Idolator
Washington, D.C.'s Fort Reno Park has hosted free shows by many of the city's punk and indie stalwarts—Fugazi, the Dismemberment Plan, and Ted Leo are just a few—as part of its long-standing summer concert series. But this summer's slate of shows is up in the air, thanks to the park being closed indefinitely yesterday after a satellite employed by the United States Geological Survey found high levels of arsenic in its soil. The promoters of the shows are waiting for further testing of the soil, but in the meantime they're Ian MacKaye: Not Dead
In case you were wondering, Ian MacKaye is still alive and well, despite spurious Internet rumors that sparked a flurry of e-mails, Wikipedia updates, and Google searches earlier this evening. The "obituary" that was floating around, which I'm not going to repost for reasons that will become obvious, not only spelled MacKaye's name wrong and misused the comma about eight times, it said that he got hit by a car outside of a Fugazi show (!) in New Jersey before being taken to a hospital in Baltimore (!?). A note to the Dischord offices asking after the "news" elicited the following response: "Thanks for your concern, Ian is fine and all is well. Just an internet rumor." Hooray! To celebrate MacKaye's continued existence, give a listen to his agit-folk duo The Evens, because both their albums are terrific, and criminally underrated:The Evens [MySpace]
Ian MacKaye is alive. Elvis is still dead [baltmoresun.com]
