live shows and an aside about go-go

The only good thing about my long commute to work is that I get to listen to a lot of music. My iPod gets a work out during my 60 miles of Monday to Friday drive time and it’s always on shuffle. This randomness will sometimes serve up a song that knocks a nice nugget of remembrance loose.

Today’s earworm was an old track from Virginia Coalition. They are from the DC area and used to do the local circuit and I was lucky enough to catch one of their shows at a local dive bar.

The night I saw them they were banging out some nice DC Go-Go and they had the whole place moving. It was packed with old friends, hooligans, geeks, tremendous brunettes, and local drunks of the Otis variety. The beer was flowing and everyone was dancing. To this day I still think that VaCo appearance was one of the best live shows I have ever seen. Right time, right music, good company all converged to burn that show into my mind and bring it back to me while driving to work today.

<an aside about go-go music> If you haven’t heard DC Go-Go before you should try and find some. I don’t think it flourished much outside the DC Metro area, but in the 90’s you couldn’t swing a dead cat with out hitting a Go-Go show. Even in the suburban area of Maryland I lived in you could always find some live Go-Go. They went off anywhere you could plug a mic in and set up the bongos and drums. After hours at a Mexican restaurant, at a empty strip mall store, in a field with generators, anywhere.

My friend worked with a Go-Go freak who had shoe boxes full cassettes holding recordings of live Go-Go shows. We would get his cast asides and so had an endless supply of raspy live shows to torture our car stereos with.

Back in the day it was Junkyard, Rare Essence, and Chuck Brown. Now there are probably different Go-Go bands making DC move (although I still see signs for Chuck Brown shows on the side of the road). You may be able to find some Go-Go on iTunes or online so check it out. </aside>