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-- Catherine P. Lewis
Go-Go at Meeting Place
Every Wednesday night at the Meeting Place, a go-go band gathers that includes three stalwarts of D.C.'s indigenous dance music: keyboardist/vocalist "Sweet Cherie" Mitchell, drummer JuJu House and bandleader/party starter Sugar Bear. (Sugar Bear is known outside the Washington area for leading his band, Experience Unlimited, in the irresistible crowd favorite "Da Butt.") The latest installment featured the usual go-go delights: a clutch of canny covers of pop tunes and a bushel of beats as bountiful as anything you can hear for 10 bucks.
Robin Thicke's "Lost Without You" got the most engaging cover, one that retained Thicke's ethereal falsetto melody but swept away his gossamer guitar accompaniment in favor of a series of locked-in go-go beats ranging from subtle to boisterous; these were anchored by swelling chords that made the harmonies suggested by the original rump-shakingly explicit. The band also delivered two fine covers of Snoop Dogg songs, "Drop It Like It's Hot" and "That's That [expletive]," tapping out a wickedly syncopated version of the former's tongue-click rhythm and draping a warm blanket of synths over a crankin' beat in the latter. Mitchell's soulful cover of "Enough Cryin' " was familiar but satisfying as well, and the band threw in a couple go-go oldies like "One on One."
The beat was at its mightiest at the end of the show, which featured a series of devastating dance rhythms; House got maximum volume and charge from his tuned drums, and Sugar Bear and Mitchell shouted terse, crowd-moving catchphrases. The possibilities of the beat seemed infinite, but it fell silent early -- after all, it was just another Wednesday show, and people had to go to work in the morning.
-- Andrew Lindemann Malone
Georgie James
Officially, Georgie James is a duo that channels the departed spirits of mid-1960s pop. Yet on Thursday night at an almost-packed Rock & Roll Hotel, the D.C. group's retro orientation was expressed most strongly by the logo on its souvenir T-shirts -- very 1962 -- and the closing encore of "El Condor Pasa," a lilting 1970 Simon and Garfunkel number. With a rhythm section driving all of the other songs, Georgie James sounded like, well, a rock band -- and even a fairly noisy one. There were hints of such '60s baroque-pop acts as the Left Banke, and glimmers of various Latin styles, but they were often overwhelmed by John Davis's guitar and Andrew Black's drums.
