Yellow Arrow Tours
If you’re feeling burnt out by midterms and looking for a bit of distraction, we here at the Voice urge you to get outside on what may be the last nice weekend of ‘06. Load up your iPod with some Fugazi, Bad Brains and Black Flag, and head out for a walking tour of D.C. punk rock.
While some associate the city with the federal government, there’s a dedicated subculture for whom the nation’s capital will always signify loud, fast, politically active rock and the straight-edge movement. Now, with some help from the DIY Yellow Arrow Tours network, a great set of information is available about the development and history of punk in D.C. We get Ian MacKaye (Fugazi, Minor Threat) talking about the greatness of Bad Brains, Dante Ferrando (owner of The Black Cat) on Henry Rollins’ job at Häagen-Dazs, and even infamous former mayor Marion Barry speaking about his support of the Fort Reno concert series. You can start the tour right outside the front gates: one of the videos deals with the notorious 1979 Cramps show in Walsh’s basement space. It’s all available via text messages or as a series of video podcasts (which will work on your fifth generation iPod too) at
http://yellowarrow.net/capitolofpunk.
American Hardcore
One stop on the tour, at least this weekend, should be the E St. Theater, where the documentary American Hardcore opens on Friday. Billed as a history of American punk rock from 1980 to 1986, the film covers the formative years of the movement, focusing on the key cities, including D.C., that gave birth to some truly great and bizarre rock. It’s a lofty goal, considering the breadth of the movement and the number of great (and not-so-great) bands involved in the process. The film will hopefully get the word out about a bunch of bands that, in the popular imagination, remain misunderstood at best and reviled at worst.
E St. Cinema is located at 555 11th St. NW.
