Crib Notes

A LOCAL LEGEND: the Dexter Romweber duo (photo by Camellia Morton)

The third and final day of Bubbapalooza ‘08 features some of the finest acts to grace this year’s festival. Bands on the bill include. Rocket 350, the Psychodevilles, the Dexter Romweber Duo, Anna Kramer & The Lost Cause, Jimmy & The Teasers, Billie Joe Winghead, El Capitan & The Scallywags and the Georgia Fireflies.

None of these acts are to be missed, but this critics pics for the must see performances of the entire weekend are Anna Kramer & the Loast Cause, and of course former Flat Duo Jets main man Dexter Romweber fronting a new duo. Kramer & the Cause have just returned from a West coast tour and are sharper than ever. Romweber is straight-up a local legend. Yeah he lives in North Carloina, but he honed his chops in the golden age of Athens, GA… He’s a local. What are you gonna do?

It’s $15 at the door and the music starts at 8 p.m. For more information click here.

MAN IN BLACK: Robin Dean Salmon (photo courtesy of Paul Street)

Day 2 of Bubbapalooza kicks off at The Star Bar tonight. Robin Dean Salmon headlines with a set of songs from his latest release, Gasoline. Cletis & His City Cousins, the Blacktop Rockets, the Downer Brothers, Ghostrider Car Club, J.J. & the Hustlers and Rat Rod & the Rusty Rebels also perform.

It’s $15 at the door and the music starts at 8 p.m. For more information click here.

BABE IN THE WOODS: Adron (photo by Chad Radford)

When she still lived in Atlanta Adron (Adrienne McCann) was one of Atlanta’s best kept secrets. Since moving to Brooklyn about six months ago the city has felt like a much emptier place without her. Tonight Adron returns to her old stomping grounds to play a show at The 5 Spot in L5P.

In July the wayward songstress will release her self-titled debut on Atlanta’s New Street Recordings, home to fellow local folkies JuJu B Solomon and Isia Cooper.

Adron skews the traditions of a little lady with a big guitar by embracing a strong element of Tropicalia and a quasi-Brazilian-style strum that is at once baroque, hypnotic and totally enthralling.

Imagine, if you will, the sounds of Beck pre-Sea Change, Os Mutantes, the Beatles and Seu Jorge’s soundtrack to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and you’re somewhere in the right neighborhood, but not quite there. Adron’s songs are as captivating as they are distinctive and this rare homecoming performance is not to be missed.

Chad Radford: How long have you been playing guitar?

Adron: I started when I was 12, I guess. I’ve been playing piano since I was four. I demonstrated an early aptitude for it, but playing piano was always like homework for me. I’m grateful for it and I have an avid appreciation for the great classical masters, but it’s not very useful for me aside from having all of this esoteric invisible knowledge but don’t know that I have. I wanted to play guitar. I knew I wanted to be a kick-ass songwriter … I wanted to be a rock star and I was always thinking of the best avenue to get there so I thought that I should learn to play a guitar. I didn’t want to start writing songs on a piano because it just didn’t feel natural. My brother was a guitar player, so I stole that from him.

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By Negashi Armada of Supreeme (Winner’s of CL’s 2007 Best Hip-Hop Group That’s Not OutKast)

DISCLAIMER: When you read my spiel, don’t go calling Fox News because all of a sudden CL is a radical news organization furthering the sick twisted liberal media’s mind control over the people. Because they’re not doing that at all. The views expressed here do not reflect CL, Crib Notes, or anyone but me and possibly Bizzy Bone. I am out of control and way to young and dumb to be allowed a public forum for my not so humble opinions. I hope you will still take them seriously, consider them and research some of my FACTS for yourself.

Hey wassup, my name is Negashi Armada and I am a member of the extremely un-famous yet critically acclaimed rap group Supreeme (Supreeme Supreeme). But that’s not what this is about. This is about attempting to expose possibly groundbreaking connections between race, class, gender, climate and … music.

I’ll make hierarchical music lists that may upset people, I’ll talk shit about musicians I know personally (but only from a creatively critical standpoint), and I’ll try to not get beat up by some gangster rapper that I might run into someday. Hopefully I’ll inform you on a bunch of music you don’t know anything about but will love. I think I’m really smart, but I’m really immature and I’m Ree De La Vega’s brother so feel free to hate.

Welcome to SPRING BREAK FOREVER.

WHERE MY DOGS @?
So let’s get into something racy. The other day I was chilling with some friends of mine, all of whom were white (don’t worry race will become significant). They ordered Amores Perros on Netflix because it was cool, hip and foreign and all the things the artsy kids love. Little did they know the movie was about dog fighting and featured a lot of dead and bloody dogs. (more…)

WHO’S THE MACK? Kenny Crucial as Mack Messiah, performing at Drunken Unicorn Wed., May 21.

This was one of the best local shows I have seen in a very long time and rivaled many of the bands I saw at South by Southwest this year — although I may be accused of bias given that my daughter Monika sat in on bass and omnichord. I think you would get the same reaction from anybody that was present to see Kenny Crucial on stage instead of in the front row.

(See more photos by Perry Julien below. Read last year’s Kenny Crucial cover story by Mara Shalhoup.)

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There’s a hefty buzz surrounding this year’s Bubbapalooza at The Star Bar over Memorial Day weekend (May 22-24) . Local musicians across the board are singing praises of the club’s booking agent, Bryan Malone, for helping steer the festival back in the direction that it was originally intended to go when founder Gregory Dean Smalley originally hatched the idea.

This year marks the 12^th installment of Bubbapalooza and Creative Loafing contributing music writer James Kelley has lifted a self-imposed six-year exile to play the festival with his band Slim Chance and the Convicts, and he couldn’t be happier about it.

Chad Radford: You give Bubbapalooza your stamp of approval this year?

James Kelley: Yes, I sure do. This year’s lineup is moving back in the direction of where Bubbapalooza originally started, and that was to feature alternative country, country rock, roots music and Americana. The last 4 or 5 years there have been only one or two country bands on the bill for the whole weekend. It had just moved toward hard rock, punk and psychobilly, but this year it’s returning to what it used to be.

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Title: Lifes Rich Pageant
Released on: July 28, 1986
Favorite tracks: “These Days,” “Begin the Begin,” “Swan Swan H”

“Let’s begin again,” Michael Stipe sings in “Begin the Begin,” the first song on Lifes Rich Pageant. When the members of R.E.M. start their fourth full-length album with an anthemic message to start anew, it’s almost like they’re presenting Pageant as a “do-over” album compared to Fables. Not that I think that Fables would necessitate a do-over, but if Wikipedia is to be believed, the band had ambivalent feelings about Fables and didn’t enjoy the process of recording it.

Signals aside, there’s a marked difference between the albums. In my memory, R.E.M. made a gradual, step-by-step transition from the jangly, oblique, murmury quality of its early albums to the brighter, soaring, more articulate sound that followed — and coincided with the band’s increasing commercial popularity. It was like a dance of the seven veils, with Pageant less muffled than Fables, Document more “unwrapped” than Pageant, etc.

Instead, rediscovering Pageant reveals a sharp, almost immediate transition, like day for night. If their charging rave-ups had a “train engine” sound before, they traded them for jet engines here, as attested immediately by the low rumble, like a distant sonic bomb, underneath “Begin the Begin.” The hammering drums of “These Days” and the whoops of the equally rapid “Just a Touch” almost sound like punk songs.

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Long-standing Atlanta punk, hip-hop, indie rock and experimental music booking agent Randy Castello (aka the face of the ubiquitous Tight Bros. Network) announced this weekend that he will no longer be working as “the official talent purchaser” for The Drunken Unicorn, where he has worked as an employee and focused the brunt of his booking activities for the last three years. In his place, Stickfigure Records owner Gavin Frederick has stepped in to fill the position.

When asked why he’s not doing the job anymore, Castello replied, “What, are you looking for some dirt? Who do you think I am, Dres tha Beatnik?”

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We wanted to alert our readers about this week’s Summer Guide, which features 111 things to do this season. We incorrectly listed the dates of the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival; the correct dates are June 12-15. Thanks to the alert reader for correcting us on this.

One of the many charms of singer/songwriter John Prine is the stark contrast of under-stated delivery of such evocative lyrics. It’s as if Prine is almost embarrassed by the power of his poetry, like he’s let a secret out of a bag he’d promised to secure, but understands the secret’s out and should then be told properly.

And for a man who’s sung songs about those living along life’s humbler edges, Prine sings as beautifully about women as he has about men. He’s masculine yet thoughtful. Nowhere is that more apparent than in “Angel From Montgomery,” which Prine wrote in 1971 for his debut, eponymous CD. It’s a bittersweet song about yearning, from a woman who wonders if life (and her husband) has left her by …

I am an old woman named after my mother /
My old man is another child that’s grown old /
If dreams were lightning thunder was desire /
This old house would have burnt down a long time ago.

Prine explains the inspiration for the song before singing it on the edge of a river …

The song, of course, has been covered by just about everybody smart enough to recognize its power, the most famous coming from Bonnie Raitt. (I often wonder why the modern-day Raitt remains so fascinated with the power of gloss and production sheen, or artifice, in her songs since she’s at her best when she keeps it simple.) But the song also was used to great effect in Sean Penn’s film Into the Wild (reviewed here by Felicia Feaster), about the former Emory University student Christopher McCandless who checked out from civilization on an ill-fated journey of self-discovery. In the scene, McCandless (Emile Hirsch) turns an awkward attempt at seduction by a nubile teen (Kristen Stewart) into something more meaningful.

Powerful stuff. The one time I heard him perform the song live, about five years ago in New Orleans, you could tell his voice was struggling; he was probably still in the grips of the throat cancer he appears to have licked. And yet it damn near moved me to tears. You could fee the song’s impact throughout the room.

Even though Prine could be forgiven for being tired of performing this timeless tune, here’s hoping he’ll delight Atlantans — who live only a couple hours from that now-fabled city — with “Angel From Montgomery” one more time when he plays the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre on Saturday night. Not that his recent work isn’t worth listening to — including his 2005 Grammy-winning comeback album, Fair & Square, and last year’s duet album with Mac Wiseman, Average Songs for Average People. It’s just that this song never, every gets old, even if the heroine of the song believes she has.