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Silverdocs is just around the corner, as you know if you picked up today’s Washington City Paper (online later today!). And for aficionados of punk rock, not to mention net-neutrality nerds, there’s at least one good option on the festival’s slate.
Or you could sate your punk jones tonight next Thursday at Affinity Lab in Adams Morgan, where longtime D.C. activist Mark Andersen will be screening 70 minutes of footage he began collecting while working on his history of the city’s punk rock, Dance of Days. It’s not a formal documentary film, the Positive Force co-founder says, just a byproduct of his research.
“I’d been here for a significant portion of the time the book covers, but I wasn’t here from ’76 to ’84,” he says. “And even the parts of the book I was here for, when you’re present for something your memories aren’t always reliable… so documents and videos were terribly invaluable.”
His footage, which he’ll be providing commentary for, begins with shots of the trippy punk band the Slickee Boys with its original singer, Martha Hull. From there, Andersen says, expect video of performances by Half Japanese, Minor Theart, S.O.A., Rites of Spring, Fugazi, Dag Nasty, Embrace, Bikini Kill, and others.
He also has video from Positive Force’s 2005 Counter-Inaugeral Ball, a concert which then spilled out into a march, and then a “minor riot” (of which, he says, he did not approve; almost 80 people were arrested).
Andersen says he’ll also show some rare video from 1980 of Bad Brains performing, while young Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye look on. “It’s one of the holy grails,” he says.
The evening is free, but donations will benefit the senior-outreach non-profit Andersen runs, We Are Family. It takes place 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. tonight at Affinity Lab, which is at 2451 18th St. And it’s not the only Positive Force-related activity this next weekend. June marks the group’s 25th year, and it has a whole host of events planned. More on it later.