The Goodie Mob reunion is one week to the wind, so we’re taking a last look back at the buildup to the biggest show of the year with some footage from their MARTA press tour through the S.W.A.T.S. and a little concert footage.
Crib Notes TV goes behind the scenes with Big Rec aka Big Reczilla of the Regime as he creates two remixes for the “Real Hip Hop is Back” single featuring Rec and the rest of the members of Atlanta’s underground hip-hop supergroup, the Regime (Snub Zero, Shred Da Verbal Tongue, Jawz of Life and KP). The upcoming special “she-mix” features Adrift Da Belle, CoCo Jones, Tiffany Michael, Boog Brown, StaHHr and AynJul.
HOUSEROCKER JOHNSON
Luther “Houserocker” Johnson celebrated his 70th birthday at Atlanta blues haunt Blind Willie’s on Saturday. (Photos by Jeff Slate; more below the jump.)
On Saturday, July 11, Crib Notes caught up with veteran Atlanta-based MC Señor Kaos during the video shoot for his Illastrate-produced single “Automatic Classic” off the Swagger is Nothing, Talent is Everything project he released not long ago. He talks about how Jax’s passing motivated him to return to the stage.
Spotted @ The Kaos Effect.
The term “independent artist” almost seems like an oxymoron when watching Stacy Epps’ new video for the song “Floatin.” It’s obvious, near the 2:00 minute mark, that Atlanta’s indie hip-hop community has her back.
Crib Notes TV caught up with Atlanta DJ/Beatsmith/Graffiti/MC/B-boy group Lee Harvey Oswald to get a sense of the men behind the masks. Consider this an introduction. Stay tuned to Crib Notes to learn more about the group, their art and loose confederation of musicians “Zone 7.” Lee Harvey Oswald opens for Edan and fellow Atlanta act Noot d’ Noot August 1 at Apache Cafe.
The last word on last weekend’s Corndogorama: squelching heat, phallic food, hot beer, mustache contests, tricycle racing, watermelon tequila shots and fifty indie rock bands.
Check out even more photos.
(Photo by Alan Friedman)
This week’s CL cover story, “The Life & Times of Bobby Ubangi: How Atlanta’s garage rock mascot saved himself before dying,” chronicles local music fixture B Jay Womack’s battle with cancer. The video montage was created by We Fun director Matthew Robison and Zack Wilson.
The following mp3s cover musical output from the Lids on up to some of his most recent songs that appear on Inside the Mind of Bobby Ubangi.
Chad Radford: I had a hard time with Meat Puppets when I was a teenager. You guys were an SST band, which in my limited understanding meant something specific, i.e. punk rock. I loved Black Flag and the Minutemen, and I guess the first couple of Husker Du records, but I couldn’t get my head around what you were doing because there was always so much more to your music than punk rock. Ironically, the thing that I didn’t like is what gave you longevity, and is what I’m drawn to now. Did you feel like your natural inclination to incorporate so much more was confusing to listeners?
Curt Kirkwood: We thought those bands were all posers; all style and no substance. That’s pretty much what I still think. Even back then someone had already done it. the Germs did it… the fucking Ramones did it first, you know? If it’s loud and fast it qualifies as punk? We were a lot more hateful than all of those people. We hated them and we hated our fucking audience. That’s why we played country music, so they’d get pissed off and leave. We knew what we were doing and we wanted to evolve the medium — if it was a medium at all. We liked the style, just like we like bluegrass and metal. There isn’t much that I don’t like.
SST sought us out and invited us to make a record. All the punk bands sought us out too, and I mean all of them: Flipper, TSOL, Dead Kennedys… we played with all of them. I can say it now because it was a long time ago, but we were the ones who didn’t buy into it, and saw that they were putting themselves in a corner by doing that. It was an intentional thing and it has worked to a degree. People are capitalizing on that era now and all I can ever think about is that I wish I hadn’t ever fired the fiddle player.
Mika Miko’s last proper album, C.Y.S.L.A.B.F., earned the L.A. lady punks props by merging spastic hooks and focused amateurism. We Be Xuxa is a superior album, due largely to the addition of drummer Seth Densham, whose motorik beats refine the group’s visceral, art-punk kick. “Blues Not Speed” encapsulates their growth and opens the palette for what is perhaps the group’s catchiest Dada manifesto, “Turkey Sandwich.” A cover of the Urinals’ “Sex” pays homage to their southern California punk roots. And with “Sex Jazz,” the subtle no wave leanings of their past aren’t so subtle anymore. We Be Xuxa kicks the group’s infectious grooves up a notch, by fine-tuning the art of what happens when primitivism and high-energy grooves collide.
Austin, Texas, garage-punk quartet the Strange Boys craft a primitive, lo-fi rock and roll sound that’s both dirty and addictive. At its most predictable moments, the group comes across like the Lone Star state’s little brother to the Black Lips. But when they’re on, they’re on. Their In the Red Records debut, The Strange Boys and Girls Club, unleashes a psychedelic post-punk jam that’s part Texas psychedelia and part slow, Southern post-punk.
The band that rolls together holds together, and the Coathangers make the perfect gang. The band’s second full-length, Scramble (Suicide Squeeze), highlights marked growth for Atlanta’s premiere punk banshees. When Julia Kugel (guitar/vocals), Stephanie Luke (drums/vocals), Candice Jones (keyboard/vocals) and Meredith Franco (bass/vocals) dropped their self-titled debut in 2007, they caught both heat and praise for penning such juvenile party-punk anthems as “Tonya Harding” and “Nestle in My Boobies.” Scramble finds the group in a darker, more poetic mood, but they’re still not about to get all serious on us.
Mika Miko “I Got A Lot” mp3
Strange Boys’ “Heard You Want to Beat Me Up” mp3
the Coathangers “Stop Stomp Stompin’” mp3
Mika Miko, the Strange Boys and the Coathangers play the Drunken Unicorn. $10. 9 p.m. Tues., June 9.
(Mika Miko photo courtesy 230 Publicity)
Crib Notes’ contributor Dominick Brady sat down with Haveyouheard.net’s co-founder Adam Trimble to discuss the rise and demise of the Atlanta-based music website Haveyouheard.net and it’s impact on Atlanta’s music community.
Brian Jonestown Massacre played a compellingly mellow show on Friday night at Variety Playhouse. The tambourine guy is still in the band and he is still very hard to look at, yet his placement at the front and center of the stage feels like a distractionary tactic.
As the band stood bathed in washes of intense blue and green lights it was difficult to tell which one of the five guitarists on stage was the group’s semi-mythic frontman Anton Newcombe. Silhoueted against the lights, a couple of the players could have easily passed for him. Again, this didn’t seem to be an accident.
One can imagine that being a group’s mastermind who has been so often maligned/hyped for having various meltdowns and temper tantrums both on and off stage over the years, would probably make one want to hide in the shadows.
At the show there was much talk in the audience about some sort of liver condition that has forced Newcombe to stop drinking. Whatever the case may be, the show was fantastic, hypnotic and without incident. There really wasn’t even much verbal interaction between the audience and the performers. Drama was non-existent as the group wafted through a career spanning set, and that’s a good thing. BJM often suffers from the same reputational set backs that someone like Cat Power used to suffer as well. The selling point for many people is that they want to see the meltdown go down on stage, made famous by the film Dig!, and that’s a damn shame. BJM has mastered their own, very gorgeous musical voice amidst a wash of paisley rock and shoe gazer jams. For this show, the music was the star, with highlights including massive runs through “Whoever You Are, “B.S.A.” and a back-to-back performance of “Not Even if You Were the Last Dandy on Earth” and “A New Low in Getting High.”
BJM is bigger and better and calmer than the band they were a decade ago, or at least they were Friday night.
(Photos by Perry Julien)
The party’s over. But we’re vicariously reliving the moments of SXSW 2009 through one of CL’s favorite Atlanta-based artists.
Just as hip-hop got major play at this year’s festival, it was also Spree Wilson’s first time attending and performing. Check out his stream of Twitter updates over the weekend, and follow him at twitter.com/spreewilson. (See him in on stage with stic.man of Dead Prez in pics above.)
Just touched down in Austin!!!….Time to play ball folks!!!…lol
Been up for 24hrs straight!!…gonna crash for a couple of hours once I get to hotel!
At the hotel..may link up with Small Eyez and the homie Donwill later..
Chillin in Blu with Dead Prez, Nikki, Small Eyez, and Cynthia…just caught up with Janelle and crew at Solange show..
Lookin at Austin City Music Hall…shit is HUGE!!!….it’s gonna be crazy tomorrow!
Funniest thing about this video: They know who Soulja Boy is.
Saddest thing about this video: They know who Soulja Boy is.
Looks like his future as a philanthropist is off to splendid start.
Spotted at The Smoking Section.
GENRE: A brick-sized collection of music journalism from a decidedly Southern magazine
THE PITCH: Trendy bands and celebrity fluff pieces aren’t welcome here. OA editor and founder Mark Smirnoff wants this writing to pay “tribute to how music seeps into us.”
BLUES SISTERS: The writing is most successful when it veers far from the confines of music history, like Carol Ann Fitzgerald’s memoir-ish tale of lesbian attraction and Bessie Smith. “I slept while she rubbed my back in motel beds. Her hands clenched and declenched, just shy of hurting. We burned candles that smelled like pumpkin pie. Bessie was on repeat,” she says.
SEX PISTOLS IN ATLANTA: Mark Binelli tells the story of the Sex Pistols’ first U.S. show at a strip mall in Atlanta. Afterwards the band heads to a bar, but Sid Vicious disappears into the night. “Vicious finally turned up at Piedmont Hospital,” Binelli explains. “After scoring some heroin, he’d gotten bored and carved the words GIMME A FIX into his chest.”
STEVE MARTIN ON FAILED MUSIC ASPIRATIONS: “Obsession is a great substitute for talent.”
ALLMAN BROTHERS IN MACON: John T. Edge quotes roadie Red Dog Campbell about Mama Louise Hudson’s soul-food restaurant, “At the H&H, they didn’t care if we were black, white, or purple. Mama didn’t say anything if we were trippin’ our asses off. Now, she might tell me to come in the back door instead of the of the front when I was messed up, but really she just fed us fried chicken and loved us.”
Peep footage from Jewish rapper Matisyahu’s in-store performance at Criminal Records last Friday, Nov. 7.
Download/listen to “Smash Lies” from Matisyahu’s new Shattered EP.
Decatur MC, B.O.B., and Atlanta transplant Asher Roth cover December’s XXL as part of the magazine’s Freshmen Class issue.
The song “Change Gonna Come” (below) features B.O.B, Asher Roth and another XXL cover subject Charles Hamilton of Harlem rapping over a sped-up vocal sample of Sam Cooke’s classic. It appears on The Unclearables, the upcoming mixtape by B.O.B. — who earned Best Mixtape honors in CL’s Best of Atlanta 2008 issue.
Here’s Gnarls Barkley video for the new song, “Mystery Man,” which will be included on the new EP dropping next Tuesday, Nov. 11. It will also contain four versions of “Whose Gonna Save My Soul” and a live take of “Neighbors” recorded at the 40 Watt in Athens, according to Billboard.
If you’re a Q-Tip fan like me, you’ve grown to accept being teased with release dates that never come to pass. Last I heard, his new album The Renaissance (click to see tracklisting and album cover) has been pushed back to November 4 (election day) — which is nearly one year past the original drop date. Hopefully it won’t go the way of Kamaal the Abstract.
In the meantime, here are some upcoming Atlanta appearances, links to a new Q-Tip mixtape by DJ Dub, and a YouTube clip of a recent interview with Angie Martinez on New York’s HOT 97. Former Rolling Stone writer Toure also interviews Tip in the October ‘08 issue of The Believer.
If you miss Tip DJing tonight at DJango’s Party Like It’s 1999 event (right), catch him in concert in one month: 2K Sports Bounce Tour featuring Q-tip and the Cool Kids. $26. 8 p.m. Mon., Nov. 24. Center Stage, 1374 W. Peachtree St. 404-875-9364.
Click here to download the new Q-tip mixtape by DJ Dub, featuring a mix of old and unreleased material.
See tracklist below the jump.
