Crib Notes

The phone call interrupts dinner around 6 p.m. on a Thursday. It’s my girlfriend’s birthday and our meals have just been served up at her favorite Italian restaurant. Normally, I wouldn’t answer at a time like this, not even for my own mother. But the picture of B Jay pops up on my phone’s screen, his arms outstretched like Mr. Bill when he’s about to get squashed. I have to answer.

For the last nine months, Benjamin Jay Womack has been soldiering through terminal lung cancer that has spread to his brain, liver and God knows where else — at the age of 34. I answer, expecting to hear his voice on the other end asking for a ride to get something to eat or a pack of cigarettes. But it’s his roommate Jessica. “I had to put B Jay into hospice care today,” she deadpans. “His hips gave out and he’s having a hard time walking. We’re filling out paperwork with a social worker right now and B Jay wants to know if he can put you down for power of attorney.” I answer yes, envisioning the worst-case scenario as a wave of denial sweeps over me.

One year ago, the man best known by his stage name Bobby Ubangi was a rebel without a pause, partying like a rock star and working as the grouchy door guy at the Drunken Unicorn off Ponce de Leon Avenue. Long considered a mascot of sorts for the Atlanta music scene that nurtured such bands as Deerhunter, Black Lips and Gentleman Jesse, B Jay was a founding member of Carbonas before he got kicked out because he didn’t like to practice. He went on to play guitar and sing in such local garage-punk outfits as the Lids, the Gaye Blades, and Bobby and the Soft Spots. “B Jay is omnipresent around here,” says Jared Swilley of the Black Lips. “He’s been around forever.”

Continue reading “The life and times of Bobby Ubangi”

(Photo by Chad Radford)

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Starting this Friday, director Matthew Robison’s Atlanta music documentary We Fun will be playing on Pitchfork.TV for one week and one week only. Inside sources tell us that this will be a slightly edited version from what screened last month as part of the Atlanta Film Festival.

To get specific about it, the much ballyhooed flaming vagina scene has been trimmed considerably.

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This Saturday turned out to be a monumental day for music in Atlanta.

I hit Record Store Day at Criminal Records around 10 a.m. and was lucky enough to score everything I wanted: Jesus Lizard 7-inch shower curtain pack, check. Slayer 7-inch, Tom Waits live at the Fox Theater 7-inch, Jay Reatard/Sonic Youth 7-inch, Sonic Youth/Beck 7-inch, reissue of the the first Bad Religion EP, reissue of Queen’s first EP, a 180 gram LP reissue of Walk Among Us by the Misfits… check, check, check.

When it came time for the moment of truth the man at the cash register asked for two Benjamins to cover my purchases, but it was worth it. Record Store Day comes but once a year, and I had been saving money for weeks in preparation for this. And besides, judging by the high prices that I’m seeing many of these things fetch on e-Bay this morning I think I did the right thing… Just no more record shopping for like a month. Maybe two months.

After performances from Death on Two Wheels and Thy Mighty Contract, the hangover lingering from the All Night Drug Prowling Wolves’ show the night before was catching up with me. After eating a life-replenishing burrito from a gigantic box of wrapped, silver burritos from El Myr that had surfaced in the store, it was time to take a nap before getting the party restarted for the screening of I’m Like This Everyday, Mitchell Powers’ documentary film about Dalton, GA songwriter Peter Stubb, followed by the premiere of We Fun at the Atlanta Film Festival. The screening was sparsely attended, which could be attributed to several factors. The Dogwood Festival was going at Piedmont Park, which meant that barbarian hordes had descended upon the area and had taken up every parking space within a three mile radius. Record Store Day was still going strong and pulling big crowds, and across town at the Earl Customers, NOBUNNY and Gentleman Jesse were setting up to play. The people of Atlanta were spread very thinly across the city, but mostly I think the real party was at Record Store Day where a lot of folks were drinking during the daylight hours and buying records, thus taking the wind out of their sales for later in the evening and keeping them at home. Or maybe people just don’t care about the movie…

After the screening of We Fun it was time to hightail it to East Atlanta to catch a free in-store from Peter Stubb. The crowd was about 20 deep, which felt pretty solid, considering the size of the store. Most of the people in attendance had driven down from the Dalton/Chattanooga area and kind of dominated the scene.

Stubb played an electric guitar and belted out raspy, folkie punk-strummed songs about his ex wife and oral sex and being institutionalized at Atlanta Medical Center, while deflecting a barrage of requests from the crowd. Several of Stubb’s people from Dalton were sharing shoebox detail, out of which they were selling homemade dubbed cassettes of Stubb’s songs with album titles like Ol’ St. Nick, Cutting My Flesh and Worshiping Darlene and From Hell to Victory. Earlier Stubb explained to me that he had spent a few days with his son preparing the tapes to sell them the show for $2 apiece. Each one had a separate but very distinct cut out from a porno magazine of a phone sex line ad glued to the tape cover, which was almost as unsettling as the hot dog tattoo that now adorns Stubb’s face.

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Nashville-based film maker Matthew Robison’s (Silver Jew) much ballyhooed, but yet to be released Atlanta rock documentary We Fun premieres at the Atlanta Film Festival this Saturday night (April 18.)

The film is showing on screen no. 4 at the Midtown Art Cinema on Sat., April 18 and again at 2:05 p.m. on screen no. 6 on  Wed., April 22.

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CL’s Chanté LaGon and Chad Radford chat about two Atlanta rock docs, We Fun and I’m Like This Everyday, showing at the Atlanta Film Festival.

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

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Earlier today producer/director Matthew Robison sent Crib Notes a new cut of the trailer for the forthcoming Atlanta rock scene documentary, We Fun.

WARNING: The trailer features a few swear words, so if you are at work put on a pair of headphones.

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I recently flew to New York City to catch the Black Lips, Deerhunter, and King Khan & the Shrines play a free show August 3, at McCarren Pool in Brooklyn.

It was worth the trip. The bands played to an insanely packed crowd of thousands of kids, young and old. It was so surreal standing onstage looking out at the wave of people covering the pool so thick you could barely see the cement floor.

The show was sweaty, loud, unpredictable, and a little bit chaotic — sounds like an Atlanta show to me.

I spent ten days in the city. This is what I saw:

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Word on the street says that there is a new Atlanta compilation in the works, titled We No Fun. The record is being organized by a few folks, including Chris Daresta of local experimental acts Gold Painted Nails and Suitcases, as well as Mike Keenan of the band Hawks.

According to Daresta the title is not meant as a jab at We Fun, the documentary film about Atlanta’s garage rock scene that is currently in production. Rather it’s a reference to Brian Eno’s No New York compilation that documented a handful of bands that made up New York’s No Wave scene in the late ’70s.

“We wanted to put together a cool document of Atlanta’s alternative stuff… Just outsider kind of stuff.” Daresta says.

The comp. will be a vinyl only release and pressed in a limited edition of 500 copies. According to the We No fun Myspace page the record will feature 10 bands and the line-up includes Chrissakes, Hawks, the Sunglasses, Thy Mighty Contract, the Suitcases, Retconned, Judy Chicago, SIDS, Lay Down Mains, Bernard, Chopper and the Felon Wind, which is actually 12 bands.

More details will be posted as they come in.

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For this year’s music issue, directors Chris Dortch and Matthew Robison gave CL two exclusive video clips from their upcoming Atlanta rock documentary, We Fun: Atlanta, GA Inside Out.

The first clip features yours truly waxing nostalgic about my first encounter with the Black Lips. During the interview we talked a lot about the musical climate within the first few years of millennium change. It was a different town back then. Danger Mouse was just the DJ name for Brian Burton who was churning out primitive but brilliant trip-hop with his Pelican City moniker. Scott Heron’s Prefuse 73 and Savath+Savalas were on the upswing. Richard Devine was churning out great albums and playing shows, and Cat Power was well on her way to moving mountains in New York. As a result Atlanta held a strong art house / coffee shop intelligent music scene. But when the most talented and lauded artists around town moved on to the greener pastures of NYC, the local scene just petered out. Enter the Black Lips.

I first made the Black Lips guitarist Cole Alexander’s acquaintance in the spring of 2002. There was a knock on the door that was so faint that I almost didn’t hear it. The knock came from a young and doe-eyed guitarist, Cole Alexander, who timidly offered me a copy of the Black Lips “Ain’t Coming Back” 7-inch. The photocopied sleeve was too big for the plastic outer sleeve, yet he’d managed to cram it in, paying no attention to the bends and dog-ears he caused in the process.

The record was scratched all to hell, and the b-side was even scuffed with a dusty shoe print. The four songs on this poor piece of wax were a mishmash of noisy and far-away garage rock rhythms and hiss. He was grateful that I was willing to listen to the record.

While recalling this for Dortch and Robison, I was reminded of the famous story of when Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis met British journalist and Factory Records owner Tony Wilson. Curtis promptly called him a bastard. I got off pretty easy with the Black Lips. Nevertheless, while telling the story Dortch and Robison’s faces lit up as though I had just given them something to turn into a legend.

The second clip is footage of Bobby and the Soft Spots performing live in the basement at Rob’s House Record HQ in East Atlanta.

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WE FUN TRAILER: Episodic chaos

Last week Nashville filmmakers Christopher Dortch and Matthew Robison (Silver Jew) unveiled the first substantial look at their Atlanta rock scene documentary film, titled We Fun: Atlanta, Ga. Inside Out.

The film is projected for an August release date.

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I don’t want to be a snitch, so I won’t name any names, but it requires no stretch of the imagination to figure who the guilty party is here.

For at least two weeks, talk has spread through text messages, MySpace, e-mails and word of mouth. Atlanta magazine is going to run a story about Atlanta’s music scene, and the unofficial sequel to Tony Gayton’s 1987 documentary Athens, Ga.: Inside/Out, titled We Fun. The film examines the present-day Atlanta rock scene and the various enclaves of debauchery and society that bind the many scenes of the city where every day is opening day.

Time and place: 2:30 p.m. at Variety Playhouse. Come one, come all. Alcohol and food will be provided.

Being the punctual journalist, I was there at 2:15; fashionably early right alongside Tommy Chung of the Selmanaires. First words upon entry, “Sorry guys, no alcohol.”

It didn’t seem like a big deal at first. There were easily 20 pizzas from Savage lined up next to a cooler of Coca-Cola and water. But as the scattered trickle of musicians began to arrive, the absence of alcohol sent a hushed echo of disappointment around the room. These are musicians we are dealing with here, so no one really showed up until after 3 p.m., and with a lack of any official intoxicants in the room, one should have expected the worst. After all, this is an open invitation to Atlanta’s rock scene. These people need to be sedated — which we all learned the hard way.

Everyone was there: the Coathangers, the Baby Shakes, the Carbonas, Knife and the Fourth Ward Daggers, the Black Lips, some folks from Chopper, Deerhunter, One Hand Loves the Other, Snowden, Beat Beat Beat, West End Motel, Gringo Star, All Night Drug Prowling Wolves, the Gaye Blades, the Selmanaires. Representatives from Rob’s House Records, Douche Master and Die Slaughterhouse were also on hand, along with the Nashville-based We Fun documentary filmmakers Christopher Dortch, Matt Robison and producer Bill Cody.

The call came and everyone crowded onto the stage for the shoot. The rig was impressive and a pasty photographer climbed to the top of a tall ladder and began yelling at everyone to move forward. It was an impressive endeavor, but the camera clicked maybe three times before an alarming hiss sounded and the entire mob was engulfed in a cloud of white carcinogenic fog. Someone — I won’t say who — unleashed a fire extinguisher and turned the entire scene into a clusterfuck. At first people laughed, then they realized that they couldn’t breath. A film of white dust coated everyone and the taste of salt and latex was on everyone’s tongue.

The Atlanta magazine photographers and the Variety Playhouse staff were not pleased, to say the least. Someone who looked exceptionally pissed off demanded to know who was taking responsibility for the fiasco.

This is all part of the Faulknerian dilemma I was talking about when I wrote the year-end piece about Atlanta’s music scene. Everyone who mattered was there. The folks from Gringo Star were dressed up in bandito costumes, and Tommy Chung looked like a red army expatriate. Not to mention that it is quite an ambitious task to wrangle so many hell-raisers under the same roof during daylight hours. But the efforts were all for naught because of one moment of chaos, buffoonery and a fire extinguisher.

Alas, there was solidarity in the music scene here in Atlanta. No one was talking. The crowd congregated outside in hopes of maybe snapping some pictures, but the joy was gone. Inside, tension filled the air as the photographers broke down their equipment and bitched about the thousands of dollars they just lost. Outside a new plan was circulating, “Let’s go next door to El Myr and gets some drinks!”

Which was what these people needed and were denied in the first place.

Read more Chad Radford blogs at chadrad.blogspot.com.

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