Fresh Loaf

If you’d like to help shut down the former School of the Americas at Fort Benning, but can’t spare the time and gas money to join the march in Columbus this weekend, you still have an option. Tomorrow night, Eyedrum will host a benefit concert for SOA Watch, the group founded by Father Roy Bourgeois that sponsors the annual protest march.

Maybe “rock out” is overstating it; perhaps it’ll be more like “strum out,” given the folk-heavy lineup, which includes scene vets Caroline Aiken and Elise Witt, social activist Alice Lovelace, the charmingly named Atlanta Sedition Orchestra and many others.

The event begins at 6:30 p.m. with an exhibition by socially conscious graphics group Beehive Collective. The concert starts at 7 p.m. Tickets start at $25 for early birds and drop the later you walk in, but a sell-out is  expected, so don’t say you weren’t warned. Tix are available at Charis Books. Details are here.

Bookmark It

1) Eyedrum celebrates its anniversary with A 10-Year Affair.

2) Vinyl Harvest is at the Little Five Points Community Center.

3) Taste of Atlanta kicks off at Atlantic Station.

4) Oglethorpe University holds Scandinavian Fest.

5) Fertile Ground plays Sugarhill.

(Photo courtesy Eyedrum)

Bookmark It

1) Chrome/Helios Creed, Sour Vein and Tenth to the Moon play the Drunken Unicorn.

2) Captured, the art show by, for and about cell-phone photography, opens at Apache Cafe.

3) Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City, reads from her new novel, One Fifth Avenue, at Margaret Mitchell House & Museum.

4) Atlanta’s best paired band names on the same bill this week, Climax Denial and Stillbirth, play Eyedrum.

5) The Journey group exhibition at Bennett Street Gallery lives out its final days.

(Photo courtesy Helios Creed)

Bookmark It

1) Visit the 17th Street Art Fair for its final day at Atlantic Station.

2) In the tradition of the Harlem Renaissance, Linda Villarosa discusses her new novel, Passing for Black, at Charis Circle.

3) Brian Henson, co-CEO of the Jim Henson Company, presents his oeuvre, The Future of Digital Puppetry, at the Center for Puppetry Arts.

4) Stop by Eyedrum for the Gimme Shelter Benefit for the Madhousers, builders of shelter for the homeless.

5) Relive history and take the Grant Park Tour of Homes.

(Image by Dagmar Bruehmueller)

Bookmark It

RISING APPALACHIA’S CONCRETE PANDEMONIUM III AT EYEDRUM: “That song’s gonna be stuck in my head all night.”

(Photo by Tara-Lynne Pixley)

Bookmark It

(Photo courtesy http://duetonline.net)

We’re pleased to announce more reasons for folks to come check out our annual Fiction Contest party at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 10, at Eyedrum. Not only were we blessed with a record number of submissions this year, but we’ve also got some cool sponsors (Café Intermezzo, Chattahoochee Review) and cool judges (David Fulmer, Joshilyn Jackson, Fiona Zedde).

Now we’re a bit geeked to have confirmed one of the more mood-enhancing musical acts in town in the form of Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel. Featuring Scott Burland (pictured, at right) on theremin and Frank Schultz on lap steel, this duet is often described as experimental, ambient and minimalist — their music seems to come more in surges and streaks, strains and swoops, with stops and starts thrown in for good measure. You might call it sonic! It’s intoxicating stuff that stands on its own or as a heady soundtrack behind the winning entries, which will be read by the winners at the end of the evening.

Check out this U.K. appearance …

Bookmark It

Well, we’ve heard from you loud and clear, and we here at CL would like to make one humble suggestion to our blossoming literary scene: Get help.

Seriously, y’all are messed up. That’s as simple as we can put it, judging from the entries to our seventh annual Fiction Contest — the (extended) deadline of which passed on Wednesday. The theme is “scratch,” and let’s just say the entrants took the notion and ran with it in every manner possible. There’s the scratching of the itch (with images too vivid to recount here), Old Scratch (a particular favorite), scratching on the eight ball in pool, scratch as in money. Now, I didn’t read all of them — thank you, thank you, thank you, CL staff — but I don’t recall it being used in the racetrack vernacular (as in scratching, or removing, a horse from a race), although I’m sure every other angle was covered. And this stuff was so gothic, so dark, so supernatural, so … icky … we just wonder if we’ve opened some wounds with this one.

Best of all, from rudimentary research, we’ve learned our submission total of 240 is an all-time best. And our apologies for any confusion caused by the extended deadline, which resulted in a FLOOD of extra entries. Now comes the judging phase; and as we mentioned in a previous PopSmart post, we’ve got an impressive lineup: Fiona Zedde, Joshilyn Jackson and David Fulmer.

Now, onto the next phase: the party! We’re scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 10, at Eyedrum. We’re working furiously to set up the appropriate musical and other ambient moods, and of course there will be refreshments aplenty. Mark it on your calendar; it’ll be the first cool literary event of the new year, so don’t scratch it off your list …

Bookmark It

A group of artists and arts advocates meeting at Eyedrum arts center Monday night agreed that legal action is needed to force the city of Atlanta to implement its own percent-for-the-arts program for public art.

The question, however, is: What arts organizations will be willing to put their local grants on the line and sue the city?

The issue has heated up since CL recently reported that an in-house study shows that, over the past four years, the city has collected only $1.7 million for the program while letting additional millions go uncollected. Under a longtime ordinance, the city is required to set aside 1.5 percent of the cost of new construction projects for public art. But the city’s own report estimates that as much as $3.6 million has gone uncollected because no one at City Hall seems to be enforcing the ordinance.

The report was completed last fall and kept under wraps until activist Bill Gignilliat recently gained a copy through an open-records request, but the city still has apparently done little to rectify the problem.

The goal of a lawsuit by arts groups would be to push the city to account for the money that should have been collected and to put a system in place to make sure the percent-for-the-arts money is collected from now on.

Arts advocate Evan Levy announced that he had spoken to several local attorneys interested in taking what could well be a high-profile — and easily winnable — case. The trick will be finding arts groups willing to sign on as plaintiffs, since most receive some funding from the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs.

Eyedrum, which currently gets about $5,000 a year from the city, could become the lead plaintiff if its board gives the go-ahead in coming weeks, says Chairwoman Nisa Asokan.

“We could be shooting ourselves in the foot,” she says, “but if not Eyedrum, then who else?”

Bookmark It

PLASTIC PEOPLE OF THE UNIVERSE: Bohemian rhapsody

(photo by Joeff Davis)

Even for a venue known for its unique events, this one was a doozy.

Last night, Eyedrum hosted Czech rock legends Plastic People of the Universe.

PPU is best known for the impact it had on politics. The band defied the crackdown on public artistic expression in Czechoslovakia that followed the Soviet invasion in 1968 – performing and even recording albums in secret. In 1976, the Communist government jailed members of the band simply for daring to be musicians – an act so egregious it mobilized Czechoslovakian civil society against its government’s tyranny.

As luck would have it, it’s also a great band – combining the Velvet Underground’s relentlessness and Zappa’s absurdity with an unmistakably Central European sense of melody.

If you were careless enough to miss them last night, you have another chance. On Saturday, the band has a gig at Prague in Motion, a Czech bar in Norcross.

Bookmark It

Last Friday night at Manuel’s, Tom Webb had the microphone in the back room, exhorting the crowd to draft Al Gore for president in 2008.

"He’s the perfect candidate," Webb told an emptying barroom of patrons.
"You know Al Gore is the best-qualified person to be president," he added.
There was no objection to the statement, but neither was there a sense anyone took it seriously. Still, there was no rallying cry for "Hillary" or "Dodd" from the drooped heads up at the bar.

Between guitar and singing acts, Webb was a little more impassioned even as the crowd was a little smaller and a little more unimpassioned — or disoriented.

(more…)

Bookmark It