Fresh Loaf

If you’ve ever visited the DeKalb County Police Department’s website, you know it’s a treasure trove of lo-fi rap loops that surely scare the bejesus out of criminals and confuse the hell out of taxpayers. But the tunes always made us smile. ytcracker — the “undisputed king of nerdcore” — heard the beats and found inspiration.

Preston at Kiss Atlanta writes:

ytcracker… nerdcore rapper, hacker, and founder of Digital Gangster (you can thank that board and it’s members for the hack of Miley Cyrus)… went and recorded an entire album based on the music from the DPD website. Even more impressive, he did it in less than 10 hours, it’s profanity free, and the lyrics are fucking hillarious. My favorite, hands down, is “executive_command.html”

Six profanity-free tracks, each one inspired by the different part of the site where the loops could be heard. Awesome.

The department has since removed the loops from its website, but they’re preserved for time eternal on the Internet. Listen to ‘em here. A free download of the entire album is available here.

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Lenny’s in Old Fourth Ward will have to find a new home when its lease expires in two years. The music venue and bar’s Decatur Street strip mall location was sold for $3.3 million, according to the AJC.

“For us, it just means in 2-3 years we’ll probably have to move again,” says Bean Summer, the music venue’s booking agent.

“On a larger scale, I think it’s a horrible trend for the city. I think they’re pushing out culture and making really ugly choices. They’re losing control of whatever the beauty of Atlanta is becoming. What are we going to do as a city if we have miles and miles of apartments and nothing to do?”

(Read more at Crib Notes)

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Renee: Lenny’s. Most of the time the sound is terrible. Last time I was there I saw the Booze. Typical Atlanta band. Mediocre. Lenny’s is just dark, dirty and really smoky. The bathrooms are appalling. Plus, the door guy at Lenny’s is a big jerk. I like the Earl. The sound guy is great. The environment is better for hanging out and listening to music. The crowd is more relaxed, alternative, indie-rock sort of people.

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Korri: MJQ. They don’t follow trends. No radio music. It’s the best dance music. It’s upbeat like a club should be. The Velvet Room [is the worst]. They just play what the radio plays. It’s the kind of music that makes guys think they can grind on you. At MJQ, you can dance by yourself. Dance by yourself at the Velvet Room and somebody will come up and put their groin up on your booby like it’s an OK thing to do. Like it would be like shaking hands.

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Tom: Lenny’s. A lot of good bands in Atlanta only got good because of places like Lenny’s that allowed them to become good. It’s a place for people to do their thing. It’s important for a place like Lenny’s to exist. Worst place — the Masquerade. Easy. That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s dangerous and it sounds god-awful. The local bands are trying to get there because it’s a big stage. They think it’s kind of just neat. They’re not really interested in trying anything necessarily new.

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O’ BROTHER AT MASQUERADE SATURDAY: “Are you ready to locally and independently rock?”

(Photo by Alex Gibbs)

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Jordan: Cinemechanica’s The Martial Arts. It’s not the individual tracks but it’s like an emotional roller-coaster ride if you listen to it from beginning to the end. It’s progressive indie. It’s awesome. The worst is the Cat Empire’s Two Shoes. It’s crap. Tone-deaf retards. They’re holier-than-thou musicians that aren’t on the level of being holier than thou. It’s trying to be radio-friendly. It doesn’t work. It takes a certain personality to listen to that crap — idiot. If you relate to it you’re just as bad as the music.

Dee: Best is Bad Brains’ Build a Nation. When they decided to come back, it sounded like new and old stuff put together. They put on a really reggae vibe and a really good punk vibe. They’ve been feeding off both and it comes off as a new look on music. Worst? The Killers’ Sam’s Town is horrible. All their music is horrible. They’re stuck in that whole “too indie” phase. They’re trying to come out with their own style, but they’re still making music that kids listen to like they’re in middle school or the ninth grade.

Bri: Venus Doom by HIM. His voice is just like so amazing and deep, and it’s foreign so it makes it like 10 times cooler. They know how to harmonize really well. It’s really easy listening. Really smooth. The new Good Charlotte CD — Good Morning Revival is the worst. They used to be really good, but they’re now mainstream and just crap. Before they got famous they really had their own sound; now it’s annoying. It’s made for American teenagers, and American teenagers don’t have good taste in music.

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Al and Juan: “Christmas in Hollis” by Run-DMC. We grew up in New York, so we know what it’s about having Christmas in Queens. Also, they had midgets and elves in the video. The worst is “Here Comes Santa Claus.” Are we supposed to duck? Give me a break. We’re brothers. We never got presents. Here comes Santa Claus? Well, guess what. He never came to our house, but Run-DMC was always there in our radio every night for Christmas.

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Candance: “Back Door Santa” by Honeymoon Killers. It’s bluesy and trashy. We really don’t have a lot of that around Christmas; Santa sliding down your chimney, sneaking out the back door. I just like old, dirty blues songs. The fact it’s a Christmas song makes it even better. The worst is those dogs barking to “Jingle Bells.” It’s the most annoying song I’ve ever heard. I don’t like small dogs, or babies, and that incessant barking makes me crazy.

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Larry: “Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto” by James Brown. I could relate to it. When it came out, I was living deep in the city and I thought what a cool idea for a song. Instead of giving to the haves, how about giving to the have-nots? Worst is “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” When you think about Christmas, you don’t think about something that morbid. As a songwriter it caught your ear pretty much but in the spirit of Christmas it failed miserably.

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Gina: Def Leppard at HiFi Buys Amphitheatre. Everyone was so positive. It’s that ’80s hair-band vibe. The newer generations are looking for what the baby boomers had. All our ’80s music is fodder for the new generation. Kenny Chesney at Chastain was the worst. He bills himself as a country act, but he’s kind of a lowbrow version of Jimmy Buffett. It felt like being at a chick flick. It was just a bunch of screaming women, like being at a new-age Chippendales show. I felt silly.

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Reggie: Best was Lucky Dube at Variety Playhouse. The band was real tight. He does an African-style reggae. The worst show was, I hate to say it, Steel Pulse. It might have been their first stop on tour. I ended up leaving early, and that’s my favorite band. They were off. Some of the musicians seemed new. They weren’t real confident about what they were doing. It was like a warm-up, and I don’t appreciate being warmed up in Atlanta.

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Matt: Favorite was the Gallows at HiFi Buys. Amazing energy. The singer jumped off the stage. He was actually running around the sound booth, and he got other people to chase him around while performing. It was pretty special. The worst was Yellow Card at HiFi Buys. Everything was choreographed in terms of them jumping on stage. It was like they were watching a video on how to be a rock star. They live the cliché — same four chords, jump around, sing about teenage things when you’re in your late 20s.

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One of our veteran music freelancers — whose heart is roughly the same size as his record collection — is trying to help out a friend in need: himself a former CL writer.

Here’s the pitch, from James Kelly:

All-around good guy and former CL music writer Doug Deloach had a recent liver transplant, and while he is recovering nicely he has a slew of bills and financial issues that need to be addressed. In order to help alleviate some of this stress, a big-ass yard sale will be held on Friday, Aug. 10 (9 a.m.-3 p.m.), and Saturday, Aug. 11 (8 a.m.-2 p.m.). The location is 2191 Hosea L. Williams Drive, which is on the corner of Hosea Williams and Rocky Ford in East Atlanta. You can’t miss it.

I’m posting this because I’m sure some of you may know Doug or be familiar with his writing, and also because we have a ton of brand-new, donated cool books and CDs to sell for really low prices. A lot of it is stuff I have never heard of, but folks that are into the indie scene will likely be more familiar with it. Quantity discounts!

There will be a lot of other stuff for sale as well, priced to go! Household goods, odds and ends, some furniture, collectibles, and who knows what else we’ll dig out. So swing by and help out a good fellow, and stock up on the music of the most obscure next big things in the biz.

Thanks.

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To say that I’m more than a little geeked about tonight’s Rebirth Brass Band show at Smith’s Olde Bar is an understatement. It’s not just a chance to get a much needed breath of New Orleans air and put a little boogie in my bones; it’s a chance to revisit a totally different kind of nostalgia.
You see, it was almost exactly nine months ago that, emboldened by a little box in my pocket and a few beers in my gut, I hopped up onstage and proposed to my girlfriend. Having only lived in Atlanta for about seven months, I couldn’t think of anything remotely or familiarly Atlanta-ly romantic to pop the question. I needed a setting. I needed a mood. I needed familiarity. I needed a little bit of New Orleans.
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It’s been a busy week for pop-culture lists. Wednesday night the American Film Institute announced its list of “The 100 Best American Films.” The AFI list has improved significantly from its initial version of the top 100, retaining perennials like Citizen Kane, The Godfather and Casablanca; adding worthy additions like Nashville, Sullivan’s Travels, Cabaret, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Saving Private Ryan; while dropping inessentials like Fantasia, Birth of a Nation and The Jazz Singer.

Overall, any endeavor that encourages young people to watch movies from before the 1980s that do not involve Star Wars or Steven Spielberg should be supported wholeheartedly.

Also this week, Entertainment Weekly weighs in on “The 50 Greatest Action Movies Ever.” The first 25 appear in the print edition, with numbers 26-50 being online. It’s a weird split. Numbers 1-25 turn out to be pretty good picks: The first six are Die Hard, Aliens, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Road Warrior, The Matrix and The Seven Samurai, and it’s hard to dispute any of those. Entertainment Weekly’s lists tend to be full of “Huh?” choices, but this one has surprisingly few of those, although The Bourne Ultimatum and Lethal Weapon probably rank a little high.

The next 25, however, feature significantly worse films like Pitch Black, Independence Day and Twister, and it quickly becomes clear that they use a weird quota system for the whole 50, restricting it to one film apiece from John Woo, Jackie Chan and the James Bond franchise. A high-speed comedy from the silent era, like Safety Last, probably deserves inclusion, and it’s hard to believe that Jurassic Park, the original Star Wars and any of the Lord of the Rings movies are restricted from a list of 50 action films.

Finally, an article on MSNBC.com headlined “Beatles? Nirvana? Overrated!” has already started arguments thanks to the assertion of writer Dave White (an old friend of mine, incidentally) that the most lauded pop bands in history are overrated. He’s totally wrong about the Clash, but correct in his observation that anything enshrined as THE BEST EVAR! is probably getting more than it deserves. That probably goes for Citizen Kane and Die Hard at the top of those other lists, too.

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Nightmoves — the new band of Adrian Finch, the violinist from Elf Power — is playing this Saturday night with psychedelic pop-rock band Summer Hymns. Here we have a sometimes termed “slowcore,” Elephant Six-led group opening for a band that is often compared to Neil Young and the Flaming Lips. This promises to be one of the chillest shows the 40 Watt’s seen in a while. Although Summer Hymns headlines this show, I’m putting my money on Nightmoves being the better act. Speaking of money, tickets are cheap if you want to make the drive to Athens.

Summer Hymns w/ Nightmoves.
June 9, 2007, at 40 Watt Club
Washington Street, Athens, Ga.
Cost: $5.00

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It was a long wait before Tool took the stage at Gwinnett Arena 20 minutes late Monday night.

As the first guitar rifts of “Jambi,” from the band’s latest album, 10,000 Days, filled the arena, there was a deafening scream, and it was actually hard to hear lead vocalist Maynard James Keenan for the first few words. But as soon as he began to sing, it seemed to be eerily quiet as everyone became enthralled with his voice and the guttural sound of the band beside him.

Following “Jambi,” Keenan asked, “What’s up, Georgia?” and unfortunately that was all he had to say the entire show. Tool fans, and even people who are not Tool fans who know of Keenan, can agree he is not the typical “rock-star” kind of guy. The band likes to stay out of the spotlight and let its music speak for itself. For the entire two-hour show, it was all music, no silence or even a spoken word from the band. Keenan disappeared every once in a while backstage when he was not needed for vocals in certain songs. When he was on stage, he appeared as a shadow, staying as far back as possible, close to the huge screen portraying the different art and videos that accompanied the songs.

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A week ago today, I was preparing to rough it. Back-to-back metal mayhem at the Tabernacle with the Deftones on Friday, Mastodon on Saturday. Although the crowd, and crowd surfers, showed up like waves on North Shore for those Cali boys — big, aggressive and plentiful — the real test is to survive Blood Mountain. The guys from Mastodon should know, what with songs like “Colony of Birchmen” (”Hunt for ogres and dwarves/lion slicer/run with deea-aath! … white faces coming closer with every step … taking breath without happenstance/carve my teeth out ripping the sheep’s head curse”) — one of my favorites, actually. There’s talk of rations running thin, flying nymphs with (probably bad) omens and hearts “gone away.”

So, to help all their merch-buying fans navigate the terrific yet horrifying territory called Blood Mountain (which also happens to be the sixth-tallest mountain in Georgia), the band offered a three-fold Survival Guide and Blood Mountain lighter. There’s a map with various points on the trail, like Fields/Grave Yards, and the Birch Forest, which is described: “Here you will find a colony of Birchmen as well as a sparse population of Ogres and Dwarves. When hunger ensues, find nourishment in the brains of local sheep.” There’s even a crossword puzzle to nourish your sense of fun. Damn I love this band.

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