Best heckle: to a very pregnant Kasey Chambers: “Play all night!” followed by “Play ’til the baby’s born!” 9 July at the Birchmere.

Best aluminum-necked guitars: Torche, again. Yes, they tied in the same category back in March, but those EGCs are so gorgeous (and sound so awesome) that it bears repeating. 16 July at the Rock & Roll Hotel.

Best hand quiver; also, best New Jersey accent: Suffocation. 10 July at the Ottobar.

Best Long Island accent; also, most rambling stage banter: Mindy Smith. 24 July at Jammin’ Java.

Best new friend: Always nice to strike up random conversations with folks at shows; best one this month was at Children of Bodom. 15 July at Jaxx.

Best song about zombies: Buck 65’s “Zombie Delight”. 21 July at Iota.

Biggest swing in interest level from opening act to headliner: In short, NYC’s Liturgy was awesome. I couldn’t wait for openers Dope Body to get off the stage. 5 July at DC9.

Worst guacamole: OK, so there wasn’t any guac at any of the shows I attended in July. But on my way to see Yob and Dark Castle, two(!) restaurants in Baltimore were out of guac, which made for a very growling tummy and a bummer of a night. It’s a shame, too, ‘cuz the show was otherwise really great. 17 July at Sonar.

• I saw a total of 190 different bands at 29 different venues.
• Saturday was my most popular concert-going day with 16. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays were all tied for the lowest at 7.
• Most frequented venues: the Black Cat (6 on the main stage, 4 on the backstage), Sonar (7), and Jaxx (6).
• House venues: the Robot House (Arlington), the Corpse Fortress (Silver Spring), the Candelhaus (Fairfax)
• States: DC (27), VA (22), MD (17), and PA (1). (yes, we know that DC isn’t really a state.)
• Most frequently seen bands: Ilsa (3), Kylesa (3), and Cartoon Johnny (3).
• Busiest month: March (17). Quietest month: February (6).
• Busiest day: the 17th. I saw a concert on the 17th of every month for the first 6 months of this year: January (Night and the City @ the Velvet Lounge), February (Eyehategod and Misery Index @ Sonar), March (Kataklysm and Decrepit Birth @ Jaxx), April (Sharon van Etten @ the Red Palace), May (the Antlers @ the Black Cat), and June (Earth @ the Ottobar).

Best opening song: David Bazan’s “Wolves At the Door”. 24 June @ the Black Cat.

Best multicultural show: a vocal festival featuring groups from Canada (Cadence), Russia (Konevets Quartet), South Africa (Wits Choir), Indonesia (Cordana Youth Choir), and the U.S. (Los Angeles Children’s Chorus and Pacific Boychoir). Even better? The show was free! 26 June @ Strathmore.

Best Iraqi metal band: Acrassicauda, opening up for Destruction. I had spent the earlier part of the evening at a Nats game, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see an Iraqi metal band later that night. 13 May @ Jaxx.

Best Tuesday night crowd: I always love seeing a venue packed on a Tuesday night, and the Antlers certainly didn’t disappoint. 17 May @ the Black Cat.

Worst cell phone: The woman at the Agnes Obel show whose phone rang not once but twice. Seriously? You didn’t turn the volume off after it rang the first time? You didn’t notice that everyone turned to stare at you? Really? 13 June @ 6th & I Synagogue Downstairs.

Best cello: I didn’t really think that an extra instrument would make Earth’s music better, but I was pleasantly surprised: the cello added a lot to the group’s newest album, but it added even more to the older songs. 17 June @ the Ottobar.

Best show at a pizza joint: Must say, it was kind of surreal to see Municipal Waste in a pizza house -slash- ping pong place. 6 May @ Comet Ping Pong.

Best pelt: some dude at Amon Amarth was wearing a full bear pelt, which is impressive enough on its own, but the A/C at Jaxx took the night off, which made wearing animal fur even less appealing. More power to you, drunk pelt-wearing dude who kept staggering around as if you were going to vomit in the back of the club. 2 May @ Jaxx.

Best stage set: Shpongle had an elaborate stage set: a gigantic boat-like contraption from which the Shpongle dude stood and DJed/danced. 3 May @ the 9:30 Club.

Best birthday party: A whole slew of metal bands celebrating Marie’s birthday out in Leesburg, VA. 14 May @ Balls Bluff Tavern.

Best going-away party: Someone moving away is always a good excuse to get a bunch of metal bands to play a show, and Deathammer bid farewell to one of its members in style, along with Ilsa and Extermination Angel. 25 June @ the Corpse Fortress.

Best death metal: The guys in Loculus are always up to crazy stuff, as this picture illustrates. 18 May @ the Corpse Fortress.

Best way to warm up for DeathFest: Anhedonist and Oak. Wish I could’ve stayed out later to catch Midnight Eye and Ilsa, but I had a long day of work the next day before heading up to Charm City. 25 May @ the Corpse Fortress.

Best way to cool down after DeathFest: Dead Can Dance’s Brendan Perry and the Cocteau Twins’s Robin Guthrie. The most amusing thing about this show was the kid on my pew who freaked out at every Dead Can Dance cover, literally squirming in his seat– and shaking the entire pew. 30 May @ 6th & I Synagogue.

Best house show: Auroboros, the latest project from Brian Baroness and Rob Salome. 4 June @ the Robot House.

Best way to celebrate a holiday that I really don’t care anything about: As much as I love Mexican food, I’d rather be anywhere other than a Mexican restaurant on Cinco de Mayo. A power metal show– thanks to Holy Grail– provided a great alternative. 5 May @ the Red Palace.

Biggest disappointment: Maybe it was all the hype– a metal show! in a church sanctuary! with a women’s choir!– but damn, I found the Assembly of Light Choir to be off-pitch and the Body’s set to be too damn short. Total letdown. 24 June @ St. Stephen’s.

Most worth the wait: Neurosis. Now, you might think I’m talking about the wait since the band’s last area appearance, which was ages ago, but I’m talking about the wait through a torrential thunderstorm that passed through Baltimore just before the band hit the stage. We weren’t about to lose the front-row spots we’d staked out for this show, so we waited it out, getting drenched and making all kinds of new friends through the experience– the tuba Ph.D. student, the two Americans majoring in German, and the Australian who’d travelled over here just for this festival. Oh, and Neurosis’s set itself was the highlight of the festival, hands-down.

Second-best set of the festival: Orange Goblin. Seriously, who knew they’d be so damn great live?

Best last words: “Don’t listen to shitty music!” These were the final words of the final Skinless show.

Best farewell: Cathedral’s final show.

Most disappointing set: Ghost, who closed out the festival on Sunday night. (Note: not to be confused with the Japanese experimental band Ghost– although I’m betting most MDF attendees are not exactly Ghost or Damon & Naomi fans). I wrote about their album Opus Eponymous for the Post (my review is here), and I was looking forward to their first-ever US show, but a super-long setup/soundcheck and a really short set (35-40 minutes, tops) made this a fairly disappointing show overall. Admittedly, the show was also hampered by some things that weren’t the band’s fault– an overwhelmingly aggressive audience (a fight broke out next to me over a place to stand) and ridiculously loud/unnecessary sing-alongs. Still, it was great to see the band play even for just a short set, and their costumes were pretty damn cool too.

Best circle pit involving costumed fans, inflatable animals, and glow-sticks: You might not think that there would be too much competition for this category, but there were two bands in the running: New Orleans’s Flesh Parade (Thursday night) and the Dutch Last Days of Humanity (Sunday night). I think Flesh Parade’s fans had a better execution, but LDoH’s music was (slightly) more enjoyable, so I guess you could call this category a tie.

Best Cover: Coroner’s tribute to ‘the first thrasher’, playing Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”.

Best Death Metal that I wish I’d been less tired for: Spain’s Wormed. They were great, but it’s always tough to re-focus to the indoor stage after spending the last few hours out in the hot sun. (Also, they had to follow Coroner, which is not an easy task.)

Most enjoyable band I’ve already seen twice this year: Kylesa. Didn’t get to see their whole set (yeah, it’s not like I was going to leave Neurosis early), but they sure sounded great in that main room at Sonar– a far cry from the compressed thunder of their set at the Black Cat’s Backstage this January.

Other highlights: Marduk, Exhumed, Tragedy, Buzzov*en, Corrosion of Conformity, and Aura Noir.

Saw a handful of other bands as well, but that’s about enough of my walk down MDF memory lane….

Best crowd: the sold-out Black Cat for Titus Andronicus. Ordinarily, I bristle at sold-out shows, but this crowd was full of a good energy: everyone was jumping so much, I thought the whole club was going to levitate. And covers of X-Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” and Sham 69’s “If the Kids are United” certainly didn’t hurt. 27 April @ the Black Cat.

Best house show: Ilsa + Amarok + Spirals. Also wins the award for “loudest house show”. 13 April @ the Corpse Fortress.

Best local a cappella debut: the Agency at the Mid-Atlantic Harmony Sweeps. It’s always fun to see friends from multiple projects all come together and form something new. It’s also fun when an a cappella interpretation can make me enjoy a song I ordinarily can’t tolerate (in this case: “We Built This City”). 2 April @ the Birchmere.

Best mosh pit: I bet you’re expecting me to cite some metal show here, right? Wrong! Best mosh pit goes to the kids at an a cappella show in a school auditorium on a Friday afternoon: Cartoon Johnny + Vox Pop + the UVA Sil’hooettes + Capital Blend. The sound was a bit off, but man, those kids were having the time of their lives. Future rockstars, perhaps? 1 April @ Williamsburg Middle School.

Best roadtrip: I hadn’t gotten out of town for a show in ages, so it was great to hit the road with one of my favorite people from my Austin days to go see So Percussion up in Philadelphia. Even the snarky sighs from the dude sitting behind us (in a Flyers jersey and a do-rag (no, I didn’t make that up)) couldn’t ruin this show. 23 April @ the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

Best spontaneously pre-planned conga line: Danielson, who could’ve won for “Best costumes”, but that’s too predictable for them at this point. 16 April @ the Red Palace.

Best use of flute: Bardo Pond. See also: “Best stoner rock band” and “Best way to end a great weekend”. 10 April @ the Black Cat backstage.

Best local band: the Chance, with their Cure-influenced pop songs. 15 April @ the Black Cat.

Smallest crowd: Fittingly, Low’s “Tiny Desk” concert at the NPR offices. It brought back memories of watching them film an in-studio performance at the Yahoo studios in Dallas back in 2001. Great to see them performing really sparse (guitar + 2 voices) versions of songs from their newest album– “Try To Sleep”, “Nightingale”, and “Something’s Turning Over”. 25 April @ NPR.

Best request: “Starfire” by Low. ’nuff said. 26 April @ the Black Cat.

Worst band name: Hammer No More the Fingers. Yes, they’re good at what they do– a North Carolina indie-rock vibe a la Superchunk or Archers of Loaf– but sheesh, the name! 6 April @ the Red Palace.

Weirdest venue for a metal show: Don’t get me wrong, I love that Jammin’ Java hosted a metal show this month — Iris Divine + Division + TimeLord + Death Penalty– but it was certainly bizarre to see those bands on the same stage that my old a cappella group graced many times. 12 April @ Jammin’ Java.

Rudest heckle: “Better off solo anyway!” at Sharon van Etten, as she was joking with her bandmates. Read the full story here. 17 April @ the Red Palace.

Weirdest crowd dissipation: Krallice and Withered. I totally get that sometimes people are more into an opening band and choose to leave before the headliner takes the stage. But I was really surprised to see about 2/3rds of the (fairly small) crowd pouring for the exits during Krallice’s set– especially because they freakin’ ruled! And it’s not like the show was that late, either: the band was done by 1:30 AM, and it was a Friday night anyway. Really odd. 29 April @ Sonar.

Fewest memories: I definitely remember being at the Corpse Fortress to see Torch Runner + Artillery Breath + Fisthammer, and I also remember that the singer dude from one of those bands had an outrageous ‘fro. But this was also the peak of my monthlong tango with the flu, so all I really remember from this show is feeling like crap. A shame. 9 April @ the Corpse Fortress.

Best aluminum-necked guitar: It’s a tie!!! Torche rocked two gorgeous EGCs, and Agalloch was of course playing a gorgeous Travis Bean. 20 March @ Jaxx and 21 March @ Sonar.

Worst opening band: No question, Worm Ouroboros. I don’t even want to think about it again to write about it here (so check out the write-up on DCHeavyMetal.com), but it was a serious yawn. And also, really, NO ONE wants to listen to that much head voice. 21 March @ Sonar.

Best church show: Dropdead + Magrudergrind + Wasted Time + Cough + Ilsa. I still wish that this had been in the sanctuary, but it was still pretty awesome even in the rec room. I was surprised that the crowd dispersed so much after Magrudergrind’s awesome set (would’ve thought that Dropdead was the big draw here), but as good as that was, Cough was the real highlight for me. 12 March @ St Stephen’s.

Most offensive band name: Well, I don’t think there’s anything particularly offensive about the name Rotting Christ but some people might. 9 March @ Jaxx.

Most mismatched tour: Whose bright idea was it to stick Helmet as the headliner on a tour full of doom bands? Who knows. 23 March @ Jaxx.

Worst dancing: I know I should just let people enjoy live music in their own way, but it’s just really hard to watch people with absolutely no rhythm whatsoever try to dance and clap along to music, really off-tempo. And this was at an Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed show! Seriously, people, if you can’t find the beat at a soul show, you should just leave your dancing shoes at home. 10 March @ the Rock & Roll Hotel.

Best metal show at a gay bar: Palkoski / Xeukatre / Wolfnuke / Wolventhrone. I’ve heard that the Monday night metal shows out at the So Addictive Lounge in Herndon might be coming to an end, which is a bummer– while it’s certainly a haul for me to get my city-dwelling butt out to soccer-mom country on a Monday night, I’ve always liked the fact that this scene exists. 7 March @ So Addictive.

Best St Patrick’s Day Show: OK, Canadian hyperblast band Kataklysm has absolutely no relation to St Paddy’s day whatsoever. Fine. 17 March @ Jaxx.

Best colors: the Ex. OK, yes, with their solid-color t-shirts, they looked sorta like the Wiggles, and once you get that image in your head, can you really listen to the music seriously? 12 March @ the Black Cat.

Worst club experience: I understand that sometimes things don’t run on schedule. But when a club double-books shows and doesn’t let the bands playing the “late” show even start loading in (and soundchecking) until after the doors were supposed to open for their show, you know things are going to run really late. I enjoyed what I got to see of Dark Sea Dream (note: way more psychedelic/shoegaze than metal), but I may be getting too old for shows where the headlining band is just getting started at 2 AM. 18 March @ the Velvet Lounge.

Best plaid: The trifecta of plaid shirts worn by Mike Watt and his Missingmen. 31 March @ the Black Cat backstage.

Best bells: Admittedly, seeing Virginia Bronze made me kinda sorta miss playing handbells. 20 March @ George Washington National Masonic Memorial Auditorium.

Most covers (outside an a cappella show): Vetiver rocked covers by Townes Van Zandt (”Standin’”), A.R.Kane (”Miles Apart”), and Gene Clark (”Here Tonight”). And those are just the ones I remember. 25 March @ IOTA.

Best a cappella competition: Aca-Idol at SingStrong. Good mix of collegiate and post-collegiate groups. 4 March @ South Lakes High School.

Most panty-throwing at a high school a cappella competition: SingStrong’s HS competition. Seriously, there’s a group called the “Manchoir”; who can keep panties on during that? 5 March @ South Lakes High School.

Worst a cappella headliner: Street Corner Symphony. Sure, they came in 2nd place on NBC’s Sing-Off. And yes, I can cut them some slack because their percussionist wasn’t able to make it. But that’s really no excuse: this set was sloppy, and that sloppiness had nothing to do with an absent member. (We can all be forgiving of that and even of tinkering with looping equipment to provide VP in absentia. But also: you’re at an a cappella festival! you could’ve found a substitute for the night!) What with inexplicable carrots thrown into the audience, time wasted with sheet music giveaways, and sub-par vocal performances (really, we all know that you sing abbreviated versions of songs on the show. but it wouldn’t kill you to learn those other verses of “Fix You” for a concert), this show was, as I texted a friend that night, a clusterf*ck of a trainwreck. 5 March @ South Lakes High School.

Best a cappella headliner: the Bobs. After the trainwreck of the previous night, it was great to see these seasoned performers (and seriously, Richard Bob = one of my favorite basses of all time) show us how a headlining set should be done. 6 March @ Reston Community Center.

Best horns: the ROVA Saxophone Quartet performing with the Nels Cline Singers. Admittedly, their collaboration album the Celestial Septet (New World Records, 2010) was great, but it was even more amazing to hear– and see!– them perform these songs live. Highlight of the set: “Cesar Chávez”. 27 February @ the Wind-Up Space.

Worst pick-up line: Dude at the Immortal show: “Hey, do you like Immortal?” Me: “I’m here, aren’t I?” 20 February @ Sonar (main stage).

Best house show: Inter Arma, Windhand, Fatal, and Revolta. Man, it’s been a while since I’ve been to a house show; this one was originally scheduled to be at Hole in the Sky, but it was moved at the last minute, due to a visit from the Fire Warden. 19 February @ the Candelhaus.

Worst crowd: sold-out Rock & Roll Hotel for Wild Nothing. Sold-out shows at the Hotel are always uncomfortable, but this one– with its overly-exuberant (and unnecessarily so!) crowd– was a bit much to take. 12 February @ the Rock & Roll Hotel.

Best local band: I’m embarrassed that it’s taken me this long to see Screen Vinyl Image but they were totally great. 11 February @ the Mansion at Strathmore.

Best show for reasons that had nothing to do with the music: Eyehategod. Don’t get me wrong, there were some great local bands on this bill that I hadn’t seen before– Misery Index in particular was awesome– but that’s probably not at all how I’ll remember this show. 17 February @ Sonar (Club Stage).

So I’m gradually chipping away at the list of writing that’s not yet online; here are six pieces (3 new CD reviews, 3 old concert reviews) that I’ve added up to my online clipfile:
• Concert review: Built to Spill at the 9:30 club, performing Perfect From Now On - 23 September 2008 (the Washington Post)
• Concert review: Jimmy Eat World and Paramore at the American University Bender Arena - 26 April 2008 (the Washington Post)
• Concert review: Rascal Flatts at Nissan Pavilion - 26 July 2008 (the Washington Post)
• CD Review: the Concretes: WYWH (Friendly Fire, 2010) - the Washington Post
• CD Review: Eilen Jewell: Butcher Holler: a Tribute to Loretta Lynn (Signature Sounds, 2010) - the Washington Post
• CD Review: Sarah McLachlan: Laws of Illusion (Arista, 2010) - the Washington Post

Not sure if I’ll update this blog every time I do a clipfile update, but it is kind of cool and weird to go back and read stuff I wrote 3 or 4 years ago.

I remember writing that Rascal Flatts review in the back seat of my car– the parking lot at Nissan Pavilion takes forever to empty out, so it was a way to kill time– and not realizing that the whole parking lot had finally emptied out until a security guard came and knocked on my window to find out what the hell I was still doing, sitting in the back seat of a car in the middle of an empty parking lot. I also remember talking to the mother of the teenager with the Rascal Flatts lyrics tattooed across her back, that I cited in that review.

I remember running into a friend of mine on the way in to that Built to Spill show (someone I don’t think I’ve seen since that night, now that I think about it) and pushing our way up to the very front nook of the balcony at the 9:30 club, which is one of my favorite places to watch a show in that club.

I remember walking to the Bender Arena from the metro– it’s a lot longer of a walk than I’d anticipated, which would’ve been fine except for the rain. And it kinda made me feel like I was in high school again, watching a rock concert in a basketball arena.

But any new Earth album had to start with a visit back to 2008’s outstanding The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull (Southern Lord), my #1 record of that year. That album really captures a moment for me; I listened to it over and over when I was living in Los Angeles in January of 2008. It wasn’t the greatest time in my life: After a debilitating breakup, I just wanted to get out of town, so I accepted a couple of projects for my dayjob that sent me travelling for four months continuously, bouncing back and forth between northern Alberta, Canada, and Los Angeles. I thought that the travel would help– a change of scenery, an opportunity to get out of DC and my apartment and not have to see all the things that might stir up bad memories– but it had the opposite effect. I spent those four months completely numb (quite literally so: it was -40 F in northern Canada while I was up there) and disassociated from my friends and life back home. I have some fantastic friends in LA who kept me grounded while I was there, but living out of a suitcase for months at a time is never easy, and it’s certainly not the way to try to heal a bruised heart.

And then there was that Earth record. I listened to it over and over and over again in my little rental car (one does a lot of driving in SoCal, it turns out), and it channeled something for me. I couldn’t put it into words then, and I probably can’t now either, but it captured my attention and it calmed me in a way that nothing else to that point had been able to.

I’ve touched here before about how my listening habits changed when I started writing about music (check how I wrote about Silkworm’s 2002 album Italian Platinum, here). That 2002-2003 timeframe is when I turned from a music fan into a serious music writer– and therefore, a music consumer– and the changes to my listening habits are huge. Albums released before that time conjure very specific memories: Spoon’s Girls Can Tell (Merge, 2001) was the soundtrack to my move out of Texas; Britt Daniel might’ve written “Anything You Want” about a woman, but my ears hear my breakup with the city of Austin: I took my half of the beer with me when I moved to DC, and I still get a little choked up thinking about the traffic light on the corner by the (now-defunct) Sound Exchange. Songs: Ohia’s The Lioness (Secretly Canadian, 2000) reminds me of a weekend spent in NYC with a boy I never dated (but probably should have), Low’s I Could Live in Hope (Vernon Yard, 1994) got me through countless allnighters in college, and Soul Coughing’s Ruby Vroom (Warner Brothers, 1994) gave me an escape from a miserable senior year in high school.

But now, I listen to music differently. I don’t get the luxury of listening to one album for weeks at a time; it’s now listen!-react!-moveon!, over and over and over again. I’m constantly asked for my reactions and thoughts on new albums– and I love having those conversations, don’t get me wrong, but keeping up with new music could be a full-time job; most days, I wish it were mine, but it’s not, which means I almost need to make even faster reactions since I don’t get to spend all my time on it.

What all this means, though, is that when I do make connections to albums, they become all the more intense. Back in 2008, even as early as January, there was no question that that Earth record was going to be my #1 album of the year; there may have been better albums released that year, but none was more powerful or meaningful to me than that one– music is all about capturing and evoking emotions, and that’s what that record does. Even when I listen to it now, though, I don’t think about the pain I was feeling at the time; instead, I hear only the calming effect that it had (and still has) on me.

I wish I could say that things have gotten better in the three years since I was living in LA, but this past January reminded me that some demons still cast their long shadows over the bruises that remain. Thank goodness, then, for another Earth record to pull me through the darkness into a calmer place.

Best way to start the year: Jucifer. First concert of the year in 2009, 2010, and 2011. 11 January @ the Black Cat backstage.

Best percussion: the thunderous force of Kylesa’s dueling drummers. 20 January @ the Black Cat backstage.

Best cover: Eli “Paperboy” Reed’s take on “Ace of Spades” [Motörhead]. 15 January @ Rock & Roll Hotel.

Best guest: Victor Griffin of Pentagram joining King Giant for a cover of Skynyrd’s “The Needle and the Spoon” (video here). 29 January @ the State Theatre.

Best tears: I’ll admit it: Lyle Lovett’s “If You Were To Wake Up” brought me to tears; then I went home and learned to play it on guitar. The friend who came with me to this show forbade me from ever listening to two Lovett songs in a row, for my own mental health (an order I’ve since ignored, by the way). 18 January @ the Birchmere.

Worst crowd: sold-out IOTA for Eilen Jewell. I’m happy IOTA has expanded– don’t get me wrong– but a full house of talking fans sure does make it hard to hear an artist perform. 21 January @ IOTA.

Earliest show: Who would’ve thought a 7-band Saturday night metal lineup at the Ottobar would end by 10 PM? Sorry, kids, totally stinks to have a curfew. 22 January @ the Ottobar.

Cutest Swede: Lisa Milberg of the Concretes. (Perhaps not fair, since there were no other Swedes this month….) 25 January @ the Rock & Roll Hotel.

Favorite local band: Night and the City (and yes, totally cheating, since they’re all friends of mine, but whatever). 17 January @ the Velvet Lounge.