Three reasons, mainly.

One:

Two:

Three:

For the sheer hell of it.

The band The Mountain Goats (reason one) was performing at the 6th and I Synagogue with John Vanderslice (reason two) and a friend of mine invited me along. Since I had never been to DC and my work magically decided I would be the only one in the department granted time off for the month......thus we get reason three.

Here is a pic from the concert, courteously stolen from bookish on Flickr because I had left my camera at the hotel:

John Darnielle, aka The Mountain Goats, is on the left, John Vanderslice is on the right. Both are extremely nice and funny guys with highly literate, intelligent lyrics. JD is a geek who has this awesome closet love of Ace of Base and is known for playing The Sign at live shows, which just makes him more endearing as I also loved Ace of Base back in the day. JV is my friend on Twitter and is the producer of a number of tMG albums.

I can't pick just one favorite MG song, but my top five (in no particular order) are:

--In The Craters of the Moon
--So Desperate
--Jenny
--No Children
--Half Dead

My favorite, favorite John Vanderslice song is Nikki Oh Nikki and that is the second song performed in the video above, the first song being Time To Go.

Here is a playlist of just tMG and JV songs in case anyone is interested enough to listen to more. Huzzah for tMG and JV in DC!