Crib Notes

According to the East Atlanta neighborhood message board eavbuzz.net, Feed Your Head Music (493 Flat Shoals) owner Thom Osbourn was the victim of a robbery/assault that happened in the record store around 10:20 p.m on Sunday.

According to the post at eavbuzz.net,

A young, black male entered and appeared to have a gun concealed in a chip bag.  He asked Tom for all his money.  Tom told him that he didn’t have any sales for the day, so the kid told him he was going to take Tom’s laptop.  Tom told him to take it.  The kid seemed to get frustrated when he couldn’t get the power cord.  Tom told him he didn’t need it.  Tom discovered that the gun was actually a cell phone in the chip bag.  The kid began hitting Tom with his fists.  Then he picked up a turntable and an amp and hit Tom in the head with them.  Tom grabbed a bat and they struggled.  They ended up on the floor.

Randal was still next door at So Trendy and heard the yelling.  He called 911 and grabbed his pistol.  He ran outside and looked through Tom’s door.  Once he was certain that the kid didn’t have a weapon, Randal entered and told the kid to stay on the floor or he would blow the kid’s head off.

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Atlanta’s the Balkans are raising the bar on DIY cred. They make their own records — practically from scratch.

Balkans bassist/guitarist Woody Shortridge makes the mold by pouring liquid silicone over a record placed at the bottom of the box. Then, the record is made by pouring a liquid resin into the mold. The kind he uses dries in 15 minutes. He adds urethane dyes to create colorful swirling patterns. The whole process takes less than an hour to complete.

Balkans bassist/guitarist Woody Shortridge learned about copying records this way from Adam Bruneau who originally posted about it on his blog. Together they perfected their technique and Cave Paint Records was born.

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Geographic North has unveiled the third installment of the “You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever” 7-inch series. This latest addition is a minty blue single from San Francisco’s Tarentel. On the a-side, “Space Junk A” is an amorphous cluster of percussive rhythms that snake and grind into a wall of bright black feedback that phases in and out of overdrive. On the flip side “Space Junk B” is a slower bout of groaning drones, feedback and machine textures that swell with a sinister hue.

The record spins at 33 1/3 RPMs, but I played mine on 45 at least three times before realizing that it was going at the wrong speed. In reality, both speeds sound pretty cool, so in essence you get two records for the price of one.

As with the previous 7-inches from A Sunny Day in Glasgow and Tussle, the packaging aesthetic is minimal but solid. At a glance the attention to lavish detail can easily be overlooked. But the heavy duty cardstock and off-set printing on the sleeve really give weight to the record. It’s a jam for collectors to be certain, and if your interests are piqued you should act quickly. Each record in the series is limited to only 300 copies.

Six-month subscriptions to the series are available for $36, which gives you a little bit of a break on the price. But if you’d rather hunt them down at one of the local record stores they’ll set you back anywhere from $6-$8. The smart money is on the subscription.

(Photo by Geographic North)

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James Joyce, underground record keeper

A self-described librarian of rock, 33-year-old Joyce posts long-lost songs, photos, fliers and anecdotes from Atlanta’s underground music scene on his blog, Beyond Failure. He also has played with a bunch of Atlanta bands over the years — most recently with psych-funk collective Noot d’ Noot.

CL: How did you come up with the idea for Beyond Failure?

JJ: I’ve probably been in 20 bands or so. And I’m kind of by nature an archival person. I’m kind of a librarian.

That’s a rare combination for people in bands.

I think it’s because I’m a drummer. I’m just more systematic in the way I think and the way I organize myself. I’m more organized than a lot of my bandmates. Everyone has moved 100 times, and nobody has their old records, their old tapes, old flyers, old pictures. They started contacting me and asked if I had any of the old recordings, because theirs were all gone.

So I started digitizing all these old demo tapes, old records and seven-inches and stuff. And I started posting them up on this blog, rather than just emailing them to everybody.

Then I started posting stuff by bands I was friends with at that time, in the ’90s. I really like their music, and it’s really hard to find a lot of their stuff. Everything local is out of print. It’s good to just collect a lot of that stuff and make it available, for historical purposes. Because otherwise, you won’t be able to find it.

(Lots of links to long-lost recordings, after the jump.)

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For some reason, it’s been all very hush-hush, but Criminal Records is planning to expand its L5P mini-empire with a satellite location dedicated to vinyl. We’re told Criminal will soon take over the Euclid Avenue storefront that recently housed R. Land’s Summerland art show, filling it with new, and possibly used, records.

Details are sketchy because, for unknown reasons, the fun-loving Criminals have been tight-lipped about their plans. What we hear is that the move will allow the original store to expand its selection of comics, magazines and toys. We don’t know where the CDs will be housed.

But we do know that vinyl is in the midst of a consumer boom as young’uns raised on mp3s are gradually discovering that the LP is the most bad-ass recorded music format God ever created!

How does neighboring Wax ‘N Facts feel about the additional competition? The ever-perky Victoria told us the folks there are looking forward to the company, the more the merrier, and all that. If anything, the new outlet will help promote the supremacy of vinyl, which may boost everyone’s business.

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THE PIPETTES AT VINYL: Singer Gwenno Pipette can’t believe how much parking costs in Midtown. (Photo by Perry Julien)

The Pipettes are a British group whose sound and matching polka-dotted look harks back to the era of the so-called girl groups — artists like the Ronettes and the Crystals whose popularity peaked after Elvis was drafted, but before the Beatles played “Ed Sullivan.”

In support of their debut album, We Are the Pipettes, the Pipettes played a proper gig at Vinyl in Midtown on Friday. A couple of hours earlier, though, they marched into Criminal Records in Little Five Points and played a fantastic three-song acoustic set to a roomful mostly of men – many of whom were, presumably, like me, there to find out if they would look and sound as good in person as they do on YouTube and CD.

The answers: yes and yes. The Pipettes are cuter than puppies in toilet paper commercials and their three-part harmonies are as lovely live as they are in-studio. They sounded so good, I almost bought a second copy of their CD. No joke.

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