Chronic Negress

I was born in Washington DC and then followed my journalism career away from the city for close to 35 years. Eventually I’ll get to why I was at the 9:30 club to see Anvil, but the topic needs some context. When I left DC right after high school, most of my Mom’s siblings were alive, serially marrying and borrowing money from our family. The brothers Whitt died, one of a heroin overdose while I was at MIT, the other of liver cancer a few years later when I was in Jacksonville. Since returning, I’ve found out some apples haven’t fallen that far from the tree. Mom is the last of her line, in her pink Gerrichair, rail thin and closed off by dementia. Some of the stories of that time are locked away inside of her, so I’m slowly trying to reconstruct some of the things I missed.

However, when I did come home, the 9:30 was kind of my home away from home. My sister was a regular at dance nights there. I went for bands like Killing Joke, Guadalcanal Diary, the Replacements, Soul Asylum, the True Believers and such. The old 9:30 was right downtown at 930 F Street NW hence the name. The dressing room was over a broken sewer pipe, which meant it usually smelled worse than bands who were saving on motel money by sleeping in the van. It also proved the adage that hardly anything is more overrated than backstage.

Courtesy Earl What I Saw 2.0 on Flickr A Little Tavern

I knew I would go back sometime though as I age I am less and less fond of stand-up venues thanks to a pair of knee replacements and other signs of decrepitude. The 9:30 is now located in something of a warehouse district near Howard University Hospital, which was built on the site of the old Griffith Stadium. There’s a parking lot you pay $20 to use, which is guarded by a large, amiable black man. After driving up on what appeared to be a “transaction” between a pair of SUVs and some gentleman in big jackets on a spring night, I parked and headed to the club. I had missed Misstallica, an all-female Metallica tribute band, but wandered around the club for a bit to get my bearings. I was beginning to write off my old town as fatally Southern when I saw they had Yuengling on draft. No beer for The Negress this night. I had choir at church the next day. I suspect I was the only person at the 9:30 that night who had that dilemma.

I ended up in the balcony, which the club has thoughtfully tiered for easy viewing. The floor is concrete so I knew I would only last as long as my knees did. Guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow began the show in the crowd on the floor playing impossibly speedy guitar sort of like Alvin Lee’s interminable set in “Woodstock.” However, I was smiling, which is not my usual reaction to speed metal. The crowd were snapping camera photos and supporting Kudlow as he noodled away. It was delightfully democratic.

Kudlow did  go onstage with bass player Glenn Five and drummer Robb Reiner and ripped through tunes like “Weed Assassins,” “This is 13″ and “Screw You.” Kudlow noted that the last time they had played DC was in 1989, and he could see the light shining off the bald spots in the audience. In the ongoing theme of democracy, he noted that he was also “rocking the Friar Tuck look.” I could not stop smiling. I did throw an obligatory devils’ horn metal roolz sign now and then, but this all made me happy. It’s as though the old traditions of gleeful bombast were still in place.

The new 9:30 is better than the old in terms of audience comfort and being smoke-free. As I returned to the suburbs like I used to after shows, I wondered how many people could spot the pitched green roofs of the old Little Taverns. Did they know about Dart Drugs and People’s? Did they know that neither Silver Spring nor Bethesda had downtowns when I was a kid? In short, stay tuned for more explanations.