The Pocket: The DC Go-Go Movement
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Shumaker and partner Michael Cahill examine a subject ripe for exposure: a persistent, self-sustaining urban subculture that’s barely understood even in its own hometown. Their title has two meanings. The “pocket” is a musical term for the spot where bass and drums click into a perfect groove. But it also refers to the neighborhoods where go-go flourishes. Here, the film suggests, in the shadow of the capital’s monumental neoclassical architecture, real, living people can create a real, living culture. But though they capture the passion and pride of that culture, Schumaker and Cahill only hint at the real question go-go raises–why did this stuff survive, while so many other regional styles fizzled out or were sucked into the mainstream and diluted? It turns out that the same elements that kept go-go from crossing over big–its site-specific flavor, its emphasis on live performance, and its constantly changing sound–have helped it thrive locally. The pocket isolates, but it also protects.
And go-go does thrive. In the 2001 book The Beat: Go-Go’s Fusion of Funk and Hip-Hop, George Washington University music professor Kip Lornell and ex-E.U. manager Charles C. Stephenson Jr. estimate that it’s at least a $10,000,000-a-year industry in the D.C. region. Programs like Go-Go Rudy’s Friday night show on WKYS build hype for big gigs, and DJs like Supa Funkregulata Celo spin at club nights and release mix CDs featuring joints new and old. The on-line zine Take Me Out to the Go-Go counts more than 1,000 shows a year in the area, and reigning acts like the Back Yard Band or 911 can play a packed club every week. There are gigs every night in countless D.C. and suburban clubs such as Legends, Breeze’s Supper Club, the Meeting Place, the East Side, and the Black Hole–places where top groups compete for weekly residencies. But this success also contributes to go-go’s isolation. Even after paying for the phalanx of security guards required for shows, players can make a living without leaving town. So they generally don’t, which means few people outside the area get to hear this music. Though great reissues are still being put out–Liaison Records’ two-disc companion set to the Lornell and Stephenson book is worth seeking out–national distribution for new go-go recordings simply doesn’t exist.
In fact D.C. punks have long talked up the go-go scene. One such fan, hardcore icon Ian MacKaye, appears in The Pocket, celebrating the music’s distinctively local character. D.C. is a notoriously transitory town, he notes, adding, “If you’re from here, you gotta hang on tight.” Yet many of the go-go players in The Pocket, such as E.U. and Chuck Brown, aren’t eager to resign themselves to regional status. A decade after the majors lost all interest, pioneers like Brown continue to promote the music outside of the city. Editorials in Take Me Out to the Go-Go concern themselves with the economics of PA tape trading and strategies for taking the music to the next–presumably national–level. The go-go story is inspiring to some, who see a homegrown culture that’s outlasted the tainting effects of mass marketing. But the story is dispiriting to many of its creators, who still hang on to their big dreams and show no signs of letting go.
