Crib Notes

Atlanta five-piece the Stolen Hearts are a sultry, girly punk-rock band that revels in a damaged, Phil Spector punk vibe, churning out simple, ballad-esque rock and roll songs that hone primitive, melodies, sweet crooning and hooks that are as innocent as they are on fire. For their show tonight (Sat., June 6) at 529, the group is celebrating the release of its debut 7-inch on Douchemaster Records. $5. 9 p.m. Digital Leather opens. 529 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-228-6769.

How did the Stolen Hearts come together.
Rachel Jones: The group first started out with an all girl line-up. There were five girls, me and Michelle and three other girls. Then Ashley Salisbury joined and the other girls were really busy doing other things so it didn’t really work out. When they left we took a break and then started back up again later. We needed a guitar player and Adrian Barrera (Barreracudas) was in, which was really cool. If you ask most people if they want to join a new all girl band they laugh at you, but he was totally into trying it out.

Why will they laugh at you?
RJ: Mostly because we’ve never really been in a band before and don’t know what to expect. I would probably have the same reaction, but Adrian was willing to do it. Greg King (Carbonas, GG King) was in too. He’s a trooper for sure.

Greg and Adrian are both very competent musicians. What’s it like to come into a band with them, having no real musical experience yourselves?
MK: It pushes us to better ourselves as musicians. You can’t get better at it unless you’re actually playing music with other people. We’ve learned a lot from them, and I think we’ve pulled it off pretty well so far.

“Heart Collector” mp3

“Fire” mp3

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The Coathangers – Stop Stomp Stompin from Extra Zero Media on Vimeo.

Earlier this week the Coathangers unveiled the video for “Stop Stomp Stompin’” from their sophomore album, Scramble on Suicide Squeeze Records.

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While the East Atlanta Icehouse has closed its doors until June when they hope to have acquired a license to sell booze, the doors will be open this Saturday night (April 18) for the much ballyhooed “Born to Thrill” tribute to fallen Cramps vocalist Lux Interior.

DANG DANG DANG is no longer on the bill and in their stead, Uncle Daddy & the Kissin’ Cousins will perform.

Uncle Daddy will also host a trivia game with questions about Lux Interior and, of course, the Cramps between bands. $10. Doors open at 9 p.m. East Atlanta Icehouse. 543 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-577-2073

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Chad Radford:  Your 7-inch came out a few months back. Now that you’ve had some time to ruminate, what are your thoughts on your first release after Carbonas?
Greg King:  We just laid down a bunch of new songs and they are a whole lot better.

Are you playing with the same line-up you had with the first single?
I sang and played all of the drums and the guitars and Chris Van Etten played the bass. [Gentleman] Jesse hasn’t been playing with me since we did the recording. Clay Kilbourne has been playing guitar and Mike Beavers from Predator has been playing drums.

Are you going to put out a G.G. King full-length?
Oh I don’t know. I’ve recorded six songs and they’re demo quality. It’s pretty raw and it might make a better 7-inch. I think a whole album would get kind of tiresome. I’ll probably do it with Douchemaster, but I want to send it around to a few other places to see if anyone is interested, and to see who’s going to give me a massive budget to go and record.

Are you going to stick with the name G. G. King?
I really wish that I hadn’t picked that name, but I already got a record with that name on it, so I’ll stick with it. As soon as we started getting the record covers printed I started getting all of these great ideas for names, and thought crap. It’s totally retarded. But it does kind of plays into my obsession with when cool bands and musicians shit the bed and do something terrible… And it’s an obvious reference to Dee Dee King from the Ramones doing his solo rap stuff which is pretty much unbearable.

G. G. King plays tonight, Sat., April 11 with Jay Reatard and the Stolen Hearts at Lenny’s 9 p.m. $10. 486 Decatur St. 404-577-7721.

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Balkans played a 7-inch release party on Sunday night (Feb. 22) at Vacation Gallery & Boutique in the Virginia Highlands, and there was one small problem: there weren’t any 7-inches to be found. The label didn’t get them from the pressing plant in time for the show, which has been an increasingly common problem as of late. Rumor has it that all of the pressing plants around the country are experiencing a huge demand for vinyl right now. As a result it’s taking longer and longer to get records.

The group played anyway, and they wore an awful lot of denim when they did (see above). There were about 25 people in attendance for the 20+ minute set. Balkans craft a jittery and fast-paced punk/surf/fuzzed-out pop grind that teems with energy while they perform.

Guitarist/bass player Brett Miller played with a broken hand, and when he dropped his pick toward the end of the show he just played the string with his fingers. A fine, red spackling, a few smears and a couple of bloody finger prints marred the otherwise colorless face of his guitar by the time he was done.

It’s a sure sign of dedication when a band literally sheds their own blood to keep a show moving along, and all of the pain and frenetic energy the group displayed paid off.

Double Phantom Records hope to have the 7-inches for sale sometime this week, and most definitely by the time they open for King Khan and the Shrines at the Masquerade on Tues., March 10.

(Photo by Chad Radford)

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The Fleshtones’ frontman Peter Zaremba seems perfectly at ease when explaining that since forming the group in 1976, the members have always held strong Southern ties despite their New York roots.

“We’re Yankees who are very comfortable in the South,” he offers with a thick, Queens accent. From there he tells stories of passing through Georgia in the band’s early days and buddying up with the “boys” in Athens who later became R.E.M. “We played there a lot back in those days, and were a good influence on them.”

The Fleshtones 1981 debut Roman Gods put the group on the map as purveyors of what they call “super rock.” It’s an intense merger of punk and alternative meshed with ’60s soul, surf and garage. In the beginning, the press called them garage rock revivalists, but their songs transcend simple nostalgia.

Through acquaintances with such bands as the Cramps and Boston’s proto punks the Real Kids, the Fleshtones encountered various approaches to wistful rebellion and developed their own raucous sound. “When we saw the Real Kids it was an important moment for us,” Zaremba explains. “We said, ‘Alright, let’s not just love this music, let’s make this music.”

The group has remained remarkably consistent since 1990. Zaremba and original drummer Bill Milhizer, along with guitarist Keith Streng and bassist Ken Fox, round-out the Fleshtones’ line-up. After releasing scores of albums, such songs as “First Date (Are You Coming on to Me),” “Shiny Heinie” and the rollicking “Jet-Set Fleshtones” from last year’s Take A Good Look, reel with more energy and spontaneity than, frankly, anything throughout the Fleshtones’ catalogue. “We tortured ourselves when we made albums like Roman Gods,” Zaremba laughs. “It’s not like we’re in a studio trying to communicate ideas to an engineer who doesn’t understand; which was the case back then. Their lives were dedicated to taking raucousness out of recordings. Nowadays we just have fun.”

The Fleshtones play a free in-store at Criminal Records on Sat., Feb. 7th probably around 5 or 5:30 p.m. and then later with Anna Kramer & the Lost Cause at The Star Bar. $10. 9 p.m. 437 Moreland Ave. 404-681-9018.

(Photo by Anne Streng)

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Frontman and co-founder of the legendary American horror punk band the Cramps, Lux Interior died on Wed., Feb 4th, at the Glendale Memorial Hospital in Glendale, California. Born Erick Lee Purkhiser, Lux Interior was 62 years old at the time of his death. According to a press release issued by his wife and Cramps guitarist Kristy “Poison Ivy Rorschach” Wallace, a pre-existing heart condition is attributed as the cause of death.

Lux Interior and Poison Ivy were married for over 37 years and moved the group from Los Angeles to Akron Ohio to New York City where they gained notoriety amidst the backdrop of the seminal CBGB’s punk scene of New York in the 1970s and ’80s.

The Cramps made their debut with their 1979 EP, Gravest Hits. Later albums, such as 1981’s Psychedelic Jungle, and their mid-career retrospective, Bad Music For Bad People are iconic albums in the punk rock lexicon. The group’s merger of horror and sci-fi imagery laced with punk, rockabilly and garge rock sounds is often imitated, but has never been rivaled.

The press release sent out by Poison Ivy goes on to say that “Lux was a fearless frontman who transformed every stage he stepped on into a place of passion, abandon, and true freedom. He is a rare icon who will be missed dearly.”

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For today’s Roll Call we call out Candice Jones and Stephanie Luke of the Coathangers.

Who are you?
Candice and Stephanie.

Describe yourself in three words.
Manic, Creative, Eggs.

Who — dead or alive — would most you like to meet?
Honest Abe, Kurt Cobain, Conan O’Brien, Charles Bukowski, Rainbow Bright, Kathleen Hanna, Emma Goldman, Cleopatra and Albert Einstein.

Who would you most like to slap in the face?
Zsa Zsa Gabor, so she gets a dose of her own medicine.

What song do you wish you had written?
“Wang Chung”

Elvis Costello or Elvis Presley?
Toughie… Costello

LP, CD or MP3?
LP, duh

If you could start one trend, what would it be?
To have fun at shows again.

If you could end one trend, what would it be?
Ug(g) Boots…. ugggggly.

With whom would you most like to play a game of spin the bottle?
James Franco.

The Coathangers kick off their month-long residency at The Star Bar tonight (Wed., Feb. 4th) w/ Baby Dinosaurs Vs. Extinction and Customers. $5. 9 p.m. 437 Moreland Ave. 404-681-9018.

The Coathangers – “Tanya Harding” from ataricharm on Vimeo.

(Photo by Bob Levett)

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Monday nights are always a hard sell, but there are a couple of noteworthy shows going on around tonight.

First and foremost Derek Lyn Plastic is playing a 7-inch release party for his brand new She’s Go A U.T.I. 4-song 7-inch EP tonight at 97 Estoria in Cabbagetown.

Who would have thunk a 7-inch EP with a title like She’s Got a U.T.I. would show off major artistic growth for Derek Lyn Plastic? Believe it.

The four songs that make up the latest release from Atlanta’s burgeoning icon of discomfort are cut from the same vampy and paranoid cloth of synth-driven punk jams that made his previous singles so addictive. But there’s an added level of precision and intensity in his delivery that makes it clear Mr. Plastic isn’t just working out his social demons for the sake of it.

To read the rest of the story click here and to stream mp3s from Derek Lyn Plastic’s “She’s Got A U.T.I.” 7-inch click here.

… and if if the avant-garde thing is more your speed, CONNCET 9,  JERKAGRAM and QUR’ANOSAURUS HEX are playing over at Eyedrum. The droning and mysterious ensemble Conncet 9 revels in the dark resonance of real-world sounds and textures but manipulates them to take on a much more cluttered and haunting hue than their naturally occurring order. Jerkagram is a noisy and reactionary improv/psych-rock outfit from Connecticut that bashes out aggressive and ramshackle art-rock clusters of rhythm and dirge. Qur’anosaurus Hex opens the show and there’s a distinct possibility that Atlanta’s very own Duet For Theremin and Lapsteel will perform as well. $5. 9 p.m. Eyedrum. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org.

(Photo courtesy of Derek Lyn Plastic).

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Stacey Singer was so moved by the power of the Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Ore. that she decided to help set up a similar camp in Atlanta. That’s why Singer and others will be at the Plaza Theatre this weekend for the documentary Girls Rock! (reviewed in this week’s issue) as a way to publicize Girls Rock Camp (ATL), which will be held July 14-19 at Eyedrum.

On Saturday (May 3), there will be a Q&A session with co-director Arne Johnson. On Sunday at 2 p.m., instruments will be provided to kids in attendance in advance of the 2:30 p.m. screening (which will again be followed by a Q&A session, followed by more jamming.

To read more check out PopSmart.

(Photo by Nicole Weingart)

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