Christ, Lord at The Mammal Gallery, Atlanta, May 31, 2014

As discussed elsewhere, the power at my house went out last night due to a fallen tree down the block, and after two hours or so it got so warm and sticky indoors that I had no choice but to go somewhere, anywhere, else for relief.  As it turns out, Saturday night was a fairly good night for live music here in Atlanta, so it's not that I was without options.  The Candler Park Music Festival, where we saw Edward Sharpe last year, was going down and included performances by Trombone Shorty, Lucero, and Frank Turner. However, it having rained earlier in the day, I didn't trust the weather enough to spend the evening at an outdoor event.  Meanwhile, Atlanta's Quiet Hounds were performing at a restaurant, Le Maison Rouge, but that show had sold out before I got a ticket, so that was out for me as well. 

Coincidentally, last night also marked the final performances by two other Atlanta bands.  The funk-rock collective Noot D'Noot are calling it quits after eight years, and were playing their last-ever show at the MJQ Concourse (basically, the  other side of the bar at The Drunken Unicorn).  Meanwhile, Christian Ballew, accordionist, singer, and frontman for the band Christ, Lord, is moving to Wyoming (of all places) for some reason, and last night also marked their final-ever performance.  Given that I was never that big a fan of Noot D'Noot anyway, and that Christ, Lord's finale was being held at the Mammal Gallery with the venue proprietors Hello Ocho opening, I headed downtown to the MG to escape my dark, hot, powerless home.  

The doors at the Mammal Gallery opened at 9:00 pm but the music didn't start until 10:30.  However, having nothing else to do what with the power outage at home, I arrived at The Mammal Gallery just a little after 9:00 and was one of the first people there.  I waited, alone, leaning against a wall and playing with my cell phone until the battery ran low (another power failure!) to kill the 90 minutes before the show began.  I was not in a good mood and in the back of my mind I kept wondering if the power had been restored at my house yet and if I shouldn't just head back home and call it a night.  I decided to pace myself, though, and wait until after the opening act, Tantrum, finished before I left.

Tantrum is Michika McClinton, who started her set solo singing over loops and keyboard, before adding a bass and guitar to the mix.  My mood, still sour over the loss of power at the house and the 90-minute wait, didn't allow me to enjoy her set, until she was joined on stage by members of Hello Ocho and other friends to perform a perfect, note-by-note over of Tom Tom  Club's Wordy Rappinghood (which, by the way, I first heard on WRAS Album 88).

It's interesting how one song can turn your whole attitude around.  In no time at all, I and the whole rest of the audience were dancing and jumping up and down and singing along, even to the tricky "Ran-san-san a ran-san-san, Ku-ni ku-ni ku-ni ku-ni ran-san-san, Ai-ka-ye yoopi ak-ka-ye, A-roo, a-roo, a-ni-ki-chi!" Michika and company covered the song faithfully and perfectly, including all of the raps and even the conga solos.  I was in pure veridical heaven. 

That one song turned me and my evening around ("turned my frown upside down"), but I realized later that much of the young audience didn't even recognize the classic 1981 song.  Hell, most of the audience hadn't even been born yet when the song first came out and at the time, I was approaching 30 (okay, I was 27). So, for those of you who don't know, Wordy Rappinghood was the B-side to the single Genius of Love by the Tom-Tom Club, a spinoff of The Talking Heads fronted by bassist Tina Weymouth.  The two songs on the single marked, if not the first hip-hop/rock fusion - the 12" single version dropped February 17, 1981, a month after Blondie's Rapture had come out - certainly the most ebullient and joyful.  If I have to choose my favorite recording of 80s white girls rapping, it would have to be Tom Tom Club over Blondie, who sounds rigid and scripted by comparison.

In fact, the loopy, unhinged rapping of Wordy Rappinghood is probably a lot closer to The Slits' post-punk deconstruction of hip-hop than to Blondie's slick disco-glam.  I'd love to hear someone attempt to channel the late, great Ari Up someday and cover In The Beginning There Was Rhythm, also from 1981:

But I'm rambling (as old men tend to do) - and also up and dancing to the videos I just posted - but meanwhile, back at the Mammal Gallery, the audience was pumped up by Tantrum's performance, and Hello Ocho, about the only band that could harness that energy, took the stage for a terrific performance of their original songs.  

I've used the term "Zappaesque" in the past to describe Hello Ocho, and while the band sounds nothing like the late Frank or the Mothers of Invention, they share a common enthusiasm for mixing and subverting genres and for tricky time changes.  The "I want to take you grocery shopping" break in Orange Peel owes as much to Cruising With Ruben and the Jets as it does to the doo-wop it satirizes, and they even have a Ruth Underwood-caliber marimba player.  From about 1972 to 1975, my friends and I were heavily influenced by Zappa's unique, jazzy brand of prog rock fusion, and Hello Ocho are exactly the kind of band we kept unsuccessfully trying to form at that time. 

But this night was all about Christ, Lord, not about Tantrum or Hello Ocho, or, for that matter, Tom Tom Club, The Slits, or The Mothers of Invention.  The Atlanta music community had shown up to send Christian off, and I spotted members of Little Tybee in the audience, as well as Georgie Seanny (No Eyes) and Davy Minor (Deer Bear Wolf), among others.  I even got a chance to chat with Nirvana Kelly of Little Tybee, and bought her and guitarist Josh Martin a beer.  It wasn't until well after midnight that Christ, Lord took the stage, but it was well worth the wait.

Christ, Lord's gypsy-influenced, Balkan folk rock sounds somewhere in between the band Beirut (but without the mariachi flourishes) and Gogol Bordello (but without the punk intensity).  In a city with any number of idiosyncratic stylists (Adron, Jeffrey Butzer, Takenobu, etc,), Christian Ballow and Christ, Lord have managed to contribute their own unique flavor to the musical stew.   They will be missed.

Christ, Lord was joined on stage for several songs by members of Hello Ocho, who've played with them before, including a stint as the brief-lived Ocho Lord Orchestra, while the audience proved that yes, you can in fact mosh to a waltz.  It was a wonderful set, and at the end Ballow declared, "That's all the music that we know," but still somehow managed to come up with one more number to perform for the ecstatic crowd.

The night ended with earnest hugs all around the stage as the band realized that was it, it's over, and it was time for the musicians to move on to whatever it is they choose to do next. Personally, I'd love to hear a fusion of Hello Ocho with the remaining members of Christ, Lord to hear what Hello Ocho would sound like with horns.

It was about 2 am when I finally got back home, and the electric power had been restored.  The clocks were flashing "1:30," indicating that the power hadn't been restored until 12:30 am or roughly six hours after it had gone out and just as Christ, Lord was taking the stage, so it's a good thing (at least for me) that I turned my mood around and stayed for the whole event.  A-roo, a-roo, a-ni-ki-chi!

Born Ruffians and Moon King at The Earl, Atlanta, April 24, 2013

Last night's sky featured one of the most gorgeous full moons I can recall seeing in a while, and while I thought that I had already learned everything I needed to know about "Moon" bands back in Rocktober (Moon Duo, Soft Moon, Poor Moon, etc.), last evening taught me that I didn't know nearly as much as I had thought.  Not only did I discover what may be the best "Moon" band of all, but I also learned that a band I would have classified as "obscure" are in fact wildly popular, at least among an obscure audience.  I'll explain shortly.

But first, Atlanta's Christ, Lord kicked off the evening performing under the name Christ Lord Ochostra (I think that's how they spelled it), which means that the usual sextet is expanded to include members of Hello Ocho to make the band a nonet (I think that's the term for a nine-piece band).  Setting up, it looked like they were in a contest to get more people onto the stage than were in the audience.

Not that Christ, Lord doesn't have its own portable fan base to fill a club.  As usual when I've seen them, there was a crowd of young women in attendance, dancing to the Balkan-influenced gypsy-folk pop songs.  The Hello Ocho boys even stepped off stage for a few bars of one song to dance with a few of them, giving the young ladies a twirl or two before rejoining the band on stage.

These guys really are quite good and there's a lot to be said for them, and a lot more would probably be said if they were based in Brooklyn or Portland or Austin.  But here in the ATL, they remain one of our little secrets: the band that's even more Balkan than Gulag Orkestar-era Beirut, and the sole remaining bearers of the swing-dance movement of the 90s.

The evening was stolen, though, by Toronto's Moon King, currently touring with Born Ruffians.  Although they've apparently played The Earl many times before, they were the one band on the lineup about whom I didn't know anything, but after last night, I'm a big fan - this is how you do it, folks.

The band is led by Daniel Benjamin and Maddy Wilde, along with a drummer and a keyboardist/sampler.  Daniel has a surprisingly sweet, pop  voice - sounding almost like a male Grimes at times - but is still capable of unleashing a great post-punk howl.  On the fist song alone, he roamed the stage, stood on the bass drum, threw down the mic stand, and fell backwards while on his knees - and he was just warming up.  Maddy, meanwhile, egged him on with her guitar and supporting vocals.

There was something about the primal energy of their music that made me feel so very alive.  It was a great set by an exciting band.  I hope to see them again soon.

The headliners, fellow Torontonians Born Ruffians, kept up the level of energy.

Since I'm old and out of touch with much of pop culture, I can never tell what bands are popular or what audience is attracted to any particular band.  I knew Born Ruffians from one song and one song only, Sole Brother, which they didn't even play last night and I didn't see listed on any of the albums at their merch table (I did hear one person call a request for the song during their set, though, so I knew I wasn't thinking of some other band).  In any event, during all of their songs, they sounded like the band that performed Sole Brother, so there's that but what I hadn't expected was the level of audience enthusiasm - The Earl was only about half full, but those in attendance were singing along to almost every song - including those introduced as "new ones."

Who were these people, and where did they hear these songs? During the stage banter, it was revealed that some people had driven from over three hours away to attend this show.  There's obviously whole channels and outlets of music of which I'm unaware, and in retrospect, the surprising thing may be that Sole Brother managed to make it through whatever filters I've constructed around myself.  In any event, the band was good - energetic party music with funky beats, scruffy vocals, and earnest playing.  The audience clearly loved them, dancing, pumping their fists, and singing along throughout the set.  Although they sound very different, I was reminded of the energy and party atmosphere present at a Givers concert.

After about the midway point of their set, several of their songs starting sounding vaguely familiar to me, but I honestly couldn't tell if I'd heard them before on the radio or t.v. (American Express reportedly used a song  of theirs for a commercial), or if I was just channeling into their groove.

The call for an encore was thunderous, and the band obliged the enraptured crowd with two more songs before calling it a night.

On a night with such a glorious full moon, it seems fitting that Moon King stole the show, but Born Ruffians taught me not to be complacent - there's always more music out there to be discovered.  

Lonesome Leash

Walt McClements with Dark Dark Dark at 529, Oct. 17, 2012

Walt McClements of the band Dark Dark Dark now has his solo thing going called Lonesome Leash, and he's bringing it to Atlanta on January 10 at a venue to be named later.  We last saw McClements and Dark Dark Dark at the 529 back during Rocktober, with Christ, Lord and Emily Wells opening.  Based on the sound of his new material - listen to Ghosts, below - it would be fitting for Christ, Lord to open for him again, as they sound as it they're both cut from the same gypsy soul.

I'm not so sure that the face tattoo is such a good idea, though (rarely is).

In any event, January 10 may be the first concert night of the new year, and the first break in the great Winter Doldrums since Of Monsters and Men back on November 29 (which itself was the only break since Lost In the Trees back on November 3).  

A few more shots of McClements from back in October and another Lonesome Leash song: