It got scary a few months ago when Andrade was traveling back home from a show at Tenleytown’s Casa Fiesta. “My whole body started shaking,” he says. “I thought I was going to die.”

Andrade sought medical help and physical therapy. “I had to take a lot of medicine,” he says. Eventually, the pain receded. He soon invested in a lighter, more expensive camera.

Now, Andrade gets to show off the work that almost put him out of commission: Tonight the photographer opens “IN MY EYES,” an exhibit of his concert photography, at The Coupe in Columbia Heights. It’s his first solo show.

The exhibit features a few dozen images of 11 D.C.-area bands, including Chain & the Gang, Dudes (shown above), Olivia Neutron-John, Warchild, Give and Baby Bry Bry and the Apologists.

“I fell in love with hardcore music when I was 17 years old,” says the Alexandria native. “Bad Brains’ Pay To Cum changed my life.” Later on, the photography coming out of D.C.’s hardcore scene didn’t impress him. He felt more drawn to the work of photographers like Pulitzer winner Lucian Perkins—particularly his visceral images of a young D.C. punk scene, like the ones published in the 2013 book Hard Art DC 1979. “I decided to take it upon myself” to start shooting hardcore shows, Andrade says, aiming for a similar look and feel as Perkins achieved in his work.

Andrade has been shooting punk shows for two years—still a newbie by most standards, but his work stands out as some of the best in the scene. He’s now a familiar face at shows. Though, it helps that he doesn’t have a lot of competition at the tiny events he chooses to capture.

“When I go to these house shows, it’s like, two photographers,” Andrade says. When he recently shot a show at Rock & Roll Hotel, there were too many photographers there for his taste. He prefers the little gigs—where he can get right in the pit and shoot the kids. That’s where he says he finds the best shots.

“Lucian did a great job of documenting not just the band but the crowd,” Andrade says. In Perkins’ photos, you don’t just see the band—you see people in the audience, like Alec MacKaye, who would go on to become influential in their own right. “The crowd for me is half of the battle because they’re just as important as the band.”

Even after a couple of years—and who knows how many shows—the photographer says he still gets antsy before a shoot. “I always get super nervous,” he says. Why? 

“I don’t know—I’ve done this a million times,” Andrade says. “I guess it means I’m still enjoying it.”

“IN MY EYES” opens at 6 p.m. tonight at The Coupe. The show is on view to Sept. 1.