Get ready to rock and groove at the ultimate Punk and Go-Go extravaganza! Also featuring Breezy Supreme, Black Alley, and Bacchae
Join us on Sept. 24 from 1-5 p.m. at the front of the iconic Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library for an electrifying concert featuring legends of Go-Go Big Tony &Trouble Funk and DC hardcore legends Scream. Get ready to dance and feel the energy as these powerhouse bands take the stage. Don't miss out on this unforgettable afternoon of music, rebellion, and pure excitement.
Scream | Scream formed in 1979. Drummer Kent Stacks, bassist Skeeter Enoch Thompson and the brothers Pete and Franz Stahl attended school together in Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia, when they began to discover the punk and new wave scene in DC and the provocative power of making music. Like most of the punk bands in DC, they were influenced by the Bad Brains, but their rock and roll sensibilities set them apart.
Scream’s newest album, DC Special, will be released in the fall of 2023 on Dischord Records. For this record, Scream invited their extensive music community to help create a unique project that weaves the history of music in Washington DC into the story of the band. Recorded by Don Zientara just weeks before his studio was evicted from its longtime location, the record is rich with both the sounds of Inner Ear and those of friends and musicians who influenced Scream and who shaped DC music over the past six decades. DC Special embodies the same sense of community and politics that inspired Scream from the start and is a truly special collection of new music that speaks to the present and also tells the story of DC music, Scream, and the influences that shaped them.
Big Tony & Trouble Funk | Big Tony and Trouble Funk has served as ambassadors for DC's Go-Go music for over 45 years, with performances nationally and internationally. The band formed as Trouble Funk in 1978, and the lineup consisted of bassist and vocalist Big Tony Fisher, keyboard and vocalist Robert Reed, trombonist Gerald Reed, drummer and vocalist Emmet Nixon, percussionists Mack Carey and Timothius Davis, guitarist Chester Davis, trumpeter and vocals Taylor Reed, keyboard player James Avery, and saxophonist David Rudd. The group earned a loyal fan base for their notoriously can't-miss live performances of their funky-innovative sound, organized around audience participation along with call and response.
Keyboard player Robert "Syke Dyke" Reed passed away at age 50 on April 13, 2008, from pancreatic cancer. In spite of this tremendous loss, Big Tony was determined to keep the Trouble Funk name alive by playing often for nostalgic party goers as well as the musically curious. Today, Big Tony and Trouble Funk continue to remain a force on the music scene and continue to create new music with their unique and innovative style, as one of the major pioneers of the Go-Go culture.
Big Tony and Trouble Funk have toured the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan, performing with artists such as Foo Fighters, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Los Lobos, UB40, James Brown, War, Elvis Costello, Big Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone, Minor Threat, LL Cool J, and many others. Most notably, Big Tony and Trouble Funk performed with Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. for "Taking The Stage," celebrating the opening of the National African American Museum of History and Culture, hosted by Oprah Winfrey and attended by President Barack Obama and other dignitaries. They also performed at Madison Square Garden with UB40, RFK Stadium, co-headlined at the Cal Jam in California with the Foo Fighters, and at the Merriweather Post Pavilion with Snoop Dogg and Wu-Tang Clan.
Big Tony and Trouble Funk produced several hit records on their own record label as well as being signed to Sugar Hill Records, Sony UK and Island Records. This show-stopping group has had their music sampled on many hit records by artists such as LL Cool J, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dog, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Teddy Riley, George Michael and many others resulting in receiving gold certified records with artists such as Kelly Roland and platinum awards with Will Smith and the 2 Live Crew, becoming one of seven contributors selected by the Hip-Hop Museum to earn Hall of Fame status after being honored as "one of the most sampled groups in music history."
Most recently, Big Tony and Trouble Funk headlined shows at Wolf Trap Pavilion two years in a row and is scheduled for a third in 2023. They co-headlined the "What the Funk" Tour in Indianapolis and the band plays on. Soon to celebrate their 50-year anniversary/reunion in the music industry, Big Tony and Trouble Funk show no signs of slowing down! View some amazing live concert photos, flyers and more from Trouble Funk shows in Dig DC as part of D.C.'s Go-Go Archive.
BLACK ALLEY | BLACK ALLEY has been pushing the art of music to its rhythmic limits for some time now. Determined to create a unique musical elixir, Black Alley has taken the finest ingredients of rock, hip-hop and go-go to create their own genre-bending sound called “Hood Rock”. The band is one, each musician surrendering to the union of sounds, each delivering music from their soul, while in dialogue with one another through their instruments. Each member of this collective is essential to the workability and funkability of the unit, which is Black Alley.
With endorsements from national recording artists such as Raheem DeVaughn and Jill Scott; hip-hop standouts Common, Big KRIT & Wale; producers Tone P and Chuck Thompson; super engineer Young Guru; and legendary musicians Doug E. Fresh and Sheila E, Black Alley is always striving to rock harder and advance the culture.
In September 2017, BLACK ALLEY won Musicology's first-ever Paisley Park Battle of the Bands in Minneapolis, MN. The contest, held at the late great estate of Prince, was judged by some of Prince's former band members who worked closely with the legend. Even before the national recognition that came along with winning the Battle at Paisley Park, Black Alley was, and continues to be, one of the most followed, trend-setting and sought-after music groups hailing from the nation's capital.
Black Alley was also hand-selected to perform at the inaugural South By South Lawn Festival (SXSL) held at the White House and spearheaded by former President Barack Obama.
Bacchae | Formed in 2016 by four friends with minimal experience as musicians, Bacchae make music with no assumptions about what a punk band should sound like. Underneath a careful balance of attitude and ambivalence, the quartet embraces heavy guitar riffs alongside bouncy pop melodies and rage-filled exclamations.
Vocalist/keyboardist Katie McD, drummer Eileen O'Grady and guitarist Andrew Breiner began playing music together when they were enlisted as the backing band for a friend's experimental rock musical. Around the same time, Andrew met bassist Rena Hagins when they played together in a one-time band as part of Hat Band DC, a fundraiser for Girls Rock! DC. Together, they formed a new band called Bacchae. The band released a home-mixed demo in 2016, a self-released cassette, “Down the Drain,” in 2017, and a 2018 self-titled EP released on Get Better Records. The new LP “Pleasure Vision” will be available on vinyl through Get Better Records in March 2020.
Bacchae have found a home in the DC punk community, even as their music mixes styles and jumps between genres when the mood suits them. On their new LP, “Pleasure Vision,” brooding synth-driven pop sits alongside prickly, fast-paced punk and spooky post-punk sounds. Sometimes you get all of that in a single song.
Whether the band is exploring the pain of a doomed relationship or the push and pull of disgust and desire while shopping online, what carries through it all is a sense of uncertainty, dissolution and dread. “Pleasure Vision” is a way of looking at the world that ignores everything but how you can twist it to your own purposes. It’s a vision that’s well-suited to a time when everything and everyone is supposed to be for sale. As the inkblots on the cover imply, this is an album about what you project onto what you see, not the things themselves. It’s about the distance between what you say, what you think you want, and what you actually want.
Breezy Supreme | Breezy Supreme is a black alternative rock artist from the Washington, DC/ Maryland area. Breezy mostly expresses different struggles and emotions in his music, all in which are personal to him. Though he doesn’t have a specific end goal, he aims to inspire and create space for other black alternative creatives across the globe
AGE GROUP: | Seniors | Adults | 5 - 12 Years Old | 13 - 19 Years Old (Teens) |
EVENT TYPE: | Musical Performance |
