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Morning, folks!
Looks like D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier jumped the gun on determining the death of a man near U Street a case of “vigilante justice” on the part of five employees of the music venue DC9 (including one of its co-owners); they were arraigned on Saturday for aggravated assault and marked for release—though more serious charges still could be in the cards, depending on what the medical examiner says about the cause of death. The fate of DC9, too, appears to be somewhat up in the air, with its co-owner in limbo and shows canceled until at least the middle of this week. The news made it all the way to Pitchfork.
Meanwhile, Red Palace—the elision of erstwhile H St. neighbors The Red & The Black and Palace of Wonders—had to cancel its first shows over the weekend. Sounds like a tough weekend for Steve Lambert, who handles booking for both venues.
Slate becomes the latest to heap praise on the new Arena Stage, calling it the “most un-Washingtonian building since… the National Museum of the American Indian.” The author’s prescription for curing the Capital of its stuffy neoclassical aesthetic? Hire more Canadian modernists.
Belle & Sebastian’s wussiness: unforgivable? WaPo’s music brains debate.
In an article in the latest issue of Scientific American Mind, a couple neuroscientists use the following analogy to explain the limited ability of psychopaths to understand human emotion: “they hear the words, but not the music.” This must be why quoting lyrics—in Facebook statuses or overwrought blog posts—always fails to approximate the words’ emotional clout in the context of the song. I guess need more psychopath friends.
Apropos, house mate and D.C. arts guru J.L. Fischer‘s gonna go nuts when Destroyer‘s new album hits the Web in January. (Useless bit of City Paper trivia: They’re his favorite band.)
That’s all.