Fresh Loaf

GENRE: A brick-sized collection of music journalism from a decidedly Southern magazine

THE PITCH: Trendy bands and celebrity fluff pieces aren’t welcome here. OA editor and founder Mark Smirnoff wants this writing to pay “tribute to how music seeps into us.”

BLUES SISTERS: The writing is most successful when it veers far from the confines of music history, like Carol Ann Fitzgerald’s memoir-ish tale of lesbian attraction and Bessie Smith. “I slept while she rubbed my back in motel beds. Her hands clenched and declenched, just shy of hurting. We burned candles that smelled like pumpkin pie. Bessie was on repeat,” she says.

SEX PISTOLS IN ATLANTA: Mark Binelli tells the story of the Sex Pistols’ first U.S. show at a strip mall in Atlanta. Afterwards the band heads to a bar, but Sid Vicious disappears into the night. “Vicious finally turned up at Piedmont Hospital,” Binelli explains. “After scoring some heroin, he’d gotten bored and carved the words GIMME A FIX into his chest.”

STEVE MARTIN ON FAILED MUSIC ASPIRATIONS: “Obsession is a great substitute for talent.”

ALLMAN BROTHERS IN MACON: John T. Edge quotes roadie Red Dog Campbell about Mama Louise Hudson’s soul-food restaurant, “At the H&H, they didn’t care if we were black, white, or purple. Mama didn’t say anything if we were trippin’ our asses off. Now, she might tell me to come in the back door instead of the of the front when I was messed up, but really she just fed us fried chicken and loved us.” (more…)

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I’m sure someone in Atlanta’s media somewhere commemorated the 20th anniversary this past week of the Democratic National Convention being held in Atlanta, where the Dems chose the cerebral Michael Dukakis to take a very smart ass-pounding by George H.W. Bush. But that wasn’t the best thing to come out of the convention; it was the sex scandal surrounding then-heartthrob Rob Lowe, who videotaped himself trying to get out the vote among some of the city’s younger women. (Giving a new meaning to the term “glad-handing.”)

The scandal provided a bit of a career road bump for Lowe, but provided a helluva career boost for Emory University graduate and former Creative Loafing intern Mike Sager (pictured), who wrote an amazing chronicle of the incident for Rolling Stone magazine in 1989. The story is included in the first of three collections of Sager’s magazine works, Scary Monsters, Super Freaks (Perseus Books); his second book, Revenge of the Donut Boys, came out last year. His third and final collection, Wounded Warriors: Those For Whom the War Never Ends, will be released in October, while his debut novel, Deviant Behavior, was released this past spring. Sager will promote his new books at next month’s AJC Decatur Book Festival, where I will have the privilege of interviewing him about his work.

As for Lowe, 20 years on, most people know about his new scandal that broke this past spring involving his nanny situation — which is now in the courts. For me, I’ll always admire Lowe’s work on the multiple-Emmy-winning TV show “The West Wing,” but also for the hilariously timed (and woefully underrated) 1990 thriller, Bad Influence, which had a little sex, lies and videotape moment of its own. Enjoy …

(Sager photo courtesy Perseus Books)

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