McKaye, Timony, Colleta Pick Fave DC Record(s)

no one acksed me but I'd haveta go with P. Galore's Groovy, Hate F***

from Washington City Paper (go to there site to read full article - must use search engine, direct linking impossible)

Forty local music scenesters select their top 40—or 50 or 60—pieces of local music.

By Brent Burton, Eddie Dean, Joe Dempsey, David Dunlap Jr., Sarah Godfrey, Mark Jenkins, Anne Marson, Dave Nuttycombe, Leonard Roberge, Chris Shott, and Pamela Murray Winters

Gary Himelfarb, founder of local reggae label RAS Records, e-mails his emphatic vote for Root Boy Slim & the Sex Change Band With the Rootettes’ “Too Sick to Reggae”—“[a] true story about ending up in prison in Jamaica being accused of being a ganja smuggler!!!!!!” He also notes that “Chuck Brown ain’t bad either.”

Tentatively speaking for his entire trio, Navies bassist/guitarist Mike Petillo chooses “Early Humans, pretty much anything they did. They were so loud live, drenching the crowd with feedback squeals while singer/guitarist Matt Vanek spewed Black Flag lyrics and ran around in his white boxer shorts. Definitely one the most underrated heavy noise-rock bands of the last couple of years.”

“I am keen on Mick Barr’s Orthrelm/Crom-Tech discs,” says Pig Destroyer and Agoraphobic Nosebleed guitarist Scott Hull. “Orthrelm’s music is much like the crazy, detailed connect-the-dots artwork that Mick lends his discs’ covers,” he says. “His music is intensely complicated yet retains a very organic and improvised feel.”

Kevin Alvir, who as frontman for the Lil’ Hospital creates “sunny lo-fi pop straight from the bedroom,” chooses “Make Out Club” by Unrest. “I know it’s rather typical on my part,” he says. “But that song for me sums up that adolescent feeling of discovering all this exciting music from the area. It’s very teenage in spirit...but it’s very special as well.”

“I’m sure you’ll get a lot of votes for ‘Da Butt,’ and I do think ‘Da Butt’ is a fucking great song. There’s no way around that,” says Mark Noone, lead singer for the Slickee Boys, who ultimately chooses the Slickees’ own 1983 single, “When I Go to the Beach.” “Not just because I wrote it,” he says. “I just think it turned into kind of a D.C. anthem.”

Dischord Records co-founder and Evens member Ian MacKaye settles on legendary 1978 compilation :30 Over D.C., which fascinated him as a teenager. “Years later,” he says, “I was told that that when word got out that Skip Groff...was going to put out a compilation and was looking for submissions, people started making up bands and throwing together recordings to get on board. [It] ended up being a wonderful mix of artful basement recordings of one-off projects and solid active bands.”

Bruce Falkinburg, who plays bass in the Hidden Hand and owns Phase Recording in College Park, goes with Shudder to Think’s 1991 seven-songer, Funeral at the Movies. “It’s experimental, arty, anything-goes,” he says, “but it still rocks. It’s different from what you’d expect to be coming from D.C.”

Galaxy Hut booker and musician Alice Despard has no trouble selecting Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” “Not only was this song a beautiful, sensual revelation to me as a teenager when I heard it on the radio, it was just at this time that I learned that Roberta Flack resided in D.C. for a time,” she e-mails. “My understanding and appreciation of D.C. musicians’ role in the wider world of music just blew wide open from that moment onward.”

Musician and songwriter Timothy Bracken chooses former Autoclave member Mary Timony’s Mountains album, which he calls “[u]ndoubtedly unusual and important music. When I first heard this record, I felt the way I did when I first heard the White Album or Trout Mask Replica. I was amazed. The kind of record that stays with you and never gets old.”

“I think I’m gonna go with the new Medications album,” says Mary Timony. Though her choice, Your Favorite People All in One Place, doesn’t come out until June 13, Timony assures us that it “kicks ass” even in pre-release form. “[Medications are] a really amazing live band, and it really translates well on the record.”

Reached by phone, T.V. John Langworthy wastes no time in naming his favorite tune. “‘Big City,’” he says. “By T.V. John.” The author and “legendary bard” then starts singing: “It goes, ‘Oh, big city, Washington, D.Ceee-eee-eee..../Ohhh, big city, is there hope for me?’ I’ll give you a copy of it. You’ll hear why that’s my favorite D.C. song.”

After considering “stuff by Dischord bands, Velvet Monkeys, Bad Brains, Unrest, etc.,” ex-Jawbox-er and current DeSoto Records head Kim Colletta settles on 9353’s “Famous Last Words.” “When I first heard this song,” she says, “I was mostly into the D.C. hardcore scene. 9353...made me realize the incredible diversity and depth of the D.C. music scene.”

Onetime Lorelei and current Chessie member Stephen Gardner picks Rites of Spring’s self-titled 1985 LP. “My first obsession, when I was 8 or 9, was the Smiths,” he says, and Rites of Spring was like Minor Threat meets the Smiths....The album set up a template of honesty and freedom that I wanted always to be central to whatever I did with music.”