Downsizing your carbon footprint
Saturday, June 14th, Woodruff Park
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WE FUN TRAILER: Episodic chaos
Last week Nashville filmmakers Christopher Dortch and Matthew Robison (Silver Jew) unveiled the first substantial look at their Atlanta rock scene documentary film, titled We Fun: Atlanta, Ga. Inside Out.
The film is projected for an August release date.
James Hall (photo by Anya Dupree)Â
James Hall was an alternative rock fixture in Atlanta in the late 1980s, a time when the word “alternative” implied a sense of outsider pop nobility and creativity. In the Reagan era it was a guiding light for Hall’s tasteful merger of post-punk and art rock songwriting with his band Mary My Hope, which he led from 1987 to 1990.
The group’s most acclaimed release, Museum, was released in 1989 on Silvertone Records, and mixes a palette of post-punk, pop, folk and gothic nuances. The record is now an artifact of the era which surfaces in the used record stores from time to time, but is long out of print.
After parting ways with Mary My Hope, Hall embarked on a solo career that landed him in New Orleans in the early ’90s. Various configurations of solo and band efforts took shape under the guise of the Pleasure Club. Through it all he has bounded from label to label, including the Indigo Girls’ Daemon Records, Geffen and MCA.
On Saturday, April 29th Hall Returns to Atlanta to headline a solo gig at The Star Bar, fleshing out new material and preparing to take on a new chapter in his career.
Are you touring in support of a new record?
We are doing regional (Southeast) shows with an interest in solidifying new songs for a record. We have been mixing songs tracked over the last year and a half and have enlisted the help of our friend and family member, Mike Froedge (Double Drive, Open Sky Separators) to help us realize the songs’ potential. Often there are some sixty songs going into an LP, and they cannot all make it, so they are often selected for their quality based on content as well as their recorded rendering. (more…)
It’s bigger and better for the Silent Kids, who’ve beefed up their numbers and upgraded their “fi” from low to high.
Frontman Michael Oakley’s lithe, lean tenor maneuvers between soaring pop majesty and chunky, melodic alt-rock that suggests Beulah sideswiping Superchunk as they pull out of Modest Mouse’s driveway.
The Kids celebrate the release of their second album, Dinosaurs Turn Into Birds, this week. Soaked in ringing hooks and adrenalized rhythms, songs veer from psych-pop clamor (”Soccer Riot”) to jagged garage-fuzz (”Pacific Northwest Blues”) and acid-folk (”One Hundred Years from Now”). The latter seems particularly apt, with its shambling warning, “Nobody knows the kind of trouble we’re in/Nobody seems to think it all might happen again.”
Continue reading CD Release.
The name says it all.
Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel is a character study of two instruments that have about as much in common with each other as “Star Trek” has with “Green Acres.”
Yet both instruments have traditionally been used to add background color and texture to their respective musical locales. The electronic theremin captures the eerie, sci-fi sounds of outer space, while the lap steel produces the wavering whir heard everywhere from Hawaiian luaus to front-porch jamborees in the wilds of Appalachia.
Continue reading Spotlight.
The greats from the past influence the music of today. Local musician Rich Morris, aka Dream Sanitation, can attest to that. Picking and pulling from various artists, Morris developed his own sound, playing electro funk in Noot d’Noot, psychedelic rock in Good Friday Experiment, and ambient noise in Spirit of Nashville. Here, he gives his top five list of musical influences.
Continue reading Real Life Top Five.
Chris Strawn is usually recognized as one-half of Brass Castle, the Atlanta duo that tempers deranged Southern rock with spastic energy and drunken lunacy. Think Ween trying to teach the songs of MC5 to Sebadoh and you’re pretty close to the right neighborhood.
On Friday March 25th Strawn unveiled his self-released solo CD, I Left My Hat in Hades (Drazzig Records).
I left My Hat in Hades features 14 songs that wander through disparate bouts of paranoid pop, metal, electro and acid rock, while upholding his penchant for lurching surrealism and lo-fi fuzz.
When left to his own devices, Strawn takes the spun-out energy factor down a notch. But the bedroom recording qualities, frazzled pop arrangements and drug-addled logic of each song pull together in fugue-like moments of elongated rhythms and hooks that reveal an art-damaged side of bi-polar rock aesthetic.
The CD release party I Left My Hat in Hades will be held at The Highland Inn on Friday, March 28. Show starts at 8 p.m. Will Rogers Outfit opens. No price is listed, but it wouldn’t hurt to call The Highland Inn (404-874-5756).
To hear songs from I Left My Hat in Hades, click here
www.myspace.com/chrisstrawn
“WE’RE GONNA GET NAKED/AND WATCH COPS”: Judi Chicago jacks your box. (photo by John Goetzinger)
CL favorite, Judi Chicago, is filming its first self-made video this weekend and opening the doors to the entire city — hoes included. If you’ve ever seen these guys perform, you already know you’re in for a maniacal time should you choose to accept the mission.
Here’s the open invitation from one-half of the group, Ben Coleman:
“We’re making a new video down at the Digital Arts Entertainment Lab in 5 points in the last weekend of March, and we’re looking to speak to anyone who would like to come and take part in the event. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
We’re booked to film all day Saturday and Sunday March 29-30. Send us a message if you’re interested, to let us know what you’d like to bring to the party.We’re hoping it’s going to end up like a cross between ‘America’s got Talent’, ‘the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, ‘Tron’ and ‘the Trip’…
Look forward to hearing from you, Atlanta!
—Judi Chicago
email: contactbencoleman@gmail.com
ARIA AND THE GRINGOS, from left to right: Matt McCalvin, Peter Furgiuele, Aria Cavaliere, Nick Furgiuele and Pete DeLorenzo (photo by Rachel Bired)
Producer and engineer Robert Honablue has a resume that includes working with such little known artists as Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Barbra Streisand, Dave Brubeck, Aretha Franklin, Santana and Bob Marley. Now he can add Atlanta’s Gringo Star to that list.
While busking on a street corner in New York City in the summer of 2004, three-fourths of Gringo Star (Nick and Peter Furgiuele and Matt McCalvin) where strumming through the Sam Cooke song, “Send Me.” The group was playing to earn enough money to pay for the many toll bridges in the area. Their ramshackle rendition of Cooke’s song caught the attention of one passerby who happened to be Aria Cavaliere. She’s the daughter of songwriter and former Rascals organ player Felix Cavaliere who is best known for penning the songs, “Groovin’ On A Sunday Afternoon†and “Good Love.â€
One party and several performances later, Gringo Star has became Aria’s de facto backing band. “We’ve been friends ever since and we would usually get together to jam when we were passing through New York on tour,†Nick says.
In January Cavaliere moved from New York back to her original hometown of Nashville, Tenn., which makes weekend musical rendezvous much more convenient.
Over the years their collaborations have yielded a handful of songs that culminated with a self-released CD, titled Aria and the Gringos.
The songs on the disc were recorded by Honablue at Royal Blue Studios in Brooklyn in February of 2007. Although a CD release party was held at The Mercury Lounge in New York on July 16th of 2007, the disc hasn’t started circulating until this month.
To hear songs from Aria and the Gringos, click here
Aria and the Gringos track list:
“Uh-Oh” (Cavaliere)
“Mad” (P. Furgiuele / N. Furgiuele)
“Silly Boys” (Cavaliere)
“You’re the One”(P. Furgiuele)
“Tell Me” (P. Furgiuele / N. Furgiuele)
AT SXSW: Michael Stipe of R.E.M. (All photos by Perry Julien.)
Music conference vs. music festival.
Badges vs. wristbands vs. free shows.
Official showcases vs. un-official showcases.
Regardless of your opinions, there is something about 1,700 bands getting together for 24 hours of music.
I was able to see and photograph 49 bands over five days. Fucking rock excess.
Below are photos from: REM, Dark Meat, Ocha La Rocha, Elf Power, Dead Confederate, The Whigs, Von Bondies, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Raveonettes, Vampire Weekend, and X.
R.E.M.
