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Thursday, January 29
Admission: $5, $10 minimum
Doortime: 7:30pm
reservations are
recommended
Edie Sedgwick
When Justin Moyer was stricken by his first epileptic
seizure at age 25 in 2001, whispers of concern rippled through
Washington,
D.C.'s close-knit punk community. Was the founding member of third-generation
Dischord stalwarts El Guapo and Antelope to
be sidelined by a long-dormant neurological malady?
"Justin's seizures spawned erratic behavior," says Ian MacKaye, Dischord
Record's co-founder. "His bands broke up. He started wearing
cocktail dresses. He wrote an autobiography of Meryl Streep and tried to stage
readings at Fugazi shows. And Edie Sedgwick
was born."
"Edie Sedgwick" - the nom de plume Moyer swiped from a forgotten
Andy Warhol Superstar - became a vehicle for new songs, writing,
and video art about mainstream celebrity culture. Like many outsider artists,
Moyer was prolific - he started a blog at
www.ediesedgwick.biz and released Her Love is Real...But She is Not, a sprawling
electroclash full-length, on Desoto Records in
2005.
"Justin reinvented himself," says Kim Coletta, DeSoto's founder. "He
wanted to be the white, booger-drag version of Fela Kuti,
Screaming Jay Hawkins, and the Ol' Dirty Bastard. Or, maybe, a transgendered
Ian Svenonius."
After a ill-fated solo European tour in 2006 - a mid-air seizure forced the
grounding of Moyer's 747 in Prague, where he was
detained by Czech authorities for possession of contraband pantyhose - Moyer's
family convinced him to start performing with a
back-up band for safety's sake. Edie's funky collaborations with the DC punk
diaspora - including members of the Dusters, Soccer
Team, the Evens, Aquarium, and Medications - resulted in Things are Getting
Sinister and Sinisterer, ten songs produced by
MacKaye for release on Dischord in November of 2008.
"Justin's font of creativity runneth over, but his font of stability?
Bone dry," says
MacKaye. "[Engineer] Don [Zientara] and I were
happy to play the foil."
At Moyer's insistence, Things are Getting Sinister and Sinisterer will be released
on vinyl and mp3 only - a Dischord first. To further
his vision of "an inter-actable record," Moyer will post videos for
each track on www.ediesedgwick.biz between now and the
release date. The results will offer a startling glimpse into a most unusual
mind.
"Justin's fragile health and atypical artistic development make him a
unique voice in our buttoned-down capital city," says Alec
Bourgeois, a Dischord employee. "He is, if nothing else, a visionary."
Gold Drum opens.
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