Athens’ Top Live Bands
Over The Past 20 Years, We’ve Seen Hundreds Of Great Local Bands, But There’s A Lot About Athens Music That Never Translates From Stage To Tape. Here, Flagpole Writers From The Previous Two Decades Dive Into The Best Live Performers Our Town
originally published November 7, 2007
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Charles Greenleaf
Olivia Tremor Control
The Olivia Tremor Control
circa 1997…
The first time I’d ever heard the term “Elephant 6” was on Elizabeth Street around 1996 or so, hanging out with Elf Power’s Laura Carter and Andrew Rieger. They’d just finished When the Red King Comes and that funky Elephant 6 logo was illustrated on the back cover. “It’s not really a record label; it’s a collective,” Carter told me.
Within a few months, I’d staggered into one of the numerous Landfill parties at the dilapidated kegger house on Reese Street, and caught Rieger knocking out some weird jams in one of the bedrooms accompanied by what turned out to be the core of Olivia Tremor Control - Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart - and others. If my memory serves rightly, they were improvising some noisy stuff. That free-spirited, experimental approach worked well for Olivia’s heavy, psychedelic musings that followed.
It took a few gigs for what they were doing at parties and clubs to catch on. Their shambled clatter initially seemed chaotic and abrasive, but things made sense the deeper I dug into it all.
By the time those Neutral Milk Hotel guys were tangled into the frantic mix, things were even more circus-like. Nearly every time an E6 band played an Athens club, things went off like an all-for-one musical jamboree, with guitars, horns, drums and various noisemakers blasting. Olivia performances could resemble Monterey Pop Fest highlights, rough garage band gigs or high school talent shows.
In the excitement of their earlier years through the late ’90s, the Olivias were joyful, unpredictable and eager to collaborate and tinker with the traditional ’60s pop formulas. However, I think those early party jams were the most raw, weird, and memorable, even when looking back through the beery haze.
…and again, briefly, in 2005
I’ve seen a million shows in Athens by now, and most of them were at least funny in some way, and some precious few of them totally shocked my bum-ass into a state of rarefied consciousness as only a right-on musical shake-it-up can. But I have to say that the all-time killer for me, and this not just in terms of my time in Athens but rather ALL-TIME INTO PERPETUITY, was seeing the Olivia Tremor Control out at Orange Twin a few years back.
Perfect night: deep-dark out in the magic land and a cool light rain falling and hundreds of revelers finding the light in the heart of that hand-hewn amphitheatre. Tall Dwarves were tiny and amazing and mystifying, and then they disappeared. Under the rain, I could actually hear my synapses twisting and curling, and then the Olivias were on. They were frenetic and complex and spot-on in their own weird and beautiful way. I stood gape-mouthed amazed for minutes-at-a-time as they harmonized perfectly with the hiss in my head, and then I’d remember I was surrounded by hundreds of people out there in the woods, and I’d turn to reference them: seemed in perfect circus-clockwork time with the sounds fanning outward from the stage. I remember thinking the sousaphone, as it leaned to moan in a mic, was the head of some strange coastal creature reaching for a sip.
After the show, as Led Zeppelin thundered through the PA, I got lost in the dampening woods, and I didn’t mind, just looked harder for signs of the Shire and whatnot. Several things came into focus that night: this was the night my band Dark Meat officially formed, as we were all out there, sharing the same thing. Also, it became clear to me just how magical a place Athens was, and how a community based on shared creativity can result in some seriously heavy tuneage, daunting and true.
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Five-Eight
Five-Eight
circa 1992
In the early 1990s, there was no band in town like Five-Eight. They’re one of the only bands (of which there have been only a handful in the past 20 years) to have moved to Athens from out of town and become fully-fledged Athenian heroes. In fact, at this point it’s hard to ever imagine them as being from New York. In any case, Five-Eight played supremely populist rock and roll thoroughly informed by my longtime favorites Hüsker Dü. And that’s what initially drew me to them. Mike Mantione’s sweaty, crazed look onstage was the personification of the sweetly tortured tunes he was writing at the time. At this time the thing to do as an Athens band was to release demo tapes, and Five-Eight’s tapes couldn’t stay on record store shelves. You couldn’t turn on WUOG 90.5 FM and not hear their 7“ release of ”God Damn It, Paul.“
My favorite memories are of the band playing in front of UGA’s Arch during the Anti-War ”Peace Camp,“ which was set up by students in protest of the first Gulf War in 1991 or 1992. I once saw Mantione slice his guitar through several tables of beer bottles at The Downstairs during a particularly passionate set. Five-Eight was the first band I ever heard of having a deal where they’d play exclusively at the 40 Watt when in town (although perhaps a legend even then, it still makes a great rock story!). Patrick ”Tigger“ Ferguson was still playing drums for Five-Eight back then, and the rhythms he and bass player Dan Horowitz would lock into were the perfect platform for Mantione’s tuneful, occasionally angular and always explosive guitar.
Five-Eight was such an inspiration to younger bands. They were so totally looked-up-to as an ideal of success, with regard to songwriting and audience acceptance, it’s as if they were bona-fide rock stars. I should know, because I was in one of those tiny bands that held Five-Eight as an ideal. At their best they were awe-inspiring, and they were very rarely not at their best.
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Pylon
Pylon
circa 1990
By the time Flagpole published its first issue in 1987, Pylon - one of the pioneering and inspiring bands of the early “modern Athens music scene” - was seemingly gone for good and well-remembered for a brief but influential early-’80s heyday. By 1988, the band - singer Vanessa Briscoe-Hay, guitarist Randy Bewley, bassist Michael Lachowski, and drummer Curtis Crowe - was already in resurrection mode.
My first experience with Pylon was via R.E.M.’s cover of “Crazy,” originally released on Pylon’s 1983 Chomp album. Then came the rockumentary Athens, Ga.: Inside/Out with the segment on Pylon - mesmerizing stuff featuring killer vintage live show film footage and amusing interviews with Vanessa and Michael.
In the spring of 1989, the original lineup (with their original instruments) performed a surprisingly tight and energetic set of faves at the second annual (and final) Athens Music Festival at the Athens Fairgrounds. It was the first of several “reunion” shows, and it rocked. They followed through with several club shows in town and opened for the final leg of R.E.M.’s massive Green tour.
By 1990, they were even tighter and more confident. I remember one really cool show at the old 40 Watt (where the Caledonia is now) where they’d decorated the entire stage with white linen. Curtis performed on his white Rogers drum kit and the entire band was dressed in white outfits. They slammed through their early material and a few new cuts, like “Look Alive,” with Vanessa swirling and dancing and Michael and Randy jerking and bouncing on either side. Fans were totally connected to the energy and spectacle. Pylon was totally connected to the energy of the crowd. This was Pylon - and the spirit of the Athens music scene - at its very best… and it seems there’s more to come.
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R.E.M.
circa 1989
Even before I was co-owner of the 40 Watt I had seen R.E.M. many times. Once I was at the Watt, I was around the band even more. By the late ’80s the band was a huge international sensation and the 40 Watt was located very close to their rehearsal space, and the members of the band would come over sometimes before practice to wait around on everyone else. Later, when they’d been rehearsing for a while, they might come by and get a 12-pack of beer for rehearsal. After a few beers one of them might come over and ask if it was “okay” if they played that night… as if I were going to say no!
It was always difficult to keep the little secret that they were playing to myself, but I knew in my head how the show would be well before the doors opened. They’d get up on stage either before anyone else played or in between the first and last band. No sound check. No fanfare. No announcement.
Almost always they would start with “Begin the Begin.” I never asked why. It is something they still do to this day when they play short unannounced shows. I guess it was because it was a song they liked, and because it was a basic enough song for the sound man to get a quick mix for the rest of their set. All I know is that it’s a song that starts off with a lot of power, and it always got me excited and in a great frame of mind. I loved being at the Watt on those nights. I had the insider knowledge they were playing and was almost certain what song they were going to start with. To this day that song always brings back that feeling and I get a big smile on my face.
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Music Hates You
circa 2002
Sometimes, if you follow and see a band play enough in Athens, you’ll pay witness to when it hits a beautiful moment of creation and/ or transition. Such is the case with Music Hates You and a 2002 show at the old Lunch Paper space on College Avenue (where Chapel now resides). The previous times I’d seen MHY, they had played as a simple punk trio, but that night Music Hates You re-expanded to a four-piece with the inclusion of guitarist Zaxx Hembree, who had returned to the band after a hiatus “away.” From Athens? In the big house? Who knows? Who cares? However, during that seminal performance, it was obvious that Hembree’s perfect layer of added heavy guitar noise would help expand and elevate even further the band’s sound. That night, Music Hates You finished the set with the ear-scorching assault of “You Have Failed as an Audience,” a song that was so monumentally loud and great that I thought the paint was going to peel off the tin walls. That show marked the first glimpse at how phenomenally potent Music Hates You’s wicked brew could be. The band’s never looked back.
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Neutral Milk Hotel
Neutral Milk Hotel
circa 1997
I first met Jeff Mangum in 1993 at the corner of College Avenue and Clayton Street where he was standing with a sleeping bag in his hand. Earlier in the day he had met a homeless man downtown and told him he would come back with a sleeping bag for him. Mangum kept his promise but the man never showed. Flash forward to 1996 when I see Mangum perform as Neutral Milk Hotel for the first time. Not really knowing what to expect from the fellow with the acoustic guitar and melancholy eyes, I was blown away. Mangum’s intensity was such that he seemed to depart the stage (at least mentally and spiritually), but the rapture was well spun for the audience as well. His guitar lines were always very simple - mostly major chords, and not too many of ’em. His real instrument was his voice.
I could go down a laundry list of Neutral Milk Hotel shows that happened in town but the most memorable were Mangum’s solo performances at the Jittery Joe’s downtown (where The Max Canada is now) and the Jittery Joe’s on Prince Avenue (now home to the Healing Arts Center), a birthday party for filmmaker Lance Bangs at a house on Meigs Street, and several full band performances at house venue The Landfill. I value these performances over any of the club gigs Neutral Milk Hotel played because they were set away from the club scene and, somehow, seem in retrospect more appropriate to the music the band was playing. I knew it was special at the time, but the distance between now and the late ’90s has magnified (and I don’t believe distorted) those memories. Neutral Milk Hotel was able to shake an entire house when amplified and, alternately, sweetly sing the audience to dream. In any case, there wasn’t a show I saw at which the audience wasn’t securely in Mangum’s hand and world.
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Rich Merritt
Phosphorescent
Phosphorescent
circa 2006
Small touches can make great performances, and in the spring of 2006 Matthew Houck found what he needed to bring his project Phosphorescent to full realization. Right before a bunch of shows at South by Southwest he grew a beard and bought a ratty, sequined denim jacket at a thrift store in Middle Georgia somewhere, and on the hours-long drive to Texas he laced the thing with Christmas lights.
Now, past shows had been pretty damn good, or sometimes pretty rough, or sometimes both. There was an explosively jubilant full-band show at the Go Bar for AthFest 2005 that had a lot of the town talking. There was a transportive show at a party out where the lake was heavy with croaking frogs and green muck and we were all heavy with sweat and beer, but the band lifted it all. And any Flicker shows that Houck played were essential, as he’d switch things up on the fly by looping vocals, going straight acoustic or knocking out his fragile heartbreakers on that half-broke piano.
But goddamn, with that lit-up jacket he commanded the room, a beautiful and creative vestment that doubled as a clever attention grabber for Athens’ attention-deficient crowds; when you’re the only source of light, all eyes are on you. If clubs are cathedrals, Houck assumed the role of votives themselves, taking on the audience’s private offerings.
From a truly moving performance of “My Dove, My Lamb” at the 2006 Flagpole Athens Music Awards to a solo show at the Caledonia following the bust-up of the band that sounded downright dangerous, all the way up until Houck split town for Brooklyn earlier this year, there were about eight or nine months of brilliance, and I’m thankful you and I and all of us were in Athens to share it.
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Curtiss Pernice
Porn Orchard
circa 1989
People will giggle or cringe when they hear the band name now, but Porn Orchard was a crucial part of the burgeoning punk and “heavy” Athens scenes in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The band formed as a punk four-piece in late 1985, and gradually solidified as the trio of guitarist Curtiss Pernice, bassist/vocalist Ted Hafer and drummer Sam Mixon. Pernice and Hafer were really into the metallic U.S. punk/ hardcore of Black Flag, Dag Nasty and Corrosion Of Conformity and the like. Mixon came from a more traditional pop/ rock background, but dove right into that aggressive punk stuff with no problem. Pernice’s angular approach to barre chords and chromatic scales certainly resembled that of Greg Ginn, especially on Black Flag’s recently released My War and Slip It In, but he worked an array of unusual bits and metallic riffs into his guitar parts.
In September 1988, during my first month in Athens, I purchased Porn Orchard’s debut - a three-song 7“ featuring the metal-inflicted, darkly majestic ”Chain Delivery“ on the front and the more hardcore ”Desperate Formula“ and a blistering four-chord workout titled ”Barbie“ (clocking in at 59 seconds) on the flipside. At the time, I was more excited about recent releases by R.E.M., The Replacements, Midnight Oil and Let’s Active than anything this heavy and weird. After winning a pair of passes from WUOG, I ventured into my first Porn Orchard show at the old Uptown Lounge in November 1988. That’s when I caught on that ”Chain Delivery“ was aimed directly at organized religion and ”Desperate Formula“ again targeted church practices. Good heavens, it nearly rattled me. It wasn’t too long before I realized that all the bluster was partly done in jest, just to crack each other up. I almost never missed another Porn Orchard gig - all the way until their farewell show in December 1992 at the same stage.
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Chris McKay
Dark Meat
Dark Meat
circa 2007
There’s about a planet’s worth of potential in the Athens music scene, and only a small portion of that gets fully realized. Whether due to circumstance, ego, drugs, divine intervention, “real life,” bad luck, good luck, sex, love or plain ol’ who-the-fuck-knows?, much of what’s promising in Athens ends up changing into something lesser or flat-out failing. So to watch Dark Meat teeter on the edge only to grow into its own skin last year has been enormously satisfying.
Early ’06 shows were explosively psychedelic experiments in fusing proto-punk garage jam-outs with free-jazz approaches and extended structures. Most were exciting, and some (but not as many as the accepted party line around town claims) were drunken, destructive messes.
But when band figureheads Jim McHugh and Ben Clack reined the team in to record the debut album Universal Indians in mid-2006 and then took the group out on its first brief national tours, Dark Meat’s outré indulgences and party proclivities were tempered with some studio discipline and the (loose) routine of road gigging. All the players - all 15+ of them - knew the songs inside and out, knew when to rein them in and when to let ’em rip. All the costumes, the face paint, the psychedelic light shows, the sheer throbbing human mass of limbs and instruments and streamers? All eye candy supplementing those songs.
Take the one great year bookended by phenomenal AthFest ’06 and ’07 performances, and you’ve got a snapshot of some raw power. The band’s still changing, reworking old songs and new ones, and band members are coming and going. I want to know what’s next.
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The Woggles
circa 1991
Back before all of Clayton Street was college bars, surveillance cameras and police barricades, the street thrived with weirdness. A good amount was coming from the (literally) underground café The Downstairs (located where DT’s is now). And from that spot a good amount of weirdness was coming from The Woggles. Not weird as in “bizarre,” but weird such that in a town full of artsy, sad-poet boys, The Woggles were playing straight ahead, greasy, loud’n’fuzzy garage rock with such dedication to form and commitment to style it was as if R.E.M never happened. I think I first saw The Woggles in 1991 or 1992 and, with limited exception, I hadn’t really been exposed to anything coming from the garage underground. I’m not even sure if band leader Manfred “The Professor” Jones ever even liked the term “garage.” Sweat would drip from the walls at even lightly attended shows. And, man, when the shows were packed, it was akin to a spiritual revival. The Woggles would regularly play 30 or so songs in a set, and just about the time you’d ask yourself, “How many different ways can they play the same three chords?” you’d also decide that no other chords were necessary. The Woggles were a total package.
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Chris McKay
Drive-By Truckers
Drive-By Truckers
circa 2002
First time I saw the Truckers was around ’98 or ’99, I believe, and I didn’t pay ’em much mind. Vaguely jokey name, seriously jokey album titles like Pizza Deliverance and Gangstabilly… I figured ’em for a bunch of clowns playing up the redneck schtick, like a third-rate Southern Culture on the Skids or something. Over the next couple of years the band refined its songwriting and its live show, though I was in the dark - after that initial run-in I stayed away for a while.
Fast forward to September 12, 2001. I was living in an efficiency apartment on Foundry Street, and I was pretty wiped out by the TV onslaught of crumbling buildings, portentious speeches, ash-covered people (real people!) and all that. I found myself in Wuxtry that day, or maybe that week, and I picked up the Truckers’ brand-new album Southern Rock Opera on the recommendation of a friend. Gave ’em another chance, and found a new animal entirely, a band wrestling through troubled yet personal story-songs and ambitious Southern rockers. This was right around the time Jason Isbell joined up after guitarist Rob Malone left the band, and the kickin’ chaos of those shows could’ve gone either way… but the album took off nationally in 2002 and, well, local history was made, etc., y’know how it goes.
The Truckers’ shows over the past three or four years have gotten reliably rockin’ and rollickin’, and I dig how the band plays around with its arrangements (bringing in key pro Spooner Oldham, trying things acoustic, etc.). But right around 2002 and 2003 they seemed as surprised by success as anyone else (even those who’d been rooting for ’em for years); that shining delight came right from the band straight through the speakers. Rappers talk about how hunger’s necessary for success; the Truckers were hungry, but right around that time they got a taste of what was to come.
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Brian McCall
Ed Livengood of Jucifer
Jucifer
circa 1998
During one long-ago Manhattan happy hour I commiserated with Jucifer drummer Ed Livengood about growing up scrawny, with mothers who encouraged us to eat sugar-laden bullshit and stockier peers who regarded us with confusion and envy. We both protected ourselves by acting completely psychotic when threatened, and fought by flailing our limbs and lunging unpredictably. That explains a bit about Livengood’s stage presence - he goes after a drumkit like he’s a bag full of determined feral cats. Meanwhile, singer-guitarist Amber Valentine looks like an unusually gorgeous sci-fi heroine and shifts from a menacing sneer to a screaming self-exorcism (a style repeatedly and inexplicably described as “cooing”). Jucifer isn’t quite “real metal,” but it is louder than most deities. Particularly in its late ’90s ascendance, Jucifer was the sort of case in which, to quote Livengood, “you’re gonna have to leave if you don’t like it.”
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Je Suis France
circa 1999
Now, the members of Je Suis France are scattered about the nation, but in ’99, most of them were UGA undergrads, and a quorum lived together in one pleasantly overpopulated college-kid house with “WHAT BURNS NEVER RETURNS” tagged on one of the walls inside. This is where the band played a lot of its early shows, when, with no polish to speak of, it relied on its large cadre of friends and its prankish sense of humor. In time, JSF became a formidable experimental rock outfit, but its goofball surrealism, fierce charisma and cheeky approach to cover versions were forged here. To recall these shows is to long for a great college party, to marvel at what this band became, and to still know a lot of old pals by nicknames such as “Rippy,” “Crews Control” and “Cocaine Bref.”
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Vic Chesnutt
circa 1988
Vic was always one of my favorites. I remember in particular a string of shows that he did every Tuesday night at the 40 Watt for about a year straight in ’88. You never knew who was going to be playing with Vic on any given week, or what songs he was going to perform. I would guess that almost every musician in town must’ve played with him at least once during that run.
What amazed me was that he could pull all that together, week after week. Every week he had the challenge of new songs, new musicians and new stage props. Even more amazing was that it was organized and rehearsed. How he could get that many different Athens musicians to drop what they were doing and rehearse new material with him is a real mystery.
I think that time frame is when I came to discover that Vic was a genius who could pull off anything if given a chance. The sets were full of self-effacing humor and amazing heartfelt performances. Where were our video cameras then?
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Brian McCall
Kevin Barnes of Of Montreal
Of Montreal
circa 2006
Seeing Of Montreal in the late ’90s and early ’00s was fun: great rock and roll shows that did a bang-up job of translating Kevin Barnes’ diverse songs to a live setting. (And the semi-regular holiday cover sets at the 40 Watt were certainly a treat!) But, although the band pushed its performances into theatrical territory, a lot of the hoo-ha (animal masks, giant balloons, etc.) felt homemade and halfway realized. Sure, there was a certain charm associated with that aesthetic - “We did this, and so could you!” - that gets to the core of what makes the accessibility of Athens music one of the town’s best features. But once a cash infusion hit the band after the success of 2004’s Satanic Panic in the Attic and 2005’s The Sunlandic Twins, Barnes & Co. were able to let their freak flag fly, amping up the performances to include dance-inducing songs accompanied by Barnes dressed as: a nine-foot towering spectacle of glam-rock androgyny; a lobster-clawed pop ghoul; a shimmery, naked drug fantasy; a geisha pill-popper warrior monk teacher oracle elf; et cetera! Smoke machines, video projection, moving crowds… the shows in 2006 were like fantastic coming-out parties where everyone got to be the gay belle of the ball. Barnes’ oddly detached delivery and between-song utterances kept things at a distance, a little arty, a little abstract and always compelling. Of Montreal became less of itself, and more of itself, and Athens lost something and gained something. Hey, that’s forward motion, something that can be hard to come by in complacent Athens, GA.
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Ishues
circa 2002
It’s basically Rudy in a hip-hop cipher, but 8 Mile deserves some credit for introducing white suburbanites to the thrilling, harrowing one-upmanship that goes down in rap battles. Even in early-aughties Athens, where emcees shared a frustrating struggle for a small amount of attention and the highest-profile throwdowns happened on school nights at Tasty World, a lot of rivals got insulted, a lot of threats got made and lot of shit got talked. But Ishues, one of the smartest, tightest rappers on the scene, never busted any other rapper’s nuts directly. When he stepped on stage, he seemed aggressively driven and yet eerily detached. He rapped about stuff bigger than everyone in the room. And the room listened to him, forgetting about status and forthcoming freestyles and marveling at the man’s passion and skill. Now, he’s better than ever and still above office politics, but he’s lost the surprise element - would-be challengers can see his wu wei clock-cleanings coming from half a decade away.
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Vigilantes of Love
circa 1994
In the early ‘90s, one of the most prolific - and passionate - artists in and around town was Bill Mallonee. He fronted the band Vigilantes of Love, and after R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck produced the band’s Killing Floor LP in ’92, VoL reached its live apex in ’94 and ’95 supporting two monster albums, Welcome to Struggleville and Killing Floor. Though many, many musicians have played with Mallonee in VoL, that line-up which included Newton Carter on guitar, David LaBruyere on bass and Travis Aaron McNabb on drums was hands-down one of the hardest-hitting local rock-and-roll bands ever to grace Athens stages. The LP release show for Struggleville at the Chameleon Club was a high-water mark for the band, which in its prime could have easily gone toe-to-toe with the likes of the Drive-By Truckers and not backed down. Unfortunately, the Vigilantes of Love never fit into either the alt-country or alt-rock worlds and was much shunted to the side by all genres and markets. The aforementioned lineup of Mallonee, Carter, LaBruyere and McNabb was too good to last for long, with the members going on to different projects by the end of ’95, and the VoL sound was never quite as hard or harrowing again.
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Wild Gumbo
circa 1999
Vernon Thornsberry is a funny guy. He’s a guy who knows everyone (at least, he’s a guy who acts as though he knows everyone). He ran with the art crowd, and I often ran into him at X-Ray Café on Washington. He always greeted me warmly, with a lot of big ideas to discuss. I asked him my name once, and he talked his way around it. But even when I wasn’t buying what he was selling, the pitch was always a highlight of my day. He always had a lot going on, but his band Wild Gumbo only played every once in a while. Wild Gumbo was a loose, jazzy pop group, with Thornsberry on rough-but-passionate trumpet and all-over-the-place vocals, backed by members of the rock band Blue Stockings. The band recorded The Midnight Queens of Athens, GA in separate sessions in the late ’90s, giving it a spooky, disjointed quality. But when they played together, they had some of the tightest crowd rapport in the city, the sort of playful, festive attitude that could make people dance to road construction.
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Chris McKay
Hope For Agoldensummer
Hope For Agoldensummer
circa 2004
Don’t let rock-and-rollers hoodwinked by the guitar worship cascading down since the ’70s or DIY kids confused about keeping it real tell you that the only way a live show can be intense is through balls-to-the-wall volume and drunken antics. Sure, that stuff’s absolutely essential in a scene as diverse as Athens’, but that doesn’t mean that the quiet shows can’t be just as riveting and memorable. For a good year or two after the release of Hope For Agoldensummer’s 2004 debut album I Bought a Heart Made of Art in the Deep, Deep South, the ramshackle folk ensemble anchored by the Campbell sisters Claire and Page played shows that were flat-out valuable. It’s a little obvious to say, but the goal of any performer should be to connect with the audience; Hope did that over and over, show after show, playing to hushed crowds won over by the band’s onstage natural rapport and living-room chatter. Hell, at a Valentine’s Day ’05 show at the 40 Watt they even handed out cookies, an endearing move that overcame the questionably earthy, organic mouth sensation somewhat reminiscent of flavor. Cellist Will Taylor and percussionist Jamie Shepard are no longer with the band and shows are much rarer, but for a while it was great to have scene darlings who earned their status through sincerity and talent rather than onstage one-upmanship.
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Pattiy Torno
The Martians
The Martians
circa 1993
The first time I’d ever heard anything about rock trio The Martians was in the early ’90s, when I was working with Andy Baker and Joe Rowe alongside Pattiy Torno and Chris Purcell with a label project called Self Rising Records. They were youngsters out of Atlanta, and from the band name I assumed they were a garage band, or surf band, or something goofy. But they were actually one of the weirdest, most original indie-rock bands in the state.
When guitarist Hugh Connelly and bassist Keith Kortemeier followed drummer Jerry Fuchs to town in 1993, they were unofficially signed on for a 7” EP and a spot on the Refuel: Eight More Bands From Athens & Atlanta compilation that some friends and I were putting out.
The first time I ever saw them was in late 1993 at the Atomic Music Hall, possibly when it was still under the name Chameleon Club. Hardly anyone in town, other than Torno and Purcell, knew what to expect. At first glance, they looked like normal college dropouts, but during the first song, I was struck by their intensity and seriousness. They were unusually dissonant, syncopated, shouty and frighteningly tight. Connelly struck strange chords and noises from a weirdly-tuned Fender Telecaster, which chattered beneath Kortemeier’s raspy howls and hollered lyrics. On his four-piece kit, Fuchs (who would go on to play with Maserati, Turing Machine, Panthers, !!!, LCD Soundsystem, etc.) was a monster; technically amazing and powerfully explosive.
The band quickly gained a following in town and around the Atlanta/ Athens scene. They recorded and gigged plenty with Fuchs as well as with his skillful replacement Kyle Spence (later of Harvey Milk and The Tom Collins). I saw some really strong Martians shows through the ’90s, but that very first gig at the Atomic knocked me out for sure.
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LaBrea Stompers
circa 1987
The Stompers were more of a hyperkinetic free-for-all than a band. They held nothing sacred and were always working some theme or special costumes for their shows. It has nothing to do with their performance, but their posters were always great, too. Jim Stacy acted as the band’s frontman, but he also did most of their graphics. His wit and artistic talent were behind many of the costumes and stage antics. By the way, Jim was one of the funniest and hardest-hitting cartoonists Flagpole ever had in its 20-year history.
Sometimes things got a little too in your face for some audience members, but to me that was always a part of the show. Jim and the rest of the band hardly came up for air between songs before launching into another semi-serious rampage about society’s shortfalls and misfits. All the time they would be smiling and laughing to themselves: “Take that, frat boy!”
One of my favorite Stompers shows wasn’t really even the LaBrea Stompers performing. Jim organized a Gospel Jubilee Choir in ’87, and they performed at the 40 Watt. There were members of the Stompers, Hillbilly Frankenstein, Liquor Cabinet, Vic Chesnutt and Lord knows who else. Everyone was dressed in matching choir robes and they did authentic gospel songs with an alt-rock twist. It was grand in scale, hilarious, blasphemous and quite an exhibition of latent religious theatrical skill. It was just the sort of thing that the Stompers were so good at.
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Ceiling Fan
circa 2005
Ah, and sometimes a band can save its best for last. In 2005 Ceiling Fan played its final show at the Caledonia Lounge between Christmas and New Year’s. Though they’d been around for a decade, Ceiling Fan opted to call it a day after bassist Jess Robbins decided to move to Ohio. In a show befitting a Viking funeral, Ceiling Fan stormed through a masterful set of literate pop-rock in front of a crowd of friends and other local musicians who had come to pay respects to the end. Ceiling Fan stuck around and played everything the audience requested as a dark pallor drew over those who realized that this would never be seen again. (At least, not in the same way.) As an added good-bye bonus, Ceiling Fan also gave away free copies of an album Sound Replacer that they’d managed to finish up in the last weeks of 2005 after some initial recording at Kevin Lane’s house. I still proudly have a copy of my paper-sleeved Sound Replacer LP, which stands as one of the best local albums I’ve ever heard not to get an official release of some sort. While Ceiling Fan is gone, we all eagerly await Ben Spraker’s next band The Arcs, which should see its live debut in the next few months.
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Chickasaw Mudpuppies
circa 1989
The ’Pups started off as a couple of guys playing and singing on a front porch, and they kept that feel in their shows as much as they could. Most of the time the stage was decorated with work gloves with cornstalks, hats, folk-art whirligigs, Spanish moss, doors, windows and old furniture. Brant Slay played harmonica and sang from a great big old green rocking chair. Underneath the chair was a raised platform he called a stompboard. It was a plywood contraption that supported his chair and took the steady stomping that supplied the beat for the band. The stompboard actually had a mic that was hooked up to the sound board.
Ben Reynolds played guitar and sang. Ben’s songs were more structured and pop oriented. His guitar work always drove the songs forward with bluesy rocking rhythms, while Brant’s songs were a little more ethereal. There were whoops and hollers and lots of stomping and harmonica. During the early gigs they had Jim McKay as their percussionist. He literally banged on pots and pans and provided a frenetic tempo for the band. In the latter years, after Jim got too busy making films to play with the ’Pups, it was just Ben and Brant. Those brothers in arms provided far more sound than you would think two people were capable of.
I remember playing road manager for the Pups when they played this tiny club in Austin during SXSW in ’89 or maybe ’90. Vic Chesnutt had played before, and the place was packed with record company reps, other musicians from Athens, fans and whoever else wandered by. Ben and Brant played and were brilliant. The suits and the schmoozers crowded around them after the show, and that performance set off a bidding war among several major labels. They were living the dream! It was a blast and I was very proud of them. I miss days like those.
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Kathleen Cole
Stuntdouble
Stuntdouble
circa 1998
Every court needs a jester, and for the bulk of the late 1990s that jester was Stuntdouble. Led by the twin-guitar assault of John Britt and John Milavek, and backed by Rob Lomax on drums, the band fostered an atmosphere of innocent rock-and-roll dumbness, while also being able to rock pretty swell when sober enough to do so.
A veritable staple at house parties, the guys would crank their Fender guitars all the way up, paying no attention to how much treble was coming out and blast through two- and three-minute tunes at a pretty rapid clip. If you can imagine The Black Lips but with significantly fewer songs (and no slow ones), a shit-ton more beer, and a whole lot fewer worries, you’d… well, you’d still be pretty far away from Stuntdouble. There was no way to ever tell how seriously the band took itself or its music. They would record songs but then forget to tune their guitars; they would meticulously practice all week long and then get obnoxiously drunk before a show.
John Britt was writing the infamous Flagpole column The Heckler at this time and his barbed but always hilarious commentary on the local music scene had earned him more than a few detractors in town. That said, Britt seemed to feed off this energy and pretty much spat it back at the audience. Stuntdouble would say, “Fuck you!” and then blast into an AC/DC cover. They’d cover your house in beer cans but then help you clean up. As bad-ass as they came across, they were actually pretty nice boys. No, they never made much impact beyond local living rooms, but it’s bands like this - more so than ones who become at all famous - that make a scene what it is. Since their uniqueness is showcased to a very few, those very few in that community have unique memories others can’t fully understand. I never totally understood Stuntdouble, either, but they were a hell of a lot of fun. And they probably owe me money for beer.
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