Club Notes

Embedded

originally published January 25, 2006

Welcome aboard for a night of high-powered multiple hard rock and punk-pop combinations and permutations at Lunch Paper on Thursday Jan. 19, as both the crowd and bands brace themselves for a six-set onslaught. As the local master blasters from Chop Top go through sound check, I ensconce myself behind the mixing desk, sucking down Aquafina to ward off the stale smoke wafting in from the gaggle of puffing punters huddled outside the door as they come in to refill the first of many jugs of beer that will fuel this heady night. One thing I love about hard rock bands like Chop Top is that you don’t have to strain to hear any of the instruments, especially Randy Smyre’s bass, as long as you can push your earplugs in far enough so as to not go completely deaf. Chop Top is a headbanger’s delight, and while Erin Stagg’s drums and Jon Guthrie’s guitar work are reminiscent of Dirty Deeds-era AC/DC, Chris Duran’s vocals have kept up with the post-classic-rock progression in ferocious verbiage, which is more to do with incendiary screaming than the high voltage hollering that fans of Bon Scott would be familiar with.

Three songs in, Guthrie and Smyre lead off with a reggae opening which soon explodes into more screaming lyrics sending a near-fatal shock wave of ragga-rock along the bar. When I step out of my bunker to get a better view, I’m hit squarely between the eyes and sent rocking back onto my haunches. Chop Top is really determined to get this crowd rocking. To that end, Duran makes constant forays into the first row to get pushed and shoved about before returning to the safety of his bandmates, only to turn around and go back for more, all the while belting out the lyrics that grind and gouge their way over Guthrie’s awesome rock riffs.

Nashville six-piece Stuck Lucky is on next, mobilizing the crowd with hardcore punk driven by rambunctious off-kilter beats, ferocious sludge guitar work, screaming punk vocals and loads upon loads of bombastic horns. Experiencing Stuck Lucky is a bit like crossing local hardcore metal-jazz-fusion group ¡Subversivo! with Madness or, to put it another way, like traveling at light speed through the aftermath if the Mighty Mighty Bosstones went supernova, only to be annihilated after running smack into the ultra dense core left behind as a result of the implosion.

The Carry-Ons, from the ATL, start off as just a big ol’ early-’90s, old-school, straight-up, sweaty, balls-to-the-wall, hardcore punk band that also dabbles in a little ragga-ska. Thankfully the Carry-Ons are also light on the screaming, while still managing to load up on driving beats, heavy bass, roguish enthusiasm and a wash of light fuzzy guitar. For the big finale, free CDs fly across the crowd like Frisbees, while the Carry-Ons, Stuck Lucky and Chop Top cross-pollinate to add some brass and gang call-and-response chanting vocals.

We’re staring down the barrel at Friday morning when Creve Coeur, the next offering from Atlanta, hits the stage. The band really mixes up its styles, blending new wave and punk pop, making this the first band of the night that I would regard as having a vocal presence worth really listening to - and it’s a very smooth Peter Garrett presence at that. Creve Coeur is also the first band of the night to let it come down a notch and meander into melody before taking off back into punk-pop territory after an excursion into straight punk. The group even has the gall to momentarily explore an alluring Depeche Mode-style synth-pop intro, blended with hard and heavy verses, which are linked to another synth-pop bridge via a relentlessly throbbing bassline. Radiohead meets Midnight Oil, that’s how I’m calling it.

I’m not sure if I’ve been spuriously misled into believing that new local band Emergency Broadcast System would take us to a place relatively lighter than Creve Coeur, but EBS is at least on par in tempo and weight (if not heavier) as it alternates between a kind of King Crimson-meets-The Pixies blend of thematic-feeling, elongated pop-rock and indie punk-pop, which drops a cog and accelerates into up-tempo indie math-pop (Franz Ferdinand lumped in with Now It’s Overhead and sprinkled with coke?).

After all that rock, it seems only right to go easy, and on a misty Saturday night, jazz is in the air at the Mercury Lounge, Athens’ latest bar to cater to the laid-back nouveau-sleek. Providing the aural atmosphere to complement the blue mood lighting and silver pressed-tin is the Carter McMullen Trio. The trio is playing standards from what jazz types know as “The Fake Book” which is a kind of cheat sheet or basic structure for jazz jams. Regardless, Carter McMullen’s vibrant piano keyboards sound lively and fresh next to Justin Owen-Head’s smooth upright bass and the swinging beats of master drummer Seth Hendershot (Aqualove, Fuzzy Sprouts). While the trio sounds great in the barroom setting, the highlight is Hendershot’s fine and intricate work on the skins as he sits in for the also-talented Jason Cheek.

Ben Gerrard Ben Gerrard is a radio journalist and writer living and working in Athens. Club Notes is a weekly look at the local club scene.

Ben Gerrard

Ben Gerrard is a radio journalist and writer living and working in Athens. Club Notes is a weekly look at the local club scene.