Crib Notes

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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