Local Music Features

Wednesday February 1, 2006 12:04 AM EST
I caught me a disease in 2005. No, it wasn’t avian flu, genital warts or even chlamydia, though I hear that shit is everywhere. I caught me a politically incorrect pandemic: the Yellow Fever. Somewhere between the Chow Fun, miso soup and me so horny, I thought I might be inoperable. Hell, I had it so bad that not even more cowbell would cure me. So, to commiserate my infection of and affection... | more...

Local Music Features

Wednesday January 25, 2006 12:04 AM EST
Quite often when I think of Atlanta’s nightlife, I think of a city under siege — by increasingly poor legislation and often even poorer aesthetics. And as a frontline field correspondent, sometimes I feel us nightlife veterans — DJs to patrons — deserve a goddamn Purple Heart for service above and beyond the call of duty. As I’m sure many of you know, it takes excessive... | more...

Local Music Features

Wednesday January 18, 2006 12:04 AM EST
I’d love to blame my poor decisions on the fact it was Friday the 13th, or perhaps the accompanying full moon. But in all honesty, my madness already runs deep; so deep it put that ass to sleep. All it took was two instigators — Gail, aka Chainsaw, and Tyler, aka Blowtorch (‘cause together they cut through a room) — and I vowed to spend my Friday night drinking like a sorority girl.... | more...

Local Music Features

Wednesday January 11, 2006 12:04 AM EST

Everyone has a favorite hangover cure. For my frequent companion Uncle Wu, it’s cucumber salad and sushi, while I prefer Asian soups. Hell, for some it’s coffee, a cigarette and a shot. But no one I know would say it’s mid-morning pumping dance music. Just don’t tell that to Club RuSan’s.

Apparently, RuSan’s off Moreland remains the place to get rolls when you’re on rolls. Eurodance is not...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday January 4, 2006 12:04 AM EST

In an ever-budding and flushed city of nearly 5 million people, there are seemingly infinite ways to ring in the new year. Myself? I chose a ringing in my ears by catching heavy metal behemoth Mastodon, on a locals’ bill with Artimus Pyledriver and Gonzalez at the Masquerade.

How better to celebrate another year in Atlanta than at a long-standing, even if sometimes ostensibly shakily standing,...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday December 28, 2005 12:04 AM EST

Germans do not get crunk. I learned this firsthand February 2002 in Cologne in a lavish labyrinth of a club located three stories underground. Cloistered with my friend Laura, six Jägermeister and Coke’s shared between us, I indulged the inclination to hunch up on my old high school crush in true Southern style.

First taking to Laura’s ass like it was the opposite charge to my magnetic ......

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Local Music Features

Wednesday December 21, 2005 12:04 AM EST
What’s better than getting annihilated only scant steps from the comfort of your own bed? Getting annihilated mere steps from someone else’s bed! Make other folks clean up after you at one of Atlanta’s many hotel parties going down on New Year’s Eve: At the Hyatt Regency’s “Downtown Countdown 2006,” $119 (or $200 for VIP) gets you five themed rooms of open bars, buffets and a balloon drop plus... | more...

Local Music Features

Wednesday December 14, 2005 12:04 AM EST

It sounds like the premise for a bad Republican propaganda film. You spend a night in New York City shooting whiskey with siren-gorgeous lesbians, drink a dead zone into your memory and wake up the next morning on a strange floor discombobulated, face down and ass up with a button that says “Keep It Gay” pinned to your sweater.

But it wasn’t a GOP nightmare. It was just another Wednesday...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday December 7, 2005 12:04 AM EST
In a recent study by the Schadenfreude Foundation of Swaziland it was found there are exactly two-and-a-half things funnier and yet sadder than watching a white male act out his “DJ” set from behind his laptop: monkeys riding tricycles and using the phrase “mad sauce” to convince Buppies to buy Taco Bell and midget porn. Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve sat through all two-and-a-half scenarios... | more...

Local Music Features

Wednesday November 30, 2005 12:04 AM EST

The South. To some people it’s verbena and honeysuckle; Faulkner and Flannery and Atticus Finch. To be Southern is to feel pride in your shame and shame in your pride; to move slowly enough to actually live but without blinders to the occasional difficulties. To be Southern is to recognize there’s progress to be made, and family to never let you forget it.

And where better to contemplate both...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday November 23, 2005 12:04 AM EST

Man, it was a weekend for going both deaf and def. Fri., Nov. 18, saw the Whigs at Smith’s Olde Bar; Sat., Nov. 19, saw U2 at Philips Arena; and Sun., Nov. 20, saw Kanye West, also at Philips. Oh, and I saw ‘em all. Plus, there were assorted “... and surprise guests.” Wrote a little song about it. Wanna hear it? Goes sumpthin’ like this ...

Celebrating the long-anticipated release of the...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday November 16, 2005 12:04 AM EST

So this week’s column is all about either being hip or shooting from the hip. And we’ll start with the hip shaking their hips.

Last week, I reported from Lenny’s, the Memorial Drive dive where the Selmanaires were celebrating a CD release. Well, I want to revisit that night to discuss Lenny’s long-popular Trashed Friday night “dance party” for pale skinny kids who enjoy “doing the...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday November 9, 2005 12:04 AM EST
I spend a lot of my weeks listening to bands, mostly bad, so on your average weekend, the words “free drinks” — not free jazz or “Free Bird” — are music to my ears. Sure, I hear a lot more — mostly people singing their own praises — but I use alcohol to help tune out all but the most worthy tunes. The night of Fri., Nov. 4, however, was all about actual music and... | more...

Local Music Features

Wednesday November 2, 2005 12:04 AM EST

When I was younger, I worked at a nonprofit art cinema showing summer matinees for day cares. I saw “classics” such as Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer numerous times, and something about that helium-voiced tease made me wonder about the honey pot at the end of the rainbow.

Sadly, you can’t actually seduce a cartoon; all you can do is sit alone in an empty movie theater, your left hand well...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday October 26, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

It’s Thurs., Oct. 20, and I’m afraid I’ve got a rock. Not that I’ve got to rock. Not that I’m going to rock. I’ve got a rock. I’ll explain.

You know in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” where the gang is trick-or-treating and as the kids survey their candy, Charlie Brown opens his bag to find only a single stone? Well, I’m taking visiting writer Tamara Palmer around town and, in...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday October 19, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

It has come to my attention that there are people in this community that believe I not only have a snarky disregard for but may actually hate hipsters. And goths. Also fans of drum ‘n’ bass, trance and house. Let’s see ... it’s also been insinuated I hate yuppies. Oh, and you.

But the truth is, I don’t actually hate any of these groups. I’m just incessantly frustrated and publicly fuming...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday October 12, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

Sincerity. Sometimes it seems as rare as hair on a naked mole-rat — the kind that’s all wrinkly like an old man’s scrotum. Image make you cringe? Hell, so do many of the scenesters I run across. So I spent the weekend thinking about sincerity.

My weekend started Fri., Oct. 7, at MJQ, because I believe the kids sincerely love hip-hop. Detroit’s Platinum Pied Pipers were in the Drunken...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday October 5, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

So it was a Sunday afternoon, and I had just finished a grapefruit-ginger sugar scrub and apricot face mask — because you know how us girls do — when I turned on AMC’s “Women in Hollywood Movie Marathon.” And it was then, during When Harry Met Sally, that I was introduced to an innovative, arousing concept.

A moment in the film proposes that, in terms of dramatic recreation, dining...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday September 28, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

On Sat., Sept. 24, East Atlanta’s the Earl played host to “The Princess & the PBR,” part of the Traveling Charm School burlesque events organized by New York’s Jo Boobs and Atlanta’s own Torchy Taboo.

Around 10:30 p.m., the more-Star-Bar-than-Earl crowd scuttled into the back room for the sounds of Ray Campi, Th’ Legendary Shack*Shakers, Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys, and Atlanta’s Blacktop...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday September 21, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

There are two things you should do only in private: masturbate with a microwave-warmed melon and play air guitar. But at the Mötley Crüe concert at Philips Arena on Fri., Sept. 16, I found myself surrounded by people motioning as if uncontrollably possessed to do both.

Bordered by equal parts busted-looking dudes, busty girls and bald heads — all wearing their nattiest and/or rattiest...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday September 14, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

So it was my birthday Sat., Sept. 10, but my first impulse was keeping it low-key to hokey. Ever since turning 25, when I was literally drenched in as much champagne as sweat, I’ve wondered if I should ask for an Asian massage parlour gift certificate to try and have a night as climactic.

I wondered that again approaching Cheshire Bridge Road, passing nondescript buildings where behind tinted...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday September 7, 2005 12:04 AM EDT
It’s midnight, and sweat is dripping down my balls, pooling in my shoes in testament to the voracious Gods of Funk and ungodly heat. Surrounding me several hundred bodies surge, undulating as a voice rings out like a shotgun. “You keep on fuckin’ around, I’m gonna go get muh gun!” it repeatedly blurts from gagging speakers as sirens blare and blood boils. And as the barrel-loaded beats... | more...

Local Music Features

Wednesday August 31, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

If you’ve watched network TV recently, you may have noticed that I’ve been receiving rave reviews:

“Fast and furious and tightly focused and blessedly short.” — Stephen Hunter, Washington Post

“This nifty, tense thriller ... brings together ... a relevant-sounding if thoroughly undercooked story.” — Manohla Dargis, New York Times

“Red Eye stretches believability ... more than...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday August 24, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

After much clubbing mayhem, I recommend condoms by the bedside and glowsticks in the freezer. Because you never know.

Imagine you’re at a party and meet some sexy, sparkly peeps. They’re wearing cargo pants. You’re wearing cargo pants. They’re easily distracted by anything shiny and you can barely concentrate on them. But then your large pupils lock and instantly it’s like the world is a 45...

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Local Music Features

Wednesday August 17, 2005 12:04 AM EDT
I skipped out on a high school reunion this past weekend. To be honest, I’m not sure why. Was it because I didn’t want the reminder of people still associating me as a raver in phat pants? Or because I don’t want to be publicly reminded that I’m actually three pants sizes bigger than a decade ago? I’m so vain, and all this reliving my Dorian Gray descent added up to me recovering from what I... | more...