Monthly Archives: October 2010

While you were in Econ 101 struggling not to fall asleep as you switched between your facebook homepage and your 87th game of minesweeper, Evan P. Donahue was adding his unique brand of songwriting to the vibrant mix of the Nashville music scene. As a senior at Belmont University, Donahue balances his Audio Engineering major with the task of promoting his debut album Rhythm & Amplitude. Donahue’s band, a tight and poppy rock outfit complete with trumpet and trombone, gigs extensively within the Nashville area and now with a well-polished full length LP in hand is looking to reach a wider audience. I had the recent chance to sit down with both Donahue and drummer Mike Kavouras (the self described “brains behind the project”) and discuss the band’s most recent activities.

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You know the Building Supervisor at Yates, the one who looks like Ving Rhames’s brother and inspires every scrawny kid to hit those free weights just a little bit harder? (Let’s face it, Type-A Georgetown Student, we both know you’re logging about forty hours a week at that gym anyway. You know who I’m talking about.) Well, you can call him Dorsey – while performing he goes by his b-boy moniker “The Combonator” – and not only does he put every other weightlifter on campus to shame, but he also pioneered break dancing in the District and was an original member of D.C.’s own Junkyard Band, as well as a graduate of Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

Here’s an eclectic playlist of ten favorite songs, courtesy of the man who helps keep Yates Field House running smoothly, plays piano by ear and will most definitely embarrass you in any break dance battle you challenge him to.

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“I have decided that the journalistic depiction of my life as tragic is actually an expression of profound jealousy by people who have never done anything even marginally interesting in their own.” You would expect a twenty-something year old songwriter brooding these smacks at onlookers with no more than a cocky smirk would let it show in his music. Such a hermetic sense of pride goes a long way to sterilize empathy and reduce awed reverence for a musician in the flesh and blood to a respectful nod at just his sonic prowess.

Scratch that. No, not the whole thing…just—let’s start. Holding Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson to today’s standards makes him come across as an outright contradiction. He snarls at most criticisms of his music, fighting openly against the uniformity of opinion about what is good in independent music anymore, and the fact that not jumping on the “wavve” (so to speak) is just shooting yourself in the foot. He tosses out the classic “you don’t know me” more often than most, brushing off psychoanalysts who place his debut masterpiece (more on that soon, promise) within the context of his standoff with drugs, depression, and fight for survival alone in New York and take all too many liberties with the truth to suit their journalistic ends.

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Shad is an unconventional rapper. His songs do not permeate wittiness like any track by Young Money artists such as Lil’Wayne, Drake or Nicki Minaj. He does not provide the larger than life feeling that a listener gets after going through a Kanye West or Jay-Z album. However, you can give Shad credit for doing things his own way. TSOL, Shad’s follow up to his 2007 Polaris Music Prize-nominated The Old Prince, is best described as an honest and introspective work that is initially boring, but in the end will blow you away.

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We have a funny saying here on the Hilltop when something eerily mimics the Georgetown student culture; we say “that’s so Georgetown.” Formed at Tufts University, the band Guster didn’t have the privilege of knowing this phrase, but they sure as hell have been able to come up with a little spin of their own; “that’s so Guster.” Their sixth studio album (and first one in four years), Easy Wonderful sticks close to the basics that perpetuated Guster’s success in the first place, a quality that satisfies many but leaves me just a little bit empty.

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Without the reggae tracks on Bad Brains albums, the hyper-energetic hardcore might have made listening to a full album too exhausting. In Search of Black Judas, the new solo album from Bad Brains’ bassist Darryl Jenifer, falls squarely on the reggae end of the Bad Brains spectrum. The album somehow managed prove surprising, despite not ultimately being very memorable. Read More »