Crib Notes

It’s official. The 688 reunion show is happening for real at The Masquerade on Sat., Oct. 4th. The show features reunions from several Atlanta bands from various eras gone by, all of home honed their chops at the gone but not forgotten 688 Club.

The show is set up up partially to benefit The Atlanta Music Museum, which serves as an online preservation site that’s dedicated to preserving Atlanta music history.

Regarding the reunion show, the Restraints reunion is the most unexpected addition to the bill. The group’s vocalist Chris Wood died in prison many years ago. More on this as the story develops.

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Title: Document
Released on: Sept. 1, 1987
Favorite tracks: “Finest Worksong,” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” “King of Birds”

A thumbnail sketch. A jeweler’s stone. A mean idea to call my own.

Document could be my favorite R.E.M. album. Of course, I have a lot of favorites, including Murmur and New Adventures in Hi-Fi, but Document is my favorite favorite. It may have the “biggest” and “tallest” sound of any of their albums. Certain “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” has their “fastest sound,” although some tracks on Accelerate give the song a run for its money.

Document is the last R.E.M. album I bought on vinyl — Green and all the subsequent ones, I bought on CD. That’s no doubt part of the reason why I associate the two sides of Document with having distinct identities. Side A seems to be about political action, and Side B seems to be more about disengagement, introspection and even immolation.

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Tonight marks the second installment of Broke + Boujee since its return last month.

That ballin’ ass promoter chick Fadia Kader has big plans in store for the monthly, including expansions to Canada and elsewhere. The Puma and Pabst logos on the adjacent flyer are proof that she means business.

If you know anything about such artists as Proton, Hollyweerd, Grip, and the like, you already know B&B has been the driving force behind Atlanta’s other-ground hip-hop scene.

To prime yourself for the party tonight, download the latest Broke + Boujee mixtape here, and lookout for more to come. (See tracklist below.)

Fadia’s new twist consists of a B+B rotation that highlights different themes (music, fashion, art, lifestyle) each month. Fashion gets the focus tonight.

If that conjures Visions images of sharp-as-a-tack creased slacks, button-ups and Sunday go-to-meeting shoes in your mind, this probably ain’t your kinda party.

18-and-up. 99 cents before 11 p.m. $4.99 for ladies. $9.99 for fellas. Thurs., Aug. 21. The 5 Spot, 1123 Euclid Ave. 404-223-1100. www.fivespot-atl.com.

SEE TRACKLIST AFTER JUMP

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Word on the street says that there is a new Atlanta compilation in the works, titled We No Fun. The record is being organized by a few folks, including Chris Daresta of local experimental acts Gold Painted Nails and Suitcases, as well as Mike Keenan of the band Hawks.

According to Daresta the title is not meant as a jab at We Fun, the documentary film about Atlanta’s garage rock scene that is currently in production. Rather it’s a reference to Brian Eno’s No New York compilation that documented a handful of bands that made up New York’s No Wave scene in the late ’70s.

“We wanted to put together a cool document of Atlanta’s alternative stuff… Just outsider kind of stuff.” Daresta says.

The comp. will be a vinyl only release and pressed in a limited edition of 500 copies. According to the We No fun Myspace page the record will feature 10 bands and the line-up includes Chrissakes, Hawks, the Sunglasses, Thy Mighty Contract, the Suitcases, Retconned, Judy Chicago, SIDS, Lay Down Mains, Bernard, Chopper and the Felon Wind, which is actually 12 bands.

More details will be posted as they come in.

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Last August MINT Gallery in the Sampson St. lofts opened with a show that celebrated the relationship between music and visual arts via mixtapes, called MIXT.

This year the show returns as “reMIXT,” and will place an emphasis an Atlanta’s thriving and ever-changing local music scene. Artists featured in the show include members of Judi Chicago, Vera Fang, Sealions, and dozens of others contributing to the exhibit through visual art and mixtapes.

The show opens Saturday night (Aug. 23) at 8 p.m.

The Gallery made its own mixtape of some its favorite local music as a primer to the show and you can check it out here.

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By Chris Parker

Many bands settle into their suburban tracts after four albums, content to reiterate the sounds and themes explored in their first decade. Yeah, they’ll add some strings, or do an acoustic album, but generally they’re content to sit back and raise their kids.

My Morning Jacket is the exceptional act that significantly expanded its horizons just as it was emerging into the spotlight. During its first five years, the Louisville quintet recorded three albums of country rock and folk, echoing Neil Young and the Band, with a rugged jam-band boogie. Indeed, its early reputation was earned on its energetic, hard-charging live performances.

It could have settled there, content with its indie-country niche. Instead, 2005’s Z moved the band beyond that fuzzed-out, rambling-rock ghetto and stretched its muscle. A critical fave and resident of most year-end top 10 lists, the album wandered widely, invoking pop texture, art-rock grandeur, pretty piano balladry and bubbly power pop without totally abandoning their Southern-fried rustic stomp.

It set My Morning Jacket on a new shelf, and the intervening three years heightened anticipation for Evil Urges (ATO Records), released in June. It’s even more ambitious, if not nearly as felicitous stylistically. Though it’s failed to garner as much universal adoration as Z, Evil Urges pushes the band into new territory while simultaneously looking back to My Morning Jacket’s beginnings.

Read the rest of this article here.

(Photo by Autumn Dewilde)

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It’s easy to forget the good folks at Paste magazine are based in Atlanta since they’re so good (too good, perhaps) at avoiding hometown favoritism.

But in Paste’s September ’08 cover issue, Best of What’s Next: 26 Emerging Artists You Must Know, two local yokels actually made the cut: Janelle Monae and Andy Hull.

Both are artists we’ve talked up (and sometimes down) in the pages of CL. Hull is best known as the lead for Atlanta indie rock act Manchester Orchestra. But his solo set, Right Away, Great Captain is a stripped-down concept album about a sailor from the 1600s, with each song representing journal entries to his captain and family.

Monae, whose Metropolis: The Chase suite was re-released last week, was the topic of CL’s music feature last week, along with her Wondaland Arts Society label. Metropolis is another conceptual release that tells the story of an android from the future who must be destroyed when she falls in love with a human.

But Atlanta has no monopoly on fresh talent. Check the full list for such artists as Wale (Washington D.C.), the Everybodyfields (Tennessee), Black Kids (Jacksonville, Fla.), Mugison (Iceland) and more.

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The worldwide water crisis just hit a bit closer to home with the recent news that Sauda will take her refreshingly crisp, carbonated vocal stylings to New York to attend the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.

She hopes to put a dent in the $50,000 tuition costs with tonight’s benefit performance, featuring Abyss — a beast in the city’s spoken word scene — and folk artist Becca. Ten percent of the proceeds raised will go to Drop Dead Gorgeous, a non-profit that raises awareness about child sex trafficking.

Suggested donation: $50. 9 p.m. Thurs., Aug. 21. Artistry, 942 Peachtree St. 404-888-0101. www.artistrylife.com.

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DARK MEAT, ONEIDA, DIRTY FACES, JAH DIVISION ELECTRONIC SOUND SYSTEM Athens’ psych/improv freak-rock big band Dark Meat returns to tear it up as a co-headliner with Oneida on this packed bill. Pittsburgh six-piece Dirty Faces plays terse, dark and cerebral art-punk jams. Brooklyn’s Jah Division crafts a gimmicky but cool hybrid of deep-space dub covers of Joy Division songs. $10. 9 p.m. The Drunken Unicorn. 404-870-0575. www.thedrunkenunicorn.net. — Chad Radford

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The currently Asheville-based Atlanta expat., singer Amy Pike of the Lost Continentals, the Last Cold Beer and most recently the Bonaventure Quartet fame will return to her old stomping ground for a show at The Earl on Thur., Sept. 4. Also appearing on the bill will be Atlanta’s resident Americana outfit Stovall, who will be recording their performance for a CD to be released later this year.

(Photo courtesy of the Bonaventure Quartet)

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As the audience grew tired of waiting at the Samsung AT&T Summer Krush, a symphony of boos circulated the almost full Tabernacle on Tuesday night. Meanwhile fans ranging from young to old continued to fill the auditorium in anticipation to see the often half-naked rapper Nelly.

Just as he did on the BET awards, Nelly showcased his all-female marching band dressed in matching Apple Bottom outfits and Air Jordans to open up the show. As the ladies got the crowd hyped while dancing to Soulja Boy’s “She Gotta Donk” and other ATL favorites, the blinged-out bracelet and Army dog-tag wearing rapper appeared onstage to give the audience what they’d been longing for since the doors opened.

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Title: Dead Letter Office
Released on: April 28, 1987
Favorite tracks: “Voice of Harold”

My “REMtrospective” project, a chronological, album-by-album review of the work of R.E.M. from the band’s first EP Chronic Town through its latest release Accelerate, seems to have experienced a “Can’t Get There From Here” episode. Despite having been derailed in late May (thanks in part to a couple of family vacations), it’s ready to start up again, bearing in mind that I’m more of an interested amateur than a pro rock critic or musicologist. If you missed them the first time, here are the entries for Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction and Lifes Rich Pageant. As Stipe sings on the latter, “Let’s begin again.”

The evolution of R.E.M.’s sound from murmured jangle to hammering clarity was well underway with 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant. Dead Letter Office, a collection of rarities and B-sides, nevertheless serves as a fitting transitional album, winding up REM’s early period. (The timing seems particularly appropriate to me personally, since I got my undergrad diploma a few weeks after Dead Letter Office came out.)

For me, most odds-and-sods song collections serve as appendices or supplements to a musical artist’s work, but they don’t stand on their own as well; I’m thinking of XTC’s Rag and Bone Buffet and Bruce Springsteen’s 18 Tracks, which have some songs I like and a lot of songs I can’t remember. Dead Letter Office is much the same. For many of these albums, it’s kind of interesting to hear them cover artists they clearly admire, or chew on a musical idea that came to fruition more successfully elsewhere. A lot of times “rarities” tracks remind me of deleted scenes from DVDs: there’s a reason why they didn’t make the final cut. But there are exceptions.

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Deerhunter’s third full-length, Microcastle (scheduled to hit the streets in the US on Oct. 27th via Kranky and the rest of the world via 4AD on the 28th) was posted for download today on iTunes today.

The release dates for the physical product remain the same, but if you want to hear the songs, they’re out there.

The physical release comes with a bonus full-length, titled Weird Era Cont., and the album’s first single, a limited edition 7-inch featuring the songs “Nothing Ever Happened” b/w “Little Kids (Demo)” should be out anytime now.

Microcastle track list:
1. Cover Me (Slowly)
2. Agoraphobia
3. Never Stops
4. Little Kids
5. Microcastle
6. Calvary Scars
7. Green Jacket
8. Activa
9. Nothing Ever Happened
10. Saved by Old Times
11. Neither of Us, Uncertainly
12. Twilight at Carbon Lake

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