Spent my lunch break tearing through this Washington City Paper series looking back at Q and Not U’s terrific debut.
My younger cousin Dan, who’s featured in the series, turned me on to Q and Not U (along with dozens of other bands). While I love the No Kill No Beep Beep cover, I now wish they’d gone with this outtake (both photos by Shawn Brackbill):
No Kill, No Beep Beep (Dischord 123) is a great record and this series was a captivating and unfortunately rare look at a single record and the scene it sprang from:
Those key-janglers and hand-clappers formed a scene that, to be sure, no longer exists, but the photo marked the beginning of a several-years-long creative period for young post-punk bands in D.C. … To MacKaye, the album is a reminder that musical innovation comes in waves. “What Q and Not U captured for me was this: They inherited this thing, and they said this is our fucking take on it.”