IN THE PAST YEAR, Ozomatli has played Indonesia, India, Jordan, Egpyt and even Nepal.

But the most unlikely place the band has appeared?

The set of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars."

"Its f---ing weird because I never really watched the show, but it felt like everyone around me does," saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Ulises Bella said. "You work yourself up a lot for two minutes of work and you realize how important those two minutes are because millions of people are watching you. It's a surreal experience."

Ozomatli got the gig because of a familial connection — Justin "El Nino" Poree, who plays percussion and raps, just happens to know the show's orchestra pit guitarist — his dad.

So now that Bella's performed on the show, has he started watching regularly?

Continue Reading "Goodwill Touring: Ozomatli" »

WHEN DREW HELLER first went to Africa in 2001, he had a bit of an epiphany.

He was studying guitar with Lamine Soumano, when they started to work on a traditional African love song. When it came time for his solo, Heller asked Soumano what he should play.

"I can't tell you what to play," Soumano replied. "Play what you would play, what would come naturally to you."

Heller realized then it was important for him to be himself, not to pretend to be Malian.

"That moment, or what came from that moment has opened my heart to [West African music] in a different way and drawn me more into West African music than any way I would have imagined," he said.

Later, Heller and his friends Justin Perkins (guitar, kora), Teal Brown (drums) and Luke Quaranta (percussion) — all of whom made trips to Africa — formed Toubab Krewe, a band merging West African and rock 'n' roll influences into one sonic stew. (The group's main members met in Asheville, N.C., while in college and added bassist David Pranksy in 2004.)

Continue Reading "American Afro-Pop: Toubab Krewe" »

ALTHOUGH DEVELOPERS and officials still have some details to hammer out, the city of Falls Church's downtown is going to get a major facelift. As The Post's Kristen Mack reports, the city council approved plans for a $317 million mixed-use, four-block development early Thursday morning after eight hours of public comments and two days of deliberations.

While the site at Broad and S. Washington streets is mostly made up of parking lots, four small apartment buildings will have to be condemned. In their place, developers from Atlantic Realty envision an eight-story hotel, a Harris Teeter grocery store, a bowling alley and new residential construction, adding a million square feet to the current site.

Critics of the plan contend that the plan isn't all that different from other mixed-use developments in Northern Virginia and doesn't fit well with Falls Church's small-town feel.

Construction could begin this summer.

» "Council Approves Controversial Downtown Revitalization Project" [WaPo]

IF YOU'VE DRIVEN ON ROUTE 7 through the city of Falls Church, you may have been maddened by its slow speed limit and ever-vigilant police force, which makes the trip between Seven Corners and Tysons Corner stretch on for what seems like eternity. Now, officials and planners in Falls Church are concentrating on getting those low-speed passers by to stop. After two public hearings slated for this week, the city council will vote on a grand plan to remake its downtown.

As The Post's Kristen Mack reports:

If approved, the $317 million project would be the biggest thing to happen to Falls Church since Metro extended the Orange Line there in 1986. In addition to attracting shoppers and diners from across the region, city officials say, they hope the revival of the downtown area will bring young professionals, first-time homeowners and empty nesters to buy condominiums, rent townhouses and establish roots in Falls Church.

» "Falls Church Turns to the Future" [WaPo]

Photo by Tracy A. Woodward/The Washington Post

WHEN OTIS TAYLOR speaks, he takes long, contemplative pauses between each thought — or maybe he's just pausing to eat breakfast during an early morning phone interview.

"I slept late," Taylor admitted, snacking on peanuts instead of his planned grits.

Whatever the reason, those pauses fit with Taylor's image of a conscientious, socially aware bluesman.

Taylor's songs frequently deal with sensitive issues including race, violence, politics and history. But his newest album, "Recapturing the Banjo" (Telarc), takes Taylor's themes to another level. It's an album dedicated to showcasing the banjo's African roots.

Continue Reading "Pickin' on History: Banjo Player Otis Taylor" »

"SUNLIGHT COMING THROUGH THE HAZE / No gaps in the blind / To let it inside," sings Steven Wilson at the start of the title track and album opener of Porcupine Tree's new concept album, "Fear of a Blank Planet" (Atlantic).

As the opening lines imply, "Fear of a Blank Planet" is a bleak experience. The young protagonist of the album lives in a world dominated by constant stimulation — from Playstation, iPods, reality television, prescription drugs and an overload of information.

"When I was growing up, I wasn't so aware of what was going on all over the world," said Wilson. "For the most part, I was really only aware of what was going on immediately around me. Now, with the Internet, information travels all over the world quickly. Kids today know what's going on all over the world and they see all of this reality TV, and the message they are constantly receiving is, 'If you aren't famous and you aren't on TV, you're nothing, you aren't important.'

"I think that it's easy for kids to be aware just how insignificant they are in the world today, and I really wasn't really aware of that when I was a kid."

Continue Reading "Prickly Side of Prog: Porcupine Tree" »

STAN RIDGWAY IS STILL doing that Voodoo that he do so well.

"There was a time when MTV first started that the door cracked open just slightly," recalled Ridgway, on the phone at a gas station outside Houston. "And a lot of strange stuff seemed to have got in there for a while."

One of the strangest bits of that stuff sported a weirdly syncopated keyboard riff and a verse that started, "I wish I was in Tiajuana [sic]/Eating barbequed iguana." A lizard turned on a spit, another slithered from a shattered piñata, a face emerged from a pot of beans. And Ridgway, the twitchy singer with the twangy, talky delivery, yammered into a vintage mic: &"I'm on a Mexican radio/I'm on a Mexican - wo-oh - radio." There was nothing else like it.

It's been a quarter-century since Wall of Voodoo released "Call of the West," the album of twisted, noirish story-songs whose uncharacteristic calling card was "Mexican Radio." It's been nearly that long since Ridgway set out on his own. Thursday at the State Theatre, he'll revisit the classic slab of not-quite new wave.

"We're not playing the whole record. We play about eight songs from it," Ridgway said, "because we're doing solo stuff at the same time."

Continue Reading "Heeding the 'Call': Wall of Voodoo's Stan Ridgway" »

THREE MEN IN LONDON recently completed a liver-quivering task: a pub crawl featuring stops at all 275 stations on the British capital's Underground rail network. That's not 275 stations in one trip, mind you — it took place over five years. It's still quite the feat, though. And too many pints to count...

Since our Metrorail only has 86 stations, it'd be much easier to do a D.C. subway pub crawl, right? Not exactly. While stations like Gallery Place-Chinatown, Clarendon and Bethesda have plenty of options to choose from, there are some stations that aren't known for being hubs of nightlife — they're better places to park a car than to throw back a pint.

So we used our very own Metro Links mapping tool to see whether there are drinks to be had near some of Metro's outlying stations.

» VAN DORN STREET: Yes, sort of, but you have to walk over the CSX tracks to Pickett Street. Options include Shenandoah Brewing Company (you make your own beer) and Nick's Nightclub ("a well-known spot for county music and line dancing").
» CHEVERLY: No.
» GREENBELT: No, but wait a few years.
» EAST FALLS CHURCH: Well, sort of. You just have to walk 10-15 minutes into Falls Church.
» FORT TOTTEN: An emphatic no.
» DUNN LORING-MERRIFIELD: Yes! There's a Shark Club billiards location nearby. Who knew?
» FEDERAL CENTER SW: Yes. The hotel bar at the Holiday Inn called 21st Amendment Bar & Grill. (We've actually been there. It's the crown jewel of the neighborhood.)

» "Five-Year Pub Crawl Tours Entire Tube" [This Is Local London via Londonist]
» "MetroLinks" [Express]

STEP INSIDE the white-pewed hush of The Falls Church, a 1769 red brick building just inside the Beltway in Virginia, and it’s easy to imagine this place’s storied past. Volunteers signed up to fight in the American Revolution here. Injured Union soldiers slept within these walls when the church served as a Civil War hospital. Countless Virginians got married, baptized babies and had their funeral rites read within the Georgian edifice, pictured here.

But outside, the views from the church’s bucolic graveyard suggest that the 21st century (and development) has finally zoomed into Falls Church City, the once-sleepy town that surrounds the church. A mammoth steel crane, now a common sight in these parts, marks the construction site where the 230-unit, six-story Pearson Square condo development is taking shape. One- to three-bedroom units priced from the low $300s to the mid $700s should start delivering this fall.

Also expected to debut in 2007: the still-under-construction Spectrum on West Broad Street. The building will feature an earth-friendly "green roof" and 189 one- and two-bedroom units ($400,000-$850,000) outfitted with equally green bamboo or cork floors and 9-foot ceilings.

These and a clutch of other, already occupied new condos, combined with new restaurants and an uptick in commercial projects, are helping to turn this small, incorporated city known for its top-notch schools and village-like feel into a far more urbanized place. Sidewalks seem more crowded, cafes seem more plentiful (and populated) and the area has the buzz — and the buzz-saw noise — of a neighborhood on its way up.

Continue Reading "In Falls Church, a Little City With a Big Boom" »

IT SEEMS ALMOST everybody has an opinion on comedian, actor and political activist Janeane Garofalo. Perhaps she won your heart forever in "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion" or you despised her political punditry on CNN's "Crossfire" or her Air America radio show.

Currently on a stand-up tour that brings her sharp and intelligent style of comedy to a sold-out State Theatre in Falls Church on Tuesday, Garofalo spoke to Express about her recent experiences in the world of political commentary and media in which, it seems, reality bites.

» EXPRESS: Whenever a comedian is interviewed, it seems they always say their first love is stand-up. I'm wondering if that's true for you — or do you prefer acting?
» GAROFALO: I like them both at different times. It's like any job: Sometimes your co-workers and the environment is very enjoyable and sometimes not. So it really depends on the project.

» EXPRESS: How do you develop stand-up material — do you try it out on friends? How does that process work?
» GAROFALO: It's a process of failure on stage. In New York there's so many venues to perform in that are not comedy clubs proper. There's the indifferent bars and music clubs; they have nights of comedy, which are much more casual and I just bring my notebook up and try it there. Sometimes I get rid of it if it's really bad. Or even if it bombs, if I feel like there's potential, I hang onto it and just do it that way, or just play around with it in my mind and hope for the best.

Continue Reading "Crossfire: Janeane Garofalo" »