Athens Blur Magazine Issue 2 (read In "fullscreen")

t h e at h e n s

BLUR AUGUST 2008, VOL 1, ISSUE 2

Still kickin' & still free

INSIDE: THREE SIX MAFIA • HORROR POPS • THE WATSON TWINS • G.G. ELVIS AND THE TCP BAND • FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH • JOHNATHAN RICE • BUMBLEFOOT • KEN M A G A Z i n e WILL MORTON • KENI THOMAS & MORE!!!!

gas guzzlers

sec w ie v e pr 08 20

Are pump prices draining downtown commerce?

KATY PERRY kissed a girl (and she liked it)

summer fashion goes to school

golden receiver: Five minutes with mohamed massaquoi

the legend of tilly&thewall

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BLUR

BLUR

CONTENTS

FEATURES

KATY PERRY kissed a girl

& the

is downtown commerce dying? SuMMER FINDS meet

BACK TO SCHOOL

20 34 42 45 70

CONTENTS

DEPARTMENTS MUSIC

SPOTLIGHTS: GENRE COVERAGE FROM METAL TO COUNTRY THE BUZZ: THE LATEST IN NEWS AND RUMORS EAR CANDY: ALBUM REVIEWS EDITOR’S PLAYLIST:10 TUNES WE CAN’T STOP LISTENING TO

9 28 30 33

2008 SEC OUTLOOK

40

THE RANT: DON JAMIESON’S BACK TO SCHOOL ADVICE COMIC SPOTLIGHT: THE MISERABLE MIND OF DOUG STANHOPE JUST FOR LAUGHS / GEORGE CARLIN TRIBUTE

57 59

SPORTS COMEDY

61

ARTS FOOD

+ ENTERTAINMENT MOVIE PREVIEWS

62

DIVES TO DELICACIES: A-OK CAFE & BASIL PRESS MEALS FOR YOUR BROKE ASS: CHEAP BACK TO SCHOOL EATING

65 67

ATHENS LIVE ALSO INSIDE:

84

This day in (music) history ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

52 84

5

BLUR

blur

from the editors

STAFF

t h e at h e n s

FROM THE EDITORS Dear Readers, Wow. August already. The whirlwind of getting our first issue into the public eye (while simultaneously planning for the future) really made this summer fly by. We should begin this letter by thanking those of you who lent your support and kind words of feedback in the wake of the first issue. We were blown away by the positive response, and we hope the relationships we’ve built thus far will continue to flourish.

BLUR MAGAZine

The Athens Blur Magazine P.O. Box 7117 Athens, Ga 30604

One particular change we struggled to make was to represent an even wider gamut of genres in our music section. It’s hard these days – bands don’t want a label slapped on them, but the consumer needs a starting label for direction. There’s a tricky dichotomy to represent variety without pigeonholing artists. Our answer? More spotlights. This month’s music section is even bigger and wider than our summer premiere.

Editorial (706) 351-5306

Our cover choice for this month is pop sensation Katy Perry. In a world where “pop” is all too often a dirty word, there’s something incredibly respectable and admirable about her story. Even at the young age of 23, she is an under the radar industry veteran determined to put a different spin on a genre ruined by late ‘90s boy bands and teen girl sensations. Love or hate the first single, everyone will find something worthwhile in her story.

Sales (706) 351-5307

As we continue to serve the readers we’ve already met, there is an inevitable truth on it’s way to Athens - an overarching theme to our August issue (and, really, to every August in Athens), is “back to school.” The population of this town will soon swell to many multiples of it’s summer size as school (and football) kicks back into high gear. Our fashion, comedy, food, and sports sections all offer something for longtime residents as well as those college Athenians arriving for the first time or returning from what we hope was a restful summer. Though this is our second issue, the swell of new readers means part of our message on this page must ring the same as it did in the premiere. We hope to be your go to spot for music and entertainment both in and far out of Athens, which means feedback from the readers is critical. Tell us what you like, what you don’t like, what you’re indifferent about….and we WILL listen! If you’re new in town, welcome. If you’re returning, welcome back. We’re the Athens Blur magazine, and we hope to meet you soon.

Nicole D. Black

Editor-in-Chief

6

ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

Alec Wooden Editor

For general comments and inquiries: [email protected] For advertising opportunities: [email protected] The Athens Blur Magazine August 2008, Vol.1, Issue 2, copyright©2008 by The Athens Blur Magazine, INC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part in any way by any means unless written permission is received from the publisher. Published monthly in the United States of America by The Athens Blur Magazine, INC. Postmaster send address changes to The Athens Blur Magazine, PO BOX 7117, Athens, Ga. 30604

August Featured Contributors Matt Alexander (“Dives to Delicacies,” p.65) writes based on gluttonous experience with fine cuisine. As you might expect, he has some very round spots on his body and claims that only a fisheye lens can accurately capture his portrait. Writing softens his hard edges which were formed through years of military and corporate service. The restaurant piece allows him to go back to his roots in Anthropology where he learned a little about a lot, and a lot about a little. All in all, he’s kind of an oval peg in a rounded off square hole, enjoying every minute of his explorations. Allie Byrd (“Downtown Commerce,” p.45) is a recent graduate of The University of Georgia who never wants to leave Athens. If she does leave, however, it will be to Colorado, Chicago or Boston - or wherever she gets a job first. Her interests include traveling, people watching, reading the newspaper and music. The best concert she ever saw was her favorite band The Avett Brothers at Bonnaroo this past summer. Her future aspirations include backpacking through Europe, getting a dog, writing a novel and putting off entering the “real world” as long as possible. A 2006 graduate of the University of Georgia’s Grady College, Natalie B. David (“Katy Perry,” p.20) is a freelance writer and music junkie currently residing in midtown Atlanta. In addition to Athens Blur, Natalie cleverly manipulates words and phrases for Beautiful/Decay, SPIN.com, Stereo Subversion and other points of music geekdom. When not glued to her laptop she can usually be found sewing, gluing or ducttaping and listening to music at levels her iPod often advises are unhealthy. If you see her, you should buy her a cup of coffee because, chances are, she needs it. Don Jamieson (“The Rant,” p. 57) is a nationally touring comedian, writer, and Emmy-Award Winner for his work on HBO’s “Inside The NFL”. Don can be seen in his own web series on comedycentral.com

called “Meet The Creeps” and in his new show coming this fall to VH1 called “That Metal Show.” When he’s not busy touring the nation or pulling pranks on innocent bystanders, Don enjoys reading, doing the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle with his mom, watching sports, drinking beer, listening to metal and stealing wireless internet from his neighbors. Sarah A. McCarty (“The Legend of Tilly & The Wall,” p.34) hails from Northeastern Tennessee where she freelances and is a community editor with an affinity for alliteration at a local paper. She holds a journalism degree with a cinema studies minor from the University of Tennessee. Her musical taste range from Sam Cooke to ‘80s New Wave to low-fi, lovesick Canadian singer-songwriters. Her ultimate wish would be to tour the world (despite her fear of flying and lack of funds) and attend film and music festivals in between impromptu philosophical discussions with her family. Scott Reid (“Popfest,” p. 52) is a recent University of Georgia graduate, now living in Atlanta. Since graduating, he has swam in the Dead Sea, a thermal bath in Hungary and in his parents’ neighborhood pool. He will not be swimming in Beijing this summer. So far the real world has proven to be much too frightening, so he prefers to spend as much time as possible underwater. He spends the rest of his time looking for employment, and because there is no money to be made in a swimming pool, occasionally comes up for air to do so. Atlanta native DeMarco Williams (“Golden Receiver,” p. 42) loves three things: his family, sports and writing. When he isn’t busy trying to keep the homefront harmonious, he’s doing his best to combine his other two obsessions. A senior writer with the monthly basketball glossy SLAM, DeMarco also contributes his thoughts on pigskins, pucks and putts to Citysearch.com and AirTran’s in-flight magazine Go.

Who We Are Editor-in-Chief Nicole Black [email protected] Editor Alec Wooden [email protected] Sales Manager Chuck Adkins [email protected] Art Director Terry Wilson [email protected] Design Colin Dunlop Allison Weiss Contributing writers: Matt Alexander, Allie Byrd, Melissa Coker, Natalie B. David, Don Jamieson, Sarah E. King, Sarah McCarty, Ed Morales, Robin Postell, Scott Reid, Jon Ross, Tim Sheppard, DeMarco Williams, Jennifer Williams Contributing photographers: Courtney Goldman, Sarah King, Trevor Wooden

ON THE COVER: Katy Perry photo courtesy Michael Elins and Capital Records. Illustration by Colin Dunlop. ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

7

MUSIC

METAL MANIA

MUSIC

never enough mayhem

myspace chart toppers find mainstream success In the midst of the sweltering summer heat, there’s musical mayhem brewing in major US cities across the nation. Five Finger Death Punch(FFDP) joins forces with Slipknot, Disturbed, Dragonforce, Mastodon and many more metalicious bands for the first ever Rockstar Mayhem Festival. FFDP made an explosive entrance into the metal scene last year with the release of The Way of the Fist in July of 2007, backed by record label The Firm/EMI, which debuted in Billboard’s top 200. The band’s first single, “The Bleeding” remained in constant rotation on rock radio stations for months to follow. To date, the album has sold over 150,000 copies and in May of this year was re-released with a bonus track, “Never Enough,” the bands newest smashing single, helping FFDP surge in the music industry. On August 12th, Mayhem will invade Atlanta, with FFDP annihilating the Jaegermeister stage in front of thousands of metal heads. This isn’t the first trip to Atlanta for the quintet. The band’s in your face, hardcore, angry, powerful music will infuse eager fans into moshpit frenzy. “This will be our fourth time actually,” recalls vocalist Ivan Moody, who took a few moments to talk with Blur en route to the Mayhem’s next tour stop in West Palm Beach, FL. “The first time we went there our generator broke on our bus (in the middle of summer) and we had to drive all the way to Florida with no air conditioning at all.” Prior to catching the attention of The Firm/EMI label, FFDP,

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH WHO’S WHO Ivan “Ghost” Moody (vocals) Zoltan Bathory (guitar) Darrell Roberts (guitar) Matt Snell (bass) Jeremy Spencer (drums) FORMED 2005 in Los Angeles, CA LABEL Firm Music LATEST RELEASE The Way of the Fist (2007) ON THE WEB www.fivefingerdeathpunch.com

courtesy Five Finger Death Punch

along with an army of fans known as ‘The Knuckleheads’, generated a buzz through MySpace that caught on faster than a computer virus, sending the band through MySpace charts as a top metal artist. But catching the interest of a major record label takes more than just popularity on MySpace. “Really what it comes down to is the product,” he explains. “The songs have to be decent enough

where somebody can actually work with them. I mean that’s the other thing, a lot of people think their music is so amazing and I don’t know who’s telling them that; I think it’s their mother or something. It’s an industry just like anything else. There is no secret to it.” To Moody, breaking into the mainstream is to “make a decent product so someone’s interested

in the first place and taking yourself serious enough.” Traveling the countryside and playing in music festivals seems like a fantasy job to some aspiring musicians. What they may not realize is being in a touring band isn’t always about booze, girls, and kick ass parties. “There’s so much sacrifice in this industry,” Moody adds. “I have a daughter at home that I never get to see. I have a family just like everybody else. Its stuff that I chose to do to be in this position so for me to tell somebody else how you get in the music industry, the only three words: bust your ass.” - Nicole Black ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE 9

MUSIC

MUSIC

METAL MANIA

death of the dj

DISTORTION

a new breed of the king

jason mcmaster’s broken teeth and dangerous toys

this isn’t the way your parents remember elvis

With the digital age of iPods, pirating songs, and satellite radio, the days of your local disc jockey are painfully dwindling to an end. “Blood on the Radio” from Broken Teeth’s newest album, Electric, pays tribute to such a travesty. “The lyrics are about the popularity of downloading and the death of the original rock’ n ’roll DJ,” explains Jason McMaster, lead vocalist of Broken Teeth and 80’s hair band, Dangerous Toys. The song is a tribute to the days of, “hanging out with your friends with a beer or driving down the road, a lot of people had a connection with their local DJ, well not anymore.” He continues, “Everything’s been dumbed down and Blood on the Radio is saying Rock ‘n’ Roll is not dead, you have to press play, you have to break out your records, you have to go through the ritual of physically putting [an album or cd] in your player…It’s cheaper for a broadcasting company to have someone just in there running a computer, programming the music as opposed to a guy that is actually pressing play off of a cd and talking up a scene, telling everybody in town where the parties are and what’s happening, or talking about new music. The radio stations are all programmed now. [DJ’s would play] something new or a deep cut off of [something like] an Iron Maiden record… those days are so far gone and that’s what Blood on the Radio is about. Radio is not your friend anymore like it used to be when you were growing up.” The slow death of the radio disc jockey isn’t the only significant change in the music industry McMaster has noticed over the decades. “The record labels have merged. There’s not like five or six major labels pumping out music anymore. There’s a lot of different sorts of publishing

Nobody in his right mind would compare G.G. Allin to Elvis. Allin, an ’80s underground punk notorious for mutilating himself onstage and physically attacking his audiences, seemed more preoccupied with busting through societal boundaries than creating music. But for his punk rock cover group, G.G. Elvis and the TCP Band, singer Eric Lara sought to unite Allin’s unbridled craziness with the King’s melodies. “By putting the names together, you get the idea that you’re not going to see just a normal Elvis tribute act. It’s going to be a little different,” Lara said from his houseboat in California. “You’re not really going to see me hurting anybody; you’re not going to see me throwing feces at these people.” The band’s first album, Back from the Dead, is full of timeless Elvis gems like “Viva Las Vegas,” “Suspicious Minds” and “Blue Suede Shoes” ramped up to punk rock speeds, caked with distorted grit and filtered through Lara’s gargly snarl. In concert, the guys don fake ’dos and time-bending personalities, manufacturing a complete Elvis experience in eraspecific costume. Though G.G. Elvis emanates a DIY aura, Lara sees the group as just another experiment in Elvis fandom. For him, it’s mostly about having a good time, something that comes easy with highenergy rock played by costumed musicians. That their sound isn’t exactly faithful to traditional Vegas-like interpretations of the King doesn’t matter one bit to Lara. “The true Elvis guys, the ones in Vegas, they take it to the limit,” he said, “but I think there’s always a little room for fun in the genre.” Though the project, which began in earnest six months ago, has been mostly positive, a few

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ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

BROKEN TEETH WHO’S WHO Jason McMaster (vocals) Dave Beeson (guitar) Jared Tuten (guitar) Brett McCormack (bass) Bruce Rivers (drums) FORMED 1999 in Austin, TX LABEL Textone Records Courtesy Broken Teeth

going on. Now it’s not about getting a record deal, it’s about getting a song on a fucking movie soundtrack. It’s not about how good the record is it’s about how many friends you have on Myspace. You know it’s like A & R people go look at your numbers on Myspace to consider scouting your band. It’s like a popularity contest or something.” In the same notion, McMaster sees the benefits of using programs to network, such as Myspace. “Using Myspace to promote your music or your art or sell a product is fantastic [because] it’s another tool for shameless self promotion, whatever your product is.” He adds, “I think the internet is exactly that and it’s a great tool but at the same time it also killed the record business. It’s killed CD sales, with the downloading and everything; it’s a completely different world now. I think the record labels have seriously been injured because of this and that’s another reason…they have to downsize everything [because] CD sales are in the shitter, [along with] signings and developmental deals…It’s very interesting how much change has created a

lot of doubt and scared a lot of the major companies into closing down or working out of their homes. As good as a tool as it can be it’s dangerous to think about the damage that it has done.” McMaster has credentials to back his observations. He’s seen the evolution of the music industry since the dawn of the 80’s decade where in Austin, Texas, he formed his first metal group, Watchtower. “There was no metal here in ‘81. It was hard to say what was metal and where was your metal scene. I feel like I had a hand in creating what was to become a Texas metal scene in central Texas. Of course there were people just like me in Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and wherever else, that were spearheading in the same movement.” McMaster’s mainstream break came in 1988, when his new band, formed in ‘87, Dangerous Toys, was signed by Columbia Records. The band had a hit single, “Teas’n Pleas’n” that brought them fame throughout the 80’s and into the early 90’s. While most of his time has been devoted to Broken Teeth the last nine years, he and fellow Dangerous

LATEST RELEASE Electric (2008) ON THE WEB www.brokenteeth.com Toys members still regroup on occasion to play shows and music festivals, such as Rock the Bayou in Houston at the end of August with bands like Alice Cooper and Bret Michaels. McMaster has a dream to keep rock alive. When he’s not working at a record store, he teaches vocals at Paul Green’s School of Rock (yes, there really is such a school) in Austin. “I have this fantasy of armies dressed in black heavy metal t-shirts with torches and pitchforks marching down the streets of NYC, chanting… fighting for the right of being a heavy metal fan…” For now fans of Judas Priest, Motorhead, or AC/DC, can enjoy the style of music they may have thought lost within the new waves of metal over the past two decades. Broken Teeth has masterfully revived the sound and energy of these classic metal bands and the band’s newest release, Electric, will undoubtedly keep our heads banging until the army is summoned. - Nicole Black

Courtesy GG Elivs and the TCP Band

purists hate the idea of moshing to “Love Me Tender.” These fans have confronted Lara after shows to express their disgust, but these harmless complaints don’t phase him; he’s more concerned about the group’s reception during a September European tour that includes a stop at a Netherlands Elvis Festival. The show will mark the group’s maiden voyage into a sea of purebred Elvis impersonators - something the band is both excited, even if slightly hesitant, about trying. “I don’t think they’re going to chase us out of there with torches and pitchforks, but I think there might be some puzzled looks,” Lara said. Ultimately, G.G. Elvis is just mimicking its punk forebears. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, a full-time cover band, has released seven full-length CDs, and bands like Manic Hispanic mix cherished melodies with new lyrics. Even the Christian punk band

MxPx released an album of cover songs early in its career. “When you take one of those old songs and you give it new energy and you’re kicking ass, I think that’s really cool,” he said. “Some of these old songs needed it.” After the band’s 16-date tour, it’s back to the studio to record another excavation of Elvis’ catalog along with a few non-Elvis covers like “Last Caress” by the Misfits and Agent Orange’s “BloodStains.” Lara promises two more Elvis-centric records in the near future and hopes that repeated exposure to these songs will help hardcore Elvis fans lighten up a bit. “The true Elvis fans will get it. We’re just doing a new take on something,” Lara said of any potential naysayers. “The diehard, close-minded ones might want to beat me up.”

G.G. ELVIS AND THE TCP BAND WHO’S WHO Eric Lara (vocals) George “Horhay” Snow (bass) Dave Casillas (guitar) Tony Cortez (guitar) Larry White (drums) FORMED 2006 in Los Angles, CA LABEL Mental Records LATEST RELEASE Back from the Dead (June 2008) ON THE WEB www.myspace.com/ggelvis

- Jon Ross ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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music

music

DISTORTION

horrorpops WHO’S WHO Patricia Day (vocals, bass) Kim Nekroman (guitar) Niedermeier (drums) FORMED 1996 in Copenhagen, Denmark LABEL HellCat Records LATEST RELEASE Kiss Kiss Kill Kill (2008) ON THE WEB www.horrorpops.com

courtesy Octavio Arazala

along for the ride

kissing and killing with some free spirited ass-kickers The strong-willed centerpiece for the genre-defying HorrorPops, Patricia Day is a genuine bad ass, as likely to crack a smile as she is to put you in your place. It’s an off day from the Warped Tour, on which she and her band are riding out the entire 46-date trek, and she’s taking a break. “Right now I’m lying on a couch and staring up at the sky,” her sandpapery voice says over the phone, with the hint of a Danish accent. “It’s pretty fucking neat.” Day, who wails on the upright bass, and her fellow pops, guitarist Nekroman (also of the Nekromantics) and drummer Niedermeier, avoid ascribing to any single genre by simply making the music that they want to make and staying true to themselves in the process. And, if you ask Day, doing that is exactly as easy as it sounds. “There’s nothing easier than having no limits,” she says. “With Nekroman being the Psychobilly and I was in Punk, and you know how that is. If you’re in a punk band you can only play punk. So, actually, being allowed to play all genres is a bit more fun and way more 12

ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

easy.” The third full-length, Kiss Kiss Kill Kill, found the group reverting back to a threepiece, perfecting the formula they tried out on their 2004 debut Hell Yeah. It’s a formation where the group is most comfortable and Kiss Kiss Kill Kill showcases the band’s genre-bending ways to perfection, gravitating from straight punk to psychobilly, a style mixing rockabilly with punkish macabre, but also reaching into the depths of ass kicking alt rock in one 40 minute package. “We just do what we do. When it comes out, it’s us and we don’t try to put too much thought into it,” says Day. “I can’t believe that a band would sit down and go ‘Ooh, we want to have this appearance, this look and this song should be deep.’ I mean, then it’s not about music anymore. It’s about image. We just do. And if you like it, you like it and if you don’t, well, fuck it.” Hailing from Denmark, home to 5.5 million people and only three rock venues, finding music and belonging to subcultures was an experience Day likens to living in a

suburban Midwestern town in the days prior to mall punk; to find inspiration you had to travel elsewhere. “It’s certainly different from being from the U.S. where everything is so accessible, where you can walk into a HotTopic store pasty, brown, boring and walk out with pink spiky hair and be punk,” she illustrates. “It’s almost too easy to find things sometimes and I think that’s why there’s a lot of genres that get thrown out so fast and that makes it very hard for some bands to survive.” “HorrorPops are lucky enough to actually be able to cross genres so we won’t hit that wall, I hope,” she says with a laugh. “Unless rock ‘n’ roll gets completely outdated and you can only play ‘ooom-ch oom-ch ooom-ch’ from now on.” HorrorPops may have a specific image, but it’s not a calculated one. They’re just being themselves and whoever wants to accompany their whirlwind is welcome along for the ride. - Natalie B. David

alternative

dictatorship in athens

‘sensible alcoholics’ feeling right at home “First, you care too much. Then, you get your heart broken. Then, you get angry. Then, you get tired. Then, you care about nothing. Then, you realize that nothingness is pretty cool,” says bass player Paul Reavis. And for a local group of whimsy musicians, that was the perfect moment to start The Dictatortots. Somewhere in the late 90s (the exact date was too long ago for them to remember), Athenians in their mid-30s found each other and began a musical group of universal sound and unique nature. Calling themselves a “semi-random coupling of musicians from the primordial soup of the local scene,” The Dictatortots united to seek cheaper bar tabs and thus began performing live music. Playing once a month at venues like The 40-Watt, Tasty World and Georgia Theatre, they’ve developed a fine following of “heavy drinkers” and “pretty much anyone who thinks potty humor is funny.” You can see the band about once a month at the noted venues, although they won’t name a favorite and rarely travel outside of Athens. (Although they remember going to Atlanta once, but only come away with memories of a long drive and someone getting laid.) “All of the [venues] have certain appeals,” says Reavis, a.k.a., The Reaver. “The Roadhouse is small and tight and full of energy, nudity, and booze. The 40 Watt is civilized and has an awesome backstage. Tasty World is punk rock. The Georgia Theater has majesty.” If you just want to hang out (or keep up, depending on what you do) with the group, you can find them at Cutters, The Roadhouse, Trappeze, or “anywhere that a mature, sensitive alcoholic can be comfortable.” And speaking of drinking, a typical night

dictatortots WHO’S WHO Real names withheld to protect the innocent. For info on the colorful stage names, read the story. FORMED Sometimes in the late ‘90’s in Athens, GA LABEL independent LATEST RELEASE Blingish ON THE WEB www.myspace.com/ dictatortots

Courtesy The Dictatortots

with the band includes meeting up at some bar, getting drunk, showing up (or not) to practice at their space out in Danielsville, waiting on everyone to show up, listen to each other talk about television, listen to the guitars tune, rock, drink, repeat and then quit. Obviously, the Dictatortots have a sense of humor. In fact, they relay their message to the world as “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.” They also take a simple approach to their music. “We describe our world as clearly and simply as we can,” said Reavis. “We point out things that suck, and things that rule. We like to rock.”

The bands latest albums, including most recent, Blinglish, is a composition of about six songs - they call it a 6-pack - picked out by one of the members. Earlier on their albums were 70-80 songs, all around one to two minutes, the best length for a song according to the band. 6-packs allow maximum focus to fewer songs and provide room to try new things, like creating a train wreck to start a song. They never play covers, except to poke fun, therefore making any Dictatortots show an original experience of music that not even the band can put a genre to. “We started out punk rock, but moved pretty quickly into doing

whatever we wanted. I can’t really call it anything,” admits The Reaver. Surprising, because it seems the group is pretty apt at naming. Members of the band include Mr. Ass on drums, M.C. Hatchet on lead vocals and the euphonium, Soo Bawls on the keys, Snake on guitar (also called Bear), Bo Bender on cello, Tru on guitar, and Baron Von Bone on trombone and trumpet, Belle Buster on trumpet and clarinet and, finally, Richard “Big Dick, My Friends Call Me Real Big Dick” on keyboard. The list doesn’t end there, but you get the picture. A huge group makes this phenom happen and keeps them unique and fresh, all the while having a good time. Self-described as Ween without the hippies, Motorhead without leprechauns or Donovan without Donovan, they appeal to a wide range of listeners. They don’t see it as a job or a hobby, but just a fun way to drink cheaper and play music they like. - Jenni Williams ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

13

EARN YOUR INTERDISCIPLINARY CERTIFICATE IN

HURRY!

TAKING APPLICATIONS

NOW > > > >

ALL IT TAKES IS: 21 hour commitment 2.8 GPA Completed Application And your transcript

The purpose of the program is to develop b u s i n e s s l e a d e r s f o r t h e m u s i c i n d u s t r y . By integrating con t e n t f r o m a v a riety of disciplines, t h e p r o g r a m will create an intellectual synergy beyond what students can achieve in either the current business o r m u s i c programs separatel y . S u c c e s s i n the music business r e q u i r e s a b r o a d array of knowledge f r o m a v a r i e t y o f diverse fields. The purpose of the Interdisciplinary C e r t i f i c a t e t h e n is to draw together t h e s e d i v e r s e a nd distinct areas of content into a coherent curriculum, p ro v i d i n g s t u d e n t s an opportunity that t h e y o t h e r w i s e would not have.

FOR INFORMATION, CONTACT

Bruce Burch, [email protected] TERRY COLLEGE OF BUSINESS Steve Dancz, [email protected] HUGH HODGSON SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Applications are available online:

www.terry.uga.edu/musicbusiness

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rock ‘n’ roll

Hard Working Gunslinger

an in dustry veteran offers some new age advice From the time he was six or seven years old, after hearing a Kiss album, Ron Thal, a.k.a. Bumblefoot, knew he was destined to play guitar. The evidence of Thal’s over thirty two years of experience can be masterfully heard throughout his newest solo album, Abnormal. Thal prefers to independently release albums after a few negative experiences with record labels. Thal takes a break from distributing his latest release to speak with Athens Blur.

and they’re just gonna throw you against a wall and see if you stick. If you don’t, you’re gonna get dropped and you lost all your rights, all your music, your album, everything you’ve worked for. And you have to start from scratch. I’ve seen it happen so many times to so many bands.”

When did you decide to independently release and distribute your albums?

How did you end up replacing Buckethead to play for Guns N Roses?

“I was signed in the early, midnineties and I didn’t take it to whole well…It didn’t seem right so when I got out of the contract I started doing my own business, my own company. I had an idea that this internet thing might get big so I started selling strictly on the internet back in ‘98…and I’m happy to say the world has turned in that direction and labels are crumbling and the whole version one of the music business is going under because it obviously didn’t work or you wouldn’t have all these major artists starving after making hundreds of millions of dollars for the label. I am a strong advocate for do it yourself and not signing deals with the devil and keeping your business in your hands and not empowering…the corrupt rotten system that doesn’t work.”

“They couldn’t get anybody else and got stuck with me. No, we started off just emailing back and forth, talking on the phone, feeling each other out and everything and then when it was time for them to tour we got together and started jamming. Next thing you know, two weeks later we’re doing it onstage and then we went and toured 27 countries.”

What advice can you give indie bands eager to sign with a big record label company?

(That's exactly what 3 time Grammy winner Warren Riker is doing here right now!)

Pigpen Presents:

music

“Just because someone can take care of them they think that they’re gonna take care of them, and they’re not. They’re gonna take care of themselves

In between his solo work and lending his guitar expertise on various album projects, Thal also plays for 80’s legend band, Guns N Roses.

And then you guys just stopped. “Well, then it was time to get the album out, there’s been enough Chinese Democracy tours without having Chinese Democracy out. So it was time to take care of business. I laid guitar tracks on the album and finished that up.” So is the album ever coming out? “It’s a long process, very complex [there is] a lot of things involved. First thing happening is Rock Band Two is going to have a song called, “Shackler’s Revenge”, the first official legitimate release off of the Chinese Democracy.”

Courtesy Bumblefoot

Wait, is Chinese Democracy going to be released independently? “I don’t believe it’s going to be independent. I think it’s going to be with the same label that they’ve been with. I believe. Anything can happen. Anything can change so when it comes to band business I’m the wrong man to talk to because as I’m having this conversation, management is talking to other people and things can happen I don’t know about yet.” While Guns N Roses relies on major record labels to distribute and promote the long-awaited G&R album, Thal continues to reap the benefits of a self release. “We did a pre-sale, and I’m thinking, you know, maybe a couple of people will check it out… but it really ended up being a lot more than anticipated and the

bumblefoot WHO’S WHO Ron Thal (guitar, vocals) FORMED 1995 in New York City, NY LABEL Bald Freak Music LATEST RELEASE Abnormal (2008) ON THE WEB www.bumblefoot.com

poor guy handling the mail order, every time he turned around there was another ten orders filling up his mailbox before he could even respond to one.” - Nicole Black ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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music

rock ‘n’ roll

top of the arc

folk

further north and rising

an athens-bred band finds the right trajectory

johnathan rice talks recording, touring, and mischa barton

With gas prices soaring past $4 a gallon, regional bands are struggling to stay out on the road during the grueling summer touring season. Trances Arc, an Atlanta-based modern rock group, has a different plan. Instead of touring nonstop, guitarist Michael Dorio thought it would be more cost-effective to work on songs for a new album than drive a van around the Southeast. Never mind that the band just released XOXOX a few months ago. “From January till now we’ve been on the road constantly,” Dorio says from the Righteous Room in Atlanta. “If you would have looked [on our Myspace page] three months ago, there would have been a long list of tour dates. We’ve just gotten to the end of the list.” The new album, which is still a long way off, will be the first with the band’s new lineup. Previously, it has taken five guys. That was the way things were, with small changes, since the band formed. When guitarist Jay Propst quit three months ago, Toledo shouldered rhythm guitar duties. Suddenly, everything made sense. “We were too involved in the band to notice something wasn’t perfect yet or the energy wasn’t where it could be,” bassist Daniel Silvestri says. “With Jay’s absence, it’s become this thing that we’ve always wanted it to be, and we’re being received like that, too.” When Propst quit on an ordinary Monday, it came as a surprise, but by Friday night’s concert, a four-person lineup seemed natural. “The curtain opened, and there were four of us standing there,” Dorio says. “Of course you always play for new people, so some people didn’t know. The older people who followed the band were like, ‘Wow, that was great. I loved it.’”

At least Johnathan Rice can admit why he truly started playing music. “I’ve been playing guitar since I was a young kid – I played in quite a few bands in high school to facilitate hanging out with girls,” laughs Rice through his mild Scottish accent. “And that’s kind of been the same ever since.” Rice is a conversationalist with a guitar – a slice-of-life singer/songwriter describing the daily ins and outs of his 25 years in between long stints on the road. “I write songs when I have time to myself, and touring basically means never having time to myself,” he said. “The first few days after a long tour are very productive days for me. It’s a good time to take things in.” “Most of the shows that I’ve played in my life have been just me and my guitar. I guess that can be a nerve racking thing – and it was for the first couple years I did it – I started to get a little bit lonely doing it,” he said. “It’s more fun when you have a gang up there. Ya know, to share the blame.” For his latest release (Further North), Rice “took things in” with a new band in tow, entering the studio with a batch of songs already written but searching for the perfect musical complements. “Almost 100 percent of the time, the song was fully formed,” he said of tracking Further North. “Almost everyday, the band would come in and I would play them the song on my guitar and we would start hammering out an arrangement. When you have good players around, usually their first ideas are their best ideas, so we just tried to keep it loose.” Rice holds a card for which many Athens musicians would gladly sell their souls – the

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Courtesy Trances Arc

“There’s

a lot

of energy coming in and out of that

small town” Trances Arc is usually mentioned in the same breath as the now-defunct Pendletons and the ever-growing Whigs, both bands that honed their sound in Athens clubs. Though each group’s music is different, the three groups played together frequently and are also composed of a mixed Atlanta/Athens lineage. Toledo and drummer Brad Hagen were born in Athens and grew up around the local scene, whereas Dorio and Silvestri spent their formative years in Atlanta, where they

had to make things up as they went along. “I think Atlanta was more like growing up in New York or Chicago where there wasn’t really a scene [in Athens],” Sivestri says. “In Athens, you always had to know who was playing in town, there’s always been a local scene there.” “There’s a lot of energy coming in and out of that small town,” Toledo adds, “and it’s got a lot of character.” Trances Arc eventually left Athens in search of a new and more appreciative audience, but what they found in Atlanta was a working crowd, well past party age and ready for bed by midnight. “When we go back to Athens, it’s like fist-pumping, beer slinging all over the place. It’s a different experience for us as musicians to get that energy back,” Toledo says. “We moved to Atlanta because we felt like we’d be better received there, and I think it’s

TRANCES ARC WHO’S WHO Eric Toledo (Vocals, Keyboard, Guitar) Michael Dorio (Guitar, Vocals) Daniel Silvestri (Bass) Brad Hagen (Drums) FORMED 2001 in Athens, Georgia LABEL Slush Fund LATEST RELEASE XOXOX (2008) ON THE WEB www.myspace.com/ trancesarc kind of coming around full circle. We get a lot of love from Athens, and it’s good to go back.” - Jon Ross

johnathan rice WHO’S WHO Johnathan Rice (guitar, vocals) FORMED 2004 in New York City, NY LABEL Reprise Records LATEST RELEASE Further North (2007) ON THE WEB www.johnathanrice.com

Courtesy Jonathan Rice

support of local alt-rock legends R.E.M., particularly guitarist Peter Buck, who stumbled upon Rice’s set in a London bar during a stint opening for Martha Wainwright. “I had no idea he was watching me play. I would have totally malfunctioned a lot more if I had known that,” said Rice. “Really, it’s an incredible honor [to have the support]. For me, they’re absolutely one of the reasons I play music in the first place.” An often overlooked part of Rice’s young career is his under the radar appearance in the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line” playing the role of a young Roy Orbison – one of the

music pioneers Rice grew up idolizing. “Everything was happenstance for me, I guess,” he said of his casting. “The producers of that film were just looking for young musicians to play the parts of these legendary guys. I don’t consider myself to be an actor, but I’m always acting like a musician. It was great because that’s some of the music that is dear to my heart – the early recordings of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison.” In a world of swelling talent (more musicians) and shrinking commercial outlets (tumbling CD sales, bankrupt radio stations), Rice is in a large group of

like-minded singer-songwriters looking for the best possible outlet for their music – a problem which Rice has solved, in large part, through television licensing on shows such as The O.C. and One Tree Hill. “It’s the only way that thousands of people have been able to find my music,” he said. “My music doesn’t have a voice on commercial radio. Radio belongs to Linkin Park – it doesn’t belong to me and my band. So we have to start thinking of other ways to get our stuff out there.” However, offering your music to another’s story is a nerveracking deal, often leaving the songwriter to wonder if the songs intended image will remain true. “Sometimes, I’m like ‘well the imagery I’m seeing on TV isn’t necessarily what I had in mind when I wrote this song,’ but that’s alright. I think I’d be more bummed if they played my song and then played a Linkin Park song after me on the radio. I don’t know how bad a thing it is to see Mischa Barton in a bikini to the soundtrack of your voice, ya know?” - Alec Wooden ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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music

music

folk

COUNTRY

As she should be

prize winning performing songwriter sets sights on georgia

courtesy Adam Payne

the right connections

a songwriter presses on, fresh off two new collections Songwriter Ken Will Morton isn’t listening to reviews of his music anymore. While he appreciates the good press he’s received over the years, what he really appreciates is the emotional response he’s received from fans. While the songwriter hesitated to credit himself for the change in anyone’s life, he said that a fan’s connection is what excites him, not rave reviews from critics. “At first I read every one of them but now I don’t,” said Morton about critical reviews. Instead Morton is interested in the mysterious force behind music — a force that can change one’s life or keep one going. “Music is a mystery in life…It bolsters your spirits. It gives you energy,” continued Morton. And he knows a little about enduring through life. Morton has been mugged before, including a close call to losing his life when he was at gun point and was saved by an approaching car that scared off his attackers. The title alone of Morton’s 2006 album, “King of Coming Around,” speaks to the following message in his lyrics and music— no matter how bad things are, ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE 18

everything can change with time. Morton’s gritty voice scratches through his music with an overwhelming feeling of endurance and his two new albums, released under the new local label, Rara Avis Records, continue with this feeling of overcoming struggles. Morton has played with a number of different of bands, including Wonderlust and The Indicators, but pursued a solo career with his album, “In Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Hands” in 2004. When promoting “The King of Coming Around,” Morton teamed up with The Wholly Ghosts who are also on his new, more rock based album, “The Devil In Me.” Morton said that the album came from his time spent touring and playing with The Wholly Ghosts and was something he really enjoyed and looks forward to getting together another band in the near future. “Kickin’ Out The Rungs,” Morton’s other summer release, showcases Morton’s more acoustic side from of the two albums which are the first two releases from Rara Avis Records. Michelle Roche, founder of the label and Morton’s manager, said that the records are being

ken will morton WHO’S WHO Ken Will Morton (guitar, vocals) FORMED 1998 in Atlanta, GA LABEL Rara Avis Records

distributed through digital services such as iTunes or Napster, with hard copies available for mail. After years of experience in the music industry, most recently with Capricorn Records, Roche realized that she had enough knowledge and experience to start her own record label. Roche also realized that people are finding out about music from Myspace, Facebook or through friends, and not necessarily from MTV, VH1 or major record labels. She believes that these new digital outlets make it easier for indie labels and artists to find an audience. One example of a new outlet for Morton is a recent break he

LATEST RELEASE Kickin’ Out the Rungs (2008) Devil in Me (2008) ON THE WEB www.myspace.com/ kenwillmorton

caught in the placement of his song “Oh Lord” in an episode of the popular Discovery Channel show, “The Deadliest Catch.” For Morton, an appreciative audience is all he’s looking for, and what he believes he has already found in many ways. “I’ve found kindred spirits in the lyrical domain,” he said. And Morton will keep seeking out these “kindred spirits” through his music until he is old and gray because for him, there is no other choice. Bottom line, music, and connecting to others through music, is what excites him and what stays in his heart. - Ann Cantrell

Everything is just peachy for Nashville-based Treva Blomquist. Though unsigned, the genre-defying songstress has so far managed to flower through such accolades as grand prize performing songwriter, folk festival finalist, honorable mention at the USA Songwriting Competition; and many a radio spotlight, all the way to Belgium – with no waffling along the way. Now, she’s fresh off of bringing her sweet storage of songs to the Attic (Eddie’s, to be exact) in Decatur. “I definitely plan to be back in the Atlanta area soon,” she said. “I had been to Eddie’s attic to see several other acts play…loved the vibe and loved the venue, and decided to try playing there. I first played Eddie’s open mic night almost a year ago, then I was in a MySpace Fall Showcase which landed me another gig playing there, and I’ve played both of the 500 Songs for Kids fundraisers at Smith’s Olde Bar in Atlanta.” “Nashville isn’t too far away from Atlanta,” she adds. “And I really like Atlanta so far! When a town has cool people and great music, it’s hard not to like it. I’d like to play Athens soon.”   The sweet and soulfully singing songwriter so far has two collections to her unique name. The first selection came in 2006 with Plain Vanilla Me. And Vanilla definitely blossomed none-too-plainly, if its favorable reviews are any indication. Lately, Blomquist blooms even more lusciously with the justin-June released “Quist”essential EP, As It Should Be. Much lauded for her deep melody, she shares just how she says it is (and usually, it should include good music). “Well, this EP is different [from Vanilla] because it’s full band and we added strings, too.  It was also recorded in an exceptional studio - Compass Sound Studio, by exceptional producer and engineer Eric Jaskowiak. Vanilla was done

TREVA BLOMQUIST WHO’S WHO Treva Blomquist (Vocal,Guitar) Ben Gortmaker (Guitar) Drew Wilson (Bass) Brad Odom (Drums) Eric Quiram (Keys) FORMED 2005 in Nashville, TN LABEL independent LATEST RELEASE As It Should Be (2008) ON THE WEB www.myspace.com/treva

Courtesy Treva Blomquist

in bedrooms and bathrooms, on weekdays after work until 2 in the morning. I wrote with Ben Gortmaker, my guitarist, and more good friends of mine. We invited pedal steel player Kenny Hudson to join us on “Love Abounds,” and Dan Hochhalter (who plays with Gretchen Wilson) plays fiddle on four of the six tracks.” Speaking of the band, Blomquist says: “I am so thankful for The Suits. I hate to be mushy or ‘girlie’ - but...well... I am a girl, so there. They really are the best and I love ‘em. People seem impressed with the band and their

musicality – and are shocked that such a big voice comes out of my sweet, shy little self.” The “dapper” band includes Gortmaker on guitar and backing vocals, Drew Wilson (bass), Brad Odom (drums), and Eric Quiram on keys. Elsewhere on this project Ronda Armstrong offers cello skills, and good friend Eric Paslay (backing vocal) joins in. “My favorite song on it right now is ‘As it Should Be’ - the string section is so luscious, and I love the support of Jeremy Lister’s choir behind my vocal line. I also feel very proud of ‘Love

Abounds,’ because I feel like I said what I wanted to with that song - and I captured the emotions of complete safety within the amazing wonder that love is. It was inspired by love, and by the amazing safety and comfort you experience when you are completely loved for exactly who you are.” As for genre, she adds: “I did grow up on a farm with horses and cows and rabbits and dogs… so, I think any country influence I have would be more from my upbringing. I was born and raised in a small town.” Blomquist’s Be seems to build on the concept of the acoustic Me in that you can not only be yourself, but be loved for it too. “The concept behind Plain Vanilla Me is that it’s OK to drop the masks and the facades we often wear as we go to work, school, deal with family, etc. Basically it’s about accepting others and accepting yourself as you - plain vanilla you, plain vanilla me.” - Melissa Coker ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE 19

music

POP

pop

r ve co

music

ht lig ot sp

katy perry

‘One of the boys’ on the warped tour Photos by Michael Elins

C

ordoned off to half of Lakewood Amphitheatre’s main stage, Katy Perry’s band teases the crowd with the riff to “Barracuda,” evidence of too much Guitar Hero or a cheeky allusion to the pop star herself. Despite the strange scene — and it is a strange place to find the star behind the biggest pop song of the summer—she gives it her all.

The dark haired, pale skinned pop tart bounces on stage, sporting a sleeveless tunic printed with bowling pins over grey leggings. A bronze lamé bra peeks out from the arm holes and her feet are aflame with bright magenta Doc Martens. Katy puts on her best rock façade with the help of helium-inflated fruits, scissor kicks and guitarneck makeouts, forcing her fit amongst the Warped Tour’s harsh vocals, punk riffs and black hair dye. She flitters about, throws herself down on the stage and flirts with the audience. She plays hard. “Yeah, Mom, I guess I did kiss a girl,” she kids, holding her hand to her head like a telephone before launching into her hit single. The crowd eats it up. A week later on the phone from Florida, the pop starlet doesn’t sound so exuberant. If it seems like Katy Perry is everywhere these days, that’s because she actually is. The past week alone has seen the 23-year-old whisked away from her Warped duties for a media blitz of television shows and radio promotion—all as her girly-liplock anthem, “I Kissed A Girl,” holds its 4th week reigning atop the Billboard Hot 100. But Katy does not sound or act like pop’s biggest non-Disney prodigy. Although her voice carries hints of her on-stage effervescence, she sounds like a tired college student, only instead of stress and sleep deprivation from all-nighters and going downtown, it’s from performances on So You Think You Can Dance, FN MTV and fully scheduled days on the Warped Tour. “’In the past several days I have, like, literally had no sleep and nothing substantial to 20

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eat and I have bruises all over my legs,” her raspy voice says on the other end of the line. “It’s definitely one of those things where if I survive Warped Tour, I think I can survive anything.” And the pop debutante has already come a long way, surviving more than her fair share of industry mishaps in the past seven years than some artists do over multiple decade careers. She may seem at home in the spotlight, but her success has been anything but overnight. After cutting her teeth working at the age of 17 with Glen Ballard, Alanis Morissette’s partner in crime for her 1995 blockbuster Jagged Little Pill, Katy’s path became filled with false starts, shelved projects and failed record deals with both Island and Columbia. Now attached to the Capitol brand, it marks her third major label deal and her final chance to make good on cries of the “Next Big Thing” that began back in 2004. “I did think to myself, you know, look,” she says with the vehemence of a woman scorned. “After having three record labels, if I turn 25 and I don’t put this fucking record out that I’ve been making since I was 17, I am going to start popping out babies in middle America or something.” Raised by preachers in Santa Barbara, California, Perry grew up singing in her parents’ church and even released a Christian-pop album under her birth name Katy Hudson (changed to halt confusion with actress and Goldie Hawn spawn Kate Hudson) back in 2001. Despite rave reviews and tours on the Christian circuit, the lure of true pop stardom—and her love for the secular tunes of Queen and Alanis Morissette—hooked the

burgeoning sensation. However, it wasn’t until her song and video for “Ur So Gay,” a “You’re So Vain” for the guyliner-inclined, made ripples on social networking juggernaut MySpace that pop stardom finally came calling. Although its lyrics referencing H&M scarves, hybrid cars and vegertarianism raised a few eyebrows and some scorn from the LGBT community, “Ur So Gay” opened the doors for, at long last, her debut album One of the Boys. When asked if she ever thought she would make it to this point Katy responds with amazing optimism. “I think I just look forward. I’m always looking forward, even if it’s very difficult at certain times,” she says. “There are many days where I am so glad that I didn’t throw in the towel and looked forward. It’s definitely one of those things where hard work pays off.” And pay off it did. The album debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard charts, and logged Katy into the history books when “I Kissed a Girl” became the 1,000th No. 1 hit of the rock era according to Billboard. One of the Boys, a club-ready pop romp through the high school trenches of boys, girls and hangovers in Vegas, proves Katy as a Madonna for the emo generation. The disc mixes playful dance tunes with acousti-pop ballads that Katy wrote or co-wrote alongside a handful of producers and collaborators, including Ballard, Greg Wells (Mika, Natasha Bedingfield), Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), Max Martin (Leona Lewis, Robyn), Sam Hollander and Dave Katz (Gym Class Heroes, Boys Like Girls) and Butch Walker (Pink, The Donnas). Lyrically, the album is just as fun. Katy is no poet—“You P.M.S. like a bitch/ I should know” from “Hot and Cold” is one of her gems— but her words posit her as the not-so-good girl. Unlike the late 90s debuts from Christina Aguilera or Britney Spears, One of the Boys

doesn’t rely on cushy love songs, instead favoring makeouts over pining for true love. But even if she does enjoy the taste of cherry chapstick, the indiscretion is only enough to chart Katy as a 7 on the Debbie Gibson-Paris Hilton scale. But Katy asserts she is only being herself. “Every one of those songs is about that thought or that story of my life. I can give you a person, a place where I was, what time it was when I said ‘I’m going to write a song about this’ or ‘I’m gonna jot this down in my memory bank and write a song about this experience,’” she says. “They’re all autobiographical. I’m not going to give you who these songs are about, but I could.” Katy’s honesty and quirk, too, are also parts of her effort to make being a pop star cool again. When asked what she means, she distractedly responds, “I mean that it’s not cool. I mean that, in the past, you see these girls that were more about celebrity. So I think pop music needs to be about the music again.” It’s a seemingly strange comment coming from a girl who’s hit single is about kissing a girl (and liking it), but she realizes it’s not about bringing credibility to the genre as much as just changing the focus back to music. Considering her company, it’s no wonder she wants a change when clumped alongside Avril Lavigne, Lily Allen and Ashlee Simpson. Despite her pop star status, Katy is surprisingly the real deal; she writes her own songs, plays the guitar and, although it should go without saying, she also sings and plays her songs live without the help of any technology. “I definitely am not a puppet,” she emphasizes. “If you could see the kind of work that I put into doing this myself, into the point of where I’m sitting in a chair barely able to stay awake right now because I’ve only had a few hours of sleep. I’m just so exhausted and so

katy perry WHO’S WHO Katy Perry (vocals, guitar) FORMED 2001 in Santa Barbara, CA LABEL Capitol Music Group LATEST RELEASE One of the Boys (2008) ON THE WEB www.katyperry.com wanting to put on the best show. “For me right now, it’s not just being on Warped Tour,” she continues. “It’s juggling several things at once and there’s no puppeteering to that. I’m definitely steering my ship right now, completely. And, if people can’t see that, that’s their own blindness.” Through it all, with a few dates left on Warped Tour still ahead, along with more appearances and performances, Katy’s plate won’t be empty anytime soon. But with the summer camp of Warped tour, she won’t get carried away into the stratosphere of mega-stardom just yet. “There’s no favoritism. Even if I do have a huge song, nobody fucking cares, you know?” she laughs. “They’re like ‘Get in line at catering’ and I’m like ‘ok.’” Katy may be everywhere, but at least there’s one place where she’s still just one of the boys. - Natalie B. David ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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RHYME, RHYTHM & SOUL

THREE 6 MAFIA WHO’S WHO Juicy J Dj Paul FORMED 1991 in Memphis, TN LABEL Prophet Ent. LATEST RELEASE Last 2 Die (2008) ON THE WEB www.three6-mafia. com

Courtesy Three Six Mafia

IT’S GETTING EASIER FOR A PIMP

grammy in hand, it’s a good time to be part of the mafia Money isn’t everything. Take Craig Brewer’s ’05 indie sensation Hustle & Flow, for example. The over-hyped movie only did about $23 million at the worldwide box office. The Dark Knight likely earned that yesterday. But the thing so phenomenal about the rags-tobitches story is that its true impact can’t be measured with dollars. Its lead, Terrence Howard, became a mainstream name. His favorite word, “Maaane,” hopped into the pop culture mix. And two grilled-out boys from Memphis called Three 6 Mafia snatched an Academy Award for Best Song with “Hard Out Here For a Pimp” off the movie’s soundtrack. Ain’t America grand? And if you thought Juicy J and DJ Paul’s proud prance across the Kodak Theatre stage on Oscar night lit some sort of thespian fire, you’re partially right. “Actin’ is serious,” admits Juicy, who’s only a few months removed from a guest appearance on the CBS drama Num3ers. “It ain’t like you just walk up there and

start actin’. [But] we’re willing to try some different stuff.” Hustle wasn’t the guys’ first connection to the camera. “We actually,” Juicy continues, “produced three movies ourselves: Choices, Choices 2 and another movie we called The Clean-Up Man. It went straight to DVD. But there’s a lot of money in the movie world, man. We’re willing to try it. It’s hard work to do it. The mainstream stuff is good when you’re a good actor, but you gotta work your way up.” Even harder than becoming the next Hancock might be breaking the next great single. Though the duo has had Billboard successes (“Tear Da Club Up,” “Stay Fly,” “Poppin’ My Collar”), they know that their just-released new album, Last 2 Die, needs to address the industry’s insatiable appetite for catchy songs. “We put together good albums,” Juicy insists, “but the single is the hardest part ‘cuz you might make 40, 50 songs and pick the wrong single. It’s almost like a guessing game.

Should we use this song? You let people hear the album and they go, ‘That should be the single.’ Go to the label and they go, ‘That should be the single.’ Somebody on the street might be like, ‘No, man, use that as a single.’” Last 2 Die, the group’s 9th official album, offers its share of radio-ready thumpers (“Lolli Lolli,” the Lyfe Jennings-featured “Hood Star”) and hot-n-heavy club bangers (“I’d Rather”). Hell, there’s even a gloomy number on there called “My Own Way” with pop punkers Good Charlotte. “With every Three 6 album, we might have one or two songs that sound different,” adds Juicy, who’s also prepping releases from Project Pat and Lil Wyte through Three 6’s Hypnotize Minds label. “But the album is completely dark. Straight gangsta. Straight hood.” That’s great news for longtime fans worried about all the Hollywood lights somehow softening the guys’ one-time gruff images. - DeMarco Williams ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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music

RHYME, RHYTHM & SOUL

CELL THERAPY

the melting pot

sister sister

one of the south’s finest growls

the watson twins are identical in looks -- and that’s about all

C-Murder was different. While his older brother, Master P, was all over MTV and BET, makin’ folks say Ughhh, C-Murder was makin’ that same crowd say Ahhh, it’s refreshing to hear a Southern rapper with skills. C-Murder’s (his mama named him Corey Miller) verses on platinum Dixie hits like P’s Ghetto D and his own Trapped in Crime had a bit of contempt, a touch of aggravation in them. He rapped about cash and cuties, sure, but he also gave it to you straight about pistols and poverty. C-Murder is still different. The mere fact that he’s on the phone with Blur right now, talking about a new album, Screamin’ 4 Vengeance, when there’s so much other stuff going on in his life is incredible. Back in ’02, when the No Limit Records train was losing some steam, C-Murder got caught in the middle of a nightclub tussle. Somebody was shot. Witnesses swear it was C-Murder who pulled the trigger. The Louisiana court system agreed, sentencing the New Orleans rapper to life in prison. That ruling was overturned a few years later. C-Murder’s under strict house arrest now, awaiting a retrial. “You know,” begins the reflective 37-yearold, “when you’re going through something that’s a real situation in life, first and foremost, don’t give up. Always look for a way out and always look for an answer and try to work your way through any situation. There’s a lot going on, but at the same time, I ain’t let a lot of that get to me. I just feel like that right now I’m at the top of my game, bruh. When I get into that booth, I feel like I’m in the zone lyrically, ya heard me? I’m real excited about this record. We just dropped it. I just hope that the fans like it.” Longtime No Limit followers have seen Master P and his son, Lil’ Romeo, go from bayou ballers to Nickelodeon stars to WalMart partners. Those same loyalists haven’t really seen or heard much change from CMurder’s way. From the sounds of Screamin’ 4 Vengeance, they won’t anytime soon, either. “They can expect a complete record, with the old-school C-Murder,” says the rapper about the boisterous CD, the second since his incarceration. “Lyrically, I’m rapping about what’s going on in society and stuff like that. My fans are loyal to me. One thing they know when they pick up a C-Murder record is that they’re getting a straight C record. I’m putting all of my efforts into it.”

In just over 12 hours The Watson Twins will hit the road, heading to Washington D.C. to kick-off the first tour in support of their debut LP, Fire Songs. On the other end of the line, taking a break from packing, Leigh Watson jumps in, bursting with excitement about the tour and the album as though talking to a friend. “There’s this sigh of relief,” says Leigh of the D A record T E C H finally I T C Abeing N N Ecompleted T W O R K Y Oand U R resting on store shelves, “but also this fear of B U S I NtoE Scome.” S OR HOME SO YOU CAN what’s After over a decade working around the COMMUNICATE MOREof EFFECTIVELY, Los Angeles indie scene side-by-side BE IT WITHIN YOUR OFFICE, HOME, with her identical twin sister Chandra, the LouisOR Kentucky WORLDWIDE. WEfirst OFFER MANY acville, natives met national claim in 2006, performing with Rilo Kiley SERVICES INCLUDING THE INSTALLATION seductress Jenny Lewis on her own countryO F endeavor P H O N E Rabbit S Y S T E Fur M S ,Coat. OFFICE OR folk HNaturally, O M E N E Tbeing W O R K identical I N G , A N Dtwins W I Rhas E D also drawn added attention to the singer-songAND/OR WIRELESS NETWORKS. writers. The lanky, brunette-headed, lookW E duo C A N are S E Tstriking; U P A Cit’s O Nhard S U L Tnot A T Ito O Ncomalike ment on the fact that they are identical W I T H OUR PROFESSIONAL TEAM TOtwins, and beautiful, talented ones at that. Although DISCUSS YOURoften NETWORKING NEEDS. photographers play up their alikeness — the cover of Rabbit Fur Coat shows the twins in identical costume — it’s something Leigh hopes takes a backseat to their music. Being seen as a novelty act, however, is still a fear. “I think that’s definitely something that crosses your mind,” she says. “When we did the record with Jenny, we dressed alike but the three of us dressed alike. It was more of a girl group thing - more joking, and more theatrical.” “And for us, it’s not really who we are,” she continues. “We don’t dress alike. We have our own individual personalities and you do get fearful of people going ‘Oh, it’s a gimmick’ and looking at the music second and that’s tough. You have to overcome and get past it and know that that’s just part of the gift of being a twin.” And Fire Songs is no gimmick. Released by the revered Vanguard label, the disc is full of private confessionals painted with warm harmonies and slight acoustic guitar twang. In studio, the twins are aided by producers Russell Pollard and J. Soda, however all songwriting is done on an individual basis. Perusing the liner notes, each track — excluding their delicate take on The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” — is credited to one twin or the other, not both.

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ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

Courtesy C Murder

C MURDER WHO’S WHO Corey Miller a.k.a. “C Murder” FORMED 1991 in New Orleans, LA LABEL Tru Records LATEST RELEASE Screamin’ 4 Vengeance (2008) ON THE WEB www.myspace.com/cmurder Most rappers would half-heartedly drop an album they feel could probably sell solely off controversy. Not C. We told you this one was different. - DeMarco Williams

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watson twins WHO’S WHO Chandra Watson (guitar, vocals) Leigh Watson (guitar, vocals) FORMED 2006 in Los Angeles, CA LABEL Vanguard Record/Team Love Records LATEST RELEASE Fire Songs (2008) ON THE WEB www.thewatsontwins.com courtesy Pamela Littky

“We don’t write together,” explains Leigh. “We haven’t really approached that. I don’t know why. I think for both of us it’s still a pretty personal experience, and we have different writing styles. I think eventually we probably will co-write songs together, but I think for now we’re both inspired and we’re just letting that go.” But it’s not entirely a solo experience. “When we record and when we work on songs, that’s when we collaborate,” says Leigh. “We do a lot of arrangement stuff together.”

For now, Leigh is excited to take the new songs on the road. Though they won’t make their way to Athens on this tour, they hope to hit it in the months ahead, if only for another taste of the city’s flavor. “We played there at the 40 Watt last year with our friends in this band called Magnolia Electric Co. and we literally ate at The Grit twice in the 24 hours that we were there,” she laughs. Being on the road definitely has its perks. - Natalie B. David ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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music

music

the melting pot

UPCOMING RELEASES

there’s no place like home

GET ‘EM WHILE THEY’RE HOT

one georgia alum never forgets his roots From the Stone Mountain High School Band to the music program at The University of Georgia, to teaching at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Bobby Lee Rodgers successfully laid the groundwork to become a reputable musician all over the world. From age seven, when he decided to play the upright bass for orchestra class to the years following when he picked up guitar, mandolin, banjo and the drums, Rodgers began a trip through life to “make people happy” by playing music. His background started in jazz, but has since fused with rock and become a unique sound found on stage solo or with his group, The CodeTalkers. He describes his music as, “rock ‘n roll with extreme intelligence; vigor and emotionality.” Amongst the overwhelming sense of devotion to playing music, his “normal” life is nowhere to be found, but what he did find was that he loves what he does. Throw being married and with a 16-month old daughter into the mix and you have to give him a hand. He barely has time to answer his phone, and balances teaching daughter, Eleanor, who already sings and dances along with her daddy’s music, to play the harmonica and pluck the banjo, between writing new songs and working on new projects around the country. With the help of wife Julia, Rodgers manages to do it all from Stone Mountain, where he and the family reside when he’s not on the road. “You don’t choose the music,” Rodgers says of his decision to pursue a full-time music career. “It chooses you. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to grow up and be a normal person with a normal life, but the music chose me.” Right now he is wrapping up 26

ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

august 12 CD

Zach Hill Astrological Straits Jonas Brothers A Little Bit Longer Ben Weaver The Axe and the Oak

WE CAN DVD

Courtesy Bobby Lee and the Codetalkers

the latest album, Overdrive, due out within the next year. But his work is nowhere near done, as he spans many categories at the same time, working on three projects this year. Sparked by the love from his Japanese crowd, Bobby Lee started work on an acoustic record, called BLR Lost Radio. A collaboration of “some of the best people from all over,” it has a unique sound found only as a result of playing across the world. His second project is The CodeTalkers, with whom he began a tour across the country, selfdescribed as “a fiery trio that taps into the primal mojo of ‘50s pioneers embellished with the captivating twists & turns of postbop jazz, Muscle Shoals soul, fleet fingered acoustic picking, and huge scale epic rock.” This group, started in 1999, tours all over bringing rock and jazz together for an ultimate sound that is sweet and deep with simplistic and soulful tones. They’ve

bobby lee rodgers and the codetalkers WHO’S WHO Bobby Lee Rodgers (lead vocals, guitar/banjo) Andrew Altman (bass) Mark Raudabaugh (drums) FORMED 1999 in Atlanta, GA LABEL independent LATEST RELEASE Galaxy Girl (2008) ON THE WEB www.thecodetalkers.com been around for a while, playing in the Midwest and the Northeast come late summer. His third project is a collaborative effort with guitarist Steve

upcoming releases

Kimock. Rodgers’s balancing act has brought him far, his music taking him all the way to Japan. “We’ve played all over Europe,” says Rodgers. “But going to Japan really proved how far I’d come. That’s pretty much as far over as you can go, so reaching it was something.” But despite his well-traveled guitar, Athens still remains his favorite place to play. “I feel like I grew up there,” he says. “It’s like a big homecoming every time I go, and you can’t match that anywhere else.” So after years of learning to play instruments and more years teaching other people to play them, Bobby Lee exists in a full-time music career, where he claims he is “serving the world” by playing for the masses. “Making people happy is why I play music. I am here for them. They keep me going.” - Jenni Williams

DA TECH IT CAN NETWORK YOUR BUSINESS OR HOME SO YOU CAN COMMUNICATE MORE EFFECTIVELY, BE IT WITHIN YOUR OFFICE, HOME, OR WORLDWIDE. WE OFFER MANY SERVICES INCLUDING THE INSTALLATION OF PHONE SYSTEMS, OFFICE OR HOME NETWORKING, AND WIRED AND/OR WIRELESS NETWORKS. WE CAN SET UP A CONSULTATION W I T H OUR PROFESSIONAL TEAM TO DISCUSS YOUR NETWORKING NEEDS.

HELP YOU ENJOY YOUR H O M E T H EATER EXPERIENCE TO CJ7 ITS FULLEST. OUR PROFESSIONAL Felon IrinaI NPalm STALLERS WILL MOUNT YOUR Smart T V People AND SPEAKERS, INSTALL ALL Watching O F Tthe H E Detectives APPROPRIATE WIRING, CONNECT ALL OF YOUR NEW AND EXISTING EQUIPMENT, AND TEACH YOU HOW TO USE YOUR HOME CDT H E A T E R S Y S T E M .

august 19

Strawberry Weed Caesars Earth To the Dandy Warhols The Dandy Warhols Fiery Furnaces Remember Live CD Juliana Hatfield How to Walk Away Human Highway Moody Motorcycle Lykke Li Youth Novels MakeUpBreakUp We Prefer Not To... EP Perhapst Perhapst Nelly Brass Knuckles Staind The Illusion of Progress Starling Electric Clouded Staircase Straight Line Stitch [Title TBA] System and Station A Nation of Actors T.I. Paper Trail The Verve Forth Family Force 5 Dance or Die

DVD

Chronicle of an Escape Deal The Life Before Her Eyes Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day Leatherheads Prom Night Street Kings “House” Season 4

august 26

CD

Blues Traveler North Hollywood Shootout Cordero De Donde Eres DragonForce Ultra Beatdown Missy Elliott Block Party Solange Knowles Sol-Angel and Slipknot All Hope Is Gone The Verve Fourth

DVD

The Little Mermaid Made of Honor What Happens in Vegas… “Heroes” Season 2

August 29 CD King Of Pop Michael Jackson Compilation album Wild Sweet Orange We Have Cause to Be Uneasy

September 2 CD

Syleena Johnson Chapter 4: Labor Pains Underoath Lost in the Sound of Separation Brian Wilson That Lucky Old Sun

DVD

My Outsourced Life

September 9 CD

Calexico Carried to Dust Joan Baez Day After Tomorrow Gym Class Heroes The Quilt I’m Not Jim You Are All My People Ray LaMontagne Gossip in the Grain Okkervil River The Stand Ins Joan Osborne Little Wild One Robin Thicke Something Else Brian “Head” Welch Save Me From Myself

DVD

Baby Mama ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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music

THE

music

the buzz

BUZZ

NEWS & NOISE FROM THE CLASSIC CITY AND BEYOND

By Alec Wooden

Wax off:

Bigger (and better?) things: Soulja Boy has inked a multi-year deal with Yums Shoes, a Dallasbased sneaker and apparel company, heading up a line of graffiti styled shoes. Here’s to hoping it hits big, takes up all his time, and completely erases any future hopes of a recording career.

Madame Tussauds, a famous wax museum in London, now has the perfect trifecta of musical genius enshrined: The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and…Amy Winehouse. Two are famous for great music, and the other is famous for nothing more than stints in rehab. Did they also mold in the crack pipe hanging from her mouth?

Say it ain’t so: MTV (ya know, that network that used to have lots of music videos) has announced plans to remake the 1975 classic Rocky Horror Picture Show. This all too likely suckfest will feature the original screenplay, but plans are to add new music to the production. Overachieving pop-punk bands are licking their chops as we speak to get a piece of that action.

Opening old wounds: It’s easy to forget that Mindy McCready is a country singer. Lately (and sadly), she’s simply been known as “the girl Roger Clemens likely messed around with when she was 15.” By the way…isn’t that illegal? Anyway, as the spotlight intensifies on Clemens around his performance enhancing drug allegations, it has also opened old wounds for McCready, who recently attempted suicide and landed herself in the emergency room. She is now checked into rehab for what her representatives call “longer-term and broaderbased” care. Nothing sarcastic, snarky, or funny about this – it’s just a sad story that hopefully will come to a happy resolution. 28

ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

the buzz

Who’s who?:

Tattletale: Dustin Diamond, known for his days as Samuel “Screech” Powers on Saved by the Bell, is working on a tell-all book about life on the set after the cameras were off. Set for release later this year, his pages promise tales of bitter feuding, rampant drug use, and sexcapades between cast members (we’re now taking odds on a secret relationship between Mr. Belding and A.C. Slater). As we speak, there are five other cast members (whose careers have also gone absolutely nowhere since the show) kicking themselves for not thinking of this first. The only question is this: will the original cast members play themselves when A&E picks up the rights for the made-for-TV movie?

GOT LOCAL OR NATIONAL NEWS FOR THE BUZZ? Submit to [email protected] with “Buzz” in the subject line.

It’s a closed world after all? The whispers are becoming a roar on this rumor, and some sources around Athens have confirmed what may be close to (at least as of press time) becoming true. Tasty World, as we know it now, may soon undergo an ownership change and/or possibly a change of ideology to no longer be a music venue. Not much more to report at this point, and I hope it stays as just a rumor!

X gonna give it to ya, but it won’t be real: the rapper got in some trouble back in April when he was admitted to a hospital and provided the staff with false information as to his identity: namely (no pun intended), he used the alias “Troy Jones” in an attempt to skip out on his hospital bill. The law has finally caught up with him, as he was arrested at a Phoenix mall late last month on the outstanding warrant. In other news, DMX doesn’t have the money to pay his hospital bills. Apparently the royalty checks from his 2003 blockbuster film appearance in “Cradle 2 The Grave” just aren’t paying off anymore.

A Long and Winding Road: A long lost interview with Paul McCartney and John Lennon was kicked up in some spring cleaning of a South London garage. Film enthusiast Richard Jeffs realized the worth and rarity of the object, originally recorded in 1964 during some of the most intense days of what is now referred to as “Beatlemania.” The nine minute interview features the two famed songwriters telling the tale of their meeting and musical relationship. If nothing else, this could serve as inspiration to clean out every forgotten closet, shed and storage nook in your house! ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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music

music

ear candy

EAR CANDY

ear candy

ALBUM REVIEWS Alkaline Trio Agony & Irony

Albert Hammond Jr. Como Te Llama? First off, Albert Hammond Jr. made a glaring error with his latest release Como Te Llama. To be Spanish-correct, it should be called Como Te Llamas. Unless he meant to call himself a pack animal. Which, if the songs therein are any indication, is hardly the truth. As the main (we can say it) visionary of the Strokes, that other group Hammond plays guitar with, he established with his second solo release he left the pack long ago. Where his first release, Yours To Keep, was tentative in relishing his Strokes past (yet ultimately fulfilling), Como Te Llama has Hammond not worrying about it. He has created a perfect piece of guitar pop. Are there Strokes flourishes? Of course. With his voice distorted, Hammond comes across Casablancas-like, accompanying “Bargain of the Century” and “G Up” with those traditional Strokes riffs. Are there Strokes-influenced flourishes? Sure. “GFC” and “The Boss Americana” are pure Brit pop (think Kinks), and really where would the Strokes be without that. But then Hammond adds “Rocket” and “Victory at Monterey” to the mix, with grinding guitars and just enough of a disco beat (yes, disco!) to keep you tapping and intrigued. The only breakdown is “Spooky Couch,” a seven-minute instrumental that is about six minutes too long. As track nine, it almost serves as the album’s intermission before “Borrowed Time” (a groovy tune that borrows heavily from Elvis Costello) kicks off the album’s tail end. Does this bright piece of pop mean Hammond has left the Strokes behind? Perhaps, it’s been years since the New Yorkers had a new release. But if they ever return, they can only hope to create music as strong as this. Ed Morales

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Beck Modern Guilt

Since the release of Wolf Parade’s Sub Pop debut Apologies to the Queen Mary, the music scene has been flooded with side projects of the group’s two brain trusts, Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner. So although their voices may be more familiar to the most astute of indie rock connoisseurs than they were in 2006, their reuniting for At Mount Zoomer presents a more unified front this goround, resulting in an album that treats the sophomore slump to swift a kick in the face. Recorded at Petite Église, the Quebec church owned by fellow Montreal inhabitants Arcade Fire, a few of that band’s signature moves rubbed off: “Language City” perhaps fits the Bruce-Springsteen-by-way-of-Win-Butler sound the Neon Bible study group championed on its own sophomore LP, albeit slotting the Fire’s church organ for a righteous synth. Despite claims that the band promised Sub Pop “No Singles” songs like Boeckner’s “Soldier’s Grin” and ”The Grey Estates” are palatable enough to balance Krug’s psychedelic dramas like “California Dreamer,” a keys-driven, acid-infused tornado and closing dirge, the near-11 minute “Kissing The Beehive.” Still a band with two voices, At Mount Zoomer finds the group more anchored and less schizophrenic… insofar as Wolf Parade possibly can be.

I like Amstel beer – it has a weightiness, giving it confidence and breadth. But I found I can only drink it in certain occasions – it’s not an every time beer. Perhaps that’s why they make Amstel Light. With half the heaviness, it’s a solid, carefree beer – one good for all occasions – but it’s not crap like Bud Light. This, of course, leads me to Beck. On the heels of The Information, Beck’s sprawling almost-hourlong album from 2006, comes Modern Guilt, a 34-minute breeze of pop minimalism meets ‘60s psychedelica. Brewed by Danger Mouse, a former UGA student turned DJ/producer extraordinaire, Modern Guilt is focused and blunt (missing are Beck’s many overdubs and electronic languishes) with fun bouncy beats as light as Chinese gymnasts. That’s not to say there’s no weight to it, forged through Beck’s doom and gloom lyrics dripping from his marble mouth. “Chemtrails,” a dreamy Beatles groove circa Revolver, is about the waste jets leave in their wake. “Watching the sea/Full of people/Try not to drown,” Beck laments. Yikes. In “Gamma Ray,” a happy surf beat homage if there ever was one, Beck sings about the end of the world: “Trying to hold/Hold out for now/With these ice caps/Melting down.” And “Volcano” has him ruminating about leaping into lava. Fun times. The highlight: “Profanity Prayers,” a bubblegum burst that has Beck “waiting for the light.” To sum it up, a mature Beck and a playful Danger Mouse went to different parties but emerged together with something refreshing and dour. Hard to do, but ripe for everyone.

Cut Copy have taken up residence in the middle ground between dance and rock and In Ghost Colours is their 1980s-themed housewarming bash. The follow up to 2004’s Bright Like Neon Love, In Ghost Colours gives nods towards shoegazers and E.L.O. as much as it does the trio’s contemporaries LCD Soundsystem and Daft Punk. Retro sentiments also prevail: “Out There On the Ice” could fit as a longlost John Hughes soundtrack staple and “Lights and Music” is a dead-on ringer for Depeche Mode. The latter half of the record does recede into dancier territory, but, in short, In Ghost Colours won’t alienate rock kids or disappoint club goers looking to get their groove on.

Natalie B. David

Ed Morales

Natalie B. David

Wolf Parade At Mount Zoomer

Cut Copy In Ghost Colours

If infectious pop-punk about heartbreak, death, alcoholism, fire and knives is your thing, then you most likely already know who the hell Alkaline Trio is. If you haven’t had the unique pleasure of bopping along to gloomrock ditties that sound like they were penned by a hellacious Halloween version of The Wonders, let’s catch you up to speed and tell you why your life could use a little more Agony & Irony. The Chicago threesome of Alkaline Trio has been cranking out consistently broody and increasingly impressive work since 1997. A little over a decade later, their newest release, Agony & Irony, is not only a logical progression from their last album, 2005’s Crimson – it’s easily their best work to date. With Agony & Irony, Matt Skiba, Dan Andriano and Derek Grant have put an even greater emphasis on inventive composition, instrumentation, effects and dynamics. For fans familiar with Crimson, Agony & Irony essentially takes all the winning cards and big chips from the former and goes all-in. The lyrics are still dark as sin, and the Trio’s punk rock edginess is ever-present, but the album has a richness and creative complexity to it that pushes it past anything they’ve done before. The album kicks in the front door strong with “Calling All Skeletons,” a punk rock uppercut with a doo-wop backbone, and follows it up with the catchy hooks of “Help Me,” the album’s lead off single. Both will have your head bobbing and your hands itching to clap along. Truth be told, there’s no rotten eggs in this batch, and since all the tracks are fairly unique it’s hard to pick standouts. There’s a little something for everyone – traditional Trio (“Ruin It”), sappy ballads (“Live Young, Die Fast” and “Over & Out”), epic pop-rock (“Do You Wanna Know”), and even some stuff you can shake your ass to (“I Found Away” and “Into The Night”). Agony & Irony makes it clear that the guys of Alkaline Trio are doing their best to spread their black wings as musicians. With the album’s first week sales earning them the #13 spot on the Billboard album charts, it looks like it will be a great launching pad to set the Trio soaring. PT Umphress

The Road Hammers Blood, Sweat, and Steel The Road Hammers take to the streets in style with Blood, Sweat, and Steel, the bands first U.S. release. In Canada, they’ve nailed loads of credEvery Time I Die its, including Canadian Country MuThe Big Dirty sic Awards such as 2006 Group of the Year (with six 2005 nominations), plus Planning on robbing a bank or have platinum status to their name(s) smashing somebody’s face in any- – among other accolades (ten of these time soon? You may want to pick up 13 tracks made the merge from that Every Time I Die’s newest release; and certified CD). Those names are: Jason not because it will change your mind McCoy (lead vocals/guitar), Clayton and make you a better person, but be- Bellamy (vocals/guitar), Chris Byrne cause The Big Dirty is exactly the kind of (vocals/bass) and Corbett Frasz. audio accompaniment befitting such Lead-off track “I’m a Road Hamactivities. mer” jump starts the album’s atmoThe Big Dirty is a shoe-in for the “Most sphere through fast-driven diction like Properly Titled Albums of All Time” list. “I’m building a rolling empire of blood It’s the kind of filthy, guttural rock that sweat and steel.” (Also the line lent to would make even Lemmy Kilmister say, the CD’s title). “Hammer” first peels “Damn, that’s some filthy, guttural rock.” out with a CB declaration of what’s If you don’t know who Lemmy is, you’ll ahead. Glancing in the rearview reveals a couple covers – runaway clasprobably hate this album. Metal heads looking for gritty break- sic “East Bound and Down” is in fine form, rolling it up and trucking into downs that rumble like a thousand war a rocking Reed rendition. The Jerry drums will surely enjoy tracks like “Cit- Reed romp isn’t alone now, with “Girl ies and Years” and “Rebel Without Ap- on the Billboard,” first a successful sign plause.” And with priceless lyrics like “I for Del Reeves, also appearing on the chewed off my very own head to get horizon. Sharing in the lyricism are me out of this trap,” how could “A Gen- admired writers/artists Chris Knight, tleman’s Sport” not be a favorite? Dean Miller (the legendary Roger MillFor all the guitar heroes out there er’s son), Paul Thorn, and John Rich. who loved playing along to “The New McCoy lends pen too, as do Byrne and Black”(from 2005’s Gutter Phenomenon), Bellamy (who’s no known relation to more melodic and southern rock influ- the Brothers). Rough but sweetly statenced tracks like “INRIhab,” “We’rewolf” ed “I Don’t Know When to Quit,” “I’ve and “Rendez-Voodoo” would be more Got the Scars to Prove It,” “Nashville Bound,” and “Keep on Truckin’” are key. your flavor. What’s bizarre about The Big Dirty is In “Nashville,” they try “to do the right that while it hits with a harder, dirtier thing, but busted [my] left hand.” Speak of the devil, of prime note is fist than previous ETID albums, it simultaneously manages to be their clean- the Jason Priestley-produced GAC TV show about their outings in the inner est offering in terms of vocals and promusic industry. duction quality. Even the composition “Flat Tires” closes the convoy with is cleaner in terms of digestibility and bloopers and such, giving a glimpse discernable melody. People who would of on-stage charisma. Even those typihave passed on Hot Damn! or Gutter cally wary of four-wheelers on real-life Phenomenon just might find The Big roads shouldn’t tire of these songs. So, Dirty to be within their spectrum of mu- here’s hoping we get to be in the passical preference – assuming they have senger seat for more music and aren’t even an inkling of desire to rob a bank left in goodbye dust from these highor get in a brawl. performance boys. PT Umphress

Melissa Coker

umsoo albing m o c

n

Jason Beckham Union Park and Magnolia Street No doubt, Jason Beckham is a product of the South. His latest effort (and first full length one), Union Park and Magnolia Street, is rife with influences from the regions storied past and present rock ‘n’ roll scene, complete with a guitar crunch that would make The Allman Brothers proud and vocal sensibilities not unlike those of his fellow Atlantans in Drivin ‘n’ Cryin. That said, this is not Southern Rock in the traditional sense. It is rock, yes, and it is made by a Southern songwriter who knows well and appreciates his roots. Yet Beckham’s work is not a simple homage to his homeland – it’s a collection of introverted observations and musings told over self-assured and comfortable instrumentation. Charming to anyone and meaningful to all, Union Park assures you haven’t heard the last of Beckham. Alec Wooden

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EDITOR’S PLAYLIST

PLAYLIST get out of my head

old or new, ten songs we can’t get enough of this month

Nicole Black

Alec Wooden

Editor-in-Chief

Plus Pick Your Own Game On Our MLB Package

“As you can tell from my playlist, I favor rock n roll from metal to classic rock. However, I don’t turn a deaf ear to other genres if the music appeals to my senses. You may be surprised to find that I have an Enya or Amy Whinehouse CD in my car.”

Editor

Pantera “Revolution is my Name”

Damien Jurado “Gillian was a Horse”

Hatebreed “I Will Be Heard”

Slow Runner “The Stakes Were Raised”

AC/DC “Shot Down in Flames”

Eef Barzelay “The Girls Don’t Care”

Wednesday 13 “Skeletons”

Radiohead “Optimistic”

Ski Club “My Dear Gertrude”

Bon Iver “Blindsided”

The Cubs “Surprise”

Johnathan Rice “Middle of the Road”

Dropkick Murphys “The Dirty Glass”

The Whigs “Already Young”

The Who “Baba O’Reilly”

Watson Twins “Just Like Heaven”

The Distillers “Dismantle”

Silver Jews “Open Field”

Black Sabbath “Paranoid”

My Morning Jacket “I’m Amazed”

“I tend to be a very seasonal listener -- that is, a summer playlist would usually reflect the season. Not really the case here - these ten songs are good in any and every season. A bunch of new releases, a couple classics, and a little Athens love made it a nice month to be my ears.” ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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by Sarah A. McCarty

& the

Chapter One: Faces & Places

Storybook Beginnings to Fairy-Tale Endings Jamie Pressnall

photo by Jamie Warren

tap dancing/percussion

Once upon a time a girl met a boy at a concert. They eventually got married, but this is not about that. This is not a love story. This is a story about music … and tap dancing. The girl, the boy and their three best friends soon formed a new band of their own. Inspired by a children’s storybook, the five friends fashioned a fitting name for the band: Tilly and the Wall. Since the creation of Tilly and the Wall, the musical family has carved out a nitch for itself in the world of independent pop music.

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Kianna Alarid vocals

Neely Jenkins vocals

ust as so many bands before it, Tilly and the Wall’s foundation was built from disbanded groups and connections in the local music scene. However, unlike many bands before it, Tilly and the Wall played with its imagination and its strengths to create a one of a kind sound and product. First on the scene were Kianna Alarid, Neely Jenkins and Jamie Williams. The three girls hail from Omoha, Nebraska, where they were all honing their musical talents. Jamie and Neely had previously worked together as part of Bright Eyes-talent Conor Oberst’s 1996 Omaha band Park Ave. After Park Ave.’s two-year run, Jamie met Kianna as a member of the short-lived group, Magic Kiss. Rounding out the full house are Nick White and Derek Pressnall aka, the boy who eventually married Jamie Williams (now Pressnall). Nick and Derek played together in their hometown of Dunwoody, Georgia, outside of Atlanta. The boys left their Georgia home to taste the Omaha music scene after that fateful Bright Eyes concert where they met Jamie. Jamie sacrificed sleeping and relaxing time en route to the second stop of their tour for the new album to tell Tilly’s story. “Nick and Derek were in a band in Atlanta. We met when I was selling merchandise on a Bright Eyes tour. They came to Omaha to see if they liked it. We were just hanging out and writing songs.” The five friends formed fast bonds exploring their musical ropes and individual gifts. The band naturally came together with Kianna and Neely offering vocals, Nick on keyboards and Derek playing guitar and adding another set of vocals. But the key to their success was the bold decision to set Tilly’s songs to tap dancing percussion as performed each night by Jamie. Part of the Tilly lure is experiencing a live show complete with the amplified rat-a-tat-tat of Jamie’s tap shoes. Just how she manages to keep going performance after performance with Tilly’s high-energy shows is an impressive feat. As the human drum set, Jamie explained, “The first week or two I get tired, then your body adjust. Your body expects to do it.” As Jamie dances out the beats, the rest of

Nick White keyboards

Derek Pressnall guitar/vocals

the band join in to perform a lively act for eager audiences. Each show offers a unique set that is as enjoyable to the fans as it is to the performers, who play off the energy of the crowd. “You can’t really practice for shows. You practice with the band, but it’s a totally different thing when you perform,” Jamie said. With three successful albums now out, Tilly has proved to any naysayers that the unusual percussion instrument of Jamie’s feet was much more than a gimmick. The tap dancing is an integral part of Tilly and the Wall’s artistry, as any self-proclaimed “tilly kid” will verify. Once they found their sound, the group needed a name. “At the time we were just kinda going through a bunch of different names. Not everyone liked one name, and I just always liked the way the title of this children’s book sounded. I suggested it and they liked it too,” Jamie explained. The title, taken from a children’s storybook Tillie and the Wall written by Leo Lionni, embodies the spirit of the band and has come to mean so much more. “Now that we’ve been a band for a while, it’s kind of fitting for us. The story is about overcoming obstacles and being yourself. Those are things that are really important for us,” Jamie reflected. Now that the band had a face with its inspired name, they set out to record their first record, but it wasn’t a fairy tale task. Jamie said Tilly sent out demos everywhere and no one was interested. Finally, with the help of friend Conor Oberst and his new Team Love label, they debuted their first album. Jamie praised, “Conor is the reason we even have records out. When no one was interested, he was just like, ‘I’m gonna put it out myself.’ He also took us out on our first tour. He’s the most supportive person of our band.” The aptly named debut album Wild Like Children hit the shelves in 2004 and captured audiences everywhere as Tilly received critical acclaim and began writing their dreams, joining national tours with Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley and Of Montreal.

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Chapter Two: Melodies & Harmonies ith Tilly’s first album, Wild Like Children, it became clear that the sun shines out of their tapdancing feet, harmonizing vocals, playful melodies and lively spirits. Their debut effort plays out almost like a dreamlike sequence. The scene opens with the harmonious sounds of “Fell Down the Stairs,” a surreal memory of young love. Wild Like Children’s nostalgic sagas close with a song affirming “we will sing pretty songs about love/ And we will fight if that’s what it takes/ And we won’t back down.” All the songs in between offer youth-centric emotional tunes sung with passion. Jamie, Kianna, Neely, Derek and Nick willingly accept their place in the indie pop music world as an ode to youth. They embrace that inner child phenomenon and wrap each lyric in a bundle of sugarcoated sounds. Using that sugarcoating, Tilly plays coy to its fans with their ever-so buoyant beats that mask darker images with a translucent canopy of chorus. Tilly’s narrative lyrics add another element to its sound. The quintet-writing team tends to compose melancholy stories of teenage angst and lost moments juxtaposed with their pop harmonies to create their quirky sound. Jamie said the band doesn’t necessarily set out to have that interplay between words and music. “Sometimes after we finish a song, we look and we’re like, ‘Oh, well this song is kind of dark, but it’s like a pop song.’ We just kind of write what were feeling and it just happens. And we all love pop music. It is just what comes out naturally.”’ It may be hard to believe that anything comes out naturally when five people write for one band. “It changes every time. Sometimes we write collectively the whole song together. Sometimes one of us will bring in a skeleton and say I want you to add a part here and fill it out there,” Jamie explained. No matter how they choose to compose their rhymes and rhythms, the Tillies somehow manage to work together to generate charming albums. The second album Bottoms of Barrels maintains the celebration of pop tunes with its cheerful cadence on tracks like “Bad Education” and “Urgency.” The song titles on Tilly’s second release even emit jovial bursts from “Sing Songs Along” to “Coughing Colors.” However, the true gem of the 2006 album is the poignant, yet slightly sinister “Lost Girls.” The atmospheric vocals on the track render a canvas for Tilly to tell a story drawn from the work of reclusive American artist Henry Darger. All five songwriters reunited to write Tilly’s third album, which was recently released on the Team Love label in mid June. Tilly develops its writing skills on its nameless album, now recognized by an O-shaped symbol on the cover. “We just wanted to basically not have a title, but have a symbol. That way people could kind of call it whatever they wanted too. I call it O. Derek calls it Booyah.” Tilly’s album “Booyah” is

known for its artwork. The Tillies asked artist to contribute any style of work for the album to be framed by the O shape. Jamie said not having a title was also a way to put more focus on the art – the music and the visual art. Not only did the Tillies experiment with the title, but they also experimented sonically, flirting with more instruments here and there. Jamie said working with permanent Bright Eyes member Mike Mogis in his “brand new state of the art recording studio” provided the band with a lot of resources. Although Mogis had worked with the group before, Jamie said this was the first time “he did everything.” Under Mogis’s guidance and skill, the Tillies created an album that features a variety of sounds from the typical keyboards, guitars and vocal harmonies to trombones, trumpets and an accordion. Enhancing the band’s signature taps, Tilly utilized stomps along with bells, chimes and a glockenspiel. In addition to the infusion of new instruments, Jamie said the new album is “a little more punk and tough sounding.” After its 30-second solo-tap intro, Tillie’s “Too Excited” off the new album showcases that edginess they tried to capture as does the second track, a smack-talk anthem called “Pot Kettle Black.” The song almost reeks of an ipod commercial that might feature flashes of vibrant colors synced perfectly with each stomp and a shadowed tap dancer promoting the mp3 player. Just as the first two albums before it, Tilly still has the lyrical and musical interplay as they balance words and sounds. For instance, on the mysterious track “Chandelier Lake” the lyrics step out of the sunlight emitted from the bouquet of tones and into the ominous shadows. The song opens with lines like, “The banks are stained with blood and rain/ where the water meets the land./ A secret there they’ll never share./ A code of silence.” Against the backdrop of spirited sounds, the words continue down the dim path, “There exposed was clothes and bones./ And a ring on a lifeless hand./ The trees and wind they hold their breath/ All feigning ignorance.” Jamie said this album has benefited because they are more developed songwriters, which may be one reason why the group was finally able to include “Tall Tall Grass” on an album. The track opens O and highlights the softer side of Tilly. “We started writing it for Wild Like Children, then we reworked it for the second album, and still didn’t use it. We were able to include it on this one,” Jamie said. “It’s just kind of interesting that it’s been with us since the beginning.” As writers, Jamie says experience plays a key role in their content. “I think we all are just kind of inspired by relationships, including our relationship to ourselves. We are also inspired by the people around us and other artists and visual artists. We just try to take everything in I guess.”

Chapter Three: Living & Loving t’s clear that the spirited Tillies live life to the fullest. From water balloon fights and bonfires complete with s’mores, the Tillies stay young at heart and try to make the most of their experiences. “We are definitely up for everything. If someone has a crazy idea, we are always like, ‘yeah let’s do it.’” Jamie said they always schedule days off in between their energetic performances to sight see and enjoy themselves on tour, especially when they play for crowds in destinations like Australia, Japan and New Zealand. Once back home, sometimes they will return to their pre-Tilly activities. Before joining the band, both Jamie and Neely were teachers. Neely taught fourth grade, and Jamie was teaching pre-kindergarten as part of a Head Start program. Members of the band also found new hobbies during their time off. “I’ve been reupholstering furniture for fun, and decorating the house,” Jamie said. She also dished on Derek, who married Jamie in August of 2006, shortly after the release of Bottoms of Barrels. “Derek is always

writing music and doing artwork in our basement,” Jamie confessed. In addition to his solo music project, Flowers Forever, apparently Derek also has found his green thumb, and is pretty proud of it. “Derek gardens – he just told me to tell you that,” Jamie relays over the phone. “We have an awesome garden. It just started blooming before we left. I hope it’s still there when we get back.” Whether their blooms will be there when they get back is yet to be seen, but one thing that is always there for them is their Tilly family. As the first artists on Oberst’s label, Kianna, Neely, Derek, Jamie and Nick personify Team Love with their tight bond. Despite inevitable family tiffs, they remain the best of friends. Jamie explains, “We put things into perspective. Our friendships are more important than the band.” As for the future of the band, the Tillies will continue to live out their dream, just as all children wish to do. “We’re having fun right now and we’ll see how the record does and the tour, and just keep going as long as we can.”

The End.

photo by Jamie Wa

rren

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NUCI ’S SPACE

ç

SPORTS

SPORTS

SEC FOOTBALL PREVIEW

sports

southern elite conference

now in its 76th year and truly a national powerhouse Alabama Crimson Tide

Auburn Tigers

Last year’s record: 7-6 (4-4)

Last year’s record: 9-4 (5-3)

Preview: Year two of the Nick Saban regime in Tuscaloosa promises to be interesting. Quarterback John Parker Wilson comes back for his senior season with hopes of leading Alabama to an SEC West title. To do so, he’ll need the help of several young players, including sophomores Terry Grant and Rolando McClain. Wide receiver Julio Jones is the gem of a top-rated Tide recruiting class, but Alabama will have to be able to win on the road if it wants to be successful. The Tide will have to travel to Georgia, Tennessee, and defending National Champions LSU. Players to Watch: QB John Parker Wilson (Sr.), OL Andre Smith ( Jr.), RB Terry Grant (So.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: at LSU (11/8), Miss State (11/15), Auburn (11/29)

Preview: One of the most important rules in football is if you can block, you will have success. The Tigers have installed a new offense, with former Troy coach Tony Franklin bringing a spread option attack to the Plains. Auburn will have a new starting quarterback, whether it’s sophomore Kodi Burns or junior Chris Todd, a Texas Tech transfer. Neither of those changes will be big adjustments because the Tigers’ offensive line is among the best in the SEC, with quality depth at every position. The defense will be led by a strong secondary and defensive end Sen’Derrick Marks. Players to Watch: OT Lee Ziemba (So.), DT Sen’Derrick Marks ( Jr.), RB Brad Lester (Sr.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: at Miss State (9/13), LSU (9/20), Tennessee (9/27)

Arkansas Razorbacks

Last year’s record: 8-5 (4-4)

Preview: Darren McFadden and Felix Jones are gone to the NFL. The top six tacklers from last year are gone. Heck, even head coach Houston Nutt left Fayetteville for Ole Miss. So what does Arkansas have left? Good question. Former Louisville coach Bobby Petrino left the Atlanta Falcons in midseason to become the Razorbacks’ head coach, but there won’t be a lot of success this season. The only real source of solace for Arkansas fans will come next year, when QB Ryan Mallett, a Michigan transfer, will be eligible to play. Players to Watch: OL Jonathan Luigs (Sr.), QB Casey Dick (Sr.), DT Ernest Mitchell (Sr.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: at Texas (9/13), Alabama (9/20), Florida (10/4) ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE 40

LSU Tigers

Last year’s record: 12-2 (6-2) – BCS National Champions Preview: Repeating as national champions is hard enough as an SEC team. LSU was the first two-loss BCS champion, and the talent was there to at least make another run at a title. Then quarterback Ryan Perrilloux ran into the law one too many times and was dismissed from the team by head coach Les Miles. The senior stalwarts that led the team last year have taken their games to the pros, but there is still a wealth of talent in Baton Rouge. Miles probably won’t regret staying at LSU over his alma mater Michigan, but it will be hard for the Bayou Bengals to sniff last year’s success.

Players to Watch: DE Tyson Jackson (Sr.), RB Keiland Williams ( Jr.), WR Demetrius Byrd (Sr.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: at Florida (10/11), at South Carolina (10/18), Georgia (10/25)

Mississippi State Bulldogs

Last year’s record: 8-5 (4-4)

Preview: Bulldog fans had a lot to cheer for last season, as head coach Sylvester Croom guided the team from a 45-0 season-opening loss to LSU to its first winning season in seven years, including a Liberty Bowl win over Central Florida. Wesley Carroll started at quarterback as a true freshman and gave MSU stability at the position that has not been seen in Starkville for some time. The Bulldogs will miss All-SEC offensive tackle Michael Brown, who was kicked off the team by Croom after an arrest on gun charges. Croom has a real chance to build the program back to its heyday, and if he can compound on the Bulldogs’ successes from a year ago, the bigger bowls won’t be too far off. Players to Watch: LB Jamar Chaney (Sr.), S Derek Pagues (Sr.), QB Wesley Carroll (So.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: Auburn (9/13), at Georgia Tech (9/20), at LSU (9/27)

Ole Miss Rebels

Last year’s record: 3-9 (0-8) Preview: A winless conference record last season was enough to get rid of head coach Ed Orgeron. New head coach Houston Nutt left Arkansas to take over in Oxford, where he

inherited an experienced, yet underachieving, team. After all, 47 lettermen and 17 starters are back from a team that lost to Florida, Alabama and Mississippi State by a total of 12 points. The Rebels have a lot of good individual players, and now they have a quarterback in Texas transfer Jevan Snead. If Nutt can get the pieces together, Ole Miss can hope for a possible bowl game this season. At this point, it’s still a big if. Players to Watch: OT Michael Oher ( Jr.), DE Greg Hardy ( Jr.), LB Ashlee Palmer (Sr.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: at Florida (9/27), South Carolina (10/4), at Alabama (10/18)

Florida Gators

Last year’s record: 9-4 (5-3) Preview: The Gators return one of the best offenses in the country, led by Heisman winner Tim Tebow at quarterback. The team added USC transfer Emmanuel Moody at running back to take some of the pressure off Tebow, but if Florida wants to make another run at a national championship, the defense will have to be better. Though they averaged 42.5 points per game last season, the Gators allowed 25.5 points per game, good for eighth in the conference. Either way, Florida will continue to be not only one of the best teams in the conference but in the nation as well. Players to Watch: QB Tim Tebow ( Jr.), RB/WR Percy Harvin ( Jr.), LB Brandon Spikes ( Jr.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: Hawaii (8/30), Miami (Fla.) (9/6), at Tennessee (9/20)

Georgia Bulldogs

Last year’s record: 11-2 (6-2) Preview: The Bulldogs recovered from a slow start and uninspired play to become one of the hottest teams in the nation by season’s end. On the way to ending the year ranked second, Georgia found a new star in energetic freshman running back Knowshon Moreno, who had arguably the best season for a Bulldog freshman not named Herschel Walker (1,334 rushing yards, 14 TDs). The Bulldogs will go in to the season with 17 returning starters and

as a favorite not only to win the SEC but to go to the BCS Championship Game in Miami. Georgia’s only obstacles are high expectations, bone crushing pressure as spring practice opens and a very tough schedule. If they can master both, the Bulldog Nation will be able to finally have the championship they’ve wanted for almost 20 years. Players to Watch: RB Knowshon Moreno (So.), QB Matthew Stafford ( Jr.), DT Jeff Owens (Sr.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: at LSU (10/25), vs Florida (11/1), at Kentucky (11/8)

Kentucky Wildcats

Last year’s record: 8-5 (3-5)

Preview: So begins Kentucky football A.A. (after Andre’). The talented quarterback that led the renaissance of Wildcat football is in the pros now, and Kentucky will have to find a way to be relevant in the SEC without him. The focus will have to be on the defense, as the Wildcats return eight starters on that side of the ball, mostly in the front seven. On offense, Kentucky goes into this season with a fairly inexperienced group, led by junior quarterback Curtis Pulley, who will step back into the spot that he lost to Woodson two years ago. Players to Watch: LB Johnny Williams (Sr.), DT Myron Pryor (Sr.), WR Dicky Lyons (Sr.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: at Florida (10/25), at Miss State (11/1), Georgia (11/8)

South Carolina Gamecocks

Last year’s record: 6-6 (3-5)

Preview: The winning hasn’t come easy in Columbia for the Ol’ Ball Coach, as Steve Spurrier is 21-16 in three seasons at South Carolina. This year’s version of the Gamecocks will certainly be an experienced bunch with 17 starters returning to a team that fell apart in the second half of the season. On defense, South Carolina only lost one starter: defensive end Jasper Brinkley. His twin brother, Jasper, returns after missing last season with a knee injury and will lead what should be one of the SEC’s better defenses. But will the wins come? With Spurrier, you never know. He

SEC FOOTBALL PREVIEW has a way, year in and year out, of finding a way to make himself and his team competitive no matter what the odds or competition. Players to Watch: WR Kenny McKinley (Sr.), LB Jasper Brinkley (Sr.), PK/P Ryan Succop (Sr.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: Arkansas (11/8), at Florida (11/15), at Clemson (11/29)

Tennessee Volunteers

Last year’s record: 10-4 (6-2)

Preview: Last season, Volunteers head coach Phil Fulmer was on the hot seat for much of the year. Then the Vols made a surprising run to the SEC Championship and lo and behold, Fulmer got a contract extension. But getting back to Atlanta this year will be a bigger challenge that it was last year, not to mention Tennessee will have to do it with a new quarterback, junior Jonathan Crompton, taking over for the departed Erik Ainge. The supporting cast is good on both sides of the ball, and though Big Orange fans might not get the results they want out of this team, the Vols will be a tough task for every team they face this season. Players to Watch: RB Arian Foster (Sr.), LB Rico McCoy ( Jr.), OL Anthony Parker (Sr.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: at UCLA (9/1), UAB (9/13), Florida (9/20)

Vanderbilt Commodores

Last year’s record: 5-7 (2-6)

Preview: What’s stopping another last-place finish in the SEC East for Vanderbilt? Not much. All-SEC performers such as WR Earl Bennett, OT Chris Williams and LB Jonathan Goff are in the NFL now, and the Commodores were just pesky with them. This season, Vanderbilt only returns two starters on offense and has a lot of holes on defense, and that simply won’t do in this conference. Players to Watch: QB Chris Nickson (Sr.), S Reshard Langford (Sr.), CB D.J. Moore ( Jr.) Toughest Three-Game Stretch: Auburn (10/4), at Miss State (10/11), at Georgia (10/18) Phillip Kisubika ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE 41

sports

sports

five minutes with

five minutes with

Talented Georgia Bulldogs

wide-out,

Mohamed

Massaquoi,

has a lot more bite than bark. By DeMarco Williams

GOLDEN receiver

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Listen, we don’t want to get too excited because it’s only August, but it’s getting difficult to contain our excitement, especially after reading an ESPN.com piece over the early summer. One of the site’s columnists, Mark Schlabach, was asked to make his preseason college football picks. Guess who he chose to play the Ohio State Buckeyes in the BCS title game? Yep, Mark Richt’s Georgia Bulldogs. See why we’re so geeked? (We know, we know. Schlabach is a UGA grad. But still.) Wide receiver Mohamed Massaquoi, one of the reasons these Dawgs are on every reputable magazine’s preseason top five, doesn’t share in our early jest. “I just realize what’s at stake,” says the cool 21-year-old North Carolina native. “We know what we want to accomplish and we know it’s going to be hard work trying to accomplish it, so we remain focused.” C’mon, Mo. You guys are Lindy’s Magazine preseason No. 1. Athlon’s No. 5 (ed. note: as of press time, Georgia is also atop the USA Today Coaches Poll). You have to be a lil’ pumped, right? “We can’t focus on the hype and people expecting us to do this and that,” he says. “We have to take care of the little things, so when the chance arrives, we’ll be ready.” Some thought the team might be ready for its close-up a season ago. Of course, pesky neighbors from Columbia and Knoxville had other ideas. Still, even with the two losses, there was lots to cheer about around Sanford Stadium. Leaving the Florida Gators woozy at the Cocktail Party was nice. Watching UGA tailback Knowshon Moreno morph into a national sensation was amazing. And seeing Massaquoi, the team’s second-leading receiver in ‘07, and quarterback Matthew Stafford build a yard-chomping bond was a thing of beauty. “We’ve been working hard,” tells the Dogs’ best set of hands of his relationship with the junior QB. “We want this to be a year that stands out—not only from a personal standpoint but for Georgia as a whole. We’ve been on the tip of everything the last couple of years. We wanna really go out there and put a stamp on everything.” A year ago, Mohamed had six memorable games where he caught a pass over 25 yards. And though his totals for touchdowns (four) and yards (491) were slightly off his career highs, that first number proves a testament to the young man’s explosiveness. It’s a doggone shame UGA can’t clone another 6-2, 198-pound headache for opposing secondaries to contend with this year. “Every game is going to be a different experience,” Massaquoi says. “Every game is [part of ] a countdown. Then your last game comes. You just gotta take every game and every moment and just try to seize it.” Just like we’re seizing the chance to hop on Mohamed’s bandwagon before it gets crowded by ESPN, Lindy’s and all the rest. ` ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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Broad Street between the hedges bar & grill

BLUR

investigative FEATURE

is downtown commerce dying?

as gas prices soar, how is the athens music scene coping?

I Broad Street between the hedges bar & grill

By Allie Byrd Photos By Trevor Wooden

f we got rid of Starbucks downtown, Athens would be the best town in the world.” Spoken like a true Athenian, Wilmot Greene, owner of the Georgia Theatre, lacks appreciation for corporate America and it’s infiltration into the Mecca that is downtown Athens. Like other large corporations that caused local debate and uproar (think The Gap, circa 1991-2001), Athens citizens keep a careful eye on downtown and stay true to their support of the “mom and pop” kind of local businesses. With its fervent refusal to be saturated by large corporations, downtown Athens is a community that fosters support for all things local. Whether it’s shops, restaurants, the farmers market or local bands, the Classic City takes a homegrown approach. With the exception of a few places, downtown Athens remains huge corporation and big national chain free. A haven for local businesses as eclectic as the people who wander its streets, downtown draws locals, artists, students, townies, families, out-of-towners and

musicians. Athens is a classic American town full of local restaurants, bars, shops and music venues. The delicate balance that is downtown commerce, however, may be in trouble. The economy is in the dumps and spending is on a downhill slide. Closing and going-outof-business signs keep popping up in storefront windows around downtown. Barnett’s News Stand, Athens only independent news stand for close to 30 years, recently closed, along with Nico, Roly Poly and Hot Corner (to name a few). Amber Dreams, whose move from downtown to Georgia Square Mall was also unsuccessful, is closing its doors for good. Downtown Athens is suffering at the hand of the economy, and it shows. When you think Athens, you think legendary music, not flailing economy. R.E.M., Widespread Panic, The B-52’s: bands that changed the face of music, won Grammys, conquered music charts and wrote songs that translate in every generation. More recently, local Athens band The Whigs reigned in as one of Rolling Stone magazine’s top 10 bands to watch, calling the Athens boys “the best unsigned band in America.” The band gained a local following

during itscollege years before hitting it big, and is well on its way to being another Athens band to make music history. Downtown is the epicenter of Athens music and part of the inner workings of its economy. In a place where commerce is driven by entertainment, it’s hard to know if fun takes the first cut when money gets tight, or if the music scene keeps Athens hanging on. “People aren’t into live music like they used to be,” says Greene. “Instruments are almost seen as passé.” In the past, the legendary music scene served as a catalyst for local bands, attracting start-upmusicians to play at venues and dive bars. But if anything, there are less local bands than their used to be, says Greene. “Twenty years ago if you were Greek, it was cool to be into a local band. Everyone had their own band that they were into and went to see,” he says. “Now, students don’t know any local bands. I talk to all these kids today, and they’re into bands like Coldplay, which is fine, but it’s more like being into a corporation than a band.” Ticket sales, merchandise and drink sales at ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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investigative FEATURE

the theater, however, remain consistent. If you can get people in, they pretty much spend the same amount, he says. Greene, who’s lived here for 20 years, describes Athens as what used to be “a cool little grunge town” where it was cool to be dirty and work three jobs. Now, he says, it’s cooler to wear overpriced clothes and drink martinis. “People take this music scene for granted,” explains Greene, who once moved to Charlotte for a few years and rushed back to Athens as soon as he could. “When people graduate and move, it’s a shock. You can’t find great live bands everywhere every night like you can here, but people don’t think about it that way.” Although the popularity and interest in local music among novice Athenians may have declined in the past few years, artists try to stay afloat in a sea of local musicians trying to get a gig, gain a following and catch a break. They feel the saturation of local bands when trying to get booked, and even more rarely, paid to perform. “So many people in Athens are trying to do music, so sometimes it’s futile,” says Nick Trotta, manager of Nowhere Bar, which features live music on Tuesdays and Thursdays. “We try to keep it local and support local musicians.” Although Athens continues to cultivate support and a following for local bands, getting started is a battle. It’s easy for musicians to make the rounds among venue managers and hand out demos. But, without the guarantee they’ll draw a crowd, some owners hesitate to book unknown bands. “It’s a catch-22,” says Trotta. “If you tell them who you are, but you can’t promise a big crowd, then they don’t want to book you.” Nowhere Bar, where Trotta has worked for the past five years, takes the same approach and likes bands to bring their own following, rather than depend on the bar to bring a crowd. Nowhere books newer bands on Tuesday nights and features more established bands on Thursdays. Tuesday cover is $1 and Thursday is $2-$3. However, Nowhere keeps bar ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE 46

sales and the cover revenue, which goes directly to the bands, separate. “One night a band may bring in $100, and another night they may get $800,” Trotta says, making it unpredictable for a band to project earnings from a show. Bigger bands can pack the place out, but whatever they draw in covers is what they get. The small fee of a cover charge sometimes works against the bands, as well as the bar. “Some people hear cover and it turns them away,” Trotta says. “It’s not a steady income.” Trotta is a local DJ as well. DJ Triz, as he is known, has shows at Nowhere Bar, as well as Farm 255 and Tasty World, playing electro, funk, hip-hop and some of his own beats. As smaller artists starting out often do, he played a lot of places mostly to get exposure, relying on friends and the art of knowing somebody who knows somebody to land a gig. He’s gradually gained some following and in August will play at the Trinumeral Festival in Ashville. “It’s hard to go out there by yourself in the beginning,” he says. “And if you’re not good, you’ll know real fast. You just hope someone sees you, and hand out cards and

BLUR

demos. The goal is eventually to do it for a living.” Within the city, Athens is home to dozens of music venues and countless bars that book live bands as entertainment each evening. As the sun sets, the music comes alive. Taking on a life of its own, the rhythms drift up from the bars and onto the street, beckoning people to come and listen. Although there is seldom a night where local musicians aren’t playing, on the other side, the opportunities for a small band to get booked seem limitless. Athenians can hear a live show and a different band every night of the week. “I think it’s easier for a local band to gain a following now,” says Shelby Wright, marketing and special events manager for The Melting Point. Local bands get great support through word of mouth and from people interested in local music. “Many towns with fewer venues give local acts less of a chance. Here, there are so many venues and genres, and media that follow music. That’s what makes Athens so interesting.” The Melting Point features local, regional and national bands in a melting pot of genres, from bluegrass and blues, to jazz and rock.

Although food and beverage sales for the Dougherty Street venue have dropped below the norm recently, ticket sales and attendance endure through the weakened economy, consistent with last year’s sales. The venue continues to grow, offering live music almost every night of the week. Ticket sales are steady. Attendance is still high. Changes in the economy have failed to make a huge dent in spending at venues thus far. So, what is it about the music scene in Athens that is different today? Even more than perhaps than the current economics of downtown commerce, the population moving to Athens is different. “People getting into college today are not as music and art oriented,” says Velena Vego, booking agent at the 40 Watt Club. Little music scenes and cliques are not as prevalent as they used to be and the focus on school is greater, drawing some of the college kid crowd away from venues and into study rooms. “School is a lot more difficult. If you get in, you really have to study and concentrate on school,” Vego says. “I hope there’s a new scene soon with up and coming bands that attract

more patrons.” However, the decline in student attendance has not hurt the club at all. “You can only hope that when you get national bands coming, you bring in locals and people from other areas and don’t focus on just students,” Vego says. “The age group of people who attend shows ranges from 18 to 35.” Vego, who has booked bands at the legendary club for 18 years, said ticket sales and attendance stay pretty steady, and that not much has changed. With no fear of the legendary 40 Watt Club slowing down, Vego doesn’t see an end in sight. While the downtown club typically books larger bands with large budgets, Vego has heard from some smaller bands facing a dilemma that’s causing them to cancel summer tours without enough funds to travel: gas prices. As gas prices surf the $4 line daily, Vespas are starting to sound more and more like a good idea. Increases in theft by siphoning are another sign of the times. Without a major airport in Athens, the unrestrained demand of rising transportation prices is hindering both local and national bands from gracing stages in the Classic City. Greene, owner of the Theatre since 2004, says the problem with the economy isn’t getting people in the door: it’s getting the bands here. “We’ve had a few shows cancelled because of gas prices and anticipate having a few more,” he says. The cost of diesel fuel, nearing $5 a gallon, affects bands that travel in vans and buses. Bands now want more money because it costs them more to travel. “Most deals are tight,” he continues, “and we don’t have room to increase the budget, so we just pass.” Bigger bands that once allotted 10% of their budget for travel expenses now allocate 30% and want venues to help make up the difference. Average ticket costs at Georgia Theatre range from $5 for smaller bands to $20 for big bands, but the theatre has to raise prices. To meet the demands of increased travel costs for bands,

tickets to some shows in the fall will cost $30. “We charge the lowest price we can possibly charge for tickets, and fight agents and bands to make them as low as we possibly can,” Greene says. “If you look at a bands schedule, Georgia Theatre is always the cheapest ticket on their tour.” Gas prices aren’t the only ones headed skyward. With increases in the cost of food, some people can no longer afford milk for their cereal. Ramen noodles are no longer just the broke college student food of choice. But because rent is cheaper than most towns of comparable size, and the cost of living is still relatively low, being a starving artist is a little easier in Athens. “The great thing about Athens,” Greene says, “is with the art and music scene, artists live here because they can afford to live here.” Yet, the abundance of musicians and the cool art town feel is something that worries Greene, fearing

investigative FEATURE

the attraction of living in a music town among artists will have the same affect on Athens as it did in SoHo in New York: wealthy people move in, rent goes up and artists move out. “Wealthy people are moving here from Atlanta, New York and L.A. They hear about the music and art scene and want to come here,” he says, bringing with them disposable incomes. People want to live in a small town, but they need culture and art, Greene says. Then, artists can no longer afford to live there. “Wealthy people come here and things get more expensive. The next thing you know, the ‘it’ music town is in somewhere called Washington, Georgia.” Even with all its changes and economic worries, Athens is still a city of dreams. A garage band’s greatest wish, Athens continues to give local musicians an outlet to play music. With an array of venues and a community still greatly supportive of local music, Athens

is a place where a musicians’s dreams can come to life. “Rolling Stone said Athens was the best college town for music, so I moved here. I knew if I wanted to do music that the chances of the ‘dream’ coming true were slim,” Nick Trotta says. “But I knew even if it didn’t work out, I’d know that I tried it.” More than anything else about trying to make in the Athens music scene, Trotta is a firm believer that you get out what you put in. “Look at P-Groove, they never stop touring. They’ve worked really hard, so they’re going to make it.” Falling along the lines of both legendary and revolutionary, Athens houses local spots that play live bands from every genre of music. From blue grass and jazz, to country and Indie rock, Beatles cover bands and Grateful Dead wannabes, Athens music covers it all. Much of its charm and attraction remains deeply rooted in the arts. People still come to school here from all over, even as far away as California and Texas and beyond because of the music scene, says Greene. “Everything is cyclical,” he says and seems certain there is nothing to worry about long term. “I think the Athens music scene is firmly entrenched and I don’t see it going away. There are enough people who come here because of the music scene.” Athens and its celebrated scene bring bands and huge national acts simply because it is Athens. “With the national bands we get, we are the smallest room on their tour,” Greene says.“Bands come here to play because it’s Athens, because it’s legendary and it’s history. So many people who move to here stick around. They stay in Athens and barely get by because they know how special this town is.” Athens certainly lives up to its famous name. Even with the changes in downtown, venues, genres of music and the economy, the roots of the Athens music scene are firmly planted, sure to turn out more legends in the years to come. ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE 47

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local spotlight

After a life of hustling and years spent in and out of jail, James Scott has his first job ever punching a time clock. His first week at work though, he had no idea what his co-workers were doing every time they clocked in and clocked out.

man to man By Ann Cantrell

I

finally asked the other guys what they were doing,” laughed Scott, who had taken his first job ever at Pilgrim’s Pride after looking for three months. It took him that long to find a job after leaving jail with a degree in customer service, but also a criminal background that consisted of 54 incarcerations and eight stays in prison. It was after discussing his long road out of jail and addictions with his good friend Melvin Hall, who has a similar spreadsheet of incarcerations and jail time, that the men decided to help others find their way out of a life of crime and addiction. “We want to work with those guys that society has written off,” said Hall. Scott and Hall started a program called “Man to Man” that helps individuals coming out of jail. With the help of their other colleague Carey Parrott, the men go into prisons and offer mentoring on finding a job, kicking an addiction or any other problems. The two men believe strongly that because they have lived a life of crime, but later found new lives with full time jobs and families, they can better understand and address the problems of men recently released from jail. In fact, the name, Man to Man, comes from the idea of communicating and connecting “mind to mind.”

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On their wedding day, James Scott (third from left) poses with his new bride, pastor, and pastor’ wife.

Hall said they plan to keep the organization small and intimate so that they can talk with men, one on one, adding also that he and Scott do not plan to be the only ones working to change these men’s lives. If the men do not want help and do not genuinely want to change, then Scott and Hall have no intention of working hard to help them,

understanding well the process of getting sober and leaving jail for good is a hard and long road, one that each individual must take on willingly. For both Scott and Hall, this road started about three years ago when both men became sober. Before that, Hall had spent his life addicted to heroin and crack cocaine. On

his seventh stint in jail he picked up Narcotics Anonymous, a book which deals with addictions to narcotics, which brought him to tears after he realized he was reading about himself. From there he began to deal with his addictions and even held his own Narcotics Anonymous classes within jail. After several attempts to quit using, he became sober and says that his family and other responsibilities keep him sober now. “I couldn’t ever quit completely…but now, my life has meaning,” he said. It is this meaning in life—his wife and his daughter—that keep him sober. He now has a job with a plumbing company and is only weeks away from his first ever vacation. For James Scott, it was new found faith in God that brought about his sobriety after a life of using. Scott started smoking marijuana regularly when he was eight years old and eventually moved onto other drugs. During different points in his life, he was homeless, or staying in rehab or mental institutions. During his last time in jail, he accepted Christ and has now been clean for three years. While their paths to ending addiction were different, Scott and Hall faced the same difficulties when they left jail. When they were released, there was no organization in the area to help get them on their feet. While Scott earned a customer service degree in jail, there were very few businesses willing to employ someone with such a hefty criminal record. Hall went on to say that living outside of jail is difficult for individuals who have spent most of their lives in a system where they are constantly told what to do. “When it comes to thinking for ourselves, we fall apart,” said Hall. The two men hope that Man to Man will provide the individual mentoring needed to help men leave jail for good. The program begins with an application process which includes an essay on intention. In this essay, applicants must prove that they want help and are willing to work hard to change their lives. If an individual is accepted, then the founders of “Man to Man” have one important rule the individual must follow: no using drugs. For addicts, using is a way to deal with everything. Getting high is a way to celebrate and also a way to deal with sadness or loss, said Hall. The cycle of reliance on drugs is what Scott and Hall are striving to break with the men that they help. For the two men, their new organization has provided another responsibility that keeps them sober. Scott said through their own lives, they strive to provide a good example for others and that faltering back to

local spotlight

Casey Parrott, Melvin Hall, and James Scott pose for Blur cameras during a meeting at Athfest.

addiction or crime would let a lot of people down. In the end, what really keeps the two men away from their addictions is the new happiness in their lives. While Melvin Hall cried after he first read Narcotics Anonymous, he now cries tears of joy when he watches his daughter laugh and smile. Through Man to Man, Scott, Hall and Parrott hope to share their new found joy with others who are willing to change.

MAN TO MAN From information on the organization, contact James Scott at 706-351-3984, Melvin Hall 706-351-4765, and Carey Parrott at 706-351-9666.

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Courtesy Popfest

START

a Scott Reid article

Summer is the season of the festival. You can attend festivals for everything,

music especially. As music festivals become larger, harder to navigate, and more about the bottom line than they are about the connection between artist and fan, music lovers of all stripes are looking for that deeper connection, a way to enjoy many artists of the music they love and not have to shell out big bucks to view the bands through binoculars... Athens is lucky. Its small town charms and deep-rooted musical community allows for better opportunities to witness organic, homespun festivals that have hearts in the right place, allowing fans to see musicians who want to be there to play their music for the sake of song craft - not a large payday. For the past 10 years, Athfest weekend in June has played host to hundreds of bands, in addition to arts, crafts and children’s exhibitions in the hopes of drawing together community. It is the biggest summer event in Athens when many University students have already left town for summer jobs, internships or a shot to make it in the real world. But a new underdog has emerged in the middle of August, in the dead zone week before students return for the fall semester. Mike Turner moved to Athens from Panama City, Florida in 2004. He had been running his Happy, Happy 52

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Birthday To Me (HHBTM) record label from there since 1999, and relocated the label (and its 100-odd releases to date) to Athens. HHBTM releases pop bands, pure and simple. In all of its forms. The cutesy, “twee” kind, the acoustic singer-songwriters, the kind with synthesizers you can dance to, and the list goes on. If Turner likes the band, he might release something by it. The label’s website says, matter of factly, “If we like what you sent in, we will get in touch with you.” Turner planned to move to Athens for several years, consistently held back by various factors until he decided if he didn’t make the move four years ago, then he never would. It just so happened that Athens has a booming pop music scene, and since HHBTM has been located in Athens, many of its releases have been local bands. It now seems miraculous how he did it, but less than two months after

moving to Athens, Turner organized the first Athens Popfest featuring 52 pop bands of various stripes and sounds at just two clubs, Tasty World and the 40 Watt Club. “To secure that I would leave [Panama City], I started booking this to celebrate finally moving to Athens,” Turner says. Turner booked much of the first festival, in fact, from Panama City, contacting bands he had previously interacted with through the label. According to the Popfest website, that first year drew 800 attendees. The festival is growing at a rapid rate. Now in its fifth year, the 2008 edition will feature 83 bands and it is estimated that more than 3,500 attended in 2007, with possibly more to attend this year. What’s more, the festival will take place this year at five different venues in downtown Athens, ranging from your typical bars and clubs, to an independent movie theater, to a bar with a movie theater. The festival is clearly

growing, and unlike Athfest, which is a festival designed to highlight and unite the Athens community, it’s not just Athenians attending. Popfest has attracted attendees from Japan, the United Kingdom, France and Canada. So what does it take for a young, fun, cardigan-bedecked pop band to end up with a spot on the bill at the country’s preeminent underground pop festival? Talking to Athens weekly magazine Flagpole before the third festival in 2006, Turner explained the very simple process. “I start with a dream list of headliners I would like to have,” he said, “and I work through those and see who’s available and who’s not. There’s also the label bands themselves playing, so that’s easy, that knocks out 15 to 20 bands. Then it goes into figuring out what friends of mine would like to play, and bands that are interesting to me at the time. So it’s asking them and seeing if they can do it, and logistically how we can

work out them touring or who we can put them on tour with and then there are always people who are like, ‘Hey, we’d like to play,’ who I never thought would want to play. So it’s headliners, the label bands, friends, bands I’m into but do not know personally, and then people approaching us themselves going, ‘We’d like to play.’” Turner added that a third of the bands are generally local, lesserknown bands, and booking them is usually an easier process because there’s no travel involved. Booking such a large number of local bands for the festival serves a multi-faceted purpose, according to Turner. The bands are given huge amounts of exposure from traveling attendees, the audience gets to see what Athens has to offer (even those in Athens who might not make it to concerts frequently), and then the local bands and touring bands can network to hook up future shows in

other towns. “It’s a unique time for them to be able to play their hometown in front of a lot of people from out of town and overseas, and also it’s a chance for them to play locally when they’ve got media focusing on Athens,” adds Gordon Lamb, a local writer and Popfest co-organizer. “They might get more exposure in one weekend than they did the previous year.” The past two years, many of the bands from outside Athens booked for the festival have been discovered thanks to a website called SonicBids. The site gives bands a chance to upload an electronic press kit (a package containing some of the band’s music, biography and contact information) to the festival in order to be given consideration to play. Lamb estimates that the festival received more than 300 submissions through the site this year. “It’s a very streamlined process, it’s easy to respond to bands because it’s all electronic,” says Len CON

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Neighbors, a co-organizer responsible for upkeep of the festival’s website. The site requires a small fee, but being so open about submissions, the festival allowed free mail-in submissions for bands that did not wish to pay the fee. Did any bands submit through SonicBids that immediately won over the organizers, jaw-droppers that made them think they had to book that band at once? Considering they originally planned to pick no more than 10 bands from the site, and ended up with almost 25 bands from site submissions, it’s safe to say so. In fact, some bands may have been rejected not because they weren’t talented, but that they might not have fit right with the other bands of the festival. “SonicBids makes it easy to imagine a roster for a good afternoon of music,” Turner says. Taking chances on small, unknown bands has paid off well in some instances for both the band as well as the exposure levels of the festival. Take Jacksonville, Florida’s Black Kids. The indie-pop quintet had never played a show outside of Jacksonville until Turner invited them to play the 2007 festival. Several of the bands on Turner’s Happy, Happy Birthday To Me label had played with Black Kids in Jacksonville and recommended them to Turner. After listening to the band on MySpace, Turner booked Black Kids for a 2 p.m. Saturday afternoon slot at Little Kings Shuffle Club (the first slot of a long, hot day of bands), not always the most well-attended shows of the festival due to attendee exhaustion. “They came out that day like they were headlining the 40 Watt, they played a great show,” says Turner. The media coverage given the show by bloggers and music press resulted

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in a small level of fame for the band, who has since completed several international tours and will release its first album, Partie Traumatic, on Columbia Records in July. “It’s kind of strange how that show has been given a sort of legendary status,” he says. As the profile of the festival has grown, so has the size of the acts Turner and company can book. In 2006, one night was headlined by the Mountain Goats, a mid-level indiefolk band led by singer/songwriter John Darnielle since the early 1990s. The Goats are no strangers to Athens, having played in town several times throughout the nineties, but its shows are always a joyous occasion. The band has a near cult-like following among college radio and indie-rock enthusiasts because of its Darnielle-penned broken home and fractured love narratives. 2007 featured a headliner in Daniel Johnston, an underground singer/songwriter who has been performing since the mid-1980s. Johnston suffers from bipolar disorder and sings quiet and affecting songs about lovable subjects such as his boyhood crush, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and superheroes in such a transfixing and innocent manner, he makes fans out of tough guys. A remarkable number of celebrities have claimed to be Johnston fans, from David Bowie and Kurt Cobain to the Flaming Lips and Simpsons co-creator Matt Groening. He came to mainstream attention in 2006, when the stunning documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, won the Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival. A major headliner of this year’s festival will be Roky Erickson and the Explosives. Erickson is the 61-yearold former leader of the massively

influential 1960s Texas psychedelic band the 13th Floor Elevators. Erickson was experiencing a rise to fame with his innovative guitar and vocal stylings in the late 1960s when several drug arrests and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia sent him to mental institutions, where he was subjected to several years of horrific electroshock therapy. The past several decades upon his release have been difficult for Erickson, and it wasn’t until the beginning of this decade he was considered stable enough to begin performing live again. The booking of such a legendary, but fragile, figure such as Erickson must have been extremely difficult, but it surprisingly wasn’t, according to Lamb. “That came pretty quickly,” he says. “It came down to getting in touch with the right people, making the right offer, and getting a date nailed down. That’s really how festival bookings should be.” The most difficult band to book for the Popfest, according to Lamb and Turner, is this year’s Saturday headliner, the Music Tapes, a ‘90s Athens band that has been on a hiatus for nearly 10 years. Led by Julian Koster, also a former member of Athens’ seminal Neutral Milk Hotel, the band didn’t have a huge list of demands to play. Instead, it just didn’t feel ready to play again, despite Turner and Lamb asking Koster and friends to perform for several of the Popfests. “Each year I would get ahold of Julian, and he would say, ‘No, not ready.’ This year just kind of worked out as the right time for them to play again.” It helps that the Tapes will release its first album in nine years on August 19 with Merge Records. Not every band that plays Popfest comes from the U.S. of A, however.

Turner released several albums for the Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan pop group Elekibass, a party-pop goodtime explosion that gets all crowd members moving and singing along to infectious choruses and melodies. Asked through e-mail his impressions of the previous Athens Popfests he’s played, guitarist and vocalist Sakamoto Youichi wrote, “Elekibass play many music fest in Japan, Taiwan, and USA that is great, but number one fest is Athens Popfest! This is the fest that pop music’s true meaning overflows.” This overflow, explains Youichi, is caused by the fact that every band loves pop music, and the festival has love for pop music. “Elekibass went to USA many time and many place. Everything is great! But number one is Athens town! All the people loves the music.” When Turner brings an international band to the U.S. to play the Popfest, much like he did with Elekibass or Ninetynine from Melbourne, Australia last year, it’s almost always in conjunction with a tour of the U.S., often with another HHBTM band. Elekibass toured with Athens pop luminaries Of Montreal and 63 Crayons on past tours. This also enables bands on the label to tour mutually in Japan or Australia with much more ease. Despite being the daunting

undertaking that the Popfest is, Turner and pals are already thinking about next year, and how to make the festival bigger, better and poppier. “I’ve already got a list of like, 100 bands I’m excited about,” Turner says. “That will probably change over and over and over.” With that many dream bands, the guys don’t see much likelihood of an end to the fest. “We want people to have to park in Atlanta,” Neighbors says jokingly. “There’s new and exciting bands every year,” Lamb adds. “We could get tired of doing it, but it won’t have run its course as long as there are new and exciting bands, and we stay committed to our goals.” Only in Athens can you see such a refreshing and pure outlook on planning a behemoth five-day event that aims to showcase what is often viewed as merely a niche, under appreciated musical genre. Instead, Mike Turner and his friends work incredibly hard year-long to bring together a community-enriching, excellently organized, and, most importantly, fun event that aims to reconnect music with audience, artist with fan, and town with resident. Since we have many more years to look forward to experiencing the Popfest, let’s hope that neither Turner nor the festival’s attendees ever stray from those stated goals.

Courtesy Popfest

Courtesy Popfest

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WARNIN COMEDY G:

THE RANT

comedy W

ell kids, it’s that time of year again…time to head back to college. Time to stop drinking every night, having unprotected sex and spending all day sleeping off your hangover at mom and dad’s house and time to start drinking every night, having unprotected sex and spending all day sleeping off your hangover in your dorm room. Let’s face it. After baking in the sun all summer and baking your brain with bong hits, the last thing you want to do is pack up the shitty Saturn your folks bought you and head back to your favorite institution of higher learning.

gas prices getting you down? bring it current date gas receipt and admission is $2

But since Dad’s been putting in extra shifts at the slaughterhouse and Mom has stopped wasting all her spending money abusing prescription drugs just to have enough to put you through school, you kind of feel obligated. So, here are a few tips for those going back to school, as well as a few for those going for the first time:

EX

PLICIT

MATERIAL

Back to school By Don Jamieson

HOW TO CHOOSE A SCHOOL NEVER choose a school because of a

good curriculum or well-respected professors. Pick a school with a cool mascot. There’s a reason 100,000 people show up every Saturday to see the Georgia Bulldogs play in Sanford Stadium: a cool mascot. Do you know what they have at Sacred Heart University? Bucky The Outdoor Pioneer. This mascot is retarded. He has freckles and wears a coonskin cap. You wouldn’t catch me sitting in the stands at the Homecoming Game yelling “Go Bucky!” I’d rather be date-raped by an entire fraternity. You know your mascot stinks when Barney the Dinosaur or the Powder Puff Girls can kick his ass. They also say that you should pick a college based on your strengths and talents, but I couldn’t find any schools that catered to someone who frequents strip clubs, drinks Jager-bombs all night and can belch the entire alphabet. Another thing they tell you to consider when picking a college is how far away from your family you want to live. When I heard that I said, “University Of Juneau, here I come.” I went on a college website recently

and it was funny how they were trying to sell you on the school. This particular one said the campus had a library, academic and administrative buildings and computer facilities. WHAT COLLEGE DOESN’T HAVE THOSE THINGS? Do they have oxygen too? I mean, if you have a water park, a casino and a whorehouse…those you put up on the website. When is “Girls Gone Wild” in town to tape one of their “College Girls Exposed” DVD’s? This is the kind of info that I need. And if you take one of these virtual tours online, make sure you do it drunk. That way, when you actually go to the school, you can do keg stands all night and still be totally able to find the way back to your dorm room…”Hey, this blurry building looks familiar.” I’m telling you, I drank so much in college, I got a partial scholarship from Heineken. And finally, the only difference between a 2-year and a 4-year college is that you end up moving back into your parent’s house and trolling Facebook for girls you wanted to band in high school much quicker when you fail out of a 2-year school. ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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COMEDY

THE RANT

buying books The number one rule is to ALWAYS, ALWAYS, AL-

WAYS buy used school books. First of all, they’re cheaper. Which leaves you lots more beer and (fill in drug of choice here) money. Also, these books are usually highlighted already so you don’t need to read the entire book. I mean, how dumb could the last person who owned it be? After all, they were college students. Who wants to waste hours studying Astrobiology when you could be spending that time getting stoned and playing Guitar Hero? Actually, I think every student should write the grade they got in the class on the inside of the book so the next person who owns it knows that the right stuff got highlighted. Believe me, if they had sold used term papers and final exams when I was in school, I would’ve bought those too.

FINANCIAL AID Financial Aid is very important for families who can’t afford the full cost of tuition, room and board, books, vodka, pot, bail money, stomach pumps, bongs, funnels, condoms, roofies, abortions and other college-related expenses.

PICKING A MAJOR Some majors don’t even make sense. I almost

went to a college that had majors like Automotive Technology and Construction Technology. Aren’t those things you do when you drop out of high school and work for your Dad? I’ve come up with some of my own majors: Dominos Pizza Delivery Tech, Security Guard at the Mall Tech and Handing Out Fliers On The Street In The Middle of The Summer While Wearing a Gorilla Suit Tech.

comedy

orientation During orientation, most schools will give you a pamphlet

on “How To Prepare Your Dorm Room.” What a waste of time. It doesn’t teach you any of the things you really need to know. Like, how to squeeze 2 cases of Natty Ice into one of those mini-fridges. Or, how to make a bong out of a lamp. Or, how to have sex on the top bunk without waking up your roommate. Especially when you’ve got your ass pressed up against that cold, dorm room, jail cell wall. I don’t want to learn how to install bookshelves. My room freshman year was right next to the women’s showers. Teach me how to drill a hole through the cinderblock so I can have a live peep show. They always try to have activities for you when you first arrive. But they are always lame. For instance, my school had a Pioneer Weekend, which included Sumo Wrestling and a bonfire. Yep, there’s nothing like standing around an open flame totally sober and a bunch of fat Chinese guys in diapers to get you psyched for the semester. Screw making S’mores with some prissy sorority girls, I’m going on a beer run.

dormitories NEVER live in the dorms when you don’t have to. That’s like living at Melrose Place. Everyone knows everyone else’s business and there is no privacy. Plus, who wants to get stuck with some psycho roommate who tries to burn you in your sleep with a curling iron just because you masturbated on his mattress? Live off-campus. Want to play Beer Pong at 8 o’clock in the morning? No problem. Need a place to hold Bucky The Outdoor Pioneer prisoner? No problem. Plus, when you bring home a fattie (and you will), nobody will ever know. I once lived in a dorm called, Frelinghuysen, which actually sounds more like a federal prison than a place for young people to live and study. We didn’t have a Residence Counselor. We had a Warden. Instead of student I.D.’s, we just had mugshots. And if you were caught bending the rules even a little bit, like lighting bottle rockets under someone’s door at 4am, you were sent to solitary. You think it’s hard to get a tipsy college girl back to your dorm room after a party? Try it when “Lights Out” is at 9pm sharp and your cellmate is hornier than you are.They say you find yourself in college. The only thing I ever found in college was where to get a fake ID and the liquor store that would take them. I’ll be honest; I did so many crazy things in college that the statute of limitations on some of them aren’t even up yet. What I say is…go to college online. It’s cheaper, you can cheat undetected and with all the school shootings these days, you’ll never have to worry about bullets piercing the firewall.

CHECK OUT DON JAMIESON ONLINE AT WWW.DONJAMIESON.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/DONJAMIESON 58

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comic spotlight WARNIN

misery loves company

EXP LICITG! MATERIAL

comedian doug stanhope is happy being miserable It’s 2 a.m. and I just missed a phone call.  I was ready to retire for the night but out of curiosity, decided to check my voicemail.  “Nicole, its Doug Stanhope.  Its 11 o’clock…no, 2 am your time.  So I was calling to do that interview…evidently, you don’t work my hours.” Sensing a slight slur in his speech, undoubtedly caused by alcohol, I immediately call him back and was greeted by a generous burp.  Stanhope asks me to hold on as he fishes from his fridge another Rolling Rock.  He explains to me that it might be hard to understand him as he just had 9 teeth removed as a result of periodontal disease. “It’s a new mouth I have so if you don’t understand me make me repeat it because I’m working around having no teeth and being drunk.” “I fucking hate going to doctors,” he admits.  “All I went for was to get my teeth cleaned. It (his teeth) didn’t hurt. Nothing ever bothered me. I quit smoking so I went in to fucking get my teeth cleaned and they said ‘we can’t even clean them because you have [periodontal] so bad you’ll probably need to have extractions’. I didn’t want to know that. Just shut up! Don’t fucking tell me! They go, ‘do you have diabetes cause we see this a lot in diabetes?’ and I go, ‘I don’t know.’ I wouldn’t know if I have diabetes because I don’t go to doctors and ask questions and now you’re getting me fucking paranoid about this shit, you fucking assholes, I just want my teeth cleaned…” He stops for a moment to take a swig of his beer. “I fucking hate it. I have contact lenses and I always forget to order 5,000 pair before I have to get another eye examination. I’ve had the same fucking contact lenses for years; it (prescription) doesn’t change. And they do that test where they blow that air in your eye like a pellet gun with no beebee. I don’t care if

I have fucking glaucoma, I’m not here for that.” Stanhope ponders for a moment. “If I get ten minutes of material out of this shit it’ll make me happy. Sometimes

you have to go to a small, Quentin Tarantino Mexico border town to have all your teeth removed just to get new material…” A standup comedian for over 18

years, his pessimistic yet humorous attitude first paid off for Stanhope in 2003, when he, along with fellow comedian Joe Rogan, replaced Adam Corrola and Jimmy ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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comedy

comedy

comic spotlight

Kimmel on Comedy Central’s ‘The Man Show,’ at 13 years old in the hospital in the waiting a national launching pad for his career. “I got room. That was in the early 80’s. In the early fired from a comedy club in Austin but as soon 90’s I was smoking on planes. In ‘94 I rememas I got on the fucking Man Show, I was wel- ber I had quit [but] then started smoking become to come back. ‘Oh those were the old cause I had to fly to air force bases in Japan and days when you used to get naked.’ I would still Korea and you could smoke on international get naked. I guess I “banned” them by work- flights. And I go ‘ah fuck I don’t want to waste ing rock clubs in town and telling them to go this privilege’ so I started smoking again just so fuck themselves.” He I could smoke on a 14 prefers performing hour flight.” small rock and comeWhen he’s not dy clubs, recently perspreading his misery forming in Atlanta at thousands of fans be on TV or . to The Earl. around the world, His success didn’t Stanhope spends time I have no qualms ... I love stop there. Less than at home with his livewhere I’m at. a year ago, Showtime in girlfriend, Bingo, first aired Stanhope’s at their home in Biscomedy in his own bee, Arizona, a minisspecial, No Refunds. cule historic mining Stanhope knows the town in the middle formula to success yet of the desert, drinkchooses to live his life ing while answering now in almost obscuemails and checking rity from the public his MySpace. On ocspotlight. He tells me, casion, a fan may hear “I don’t have any dea response back, “if sires anymore in this I’m drunk and in the business. I don’t even mood.” He’s even want to be on TV or dedicated to blogbe famous. I have no ging on his website, qualms…I love where always looking for a I’m at. I would love story to share with his it if more people who fans, consisting mostwere into what I do ly of “lonely, disgrunknew about me. I get tled men.” Stanhope a lot of ‘how come afis so dedicated to enter 14 years of listening to stand up comedy I tertaining his readers he went as far as sacrificjust heard of you?’ You wish there was a way ing his testosterone for his fans by following to find those people but my audience is such through with a scheduled vasectomy. “I actuan eclectic group of people that it’s not like ally pulled my car over on the way and said I you can advertise on a channel and go these don’t have to do this at all; I don’t want to do are the Doug Stanhope people.” For example, this. I started breaking out in cold sweats just “I have grandparents who come to my show thinking about needles, but I need an update and I make fun of them for stumbling into the for my website.” wrong place and they go, no we’ve been listenThat’s not all Stanhope does with his spare ing to you for years.” time. “I do stuff like today I fucking fixed up Stanhope is notorious (as evidenced by our this house to make it a perfect crash pad beconversation) for digressing from an original cause I got my stupid niece and nephew, and I thought during his standup, as he feverishly hate kids, but it does make some things great, chain smokes onstage. Now without a ciga- like being able to spoil them and make their rette in hand, he more than likely will be chain home life seem tragic in comparison so I’m drinking bottles of beer onstage. “I quit smok- turning this house into a Disneyland in the ing 6 months ago… I used to fuck a lot too and middle of the desert.” A favorite pastime of his I don’t do that much at all [either]…I still love is playing tennis in the middle of the scorchcigarettes actually. I smoked for 27 years and ing summer heat. “I played three sets of ten[twice] I quit for 9 months, once in the ear- nis against a former NFL player in the Arily 90s and then once in the late 90’s. Now it’s zona sun yesterday for two hours and I got all different. It’s a whole lifestyle thing. You my ass kicked, I almost fucking died on the can’t do anything. It really started to control court.” The former NFL player was “no one my life in that now you can’t go anywhere and famous.” “I think he kicked a couple of kicks smoke. I remember when I was a kid smoking professionally but it’s technically accurate. His ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE 60

I don’t even want to be famous

I would love it if more people who were into what I do knew about me.

“I’m happy when I’m

fucking miserable.

If I ran out of hate or became a fucking Richard Gere Buddhist I would

fail miserably.”

JUST FOR LAUGHS

doug stanhope YOU RECOGNIZE HIM FROM: The Man Show

get the pancakes

SHOWTIME SPECIAL “No Refunds” (2007) LOCATION Bisbee, Arizona TOP 5 SONGS IN IPOD SHUFFLE: Big Empty - STP Long, Tall, Glasses One toke over the line Some train to Satanville (I hae no idea what this is) Sullivan Street - Counting Crows

name is Gabe Windstrom. He’s a punter and I think he played for the Seahawks for a minute and played NFL Europe a lot. But technically (heavy emphasis) it’s correct that he was a former NFL player and that makes the story true.” Stanhope will take the tiniest shred of annoyance and twist the experience into the most utter disturbance of his life. He manifests his own misery, fueling his fire of comedic rage. No matter how his life turns out, Stanhope will always find the negative. “I’m happy when I’m fucking miserable. If I ran out of hate or became a fucking Richard Gere Buddhist I would fail miserably.” Hence, Doug Stanhope will always be happy. With scorching days of summer sizzling to an end, Stanhope will once again take to the stage in rock n roll clubs across the nation. In September, he begins his Europe tour back in Ireland, where in 2006 he was booed by an angry crowd when he made a bold statement that Irish women were too ugly to rape, an insult with a crushing effect, resulting in the cancellation of all remaining slots for the remainder of the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival he was booked for. If you missed his performance at the Earl, you can see and purchase his standup on his website. You’ll witness his liberal rants from politics to religion, and always sensitive subjects in between. You can expect him to unleash his brutally honest views and opinions but be prepared, you could find yourself nodding your head in agreement while you laugh with him (or at him) but you could also end up offended and pissed off. Regardless, you’ll need a seatbelt - because Stanhope will take you on one hell of a comedic ride. -Nicole Black

just for laughs

In memory of the comic genius that was George Carlin, the Blur Staff has selected some of our favorite Carlin oneliners: Why are hemorrhoids called “hemorrhoids” instead of “assteroids”? If the “black box” flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn’t the whole damn airplane made out of that shit? Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster than you is a maniac? I’m in shape. Round is a shape. Why is it called tourist season if we can’t shoot at them? Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them? The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

Three kids come down to the kitchen and sit around the breakfast table. The mother asks the oldest boy what he’d like to eat. “I’ll have some fuckin’ French toast,” he says. The mother is outraged at his language, hits him, and sends him upstairs. She asks the middle child what he wants. “Well, I guess that leaves more fuckin’ French toast for me,” he says. She is livid, smacks him, and sends him away. Finally she asks the youngest son what he wants for breakfast. “I don’t know,” he says meekly, “but I definitely don’t want the fuckin’ French toast.”

the jaws of life A guy enters a bar carrying an alligator. Says to the patrons, “Here’s a deal. I’ll open this alligator’s mouth and place my genitals inside. The gator will close his mouth for one minute, then open it, and I’ll remove my unit unscathed. If it works, everyone buys me drinks.” The crowd agrees. The guy drops his pants and puts his privates in the gator’s mouth. Gator closes mouth. After a minute, the guy grabs a beer bottle and bangs the gator on the top of its head. The gator opens wide, and he removes his genitals unscathed. Everyone buys him drinks. Then he says: “I’ll pay anyone $100 who’s willing to give it a try.” After a while, a hand goes up in the back of the bar. It’s a woman. “I’ll give it a try,” she says, “but you have to promise not to hit me on the head with the beer bottle.”

Stiff as a board? A woman was in bed with her lover when she heard her husband opening the front door. “Hurry!” she said, “stand in the corner.” She quickly rubbed baby oil all over him and then she dusted him with talcum powder. “Don’t move until I tell you to,” she whispered. “Just pretend you’re a statue.” “What’s this, honey?” the husband inquired as he entered the room. “Oh, it’s just a statue,” she replied nonchalantly. “The Smiths bought one for their bedroom. I liked it so much, I got one for us too.” No more was said about the statue, not even later that night when they went to sleep.

G!

WARNIN LICIT EXP MATERIAL

Around two in the morning the husband got out of bed, went to the kitchen and returned a while later with a sandwich and a glass of milk. “Here,” he said to the ‘statue’, “eat something. I stood like an idiot at the Smiths’ for three days and nobody offered me as much as a glass of water.”

no use pulling out A beautiful, voluptuous woman went to a gynecologist. The doctor took one look at her, and all his professionalism went out the window. He immediately told her to undress. After she had disrobed, the doctor began to stroke her thigh. Doing so, he asked her, “Do you know what I’m doing?” “Yes,” she replied, “you’re checking for any abrasions or dermatological abnormalities.” “That’s right,” said the doctor. He then began to fondle her breasts. “Do you know what I’m doing now?” “Yes,” the woman said, “you’re checking for any lumps or breast cancer.” “Correct,” replied the shady doctor. Finally, he mounted his patient and started having sexual intercourse with her. He asked, “Do you know what I’m doing now?” “Yes,” she said. “You’re getting herpes, which is why I came here in the first place.”

it’s called listerine A young man walks up and sits down at the bar. Bartender: “What can I get you?” Man: “I want 6 shots of Jagermeister.” Bartender: “6 shots?!? Are you celebrating something?” Man: “Yeah, my first blowjob.” Bartender: “Well, in that case, let me give you a 7th on the house.” Man: “No offense, sir. But if 6 shots won’t get rid of the taste, nothing will.”

Think you’re funny? Submit your jokes online to [email protected] with “Just For Laughs” in the subject line. ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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A&E

A&E

movies

ARTS

previews

Igor (SEPTEMBER 19) (Anthony Ledonis) The most promising animation film for the fall, Igor is a story that sheds new light on monsters, offering a cute little hunchback as a Mad Scientist’s lab assistant. Along the trek to becoming a real scientist and winning the Evil Scientist Award, he learns lessons of life and aspiration. John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Christian Slater and Jennifer Coolidge provide perfect voices, and are joined by Jay Leno and Molly Shannon to make this a punchy cast headed for animation perfection.

+ ENTERTAINMENT

movie previews

By JENNI WILLIAMS

making sure that it’s worth your $9.50

Management The Duchess (SEPTEMBER 12) (Saul Dibb) Kiera Knightley and Ralph Fiennes star in this film about the Duchess of Devonshire. An 18th Century aristocrat, Georgiana displays her personal life and political extravagantness to entertain the masses, hundreds of years later and to those who most likely have never heard of her. But, with a solid duo playing lead and a story never before attempted, this promises a unique and memorable account of entertaining history worth noting.

The Assassination of a High School President (SEPTEMBER 12) (Brett Simon) Starring Mischa Barton and Bruce Willis, this is the story of a “beauty and the geek” team-up to find the culprit of stolen SAT exams. But, like any good Bruce film, what begins as a smaller problem brings on a larger and more violent one that probably delivers laughable moments to level out the mood. Think Die Hard meets Lizzie McGuire.

BURN AFTER READING (SEPTEMBER 12) (Written and Directed by The Coen Brothers) Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand. The story is about two gym-buffs who discover a disc containing top secret files of a CIA agent and plot to steal it. Get ready for non-stop laughter and entertainment as the Coen brothers bring you comedy and crime in a perfect beginning of the fall film run.

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ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

THE WOMEN (SEPTEMBER 12) (Diana English) Starring Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Meg Ryan (glad she is back), Carrie Fisher and Annette Bening, not to mention Cloris Leachman, Candice Bergen and Bette Midler. With an endless cast of notable female stars and a no less classic story, this remake of the 1939 film by the same name will certainly live up to the success of its predecessor. The story of female bonding and staying young through the years, “The Women” will please and entertain, bringing the tears and laughter that make every good chick flick what it is.

Taken

Whiteout

(SEPTEMBER 19) (Pierre Morel) Another kidnapping flick, but this time with slave trade thrown in as the ransom risk, Liam Neeson plays a father and a detective out to solve the crime and save his daughter. Backed up by Maggie Grace and Famke Janssen, this film will serve action and suspense for a possibility any parent dreads.

(SEPTEMBER 19) (Dominic Sena) As the sun sets for the next six months in Antarctica, a U.S. Marshall, played by Kate Beckinsale, sets out to track a killer in the dark. Inevitably a phenomenal cinematography display and, with Beckinsale as a tough guy, eye candy. Based on a comic book, this story should dredge up suspense and fear on screen.

Nights in Rodanthe (SEPTEMBER 26) (George C. Wolfe) It will be impossible not to take stereotypical expectations with you to this Romantic Drama about two people who find each other during hard times in their life. Richard Gere plays a doctor who road trips to visit his estranged son and runs into Diane Lane, playing a down-trodden woman who is unhappily married and escaping at North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Two consciences of crisis come together for inevitable love and guidance through hard times, so get ready for sappy romance but an encouraging (aren’t they always) story.

(SEPTEMBER 19) (Stephen Belber) Jennifer Aniston, Woody Harrelson and Steve Zahn unite to play characters in the story of a traveling art saleswoman who tries desperately to shake off an annoying Motel-owning man who falls in love with her during her stay. He follows her back home, where upon running into her boyfriend, a love triangle of organic people with big dreams from small towns collides and delivers a quaint and happy tale.

Blindness (SEPTEMBER 19) (Fernando Meirelles) Based on the novel by Jose Saramago, a city is overtaken by a sudden case of blindness that lands the infected in a mental hospital and left for ravage against criminals and the physically fitter. Julianne Moore plays wife to doctor Mark Ruffalo and feigns the blindness to help save her husband and others from the deathly hospital. Expect violence and gruesome morals, but enjoy a story of desperate hope and survival.

ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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FOOD

FOOD

dives to delicacies

decisions, decisions

under or above ground, two great athens meals THREE ATHENS AREA LOCATIONS

SOME OF OUR MENU ITEMS:

SEAFOOD CHARMAINE CHICKEN MARSALA THREE CHEESE BAKED PENNE BOLOGNESE TRADITIONAL LASAGNA PASTA DEPALMA CHICKEN SCALOPPINI

DOWNTOWN 706-354-6966 401 E. Broad St. Athens, GA 30601

a sATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE t i r e v o n i v in

EASTSIDE 706-369-0085 1965 Barnett Shoals Athens, GA 30605 WESTSIDE 706-552-1237 2467 Jefferson Rd. Athens, GA 30607

CRAB LINGUINI PIZZA PRIMAVERA

Photos courtesy Nicole Black

WILD MUSHROOM AND 3 CHEESE PIZZA

A-OK Café & Basil Press

nd fo r r es er vat io n s a t u s o n li n e c u r r en t m en u vi si

m o .c fe a c n a li ta si a lm a p e www.d

If ye quests for hidden treasure and a bounty of food delights, look no further than the A-OK Café. I had to be part Indiana Jones to find it, but you won’t - because I’m gonna tell you right where to look. 154 College Avenue, across from the Grill. Look carefully, it’s just a doorway at street level. The real treasure is literally underground. You may remember it as Kirk’s Kafe (or not). It’s under new ownership. Reading the menu on the door and trying to

convince my daughter that it would be safe to go down the stairs, we were beckoned by a nice woman who turns out to be the owner and the chef. At the bottom of the stairs you turn left into an intimate café serving a simple menu of sandwiches, soup and salads. It’s very basic with Carolina Blue walls, and UGA themed tables and chairs. Street level windows provide ample lighting and a great view of the feet passing by with seating for eighteen. Go to the counter to order your food, and the

chef will bring it to you when it’s ready. This is real custom made fare- you fill out a little checklist of what you want on your sandwich. First pick your basic sandwich. The combination sandwiches are $5.95 and are named after famous newspapers. I got the Boston Globe a huge hunk of turkey, bacon and cheese (your choice of cheese). Big stomach, little mouth, I had to open wide. Or choose a meal with a regular name like club, chicken salad or Philly cheese steak, to name a few. The latter are ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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FOOD

FOOD

dives to delicacies

toasted on a Panini grill and cost $6.50. Now, to customize. Choose your bread from a list of seven varieties. Multi-grain, whole wheat, marble rye, sourdough, sub, croissant, and of course white bread. Add toppings like lettuce, homegrown tomatoes, cucumber, banana peppers, and several others. All the sandwiches come with a pickle spear and a choice of pasta salad, potato salad, cole slaw or chips. If you like something more deli style, go for a deli sandwich. Choose from classics like chicken salad, tuna salad, egg salad, BLT, a variety of meat based items or more health conscious selections like veggie or veggie with hummus or cheese. These delights are between $4.00 and $5.50. If you’re not in a sandwich state of mind, you can opt for something really simple like a $1.50 hot dog. Add chili, slaw or cheese - $.25 each. Or get some soup something fresh every day. Small is $3.00 and large is $4.75. If cool and crisp is what your palate craves, get a salad. A garden salad is $3.75. Or spruce it up with grilled chicken for $6.50. In between you can get a chef salad or pasta salad. And here is the treasure this adventurer is always seeking - something free! Fountain drinks are priced at zero for UGA students and staff with a valid ID! The tea comes with my daughter’s highest praises, and she IS a tea connoisseur. Now that’s a great A-OK meal deal! Open Monday - Friday, 10:30 to 6:00. If you like your food served with a little more flair, and above ground, try The Basil Press on Washington Street. When they first opened several years ago, I took my wife there for our anniversary. They wouldn’t let me in. No, they aren’t snobs and I don’t look like a slob. Silly me - no reservation and they were full. I thought I’d give them another chance, this time with a reservation. Stepping through the door, you feel like you’ve entered a Cote d’Azure bistro- oversized windows bring in a lot of light, and allow ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE 66

for a marvelous view of the pedestrian traffic on the street. The tables are covered with crisp white tablecloths accented by black slate placemats. Approaching the maitre d podium, made simply of wooden wine crates neatly stacked on each other, you are greeted by a friendly smile on the face of the waiter who is dressed in a basil green chefs coat, the double breasted kind. He leads you to a table, bidding you to be seated in the wooden chair with such simple lines. As he hands you the menu, sumptuously encased in a padded cover that resembles brushed stainless steel, you notice the walls that are made of red brick. And here is where things begin to be a little less simple. Decisions, decisions, so many options on the menu and wine list. Glass or bottle? Red, white, sparkling? I think I counted about fifty choices on the wine list. Fifty! Prices range from $28.00 to $108.00 per bottle. A single glass ranges from $6.00 to $10.00. If you are like me, you know what you like and go with that, regardless of the rules of wine consumption. But the menu very kindly offers suggestions for what wine goes with what food. So, lets talk food. Don’t be bashful about your appetite- I’m not. Start with a soup. There is a daily special, or Gazpacho or the French Onion with a sprinkle of sherry. Just enough to flavor it. Soups range form $4.50 to $4.95. Next up is the salad, ranging in price from $5.50 for the Bistro to $7.50 for the most amazing salad I’ve eve seen. This one has a priceless presentation. Start with a handful of crisp greens, wrap multiple layers of prosciutto around it, stand it on end on the plate and place several cloves of garlic around it. Voila! I felt like I was defacing it somehow when I cut it up and mixed it on my plate. And now, the entrée. These range in price from $15.00 to $25.00. On TV you see the tuxedoed waiter bring the plate with almost enough food to feed a bird, and I was afraid of this, but these

fears were unfounded. My plate was fully covered by the portion of fish and the accompanying vegetables, but not for long as I greedily ate it all up. Cleaned the plate, what’s next? Dessert. Not just edible sweets, but also some of the liquid variety. A goodly selection of cordials and cognacs accompany the pastries. In a place like this, it’s not just the quality of the food you pay for, it’s also the service you receive. The whole experience is one of understated charm. - Matt Alexander

Got a dive or delicacy you’d like to see in The Athens Blur? Let us know at editorial@ athensblur.com

TASTE FOR YOURSELF A-Ok Cafe 154 College Ave. (706) 355-3002 DePalma’s 104 E.Washington St. (706) 227-8926

M.F.Y.B.A.

MEALS FOR YOUR

one dish wonders, LONG-LIFE specials and vegin’ right

By Jacquie Brasher Gas prices aren’t the only things rising these days. Have you noticed how much food costs lately? Too bad mom can’t come to the rescue every day with her tasty meals while you slog it out at college, huh? But hey, it’s not as hard as you think. Buying and cooking good food on a slim budget is actually easier than formulating excuses about why your research paper is late.

One Dish Wonders There’s a reason why casseroles are popular. It’s a one-stop-shop! And in college, when you’re running around from classes to parties, a one dish wonder could literally save your life. They make handy leftovers, too, and are one of the all-American great comfort foods. Here are a couple of simple recipes:

Curried Chicken and Broccoli Casserole 2 cups chopped broccoli 2 cooked boneless chicken breasts, cut in cubes 1 can cream of chicken soup 1 tsp. lemon juice 1 tsp. curry powder (add more if you like it spicy) ½ cup sharp cheddar cheese, (or any kind of cheese) ½ cup breadcrumbs 2 tbsp. melted butter

Directions:

Drop broccoli in boiling water for one minute. Drain. Arrange broccoli and cooked chicken in a casserole dish. Mix the soup, lemon juice and curry powder and pour over mixture. Sprinkle with cheese. Top with breadcrumbs. Drizzle melted butter over the whole dish and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until bubbly. (You can substitute broccoli with other veggies like cauliflower or asparagus.)

Red Beans and Rice ½ cup chopped onion ½ cup green bell pepper 1 clove garlic 2 tbsp. olive oil or butter 1 16 oz. can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed 1 ½ cups uncooked rice ¾ cup water or chicken broth Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

On medium heat, sauté onion, garlic, and bell pepper in oil. Add rice. Stir everything well for a minute. Add water or chicken broth. Add beans. Salt and pepper to taste. Cover, lower heat, and simmer for 20 minutes or until rice is cooked. Add more liquid if rice is too dry. ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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M.F.Y.B.A.

Soft Tortillas

Buying food on a budget also means making sure your food has a long shelf life. Here are two tried and true items:

English Muffins

Veg Out

Quick and Easy Vegetarian Chili

I know, I know. I like meat, too, but sometimes it’s just impossible to include it regularly on a tight budget. For those lean times, vegetarian options can be a very healthy lifesaver.

(They’re the funny looking round slices of bread with nooks and crannies in them.) They last a while and are great for breakfast or snacks. Pop a pair in the toaster and get creative! They’re great with all sorts of toppings. Try buttering warm muffins and topping them with jelly for a quick breakfast or make a fast toasted sandwich with a slice of ham and cheese.

Directions:

In a pot, sauté onion and garlic in oil on medium to medium-high heat until onion is translucent. Add celery, carrot, salt, and pepper. Sauté until carrots are tender, about five minutes. Add the canned

2 large portabella mushrooms (available in the produce section in most grocery stores) 1 large red onion, sliced Sliced tomato Lettuce Olive or vegetable oil Salt and pepper ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

and bake our pies and calzones on the stone, not in some conveyor belt oven, so when you take a bite you can’t help but say Bellissimo!

full bar

2 15.5 oz cans cannellini, navy, white, or kidney beans 1 28 oz can whole tomatoes ½ small can tomato paste 1 chopped medium bell pepper 1 diced medium carrot 1 diced stalk of celery 1 chopped onion 2 cloves minced garlic 2 tsp. chili powder 2 tbsp. olive or vegetable oil Salt and pepper

Portabella Burger

68

A package contains 10-12 tortillas. They can be frozen, and thaw quickly. You can make all sorts of fast food with these. Put grated cheese in a tortilla, fold over and place on a nonstick pan over medium heat. Brown lightly on both sides or until cheese melts. Instant quesadilla! You can add all sorts of fillings to these warm, fold-over delights. Try some thinlysliced apple and cheddar cheese for a quick, afternoon snack. Or chop up a couple of slices of cooked bacon, add a scrambled egg and voila! Your own breakfast burrito, minus a lot of processed junk you don’t need.

s zer eti ros gy

Live long and Prosper

nes, buffalo wing o z l a c s, fin s, r f r a e t p s e u u s b , s&s ger inn burgers a d ndw s & n , s ia sert ich app l “ At Sons of Italy, a t es es, d we make our special dough fresh every day ,

piz z sal as, i ad s

FOOD

TRY OUR DAILY LUNCH SPECIAL MON. - FRI. 11AM - 3PM SLICE W/TOPPING, SALAD & SOFT DRINK ONLY

tomatoes and tomato paste. Stir well. The tomatoes will begin to break down as you cook them. You can also help them along with a wooden spatula. Add the chili powder. After about 10-15 minutes, or until

Sliced cheese Mustard, mayo, ketchup Hamburger buns

Directions:

Clean mushrooms with a damp paper towel. Do not wash them because they will retain water and become soggy. Just wipe any dirt or grit

the tomatoes are broken down and saucy, add the beans. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until the consistency is to your liking and the beans are soft. Add more salt and pepper or chili powder as needed.

off them. Remove the stem. Brush both sides of the mushrooms with oil. Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper. Place in nonstick pan on medium high heat. Heat on both sides until mushrooms are slightly soft. Serve on buns with all the accompaniments. Makes two burgers. You can also sauté the onion if you don’t like them raw.

$4.75

WE DELIVER AND CATER! to place your order, CALL 706.543.2516 (  .   )

2095 S. Milledge Athens, Georgia 30605 In Milledge Plaza

SUMMER FINDS MEET BACK TO SCHOOL

by Sarah E. King

If you are like me, you probably use the lazy summer months to catch up on a little traveling: maybe hop a plane to Europe, road trip to California, soak up the sun somewhere exotic, or simply lay on the beach at grandma’s. Inevitably, any fashion forward individual picks up great finds at these locations, from the bright beaded jewelry of the Caribbean to Europe’s sophisticated scarves. But those are just for your summer wardrobe, right? Wrong. When you’re shopping for those back to school outfits, or simply taking stock of what you do have for the new semester, remember to keep your great summer finds in mind. With mix and matching always in style, create your own look by combining a few key fall items with great summer finds - and you will be sure to turn some heads.

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Euro-Inspired Scarf: One of my favorite things, and always so chic looking, these scarves can dress up any casual outfit or dress down eveningwear. The important thing is to not color-coordinate. Be playful. Match a bright scarf with something equally colorful, and you can easily avoid having your outfit look too much like winter wear. Personally, I think these things should be worn year round! Cotton Summer Dress: Leggings are still in, so that is a given. However, if you want to start your own trend, don a pair of colorful flats with your favorite summer dress. Nothing screams summer like a sundress and flip-flops, but if you must remain true to this classic style, try one of the new Gladiator style sandals. If you are really itching to try something new, pick up a long sweater to wear over a summer dress. It makes cotton dresses more appropriate for fall, and with such a wide range of styles and colors, you can grab a different sweater for every dress in your closet! ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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Funky Flats: This ever-popular European style has made it to the States, and thank goodness, because the right pair of flats makes any outfit look stylish. Not sure how to pull this look off? Pair flats with a dress, skinny jeans, a free-flowing skirt, or Bermuda shorts, and appreciate the subtle difference they make to your look. Really, try flats with anything in your closet. They are a perfect piece to dress up or dress down an outfit.

Beaded Caribbean Necklace: This one is easy. Pair with your favorite LBD (Little Black Dress), over a classy turtleneck, or with any solid-colored piece, and watch people take notice. Big jewelry is always in, and if you have a great story behind it, all the better.

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FOR THE FASHION-FORWARD GUY Guys have it easy. Slap on a pair of khaki shorts, a collared-tee and some sandals, and you’re set to go for class, work, the beach, a football game, or a party. But really, the ladies get to have all the fun when it comes to clothes. Guys, if you’re tired of going with the crowd, take a few tips from some of Europe’s finest men: • • • •

Rock a simple-colored scarf Colin Farrell style. Tight, graphic tees can make any guy trendy like soccer-stud Cristiano Ronaldo. Looking for something new downtown? Go David Beckham style with dark jeans, a button-up shirt and blazer for a classic night on the town. Fedoras make any man look sexy; just look at Orlando Bloom!

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WHEN IS RIGHT

TO WEAR WHITE? In fulfilling a lifetime dream, I just got back from a postgradation trip to Europe, where I backpacked my way across the continent. As you might expect, I noticed some wonderful fashion trends along the way. European styles always manage to find a way over to the States, so here are some things to look out for: We covered flats and scarves, but I’m telling you, hang on to this one. These trends are worn year-round in Europe, and I think we could really take a tip from them. They are great for just about every situation! Arabian-inspired pants. Think Aladdin meets the goucho, and there you are. I’m not sure how I feel about these baggy-in-the-crotch pants, but on the right person, they look pretty cool. Just try to avoid them in bright colors, or you’ll basically look like a clown. Shorts with tights. Another interesting style, but great for when the fall turns a little chilly. A pair of fashionable dress shorts and black tights can look quite chic. Unfortunately, some of the tights styles out there can have you looking like someone from an 80’s music video (or worse) so remain cautious with the styles and colors you choose. Black is always good, and grays and dark greens/ blues can be pulled off, but anything bright takes it a bit too far. Floppy ankle boots. Move over UGGs, because this trend screams chic, at half the price. Who actually needs UGG boots in Georgia anyways? Try a looser, more grown-up style with a pair of ankle boots, easily paired with skinny jeans, leggings and a loose tunic, or a knee-length freeflowing skirt.

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Ok, so some people make a huge deal about wearing white after Labor Day. Screw what they say. Rules are fo breaking! Wearing white is flattering on almost everyone, and as long as Georgia’s weather continues to be 80 degrees until December, I say rock your favorite white piece of clothing! Just make a few subtle changes to keep the fashion police at bay. Pair dresses with a big belt, an oversized sweater, or a scarf. For skirts and pants, play with a combination of flats, scarves, and belted, oversized shirts to keep your white items in tune with the fall. And lucky for you, Greek-inspired items are big this fall, so use that to your advantage by rocking big, gold jewelry, Gladiator sandals and a simple clutch with your white pieces. Just don’t go the toga route. Save that for parties…

Bright Flowery Wrap: You picked up this great wrap in Jamaica, and wore it like a champ over your bathing suit all summer long. What now? Insert the LBD. Early fall is way too soon to tone down the color of your outfits, so drape the wrap over any LBD like a shawl or large scarf, add some flats, and you’ve got yourself a rather sophisticated going out ensemble. Props if the wrap is red… can we say, Go Dawgs?!

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OUT ON THE TOWN

Nicole Black

photos courtesy of omgparty.com

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HISTORY

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DAY in

1924 - “The Prisoner’s Song” by Vernon Dalhart became the first country music record to sell one million copies. 1995 - Michael Stipe (R.E.M.) has surgery for a hernia.

1986 - Rick Allen (Def Leppard) played his first concert with his band since losing his left arm in a car accident.

1995 - Security guards carried Courtney Love offstage after she began fighting with Hole fans because they weren’t cheering loud enough during the last night of the Lollapalooza tour in Mountain View, CA.

1923 - In Kalamazoo, Michigan, an ordinance was passed forbidding dancers from gazing into the eyes of their partner.

1994 - John Denver was charged with drunken driving after crashing his Porsche into a tree.

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 1954 - Elvis Presley made an appearance in Memphis where he debuted “That’s All Right (Mama).” 1985 - Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” became the first album by a female to be certified for 5 million sales. 1969 - Diana Ross invited 350 guests to a Beverly Hills club to see the newest Motown act, The Jackson 5. 1985 - Simon LeBon’s (Duran Duran) boat capsized off the English coast during a race. The Royal Navy rescued him after he spent 40 minutes trapped in an underwater air pocket. 1877 - Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and made the first sound recording. 1998 - Scott Weiland (Stone Temple Pilots) pled guilty to felony heroin possession and was sentenced to three months in a drug treatment facility. 84

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1989 - Bon Jovi’s “New Jersey” album became the first U.S. album to be released legally in the Soviet Union. The Russian label Melodiya paid the group with a truckload of firewood since rubles can’t leave Russia. 1999 - 765,000 tickets to a Backstreet Boys North American tour were sold in one day. 1939 - “The Wizard of Oz” premiered in Hollywood, CA. Judy Garland became famous for the movie’s song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” 1969 - The Woodstock Music and Art Fair began in Bethel, NY. The three-day concert featured 24 bands and drew over 400,000 people. 1974 - The Ramones played their first concert at New York’s CBGB. 1977 - Elvis Presley died at the age of 42 in Memphis, TN. He died of coronary arrhythmia.

1964 - The first American tour by the Beatles began in San Francisco, CA. The tour would cover 26 cities. 1980 - 1,400 people riot in Toronto when Alice Cooper cancelled a show due to illness. 1956 - The original version of “Hound Dog,” by Big Mama Thornton, was released. 1991 - Billy Preston was arrested in Los Angeles, CA after a 16 year old boy reported being sexually attacked.

1906 - The Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, NJ, began to manufacture the Victrola. The hand-cranked unit, with horn cabinet, sold for $200. 1979 - Led Zeppelin released their last album together, “In Through The Out Door.”

1968 - Keith Moon (The Who) drove a Lincoln into the pool of a Holiday Inn in Flint, MI. 1990 - Sinead O’Connor refused to perform if the United States National Anthem was played before her show at the Garden State Arts Plaza in Homdel, NJ, as is custom. A patriotic uproar ensued which lead to several radio stations banning her music.

1969 - Frank Zappa disbanded the Mothers of Invention right after an eight-day tour in Canada. Zappa said that he was “tired of playing for people who clap for all the wrong reasons.” 2003 - In Rhode Island, OSHA fined Derco LLC, which operated The Station club, $85,200 for one “willful” violation and six serious violations related to the February 20 fire that killed 100 and injured almost 200. Great White was fined $7,000 for failing to protect employees from fire hazards.

1947 - Margaret Truman, U.S. President Truman’s daughter, gave her first public performance as a singer. The event was at the Hollywood Bowl and had an audience of 15,000.

1971 - A security guard was stabbed to death at a Who concert in Forest Hills, NY.

1993 - The Los Angeles Police Department formally announced that Michael Jackson was the subject a criminal investigation.

1997 - James Brown became the first U.S. artist to appear in Lebanon following the recent lift of the ban on U.S. travel to the country.

1994 - Jimmy Buffett’s plane flipped after taking off in Nantucket, MA. He swam to safety. 2001 - In the Bahamas, Aaliyah and eight others were killed when their plane crashed in Marsh Harbor, in the Abacos islands of the northern Bahamas. The cause appeared to be engine failure due to the plane being overloaded.

26 27 28 29 30 31 1970 - Jimi Hendrix made his last public appearance at the Isle of Wright Pop Festival in England.

1989 - Izzy Stradlin (Guns ‘N’ Roses) was arrested for creating a disturbance on an airline flight.

1987 - Sonny Bono announced that he was running for mayor of Palm Springs, CA. He won the election.

1993 - Billy Joel became the first musical guest on CBS-TV’s “The Late Show with David Letterman” when the show debuted.

1965 - Elvis Presley played host to the Beatles at his home in Bel-Air, CA. 1990 - Stevie Ray Vaughn and three members of Eric Clapton’s band were killed in a helicopter crash in Wisconsin.

1963 - Peter, Paul & Mary performed “Blowin’ In The Wind” before Civil Rights marchers who had gathered in Washington to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak. 1972 - David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars made their debut at Carnegie Hall in New York.

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1990 - Elton John checked into a rehab center in Chicago, IL, for bulimia, drinking and drugs. 1996 - Isaac Hayes, who cowrote the Stax classic “Soul Man,” sent a protest letter to presidential candidate Bob Dole requesting Dole to stop using his song, which his supporters had changed to “I’m A Dole Man.”

T.D.I.M.H. 1936 - Charles Hardin Holley, later Buddy Holly, was born in Lubbock, TX. His name was misspelled on his first record contract and he decided to leave it that way.

1987 - “American Bandstand,” hosted by Dick Clark, was canceled after 30 years on television.

1978 - Keith Moon, drummer for The Who, died in London after overdosing on Hemenephirin at the age of 31. He was taking the prescription drug to help him with alcohol. He was replaced in The Who by Kenney Jones (from the Faces).

1993 - Dave Navarro, guitarist, joins the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

1996 - Tupac Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight are shot while in Las Vegas after a Mike Tyson fight. Shakur died six days later.

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1979 - U2 released their first record “U2-3” in Ireland. 1995 - Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum was opened with a seven-hour concert with dozens of stars. 1971 - The Grateful Dead’s ex-manager was arrested for embezzling $70,000 from the band. 1976 - The first issue of Musician magazine was published.

1986 - Gregg Allman was arrested for drunk driving in Florida. 2002 - Singer Kelly Clarkson was voted the first “American Idol” on the Fox TV series.

1942 - Frank Sinatra started his solo singing career. 1992 - David Bowie appeared on the cover of “Architectural Digest.” He was the first human on the cover in 4 years.

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1988 - Elton John sold some of his costumes and concert memorabilia at an auction in London for $6.2 million. 1968 - Eric Clapton recorded his guitar solo on The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” 1989 - The Pittsburgh Steelers were banned from practicing on their own field, Three Rivers Stadium, because The Rolling Stones were rehearsing for their upcoming concert.

1990 - Will Smith made his debut in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” 1992 - Howard Stern appeared as Fartman on the MTV Video Music Awards.

1998 - An episode of “Judge Judy” aired in which Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten appeared as the defendant in a case involving a drummer who sued Rotten for allegedly head-butting him during a contract dispute. 1999 - Nine Inch Nails performed at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards. It was their first-ever appearance on a televised award show. ATHENS BLUR MAGAZINE

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The Ringerz with LD & The Blind Dates From soul to hard rock

Aug14 Squat Great local jazz masters

Aug23 Athens’ Own Rack of Spam Funtime soul, rock and R&B

Aug29 Deepstep w/ Tyler & Joey Kick-Off the Georgia Southern Game weekend in style with these country trailblazers

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