In the second installment of Lost and Found for the summer of 2010, the crowd was diverse and grew as day went on.  The only setback was when the “real” cops came, for complaints of people having fun.

For the next 2 months, Danny’s art will be exhibited at Tryst (coffeehouse/bar) and is up for sale.

Tryst

2459 18th Street Northwest
Washington, DC 20009

If you’re interested in purchasing one of Danny’s art pieces, contact him at:

normalthealienboy@gmail.com

You can also follow him through Twitter @ D_JeanJacques

A H.A.C.K. is a “Heartbroken Artist Creativity Killed”. We’ve all been
there, for some it is either the driving force that motivates us to do
nothing or the ideas that will keep you up at night. For others, it’s going through
old ideas and trying to make them new and when you think you have
something.. it’s not what you had in mind. Creativity is the one thing that
can lift your spirits and break you down in ways you never thought possible.

This is a collection of work that goes with how I feel at the moment. Some
ideas are old, and the dreams are new.. the one thing that’s constant is the
killer known as CREATIVITY.

That’s a heartbreaker.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
7:00pm – 9:00pm

Tryst
2459 18th St NW
Washington, DC

MARQUES WYATT

JOE L.

SAMMY K

U Street Music Hall
1115 U St NW
Washington, DC

10pm | Free before 11pm; $10 dollars after | 18+

International DJ and producer Marques Wyatt is an influential messenger of the deepest, most soulful kind of house music. Beneath his relaxed, spiritual and unknowingly suave persona, therein lies a man partially responsible for giving birth to the West Coast house scene by bringing the fresh sounds of New York (a la Frankie Knuckles, Tony Humphries and Larry Levan) to Los Angeles beginning in the mid 80s. Carefully pointing out that he has “always had a deep passion for music,” you know that his adoration of house has been a gateway into the lives of thousands and thousands of people. Over the years promoting and playing an enormous amount of parties including BBC, Brass, MAC’s Garage, Does Your Mama Know? and currently LA’s biggest house club DEEP, Marques has changed the face of Southern California nightclubbing and the presentation of its music, sound and scene.

Today, he spends much of his time taking the sounds that emanate from his soul around the world, or laying them down in the studio in remixes and original compositions. Yet, he always returns to the club scene in his hometown of Los Angeles. He grew up in a loving, musical family that exposed him to everything from unique Afro rhythm sounds, jazz and soul to psychedelic rock. As a DJ he draws on a little bit of all these influences in silky smooth sets that never fail to be a buoyant celebration of life.

Local Washington, DC Businesses Join Forces to Present a Massive  4th of July Concert Event

Fort Knox Recordings and Capitol Hemp have joined forces with DC’s most exciting new venue, the U Street Music Hall to put together a solid concert for the 4th of July Independence Day celebrations.  Fort Knox Five, See-I and Nappy Riddem will all perform with live bands, with DJ support from Rex Riddem, JonH and Raskal and live visual projections by John Bowen of Video Killers and Empresarios.

Capitol Hemp recently expanded and opened their second location in Chinatown.  As DC’s only hemp stores, they have received widespread support from the community and are actively giving back to the community.  The Capitol Hemp “Custom Waste Veggie Oil Delivery Truck” will be parked out front as an interactive bio-fuel exhibit.  Adam Eidinger and Americans for Safe Access will also be on hand to help celebrate the 4th of July.

Fort Knox Five are on fire right now with a series of remix singles, releases and a brand new music video featuring Afrika Bambaataa.  Their music was recently licensed to Oscar Winning Best Documentary The Cove, the trailer for Touchstone/Disney’s You Again and Greg Stump’s forthcoming ski movie Legend of Aahh’s.  You can catch both Fort Knox Five and See-I on tour all summer long at some of the best venues and festivals nationwide.  Nappy Riddem and See-I are both releasing singles, remixes and finishing up full-length albums.  Fort Knox Recordings has been very busy and as always it is 100% Washington, DC artist owned and operated.

U Street Music Hall is the perfect venue for this exciting event.  Still brand new and boasting the best sound system in town, the audience will truly get The Big Boom experience!  The venue is also owned and operated by some of DC’s finest DJs and musicians – people who know and respect the local music industry.

As all businesses involved are 100% independently owned and operated, this is a non-corporate event of the local business community.  We rely upon your support in spreading the word.  All artists and musicians involved are eager to speak with the press and offer free giveaways and exclusive news for your readers.

Featuring live performances by:

FORT KNOX FIVE
SEE-I
NAPPY RIDDEM

Live visuals from the VideoKillers don:

JOHN BOWEN
(Empresarios/United Content Providers)

Special DJ sets from:

JON H & RASKAL
REX RIDDEM

Free Ticket Giveaway

Exclusive here on murmur DC, we will be giving away 2 pairs of tickets to THE BIG BOOM.  Just write a comment on this post about why you deserve a free pair of tickets.  We will decide the winner Sunday, June 27th (one week before).

Links

http://www.fortknoxrecordings.com
http://www.capitolhemp.com
http://www.ustreetmusichall.com

Download

‘Boxer’ may have been the single most overrated album of the Twenty-first century’s first decade, and the National may have been the single most overrated band. I gave up trying to like ‘Boxer’ because it wasn’t going to happen, and I wasn’t going to kid myself. I formed my opinion, and yes it is a negative opinion, but no one can say I didn’t give ‘Boxer’ a chance. I’m fair, but I’m also honest.

The words we say, be they the casual happenstance of every day conversation or the semi-formal declarations we feel entitled to make on the internet, are meaningless. It is impossible to see the future or to even comprehend the paths weaving concurrently to our own that will one day intersect us. Chance encounters in which we reiterate opinions posted elsewhere have nothing to do with what happens a week later. Even if they do, there is no way for us to know. We say what we say because of what unfolds immediately before us. In a future moment you look back and wonder what a past moment, if directed differently, could have yielded. There is no correct answer, just as there is no blame to shoulder and absolutely no dignified fulfillment to ‘what might have been.’ The suddenness of reality bears down once this fact becomes vivid, and when faced with the overwhelming shadow of truth all you can do is cry on the bathroom floor.

I last saw my friend Kim on May 15. I pulled into the parking lot of the coffee shop that employs me and saw a green Hyundai. ‘That looks like Kim’s car,’ I mused to myself, and I parked next to it, engaged in my typical prework ritual of listening to music until I’ve unwound enough to face another day. Sunset Rubdown was playing, and I settled into the driver’s seat, closed my eyes, and heard a knock on my passenger side window. ‘Oh, it was Kim’s car.’ I rolled down the window as Kim waved, and after I said hello the first thing out of her mouth was, “Do you know why you don’t like the National? Because their lyrics suck.”

What followed was a lengthy but casual conversation about the new National album, ‘High Violet,’ and how we felt it compared to their earlier work. I repeated my opinion from the review I wrote a few weeks ago, that ‘High Violet’ was a grower, that it wasn’t going to ignite until somewhere in the middle of the album, and that I like that so much more than ‘Boxer.’ Kim’s stance was firm, though. She told me she never liked Matt Berninger’s lyrics, that “I’m going to eat your brains” is one of the lamest phrases she’s ever heard, that she has no time for something so flimsy. All of this seemed odd to me since I remembered her deeply in love with ‘Boxer.’ I kept talking about ‘Boxer,’ and I believe my exact words were, “I stopped kidding myself. You know? It wasn’t going to happen. It was just one of those things. Time to move on.”

We kept talking, and I got Kim thinking about “I came to Ohio on a swarm of bees.” Maybe I made some headway for her to like ‘High Violet.’ We parted ways a little bit later as I went into work and Kim went to meet another friend of ours. I worked my shift that day and five other shifts the following week, and I thought about Kim a lot. I thought about how sporadically I see her, and I thought about how I love seeing her because we have conversations just like that when we do run into each other, be it at a party or out somewhere unexpected. It was just a part of life, that conversation and all the other conversations we have. I lived and I worked as I always do.

A week later, a week to the day and maybe even the hour, I got a call from the friend who Kim went to meet after our parking lot encounter. Kim killed herself on May 21. The days following that phone call were numb. Everyone talks about numbness when facing shock. I had no idea what it felt like until I experienced it. The only word to describe it is numb, and nothing more can be said to further illustrate it. Just know that you don’t want to feel it. Yesterday afternoon I had my first honest to God cry over this mess, and while the ship is starting to right itself I don’t think it will ever be on a perfectly even keel again. Everything I saw and experienced last week has guaranteed that nothing will ever be the same. Wherever Kim is now, no matter how much I want to go after her, I can’t. It’s a bitch, that barrier between the now and the nether, but both halves are equally real and equally intangible. And we all have our place.

Wednesday evening last week we were together at Kim’s mother’s house, talking about Kim, remembering Kim, laughing and crying when we needed to. It was late, and I had to work early the next morning, but just being there and listening to these stories, chiming in when I had to, it was the first good time I’d had in four days. Smiling and laughing again when I hadn’t cried at all, not yet anyway. I thought I could face this thing and get over it. Then the conversation went from one thing to another, and suddenly I’m hearing Kim’s sister say, “The last song she listened to was ‘Start a War’ by the National.” My brain passed through a black hole. I was everywhere and nowhere and I needed to be somewhere else, so I ran. We were actually talking about this. We were talking about the last song Kim listened to. Not only that, but the last song Kim listened to was directly related to the last conversation I ever had with Kim.

I am not an idiot. I don’t think anything I said that afternoon had any bearing on the choices Kim made. Nor do I think anything I could have said would have made things happen differently. The paths were already weaving just beyond our comprehension, and while I also don’t believe in predestination I also know there was nothing I could do. But the topic of our last conversation was the last band that Kim ever listened to. That’s just haunting to me. All of these unanswered questions – was she already thinking about this when we were talking? Did the National mean that much to her? I can’t answer these questions and I don’t want to. But where does that leave me? I’m stuck with the memory of dry May heat on a Saturday afternoon, sitting in my black car with sticky hot black upholstery sucking up hot air crawling through the open passenger window, my air conditioner spilling cold air on my knees, Sunset Rubdown whispering while I lean over to talk to Kim who knocked on my passenger window, and we’re talking about how much she thinks the lyrics on ‘High Violet’ suck. Nothing I did or said made this happen, but the memory still lingers. The memory lingers and my arms wish I had hugged Kim that afternoon before I went to work.

One of the things we talked about last Wednesday was how much music we associate with Kim and how much music we can’t listen to anymore. Something about the chain of events and the happenstance of casual conversation made me wonder. I wondered if I could face another listen. Call me masochistic, but I needed to face this thing head on. Pull ‘Boxer’ from the shelf. Give it another listen. Wait until track eight and see how it makes you feel. The strange thing is that track eight was always the place where I would glance irritably at the back cover and think to myself, ‘There are still four more freaking songs to go on this thing.’ This time around here comes “Start a War,” here come the goosebumps, and I’m with her. I’m listening to ‘Boxer’ and I see it. Maybe in some way I see Kim through it. Maybe that’s overly poetic drivel. But I’m listening to ‘Boxer’ again right now. It was not my symbolic chosen music while I wrote this. Rather it is simply the third disc in tonight’s rotation. I understand that I am probably including ‘Boxer’ in current CD rotations as a tribute to Kim, but so what? ‘Boxer’ is on my iTunes again well over a year after I removed it. I will listen to it in album shuffle. I will hear “Start a War” and I will not skip it in irritation. I will wish for something better than before. I will wish for something more, and I will remember a chance encounter with Kim on a Saturday afternoon. After all the grieving and knowing there’s still more to come, the only thing I wish for right now is a chance to tell Kim how much she made me love the National last week. Somehow, though, something tells me Kim already knows this. That makes me happy.

Kimberly Swartz

As we all learned in elementary school a story’s setting is the place and time in which the events transpire. This year’s Academy Award Winner for Best Picture ‘The Hurt Locker’ clearly defines its setting as Iraq sometime in 2004. Early in the movie one of the characters is playing video games in base camp. To the properly trained eye, the video game he plays is Gears of War, a title that is exclusive to the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 did not release domestically until November of 2005, internationally until December of 2005. Chalk this up as the only minor technical flaw in ‘The Hurt Locker,’ an otherwise excellent choice for Best Picture of 2010.

Call me Comic Book Guy if you want. I deserve it. I shall iron my hands later to chastise myself, but I can’t help it. I have to say these things. But dwelling on my snootiness is not the reason I am writing tonight about ‘The Hurt Locker.’ Tonight I am writing about ‘The Hurt Locker’ because of a tendency I have observed in war movies. I am a military buff. Growing up I was obsessed with World War II stuff, and I can bore anyone at any time if the conversation lends itself to cars, power steering, and the fact that Germany invented power steering in World War II in order to mount an anti-aircraft canon on a tank. I know. It’s sad that I know these things. Being obsessed with military stuff doesn’t mean I am hawkish when it comes to war, going to war, supporting war. Call it a morbid fascination with what human beings are willing to do to each other and the lengths they travel to do it. War disgusts me, but I have the urge to learn more about it. I want to understand war. The best way to do so is to put myself in the middle of it. Short of joining the Army, the only way to understand war is to educate myself.

Books, documentary, feature film, snippets of interviews with veterans online – if I think it helps me have a better perspective of why people fight, I will watch it or read it. Looking at my DVD collection there isn’t a shelf without a war movie. ‘A Bridge Too Far,’ ‘Glory,’ ‘Platoon,’ ‘Waltz With Bashir,’ and I can’t say anything bad about ‘Band of Brothers.’ Over time I have come to identify what’s good, to sort the quality work from the crap. You learn universal truths after a while. ‘Platoon’ makes ‘Hamburger Hill’ look like an episode of Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood, and ‘Jarhead’ was a complete waste of time in comparison to ‘Three Kings.’ Realism is what I look for. Of course being an outsider means I have every right to discern between what is realistic and what is not, but the more you observe, the more you listen to testimonials, the more you read on the subject, you get a feeling for what’s genuine and what’s a guess. Both sides of the debate walk this line, both the patriotic garbage and the sentimental tear-jerking protests. Realism is what draws me to either side at any given moment. As with music or any other art form, any other storytelling, you can tell when something is honest. You just get that feeling. It’s hard to define, but realism is what keeps me watching.

After watching so many war movies, having my opinions about war, and then venturing forth into real life to talk to real people and see what they think, I have come to the conclusion that real people are idiots. I believe this to be true because real people use movies like ‘Platoon’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket’ to get their dicks hard, join the military, and then go off to kill others and themselves in places nobody cares about. After watching ‘Platoon’ and seeing Charlie Sheen turn into something just as monstrous as Sergeant Barnes you should feel absolutely no desire to have taken part in the Vietnam War. Don’t condemn the people who did take part, because that’s just as bad if not worse, but you should have no urge to experience insanity firsthand. Especially after watching this.

I speak from prior knowledge. I watch a lot of war movies, but back when I had cable I used to watch the Military Channel far more than I should have. I stopped watching it when they ran the same episodes of Future Weapons and Top Ten Such-and-Such-Who-Cares over and over again. Every Friday night was movie night, though, and they would show a war movie. The commercial they aired was ridiculous. ‘Platoon’ was one of the centerpieces as a voiceover invited us to “feel the rush of battle” and to “witness the birth of heroes.” When the voiceover invited us to feel the rush of battle they flashed a brief instant of a scene from ‘Platoon’ where an American soldier gets a healthy dosage of artillery fire (artillery that was fired by his own guns, no less, and they cut out the part where searing hot shrapnel burns the screaming kid). When the voiceover invited us to witness the birth of heroes we saw Charlie Sheen at the end of the movie, burned by his own napalm, holding a discarded AK47 and ready to frag Sergeant Barnes (again, they cut out the actual fragging). I really wonder if people think before they piece these things together and draw their conclusions, and then I remind myself that wondering isn’t necessary. The answer is no. Nobody thinks about the reality. Or they do, but the machismo thrill of an erection is too much to keep them from making a rational decision. The fact that anyone could watch ‘Platoon’ and long to be trapped in a killing mess proves to me that average citizens should not be allowed to vote. “It’s a lovely fucking war.” It sure is, and democratically elected officials brought it to us.

So what does all of this have to do with ‘The Hurt Locker?’ As I said before, ‘The Hurt Locker’ is an excellent movie that deserved its Best Picture award. Dealing with an Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team is the proper perspective for a war that seems to revolve daily around press releases of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and suicide bombings. What’s happening in Iraq is a multilayered mess that has me angry on levels deep inside that I didn’t even know existed before 2003. Two lines in ‘The Hurt Locker’ stand out and show me why I’m so angry.

In one scene a tanker truck has exploded in the Green Zone and the EOD team is sent to investigate. While examining the devastation they realize it was not the work of a suicide bomber, that instead it was a remote detonation from the hand of someone watching a safe distance away. One of the characters says, “You know there are guys watching us right now. They are laughing at this, and I am not okay with that.” That’s a perfect summation of every Devil’s advocate fiber in my body. Every time this EOD team is sent into action there are people watching from the sidelines, watching from rooftops, watching from balconies and minarets, people we know are probably responsible for what just happened or what is about to happen but there’s no concrete proof. If I was there I’d want to get them, too. We know these bastards are out there. Let’s just get them because deep down inside that’s what we all want to do. We’re tired of this garbage and killing every last one of them is the easiest way out. There’s nothing right or noble about it. It just is.

In the other scene, after a rather disastrous mission, the team is driving back to base in their Humvee. One of them thinks about the arbitrariness and futility of this war. “Another two inches. Shrapnel zings by, slices my throat. I bleed out like a pig in the sand. Nobody will give a shit. My parents will care, but they don’t count. Who else?” And this is where I do the rest of my finger-pointing, at myself and every last American who draws breath in normal every day life. How many of us have lived lives, meaningful or otherwise, in the seven years since we invaded Iraq? In the nearly nine years since we invaded Afghanistan? Unless we are directly connected to someone deployed to one of these wars, no one bats an eye when word comes of another IED blowing up a Humvee. We don’t think about it because we don’t care. We don’t care because the general thinking of everyone on either side of the war movement is “it’s not my fight, so it’s not my problem.” Our involvement with this conflict extends to either hoisting an effigy of George W. Bush as Hitler or waving a miniature American flag at a Sarah Palin rally. Beyond that we have no commitment or desire to be more committed, because then it might become our problem. Ignoring the issue is much more attractive. 4397 American soldiers have died in Iraq and over 30,000 wounded, so it’s definitely someone’s problem. Nothing is going to change it, so there is nothing else to say.

‘The Hurt Locker’ is a great movie because it has me digging deep inside myself to find these opinions, however ugly, unseemly, and unattractive they may be. ‘The Hurt Locker’ succeeds, and ‘The Hurt Locker’ is one of those timely cultural movies that everyone needs to see. Sit through two hours and wonder how hard it is to care for a moment.

As successful a war movie ‘The Hurt Locker’ is, I still see it falling into the trap that so many other war movies fall into, intentionally or otherwise. Remember my rant a few paragraphs ago about misguided patriotism? I don’t believe it was director Kathryn Bigelow’s intention to turn the end of ‘The Hurt Locker’ into a recruiting poster. At the end of the movie our main character is returning voluntarily to Iraq for another tour. When he joins his new unit we have Ministry playing on the soundtrack, and the credits roll to the tune of “Khyber Pass.”

Knowing what kind of band Ministry is, I know what Kathryn Bigelow was going for here at the end of ‘The Hurt Locker.’ The end of this movie is tragic. If the tragedy has not yet happened, then it probably will happen on this 365-day combat tour or the next one. This is not meant to be a stirring scene where our hero marches off to war for glory and fame. Rather, this is the sad state of affairs for combat veterans. Experiencing combat is like going to prison. After a while you adjust to a life of combat the way a prisoner adjusts to life on the inside. If you survive the combat life, readjusting to the normal world can be difficult, sometimes impossible, just like it is for many prisoners who are released after a decade of incarceration. Oftentimes, soldiers who return home wind up signing up for second tours, third tours, fourth tours, not necessarily out of duty or patriotism but because after a certain point the combat life is the only life that makes sense. It’s like an ex-con committing another crime just to return to prison. Ministry is here at the end of ‘The Hurt Locker’ because they bring out this tragedy. This music reflects the pain felt by many Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and the twisted normality that is the combat life.

I say these things knowing full well the style of music Ministry plays. I know my opinion of the average American when it comes to war movies, and I remember clearly the accounts I read in 2003 of American tank crews listening to Slayer and Rage Against the Machine as they drove their vehicles into Baghdad. I know what kind of music Ministry, Slayer, and Rage Against the Machine play. I know how politically charged it is and how anti-war it is. I know it. You know it. But this is the average American we are talking about. Average Americans are the ones who do our fighting, and average Americans are going to watch ‘The Hurt Locker.’ All I can think of are the misinterpretations. People are going to watch the end of this movie with our hero walking into another bomb zone while Ministry growls away, and they’re going to think how wonderful it is. Ministry gets you amped. Rage Against the Machine, yo. Let’s go pop some skulls to “Killing in the Name Of.”

Average people will watch this scene soundtracked by Ministry and think about the rush of battle and the birth of heroes. The problems highlighted by ‘The Hurt Locker’ and so many other war movies will be glossed over by ignorance. If you sit through two hours of ‘The Hurt Locker’ and think this is the best idea anybody ever had, just like if you sit through two hours of ‘Platoon’ and feel the urge to invade a village and randomly murder the inhabitants, there is something very wrong with you. Like I keep saying, I speak from prior observation. I have seen too many people react this way to war movies. We witness the adverse effect of what is intended. How is this possible? I haven’t a fucking clue. But the sad fact of the matter is that these people vote, and their vote counts just as much as mine or yours, and this is what brings us back to killing messes time and time again.

After watching ‘The Hurt Locker’ I wish that my only argument could be a simple matter of setting, of continuity, of a character playing a video game system that had not yet been released in 2004. Instead I am troubled by something more dire. Maybe it’s just the last bit of complexity in an already tangled web of clusterfuck. I’ll keep watching war movies if people keep making them. Sadly, though, so will everybody else.

Three years ago the National released an album called ‘Boxer.’ Many people hailed ‘Boxer’ as 2007’s album of the year. I was not included in this group of people. For a long time, long after 2007 ended and the shit-storm that was 2008 began for me, I straddled the fence regarding the National and ‘Boxer.’

At one moment I could see what everyone was talking about – a weighty album, a meaty album with nooks and crannies full of juices and flavors, an album anchored by the strong track “Mistaken For Strangers.” Then the next moment would come and I was on the other side, the negative side, seeing through ‘Boxer’ and agreeing that “Mistaken For Strangers” was indeed the strongest track, except that it fell in the number 2 slot and the rest of the album disintegrated afterward.

I oscillated back and forth like this for a long time, even as late as last year, and then I finally gave up. Let me defend myself for a second. I cringe to call it giving up, because I firmly hold this opinion. ‘Boxer’ may have been the single most overrated album of the Twenty-first century’s first decade, and the National may have been the single most overrated band. I gave up trying to like ‘Boxer’ because it wasn’t going to happen, and I wasn’t going to kid myself. I formed my opinion, and yes it is a negative opinion, but no one can say I didn’t give ‘Boxer’ a chance. I’m fair, but I’m also honest.

In 2010 the National are back with ‘High Violet.’ After only a few listens I am experiencing the same oscillation between love and pulling-out-my-hair that I did with ‘Boxer.’ For the most part, though, this time as I sit on the fence I have both of my legs on the positive side. The best thing I can say about ‘High Violet’ is that this one is everything I wish ‘Boxer’ had been.

The worst thing I can say about ‘High Violet’ is that it doesn’t kick in until the later tracks, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What dragged down ‘Boxer’ for me was having such a strong track like “Mistaken For Strangers” so early in the placement. After the high I was stuck with a sustained low – an intense low, yes, but still a low. ‘Boxer’ never recovered. With ‘High Violet’ the National sustain the emotional drive they are so excellent at igniting like a slow motion Roman candle.

My first focal point isn’t until track 6, “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” when Mike Berninger sings, “I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees.” On my first listen of ‘High Violet’ I was rewriting a longer work, and that line alone grabbed me. I knew I had to listen to ‘High Violet’ two more times, three more times, however many times it takes not to love ‘High Violet’ but to at least understand it. “It’s taking forever,” Berninger says on “Runaway,” and I want it to. Maybe I will never understand it, but that isn’t the point. The point is to listen. The point is to try. Most of all, the point is to be lost. I want to be lost in the tangled honesty of ‘High Violet.’ Here at the end, five hundred words later, I leap from the fence to spend the rest of the year with the National.