That could be the motto of DZ Tapes, the D.C.-based record label Isaacoff started in 2011. At the time, he had decided that simply running a music blog — the now-defunct DAYVAN ZOMBEAR — wasn’t enough. He wanted to take it to the next level. And this Saturday the digital-and-tape imprint celebrates its fifth anniversary with a marathon show at local DIY venue Hole In The Sky.

Brett Isaacoff of DZ Tapes (photo: Julia Leiby)

How did DZ Tapes get here? Back in Isaacoff’s blogging days, he says, he kept receiving great submissions from indie artists — “so much so that I really want[ed] to find a way to share the work that was coming around my e-desk,” the D.C. resident says. “So I figured I might as well put out a mixtape.” He launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to put out a compilation. The label followed in its wake.

Now DZ Tapes has several cassettes under its belt, featuring both artists from here and elsewhere. It focuses on bands bringing new energy to D.C. and Baltimore’s underground rock scenes — label alumni include shoegazers Wildhoney and Big Hush, punks Hemlines and the fuzzy Nice Breeze, among others.

Sustaining any project for half a decade is no easy feat — perhaps doubly so considering the volatility of the music industry. But Isaacoff has figured out the formula: keep your expectations low and your planning short-term.

“It’s as hard as you want to make it, really,” Isaacoff says. “I’m just trying to have fun and enjoy myself and help people out.” By booking shows and working with interesting bands, he aims to give back to the scene that gave him — an avid showgoer himself — so much.

Hemlines “All Your Homes,” released on DZ Tapes

Keeping his day job as a business analyst at a solar startup has helped grease the gears at DZ Tapes. “If I could make money off of [the label] I would, but it’s not something that I want to really force,” Isaacoff says. “I feel like blending the lines between quote-unquote business and pleasure might get a little messy.”

A steady path is as good a marker of success as any, though there have been certain high points — like when Rolling Stone published a piece about Speedy Ortiz right before they were to play D.C. house venue The Dougout, a show he booked. “Filled to capacity” isn’t quite the correct phrase for it — the 70-capacity venue was overflowing. “It was an extreme fire hazard, looking back on it,” Isaacoff says.

DZ Tapes’ future remains both certain and up in the air. There’s this weekend’s anniversary show — “It’s gonna be a banger,” promises Isaacoff — and a few more releases slated for the rest of 2016. But for the future-future? Isaacoff isn’t interested in pressuring himself. DZ Tapes is going “wherever it wants to go, really,” Isaacoff says.

DZ Tapes celebrates its fifth anniversary July 9 at Hole in the Sky. 

Often, Gray’s destination is a punk show. The 34-year-old has been infatuated with hardcore and punk rock since his teenage days in Ellicott City. But after years of traveling to shows, only to be impeded by a staircase or an inaccessible bathroom once he arrived, Gray resolved to do something about it.

In 2014, Gray started a website called Is This Venue Accessible? that provides detailed accessibility information for venues around Baltimore and D.C. Since then, the site has expanded to 26 cities, including Glasgow, Scotland, and Osaka, Japan. Now Gray is taking his project to the next level, launching an app that will serve the same purpose. He expects to debut the app later this year.

Gray’s efforts have sparked a larger conversation about accessibility as a social-justice issue, particularly in regional punk scenes. I recently chatted with Gray about the broader impact of inaccessibility and how his app aims to take the stress out of concertgoing for people with disabilities.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On the true purpose of “Is This Venue Accessible?”:

Sean Gray: I would love to see all venues be accessible, but [Is This Venue Accessible?] is not about changing venues. It’s about providing information that there’s a lack of. If there’s no accessibility information, I have to automatically default to “it’s probably not accessible.”

I took a cab to [D.C. venue] DC9, and it’s my first time going there, and when I saw those steps I just hailed a cab and went back home. The retort for some people would be, “Well, you could just ask someone to help you.” But that’s not as easy as it sounds. For some people they’re comfortable doing that and others aren’t. It shouldn’t be that way. I shouldn’t have to ask for help to go see art. Art and music and culture should be accessible to everybody.

On what accessibility means to him:

When I was a younger teen and in my early 20s, I didn’t really know what a disability was, and I didn’t know how to own that and how that affected me and how the world — the physical world — affects me. I just took the blame myself. ITVA provides information to give you a better guide to go out and actually experience music and art and culture. To me, accessibility isn’t about physical spaces. Full accessibility is about having access to culture and aspects of life that go far beyond getting into a physical building. And I think when you cut that off from a segment of people, it’s hurtful and bad for society.

When I’m not able to get to a show, I don’t just take it as being inaccessible. What that promoter, building or band is saying to me is, “You’re just not allowed to go to this show.” It sounds harsh, but that’s the reality that I and many other people with disabilities live with every single day.

“I’ve been lucky enough to see shows that have changed my life, but I also wonder how many shows I’ve had to miss that could have changed my life.”

On the lack of awareness around young people with disabilities:

Accessibility isn’t really a sexy concept. We’re going through a political election, and I assure you, you will not hear any politician on any side talk about accessibility and disability in young people. You’ve got young people and babies used as inspiration porn, and then you’ve got older people who are disabled, and there’s this gap in between. So there’s this blank space of representation for people with disabilities, and that’s why it’s very rare to see people with disabilities going to shows.

I’ve had promoters or bar owners say that they just don’t see people with disabilities there, and my response has been that you would see people with disabilities at these venues if you actually provided them with the information necessary to come.

On how inaccessibility hampers personal enrichment:

I did a talk at SXSW… and I asked the crowd, “How many of you here can say that you’ve gone to a show that’s changed your life?” Everybody raised their hand. Then I said, “Imagine if the show that changed your life, you weren’t allowed to go to. Not because your parents said you couldn’t go, and not because you had to work, but because you just couldn’t get in. That happens all the time to people with disabilities.” I’ve been lucky enough to see shows that have changed my life, but I also wonder how many shows I’ve had to miss that could have changed my life.

On accessibility as an overlooked social-justice issue:

We live in an age where there are a lot of bands, for good reason, talking about inclusion and oppression, and that’s great. But the thing that always seems to be lacking is accessibility. I saw a drawing once, and it was like a DIY house, and on the front it said, “We do not tolerate homophobia, sexism, racism, ageism,” and everything else, and the way to get into the house were these broken, rickety steps.

On the ambitious goals of the “Is This Venue Accessible?” app:

I’m trying to give the user the total experience of going to a show and planning that out. I want to build an app that I want to use, so anywhere in the world it’s connected to Google Maps, it knows where I am, which venues are around me, which venues have accessibility information, what information I need to make my choice to go to that show. I could have put together an app that just reflects the website, but that’s not the goal. It’s not just about changing attitudes about going to shows for people with disabilities, but making it an experience that is less stressful and less worrisome.

On how punk drove him to make a difference:

Punk has taught me that if nobody is going to do it for you, you do it yourself. ITVA was born out of my frustration of not being able to experience what I love the most — being told that I couldn’t be a part of it. I just wouldn’t settle for that.

When you have a disability, you’re sort of thought of to not be angry, to not be emotional, to not be sexual. There are things that you’re just not allowed to have, and you’re socialized to enjoy the fact that you can just get out of the house — or that you’re alive. In anything that I’ve done, [I’ve been determined] not to settle. It’s OK to be disabled and angry, or to want to see a band and not have to feel like this is a privilege that somebody’s helping you.

I want this site and this app to make people think differently. I think things are changing, and it’ll be a good wake-up call for bands and venues that haven’t thought of this or taken it seriously.

Listen: Sean Gray discusses accessibility on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show

Hardcore, and D.C. hardcore in particular, has a rep for being stuck in the past. But it stays fresh by continually creating new pasts to draw from. A few years back, bands like Coke Bust brought the early ’80s thrashy style of hardcore back into vogue. But there are others reviving the mid-’80s melody of Dag Nasty, the late ’80s aggression of Swiz and the late-’90s chug of Damnation A.D. Soon there will be late ’00s tribute bands to Coke Bust, too. The logical endpoint is to be, to paraphrase The Onion, nostalgic for bands that don’t exist yet.

This Was My Night & This Was a Lot of Other Nights is another chapter in the scene’s love affair with itself, though an entertaining and necessary one. Editors Tim Follos and Hussain Mohammed compile show reviews and interviews from Follos’ blog Day After Day DC, covering the past decade — the most recent era of harDCore. It reads like a blog, in good ways and bad: The energy of the house shows reviewed (though “lovingly described” is more accurate; Follos has hardly an unkind word for anyone) is palpable, and he draws from a depth of knowledge and eye for detail only a true fan could.

At the same time, the long personal asides, shout-outs and inside jokes (most involving Sick Fix‘s Pat Vogel) remind you this was written by and for a small group of friends who all hang out and play in bands together.

This Was My Night isn’t so much about a particular city or era, but rather a particular crowd of 20-something, group-house-dwelling, radical politics-having, dog-walking, (ex-)vegan straight edge punx dedicated to putting on shows in makeshift spaces on shoestring budgets.

So the 12-page review of the 2013 Damaged City Fest that opens the book is kind of overkill. And for a book aiming to document an era that produced hundreds of local bands, a lot of the same ones show up again and again — Ilsa and The Max Levine Ensemble, both terrific bands, but reflective of the authors’ personal preferences.

There are a lot of others from that period that don’t appear, either for taking a different punk-derived trajectory, or just being in different social circles. They include Deathfix, Mass Movement of the Moth, The Apes, The Shirks, The Cassettes, Medications, Imperial China and the whole Sockets Records roster. Today, as always, there isn’t one D.C. punk scene, there are many scenes, and they don’t always communicate well with each other.

‘This Was My Night & This Was A Lot of Other Nights,’ back cover

This Was My Night isn’t so much about a particular city or era, but rather a particular crowd of 20-something, group-house-dwelling, radical politics-having, dog-walking, (ex-)vegan straight edge punx dedicated to putting on shows in makeshift spaces on shoestring budgets. And in that sense, it’s really about one band, Coke Bust, whose members and fellow super-promoters Chris Moore and Nick Candela (aka Nick Tape, who’s since moved to Brazil) held this scene together mostly by themselves through sheer force of will.

Thus one of the best pieces in the book is by Nick Tape, in which he describes the benefits of booking shows at the Corpse Fortress, the famously filthy, hot, dilapidated Silver Spring house that put on memorable shows until the neighbors finally got sick of the ruckus and got them all evicted.

“As a promoter, access to a venue with no rules and no set fee is enormously helpful,” Tape writes. “The lack of a fee allows promoters of shows with mediocre turnout to still pay bands somewhat respectable amounts at the end of the night.”

The second half of the book is made up of interviews with familiar punk figures, some of which are more lucid than others (Bad Brains’ H.R. is, predictably, in another world). There’s a bittersweet chat with the now-deceased Dave Brockie of Gwar. There’s a theological discussion with Positive Force co-founder (and fellow scene historian) Mark Andersen. There’s the requisite Ian MacKaye interview — a surprisingly unique one given the man must give dozens of interviews a month — in which he takes a deep dive into the history of Georgetown.

Follos is a skilled interviewer, able to draw out rich personal stories without being too much of the fanboy that he is (and most of us who read the book are). He can also be mischievous, asking Brian Baker, “Why is it necessary for Bad Religion to have three guitarists?” and getting Ian Svenonius to accidentally agree with conservative columnist George Will.

It’s fair to wonder whether a book like this needs to exist, especially for a genre saturated in self-documentation — and especially today, when many of the bands documented still exist, and a lot of the material is already accessible online. But I’d say it does. Given the book’s ultra-insider perspective, the target readership seems to be the 50 or so people who already appear in the book.

But only an insider could tell the story of the Bobby Fisher Memorial Building, another DIY space that the Borf graffiti collective jury rigged and briefly put on art installations and punk shows before it inevitably got shut down: “Towards the end, they cut our power, because we were stealing power from a neighbor who was also stealing power,” writes Chris Moore. “We ran over 15 shows on generators. Cops never shut down the shows… Seeing 20 people installing soundproofing and insulation… that’s awesome.”

The authors of This Was My Night & This Was a Lot of Other Nights host a book-release party Monday, April 25 at Black Cat with Scanners and Mirror Motives.

This weekend the two musicians, who play in Northern Virginia pop-punk band American Television, are putting on the inaugural Breakin’ Even Fest at Songbyrd Music House & Record Cafe in D.C.

“As we’ve gotten into our 30s and life has progressed,” Flowers says, “it’s gotten harder and harder to do some of the touring and other things that bands do.” But that doesn’t mean they’re bowing out of music altogether.

Taking place March 4 and 5, Breakin’ Even Fest will feature more than a dozen bands from across the D.C. region, including local favorites Lilac Daze and Loud Boyz, as well as New York rockers Iron Chic and Timeshares.

The fest focuses on tuneful punk rock, a style Flowers says he doesn’t encounter enough in the D.C. scene.

“There’s a lot going on in D.C. already,” the drummer says, “but we saw a little bit of a void in the music that we really like — melodic pop-punk with a little bit of a hard edge.”

D.C.’s biggest punk festival, Damaged City, specializes in a faster and more aggressive side of the music. Flowers says that fest “is really great, but it’s not really the music that Steve and I like.”

To help pay for the event, Rovery and Flowers have arranged a number of local sponsors, including Mobius Records and vinyl-pressing company Furnace Manufacturing, which have each donated merchandise to be raffled off over the course of the weekend. Rovery says each “mystery merch pack,” given away a few times each night, will be worth around $200.

In addition to the ticket prices — an affordable $27.50 for the entire weekend — proceeds from the raffles will go directly to the bands. Rovery and Flowers won’t be taking any for themselves.

“We came up with the name Breakin’ Even is because our goal is to break even,” Rovery says, “but first and foremost we need to make sure the bands get paid.”

Breakin’ Even Fest takes place March 4 to 5 at Songbyrd Music House and Record Cafe in Adams Morgan.

D.C. punk band Priests will headline a benefit show Friday at 411 New York Ave. NE, the location of the arts facility slated to become a boutique hotel. Also on the bill are experimental duo Janel and Anthony, synthesizer musician Adriana-Lucia Cotes and Ian Svenonius‘ solo project, Escape-ism.

The building on New York Avenue has operated under the name Union Arts since 2013, serving as a work and practice space for musicians and artists. Before that, it was used regularly for underground concerts and dance parties. But property taxes on the building became too high for the previous owners, and they sold the property last summer.

D.B. Lee Development, Inc. Construction and Brook Rose Development, LLC, purchased Union Arts in June 2015. They later announced plans to transform 411 New York Ave. NE into a high-end hotel with eight studios and other art spaces managed by the nonprofit CulturalDC. But up to 100 artists use the building on a rotating basis, according to supporters, and the new configuration is likely to push many of them out.

Supporters of Union Arts packed a zoning commission hearing Feb. 1. Many offered testimony about the scarcity of affordable arts space in D.C., which has rapidly gentrified in the last 15 years.

Janel Leppin of Janel and Anthony says the outpouring of support inspired her, and she decided to organize a show to bring attention to the situation.

“More than anything,” Leppin says, she wanted to “raise awareness for the need for spaces for artists in D.C.”

A flyer for Friday’s Union Arts benefit show

Leppin has performed at Union Arts numerous times. She says when choosing bands for the benefit concert, she picked acts who have been involved in the space in some way.

Priests fit that description. The band’s members have set up shows at Union Arts and two of them testified Feb. 1 on the importance of Union Arts to local music.

“It’s definitely a hub of music activity,” says Priests singer Katie Alice Greer in an interview. “It is a unique building right now in D.C. in certain ways. There aren’t a whole lot of other spaces left that are not private homes or businesses. … There’s not a lot of middle-ground spaces where people are actively making art and putting on shows for any band that they think is cool and interesting — in a way that’s not really driven by alcohol sales.”

But saving the building as it is now may not be feasible. According to Gail Harris, managing member of the LLC that sold Union Arts last year, the rent paid by artists did not cover the building’s property taxes. The new owners have asked the current tenants to vacate by Sept. 1. (Though at the hearing, D.B. Lee President Dennis Lee said that date may be flexible.)

CulturalDC says the new studios will accommodate “up to 20-plus artists” who can apply in an open call. Developers point out that musicians will also be considered for art spaces.

But current tenants are still challenging the redevelopment plans. Leppin says proceeds from Friday’s show will help the building’s artists with “whatever cost[s] they are faced with.” She later writes in an email that funds should go to help artists who are trying to find new studio space.

“We will raise the money to help Union Arts continue its work as an arts venue and basically a community center for the public — for as long as it can,” Leppin writes.

Desirée Venn Frederic, founder of vintage shop Nomad Yard Collectiv, which operates out of Union Arts, says that means lawyer’s fees. “In our current fight we acknowledge we need legal support and legal guidance,” she says.

The number of people who signed up to give public testimony Feb. 1 was so great that a second zoning commission hearing was scheduled for Feb. 23. Leppin says she hopes Friday’s show sparks enough interest to overwhelm that hearing, too.

The benefit concert for Union Arts takes place Feb. 19 at 411 New York Ave. NE. 8:30 p.m.

Top image: Protestors at a Feb. 1 zoning commission hearing on the planned redevelopment of Union Arts.

The building known as Union Arts is being converted into a boutique hotel, and all of its occupants — including artists, musicians and various small companies — must vacate by Sept. 1.

Demonstrators outside the D.C. Zoning Office Monday night (James Doubek/WAMU)

The four-story structure at 411 New York Ave. NE has served as a practice space, studio and venue for musicians and artists since 2013. Under previous management, it regularly hosted all-night events under the name Warehouse Loft. Because of its location in a sparsely populated manufacturing district, Union Arts offers a perk that’s hard to come by in D.C.: lax noise restrictions.

Artists say losing Union Arts deals a blow to a creative community already diminished by widespread gentrification. “The content and culture that comes out of this space is something that happens nowhere else in the city,” says Graham Boyle, one of the founders of 2B Artist Studios in the building.

Luke Stewart, who co-founded Union Arts and manages its studios, estimates that between 70 and 100 artists use the spaces on New York Avenue, but he says they move in and out frequently. (Disclosure: Stewart and I previously worked together.) Five rooms in the building are used for bands to practice, he says, and other tenants have included vintage shop Nomad Yard, a motorcycle repair shop, a church, a furniture company, a bikeshare company and a contracting company.

In June 2015, the building was sold for $7 million to 411 New York Avenue Holdings, LLC, which comprises D.B. Lee Development, Inc. Construction and Brook Rose Development, LLC. The two developers submitted a joint application to the D.C. zoning commission last summer, outlining plans to redevelop the site as an 11-story hotel with up to 178 rooms.

Planners hope to create a “high end, unique boutique hotel option” that will “provide desperately needed art studio and gallery space for local residents and students of Gallaudet University,” according to the proposal. A restaurant is planned for the ground floor, with a combined restaurant and gallery space on the 11th floor, as well as a rooftop pool and bar. Developers say it will create between 75 and 100 new jobs and, ideally, spur more development in the area.

“It supports the city’s comprehensive plan with the development in the Union Market area,” says Dennis Lee, president of D.B. Lee Development. Lee says food and beverage options that are open to the public will help make the facility more of a “community hotel.” He expects it will serve as a “strong bridge” between the adjacent neighborhoods of Ivy City, Union Market, Gallaudet University and NoMa.

Given the building’s history as an arts space, developers have tried to heavily incorporate the arts into the hotel project. Their plans call for eight art studios, an art classroom, rooftop gallery spaces, a sculpture terrace and “art displays throughout.” CulturalDC, the nonprofit and consulting group that owns Flashpoint Gallery and the Source theater, will partner with the developers to manage the arts components of the building. The group says the second and 11th floors will mostly be dedicated to artistic use.

Lee says the building’s planned arts spaces will help create “a center for all arts to come together.” He adds, “It’s a pretty unique program that we’ve put together. We don’t think there’s anything like it in the whole country.”

A new website devoted to the project details plans for the arts studios. A maximum of 20 artists will get access to them, and their cost will be subsidized up to 60 percent. Lee says subsidies could put the cost at $20 per square foot in some areas. There will be an open call for studio tenants, and CulturalDC will facilitate a panel of five to seven “artists, community members, local business owners” and others to make selections. Every type of artist will be considered, including musicians, says CulturalDC’s communications manager, John Richards.

Lee adds that existing artist residents in the building will be given some preference over other applicants. He also cites different numbers than Stewart, saying the actual number of artists who pay to be in the current building is fewer than 30. He says the estimate of 100 occupants includes visitors and contributors.

Speaking before the zoning commission Monday, many artists said they see the project as displacing art rather than strengthening it. Developers say 3,000 square feet of the new building will be dedicated to art, but artists say that’s not enough.

Musicians especially are nervous about the hotel project, and some say they will have no place in the plan, despite assurances.

“Playing music is very loud, and it’s going to be very disruptive to hotel guests, so musicians will definitely be pushed out of this,” said Katie Alice Greer of the band Priests, speaking before the zoning commission Monday. “There really aren’t any other places like this,” she said.

A crowded room during Monday night’s hearing on Union Arts (James Doubek/WAMU)

But while artists are riled up about Union Arts’ demise, the new owners’ commitment to maintaining some art studio space may have been the least-bad outcome for 411 New York Ave. NE.

The building had been on the market for more than three years, says Gail Harris, the managing member of the LLC that owned the building until last summer. She says the cost of property taxes had become unsustainable.

“Everyone was paying way under market rate for rent,” Harris says. The rent paid by tenants, she adds, could not cover $70,000 in annual property taxes. The Harris family’s LLC purchased the building for just above $1 million in 2007, public records show.

Stewart says Harris was “very, very supportive” of the music and art going on in the building, but it became “a headache for her.”

Mike Abrams, an artist who founded Union Arts in 2013, says the building’s fortunes could be worse. He suggests that the hybrid arts/hotel space may become a model for other developers.

“At least they are considering what they are doing,” Abrams says. “Yes, they are displacing an entire studio building, and they bought the building and that’s their right to do what they want. So to be able to include artists as part of their project, I think that’s a really tremendous first step, to be able to get other developers to see that, to see how it works, see that it can be successful.”

But Abrams expresses concern about the big picture. He says he’d like to see D.C. take a more serious approach to creating live and work spaces for artists, possibly with city-owned property.

“For photographers, for sculptors, for painters, for musicians, for all types of creatives,” Abrams says. “If you share one building, you start to really create a dynamic center, which is what’s missing in D.C.”

Artists attributed the big turnout Monday night to general anxieties about the city’s future.

“Our fight today is not necessarily with the developers,” said Gaje Jones, who runs MOUSAi House, an art and music space within Union Arts. “Our fight today is actually with the city. Because the city, in the planning department, are actually the ones who are allowing these companies to come in and to take over places like Union Arts.”

Graham Boyle added, “It’s very symbolic of the bigger issue of gentrification that’s happening in the city.”

The zoning commission will have another public hearing on the project Feb. 23 at 6:30 p.m.

“I came not to work, but dressed to party,” Stubs says. “I had a little skirt on.”

Usually, when Stubs checked in at the downtown D.C. rock club, she was there to do her job: run a camera. She’d seen more than 1,000 acts during her 10 years at the venue. Most of the time, though, Stubs didn’t record them — from her seat above the audience, she normally just shot for the in-house video system.

But this was New Year’s Eve of 1995, and Tiny Desk Unit was getting ready to play the final show on F Street before 9:30 Club moved to a bigger building uptown. It cried out for documentation. Stubs wasn’t on the clock, but her pal couldn’t let her miss this one.

“A friend said to me, ‘Get your butt in that chair. You’re gonna regret it the rest of your life if you don’t shoot the last band that plays there,'” says Stubs. “I said, ‘I have a little skirt on! I don’t think I should get up there.'” But her friend insisted. “Get your butt in that chair,” she said.

“So that’s exactly what I did,” Stubs says. “I got my butt in the chair and held my legs tight together that night.”

That video went into Stubs’ small collection of tape she’d shot at 9:30 Club, much of which sat in her Takoma Park house after the venue relocated and retired its camera-operator position. It took Stubs 20 years to find a new home for the videos. Now they live at the D.C. Public Library.

“Over the years I kept thinking, ‘OK, I’m gonna digitize these things,’ and I never got around to it,” Stubs says. Brendan Canty, the former drummer of D.C. punk legends Fugazi, suggested that she donate them to the library’s growing D.C. Punk Archive.

Now, the library can boast that it has original footage of Nine Inch Nails, Gwar, Psychedelic Furs, Youth of Today, Mudhoney, Jawbox, Seven Seconds and Fugazi — among many others — playing 9:30 Club back in the day. (Her Tiny Desk Unit video isn’t there, but it’s on YouTube, above. See a complete list of her donations, below.)

Rumors have swirled for years that someone, somewhere, must be sitting on a goldmine of old 9:30 Club footage. Stubs probably has the closest thing to it — and there may be more tape she hasn’t found yet, she says. But her collection isn’t exactly vast.

“People were far more protective of their music at that time,” she says. “Most of the time, the best work I ever did was gone. It was not recorded… It wasn’t like people today, recording things with their cell phones.”

Stubs’ contribution to D.C. music history is now digitized and accessible to anyone who visits the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library downtown. Librarian Michele Casto says members of the public just need to contact her division to arrange a viewing. (Some of the videos were also shown at 9:30 Club’s recent World’s Fair exhibition.)

Stubs looks back on her 10 years at 9:30 Club warmly. But she says it wasn’t all bad that the venue stopped filming shows when it relocated to V Street. If it hadn’t, she doubts she would have moved on.

“I’d be a geezer up on the pole,” Stubs says, laughing. “It would be so hard to give up that job.”

A list of the 9:30 Club performance videos Teri Stubs donated to the D.C. Punk Archive, by band name: Adolescents, Clutch (four tapes), Cop Shoot Cop (two tapes), Executive Slacks, Firehose, Fudge Tunnel, Fugazi (three tapes), G.I., Gumball, Gwar, Happy Go Licky, Henry Rollins, Holy Cow (four tapes), Ignition, Jack Hammer, Jawbox (three tapes), John Sex, Killing Joke, Kingface, Lucy Brown (four tapes), Marginal Man, Mudhoney, Nine Inch Nails (two tapes), Pain Teens, Psychedelic Furs (two tapes), Royal Crescent Mob, Seven Seconds, Slickee Boys, Sonic Youth, Strange Boutique (two tapes), Sugartime, That Petrol Emotion, Thud (six tapes), Velocity Girl, Who is God, Youth of Today.

Top photo: A screenshot from Teri Stubs’ video of Tiny Desk Unit’s Dec. 31, 1995 show at the 9:30 Club.

Organizers announced today that Damaged City 2016 will take place over four days, from April 7 to 10, at venues to be announced. So far, 33 bands are booked to play the fest’s beefiest lineup yet, with notable performances from Japanese hardcore legends Systematic Death and classic California punk band The Avengers.

Like past Damaged City headliners Negative Approach, Infest and The Mob, both Systematic Death and The Avengers date back decades. But festival co-organizer Nick “Tape” Candela says he and partner Chris Moore “made a strong effort to include a lot of fresh blood and newer bands” for next year’s edition. Philly rockers Sheer Mag, French punks Youth Avoiders, straight-edge Californians Torsö and grubby Irish punk band Disguise are among them. (See the rest of Damaged City’s preliminary 2016 lineup, below.)

As Bandwidth writer Ron Knox pointed out in 2014, Candela and Moore deserve much of the credit for reviving the District’s fabled hardcore scene, and they’ve done it without tweaking the formula. In the purist tradition of D.C. hardcore, Damaged City remains all-ages and strictly DIY, aided by a legion of volunteers.

“[Moore and I] are the only two organizers,” Candela writes in a Facebook message, “but there are dozens of folks that help out with everything.”

Volunteers clean up, provide equipment, pick up bands from the airport and — critically — open their homes to out-of-town bands. That’s a task Candela says he’s happy to delegate.

“In the past, I learned not to let too many people sleep at my house,” Candela writes. “In 2014, I got home around 4 or 5 [a.m.] from cleaning up and found that there were punks everywhere in my house.” He’d been left with nowhere to sleep.

“I didn’t have the heart to kick our foreign guests out of my room so I just went back outside and slept in my car,” Candela writes. “Lesson learned: Don’t do that again.”

Check Damaged City’s Facebook event page for ticket information and schedule updates.

Damaged City’s preliminary 2016 lineup: 

Systematic Death (Japan)
The Avengers (California)
Sheer Mag (Pennsylvania)
Youth Avoiders (France)
Torsö (California)
Disguise (Ireland)
La Urss (Spain)
Obstruct (U.K.)
Blood Pressure (Pennsylvania)
The Goons (D.C.)
Eel (Pennsylvania)
Caught in a Crowd (Massachusetts)
Dame (Massachusetts)
Post Teens (Florida)
Rubbish (Florida)
Stalled Minds (France)
Busted Outlook (California)
The Pessimists (Brazil)
Sem Hastro (Brazil/U.S.)
Holders Scar (North Carolina)
Firing Squad (Virginia)
Protester (D.C.)
Depths of Reality (Massachusetts)
Firewalker (Massachusetts)
Drug Control (California)
Odd Man Out (Washington)
Collusion (D.C.)
Stand Off (D.C.)
Homosuperior (D.C.)
Radiation Risks (New York)
Bust Off (D.C.)
Kombat (D.C.)
Spite (D.C.)

“It was time for us to leave,” emails Peter Lillis, a Babe City resident who runs the label’s publicity. According to Lillis, Babe City met the same fate as dozens of D.C. house venues before it: The property at 22nd and N streets NW is being “gutted and flipped and sold for big money,” he writes.

Lillis says he and his roommates have moved to a house near Fort Totten Metro. (For privacy reasons, he asked Bandwidth not to publish the address.)

After Babe City began hosting basement shows last fall, the spot became one of D.C.’s most reliable hosts of underground, rock-skewing bands, putting on at least a few gigs a month. Raucous New Paltz punk duo Diet Cig played there twice this year; pop-rock Virginians RDGLDGRN packed the basement in July.

When Jon Weiss (of The Sea Life and Witch Coast) and Erik Strander launched Babe City Records, the house became its headquarters.

But the location — in one of D.C.’s most expensive neighborhoods — felt temporary from the beginning, Lillis points out. “As much as we love it, [Babe City] was never meant to be our permanent home,” he writes. “We quickly outgrew the space, with five people living in a three-bedroom house, and many bands operating out of our living room and basement.”

Moving elsewhere promises to be a money-saver. “We were happy to move to a more comfortable (and cheaper) home up in north D.C.,” Lillis writes.

The second incarnation of Babe City hosts a kickoff show Dec. 27 featuring Babe City act Den-Mate, San Francisco’s Sports and a solo version of Maryland’s Go Cozy. Donations will be taken at the door.

In true punk-rock fashion, the residents of Babe City exited Dupont with little pomp and circumstance, Lillis says. “We packed and moved in the middle of the night with a 24-foot U-Haul,” he writes. “It was an experience.” 

Babe City II hosts its first show Dec. 27. See Facebook for details.

When White’s tour rider leaked in February, the music blogosphere erupted over its extremely specific guacamole guidelines. Not only did the document include a guacamole recipe, it provided instructions for how to slice the avocados to achieve perfect chunkiness. (White has said he had nothing to do with the guac recipe, calling it an “inside joke” with show promoters.)

D.C.’s Jason Mogavero, who’s in the band Jack on Fire, got to mocking the tour rider’s specifications with pal Sam Sherwood at local watering hole Showtime.

“It was sort of like the obnoxious 2015 version of ‘remove the red M&Ms,'” says Mogavero, 30.

That conversation led Sherwood and Mogavero down a culinary rabbit hole: They started comparing their own takes on guacamole, then moved on to their chili recipes. Mogavero realized he had a lot of friends who both play in D.C. bands and possess “serious cooking chops,” he says. Then it hit him: D.C.’s music scene needs a chili cookbook.

D.C.’s most famous chili is the stuff ladled out at Ben’s Chili Bowl. But after Mogavero began reaching out to friends and folks in the music scene — soliciting both recipes and songs for a paired music compilation — he found a surprising variety of concoctions.

“At first I worried, ‘There’s probably going to be a bit of repetition…  it’s chili, how many different variations could you get?” Mogavero says. “[But] we just naturally got this wide breadth of chili recipes.”

Called the DC Rock’n’Roll Chili Cookbook, the collection includes both meaty and vegan chilis, chilis centered around beans and some that don’t touch the legume. There are also sides and soups — i.e. cheesy biscuits and butternut squash cornbread — that would make excellent foils to the hearty main attraction. Recipe styles also run the gamut, from straightforward to silly, like the footnoted, joke-heavy one submitted by the people behind parody Twitter account Fort Reno Rumors.

Together, the recipes compose a 40-page physical cookbook. The book comes with a 15-song compilation of songs by D.C. artists, including two previously unreleased tunes from indie rockers BRNDA and Mogavero’s Jack On Fire.  (Stream the entire compilation below.)

“Beat the Rich,” which formally arrives on Jack On Fire’s new album out Dec. 4, is a sardonic take on pricey craft cocktails and other trappings of gentrification. Thematically, it piggybacks on the band’s fiery 2014 cut “Burn Down the Brixton.”

Proceeds from the cookbook and compilation benefit nonprofit Bread for the City, which just made sense for a food-themed benefit, Mogavero says. He also points out that the release’s timing — shortly before Thanksgiving — was intentional.

“I deliberately said, ‘Let’s get this out in the first two weeks of November so that the money can help [Bread for the City] with the push for Thanksgiving meals.'”

Mogavero plans to host a release party for the DC Rock’n’Roll Chili Cookbook Nov. 8 at Showtime, the bar where the chili cookbook was born. The musician says he’ll have 50 copies of the compilation for sale — in cassette form, for $5 — along with 100 copies of the cookbook.

If the cookbook proves to be a hit, Mogavero says, he’s happy to satisfy people’s appetites for more.

The DC Rock’n’Roll Chili Cookbook is available for preorder on Bandcamp and will be for sale, along with cassette copies of the compilation, Nov. 8 at Showtime. Top photo by Flickr user jeffreyww used under a Creative Commons license.