airøspace – Lucid (prod. Munoz)
Synthador – Our Snowy Day 2015
ᴇʟᴅʀ. – Delirium
Big Sky Conspiracy – Puzzle Palace Prophet
Medications – For WMF
Laura Baron – No Easy Way to Say Goodbye
The Grit Pushers – Moonshine
Dmerit – Stuck On You
KTW – Goodnight
Go Cozy – Our Best Reflections
Terri Bocklund – WolfSong
David Marc Alterman (performed by Astrid Walschott Stapp) – Octagon
Diggs Duke – Is It Love feat. Vaughan Octavia
Vestiges – III
Gordon Withers – Memories Of The Future
Caustic Casanova – There Is No Need For Grammar On the Moon
Craig Gildner and The Blue Sky 5 – Capitol South
Star FK Radium – Life in Slow Motion
Scythian – Jigsaw
Body Thief – Transitions

Birdlips – Home
Medications – Brasil ’07
Wytold – Titania
Nick Hakim – Heaven
Drop Electric – Brooklyn’s Nightmare
Mud Rey – Never Satisfied
Sweetnova – Soldier
Will Eastman & Caleb L’Etoile – We Gon Make It All Happen
Lands & Peoples – Colleen’s Wedding
Middle Distance Runner – Brother John
Near Northeast – North Star
Mathugh – THe! Fearsome Twosome.
Warren Wolf – Natural Beauties
Pete Frassrand – Special K
Fugazi – Break
Shark Week – Desire
Damu the Fudgemunk – Overtime Intro – Instrumental
Raw Feels – Waiting / Wasting
Ben Dransfield – Nostalgia
More Humans – You’re a Liar

Elijah Jamal Balbed – Butch Warren
Sneaks – X.T.Y
Astronaut Jones – Farther
FAR EXP – Get On Your Grind
Golden Looks – Hey Say
East Ghost – Jericho
Bossalingo – Round Midnight
Carni Klirs – A Respite Amongst the Palms
Five State Drive – Dry Clean Express
Soundtrack to Sleep – All We Do Is Talk
Sleeves Off a Vest – Number 9
Medications – Kilometers and Smiles
Hailu Mergia and the Walias – Muziqawi Silt
Philip Lassiter – Liquid in Love
Cigarbox Planetarium – Memory Loop
June Gloom – Dealer
Sri Rama – Refreshing
Lifted – Medicated Yoga
The Dwindlers – Pale Blue Dress
Aerialist – Proteus

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.

“I’ve always called these types of songs ‘barn burners,'” says the D.C.-based guitarist, songwriter, engineer and drummer. That’s why his new band, The Effects, made its recorded debut with its own barn-burner last week. The song is called “Blister,” and it aligns precisely with Ocampo’s definition of the term: brief and intense—but with one foot planted in melodic songcraft.

“I don’t think there was ever a question that it was going be the first thing we wanted to drop on people,” says Ocampo, 40. He wanted to make a strong impression right away for a band that’s only been playing together—in various forms—since late 2013.

But Ocampo may already be a familiar name in D.C. rock circles: He’s played in Faraquet, Smart Went Crazy, Beauty Pill, Medications, Deathfix and alongside Mary Timony. When he plays guitar, he imparts a bracing and distinct brand of noodlery. It’s a sound that’s inseparable from D.C. indie rock of the ’90s and aughts, and Ocampo has never completely stopped playing it.

“I would say that [The Effects] is a continuation of the same sort of work for me. The songs that I wrote for a rock-trio format I think all have a certain consistency to them,” Ocampo says. “One could make an argument that I could have called it the same thing the whole time.”

The Effects—which includes drummer David Rich (ex-Buildings) and bassist Matt Dowling (Deleted Scenes)—isn’t even Ocampo’s only band right now. He also sings and plays guitar in a fourpiece called Warm Sun with his spouse, Renata, and D.C. music vets Basla Andolsun and Jason Hutto. That band just played its first show last Sunday. But Ocampo seems committed to making The Effects a serious gig.

He plans to do that by recording, then releasing, only a dribble of Effects music each month for a year. The band dropped a digital version of “Blister” (without its B-side, “Old Soul”) on Sept. 1. Next month, “Blister” will be retired from Bandcamp, and the band will upload a new track. Each digital song will also get a cassette release. In the end, the band will probably put it all on an LP—but that doesn’t seem to be the first thing on Ocampo’s mind.

“We just sort of want to keep things interesting and moving forward,” the musician says. “I’ve put out a lot of records doing the whole normal album cycle, where you build up songs and you take six months to write them, and then you try to get financing to get into a studio… then you drop this big weighty thing that you’ve spent all this time on.” He says that people don’t all consume music in album form now, so why follow that old formula? “We’re trying to do all singles, no filler. That’s been our motto.”

Not that listeners should expect a relentless campaign of barn burners from here on out.

“The band has a lot more to say,” Ocampo says. “We do have a lot more nuance in our music. But I thought [‘Blister’] was something to kind of hit people over the head with.”

The Effects play Rock & Roll Hotel with The Life & Times and Tone on Sept. 14. They play a “Blister/Old Soul” release show at Comet Ping Pong Oct. 18.