Crib Notes

The inimitable Arish “King” Khan made a surprise appearance at The Highland Inn Lounge last night for the weekly Kirkwood Ballers Club open mic night. The place was packed, spirits were high and Khan, who flew to Atlanta from Berlin, played guitar and sang in an impromptu set with Bobby Ubangi (vocals / tamborine), Frank Jenson (drums), Jessica Juggz (drums), and a guest appearance by Brent Hinds from Mastodon who also played guitar.

The legendary pairing of the king and the behemoth on one stage together seemed to be working just fine as they pounded their way through a few, sloppy garage rock numbers, including a cover of the song, “G–L–O–R–I–A.” The crowd loved it. The band was all smiles and at one point Arish even dumped a beer out on Brent’s head, but it all looked like it was in good fun.

However, the mood changed drastically when shortly after the set, Khan took a fist to the face from Brent, that resulted in a trip to the hospital.

The formerly amicable party atmosphere turned into somewhat of a witch hunt, but Brent had left the building.

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Beginning this Thursday night (Sept. 4 ) Kirkwood Ballers Club will keep the party going late-night with DJ Zano at the controls every Thursday night at The Highland Inn Ballroom Lounge, from 10 p.m. ’til 2 a.m.

Zano is already a become a regular fixture at the KBC, spinning sets of dub, bugged-out turntablism, funk and electro minimalism. As of this Thurs. these sets will extend beyond the Ballers Club, which typically wrap-up around midnight. So now the the vibe will go on for as long as the law will allow.

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Thursday night (Aug. 28th) wasn’t quite business usual at Kirkwood Ballers Club. The regular cast and crew of local yokels twiddled knobs, bowed cymbals and plugged away to the sounds of vintage videogame consoles on stage.

Headlining act Hungry Bodies from Baltimore ended with a show of hypnotically amorphous beats and textures that melted-down the bass elements of hip-hop, drone and maximized minimalism into pools of liquid noise.

Sam Garner from Baltimore’s Lexie Mountain Boys wailed a muffled banshee howl into the microphone, adding a haunted, human layer to the mix of sloshing sounds and resonance. The group also featured members of Washington D.C.’s hip-hop experimentalists Food For Animals, alongside ATL expat. and Hoss Records owner Brad Hurst. It was a happy homecoming for Hurst who was a KBC fixture when the weekly open mic Ballers Club nights were held at the old Lenny’s. Hungry Bodies’ set was surreal, short and sweet, which is one of the greatest things about the Ballers Club. Be it a weird indie rock dude beating violin strings with a turkey baster, a lonely young gal strumming on an acoustic guitar or a spontaneously formed ensemble of noise rockers lost in a moment of teeth-gnashing Sonic youth-style feedback, you take the good with the bad. After all, KBC is ground zero for the most adventurous and unorthodox music in the city. So if one particular performer is absolutely unbearable, you can take solace in the fact that it won’t last for much longer. If a band puts on a fantastic performance you’ll be left wanting more and you can talk them up when they’re finished and maybe walk away with a CDR of some stuff they’ve been working on.

All night long the audience was buzzing with word that Geologist from Animal Collective was in the house and hanging out, if only for a brief while. Animal Collective is in town mastering their forthcoming album produced by Ben Allen (Gnarls Barkley, All the Saints, Constellations). Sadly there was no impromptu AC performances, but for the scene of anything-goes musicianship that KBC has cultivated, a visit from Animal Collective is like a nod from royalty, and a sign that experimental music is on the up swing in Atlanta.

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Hungry Bodies from Baltimore, MD features members of Food For Animals, Lexi Mountain Boys, Mexcellent and Atlanta expat and Hoss Records founder, Brad Hurst. The group revels in improvised beat, mutant hip-hop, deconstruction, pure sine tones and digitally “digitally-scrubbed glossolalia.”

The group is performing at The Kirkwood Ballers Club this Thursday night at The Highland Inn Ballroom. Music starts around 9 p.m. It’s free but the out-of-towners could sure use a donation.

To listen to the song, titled “Singles (Radio Edit)” from Hungry Bodies’ forthcoming 7-inch, click here.

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After several months of languishing in a state of indefinite hiatus, The Kirkwood Ballers Club is back, this time in its new home at The Highland Inn Ballroom. The call is simple, bring an instrument, a device, a record, a beat, a turntable, a laptop, a prepared piece of music, a song, a voice, a bag of blood, a film projector, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, an agenda, a broken guitar and all your hang-ups for an evening of jazzy, noisy and totally arty open mic. madness.

On the eve. of the rebirth of The Ballers Club I sat down with Randy in the basement where it all began, to talk about the past and the present of KBC and his booking activities with The Tight Bros. Network.

Chad Radford: Now that you’re in the new home you’re not going to drop “Kirkwood” from the title, are you?

Randy Castello: Fuck no. I like the name and I like the neighborhood. That’s where it began.

It started in the house where you live with your Tight Bros. partner Nisa Asokan, correct?

Correct. It was never planned that we were going to start this cool night in the basement or anything, we just kind of started doing it. We would have parties with our friends and everyone here was a musician. This was in ‘97 when we were having these parties and there were instruments set up. We had some cool memorable nights when like my co-workers from when I was working at Eats would come over and everyone would congregate down in the basement and have sessions. There weren’t any huge stars down here or anything. Bradford [Cox from Deehunter used to rock out down here], and I remember one night when David Grubbs was sleeping upstairs with his cello player and everyone started rocking out in the basement after the David Grubbs show at Eyedrum and he came down and asked us politely if we could stop.

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In this week’s CL feature story on King Khan and the Shrines I mention that Khan’s first Atlanta appearance, with the King Khan & BBQ Show, took place at the “defunct” Kirkwood Ballers Club open mic night at the old Lenny’s. The day the story went to print I received an e-mail from Randy Castello saying that the Ballers Club was born again and as of Thurs., Aug. 7 will resume at the ever popular Highland Inn Ballroom Lounge underneath the Highland Inn.

Since 2004 KBC has served as a weekly, open mic staple for Atlanta’s more adventurous musicians, and has been housed at 3 locations, including a private residence in Kirkwood, the old Lenny’s Bar and 11:11 Teahouse. Past Baller’s Club events have featured performances from the likes of King Khan and BBQ show, Girl Talk, Deerhunter, Jana Hunter, the Black Lips and hundreds of other local and national acts; some that you have heard of and many others that you have not.

“When I started Kirkwood Ballers Club in March 2004, my intent was to provide an open forum for experimental musicians and performance artist who found it difficult to get shows here in town. I also wanted to create an idea incubator of sorts to allow others to perform and experiment with each other musically in an effort to create and nurture new creative ensembles.”

-Randy Castello founder of KBC

Kirkwood Ballers Club is free and the doors open at 8 p.m. Artists who are interested in performing sign up at the door and music starts promptly at 9 p.m. and end at midnight. Since it’s new home is a hotel, Costello stresses that performers must be mindful at all times of the hotel’s residents and keep the volume at an acceptable level.

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