Two Cool Music Things To Do Tonight - Tuesday

Free ice cream and beer at Decatur CD tonight, starting at 6pm. Knowing all the hipster-deadbeats likely to show up, best get there early. More info here on their blog.

Then later in the evening is cool country music from Jason Isbell at The Earl. More info about that show on Sara's blog.

Let me clarify with a bit of a rant... when I say "country" I will NEVER mean that country-lite Kenny Chesney crap. Lordy hon, don't get me started on the creepy hideousness that is "New Country." Vaguely inspired by Ugly Bobby's recent blissed-out ravings of mediocrity over what is simply really bad music and processed musicianship, I listened to way more than I ever should have of "New Country" while driving around the tri-state (GA, NC, SC) area on vacation. I've never heard so much mediocre, pedestrian, plebeian, manufactured, canned, trite, odes-to-McNuggets (I'm not kidding) and The Wal-Mart-Inspired Life, seriously average, fakey kinda "music" in my entire life. The worst offender was the feeble attempt to lull us all into drone-like stupidity by that nutwrapper jeans-wearing Kenny Chesney. UUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH.

See youz guys 'round the ATL tonight.

Funk Yourself Silly This Friday

We all know how much the white folk over 35 typically hate hip-hop music. They hate everything about it, finding no redeemable features whatsoever in the music or the culture. But what about black folk? What do they think about living in a hip-hop world?

Well, my friend (old Home Depot TV days) and musician Chilton, who leads the ensemble funk extravaganza band TexBukSex (see video; they're playing Friday!) doesn't hate hip-hop; rather, he's enormously frustrated because he feels that blacks playing and creating in other genres of music, and there are droves, be it soul, rock, funk, blues, etc., are overshadowed and ignored in a hip-hop 'centric world.

Chilton's musical world with TexBukSex is as vibrant and funky and tight and musical and wild and danceable as it gets. I urge you to come out and see 'em this Friday at Emergenza Music Festival, because when you do, you'll not only be giving yourself a completely funked-out roarin' good time, you'll be supporting artists who are fighting against the tide of mass-marketed contemporary musical stereotypes.

Artists like Chilton want you to know they're out there. They're black and they're proud, and they're loud and sweaty and funky as it gets. So come on out Friday night to Midtown to support artists who need to be returned to their soulful, righteous place at the musical table!

Ladies and Gentleman... Chilton and TexBukSex:

Chilton and TexBukSex

March 9, 2007

8:30pm

@ The Vinyl

1374 West Peachtree Street

Atlanta

Caroline's Playing Tonight!

Caroline Monroe takes the stage at Smith's tonight to shine the light on her brand-new CD release, Ghost Town. Y'all are soooo in for a treat! Wish I could be there, but I'll have to catch her on TrueGritz instead. Caroline plays The Earl in February.

Oh yeah... Look for a new TG episode next week. 'Bout time those two gals got up off their fat asses, stopped watching Oprah and eating bon-bons all day long, and started cookin' some darn video for the men folk 'round here...

The Earl Affirmed By Mammaries and Moms

Do we have to have a boob magazine tell us what to do now? Only a complete loser wouldn't know The Earl was a fucking great club. If it's so great though then why, every time I go there, do I get abandoned by my friend _______ when she takes off to make out with some longhair grease monkey, after she's had a mere two beers, then I get stuck making weird chitchat with that 85-year old barfly who used to scrape road kill for a living while I finish my pint? (Ambulance driver. Know who I'm talking about?) Jeez.

And yes, The Selmanaires are good too. Exceptionally good. Next Big Thing good. (New Year's Eve show at, yes, The Earl. Hot ticket there.) I might be a Buckhead soccer mom, but I still know good music when I hear it, go see it and buy it, too. Always have. Always will. So take that, all you hapless marketeers.

Makes Tony Soprano Seem Impotent

Quote du jour: "All Meech did was walk in the spot and panties got moist."

Wow! Know who Big Meech is, white ATL? You will now. Here's the kinda throwdown, hardcore, local reporting work we've been waiting for: exposing the moguls and the scenes behind the scenes of Atlanta's music industry, and veering into something very sinister called the Black Mafia Family.

Wanna know more? Mara Shaloup has a crack investigative piece, a year in the making, in three parts, the first part being in this week's Creative Loafing. This is some serious dirt folks, appropriately titled: Hip-hop's shadowy empire. Get reading. You can thank me (and PS) later.

(Why don't I ever get invited to these kinda parties? I adore champagne. And if you're a real writer, here's your New South material just waiting there in the gutter for you to reach down and pick-up.)

Amateurs

So bands that don't like the way the music site Pitchfork writes about their "music" make cute little videos of double entendre disgust and put 'em on YouTube? What a darling love letter compared to the cracked skulls that used to be administered to smart-ass music critics in Atlanta back in the day.

Try as they might, those gumming wannabees at Pitchfork will likely never achieve full-bite DTL status. Ahhhh... the good 'ole days of genuine music industry abuse.

Crush With Longevity

Oh yum! A mad crush I had about twenty years ago, Tim Nielsen of Drivin' n' Cryin', is STILL totally hot. Take a peak at the pictures from a recent show. Tim looks like he could even have brain activity by now. Hot hot hot middle-aged stuff!!!

Shut Up and Change The World

Finally went to see Shut Up & Sing, a film I've had an ad for here on the SGR for a while. It is absolutely amazing to watch Natalie Maines not only give the finger to country-fuck rednecks everywhere and the radio industry (as we knew it), but to change the entire music industry in front of our faces, all the while making a complete artistic and emotional shift from within.

Natalie Maines is my freakin' hero. She sings like a dream, and her Dixie Chicks posse can play the holy crap outta their instruments. Plus, you gotta love the hair and makeup. Talk about getting your $8.50's worth. All in all, a righteous ticket to a righteous place in time.

He'd Have Been A Good Man...

"... if he'd had a bad rocker to bash him in the head every day."

Since a couple of you have enquired into the matter, let me direct you to the blog thread from over a year ago in which someone (I'll never tell) posted the "Tony Paris is buried in the Kremlin" comment. Many choice eighties-Atlanta references lie within, if you're over 38 and still alive.

In a devilish new twist, the plot of the Fox TV show, Vanished, set in Atlanta and on Monday nights at 9pm, hints of a romp through the "Atlanta underground music scene." Such a story line should make for intense TV -- how about that wanker redneck drummer from Duluth who once did blow with Ashley Smith lounging about on your East Atlanta Ikea couch for three weeks instead of the one week it promised in the first place? Now that would be frightening.

It's a shame the show does not incorporate the truly evil and horrid realities of Atlanta's much more infamous and always-flourishing sex trade business instead. That could indeed scare someone.

While bad TV, Vanished does make for an excellent drinking game. For instance, you can drink every time they botch an Atlanta reference. Something along the lines of I-20 going through Stone Mountain. You'll be crocked by 9:15, if you can make it through the laughable, very unsouthern-esque acting for that long.

One other note, wanna hear something real pretty? Check out the song on Caroline Monroe's MySpace. Just as lovely as it can be. We were delighted to have her on TrueGritz twice. Caroline's surely a star in the making.