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It would best serve the public for me to write about Number One Cup’s new CD, People People Why Are We Fighting? It would also assist the band in getting its new sonic togetherness publicized for me to tell how the Chicago indie-rock quartet has made the difficult leap from shambling popsters into solid rock-‘n’-rollers who inject their Pavementesque melodies with jagged, New Wavey arrangements. But the cooler story is how Number One Cup’s guitarist, Seth Cohen, broke his neck while playing hockey, tripping over the goalie’s stick and crashing into the boards, causing the band to cancel its fall tour. A six-and-a-half-hour operation later and Cohen is fine, his third cervical vertebra fixed with a piece of his hip, and the band is once again on tour with its puckhead ax slinger. Ask for Number One Cup to play its recently recorded cover of “By Design,” by D.C.’s Rites of Spring, when it plays with opener the Hurricane Lamps at 8:30 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1831 14th St. NW. $5. (202) 667-7960. (CP)