Rock and Roll

Last Sunday night I caught a performance by the Father of Emo, Jeremy Enigk. In the early and mid 90s, his band Sunny Day Real Estate helped launch what would eventually become the (now extremely annoying) emo craze of today. Enigk is the original sensitive, silky-voiced punk rocker. Before there was Ben Gibbard and Death Cab for Cutie, there was Enigk and Sunny Day Real Estate.

As you might expect, the show was quite good, suitably epic and eloquent, and the live setting really shows off how amazing Enigk’s pipes are. On CD, you realize the guy has a good voice; live, when you know it doesn’t have the benefit of ProTools and is booming through club speakers, you understand that it's borderline miraculous.

Incidentally, the show was at Rock N Roll Hotel, D.C.'s newest rock venue in the up-and-coming Atlas district. The venue’s sound is only mediocre (I’ve heard much worse, but also much better; one friend grumbled a bit), but the atmosphere is really nifty. It’s been done up like an actual old-style hotel, and the upstairs bar and private rooms, with their classy antique furniture and musty wooden décor (mixed, appropriately, with rock paraphernalia), well—it’s one of the coolest rooms I’ve been in since moving to D.C.

Addendum: I really like the folks at AEI, but somehow I just don't buy this. I drink far, far, far more coffee than any human should, and I'm definitely addicted. It's so important to my day-to-day existence and my work productivity that I sometimes joke that it's responsible for a significant portion of my life's successes. Come to think of it, it might not even be a joke.