Poets, Artists & Madmen

Word. As part of the College Night at the High series, ART, BEATS & LYRICS brought together some of the city’s most promising young street artists (MICHI, UrbanMedium, Dubelyoo, Dosa and Fuze Green), breakdancers and DJs (Klever, Jamad and Spider). The event proved that if you cater to a hip, young, multiethnic crowd, they will come. The High had to turn people away when local event organizer Jabari Graham’s one-night-only spectacular exceeded all expectations. But don’t worry if you missed out on the fun. Graham hosts another Art, Beats & Lyrics event called Cold Busted Art Exhibition on Nov. 18 at the Defoor Centre.
www.artbeatslyrics.com.

Considering the pending merger with the Savannah College of Art and Design, now seems as good a time as any to celebrate the iconoclastic, artist-centered vision of the ATLANTA COLLEGE OF ART. With alumni like Radcliffe Bailey and Kara Walker, somebody must be doing something right at this fine art-oriented college known for its congenial, nurturing relationships between teachers and students. The school celebrated its 100th anniversary this year by hosting performances by DJ Spooky and David Byrne.
1280 Peachtree St. 404-733-5101. www.aca.edu.

It’s a tie: PYLON and LOVE TRACTOR, two of Athens’ most influential ’80s new-wave bands, returned to dynamic duty this year following lengthy periods of inactivity. Both groups have an impressive canon of material, with their most enduring works released through Atlanta’s DB Recs. Pylon, created in 1979, stick to the old-school Athens adage: “If one of us leaves, it’s not the same band anymore,” and has the distinction of being the only Classic City act from the “golden age” to feature all of its original members. Formed in the ’80s, Love Tractor now consists of founding singer/guitarist Mike Richmond and a gang of relatively new recruits heard on its recently released Black Hole album. Welcome back, folks, we missed you!
www.wearepylon.com.

Kevin Barnes’ Athens psych-pop crew OF MONTREAL has worked from the backbone of Beach Boys’ vocals and Beatles’ straight strum to make records that run the gambit from sweetly earnest to playfully psychedelic. The result was so lovable that when its former label, Kindercore, ceased operations in 2003, it only took a few months for the band to land on Midwestern indie Polyvinyl. Barnes tweaked his lo-fi sound, noticing that all the kids were dancing these days, and made two albums (Satanic Panic in the Attic and this year’s The Sunlandic Twins) with disco-inspired sing-alongs like “Rapture Rapes the Muses” and “So Begins Our Alabee.” We’d follow Barnes through sludge, so we have no problem with a little booty-shaking, albeit in an indie-rock kinda way.
www.ofmontreal.net.

Though almost unknown in Atlanta, WE VERSUS THE SHARK has blown the mind of the college town to our east several times over the last couple years. The quartet of young’ns make music that’s peripatetic, frenetic and infectious. The entire frontline sings, with voices ranging from the snarl of bassist/keyboardist Jeff Tobias to the lilt of guitarist/keyboardist Samantha Paulsen. Each song is like three mini-tracks bombarded together in a supercollider with sounds of echoing computers going haywire and thrashing metal-god roars all built around lockstep rhythm and jazzy drumbeats. And the best thing about this band: Even when a set blows your hair back like you just removed a screwdriver from a light socket, the members still aren’t satisfied. Part Dismemberment Plan, part Motorhead, part Rapture = gonna make you sweat.
www.wevstheshark.com.

If you read the Vibes section of this venerable rag a year ago, you know all about the troubles that haunted I AM THE WORLD TRADE CENTER right around the release of its third album, The Cover Up. Quick recap: lost label, got label, members ended romantic relationship, back together, off again, on again, off again, Amy Dykes diagnosed with cancer, on again, members get engaged, Amy’s cancer goes into remission, off again. That’s a long and intensely emotional year. What does it mean for fans of the band who don’t want to butt into Dykes and bandmate Dan Geller’s personal life? Not a whole lot, but their sound is better, owing to a new lower octave that Dykes discovered, and aside from her haircut, the onstage interplay is the same as ever, though maybe with some extra tension. Chemistry doesn’t always end with relationships.
www.iamtheworldtradecenter.com.

One of the most striking of this fair city’s cornucopia of comely burlesque queens is the delightful CALU. Whether she’s commanding attention as a member of local burlesque troupe the Doll Squad, shrieking in the horrible B-movie horror send-up Cheerleader Autopsy, slinging drinks and DJing at Smith’s Olde Bar, or just being herself, Calu’s mysterious beauty is awe-inspiring. Her deliciously tattooed body is truly a curvaceous canvas of colorful ink. But don’t stare too long because just like the sun, she’s brightly illuminating and dangerously combustible. Yeah, she knows you want her, but just look and don’t touch — because she’ll surely kick your punk ass.
www.dollsquad.com.

Sure, the band is named after Plymouth’s Ram-tough engine from the early ’60s, but SONORAMIC COMMANDO’s V-8 powered country can outrun any competitor on the street today. The unassuming gang of amiable roots enthusiasts has been pickin’ n’ grinnin’ for years in various combinations. Together, the fellas make some of the sweetest back-porch harmonies you will find around town — even if you don’t catch them on an actual porch. Sure, they can rev it up when the time is right, but when they ease into their engaging dirt-road anthems, you’ll want the ride to last awhile. Old-school to the bone, them boys don’t care ’bout no “American Idol,” they’re the dual four-barrel heartbeat of rural Americana.
www.sonoramiccommando.com.

Artistic director Elizabeth Dishman’s newfound mission is to create dances that even you double-left-footed movement newbies can at least partially appreciate (you seem to be laughing and clapping at the right places, anyhow), and the dances she creates for the CORIOLIS DANCE PROJECT continue to be the best brain-buzz you can get outside a Mensa meeting. We loved this year’s playful Falling, a study of balance and its absence that included the debut of Israeli import Hila Kerekesh, a sublimely subtle new dancer on the Atlanta scene. Dishman is moving to NYC, so the Oct. 1 performance of a reworked Falling (at Emory University’s Performing Arts Studio) will be the company’s Atlanta swan song.
404-931-0212. www.coriolisdance.org.

Nobody stomps harder in the local electronic scene than Matthew Jeanes’ mostly solo, sometimes three-man electro outfit, LARVAE. This year, Jeanes launched sonic assaults on both American and European soil, dropping bombastic, head-nodding beats and bass swells while hooking up with the Berlin-based Ad Noiseum Records. Using guerrilla-style tactics, Larvae’s digital audio/visual dirges have manhandled some of the most recognizable sights and sounds of pop and corporate icons, manipulating everything from Nike to Kill Bill and Star Wars (think Uma Thurman wielding lightsabers instead of samurai swords), all the while avoiding any imperial entanglements such as licensing.
www.zeroplate.com.

Banjo/trumpet-playing singer/poet Bill Taft has been one of Atlanta’s most musically interesting and creative fringe dwellers ever since the days of the legendary Mudd Shack. His collaborations with dearly departed local icons Benjamin (Smoke), Deacon Lunchbox, and the Jody Grind were progressively evolving variations that led ultimately to HUBCAP CITY (FROM BELGIUM). Taft, guitarist Matthew Proctor, and drummer Will Fratesi manufacture soundscapes and auditory portraits derived from their subjective life experiences filtered through a prism of alternating urban blight and hope. Of course, the group also has a song cycle inspired by the record reviews in Sassy magazine, too. If there is ever a documentary made on the “Cabbagetown sound,” Hubcap City (from Belgium) would be a vital component.
www.members.aol.com/n10j27b82/hubcapcity.html.

Atlanta’s own Berlin Wall and the city’s favorite soapbox, the KROG STREET TUNNEL is a trippy kaleidoscope of politics and explosive color thankfully overlooked by the city’s anti-graffiti law enforcers. The colorful display significantly adds to the city’s beleaguered funky quotient. Shows change daily.
Between DeKalb Avenue and Wylie Street at the border of Cabbagetown and Inman Park.

In a town where hip-hop super-stardom reigns supreme, PSYCHE ORIGAMI subverts the blingin’ and big pimpin’ of the drrty paradigm with sheer brainpower. Remaining commercially accessible without compromising the fundamentals of underground hip-hop, MC Wyzsztyk (pronounced WIZ-stick) spits a torrent of scientific theory and existential slang at lightning speeds. DJs Dainja and Synthesis weave a web of baroque beats and innovative melodies, just trying to keep up. Crafting The Standard, a concept album about fuel for the mind and body in an age when gas costs an arm and a leg, Psyche Origami transcends the clubs and aims for the true heads.
www.psycheorigami.com.

Before any purists cry “Foul!” and claim that Cajun and zydeco don’t count as “world music,” last time I checked my atlas, Louisiana was part of the world. Led by Whit Connah and Barbara Panter-Connah, HAIR OF THE DOG has been making asses shake and feet glide for almost 30 years. The musical spirit has stayed on course as the group celebrates the culture and sounds of the ragin’ ’coon ass. But this band isn’t limited to one trick, and on any given night it may rip through a stack of classic country tunes, or a perfect Delta blues riff. With a repertoire like that, how can it not be “world music”?
www.couchslug.com/HairofTheDog/default.htm.

Sure, pianist TAKANA MIYAMOTO is known around town as a “sideman” for soul singers Julie Dexter and Gaelle, but her talent on the keys is best put to use in the service of jazz. Miyamoto has appeared at the straight-ahead spot Churchill Grounds countless times, sharing the stage with local heroes such as Russell Gunn. She recently recorded a collection of simple, melodic tunes and released her debut solo CD called Piano Tales.
www.takana.net.

EYEDRUM ART AND MUSIC GALLERY’s continued presence since opening in 1998 is a reassuring reminder that the indie spirit lives on despite the rising rents and in-the-box art thinking. This artist-run, nonprofit, interdisciplinary living room for the city’s culture hounds has capitalized on a renaissance sensibility by bringing video, performance, poetry, music, visual arts and everything in-between all together under one roof. Notable events this year included the Submerged and Shelter group shows, a solo exhibition by Gail Vogels, the Indie Craft Experience and a screening of artist Joseph Cornell’s films.
290 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org.

Here’s something we noticed immediately after Several Dancers Core’s performance of AMERICA! QUESTION: Even people who weren’t so sure they had liked the dance were doing precisely what the dance intended them to do. (Dance little marionettes! Dance!) On the anniversary of 9/11, the company posed questions about what it means to be American and prompted passionate debates about the critiques implicit in the dance. Some of the dance was avant-awesome. Some of it was just plain weird. But we’ll take that over a gas-guzzling SUV any dancing day of the week.
404-373-4154. www.severaldancerscore.org.

It’s been going on long enough that we’ll dispense with the old jokes regarding what do engineers know about poetry (and poets about engineering). POETRY AT TECH used to carry an invisible question mark on its tail end, but Georgia Tech poetry professor Thomas Lux and Ginger Murchison have assembled the best poetry series going. The after-parties at Lux’s place — an opportunity to mingle with the poets — are also way cooler than what we imagine your average Techie parties are like ... not that you ever invite us.
404-385-2760. poetry.gatech.edu.

Singer/songwriter Amy Ray began exploring self-image and social injustice with her bittersweet folk duo Indigo Girls. She continued with her first rebellious rock solo album, Stag, which featured a wealth of guest backup artists as she searched for stylistic footing along a gnarled backbone of rootsy bristle. But with her sophomore full-length, PROM, Ray’s grown past her own awkward phase and sounds utterly confident in her songwriting and identity, delivering vignettes of surging struggle both melodic and crunchy, wrenching yet assuring.
www.daemonrecords.com/amy/.

The Rock*A*Teens had a ragged, reverberating wail that was easy to imagine cascading down the time-tattered streets of Cabbagetown. That sound had much to do with the vocals of singer/songwriter/guitarist Chris Lopez, who continues the world-weary tradition in his new band, TENEMENT HALLS. Lopez’s gently frayed voice quavers just barely above the spooks that taunt him, and his sly, spry melodies recall facets of the Kinks and Elvis Costello. While scratchy and mesmeric organs and jangly guitars warble moodily, Lopez paints scenarios of desperate, tired narrators.
www.mergerecords.com.

You usually see hot new plays emerge from little black box theaters, not a city’s biggest playhouse. But this year, the ALLIANCE THEATRE served as a launching pad for two big, Broadway-bound, Southern-themed world premieres: The Color Purple musical and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Plus, thanks to a $1.5 million gift from the Kendeda Fund, the Alliance permanently established its Graduate Playwriting Competition to develop bold new works like the Cuban melodrama Day of the Kings. The Alliance did more than pay lip service to the idea that new plays deserve resources.
1280 Peachtree St. 404-733-5000. www.alliancetheatre.org.

Any given performance from BLAME GAME offers a glimpse of a group driving toward complex, tonal perfection. Along with bassist Chris Ware, guitarists/vocalists George Asimakos and Andrew Wiggins construct a grid of gigantic arches that are pounded into place by drummer Alex Lambert’s swagger from rapid-fire precision to loose improvisation. On stage, Lambert and Ware are stationed front and center while the rest of the group follows their extravagant hybrid of jazz and hardcore. Stage presence, wardrobe and personality are secondary to the shimmering and ever-thickening sounds of a group that relies on the chemistry of intellect.
www.sunrevolver.org/blamegame/.

The Atlanta theater scene’s most impressive newcomer of the past year wasn’t a person but a place. Theatrical Outfit’s new permanent home, the 200-seat BALZER THEATRE, boasts a slick art deco design, a huge stage, a great sound system and not a bad seat in the house. The Balzer Theatre gives skittish audiences more than enough reason to venture downtown so long as Theatrical Outfit stages shows such as Hank Williams: Lost Highway that live up to it.
84 Luckie St. 404-651-4727. www.theatricaloutfit.org.

For several years now, one of the greatest cities for spoken word poetry failed to field a team for the National Slam Competition, but Atlanta is once again sending its finest slammers to the big game thanks to a series of lively local slam competitions at Java Monkey, organized by big-haired beatnik Kodac Harrison of POETRY ATLANTA, the community development extension of the Atlanta Review.
205 Ponce de Leon Ave. 404-378-5002. www.poetryatlanta.com.

The concert business has gone from bad to worse in terms of customer exploitation through ticket brokers and price gouging, and the industry has suffered as a consequence. Fortunately for Atlanta, we have guys like ALEX WEISS who are willing to do whatever it takes to bring in decent acts for the right reason: the love of music. After booking the Echo Lounge for several years, Weiss now mans his own company, OK Productions. His recent ventures include annual events like the Elvis Death Day show at Variety Playhouse, Drive Invasion at Starlight Six Drive-In, as well as booking Brian Jonestown Massacre and Japanese acts like Guitar Wolf and the 5,6,7,8’s at the Earl.
www.okproductions.net.

Though the range of work in the summer-long ART IN FREEDOM PARK exhibition ran the gamut from so-so to sublime, it was nice to see this grassroots effort (and a laudable involvement by the Freedom Park Conservancy) in trying to bring art out of the galleries and to the folk who bike, jog and saunter through the 210-acre greenspace. Notable pieces include Meshakai Wolf’s faux animal-crossing road signs warning of citified critters like squirrel and opossum on the roadways; Linda Stern‘s politically charged and user-friendly “Hammocks for the Homeless” made of construction site material; and Phil Proctor’s bright yellow metal sculpture that looks like metal origami plunked into the middle of the park. The Conservancy’s dedication to public art continued last month with the installation of folk artist Thornton Dial’s sculpture “The Bridge,” the largest piece of public art ever created by the artist. The work, at the corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and Freedom Parkway, sits on the John Lewis Plaza dedicated to the civil rights legacy of that beloved U.S. Representative.
The cross-shaped park runs from DeKalb Avenue to Ponce de Leon Avenue, from Boulevard to Oakdale Road. www.artinfreedompark.org. www.freedompark.org.

We’re pretty sure we would have enjoyed the dancing even without the woman who walked the aisles serving us from a tray laden with jars of frosting and plastic spoons, not to mention the little pastry cooked up live on stage in an EZ-Bake Oven in the time it took one dancer to perform a short transition work. The Zoetic Dance Ensemble never fails to throw a good party ... er, performance, and this year’s CAKE, held at the hip Nickel and Dime Studios in Avondale Estates, was no exception. The snacks were just the frosting on the ... (oh, come on, you knew we had to go there).
678-966-0253. www.zoeticdance.org.

Stripper-turned-actress White Chocolate may get the lion’s share of attention in the media, but Strokers’ other superstar dancer, SUGAR, is truly the best at what she does. Visit the Clarkston club and chances are you’ll be sold on her around-the-way-girl personality on the floor and her bombastic pole skills on stage. Oh, and she looks good nekkid, too.
Strokers Club, 1353 Brockett Road, Clarkston. 770-270-0350. www.strokersclub.com.