Crib Notes

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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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Twin Tigers

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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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By Chris Parker

It’s been an eventful year for Dead Confederate. Since last September’s release of the debut LP Wrecking Ball, they’ve appeared on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and recently finished a tour with childhood heroes Dinosaur Jr. This weekend, the Athens quintet pulls double-duty closer to home, performing at both AthFest and Corndogorama.

Dead Confederate’s sultry psych rumble evokes a range of acts including Pink Floyd’s spacey atmospherics, the Black Angels’ primal drone, and My Morning Jacket’s Southern-fried guitar rawk. They came into existence in the late ’90s as the jam-oriented act Red Belly Band. After graduating from college, they set about pursuing music in earnest, embarking on a new sound, name and outlook.

“We fell in love with creating music all over again,” says singer/guitarist Hardy Morris. “We were floundering as a college band that didn’t take themselves too seriously. Then we started writing some songs that really mattered to us and it took on a whole ’nother level.”

Continue reading “Dead Confederate feeling festive in preparation for new album”

(Photo by Pamela Littky)

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By Michael Gerber

Dead Confederate make unhappy music, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. On Sat., Dec. 20 at Variety Playhouse, the band presented its cathartic world of guitars banging away in dark corners. Right away the Nirvana comparisons the group have drawn with their latest CD, Wrecking Ball, were obvious. A clattering of moody and frustrated noise conjured up vivid memories of the grunge era. Dead Confederate have mastered the art of losing themselves in messy and hopeless dark rock. It’s a combination that has a unique power to take over the senses.

The headliners of the night were Manchester Orchestra. Right away, it was the cleanness of their sound that stood out, which was a drastic contrast to Dead Confederate. These were nice guys who opened with a joke (a tongue in cheek ode to 50 Cent) and went on to play youthful anthems primed for popular embrace.

Vocalist, guitar player and frontman Andy Hull’s bearded and flannel-clad exterior resembles a young Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers, but there wasn’t too much Southern about this rock. Instead, they played something that had more of a suburban feel to it, with songs that felt dreamed up in an Alpharetta bedroom, shared for the first time with friends in a basement, and finally fleshed out as independence replaced high school and parents. I’m guessing. This is all based on the little that I know of where they’re from, their ages and the undeniable emo hand stirring their songs.

Hull reminisced about seeing Death Cab for Cutie at Variety Playhouse, and pointed to the exact spot where he was stood during their show and apparently, “shit [his] pants.” So it was something special to see the crowd singing along to his lyrics when he did the same thing with Ben Gibbard only a few years ago. Their set played like a triumphant homecoming: inspired, grateful, and it only got better as the night went on. Both bands demonstrated why they’ve become critical darlings over the last year. If this is the future of Southern rock it, the future has a lot in common with alternative rock from the ’90s.

(Photo by Shana Langfur)

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Athens rising stars Dead Confederate played one of their typically morphine/raucous sets on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” on Fri., Oct. 10th. There’s a lot about these guys’ sound and image that recalls Radiohead circa, OK Computer, Dinosaur Jr’s latter albums, and even Nirvana from time to time. The group portrays a sense of threadbare emotion and spontaneity, but it sticks very closely to the means of straightforward rock music; albeit a bit on the morose side.

Their performance on Conan possessed a level of energy that’s been missing from many of the more tolerable high-profile rock bands in quite some time. It’s refreshing to watch musicians get so lost in the moment that the their guitar player goes tumbling over backwards during a song, sending stage hands running to his aide from every direction.

Sure this kind of thing happens with some regularity at Lenny’s or the Drunken Unicorn, but to see it on national television makes it all the more poignant.

In case you missed their performance, here’s a video.

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AT SXSW: Michael Stipe of R.E.M. (All photos by Perry Julien.)

Music conference vs. music festival.

Badges vs. wristbands vs. free shows.

Official showcases vs. un-official showcases.

Regardless of your opinions, there is something about 1,700 bands getting together for 24 hours of music.

I was able to see and photograph 49 bands over five days. Fucking rock excess.

Below are photos from: REM, Dark Meat, Ocha La Rocha, Elf Power, Dead Confederate, The Whigs, Von Bondies, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Raveonettes, Vampire Weekend, and X.

R.E.M.

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