Leisure

Reviews and think pieces on music, movies, art, and theater.

Leisure

Recording like the pros

Listening to the professional sheen of Spacecamp’s new Grog’d EP, you’d swear these guys were major-label pros, rolling in a big advance reveling in heavy MTV rotation and airplay on modern-rock radio stations nationwide.

You’d be wrong. Spacecamp, composed of five Georgetown students, is a lot like many other garage bands—unsigned, little-noticed and hungry for success.

By the February 27, 2003

Leisure

Cowboys and pudding

Listen up, you pasty, drug-addicted prostitute of a student: I know how you feel. It’s February, perhaps the worst month of the year. Spring Break seems far away. It’s cold and snowy, and there is nothing to do in this city unless you’re going to see Liza Minelli on Friday night at the MCI Center.

By the February 27, 2003

Leisure

Quixotic quest ends in failure, fun

Video killed the radio star, curiosity killed the cat and bad luck and a lack of funds killed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the latest would-be joint from offbeat director Terry Gilliam. The only thing that remains of the director’s vision for a film version of Cervantes’ Don Quixote is Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s documentary Lost in La Mancha—a detailed account of the dissolution of one director’s dream.

By the February 27, 2003

Leisure

‘One Acts’ offer quick, dirty theater

“Because television sucks” is the slogan for Mask & Bauble’s Donn B. Murphy One Acts Festival this year. But even if you don’t want to watch television that sucks, decent actors trying to pull off plays that suck may not be enough to draw you off the couch.

By the February 20, 2003

Leisure

Bourke-White exhibition shows the unexpected

You’ve seen her photos before. The picture of Gandhi sitting by his spinning wheel, those snapshots of DC-4s traveling high above Manhattan or the one of a female photographer kneeling on a skyscraper gargoyle. That last one’s actually not a picture she took, but a picture of her.

By the February 20, 2003

Leisure

Kickin’ it with Cody ChesnuTT

Donray Von, the cousin-turned-manager of rocker Cody ChesnuTT, sat silently backstage at a table eating buffalo wings an hour before ChesnuTT was to perform at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Va. earlier this month. The Birchmere’s promoter sat down on a couch next to the table and talked with Von for a few minutes.

By the February 20, 2003

Leisure

’80s bands, again

Bands from the ‘80s are pissed. Wouldn’t you be if a bunch of ex-hardcore and emo kids hijacked your sound and called it their own? Maybe that’s why such groups as Wire, Television and Mission of Burma are reuniting. It can’t be for the cash, right? In any case, this Friday all the kids under 30 who never got to see Mission of Burma in the band’s heyday can drag their young butts down to the 9:30 Club and watch the aging legends roll out some classic tunes.

By the February 20, 2003

Leisure

Mr. Lif gets political

Independent emcee Mr. Lif is an emerging underground rapper who is making a name for himself by incorporating political awareness with his purist hip-hop formula of rapid-fire, innovative lyrics and hard-hitting beats. His latest LP, I Phantom on Definitive Jux records, has received critical acclaim and is his best-selling to date.

By the February 20, 2003

Leisure

‘100th Window’ gives view of band’s decline

Pioneering British electronic act Massive Attack has finally released the follow-up to 1998’s critically acclaimed Mezzanine. The new album, 100th Window, is a disappointing record that tries in vain to recreate Mezzanine’s sound.

That sound was a sensual mix of slowed-down hip-hop beats, throbbing, insistent bass lines and the occasional foray into churning storms of guitar.

By the February 20, 2003

Leisure

Arcadia

Unbeknownst to most Georgetown students, the Leavey Center is good for more than just cursing at broken cash machines and stealing “chromies” from the wheels of cars parked in the garage. No, this building houses a leisure gold-mine, a little slice of blinking heaven known as the arcade.

By the February 13, 2003

Leisure

Music for singles

Valentine’s Day got you down? No date this year, again? No need to worry, there’s plenty going on in D.C. this weekend for singles like you! So grab some friends, get slizzard and head out on the town to beat these mid-February doldrums. On Friday, the Black Cat will be hosting its traditional Valentine’s Day Dance Night.

By the February 13, 2003

Leisure

‘Russian Ark’ stays afloat

St. Petersburg has some self-esteem issues. Perched precipitously between Russia and Europe both geographically and culturally, it has long wavered between the “civilized” yearnings of Peter the Great and the revolutionary tendencies that renamed it Leningrad.

By the February 13, 2003

Leisure

Poetry and politics at Uncommon Grounds

The kid looked like Eminem. Forearms flailing rhythmically yet with restraint. Steady wide-eyed gaze emphatic and penetrating. He had the flow, the excessive hyperactive energy, the uncanny sense for timing and shifting intonation, the brilliant lyrical subtlety .

By the February 13, 2003

Leisure

The definitive OK Go

OK Go’s hit single, “Get Over It,” is tearing up both alternative and mainstream radio nationwide. The band’s founding members, now in their late twenties, met at music camp when they were twelve and stayed in touch by exchanging mix-tapes through high school, reconvening after college to pursue rock-stardom.

By the February 13, 2003

Leisure

‘Piano Lesson’ needs practice

The Black Theatre Ensemble’s production of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is a drama that hits a couple of marvelous keys but fails to sustain a unified melody. While often fascinating and touching, the production comes off as lackluster, failing to live up to its full potential.

By the February 6, 2003

Leisure

Supergroup Zwan zwucks

The problem with supergroups constructed from bits and pieces of other bands is that they often end up with the least essential component of the original—bringing with them the name association, but rarely the creativity, of their former group. Zwan is a band in this vein, bringing Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin (Smashing Pumpkins), Paz Lenchantin (A Perfect Circle) and David Pajo (Slint/Tortoise) together with less than outstanding results.

By the February 6, 2003

Leisure

‘Darko’ at midnight

Everyone, at some point, has had a dream that they are certain is real. Recently re-popularized by The Matrix, the real world versus dream world discussion was old even when John Keats asked, “Was it a vision, or a waking dream … do I wake or sleep?” Written and directed by Richard Kelly, the movie Donnie Darko offers a highly original and challenging take on this age-old question.

By the February 6, 2003

Leisure

Funny sign

“It’s a funny sign, isn’t it?” said the GUTV kid with the shoulder-mounted video camera. He barreled down the hill from Leavey towards Lot T, calling attention to the large, electronic flip-sign at the entrance. It is 2:15 a.m. Tuesday and what normally should say “Road Closed” now reads “No War.

By the February 6, 2003

Leisure

Ride the no wave

Perhaps only a few of us remember the decadence of new wave in the ‘80s via the memorable Flock of Seagulls hairdos of our older siblings, and their moodiness that precipitated endless spins of Depeche Mode’s Violator. Maybe we relive the magic through Behind the Music’s profile of 1982.

By the February 6, 2003

Leisure

Bash delves, emotes, disturbs

For a campus where fraternities and sororities do not officially exist, there has been a recent influx of things Greek at Georgetown. Bash, Neil LaBute’s examination of psychology on the edge, is laden with allusions to ancient Greece: fate, mythology, classical tragedy and even a “Delphi University.

By the January 30, 2003