Wednesday, November 25, 2009
FRIED TURKEY
Listening to Georgia Public Radio the other day, my wife caught a story which was a list of safe suggestions for Thanksgiving, which can get so out of control I guess. One of these suggestions was not to fry the turkey in a pot of oil. I had never heard of or imagined this idea of fried turkey. While normal turkey is fairly disgusting and frying it couldn't make it any worse, it seems like an all-around cockamamie idea to fry something as large as a turkey. But I live in the South now and I guess I should try and get used to the idea of small mammals, fairly large birds and even medium-sized humanoids being deep-fried. Happy Thanksgiving, my Bejesus-lovin', gravy-simmering, Jew-frying neighbors.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
THE FRINGE FACTORY
Over the decades, I've been to all types of themed clubs: '60s underground garage rock, '70s disco, the obligatory '80s new wave, '20s speakeasy, Brit-pop, goth, industrial (lame), soul and hip-hop. But I do not recall ever attending a '60s psychedelic-themed club. I'm very much into the British whimsical style of psychedelia that the likes of Donovan and Syd Barrett mastered, anything about gnomes or butterflies (if you can write songs about those subjects, then you are a great songwriter), though I've never been so crazy for the generally American version that's more about wanky guitars.
Anyhow, I was excited about The Fringe Factory, Atlanta's monthly club that was previously held at the Highland Ballroom (where we checked out the Peachtree Soul Club last week), but which has recently moved to a much larger space, the Spring4th Center in Midtown. Upon arrival last night, I was immediately impressed with the attention to detail in the club's decoration: the little mushroom statues (I saw a guy try to put a drink on one), the beaded curtain style door in the space and time machine chill lounge (where there was an Asian gal DJ playing some out-there, mostly ambient music), the 45s strung together in the Peacock Lounge, the kaleidoscopic art on the walls and the '60s movies playing in several rooms. There were only a couple of bearded fellows in attendance who looked as if they had actually experienced the '60s, but in general the crowd skewed pretty old, near my age (38), and it was not so dominated by hipsters. A decent amount of people were dressed up. My tie-dye and various velour shirts no longer fit. The smoking jacket didn't really make sense. My blue velvet jacket is a little too warm for a club. So, the wife (who only wears black and purple) and I were dressed as if it were any odd night out.
In the main room, the music blasting was obscure psych and I couldn't name even one of the bands they played. Psychedelic music doesn't necessarily lend itself to dancing, except for that spacey hippy dance one can really only do in an ironic fashion. So the main room was more of a band room, while the Peacock Lounge around back was where the majority of the dancing was going on to a '60s soul soundtrack. I wasn't nuts about either of the two main stage acts, the New Orleans organ/puppet show, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, whom I saw over a decade ago play in the LAX Theme Building's Encounter Bar in L.A., or the Electric Cycles, a local garage band with floppy hair and suits. But in the Peacock Lounge, there were two terrific sets by Spencer Garn's Psychedelic Organ. This local gentleman can play the organ and he and his all-instrumental band grooved frenetically for two sets, including a late night one that packed a small enthusiastic crowd 'til 2:30 am. What was with the one couple dirty dancing? They were so wild that people had to clear out somewhat when the girl flipped around with her heels in the air. I thought it neat that this club went to 4 am, though I didn't last to that hour. I haven't checked out Atlanta's nightlife scene extensively, but compared to elsewhere, I'd say it's very much lively and groovy with plenty of gigantic, fairly unique club spaces and no shortage of swell ideas and themes. And drinks are so cheap, $5 for a cocktail in many places, as if it was 1992.
www.myspace.com/fringefactory
Anyhow, I was excited about The Fringe Factory, Atlanta's monthly club that was previously held at the Highland Ballroom (where we checked out the Peachtree Soul Club last week), but which has recently moved to a much larger space, the Spring4th Center in Midtown. Upon arrival last night, I was immediately impressed with the attention to detail in the club's decoration: the little mushroom statues (I saw a guy try to put a drink on one), the beaded curtain style door in the space and time machine chill lounge (where there was an Asian gal DJ playing some out-there, mostly ambient music), the 45s strung together in the Peacock Lounge, the kaleidoscopic art on the walls and the '60s movies playing in several rooms. There were only a couple of bearded fellows in attendance who looked as if they had actually experienced the '60s, but in general the crowd skewed pretty old, near my age (38), and it was not so dominated by hipsters. A decent amount of people were dressed up. My tie-dye and various velour shirts no longer fit. The smoking jacket didn't really make sense. My blue velvet jacket is a little too warm for a club. So, the wife (who only wears black and purple) and I were dressed as if it were any odd night out.
In the main room, the music blasting was obscure psych and I couldn't name even one of the bands they played. Psychedelic music doesn't necessarily lend itself to dancing, except for that spacey hippy dance one can really only do in an ironic fashion. So the main room was more of a band room, while the Peacock Lounge around back was where the majority of the dancing was going on to a '60s soul soundtrack. I wasn't nuts about either of the two main stage acts, the New Orleans organ/puppet show, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, whom I saw over a decade ago play in the LAX Theme Building's Encounter Bar in L.A., or the Electric Cycles, a local garage band with floppy hair and suits. But in the Peacock Lounge, there were two terrific sets by Spencer Garn's Psychedelic Organ. This local gentleman can play the organ and he and his all-instrumental band grooved frenetically for two sets, including a late night one that packed a small enthusiastic crowd 'til 2:30 am. What was with the one couple dirty dancing? They were so wild that people had to clear out somewhat when the girl flipped around with her heels in the air. I thought it neat that this club went to 4 am, though I didn't last to that hour. I haven't checked out Atlanta's nightlife scene extensively, but compared to elsewhere, I'd say it's very much lively and groovy with plenty of gigantic, fairly unique club spaces and no shortage of swell ideas and themes. And drinks are so cheap, $5 for a cocktail in many places, as if it was 1992.
www.myspace.com/fringefactory
Friday, November 6, 2009
DETHKLOK, MASTODON AND CONVERGE AT TABERNACLE
There is such a plethora of churches in Atlanta, the South and actually the whole length and width of this silly country, thank the lord someone turned one of them into a godless concert venue. I had heard talk of the club Tabernacle, but had just walked by the huge brick edifice of this converted church for the first time a few days before the brutal concert lineup that had turned me into a hyperactive, shrieking schoolgirl: Mastodon, Converge and the almighty Dethklok.
When I arrived at the packed and very sold-out (scalper tickets were $80), all-ages concert, I was blown away by the humongousness of Tabernacle (its capacity is 2600 smelly people). It has two separate balcony floors, a very large basement that could be a venue itself, a crowded outside smoking area and numerous rooms filled with assorted antiques, stained glass and what looked to be leftover fake outsider art from when the venue was a House of Blues briefly in the '90s. The very large main room has a beautiful chandelier and a neat, painted ceiling (I'm going to guess it's not original, but it could be) partially obscured by concert lighting. An awesome venue, Tabernacle is owned by the largest concert company in the world, Live Nation, who book Wembley Arena in London and the like.
I had seen Converge in their earlier years, when they were associated with the mostly East Coast metalcore scene (I don't even think that term is in use anymore). They have since matured into a nuanced extreme metal band and I very much dig their latest and perhaps finest record, Axe to Fall, which came out a few weeks ago. I think the parts of the capacity crowd not familiar with Converge, which would be most of the crowd, took a while to get used to singer Jacob Bannon, the spastic, somewhat awkward, Napoleon-sized fella with the receding hairline, who does not look very metal. Also, the guitar was way too low in the mix for the first few songs. But by the end of their shredding set, which bent from gloom to screeching din to massive mosh chords, folks were very much into it. Converge has taken the aesthetic of New England straight-edge-sounding hardcore to the outer limits.
http://www.convergecult.com
Mastodon is one of Atlanta's preeminent bands and I had never quite made it to see them before. I have always dug where they were coming from, their mega-themed albums conceived on subjects like Herman Melville's Moby Dick and their new album, Crack the Skye, which has a Tsarist Russian theme. It's maybe more the concepts and originality that I admired than the actual music. (I have always been a sucker for any metal with even the slightest literary or historic reference.) So, more so than the other bands, I was truly floored by their show, which was accompanied by some mesmerizing video imagery of evil men in beards, dueling Chinese dragons, giant, Satanic-looking buckheads and lots of burning devil creatures. The band itself is bearded and coiffed like a heavy metal version of Black Oak Arkansas, as Southern backwoods metal looking as you can get. These burly fellas play some highfalutin music that is both psychedelic and gargantuan, no easy task, and manage to live up to all their hype.
http://www.mastodonrocks.com
Dethklok is of course the most successful band in the history of music, the twelfth largest economy in the world, just above Belgium. The animated deth metal band is the creation of Brendon Small, who previously did the brilliant animated Home Movies on Adult Swim for five seasons before coming up with the ludicrous original concept of Metalocalpyse about a dunderheaded death metal band that has become a cultural and economic force. Though the show was scheduled in the wee hours and episodes were generally eleven minutes long, Metalocalpyse struck a chord in the almost humorless universe of metal, making fun of minutia of the genre well beyond This is Spinal Tap. Rather than try to replicate the characters on the show and turn them into life-size versions onstage, which would have been not all that easy to pull off and perhaps turned out like Bear Country Jamboree, the live show is made up of subtly humorous videos, with a lot of similar imagery to Mastodon's videos or any metal videos you might see on Headbangers Ball, only with the violence and irony quotient turned way up. Brendon and his band, who look not at all like a death metal band, sounded utterly authentic aided by a fanatical audience, who shouted along to the lyrics, an almost unheard of happening at death metal concerts, and bought a lot of merch. While Mastodon's set was nearly as lengthy as Moby Dick, Dethklok kept it short and to the point, pulverizing my brain into a piece of lifeless putty.
http://www.adultswim.com/shows/metalocalypse/index.html
When I arrived at the packed and very sold-out (scalper tickets were $80), all-ages concert, I was blown away by the humongousness of Tabernacle (its capacity is 2600 smelly people). It has two separate balcony floors, a very large basement that could be a venue itself, a crowded outside smoking area and numerous rooms filled with assorted antiques, stained glass and what looked to be leftover fake outsider art from when the venue was a House of Blues briefly in the '90s. The very large main room has a beautiful chandelier and a neat, painted ceiling (I'm going to guess it's not original, but it could be) partially obscured by concert lighting. An awesome venue, Tabernacle is owned by the largest concert company in the world, Live Nation, who book Wembley Arena in London and the like.
I had seen Converge in their earlier years, when they were associated with the mostly East Coast metalcore scene (I don't even think that term is in use anymore). They have since matured into a nuanced extreme metal band and I very much dig their latest and perhaps finest record, Axe to Fall, which came out a few weeks ago. I think the parts of the capacity crowd not familiar with Converge, which would be most of the crowd, took a while to get used to singer Jacob Bannon, the spastic, somewhat awkward, Napoleon-sized fella with the receding hairline, who does not look very metal. Also, the guitar was way too low in the mix for the first few songs. But by the end of their shredding set, which bent from gloom to screeching din to massive mosh chords, folks were very much into it. Converge has taken the aesthetic of New England straight-edge-sounding hardcore to the outer limits.
http://www.convergecult.com
Mastodon is one of Atlanta's preeminent bands and I had never quite made it to see them before. I have always dug where they were coming from, their mega-themed albums conceived on subjects like Herman Melville's Moby Dick and their new album, Crack the Skye, which has a Tsarist Russian theme. It's maybe more the concepts and originality that I admired than the actual music. (I have always been a sucker for any metal with even the slightest literary or historic reference.) So, more so than the other bands, I was truly floored by their show, which was accompanied by some mesmerizing video imagery of evil men in beards, dueling Chinese dragons, giant, Satanic-looking buckheads and lots of burning devil creatures. The band itself is bearded and coiffed like a heavy metal version of Black Oak Arkansas, as Southern backwoods metal looking as you can get. These burly fellas play some highfalutin music that is both psychedelic and gargantuan, no easy task, and manage to live up to all their hype.
http://www.mastodonrocks.com
Dethklok is of course the most successful band in the history of music, the twelfth largest economy in the world, just above Belgium. The animated deth metal band is the creation of Brendon Small, who previously did the brilliant animated Home Movies on Adult Swim for five seasons before coming up with the ludicrous original concept of Metalocalpyse about a dunderheaded death metal band that has become a cultural and economic force. Though the show was scheduled in the wee hours and episodes were generally eleven minutes long, Metalocalpyse struck a chord in the almost humorless universe of metal, making fun of minutia of the genre well beyond This is Spinal Tap. Rather than try to replicate the characters on the show and turn them into life-size versions onstage, which would have been not all that easy to pull off and perhaps turned out like Bear Country Jamboree, the live show is made up of subtly humorous videos, with a lot of similar imagery to Mastodon's videos or any metal videos you might see on Headbangers Ball, only with the violence and irony quotient turned way up. Brendon and his band, who look not at all like a death metal band, sounded utterly authentic aided by a fanatical audience, who shouted along to the lyrics, an almost unheard of happening at death metal concerts, and bought a lot of merch. While Mastodon's set was nearly as lengthy as Moby Dick, Dethklok kept it short and to the point, pulverizing my brain into a piece of lifeless putty.
http://www.adultswim.com/shows/metalocalypse/index.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
