Crib Notes

A fire that ignited outside Atlanta’s Masquerade Music Park Saturday night has been extinguished, with no reported injuries. The fire did, however, destroy a storage space separate from the music venue.

Around 10 p.m., three Atlanta Fire Department engines responded to the venue’s open-air music park.

Witnesses said they walked outside to find plumes of smoke billowing from the the rear of the venue. Another witness standing in a nearby parking lot said he saw smoke as well. He said he walked to the rear of the venue and found flames had already engulfed trees and were spreading to nearby booths.

Firefighters managed to contain the blaze to a fenced-in area that stored portable toilets. All of those toilets — an estimated 20 — appeared to be destroyed.

The main venue, which tonight was hosting a punk rock showcase, was not impacted.

Firefighters did not immediately know what caused the fire. Witnesses said the blaze appeared to have started in the portable toilet storage area.

CL attempted to take a photo of the damage but was told by firefighters we were not appropriately dressed to enter the scene. You know, because of the contents of the burnt portable toilets and the fact that we were in sandals. Tessa from Drive a Faster Car has pics from Twitter of the blaze.

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Paste magazine, the Decatur-based music mag that’s reaching out for help during a crushing advertising downturn, says it’s reached the halfway point in its campaign.

From the magazine:

When we launched the campaign, we had no idea what to expect. We knew some readers had offered to help, but we braced for the worst. The response has been phenomenal. Readers, press and even advertisers showed remarkable support. We’ve been amazed, humbled and inspired.

So far we have raised $148,000! That was the minimum that we needed to keep us going into the summer; we never expected to hit this goal so quickly. Thank you! We have the most amazing readers in the world, and we now know—in a very real way—that we hold this thing called Paste in trust for you and will work diligently to honor that.

We still have a ways to go. Most of our debt will be paid out of revenues when the economy starts to rebound and advertisers return, but we need $300,000 to take care of bills that spiraled up during the ad slump. We’re halfway to that goal and more confident than ever that Paste will make it.

If you’re one of the thousands that have donated, you have our deepest gratitude. This crazy campaign is working. If you haven’t donated solely because you thought the effort was futile, it is not. And just check out those amazing songs that are yours for whatever you want to donate.

More musicians — including Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices, Neko Case, Cee Lo Green — have been added to the Paste Station Download Vault, a 120-song repository available to contributors. There are also contest prizes, such as tickets to the Austin City Limits Festival and “an entire Of Montreal Skeletal Lamping Collection.” For more information about the magazine or to contribute to the effort, visit Paste magazine.

The full release from Paste follows after the jump.

(more…)

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If you’ve ever visited the DeKalb County Police Department’s website, you know it’s a treasure trove of lo-fi rap loops that surely scare the bejesus out of criminals and confuse the hell out of taxpayers. But the tunes always made us smile. ytcracker — the “undisputed king of nerdcore” — heard the beats and found inspiration.

Preston at Kiss Atlanta writes:

ytcracker… nerdcore rapper, hacker, and founder of Digital Gangster (you can thank that board and it’s members for the hack of Miley Cyrus)… went and recorded an entire album based on the music from the DPD website. Even more impressive, he did it in less than 10 hours, it’s profanity free, and the lyrics are fucking hillarious. My favorite, hands down, is “executive_command.html”

Six profanity-free tracks, each one inspired by the different part of the site where the loops could be heard. Awesome.

The department has since removed the loops from its website, but they’re preserved for time eternal on the Internet. Listen to ‘em here. A free download of the entire album is available here.

(Cross-posted from Fresh Loaf)

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Lenny’s in Old Fourth Ward will have to find a new location when its lease expires in two years. The sale of the strip mall in which it’s located at the corner of Decatur Avenue and Boulevard was finalized today for $3.3 million to a group of investors.

“For us, it just means in 2-3 years we’ll probably have to move again,” says Bean Summer, the music venue’s booking agent. “On a larger scale, I think it’s a horrible trend for the city. I think they’re pushing out culture and making really ugly choices. They’re losing control of whatever the beauty of Atlanta is becoming. What are we going to do as a city if we have miles and miles of apartments and nothing to do?”

He stresses that the popular music venue is not closing and hopes they’ll own the next location or relocate to a neighborhood less likely to force another move. Lenny’s moved to its current location in August 2006 after its old spot on Memorial Drive was sold.

“I hope people know that we’re going to keep going and we’re going to keep booking shows,” Summer says. “Yeah, we’ve had a lot of ‘public issues’ that have happened to us, but somehow we keep going. But you never know when a tornado is going to hit and gentrification is going to push us out and out.” (more…)

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Radiohead plays Thursday at Lakewood Amphitheater and, being the eco-conscious angst-ridden gents they are, have suggested fans use public transit if possible. MARTA will be operating a shuttle service between the Lakewood/Fort McPherson station (s4) and the venue tomorrow night. Gates to the venue will open to MARTA customers at 5:30 p.m.The shuttle stops running one hour after the amphitheater closes. Fare’s $1.75 and covers both the shuttle and rail services. Parking at MARTA stations is free as long as you’re not there for more than 24 hours.

So jump on the North-South line and make Thom Yorke smile, maybe even cry. If you’d like to see how you can get from home to the MARTA station without having to drive at all, click here and tell the navigation droids what they want to know.

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