His Life With The Thrill Kill Kult

There are a lot of pictures in this particular post. It might take your computer a moment or two to download everything.

1995, as it turned out, was a pretty good year in Atlanta for outdoor concerts and events. In April, something called the Sixth Annual Great Atlanta Pot Festival was held in Piedmont Park, finally giving him his chance to see the band Cypress Hill.

By 1995, Cypress Hill was already a highly successful Latino-American hip-hop outfit, considered by many to be early and seminal exemplars of West Coast rap. They had already released their first two groundbreaking albums by the time of the Pot Festival, and while it was a bit surprising to see a band of their stature at a small, marginally legal event like the Piedmont Park festival, The Black Crowes had previously headlined the 1992 event with over 60,000 people reportedly attending. What's more, Cypress Hill had always been staunch advocates for cannabis, as demonstrated in their breakthrough hit Insane In the Brain, featuring rapper B-Real's exaggeratedly high-pitched nasal vocals, for which he credits The Beastie Boys for inspiration.

Black Uhuru, one of his favorite reggae bands, headlined the Pot Festival.  For the record, he first heard Black Uhuru on WRAS, Album 88, when they started playing the song Anthem. The album of the same name went on to win the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album.

That year, he also attended the Second Music Midtown Festival.  The 1995 Music Midtown line-up included Gov't Mule, Little Feat, Blind Boys of Alabama, Our Lady Peace, Collective Soul,  Edwin McCain, Chris Duarte, God Street Wine, Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies, The BoDeans, Matthew Sweet, Everything, The Band, Buckwheat Zydeco, Adam Ant, Bottle Rockets, Magnapop, Delbert McClinton, The Josh Joplin Group, Rebirth Brass Band, Cigar Store Indians, Bone Pony, Five Chinese Brothers (who were not REM under a different name, as rumored), Francine Reed, Gracie Moon, The Kentucky Headhunters, Matthew Kahler, Shawn Mullins, The Sounds of Blackness, Supreme Court, Jackopierce, Lonnie Brooks, The Cruel Sea, Memory Dean, and Murphy & Vidal.

He recognizes a lot of the bands from his pictures of that festival, but there are also a lot of bands he can't recall.  Here's who he can identify:

CAKE

This wasn't his first time seeing Cake - they had played the inaugural festival the year before, and their quirky angular songs were alt-rock radio staples that year.

TINSLEY ELLIS

A veteran bluesman with several smoking albums under his belt, Ellis looks to him now a little bit like Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down.

NRBQ, WITH THE SUN RA HORNS

Another veteran band, the unclassifiable NRBQ, were touring that year with "The Sun Ra Horns," but which turned out to be only two of the recently deceased bandleader's sidemen, Tyrone Hill and Dave Gordon. He's heard that when the band played around the Arkestra's home base of Philadelphia, saxophonist Marshall Allen and percussionist Donny Allen had also joined them.  Still, a little Sun Ra is better than none and goes a pretty long way.  

THE VILLAGE PEOPLE

Let's see:  a leather-bound biker, an Indian chief, and a cop - it isn't hard to identify the band in these pictures.  Even in 1995, though, the band were an anachronistic holdover from the 70s disco era, but the audience still went nuts for them.  On a somewhat disappointing note, in interviews during this comeback tour and in some of their stage banter that night, they disavowed any association with the gay community and strenuously refuted any implication that they might be gay themselves.  Who cares dudes, and why turn your back on the very audience that brought you fame and fortune?  

THE STONE ROSES

Manchester's The Stone Roses were already nearing the end of their run as a band at the time of their May 1995 Music Midtown appearance.  Some of the original band had already quit and remaining members were apparently feuding, and the tensions were apparent on stage. 

Amazingly, someone captured the set on video, including the bass player's on-stage tantrum - fast forward to the 1:20 mark for the drama.  Shortly after this set, the band cancelled their June appearance at Glastonbury, and the lineup that played on the Atlanta stage that afternoon never performed together again.  

The sound and picture quality isn't that great, but seriously, who had an iPhone in 1995?

BUSH

Bush were still rising in popularity at the time of their 1995 music Midtown appearance, but their songs Everything's Zen, Machinehead, and Little Things were already getting heavy airplay on radio station 99X.  They'd return to Music Midtown in 2002 to play an evening set, but in 1995 they were still relegated to the daytime slot.

JONATHAN RICHMAN

Jonathan Richman had been a favorite of his for years, from back in the mid 70s when Roadrunner was a Boston radio staple and through Jonathan's quirky early 80s records that were broadcast on Atlanta's WRAS, Album 88. He caught Richman live for the first time in the late 80s at a club (QE2) in the back of a White Castle hamburger joint in Albany, New York, and he vowed that night that he'd catch every Jonathan Richman show he possibly could from then on.  He's kept that vow, and by now has seen Jonathan a countless number of times, more times by far than any other performer.  His next scheduled Richman show is in Seattle on Labor Day weekend.

So that's who he can recognize.  Here are some of the bands below that he can't.  Any help at all identifying any of these performers would be most appreciated.  Seriously, please.  Anyone?

He can't even tell if this first band is reggae, hip-hop, or rock, or some hybrid of all three.

Any idea who this studious-looking guitarist is?

Or these guys?

Or these?

Does anyone know who this all-female band is? (He assumes the drummer was probably female, too.)

Or these two ladies?

No clue below, but the hat suggests country, or at least alt-country or folk.

Meanwhile, beyond these festivals and concerts and shows, somewhere around the time of the murder in the red barn, he had become a fan of the Chicago-based My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult.  He even got a chance to see them perform at Pittsburgh's Rosebud.  By 1995, when he wasn't attending Pot Festivals or Music Midtown, even though he had already turned 40 by then, he was cruising the dark streets of Atlanta playing 13 Above the Night, looking for love, looking for adventure, looking for action, looking for anything that was out there to be found.

At least he wasn't in fucking Albany any more.

Soul Coughing and Music Midtown 1994

So, the more things change, the more they stay the same, et cet.  Six years after deciding that he needed a change and left Atlanta, he had decided that he needed another change and returned to Atlanta. You never enter the same river twice and you don't live in the same city twice - it's changed after you've moved back and so have you.

His enthusiasm for alternative forms of jazz-based hip-hop continued, and one of his favorite bands of 1994 was Soul Coughing.  He considered their post-hipster combination of hip-hop, folk-rock, and jazz to be just about the coolest thing imaginable and was excited to see them perform a free, in-store performance at Criminal Records.

Frontman Mike Doughty is currently performing stripped-down, "reimagined" versions of Soul Coughing songs, and 20 years after the 1994 show, he caught Doughty perform at Criminal Records again, albeit at a new location and in a solo, acoustic set.  He caught Doughty again, this time with a full band, at Terminal West later that year.  

As with the years before, he listened to a lot of other music that year.  One Saturday morning in 1994, he saw in the local newspaper that there was something called Music Midtown that was going to be held that very day on an undeveloped tract of land at Peachtree and 10th St.  He went down on the spur of the moment and attended the inaugural event, and remembers seeing headliner James Brown for the one-and-only time in his life, as well as various other bands including Cake, Cracker, James, and Cowboy Mouth, but after that, it's mostly a blur of forgotten memories.

  

Fortunately, he took some pictures.

Michelle Malone

Flying Burrito Brothers

Glenn Phillips

Hugh Masakela

James Brown

For posterity's sake (and to attract Google hits), here's the line-up of the 1994 Music Midtown festival: Al Green, Allgood, Arturo Sandoval, Anson Funderburgh, Michelle Malone, Bela Fleck and The Flecktones, Billy Dean, Black Uhuru, Bobby Blue Bland, Brother Cane, Buddy Guy, The Charlatans, Cigar Store Indians, Cowboy Mouth, Cracker, Dallas County Line, Dash Rip Rock, Deborah Allen, Derek Trucks Band, Eddie Money, Five Eight, Flying Burrito Brothers, Glenn Phillips, Goose Creek Symphony, Hank Flamingo, Hugh Masakela, Hip Heavy Lip, James, James Brown, Jason & The Scorchers, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Joan Baez, Jupiter Coyote, KC & The Sunshine Band, The Knack, Lee Roy Parnell, Leo Kotke, Marsha Ball, Mr. Pitiful's Blues Bandits, Murray Attaway, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church Music Ministry, Ottoman Empire, Peter Case, Radney Foster, The Radiators, Raven Symone, Rodney Crowell, Rusty Johnson, Saffire The Uppity Blues Women, Sam Philips, Sergio Salvatore, The Smithereens, Subsonics, Syd Straw, Thing 1 Thing 2, The Tramps, Uncle Green, The Vidalias, and Wild West Picture Show.