Welcome to Friday Night, Saturday Morning, where every week Shira Hecht brings you a new song for your weekend. They won’t all be party songs (although this one is)–they could be songs for pregames, songs for hangovers, and songs for Sunday afternoons when you realize you didn’t accomplish anything this weekend.

The Similou - All This Love

This past week has been full of signs that summer is over: chilly winds, too-familiar faces, $400 dropped at the bookstore. Fall has arrived.

These few weeks always make me feel sort of bittersweet, and unaccountably nostalgic. As does this song, a Swedish one-hit wonder from a few years ago. The Swedes have somehow mastered the art of the heartbreaking pop song, and this one is a particularly catchy example. Bouncy keyboards with just the right amount of jangle, vague references to times spent and love lost, and a nice big singalong chorus. It makes me think of missed opportunities, sad endings, perfect days and fading memories. The end of something wonderful, bittersweet and incandescent.

If you want, you can dance to it.

The Madison Sounds of Deliverance play in Dupont Circle

Did you love Al Haddad’s article on jazz in DC in our most recent issue? Do you aspire to be just as booted and avoiding of clinkers? Al has generously offered to share his secrets:

1. Go to www.dcjazz.com and sign up for their weekly email newsletter. You would probably be horrified to discover how much my article owed to this single website.
2. Been to Adams Morgan? Good job. Now get down to U Street. For fans of live jazz and blues, U Street is to Adams Morgan as Bitches Brew is to Birth of the Cool. Just walk up and down a single block of U Street during the evening and you’re likely to come across three or four poorly-marked venues that are grooving right down to the foundations. You might have to sweet-talk some of the doormen, but believe me, it’s well worth the effort.
3. A lot of venues around DC have good websites: Wolf Trap, Blues Alley, Bohemian Caverns, Twins Jazz, HR57. Check these early and often.
4. Cheap is better, but free is best: The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage has free performances every Friday night. It’s not always jazz, but the acoustics are great and the musicians are always top quality. Check the Kennedy Center website for weekly details.
5. John Hasse, the Smithsonian’s brilliant and innovative Curator of American Music, has since 2001 conducted a weekly concert series, held each Friday night at 6.30pm at the Smithsonian Jazz Café, located on the ground floor of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. After a summer hiatus, performances start up again Friday, September 6th. The Smithsonian also has an extensive jazz program, as well as some internships for the really zealous among you: check it out at www.smithsonianjazz.org.

Flickr photo from user JamesCalder used under a Creative Commons license