Braving That New World
Riding Waves Of Hype And Controversy, The Ecstatic Sounds Of Atlanta's Black Lips Dig Deep
originally published February 21, 2007
Black Lips
Atlanta's Black Lips spew '60s-inspired garage-punk psychedelia amid infamously chaotic shows. The oily-colored light show, the droning vocals and agitated guitars all skitter along the edge of delirious oblivion. They have built a crowd-pleasing bad-boy image out of shock-rock stunts like spitting urine into audiences, hair-trigger vomiting, creative use of genitalia on guitars and the odd indoor lo-fi pyrotechnics display. Despite all that gimmickry, the Black Lips have the sound to get away with it. Their musicianship and songwriting skills have grown alongside the size of their audience, eventually snaring them a swanky new record deal with Vice Records. Pretty rosy for a guys who took off touring only six years ago at the tender age of 16 .
Nope, not often do musicians grow up before such a wide audience that adores them for their gross-out stunts as much as for their lo-fi, jangly sound. Having formed while at Dunwoody High School in Dunwoody, GA, Jared Swilley (bass, vocals), Joe Bradley (drums, keys), Cole Alexander (lead vocals, guitar) and Ben Eberbaugh (guitar) ate up records by the Stooges, Stones, Beatles, Troggs, and Japan's Teengenerate. On a weekend trip to Atlanta's Wax 'n' Facts record shop, they hit on the Back From the Grave compilations, all full of insane '60s garage punkers that have come to define a genre then unknown to the dudes.
"When we started, we thought we were geniuses," Swilley says about combining influences like Link Wray and the Germs to start a band. "We didn't think that anyone was doing it. Then slowly we started to realize that was a genre."
Eberbaugh died in a 2002 car accident and was replaced by Jack Hines. Hines left the band last year; guitarist Ian Brown is the newest addition to the mix.
In August of 2002, when the 40 Watt banned the Lips for shooting off firecrackers indoors and attempting to light their drums on fire, none of the current success was imaginable. While those involved agree to all those "it's so yesterday" sentiments, any talk about the Black Lips' return to the Watt's stage demands some kind of chitchat regarding the kerfuffle. Like any other out-of-bounds rock and roll story, it would've faded away had the band not caught some hapless fool on tape sneering about the Lips' admittedly puerile stage antics. The guys slapped the audio sample on their first album, committed the episode into punk lore, and forever defined the Lips members all as "bad boys." Heck, after such a ballsy move, who isn't curious about a band that got banned from a musical institution such as Athens' own fabulous 40 Watt Club?
"We played like dog shit that night," admits Swilley. He is tucked in a corner booth at the Majestic in Atlanta, nursing a cup of coffee in the same all-night diner where he and his bandmates once held down straight jobs. "We were really bad, but that was how we used to play all the time. All I remember, Joe pulled out his lighter fluid, was gonna light his cymbals on fire, which, y'know, that's bad. And I see a guy run onstage. Our guitarist [at the time, the late Ben Eberbaugh], he was a big guy, just knocked the sound guy off the stage. Then all of a sudden [the] power's cut. I think they were expecting this riot, but we did play shitty. Yeah, I apologize for that. It's over now, but we were really mad about that for a while."
Says 40 Watt owner Barrie Buck, "People enjoy controversy and make it out to more that what it was." Weary of the subject, she attributes the Lips' long stint between gigs there to a case of bad timing and an undeveloped audience, adding, "The offer [to play here] has been on the table for years." In fact, Buck is perhaps the band's single greatest fan in town, a rare breed who owns all five Black Lips collector plates (seriously!) and stood with only four other warm bodies to see the band play at the Caledonia Lounge in late 2004.
It's safe to say that the band's Athens audience has finally arrived. A word-of-mouth show at the local DIY venue Secret Squirrel last November blossomed into a crowd-surfing shambles lit by greasy red and yellow projections, punctuated by goodnatured yet profane trash-talking. Hardly a month later, a sold-out show at the Caledonia with Deerhunter on a frigid December night in that dubiously heated room confirmed the band's appeal.
But while their appeal sloooowly crept east from the piss-stained floors of primal Atlanta basement shows and beer-soaked dives like Lenny's, audiences across Europe and North America flocked to see the Black Lips' spectacle for themselves.
"It used to be really bad," says Swilley. "Kids would come to the show expecting to break everything and attack us. It was fun! But then we got better at playing music. Oh, the shows were the main thing, because if you come out, you wanna see a show. You don't wanna just see people standing there. That's part of it, but we don't let that take precedence over playing the actual music.
Yet as press-focused on the guys' stunts, something in their primal sound coalesced with 2005's Let It Bloom, released on In The Red Records. "I don't know. I guess we started playing together more," says Swilley, speculating about the changes in the band's instinctual sound. "When we went into the studio, we used the same process as always, but maybe it's that we got better at songwriting?"
The band has since signed to Vice, the record company arm for the fashion/lifestyle mag. The move horrified a purist segment of the band's punk fan base, but confirms Swilley's opinion that "cool stuff is bubbling over." He says, "Vice picking us up, even thinking they could market us [shows that] a lot of In The Red bands have been accepted by people way outside the 'garage-rock' thing."
The Lips' first release on Vice hits the streets this week. The 12-track Los Valientes Del Mundo Nuevo was recorded live from a performance in Tijuana, Mexico by John Reis from Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From the Crypt and Hot Snakes. The album includes live footage on an enhanced CD featuring "interviews, pills, tacos, hookers, Mexicans, tequila and a donkey painted like a zebra," according to the record company.
In December 2006, the Lips recorded what will become the band's first studio album for Vice at The Living Room in Atlanta with Ed Rollins. The fruits of those sessions are slated for release later this year. On Friday, Jan. 12, they backed up Atlanta soul man The Mighty Hannibal at The EARL. A year in the making, that landmark show electrified garage-punk circles, not only because it marked Hannibal's return to his home stage after 23 years, but because the Lips lassoed a platinum bill that included the Reigning Sound and Gentleman Jesse & His Men.
On the heels of that, the Lips set out for a tour of the West Coast, and are only now returning to Georgia. "I go crazy if I gotta stay here too long," says Swilley. "I don't have a job. Usually, I feel like a retired guy."
As genuine as they come, the Black Lips have unwittingly reinvented '60s garage psychedelia in a treble vein. As their musicianship grows alongside their skill for writing songs, the trouble-making stunts fall away as they pursue that sweet spot where sonic piss and venom mate with a surreal vortex of sound.
WHO: Black Lips, Dark Meat, Fatal Flying Guilloteens
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Saturday, February 24
HOW MUCH: $8
Suave & Sophisticated
The World-Jazz Raconteurs Of Squat Are Back In Session
originally published February 21, 2007
Shawna Herring
Squat
The Atlanta/ Athens jazz scholars of Squat have little reservation about where their band is headed these days. Almost 15 years of fusing afro-Caribbean rhythms, New Orleans second-line funk, smoky Blue Note jazz and assorted other styles are most definitely coming to fruition. With a solid, stable lineup, a brand-new self-titled album and the packed day planner of a band that does weddings, restaurants and concert halls, the four-member ensemble personifies a term of flattery not heard enough in modern musical contexts: classy.
Class aside, Squat is also a band that has somewhat of a leg up on a genre of music that’s often glossed over by local scenesters and clubgoers. Many music communities in the Southeast, such as Charleston and Savannah, boast an undercurrent of superb jazz players who, by necessity, often must work harder to get noticed than, say, the average Kiss cover band.
Guitarist Trey Wright, bassist-percussionist Carl Lindberg, piano man-saxophonist Tommy Somerville and drummer-percussionist Darren Stanley have, indeed, worked hard to get their name out there and, after swearing off the immediate possibility of long-term touring, they’ve basically become a finely tuned in-house project. The new disc Squat is self-released on the band's own Namasté imprint; it was recorded at Wright’s cozy home studio in Decatur and Squat’s membership is now able to actually make a decent living from what they love doing most without having to take it on the road. It’s several shades away from the long hauls done to play lengthy marathon shows to which the younger version of the band was more accustomed.
“When people talk about a music scene, jazz is usually not something they’re referring to unless you mean somewhere like New York City,” says Wright. “I think, particularly in the South, being a jazz musician is tough. Like in Atlanta, there’s so many amazing musicians that play jazz but there’s also such a real small market for it. Squat has been real lucky, though, as far as having support. It’s a really interesting phenomenon, too, that we’ve turned into a wedding band over the past five or six years. That’s something I never, ever would’ve imagined. We’re fortunate to make good money from that and everybody has something else they do during the week. We all still do various different things to make ends meet, but we’ve reached a point, that for the band to continue, it can’t be our one sole stream of income. If it was, we’d have killed each other a long time ago!”
Simply titled Squat, the ensemble’s sixth disc doesn’t go gangbusters to let you know its agenda. The number of tracks stands at a conservative 10, a dusky street shot of Atlanta’s Majestic Diner graces the darkened cover and a playful sense of eclecticism makes it a very rewarding summation of the band’s abilities. Having a quartet of multi-instrumentalists for Squat’s core means journalists best make sure their backslash key is functioning properly in advance. This also, according to Wright, makes it almost impossible to predict what any tune will sound like with the card players shuffled as opposed the last time it was played.
Easing into an ever-mutating groove with salsa-infused opener “Estrellas,” a longtime setlist fave that recalls the smooth salsa jones of Lindberg’s offshoot band Grogus, the album covers mucho ground in under an hour’s time. There’s the Mose Allison field-holler grit of the old standard “Railroad Worksong,” driven by Sommerville’s penchant for piano-led R&B. “Nepsis” is informed by Wright’s slippery guitar parts and Stanley’s taste for electronica gets a workout on “Whispering Portuguese.” Not only is Squat a perfunctory crash course in different micro-chasms and -cosms of jazz, it’s also the first set of songs that completely zeros in on utilizing the band’s individual components.
“What we really wanted to do was catch all the different flavors we do, but do it in a different fashion,” says Wright of the new album. “The CD draws from a wide range because at this point, 13 years into the band’s history, we all do different things. Like Carl, he heads Grogus - so we get a lot of the Latin elements from there. Tommy, he’s all over the place. He’s into the blues, the country-sounding stuff and even experimental music. Darren, our drummer, is very interested in electronica and Brazilian music. As for myself, I think I bring a more moody style of jazz that’s reflected on stuff like 'Nepsis' and 'Dialogue.' It really is the sound of us coming together as four individuals with unique musical tastes trying to make something new of it.”
Much of Squat’s staying power thus far can likely be attributed to the musically adventurous, independent nature that brought them together in the first place. Plus, when Wright states that the band is a “complete democracy,” you have little trouble believing him. He and his bandmates began as music students learning the ropes from UGA jazz studies professor Steve Dancz and haven't lost the even-keel division of power that guided the initial version of the group. Rather than plunk down cash not yet made on lengthy studio time, this time the guys recorded everything in the home studio - where Wright’s and Somerville’s recent solo discs were also laid down.
From the sound of things, they could just as well have been churning the dance-floor at a sultry cantina or soothing a smoky front room in San Francisco’s Fillmore district. As a counterpart to the new disc, Squat also has a remix project of the songs that utilizes Stanley’s digitally adept talents on the frontburner.
Both Wright and Somerville also recently became proud parents of actual human babies, not just the flashy silver kind with the little hole in the center. Squat’s CD release show at the Melting Point, says Wright, will also be somewhat of a family-style affair as his Trey Wright Trio, Somerville and Lindberg plan to perform individual sets - with a little in-house support of course - before the main event gets underway.
“It’s funny, because we still travel - to play weddings, ironically enough - but traveling on the road, playing to a few people for 50 bucks apiece is just something we’re done with. We’re all just too old,” laughs Wright. “Tommy’s pretty young, so I think his body could take it, but not the rest of us. I said earlier that we’d been real lucky as musicians. I think some of that can be credited to the fact that we’ve always presented ourselves as a real band and nothing more. A lot of jazz bands are looked at more as a vehicle for a main individual who leads a group. We’re not the most talented jazz musicians ever, and we make no pretense at being so, but I think when we buckle down and come together as a group there’s truly something special happening there.”
WHO: Squat, Carl Lindberg & Friends, Tommy Somerville, Trey Wright Trio
WHERE: Melting Point
WHEN: Saturday, February 24, 8:30 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $8.50 (advance), $10 (door)
Because Liquor's Quicker
Elite Tha Showstoppa Brings Good-Times Rap To The Athens Stage
originally published February 21, 2007
Kelli Guinn
Elite Tha Showstoppa
One of the problems with hip-hop both nationwide and locally, as well as in circles from backpack to gangsta, is its frequent over-seriousness; either there’s too much of an emphasis on social problems, or there’s what might be seen as the creation of them. It’s not that it’s a grand statement or a prestigious stance to be in favor of simple partying, but c'mon, Athens, it’s something we do well. Shouldn't Elite tha Showstoppa be raised up on our shoulders for his ability to promote that attitude?
With a mixtape out early this year (A Hater’s Motivation Vol. 2, with enough guest appearances to require footwear removal to tally them up) and more to come, the local teen rap group A-Frame signed to his RCP Music Group label, a full album due in the summer (The Heist), a new push for his “Liquor” video and more videos planned, two movies (Hard Candy, a drama about a female gang, and a comedy called Funny Bones) and a stage play in the works, you may know Elite's name a little better by the end of 2007, even if he accomplished only a fraction of what’s on his agenda.
If you didn’t go to the Sprockets Music Video Showcase at last year’s AthFest and don’t generally follow local hip-hop, you might be wondering, “Who is this fellow with the nose ring? And what makes him worthy of coverage?” If you did go, you know exactly why, as Elite went toe to toe with Elf Power and ended up taking the big award home by the narrowest of margins, due to the amiable crunk bounce of his song “Liquor,” its crowd-pleasing hook "I'm drunk off my ass and I know it!" and the comedic focus of its well-produced video.
Since Elite doesn't have any kind of official or unofficial recorded music out yet, the best way to hear his stuff is to visit his myspace page (www.myspace.com/elitethashowstoppaga), where four tracks and the video for "Liquor," directed Andrew Fazakas, are available. It's cheerful stuff, especially the track "Happy Go Lucky," which runs on cute triplets of keyboards and vocals that have that curious Southern mix where the actual tempo isn't very fast, but the deft switching up of rhythms makes the overall song's speed seem quicker.
Pleasantly, there's nothing that sounds like the current overdone penchant for metallic 1980s samples, chopped into bytes of practically nothing. Instead, there's a softer, more groove-oriented tone to all of it, better suited for those of us who can't or won't actually do that robot dance.
Ellison, originally from Athens, has been working on his music career ever since he used to cover Jackson 5 songs as a kid. “I was Michael, of course,” he says; he’s been writing songs and acting since the age of nine. It took until 1998 before he got into it in a more official capacity, forming a group called Runaway Slave with members from hip-hop, R&B, gospel, rap and alternative musical backgrounds that signed to a label in Atlanta. To make a long story short, as Ellison puts it, “I got screwed with no lubricant.”
The group broke up, but determined to keep trying, Ellison stayed in Atlanta for a year, living out of the Suburban Lodge and the back of a 1973 Impala, without much luck. After a two-year break from trying to accomplish his goals, he realized, “I am destined to do what I do. So now I am back to being the struggling artist, and loving it. Very poor, unemployed, but happy.”
So for now, Elite says he's committed to staying in Athens. “Atlanta is a good place to network, but the advantage for me is that it’s not too far away. I have made a lot of noise in Atlanta, but I can make just as much noise here and have a bigger impact. Plus, the hip-hop scene in Athens is finally getting the recognition it deserves. I am proud to be a part of the movement. Everybody and their granny - including myself - runs to 'The A' in hopes that they will be discovered because that’s what we were taught, but that’s not too true.”
Basically, while Athens is small and the scene is still growing, it seems more cooperative than Atlanta: “I want to have a home-team backing. You can’t lose with the whole city pushing for you,” Ellison says.
But isn’t the Athens scene occasionally a little bit serious when it comes to hip-hop, with the party music Elite pushes far from the forefront? “For the most part, yes," says Ellison, "but to be real with you, I want to rhyme like Ishues. I admire that cat. Or Badkat. Or Son 1. Trill Spit. I used to do a lot of anti-governmental music. Runaway Slave spoke a lot on black awareness, inner-city issues, and the sort, but we were a human movement. It was about freeing yourself from mental slavery.”
In Atlanta, he says he found that sales were the name of the game over consciousness, but after considerable disillusionment, contemplation and observation, he says, “I came to the conclusion that people do want to hear something worth listening to, but for the most part they just want to dance and have a good time. So I went in the booth and clowned around. I walked out smiling because I, too, had fun. I didn’t have to save the world that day. I didn’t have to warn people to look out for the conspiracy and the economic destruction we were facing or the reminder of how racism still exists. I just said, ‘Get a beer, grab a dance partner, fuck your problems for a little bit and be happy.’”
And it’s true. If you spend all your time trying to create world peace, solve the disparity between rich and poor, educate the youth on social issues and so on, you’ll burn out in a hurry. That doesn’t mean you can’t be serious sometimes, but it’s about balance. Ellison says he never knows what will come out when he starts writing: “I just love music," he says. "Anything inspires me. Anything and everything. So sometimes I am that rebel revolutionary, but even a revolutionary loves to have a good time. Drinks on me.”
WHAT: "The Insurgency"
WHO: Nobody Famous, Bear, Ya Boy Brell, C-Fre$h, Big John Burbon, Fist Full of Steel, Elite Tha Showstoppa
WHERE: Tasty World Upstairs
WHEN: Friday, February 23
HOW MUCH: $5
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