Scene & Herd - Music Mudtown

Sending out an S.O.S.



To me, Music Midtown is like Celine Dion; very popular, but damned if I know anyone who’ll ‘fess up to liking it. I don’t think that it’s a matter of snootiness or anti-The Man-ness (The Man, in this case, being Clear Channel), although those are perfectly good reasons. Nope, it’s simply a matter of differing tastes. Paying $45 to see Jessica Simpson, a sub-karaoke bleater of awful, awful songs who has turned her inability to distinguish chicken from tuna into a lucrative career, just isn’t some people’s idea of a good time.

And if there’s an artist whose work you do like, there are often better ways to see them than in a fenced playpen filled with kids whose parents dropped them off so they could get drunk and let off steam. Music Midtown has what it calls “a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to underage drinking.” Spend some time in front of the 99X stage, like I did Saturday afternoon, and you’ll understand that policy to mean that the only people under 21 allowed to drink at Music Midtown are those who have zero tolerance for alcohol.

I wandered around Music Midtown for a few hours on Saturday. The partying actually started several blocks away from the event, at the Civic Center MARTA station. Men gathered outside the station to watch the festival-going procession. Many of the standers-by offered tickets, T-shirts, dates, and at least two offered blunts (“Two for a dolla’!”).

Of the musical acts I saw, the Strokes were my favorite. They were drunk (singer Julian Casablancas muttered, and I do mean muttered, something about being “fucked up” at one point, but they still sounded great — much better than on record, in my opinion. My current favorite Stroke is Albert Hammond Jr. because I like the way he convulses when he plays guitar. I also like his hair. I read that he converted to Judaism in 2002, so now his adorable curls can be accurately described as a Jew-fro.

After the Strokes, I wandered to the opposite end of the fairground, at one point passing a drunken, Floridian-looking couple yelling, “Woooohoooo, Cuervo!” to no one in particular, and a hippie boy handing out “Stop Bitching. Start A Revolution” bumper stickers. He inspired a really good make-believe confrontation in my head during which I handed him a “Stop Handing Out Bumper Stickers” bumper sticker.

Rescue Me: My excuse for leaving Music Midtown was an art show Saturday night at the B-Complex, a gallery, warehouse space and apartment complex in southwest Atlanta. The show was called __S.O.S. (which stands for Salon of Sensations) and was aimed at stimulating all of the senses (minus the sixth one that lets movie kids see dead people). Hearing was stimulated by live music. Touch was represented by fuzzy balls suspended from the ceiling that bounced off your head as you walked in the show’s entrance. The dominant smell and taste of the evening was popcorn and beer, respectively, thanks to the concession stand.

The most well-represented of the senses was sight. Intentional or not, much of the art was sexually themed. An artist named Dnarl displayed mirrors silk-screened with pics of naked men. Lee Roberts showed three amazing paintings that looked like a psychic collaboration between Richard Scarry and Lewis Carroll. Matt Hyman displayed graffiti art, including one of a woman admiring a dripping cherry (not to mention that his last name is Hyman).

Sexiest of them all, though, was the Peep Show. For a dollar, you could walk into a booth built by artist Lauren Betty and watch the unnervingly sexy Atlanta burlesque performer Glampira take off a glove and a shoe. That’s it, just a glove and shoe, and it was just about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

Hey, ladies!: Last Saturday and Sunday, the always fun Cobb Galleria hosted Atlanta Women’s Expo 2004. The expo claimed in the program that its purpose was to make a space “devoted exclusively to the needs of women.”

So what exactly do women need? Well, judging solely from the expo, one might conclude that women are diet-crazy homemakers obsessed with making sure no one steals their kitchenware.

The place was bursting with cookware. At the door, there was a booth for “That’s My Pan,” a company that engraves cookware, presumably for women who potluck with kleptos.

Coupling was also an important theme of the expo. On Sunday, there was a workshop titled “How to Find the Man of Your Dreams.” If that failed, there were a couple of places to adopt cats.

In the back of the hall, next to a couple of Escalades (for the blingin’ she-balla on the go), Sofia Nur and the Bad Habibis had a booth offering belly-dancing lessons and demos. Entertaining, yes, but “women’s needs”?

Smipe and poke: __Smoke on the Mountain is not a bluegrass sequel to the 1972 Deep Purple classic. No, sir or madam, it’s a popular musical comedy about the fictional Sanders family and their return to the gospel-singing circuit in 1938. On Friday night, I trekked out to Monroe to see a performance of the play by the community theater troupe On Stage Walton.

I’ve seen a few plays at On Stage (one of my friends often performs with them), and this was by far the most elaborate and satisfying production I’ve seen there. On Stage’s 95-year-old playhouse is the perfect setting for the play since it’s actually a disused church. And the music and singing were live and superb.

As the play progressed, each member of the Sanders family testified. The testimony bounced between poignant and hilarious. David Jones was particularly good as Dennis Sanders. The awkward way that he held his Bible while practicing to be a preacher was brilliant. Also fantastic was Deborah Clark as June Sanders. June doesn’t sing. Her skill in the play was badly translating the family’s songs into sign language. For example, when the family sang, “Bear Me Away,” she mimicked a grizzly.

The show has been such a success for On Stage, they’ll probably perform it again in the fall.

andisheh@creativeloafing.com__
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