Culture Surfing

ORAIEN CATLEDGE: The photographer holds up one of his images of Cabbagetown as he knew it more than 20 years ago.

Oraien Catledge first stumbled upon Cabbagetown while sitting on his couch one evening in the fall of 1978. He was flipping through the local news channels when he came across a town meeting in which citizens were discussing the fate of their community. The nearly 100-year-old Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills had closed their doors for the last time, and a lot of the locals – vestiges of an honest-to-goodness factory town that stood in the mills’ shadows – were destitute. Many of the people living in Cabbagetown in the late ’70s were direct descendents of the workers imported from Appalachia to work at the mills since their construction in 1881. But much of the property would soon be up for sale to the rest of the city, and it seemed that the tight-knit community would unravel. “As they used to say, that was preee-sactly the moment that I learned about Cabbagetown,” Catledge chuckles through a bushy, snowy white mustache.

Catledge, 81, is an Oxford, Miss., native who moved to Atlanta in 1969 while working as a regional consultant for the American Association for the Blind. “I wasn’t a photographer back then and I knew nothing about photography, but I had an urge to do something creative,” he says. “I tried painting but the canvases just wouldn’t dry fast enough, so I went out and I got a camera.”

Catledge is legally blind, but dismisses his condition as a disadvantage. In a soft, grandfatherly voice, he says, “Oh … I can see a lot better than most people think I can.”

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(Photos by Joeff Davis)

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Faith & the Muse play the Hyatt Centennial Ballroom as part of Dragon*Con on Sun., Sept. 6 at midnight.

After meeting on tour while William Faith was performing with Rozz Williams in a resurrected incarnation of Christian Death, Faith and Monica Richards formed Faith & the Muse in 1993 to explore a more ethereal side of their dark punk roots. Over the years the LA-based duo have  fostered something of an Elizabethan approach to their dramatic and multilayered songcraft. For Sunday’s show Faith and Richards have filled-out the line-up to to a nine-piece ensemble to add a bit of a Japanese bent to their mystique.

Does the word “goth” bother you when talking about Faith & the Muse?
Does it bother me? No. It at least gives you an inkling as to the style of the music. When people use that as a limitation on what you do it’s another thing. There are certain things about the goth genre that apply, and the music has a darker style to it;  there is a romantic quality to what we do. Also, when people see the word goth they know that you’re not Garth Brooks or something like that. It’s useful in that capacity, but because we employ so much other stuff into what we do, goth is part of it, but it’s not the whole thing. To me it’s all born out of punk rock.

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Cast your vote on all the grit and glitz that make this town so filthy rich when Creative Loafing hosts the Best of Atlanta Voting Party tonight (Thurs., July 23). Dead Confederate’s Hardy Morris unveils his new side project, and Attractive Eighties Women get the party started with a set of rousing anthems that draw from equal parts Lenny Bruce impious humor-made-local, and the power-trash jams of the Replacements circa ‘83. It’ll be a night that’s sure to scuff the pages of history books in the dirty and decadent big apple of the South.

Don’t forget to vote — onsite at the party, or at clatl.com/bestofatlanta.

$5 (admission includes beverage and food samples from Ru San’s, the Real Chow Baby, Mediterranean Grill, Widmer Brother’s Beer, Ozeki Sake and more). 9 p.m. The Masquerade, 695 North Ave. 404-577-8178. masq.com.

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CROWDED HOUSE: AthFest fans

Summer in the city can be a brutal affair, especially in the South. It can get so hot, no one wants to venture out of the house during the day. But when it comes to music, Atlanta’s particularly blessed with a smattering of luring outdoor venues from Lakewood Amphitheatre to the Masquerade Music Park, the Botanical Garden all the way on up to Chastain Park. There’s no better way to beat the heat than to wait for nightfall to take in a concert, and get a little reckless with a blanket, a cooler and a significant other under the stars.

ATHFEST Athens, Ga.’s annual downtown music blitz is back for an extended weekend of performances by the Black Lips, Dreams So Real, Patterson Hood, Those Darlins, Dead Confederate and scores of others. In addition to the music, there’ll be kids workshops, an open-air artist market, and food and drink galore. If you’ve got family in town and are looking for something to do, or you’re just itching to take drive up Ga. 316, there’s no better time than AthFest. Thurs.-Sun., June 25-28. $15-$20. www.athfest.com.

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GUITAR HERO: B Jay from the Gaye Blades in the Atlanta rock doc 'We Fun'

Two films that delve deeply into the dark, often unseen fringes of Georgia music play back-to-back at this year’s Atlanta Film Festival. We Fun is the Atlanta rock ’n’ roll doc the local rock scene doesn’t want you to see. Nashville director Matthew Robison and producers Christopher Dortch and Bill Cody (Athens, GA – Inside/Out) spent 10 months in the trenches, behind the scenes and hanging out after hours to film the kids who rock our city. Via a series of interviews, chaotic misadventures and concerts from the likes of Deerhunter, Black Lips, Mastodon, Carbonas, the Selmanaires, the Coathangers, Subsonics and more, the film captures a snapshot of the incestuous musical family that put Atlanta on the map.

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