Crib Notes

The reissue of Pylon’s second album, Chomp, arrived like a thief in the night in October. Like the DFA-sanctioned reissue of its predecessor, Pylon’s debut full-length Gyrate,  the sound qualities have been greatly improved and some strange odds and ends have been tacked on as well.

Dubbed Chomp More, the reissued album benefits a good deal from the remaster treatment it received for this first-time CD appearance. The brighter cadences and darker nuances of opening number “K,” along with “Yo-Yo,” “Italian Movie,” “Buzz” and the album’s undisputed classic “Crazy” unfurl with the bounce, hazy disco, punk and funk angles that defined alternative rock when Chomp was initially released in 1983.

It’s a natural instinct to blather on about the group’s Athenian cohorts R.E.M. and the B-52’s when trying to qualify what made Pylon such a revered part of Athens’ musical heritage. But Pylon wielded a darker sexual, emotional and cerebral edge. The only thing they had in common with those other bands was time and place. It’s more fitting to drop names like PiL, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Gang of Four and Wire if you’re attempting to peg the group’s post-punk and raw new wave aesthetics. But even those comparisons don’t quite add up either. “No Clocks” and “Reptile” are rigid songs by design, underscoring the group’s signature styles — mechanical rhythms, sparse and chattering guitar lines and Vanessa Briscoe-Hay’s growling mantras that all compliment each other with balanced precision. But there’s a looseness to it all that swells within these songs, and an element of simplicity that taps into the higher functions of musical cognition.

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The funeral for Maserati drummer Jerry Fuchs will be held at the Catholic Church of St. Ann in Marietta on Tues., Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m.

Fuchs died in the early hours of Sun., Nov. 8 after suffering a fall down an elevator shaft in Brooklyn, NY. He was 34 years old.

Earlier this week WNYC posted a tribute to Fuchs.

(Photo courtesy www.myspace.com/7549671)

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This week Of Montreal’s Jamie Huggins, a.k.a. James Husband, released the video for “Window,” from his solo debut, A Parallax I via Spinner.com. The album was released Oct. 20 via Polyvinyl, and is the culmination of 12-years worth of song writing, and was recorded between 2003 and 2008.

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CL was saddened to learn that Jerry Fuchs, drummer for Athens’ band Maserati, as well as the Juan Maclean, !!! and Turing Machine, died in the early hours of Sun., Nov. 8 after falling down an elevator shaft in Brooklyn, New York. He was 34 years old.

According to a New York Times report:

At about 12:30 a.m. Sunday, Mr. Fuchs, 34, who had attended a benefit party on the building’s seventh floor, was stuck on a freight elevator between the fourth and fifth floors, friends and the police said. He had been trying to jump out of the stalled car when his jacket got caught on something, causing him to fall to the bottom of the shaft. Another man, who was not identified by the police, was riding with Mr. Fuchs in the elevator but safely jumped to a fourth floor hallway.

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Athens’ psychedelic indie rock outfit Twin Tigers have made their latest release, titled the Automatic EP, available as a free download.

In the meantime the band recently completed work on its debut full-length, Gray Waves, which is due out on the Brooklyn-based Old Flame Records in 2010.

Grey Waves‘ first single, “Automatic”

Click below to see their remaining November tour dates.

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In the liner notes to Vic Chesnutt’s ’07 full-length, North Star Deserter, Jem Cohen writes, “I make films, I’m no record producer. But I needed to bring these particular people together in this particular place… I thought they might hit it off.”
Cohen’s instincts served him well. North Star Deserter added wholly new dimensions to Chesnutt’s already vast body of songs, and by joining forces with Guy Picciotto (Fugazi) and members of A Silver Mt. Zion and God Speed You! Black Emperor, Chesnutt’s grim, avant-folk tendencies were pushed to maximum overdrive in squals of distortion and dramatic, symphonic majesty. But North Star Deserter was very much a construct of Jem Cohen — a personal vision of what Chesnutt’s albums should be, where songs, musicians and arrangements were put together like actors in a film. Chesnutt’s latest album, At the Cut, finds the same players who made North Star Deserter so bold and beautiful returning, this time to operate as a band sans Cohen’s direction.

Chad Radford:  Was the lineup for North Star Deserter really all part of Jem Cohen’s grand plan, or were you playing together before the idea for the album came about?

Guy Picciotto: That’s really how it all came together. I’ve actually known Vic since 1988. He was playing bass in a band that opened for the band I used to play in, Fugazi, at The 40 Watt Club. And actually, the other three guys in Fugazi played with Vic — maybe 10 years ago. They did an Olivia Newton-John cover together for a tribute project. They played “Have You Ever Been Mellow,” but I was out of town at the time, so I wasn’t part of that.

Before the North Star record I had never actually played with Vic, but I knew him and saw him every time we played in Athens. I was a huge fan of his records and always saw him when he came through town.

“Flirted With You All My Life”

“Philip Guston”

“Chain”

“Chinaberry Tree”

Vic Chesnutt (w/ Guy Picciotto of Fugazi and members of A Silver Mt. Zion, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Witchies, and Clare & the Reasons play the Earl on Sun. Nov. 1 $15. 8:00 p.m. 488 Flat Shoals Rd. 404-522-3950.

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Tonight, Fringe Factory Records celebrates their inaugural release at the Star Bar as they host the release party for the “In My Mind” b/w “Going Nowhere” 7-inch single from the Electric Cycles.

Like-minded locals, Atlanta’s Tiger Tiger! and Athens band the Humms open the show, and when all is said and done resident FF DJs Vikki V and Suzy Q will spin a sprawling set of ’60s rock, soul and psychedelic rock records until closing time.

“We had talked about starting a label for a while,” says Vikki. “We have lots of bands playing at our Fringe Factory events and we thought it would be cool to record some of them, put out singles, or maybe even do some reissues of some older stuff — ’60s, garage rock and psychedelic stuff. Matt from the Electric Cycles was kind of the catalyst who got it all rolling. They wanted to be affiliated with a label so we decided to do this first record together.”

“In My Mind” mp3

The Show is free and the music will kick off around 9 p.m. Star Bar, 437 Moreland Ave. 404-681-9018.

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Sign up for the Dead Confederate e-mail list and get a free digital 7-inch that features  Dead Confederate’s “The Rat” b/w Meat Puppets’ “Go to Your Head.”

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When former Masters of the Hemisphere vocalist and songwriter Sean Rawls left Athens for the Bay Area, he founded Still Flyin’, which began as a 14-piece-plus white reggae band. Over the years Rawls has tamed the reggae urge with a bit more of a dance-floor pop sound that comes to fruition on the band’s debut full-length, Never Gonna Touch the Ground. Through it all, the group has undergone a serious transformation without ever taking itself too seriously. HAMMJAMM is its credo, and freewheeling eclecticism combined with infectious rhythms that keep the party moving is the band’s way of life.

Chad Radford:  How have you been? We haven’t spoken since the last Masters of the Hemisphere reunion back in 2006.
Sean Rawls:  Pretty good, man. The Masters are playing again on Friday at Caledonia in Athens…

I wanted to ask what this Owl Hootenanny is all about.
We were on Kindercore Records out of Athens and one of the guys who used to run that label, Ryan Lewis works for Owl Scooters now and he’s putting on a big festival show/party thing that is Kindercore and Owl Scooters together. He wanted Still Flyin’ and the Masters to play, so we’re doing it for our buddy.

The last time I saw Still Flyin’ play was a few years ago. You were a 14-piece reggae band back then, but that seems to have changed.
Yeah it’s a little different. We started out as a reggae joke band but then it got kind of serious because we liked it so much. Now it’s more pop music. Our first album came out last spring and it’s more like dancey, rhythmic music. We call ourselves party music, I guess. There’s a lot less reggae going on with us now, but it’s still there.

Still Flyin’, Peelander-Z and Excalibrah play the Earl on Sun., Sept. 20. $10. 8 p.m. 404-522-3950.

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According to REMhq.com, REM will release

On October 26th, R.E.M. will release Live at the Olympia, a two-CD set of 39 songs from the group’s ‘working rehearsals’ in Dublin, Ireland,” produced by Dubliner Jacknife Lee who co-produced their album Accelerate.

“Live At The Olympia” ventures back to the first week in July 2007, when R.E.M. set up camp at the venerable Olympia Theatre in Ireland’s capital city and tested new material over five nights before fired-up, capacity crowds comprised of fan club members, friends, family, and fans from all over the world who were party to R.E.M.’s so-called ‘experiment in terror.’ ‘We were just trying to do something we hadn’t done before,’ said guitarist Peter Buck, ‘which meant there was no relaxing during the set. Every second we were playing something we didn’t know all that well. Which was kind of good… there were all kinds of terror elements going on during that show.’

…A special edition 2 CD & DVD set will contain a film of the Dublin shows by Vincent Moon and Jeremiah, who previously worked with R.E.M. on “Ninetynights,” “Six Days,” and the video for “Supernatural Superserious.”

Stream “Driver 8″ live.

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Wednesday morning we packed up and headed north of the Mason-Dixon Line.  And can you spell disaster, because I’m pretty sure Woody Shortridge can’t.  That’s what the past few days have been: a fun disaster.

We were supposed to go to New York via Hoboken, NJ for an interview and in-studio performance with Planet Verge.  As we approached New Jersey we were hit with torrential rains.  Luckily we had allotted extra travel time, but we weren’t prepared for tornadoes.  Yes, there were tornado warnings in the New York area.  Thus the Planet Verge gig was rescheduled for Thursday evening, but the studio was unavailable so the Planet Verge hosts were going to do the recording guerrilla-style.  We were unexpectedly thrown into downtown Manhattan at 6 p.m. with buckets of rain.  We made it slowly, but safely to Brooklyn to park the cars for FREE.

True, we had a lot of fun exploring the city. The Balkans took the time to check out Chinatown for some cheap stuff.  However, once again New Jersey got the best of us.  We picked the “worst time” to drive from Brooklyn through Manhattan to Hoboken: 5:30 p.m. The studio was less than 8 miles away but it took us almost 2 hours to make it. Amazingly we arrived in Hoboken on time, early actually, but one of the girls at Planet Verge was late.  We went to check out the performance space, the parking lot of the studio, but there was no outlet.   While the Planet Verge host searched for an alternative spot the parking lot proved a playground for the two bands, special thanks to some Styrofoam scraps (some of which Brett hit me over the head with).  And Stanley Vergilis proved to be the best at jumping for a hole in the wall.

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I left the boys for one night during our day of rest in Athens, GA and they got a warning from the UGA police: making a left turn out of a right turn lane, very BA.  Monday morning we headed out for Virginia.  Our soccer-mom-mobile was so weighted down that we had to turn off the AC to make it up hills.  Things were pretty quiet until the boys woke up around two, following lunch at Taco Bell.  Brett Miller took hold of the iPod and we had a sing-along that went from early Beatles– including a “Yellow Submarine” round—and “Let’s Get It On” to some ’90s favorites, mostly Pearl Jam.  Interruptions were limited to desperately rolling down the windows when Woody Shortridge’s stomach occasionally reacted to his lunch.  Woody had just put everything but the last 90 cents from the Athens gig into the car’s tank and had nothing to lose.

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The Balkans aren’t driving a fancy bus, they won’t be staying in hotels or even eating at mid-priced chain restaurants during their nine-stop tour of the east coast this summer.  But they do have complete ownership of the whole tour.  They’ve booked the shows themselves, made T-shirts, pressed records and crammed equipment into a soccer-mom-mobile plus a turtle top.  They spent months convincing concerned parents that they weren’t going to die, and after a full-band and parent meeting last Saturday they were reluctantly given the go for takeoff.  Yes, this is a tour with plan and potential.  It is also a tour with four recent high school graduate boys and a hand full of girls in tow.

The tour started sometime Saturday afternoon while I was in the shower. I emerged to find the car packed full with little room for my own bag.  We arrived in Athens to find people slightly confused as to who the Balkans were. Flagpole, Athens’ local alt-weekly, listed the band as an “Atlanta duo” while Jake, a listing’s paper, had a photo of all four members of the band, but they were labeled the “Blakans.”

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Masters of blackened drone-mental and avant-garde dirge, Stephen O’Malley and Co. are bringing Sunn O))) this side of the Mason/Dixon to play church shows in both Atlanta and Athens.

On Sat., Sept. 26  Sunn O))) plays Legends Special Events Center in Atlanta. Then the group plays two shows in Athens on Sun., Sept. 27 and Mon., Sept. 28 at the Seney-Stovall Chapel (the same church where REM was hanging out in the film Athens, GA Inside/Out). Eagle Twin opens all three shows.

Tickets go on sale this Fri., July 24.

“It Took the Night to Believe” mp3
“Etna” (Sunn O))) & Boris) mp3

Legends Special Events Center is located at:
181 Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard, S.W.
Atlanta, GA 30312
404-658-1960 x181
$15adv/$17dos
(Tickets available exclusively at Ticket Alternative and their retail outlets)

The Seney-Stovall Chapel
201 North Milledge Avenue, Athens GA 30602
706-542-2736
$15adv/$17dos
(tickets available exclusively at Wuxtry and Schoolkids in Athens, and Criminal Records in Atlanta).

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Cast your vote on all the grit and glitz that make this town so filthy rich when CL hosts the BEST OF ATLANTA VOTING PARTY. It’ll be a night that’s sure to scuff the pages of history books in the dirty and decadent big apple of the South.

Attractive Eighties Women headline with a set of rousing anthems that draw from equal parts Lenny Bruce’s impious humor-made-local, and the power-trash jams of the Replacements circa ‘83. Dead Confederate’s Hardy Morris opens the show with a rare solo performance. “I’ll be playing some of my own songs on an acoustic and an electric guitar,” Morris says. “Some of the stuff you’ll hear will be things that we’ve done as Dead Confederate songs, and some of the other songs are just my own, personal stuff. … songs that aren’t really in the right vein for the band to do.”

$5 (admission includes beverage and food samples). 9 p.m. The Masquerade, 695 North Ave. 404-577-8178. Don’t forget to vote – onsite at the party, or at clatl.com/bestofatlanta.

(Photo by Pamela Littky)

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Once again Athens’ annual downtown AthFest music blitz is back for an extended weekend of performances by Black Lips, Dreams So Real, Patterson Hood, Those Darlins, Dead Confederate and scores of others. In addition to the music, there’ll be kids workshops, an open-air artist market, and food and drinks galore. If you’ve got family in town and are looking for something to do, or you’re just itching to take drive up Ga. 316, there’s no better time than AthFest. Thurs.-Sun., June 25-28. $15-$20.

A Schedule of performances for the outdoor stage can be found here, and the lineup for the indoor venues can be found here.

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From the Whigs mailing list:

“Due to the unfortunate loss of the Georgia Theater, The Whigs will be playing a fundraiser Tuesday June 23 at the Melting Point. All proceeds to benefit the staff of the Georgia Theater. Also, our good friends Dead Confederate will be sharing the stage with us. Please join us for this important cause. Early show. Tickets can be purchased HERE.”

Georgia Theatre Fundraiser, The Melting Point. Tues., June 23. $10. ALL proceeds benefit the staff of the Georgia Theatre.

7:00 p.m. the New Familiars
9:15 p.m. Dead Confederate
10:30 p.m. the Whigs

(Photo courtesy the Whigs)

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The AJC reports that around 7 o’clock this morning the Georgia Theatre in downtown Athens was engulfed in flames.

“The Georgia Theatre, a converted cinema, has served as a music venue for many well known Athens bands, including REM and the B-52s.

Doc Eldridge, a former Athens mayor who is currently president of the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, said he saw a huge plume of black smoke when he arrived at his nearby office at 7:10 a.m.

The theater was “fully engulfed, with flames coming out above the building,” Eldridge said.”

Continue Reading Georgia Theatre Fire in Athens.

(Photo by Todd Stephenson)

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Kyle Dawkins recently completed a short video clip to preview the forthcoming Exsanguinette album, which features an impressive lineup of like-minded musicians fronted by Killick (Eric Hinds) playing guitar, along with Brann Dailor of Mastodon (drums), Liz Allbee (trumpet) and Larry Ochs of Rova Saxophone Quartet (sax).

The finished product is still about a month away, but in the meantime this teaser video offers a pretty tantalizing preview of things to come.

“Bloodletting” (excerpt) mp3

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Athens-based Appalachian trance metal guitarist/improv artist Killick’s (Erik Hinds) forthcoming full-length Exsanguinette (sic), features an impressive lineup of like-minded players accompanying his guitar playing, including Brann Dailor of Mastodon (drums), Liz Allbee (trumpet) and Larry Ochs (of Rova Saxophone Quartet) on sax. For lack of a better term, the music is insane. The CD will be released in a limited press of only 1,000 copies, featuring artwork by Watson Atkinson, photos by Rinne Allen and an old-school trash metal cassette demo J-card style insert. The recording is due out in June on Killick’s Solponticello label.

The idea for the project came about shortly after Killick suffered through a nasty bout of internal bleeding that left him hospitalized for several days, and greatly influenced this forthcoming release. According to Killick, “The music explores the idea of bleeding as purging, change, and renewal.

“Bloodletting” excerpt mp3

Chad Radford: What happened to you in June?

Killick: “I woke up one day feeling “lazy” for lack of a better word. My physical state deteriorated rapidly, and by 6 p.m., I was in the hospital where I stayed for five days. I had a bleeding Duodenal ulcer … silent, painless caused by a bacteria called H. Pylori. I could have gotten the bacteria anywhere at any point from when I was born until right up to then. I lost over half my blood. It’s thought that many, many people around the world have H. Pylori, though it typically doesn’t cause any problems. Having Celiac disease may make me more susceptible than the average person. Celiac disease is a lifelong intolerance to the gluten protein Gliadin, found in wheat, barley and rye plus there’s a closely related protein in oats. They are poison to my body. The trick is avoiding not only the obvious foods, but almost all processed food has small amounts in it, which is too much for me. I’ve been gluten-free for four years. … I’m used to it. The social dimension is harder on other people than it is me. People feel bad that I can’t eat what they prepare. I also can’t drink alcohol or eat spicy foods, or tomatoes or oranges or almonds, or refined sugar, or caffeine. I also can’t take any aspirin or Ibuprofen or anything like it. I tell people I’ll make up for it in another life.

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