This is what my notebook for school now looks like.

The first picture illustrates the front of the notebook. Only stickers from Georgia bands were allowed on the front (except for Deftones, because there was a blank space that needed to be filled). Bands featured are:

• Guzik (Athens)
• Mastodon (Atlanta)
• Kylesa (Savannah)
• Black Tusk (Savannah)
• Branded With Fear (Atlanta)
• Jucifer (Athens)
• Death of Kings (Atlanta)

The second photo is on the back of my notebook cover. I only have three band stickers there so far (need more!), and there’s a random sticker I got in the UTC book store. Bands featured are:

• Iron Diplomat (Chattanooga, TN)
• Dillinger Escape Plan (NJ)
• Suffocation (NY)

If you are a band, especially a sludge/doom band from the Southeast and you have stickers, GIVE THEM TO ME, PLEASE. I also REALLY need a Baroness sticker. Help a sister out!

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LUSTY KISSIN’ COUSINS: LUST AND UNCLE DADDY AND THE KISSIN’ COUSINS AT THE CLAIRMONT

Sorry I’m so late on writing a review for this show! My weekend has been insanely busy (but good) and I haven’t had the time. This probably won’t be a long, extended review, but it will be sufficient for the craziness that this show brought.

First off, this show was at the Clairmont Lounge, and for all of you not familiar with Atlanta hot spots, this place is notorious for having plus-sized and elderly strippers (some are pushing 70!) in a very informal, low-key environment. I got there in plenty of time to tip the girls well, because they earned every penny of it. After about an hour or so, the bands showed up and began to set up their equipment. I talked with Susanne and Amos from Lust for a bit before they took off to pick up Brann and bring him back there. I killed time by looking around at what everyone else was doing until the music started.

Uncle Daddy and the Kissin’ Cousins are a novelty bluegrass act that really impressed me. I thought their music was just going to be all slapstick and not substance, but I’ll be damned if all six of them aren’t incredible musicians. I grew up listening to traditional country and bluegrass, so I’m kind of a critic/snob of this genre, but the Kissin’ Cousins delivered big time. Among their original songs, they also did a great cover of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and another tune that was vaguely psychedelic. Check out their official Facebook page HERE.

This was my 2nd time seeing Lust, and this was the best I’ve seen them perform, hands down. The theme of the night was Hooters (as you can tell), and while I heard from Amos that owl costumes were going to be part of the shtick, they stuck with the traditional white and orange uniforms with blond wigs. I caught myself doing quite a few dorky white girl dances during their set, and Sasquatch (my nickname for their keytarist) had his junk in my face the whole time. You can’t go wrong there. One weird incident during their set, though: A club employee rushed the stage and gave a license plate number for a car that was about to be towed and he nearly got into a huge verbal smack down with a female audience member. Ahh, the joy of dive bars.

Aside from the music, I shared a few awkward moments trying to talk to Brann, but I got free cookies and a shot of vodka. That sort of made up for it. In any case, the music was great, and it felt good to let loose!

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OXXEN AND MUSIC HATES YOU AT SLUGGO’S, CHATTANOOGA, TN

Last night, I went to another show at Sluggo’s, which is one of the best small venues in Chattanooga. Three of the acts were local, while Music Hates You trekked up here from Athens, GA to play another gig. I was instrumental in making this show happen, introducing Music Hates You’s management to Tom (Oxxen bassist/vocalist, pictured above) and suggesting Sluggo’s as the venue. Thank God it all turned out okay, because this was one of my first successes as a “middle man” for a live event.

The opening act was Stoop Kidz, a “hipster-hop” group consisting of two dorky white guys who write songs about being broke trailer trash. I can best describe their sound as Das Racist for the Wal-Mart set. They actually were both legit MCs and their songs were peppered with lots of awesome ’90s references (their name is a Hey Arnold reference). The highlight of their set was a song about salad tossing set to the beat of Limp Bizkit’s “N2Gether Now”. You can’t make this shit up.

Oxxen, one of Chattanooga’s very few sludge metal outfits, played next. Tom (who I plan to start a band with as soon as my hectic school schedule dies down a bit) is very well-versed in all of the bands I cover on this blog, and Oxxen’s music reflected this. Honestly, they sound a hell of a lot like High on Fire - Matt Pike’s guitar tone was all over their songs. Of course, this was not a bad thing. They were easily my favorite band of the night and put on a killer set. Check out a video I took of their set HERE and “like” them on Facebook HERE. I’m just happy that my home town actually DOES have a teeny bit of a sludge/doom scene starting up. Hopefully it will stick.

Music Hates You is a very, very energetic band with a lot of charisma. I was only moderately familiar with their music before attending this show, but they won me over. Noah, their frontman, is a very nice dude who is extremely easy to shoot the shit with, and he commands full attention from the audience. Their music has a sort of jam band vibe to it, and I found myself headbanging quite a bit (and consequently feeling dizzy/sick when the lasagna I ate for dinner got shaken up in my guts). Sadly, I didn’t get many good pictures from their set, because my camera just decided it was going to be a dick towards the end of the show. Oh well.

All in all, it was a fun time. I didn’t get home until 1:30 AM, and I had been up since 7 AM the previous morning. I’m a little sleep deprived, but a show that good was worth it.

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Tomorrow night, Athens, GA outfit Music Hates You will be in Chattanooga for a show, with local sludge outfit Oxxen as the openers. This is another Sluggo’s gig, so I have an idea of what to expect. Michelle Temple of North Carolina sludge act Black Skies will be filling in on bass for this date, I believe.

I am very happy that this show is getting off the ground. For the better part of two months, Myself and Tom (Oxxen bassist, potential future bandmate) have worked with Michelle in getting Music Hates you to play in Chattanooga. The managers at Sluggo’s are hard to get a hold of, but they finally pulled through. I will have a full review of this show on Saturday with pictures and possibly footage. Stay tuned!

“Like” Music Hates You on Facebook HERE!

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NIGHT OF SLUDGE 2011 - ATLANTA’S ARCHIVE GALLERY

*To view pictures and other content, please click to the MAIN PAGE of my blog*

As all of you probably know and are sick of hearing about by now, I was supposed to embark on a week-long vacation in Atlanta starting last Friday and ending this Saturday. Unfortunately, my vacation got cut a few days short, giving me only four days to play. Missing out on the Braves game and the Torche/Big Business gig had me and Peter (my host) seriously bummed out, but we decided to make Monday night’s show our last hurrah.

First off, I really need to mention that the Archive Gallery is a teensy, TINY little venue in the heart of downtown Atlanta, close to the Philips Arena. There is no air conditioning or security, so you can imagine how hot and slightly on edge many of us were. Secondly, since this venue is so off-the-radar and the show was occurring on a Monday night, there were maybe 20 people who showed up, most of them being members of the other bands playing.

I was kind of upset that night and anti-social, opting not to talk to the bands until Sons of Tonatiuh drummer Tim got me out of my shell a little bit. It so turns out that he and bassist Mike are fond of my hometown of Chattanooga. “Atlanta gets so boring sometimes”, Mike told me, “sometimes I just like to go to Chattanooga to get away from everything”. Kind of funny, since I got to Atlanta to get away from Chattanooga. Guess one person’s paradise is another person’s hell hole.

Anyway, let’s get to the music. Sons of Tonatiuh and Savagist were the most well-known bands on the bill; the rest are relative unknowns. Phalanx took the state first, and honestly I don’t remember much about their set. I was still kind of upset/out of it at that time, and wasn’t focusing on the music. However, I do have a clearer memory of Savagist, who took the stage next. Their set literally sounded like one, big, long rumbling roll of thunder. They have played a few shows with Kylesa, High on Fire, and other more well-known bands, and I think that they have a bright future ahead of them. Also, their frontman Clem was very reminiscent of a young Buzz Osborne.

Phantom Glue, from Boston, were up next. They were probably the loudest band of the night, and had a two-vocalist approach that many southern sludge bands take, despite being Yankees. They made my ears bleed, but in a good way, of course. After their set, I got to talk to Clem a little bit, and it so turns out that he’s a really sweet guy. I don’t mean sweet as in “cuddly care bear” or some such non-sense, just sweet in the “I really care that you exist” kind of way. He kind of helped me to feel less out-of-place there, which I appreciated.

Sons of Tonatiuh played next. They were the only band whose music I was familiar with prior to seeing them live, so I knew what to expect. Dan, Mike, and Chris brought the goods - Sabbath-style riffs with agonizing, “kill me now” death screams. As you can see, I got this really high-res photo of Dan during one of those screams, which makes up for the photo of him cooling off by the fan with a big, stupid grin on his face that I took later (sorry!). Overall, it was a pretty solid set.

The last band to play, Humiliate, has a very unusual back story. They were billed as being Spanish, but they are actually Basque (yes, there is a HUGE difference. Wiki it). Having a background in studying human rights, I was well aware of the crisis that Spain’s indigenous groups are suffering, like the Basques and Catalonians. This was a band who clearly had a whole laundry list of things to be angry about, and that primal, feral anger translated into some shockingly good music. They were the one band out of the night that completely blew me away. There’s no way to describe the sledgehammer-to-the-face assault that these Iberian bruisers deliver, and what makes it worse is that I can’t find ANY information about them on Facebook or YouTube. If I do, this review will be updated.

So that’s really about it. Maybe I didn’t get everything that I wanted, but I did get a little bit of my fix for loud music.

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MONSTERS IN LUST: ATLANTA MONSTER BASH 2011

Yesterday was a wee bit crazy, but it was the kind of crazy that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning. Last weekend, I drunkenly prodded Jamie into buying tickets for Atlanta’s Monster Bash, an annual event held at the Starlight Drive-In Theatre (in the cool part of town). I still felt bad about missing Lust when they played with TNT back in March and wanted to “make up” for my lost experience. You see, Doro can’t be sludgy and doomy 100% of the time. Sometimes, she just straight up likes to get her camp on, and this even was oh so very campy.

Jamie and I were running a bit late but managed to show up in time for Spooky Partridge, a neat family act featuring a very precocious (and talented) 9-year-old drummer. As I would later figure out, the band also featured an ex-member of Atlanta’s own rebel grrls Catfight. Around this time, Jamie and I wandered around the event to find vendor after vendor selling all sorts of cool shit that we really couldn’t afford to buy, including a huge wall of off-beat refrigerator magnets. There were demons, vampires, zombies, and even a dude in a Cthulu mask (which made Jamie spazz big time – he as a Lovecraft obsession). We made it back to the stage just in time to catch Spooky Partridge’s last two songs, including a wonderful little diddy called “Robots Don’t Poop” (you don’t say!)

Next up was Radio Cult, a cute ‘80s cover band fronted by a very cute chick in a school girl outfit named…Bambi. Yep, it was total camp all around, which satisfied my hunger for the time being. I also think that Jamie had a bit of a crush on this Bambi chick, because during a rousing cover of Pat Benatar’s “Hit me With your Best Shot”, she singled him out and gave him a little performance all his own…haha. I’m just going to leave it at that. They also did kick-ass covers of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” and Madonna’s “Material Girl”, the latter featuring Bambi taking tips from the audience. Jamie bought a CD of theirs afterwards and probably can’t shake the little schoolgirl from his head (sorry Rachel! Haha).

A little more meandering was had before Lust took the stage. Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with Lust, they describe themselves as “Atlanta’s costumed girl power band”, formed by long-time friends Barb Hayes and Susanne Gibboney. I found out about them through Mastodon (Susanne is Brann Dailor’s wife) in 2009 and was instantly smitten with their raunchy brand of punk-tinged garage rock. In press photos, the band has dressed as cheerleaders, bull-fighters, and even Muppets. Given that this even was entitled the “Monster Bash”, the boys in the band dressed as a Sasquatch and a Yeti (respectively), while our girls stuck to fur bikinis, much like something Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble would wear to the beach.

Musically, they were a hell of a lot of fun, and I came to realize that their recorded material didn’t do their live shows nearly as much justice. At one point they brought two random dudes up on stage as their “dancers” and felt them up for the entire crowd to see, including the small children wandering about (LOL).  They blazed through staples like “Hungry for Your Lust” and “Nice Creams”. Sadly, my favorite tune “Rubber Doll Romance” was left off of the bill, probably because of the aforementioned small children. The finale included two girls dressed as a sexy demon and a sexy dinosaur squirting the audience with water pistols to a cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. Needless to say, things got good and rowdy, and a couple of young men probably went home later that night with a story to tell.

The “Girl of Monster Bash” contest was held next, and of course the tiniest, cutest, Cindy Lou-Who of them all won. At this point, I walked over to the parking lot and started making photos of some of the classic cars on display, when I noticed that everyone in Lust had finished loading their equipment in the band’s van. I decided this would be as good of a time as any to try and talk to them. Susanne was an honest-to-God cool person and gave me a hug after I told them their set kicked ass. Jamie showed up a minute or so later and this is when Mrs. Dailor brought out the vodka (the keeper of the vodka knows the way to my heart). The best part is that it was kept chilled inside of a Chrystal Skull. No shit! We chugged that shit straight out of the bottle and it probably made me less shy.

Two band members had to leave early, but Jamie and I hung around with Susanne and the Sasquatch for a little longer. There were some conversations and events that occurred during this time that I choose not to talk about on this blog for personal reasons, but let’s just say that Susanne did something really nice for me that I’m very thankful to have experienced. Here’s one thing that I will share with you, though: it turns out that she already knew I was going to be at this event and had even texted Brann all the way over in Europe to let him know about my arrival. I was kind of stunned by the fact that what I do here on the interwebz really matters that much, but I took it as a sincere compliment. Oh yeah, and she also showed me and Jamie a photo of Brann dressed up as Mr. Rogers. Everyone wants to be his neighbor, haha!

All it all, it was an absolutely great time; easily the most fun show I’ve been to since I caught Kylesa and High on Fire last Halloween. Speaking of Kylesa, I will be back in the ATL this Thursday to see them again, along with The Sword and Zoroaster. Bring on the good times!!!

AND YES, THAT IS A SASQUATCH WITH A FUCKING KEYTAR.

All photos can be checked out on my Flickr page!

PS: It was miserably hot yesterday and I have a little bit of sunburn on my face, but it was so worth it.

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LOL Chattanooga: IT’S UN-POPULAR OPINION TIME!!!

Alright, I try to avoid talking about what’s going on around my hometown of ChattaVegas, but it’s time to break the silence on one elephant in the room.

I don’t give a fuck about Lauren Alaina.

Okay, I get it. Girlfriend is from Rossville, which is just across the Tennessee/Georgia border and maybe two miles away from where I live. Yes, her family lives in East Ridge, which is also about two miles away from where I live. Yes, she’s in the top two on American Idol. Yes, the girl can actually sing. Yes, it’s a big deal to have someone get famous from the Chattanooga area who has some shred of talent for a change. Yes, it’s refreshing that she doesn’t have a child named Bentley and she isn’t named Maci.

But here’s my problem with Lauren - you can be excited that someone from Chattanooga is hitting the big time all you want, but in reality…well…there’s nothing really that special or unique about her. She can sing a good country song, but then again, some random drunk chick at Sing It Or Wing It could do just as well (that’s a local karaoke bar for those of you who don’t know). Ms. Alaina got her start singing in karaoke bars and snagged a lucky break. There was no struggle involved that made the country singers of old sound and feel so lived-in. She’s no Tammy Wynette, she’s more along the lines of Kellie Pickler.

I knew girls in high school who could sing circles around her and had been in professional theater productions, but they’re still working waitress jobs while Lauren’s schmoozing with Steven Tyler or whoever. She’s just another blond country singer like so many others that are ruining the genre (Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, and whoever else). It’s not real country music at all, it’s just Top 40 pop with a little bit of twang. The Carter family would be rolling in their graves.

What I’m trying to say is that the wrong person is getting all the attention. I don’t watch American Idol and never plan to, but the clips of Lauren Alaina singing are splattered all over the local news, and the people around me just won’t shut up about it. Eventually, it seems fitting that I should kind of chip in my two cents. When my mom first told me that “someone from around here got in the top 12 on American Idol”, I had this sort of “Oh, well she’ll probably get voted off soon” reaction. As the weeks went on, it became “Oh, she’s still there”, “Oh God, she’s in the top four”, “Oh God, she’s having a homecoming celebration”, and then “Oh God, she’s in the top two”.

It seems like the people in this city who are eccentric and really have something different to offer are the ones that will never get their dues. Most famous people who do come from this area act as though they want nothing to do with this City once they leave it. Usher is a good example of this - on an MTV special where celebrities show off their hometowns, he even said that “Chattanooga had nothing to offer him”, so he opted to rave on about Atlanta instead.

Yeah, because Atlanta doesn’t get enough attention already, right?

So fuck Usher for not at least trying to help other kids in this area make it out and get big like he did.

Anyway, back to the main point. If you like Lauren Alaina, good for you. As mentioned, she at least does have some kind of talent and isn’t an embarrassment that this region would like to forget, such as that dumbass off of Teen Mom. However, I keep hoping that maybe one day, someone with something totally new and different to offer will come from this area and hit it big. We need somebody who’s doing something a little more creative, not just someone who goes through the Idol machine and comes out sounding and acting like everyone else.

Just sayin’.

Hate mail can be directed to my inbox, lovelies <3

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