A black cat crossing your path is never a bad thing.....

Roughly a week and a half ago, the Black Cat took it's annual moment to commemorate another year of bands, beats, and brawls. At 16, the club should be sneaking out, openly defying it's parents and learning how to procure both booze and porn. How better to sum up the energy of angsty teendom than by celebrating with DC hot rodding garage punk warlords, The Shirks, coupled with DC ex-pats to the astral plane, Dead Meadow. Such a small, yet HUGE bill.

The Shirks (aka, still, the best band in DC right now....) came out in true style by declaring that,"We're The Shirks from Washington, DC, and we're HUNG OVER!" before unleashing sonic annihilation onto the crowd. Though they opened with the same two songs they started the last video with, I did manage to catch one new track, which is definitely worth checking out.

The Shirks play at the Black Cat's 16th anniversary show in DC from Denman C Anderson on Vimeo.

If you were able to take the compressed fury of The Shirks and slowly coax it out into a long and intricate tapestry, you would have the embodiment of nouveaux psych pioneers, Dead Meadow. After taking their time setting up green mood lighting, wiggle light effects, a smoke machine, and (obviously long ago now) a bass drum head that hurt your eyes to simply look at, the band calmly strolled out, and the hypnosis began. Though it's all the way I remember it, The Shirks played for roughly fifteen minutes, while Dead Meadow swam through about an hour and half. It went from a show to a happening in the blink of an eye. Once they finally let the crowd touch ground again, we could not help but notice all of their instruments were still in place, and, yes, there would be an encore.

Dead Meadow performing at the Black Cat's 16 anniversary in DC from Denman C Anderson on Vimeo.

When all was said and done, I felt as though rock'n'roll had sucked the marrow from my bones. It was, without a doubt, one of the best shows I had been to in months, and definitely one of the best shows I'd seen at the Black Cat in about a year. So, here's to another year of shows, DJ's, and,"You can't make me do that; my dad's a _______!"