“Emergency & I” sounds like home. Released in 1999 on local label DeSoto, it is the essential album of one of the essential bands of Washington, DC, The Dismemberment Plan and, along with other records by the Plan, would go in my desert island jukebox for the music itself, even if it were not the case that everything that mattered to me in high school happened with these songs as the soundtrack.
In January 2011, “Emergency & I” will see it’s first-ever release on vinyl – indeed a two-LP gatefold fancy thing, completely remastered, and including several rare tracks not previously on the album. As was reported by the WaPo Click Track blog the release, now on Barsurk, will also feature “an oral history of the album.”
To celebrate, the beloved band is doing a brief reunion tour. Though the members are no longer all based in DC, they seem to know well that this is still their home – and have scheduled two DC shows accordingly. Those of us who attended the first pair of reunion shows in 2007 will not be surprised to hear that there will be one night at the Black Cat – January 21st (tickets on sale this Friday) – and another at the 9:30 Club (site of the band’s official goodbye show in 2003) the next night. Given how the internet seemed to melt-down about the news this morning, I would say they are right to assume they need the bigger space and will inevitably sell both shows out in about 8.5 seconds.
I will leave it to you to guess where I will be those nights.
