Over the course of the week I’ve had occasion to leaf through two separate books of photography—Pat Graham’s Silent Pictures and Glen E. Friedman’s Fugazi: Keep Your Eyes Open—that document indie music in and out of D.C. through the ’90s and into the early part of this decade.

I’ve come to this conclusion: D.C. of 2007, your bands are fucking boring. What happened!?

I’m not advocating that everybody should strap on a wallet chain and move into a bike-house or contort themselves on top of the monitor speaker at Black Cat—but jeezus people, there are pictures of Tortoise in here that look more animated than most of the groups I saw at Fort Reno this summer.

D.C., you need to make like House of Pain.

(Full Disclosure: Bands that I have been in have not helped to resolve this dilemma.)