DIG THIS!


Archive for the 'Atlanta' Category

Music Issue Podcasts: Deerhunter

Monday, May 7th, 2007

Bradford Cox of the band Deerhunter

Bradford Cox is a natural when it comes to making a spectacle of himself. He provokes the most perverse reactions from audiences without even trying. Blame it on his body. The 6-foot-4 lead singer for Deerhunter is almost too skinny for words. But that doesn’t stop people from spewing them in his direction.

“Grotesque.”

“Hideous.”

“Freak.”

Ugly words like these pop up in the band’s MySpace inbox and on various music blogs all the time. But in the context of this conversation, Cox flips the insults, using them in kind to describe his taunters. That does little, however, to resolve his own conflicted feelings regarding his self-image.

“I hate my body just as much as everybody else comments on it or hates it, you know,” admits Cox. “I mean, I think most people [hate their bodies].”

But most people are not the frontman for Atlanta’s current “it” band. While Deerhunter has garnered plenty of positive ink from this publication and many others over the past year for breaking boundaries with its experimental blend of electronic psych rock (featured on the full-length Cryptograms and the Fluorescent Grey EP), Cox has garnered the band nearly as much attention by simply showing up for gigs and showing out.

Listen as CL’s Music Editor Rodney Carmichael interviews Bradford Cox – Download [mp3]

Read the rest of the story here.

Photo by Joeff Davis

Ira Glass Podcast

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

Heart of Glass
‘This American Life’ is a surprise hit on Showtime and propels Ira Glass into the spotlight

Six weeks ago, “This American Life,” the hour-long Public Radio International show, branched out to the 30-minute Showtime television show, airing in a humble Thursday, 10:30 p.m. time slot. The expansion has been practically seamless, as the six-episode-season finale this Thursday will show – and as Glass himself will explain when he brings his one-man live show to Atlanta Symphony Hall courtesy of WABE-FM (90.1).

Listen as David Lee Simmons interviews Ira Glass – Download [mp3]

Read the feature here.

Photo courtesy Showtime

Mike White Podcast

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

Year of the Dog: Puppy love
Mike White and Molly Shannon address a bone of contention

Making his directing debut, Mike White previously wrote the scripts for (and appeared in) Chuck & Buck, School of Rock and The Good Girl. His first effort behind the camera is a deadpan-hilarious, emotionally adventurous exploration of the bell jar of existence and the alienating effect of other people.

Listen as Felicia Feaster interviews Mike White – Download [mp3]

Read the review here.

Photo © 2007 Paramount Vantage

Hot Fuzz Podcast

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

Hot Fuzz: Good cop, great cop

Shaun of the Dead filmmakers skewer the usual suspects

Listen as Curt Holman interviews the Hot Fuzz gang – Download [mp3].

Read the review, click here.

Photo © 2007 Rogue Pictures

Michael Eric Dyson Podcast

Saturday, April 21st, 2007

Michael Eric Dyson is a self-described public intellectual who is an author, college professor, ordained minister and, until last week, hosted a nationally syndicated weekday radio talk show that was carried locally on WAMJ-FM 102.5. His most recent book, Debating Race, is a collection of transcripts from his many discussions and debates on the subject in several different media. He will appear at the Shrine of the Black Madonna at 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 21, and at Waldenbooks CNN Center at noon Thursday, March 22.

Listen as David Lee Simmons interviews Michael Eric Dyson – Download [mp3].

Read the story here.

Michael B. Oren podcast

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Michael B. Oren’s best seller, Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, has earned great reviews for placing America’s current military involvement in the Middle East in a meaningful, and highly readable, historical context.

Oren discussed his book, his praise and strong criticism of Jimmy Carter, and the possibility of a U.S. or Israeli war with Iran over Iran’s nuclear program, in advance of his appearance Thursday, March 8, at the Margaret Mitchell House.

Listen as Andisheh Nouraee speaks with Michael Oren – Download [mp3].

Kenny Crucial Podcast

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Few people can honestly recall the first time they saw him. It might have been circa 1995, on one of those MJQ nights when the club was still in the basement of the Ponce de Leon Hotel. Maybe it was as far back as the late ’80s, when legendary DJ Bobby Bridges was in the booth at Weekends. It could have been when the Yeah Yeah Yeahs played the Echo Lounge in 2003, or perhaps it was two years later across the Atlantic, when the Foo Fighters performed at Leeds.

Any of those occasions, and countless others, could have been your first introduction to Kenny Crucial. But it’s more likely that your memory goes back only so far, and Kenny goes back further.

Read the rest of the story.

Listen as Mara Shalhoup interviews Kenny Crucial – Download [mp3]

Photo by Joeff Davis

Podcast produced by Alejandro Leal

Jon Clinch Podcasts

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Finn: Pap sneer
Novel imagines Huck’s father as a conniving drunk

Inventing Huckleberry Finn’s father using only the thin scraps of information that Mark Twain provided is a pretty admirable feat, and reading Jon Clinch’s first novel provides an almost tactile pleasure: The story of Finn, the man Huck called “Pap,” and Twain’s original lock together neatly, with a satisfying click. The abusive drunkard who’s eager to claim his son’s newfound money, we learn, is also an intrepid and occasionally clever conniver; Huck’s grandfather turns out to be the deep wellspring of racism that prompted Finn to pursue claiming a free black man for his own; most provocatively, we learn that Huck had a black mother, a notion that ingeniously bolsters the image of Huck as a straw-hatted metaphor for free-thinking Americans.

Listen as Casey McIntyre interviews Jon Clinch – Download [mp3]

Read the story here.

David Kirby Podcast

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

David Kirby: Flights of fancy

Essays and poems zigzag between brows high and low

Photo by Barbara Hamby

Download this podcast

Mark Kriegel Podcast

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Mark Kriegel

Kriegel’s recently released effort, Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich, is the first to tell Maravich’s story through the prism of a complicated family background.

Photo from Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Download this podcast

Rising Appalachia Podcast

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Rising Appalachia

The Atlanta-bred, Grady High graduates redefine mountain music with their urbanized folk

Photo by Jan Smith

Download this podcast

Angus Maclachlan Podcast

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Angus Maclachlan, the scriptwriter for the movie Junebug

One of the most memorable indie gems in recent years, 2005’s Junebug managed to do the South justice with warmth, intelligence and precisely observed details, rather than write it off as a backwater run by sex-starved rednecks (i.e. Black Snake Moan).

Download this podcast

Doug Jones from Pan’s Labryinth Podcast

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Pan’s Labryinth’s Doug Jones

CL’s Curt Holman interviews the scary monster

Photo by Alejandro Leal

Download this podcast

Billy Bob Thornton Podcast

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Billy Bob Thornton: Rocket man
The Astronaut Farmer star soars in whatever role he pilots

Robert Duvall has called him the “hillbilly Orson Welles,” on account of both his incredible artistic versatility and his upbringing in the pinworm country of rural Host Springs, Ark.Even after a two-decade career in Hollyweird, Billy Bob Thornton has managed to hold onto something essential and stay real amid the overblown, tacky parade that is the commercial film industry. Even as he inspires comparison to one of cinema’s most famous renaissance men, he nevertheless remains true to his humble, Southern past.

Like Welles, a famously multifaceted director, actor, writer, radio personality and gourmand, Billy Bob Thornton, 51, appears unwilling to limit himself to a single job description. Though he co-wrote and co-starred as a cold-blooded scumbag in the crime genre picture One False Move in 1992, Thornton initially burst onto the national film consciousness as the writer, director and star of the idiosyncratic 1996 indie Sling Blade — thus establishing his iconoclastic and wunderkind credentials.

Over the years, Thornton has assumed, he readily admits, an enormous range of roles in films from Armageddon and The Apostle to Friday Night Lights and The Man Who Wasn’t There. It doesn’t matter whether he’s playing a calculating political operator in Primary Colors or a tortured father in Monster’s Ball who keeps his emotions locked away with a slow-burn, tightly coiled energy. Thornton has played multiple variations on his own brand of iconic American masculinity: blustering or subdued, but almost inevitably in charge. Like Humphrey Bogart — whom, along with Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness, he includes as his role models — traces of Thornton’s idiosyncratic, slightly menacing intensity move beneath the surface of almost all the men he has played.

Listen as Felicia Feaster interviews Billy Bob Thornton – Download [mp3]

Read the story here.

Joe Peacock Podcast

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Author Joe Peacock: Audience friendly

Georgia native found an ingenious way to get published: Ask his readers

Photo by Alejandro Leal

Download this podcast

Col. Bruce Podcast

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Col. Bruce to the rescue

A wild ride to Zambiland and back with the dean of the Atlanta rock scene

Photo by Joeff Davis

Download this podcast

Ralph Nader Podcast

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

“Ralph Nader.” Say the name and the blood of many liberals runs cold. The party line finds Nader in the crosshairs as the man who single-handedly cost Democrats the 2000 presidential election by running as a third-party presidential candidate who siphoned off critical votes. In more ludicrous spasms of blame, it is Nader, not George W. Bush, who is responsible for the loss of life in Iraq, according to Nation writer Eric Alterman.

An iconoclastic outsider who questions reality as it is commonly understood and refuses to toe the party line, Nader’s defiant individuality has been both his most respected and most despised feature.

An Unreasonable Man, a documentary by Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan, is a vindication of sorts for Nader. He is interviewed along with a number of critics and supporters alike, many of whom still believe he handed the country over to Bush on a silver platter.

Listen as Felicia Feaster interviews Ralph Nader – Download [mp3].

Read the story here.

Keb’ Mo’ Podcast

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

Recently nominated for a fourth Grammy for his 2006 release, Suitcase, contemporary blues artist Keb’ Mo’ makes a pit stop in Atlanta Friday, March 9, to perform as a part of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Superpops series. The series, which runs through May, features a range of musicians, including Kris Kristofferson, Lizz Wright and Wynton Marsalis. In an interview with CL, Mo’ discusses the blues evolution, as well as his own.

Listen as Rodney Carmichael speaks with Keb’ Mo’ – Download [mp3].

Underground Atlanta Podcast

Friday, April 13th, 2007

Alley of broken dreams – Underground Atlanta roundtable

When the World of Coca-Cola opens in May in its new location next door to the Georgia Aquarium, the bottom is expected to fall out of Underground Atlanta. That’s the prediction of a recent study conducted by the city’s finance department, which crunched the numbers for Underground and forecast a dismal future unless a major turnaround takes place. With the loss of the World of Coke as a tourist draw — shifting its 800,000 annual visitors to Centennial Park — revenues at Underground are expected to nosedive by 20 percent, continuing an ongoing decline in sales.

Atlanta taxpayers currently foot the bill for about $8 million a year in debt service on $85 million in bonds the city issued to relaunch Underground Atlanta in 1989. Right now, the only money the city earns from Underground comes from the adjoining parking decks, not from its shops, restaurants or bars.

So how does the city avoid a costly bailout of Underground? Creative Loafing invited a councilman, an urban planner, a downtown business owner and a community activist to discuss how Underground could be transformed from a failing subterranean mall into a vibrant component of a newly energized central business district.

To hear the councilman, the architect, the club owner, and the activist go off on Underground’s faults and wax eloquent on its future, check out our podcast.

Download this podcast

James Brown Podcast

Thursday, April 12th, 2007

James Brown: Soul Brother No. 1 (1933-2006)

The story of a Georgian who rose from poverty to become a cultural icon, as told by the people who knew him best.

Download this podcast

SEARCH