By Rachel Beckman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 16, 2006

For those interested in Washington punk rock of the 1980s, there's no shortage of ways to learn about the scene. You could listen to Minor Threat, Bad Brains and Fugazi. You could watch the documentary "American Hardcore." Or, you could stand outside the Starbucks at Seventh and E streets NW and wait for a text message.

That's the idea behind "Capitol of Punk," an interactive tour of 10 D.C. punk landmarks. By sending the text message "DCSPACE" to the number 67067, your cellphone will direct you on a guided treasure hunt, starting with factoids about the building at Seventh and E. (Organizers also have drawn a map of the tour locations, which is available online.)

In the dozen or so text messages, you'll learn that until 1991, the Starbucks site was an all-ages art and music venue called d.c. space. You'll read anecdotes about bands seeing how fast they could play the Monkees song "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone." Government Issue set the record, it turns out, finishing in 12 seconds.

Put that in your Frappuccino and sip it.

"When you're there, it's hard to believe," says 26-year-old project director Christopher Allen. "There's no marking. There's no way to see that history. It's invisible."

"Capitol of Punk" is the brainchild of Yellow Arrow, a New York-based project that is part of a company called Counts Media. The group has created similar text-message tours for New Orleans's Voodoo Music Festival and New York's East Village.

Unlike those tours, the D.C. project includes films about each location, which are screening Saturday at the Warehouse Theater. The text-message tour is already up and running and the films are available in full at http://www.yellowarrow.net/, along with the tour map.

"You get the sensation you're actually getting messages from actual musicians that are guiding you through the city," says executive producer Jesse Shapins.

Kara Oehler, a Yellow Arrow contributor and radio journalist, helped conceive of the "Capitol of Punk" tour while working on a segment about music for American Public Media's "Marketplace." Oehler, 28, grew up listening to punk in Indianapolis and served as the group's expert on the subject.

Oehler, Shapins and Allen started working on the project in January. During interviews with 15 or so musicians, Oehler asked them to point to significant locations on a giant map of Washington.

"They would see what someone else had marked and they would say, 'Oh, I remember that!' " Oehler says.

Allen says his position as a D.C. punk outsider helped the final product: "I wanted to make this accessible for people who didn't understand all the people and all the bands," he says.

Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye tells the story of his first show with the band Teen Idles. He hit the E chord on his guitar, a string broke and then somebody threw a beer can that hit him in the face.

MacKaye says he doesn't have a "text-messaging thing" and won't be taking the tour, but he has watched some of the videos online.

"It's real Washington history. It's real culture," he says. "Those of us who are from Washington, we don't live in the marble buildings."

Other sites on the "Capitol of Punk" tour include Fort Reno, an outdoor music venue in Northwest; the South African Embassy, where bands met and drummed against apartheid; and the old site of Madam's Organ at 2318 18th St. NW, now home to Crooked Beat Records (Madam's Organ is across the street).

Crooked Beat employee Andy Gale says he didn't know about the record store's history: "I know they used to have shows upstairs, but that's about it."

Alec MacKaye, who fronted a spate of punk bands (and is Ian's brother), reminisces about a show near Madam's Organ during the text-message tour. While Bad Brains was playing the song "Riot Squad," MacKaye heard dogs barking and thought the noise was part of the song, to create a more riotlike effect. It took a while for the crowd to realize that the city's riot squad had just burst into the venue to clear people out of the club.

The group also interviewed former D.C. mayor Marion Barry, since so many people they spoke to praised his policies during that era. Barry created a summer jobs program in which the city guaranteed everyone ages 14 to 21 a job or work experience, which included playing music.

"The project isn't just about music," Shapins says. "It's about the city as seen through music."

Capitol of Punk films screen Saturday at 10 p.m. at the Warehouse Theater, 1017-21 Seventh St. NW. $6. 202-783-3933. Text-message tours are free.