The Trap

1996–2000

originally published December 6, 2006

At its core, The Trap was two people: Jay Domingo and Les Mosely, high-school friends from Vidalia, GA, who moved to Athens to attend art school in the mid '90s. They formed the first Athens incarnation of The Trap in 1996 with Chris Cozad and Mark Simmons. Optimism and faux-innocence were commonplace among local bands, but The Trap was resolutely cynical.

"Our idea of a practice was to smoke pot, play for eight hours, call WUOG for free show passes, and then play all night making fun of the terrible 'punk' or 'indie' bands we had just seen," says Domingo. "I don't know why we made fun of them, we were playing basically the same kind of music. The name 'The Trap' came from either Mark or me to describe these dead-end practice sessions, because we were extremely negative about everything."

In 1997, Cozad and Simmons quit, and Adrian Finch began to occasionally play with The Trap. "Adrian played with us whenever we could get him away from his girlfriend Kimba; we kept the name 'The Trap' to describe her," says Domingo.

Drummer Jeff Griggs joined in 1997 as well, and Lydia Crumbley soon followed in early '98. "We got somewhat popular when Lydia joined the band," says Domingo. "I attribute this entirely to her popularity in Athens." To many, this was the classic Trap lineup, as Griggs' precise drumming and Crumbley's minimalist keyboard stabs (written by Domingo) made the band's Devo aspirations readily apparent.

At The Time

Together they created a musical and artistic community that flourished briefly in Athens. Domingo and Mosely were founding members of Spaceball Entertainment, the collection of bored individuals who ran the practice space and erstwhile DIY show venue known as Buckhead Beach. Inspired by the now-defunct Providence-based music and comics art headquarters Fort Thunder, Buckhead Beach was a haven for musical and artistic absurdity. The aging Hodgson Oil warehouse on Oconee Street had served many uses over the years, but in its dying days before renovation, it housed a vital yet overlooked scene that gave birth to countless bands of varying levels of competence.

"I view the Buckhead Beach days as the most inspiring waste of time that I have ever had," says Domingo. "It was our practice space, our performance theater and our impromptu dance party headquarters. To some, Buckhead Beach was the place where you could see a terrible ska-punk band consisting of midgets and people with peg-legs; to others, it was where that pirate radio station was; others thought that it was just the place where they built an in-door skate ramp. To us, it was our muse. Something about the dirtiness felt so liberating."

Griggs recalls that The Trap was "one of many bands that grew out of Buckhead Beach. There were a lot of people from different walks of life, and it provided the opportunity for a lot of interesting bands to form. It was a moment in our lives where we were super-creative, and though we didn't come up with any high art, there was a lot of creativity and general ridiculousness."

Both the diversity of Buckhead Beach and the musical style of The Trap were a reaction to what was happening elsewhere locally. There were a number of interesting and distinct scenes in town, but neither Load Records-style idiocy nor classic indie-rock were easy to find. "There was Kindercore lame-o indie pop, who were friends," says Domingo. "The Elephant 6 bands, townie rock like Hayride, the transplanted Atlanta hardcore/ DIY/ emo scene that had house shows and liked to be naked, good experimental music like Melted Men and Irene Moon and all sorts of jam bands. [The Trap] was pretty much an out-of-fashion kind of indie-rock, mixed with the sonic equivalent of a stand-up comedy routine. We were like lepers in the Athens music scene. We didn't have really cool or influential friends."

Many bands played and practiced at Buckhead Beach, but those most closely associated with the space were The Trap and various other Spaceball projects. These included Green Giant, Army of Gog, Saul Pimpson, Eardrum Repair Services and numerous other bands. "Those were always the bands we were most proud of," says Domingo. Spaceball bands dominated the line-up of Assfest, an annual festival Domingo organized that ran concurrently with the first three installments of AthFest.

Why The Split?

There were occasional difficulties between Griggs and Domingo, but The Trap didn't so much break up as fade away. Crumbley moved to Oregon in 2000, and Griggs, busy with a half-dozen other bands, left around the same time. Domingo, Mosely and Finch played two final shows as The Trap in 2000. At the second show, they played a Suicide cover for a half-hour, which led to Griggs as an audience member throwing lettuce at the band in disgust. There was no official break-up.

Today Domingo sounds ambivalent about The Trap, claiming that the band "was always an artistic failure to me. It was fun but an incongruent mixture of half-baked conceptual ideas and musical phrases. Still, we always say we should still be playing, but Les and I have kids - not together - and Jeff has never returned my calls."

These Days…

Jay Domingo went on to play in the short-lived band Pullaprince. Today he's an art teacher at a middle school in Covington; his wife recently gave birth to their first child. Les Mosely lives with his wife and three children in the same neighborhood as Domingo. He teaches high school art in the same district as Domingo. "Kids get sent through The Trap factory," Mosely says.

Jeff Griggs has possibly drummed for more Athens bands than any other man; the Caledonia bartender has sat behind the kit for Masters of the Hemisphere, Je Suis France, Murder Beach, Special Teams and countless others. At one time, Adrian Finch was a member of the Masters, Elf Power and the Summer Hymns; he released an album under the name Dances With Wolves in 2002 and currently lives in the Atlanta area. All four occasionally play in the country band Augusta Wind. Crumbley might still live in Oregon.

Garrett Martin

That Beat in Time is a biweekly feature examining dearly departed local acts worth digging up. Next up: Vaudeville. Is there a band you'd like to see covered? Email music editor Chris Hassiotis at music@flagpole.com.