Music is indeed getting younger and younger, in age, not necessarily in style and technique. Communication between older and younger generations - and older and younger techniques - generally goes from old to young and hardly ever vice-versa. The cycle will continue for pop culture, and generally the same for hiphop and punk within mainstream realms.
Interviewing Lucy Dreams for Examiner reminds me that not all fresh meat musicians have complete sponges for minds because of how eloquently they speak and how hard they work on their music. Not that they don't need to listen to their elders - I'm sure they do - but they seem like they haven't arrived to the sea of music as dry sponges ready to soak up whatever they can. In this excerpt I talk to Lucy Dreams, who came together while they were still in high school, about their textured sound and how they form their music:
Does your sound come about organically? Do you try to form the right music and notes?
When we’re practicing we do play around until something comes out right, we rarely ever bring something prepared to practice. The songwriting process is very organic compared to our sound because of how we jam. What isn’t really organic is the actual sonic sound of our music. That’s a little more conscious on our part. We have this idea, not really exact, but a vague idea of what we want our sound to be. Being a band that’s so focused on the textures and wash of everything, it can be kind of tough for our shows too. Getting something like that to sound just right, especially with all the pedals, that’s a lot of work.
I noticed that throughout your performance you guys were going back and forth with the pedals and the knobs. You guys worked the hell out of tweaking your sound onstage!
Yeah, we kinda were. Whenever there’s nothing to do though, I’m like “eh, I bet this will sound better,” and start messing with the sound.
It was really interesting watching that, and watching your sound unfold. Can you guys describe what your sound or where it’s going?
It’s textured. It’s atmospheric. I think the idea of it is to not be simply chords and notes, but invoke something more than that. The noises that you’re hearing set different kinds of moods. It’s more than just the backing of our vocals. In fact, it’s the other way around – the vocals are the backing of our noises.
You speak so well about music. Are you guys still in school? You look so young!
No, well, we’re in Georgia State. Except Dani’s still in high school, she’s a junior.
Last year, when this was The Other Sound festival, I didn't know about the event until the middle of the day it began. I promised myself I would not miss this year's, and, fortunately, I am a person of my word!
I covered Little Five Fest for Examiner this year, despite some camera issues, but was taken care of by the Little Five Fest crew. The photos you'll see below are taken by Dave Batterman, a well-known concert photographer, a man who knows his stuff.
Every week in Little Five Points are at least five shows that are worth going to, regardless of what type of music folks actually listen to - because it'll all be there one way or another. Whether it's rock or rap, in some way, shape or form there's something from all genres for someone from all walks of life.
That's what Curio Museum helped me realize when I a) saw them perform one Thursday night and b) interviewed them for Examiner.
In this excerpt, Nadia (the band's lead singer) talks about her crazy vocals and how expressing their emotions can make one feel dirty after:
With your performances, as innocent and laid back as you guys are, it gets really tense up there with all the yelling. Where does that come from and why do you do that?
I’m gonna be 100% honest, the band wanted me to just stand there and sing with my cute voice. One day, I got really upset while I was singing during a live performance, and I screamed one line. It stayed with me, so now I continue to do it every now and then. It was totally an accident, but I stuck with it because it sounds great. Plus, all the songs are really emotional, and I love to try and capture that. I put a lot of myself into these songs so that it’s very real and very a part of me. It overcomes me a lot because most of the time it’s the deepest darkest secrets I’m telling. Encoded, but still telling.
Wow, so how should I listen to it?
You should feel dirty afterwards.
Oh, like I should go wash after this show then, huh?
No, maybe, but it’s a very serious thing I do. I hope the emotion shines through even beyond the meaning, and I hope people feel it. People can take and mold their own meaning to our stuff, I just would really like it to mean something to someone else.
Before you get all "is this blue-collar, shoot-em-up rockabilly music" on me, check out Gun Party's Bandcamp player below.
Now that you know what's going on, here's the interview I did with this group. Although it's just an excerpt, get to know the deets behind their debut album.
Our drummer loves, loves, loves Radiohead. I am more of a fan of female punk singers and bands. Our guitarist really, really loves loud garage rock. Our bassist is more of a Harry Nilsson fan. It all just kinda merged into this clusterfuck of rock music that kinda turned out awesome!
How has merging all those different styles been like when it comes to creating the first album?
It could be a really interesting process. Some of our songs came way more organically than others, and some time we didn’t really notice we have different tastes in music because we seem to have one when we’re able to go into the studio. A lot of the songs, like the “Kite Flights,” we’ll work on for months and the original form was all over the place. It was very much rock and roll, but it was all kinds of things – punk, then it was blues rock, and then it had loud, garage-y guitar tones – and it wasn’t making a lot of sense. It took many, many weeks and us sitting down tweaking a lot of things. What really did it was when we went into the studio to record it and having somebody else listen to it. They were able to tell us how it was running into each other. The main thing of us having so much of a difference is that it takes us a really long time to figure out which is appropriate and which is perfect for the song we’re doing. Ultimately, it worked out, and now “Kite Flights” is my favorite song.
Whenever I’m listening to the album, what should folks look out for within the content and lyrics?
There’s a theme to each song, but not easy to pick up on. We try to not be completely random with our lyrics – it’s usually about something, sometimes they’re about someone, but they all have themes. If you keep listening, you’ll pick up on them. Like “Runaway” is a break-up song, so I’m sappy and crying. “Kite Flights” is a self-destruction song, and it doesn’t make sense at first but it’s within the way that song builds as well as lends itself to the lyrics which lets you know how feisty it is. In “DBV,” which stands for Dead Bitch Vagina, is simply about a stalker in a hotel room. They’re all over the place, but each song has a consistency with the lyrics...
Read more, like how they formed out of being a joke band and exactly how did they come up with the name, by clicking here!
One thing I've began to enjoy is catching an artist fresh off the stage. They're guard is slightly up because they know all eyes (and investigative ears) are on them, they have prepared answers for the press - before their self-proclaimed wicked performance and they're still on cloud 9 after said-wicked performance.
This got the same result.
After her performance for one of SMKA's Through The Rabbit Hole concert series, I interviewed Richelle Brown AKA Cornbread for my Get To Know Q&A series for Examiner.com. We talked about how she got her name, her influences and her upcoming projects. Here is an excerpt from our discussion where we talked about her nickname, which became her pen name - Cornbread.
... I call my music electro-funk because it’s electronically done and we summon up the funk gods. It’s funky, it’s gonna make you stank, it’s gonna make you dance, it’s gonna make you sing, it’s gonna make you wanna love somebody, and ain’t nothing better than love! And funk. Love and funk!
Let me ask you this, if it’s along those lines. You’re nickname is Cornbread. Where did that come from?
Oh gosh, that name. When I was in high school, there was this new guy that came to school and he was so cute. All the girls liked him because he was super thugged-out. As I was walking down the hallway, and all the girls were looking at him, he looked up at me and was like “What’s up Cornbread?” I was like “First of all, my name is Richelle, it is not Cornbread, and don’t you ever call me that again.” I had to let him know but then every time he sees me in the hallway, he’d yell “Cornbread!” and I yell back “That’s not my name!” I started asking people why does he keep calling me that, and come to find out he was calling me Cornbread because I was thick and was not a skinny girl. They said that people who eat a lot of bread get thick or whatever. Fast-forward to college, I was in my first class and the teacher was asking an icebreaker question like “What’s the weirdest pick-up line you ever had?” I was 17, and I couldn’t think of any weird pick-up lines except for that because I wasn’t able to date. I told the story, and when I told them that they started calling me Cornbread because they liked that name. When I got my first job, or any time somebody from my school would see me somewhere, they call me Cornbread. Then other people hear it, and they wanna call me that too because it’s easy for people to remember. With my brand, Space Age Hippie, it fit.
That’s really cool how it stuck with you and grew on you...
Usually folks label me as a hiphop journalist or all about hiphop culture. While I don't take it as an insult, I'd like for you all to know that I do have just as much interest in other music cultures besides hiphop. Bluegrass in certainly one of them.
For Examiner.com, I covered Atlanta's annual Bubbapalooza in Little Five Points at Star Bar. Other than the subconscious racial tension - mainly along the lines of "whoa, what's this Black girl doing here?!?" - I had a great time getting to know on a fond level what bluegrass, hillbilly folk-type music is all about. Here's an excerpt of what went down:
Bringing the folk back to night one was Bareknuckle Betties. Toting a guitar, banjo, washboard and an upright bass, these four ladies put on a swell rockabilly performance. They brought an authentic and forgotten super vintage girl punk feel – because the REAL original girl punk bands were ladies of blues and rockabilly!
Emotions rose as Anna Kramer and The Lost Cause began their set, specifically from “Mama,” (Gregory) Smalley’s mother, as she was hugging one of the many attendees wanting to pay their respect to the Bubbapalooza family. At only night one this annual music festival showed the values behind this kind of music, and the cause of keeping this festival alive, despite the death of their founder 15 years ago.
Check out the entire recap of the two-night festival on Examiner by clicking here!
One thing I do with Examiner is a Get to Know Q&A with some of the Atlanta musicians who stop by Little Five Points. It usually covers their creations, upcoming projects, living in the A, and whatever I can typically fit within a 20-minute conversation. This one features an eccentric band called A Fight to the Death, and the band member really gave me a glimpse into the complications of the Atlanta indie scene and being a band in general. Here's an excerpt of it, but I suggest just go to the whole interview here:
At this rate, where do you see A Fight To The Death within the next five years?
I hope that we are able to use the geographic distance and also use the challenges and convenience in modern technology to become more of a national band, and I mean that well. I hope that that’ll allow us to play more and out of our comfort zone, and overcome the complacency that we have in Atlanta. I really hope it gets us out of Atlanta more and make us a national or at least a multiregional band. I hope our songwriting grows and becomes more bizarre and interesting, like I will not have any idea what our next record will sound like. I see us growing and crafting songs that have a greater longevity than just writing songs that we’ll be performing live as we won’t be in that setting anymore. Our focus will be a little different.
I must personally say that as I was working on a preview of Atlanta's MaMaJam (happening tonight at the Five Spot btw, so read about it here), I would've never imagined the things I learned about sensuality within the most technical music genres and instruments.
What dub and electronic music and violins have in common is that they have a neglected sensual side (more about it can be read in my Examiner article here), most of it due to the attention of its technicality. Think: most people focus on the arrangement and production of dub so much, the lines in-between, connotations, and cultural background - heck, even the cries within these sounds (if you listen carefully) - are all pushed aside. There is something like a cry or yearn or desire that a violin and other sounds within dub and electronic music makes, but it's a sound that goes unheard.
Enters Govinda - a violinist and dubstep/electronic music artist. Rarely do you see someone successfully integrate two musical paths that require much-needed attention, unless you already eff with Govinda. He makes the violin and electronic music sexy from an exotic standpoint, creating his own lane. I spoke with him while journo-ing on MaMaJam over the phone about sensuality and his development as a violinist.
This is an excerpt of what we discussed, so if it sounds like stuff came out of nowhere then ignore that feeling. Ha!
How have you developed as an artist over the years?
Until out of college, I only listened to classical music. After college, I decided I wasn’t really good as a violinist, well, a concert violinist who plays symphonies, so I decided to make up my own compositions. There’s a lot of violinist out there who are doing contemporary music, but it’s more used for solo pieces. For me, it’s just a small piece of what makes up Govinda. The violin is usually a focal point live, but it isn’t a focal point in the music. Over time, it developed based on the things I was inspired by, which were the sensual kind of quality and the haunting quality of the violin. Also, the sexy quality of the violin and the mysterious quality. All these things helped design the music and how it sounded.
It’s rare to hear someone say that the violin is sexy. What do you mean when you say that?
The sounds that come out of it, the emotions that it brings out, the feelings that it brings out for people, which tend to be more on the sensual side. You don’t really think of the sounds of the violin in the way you think of the sounds of a tuba or the drum. It evokes a different feeling and emotion, and I would say in general the violin and other string instruments are more sensual in nature. Then again, I don’t really know what it is! Maybe it has to do with the body shape of the instrument, haha.
Oh, is that not your cup of tea? Is the body shape of the violin the kind of chicks you go for?
Nope, that’s my cup of tea. I like anything sexy.
Not very many people I know in music talk about violin like that, especially the sound of it because it’s usually used so technically. Now that I think about it, I could see that.
My whole life I was raised in an environment where sensuality was a big part of our life. I was raised by my mother who taught us differently. We were allowed to watch sex scenes on TV, but not violence, so we would have to cover our eyes when somebody on TV was shooting, which is pretty much the opposite of people. I grew up in this world where it was like sex and sensuality is a natural part of humanity and being alive. That’s why the music and the shows are very sensual. We have dancers, mainly with the female body, who dance provocatively. A lot of what I do is super sexy because that’s what it’s all about for me. Well, NOT what it’s ALL about, but a big part of it.
I got you. It’s not overly sexual or hypersexual.
Not exactly, I mean, not to say we haven’t had strippers and poles onstage but it’s not really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to have more of a tasteful sensuality rather than just balls out, like tits and ass and sex on the stage. I mean, I’m not saying we’ll never do something like that one day and surprise people, but that’s not really our goal, or what we’re doing.
Will all that unfold at MaMaJam?
Absolutely!
Ok. Well, what all will you be doing at MaMaJam?
Yeah, I play the violin live and we’re gonna have dancers. We’re also gonna have hoopers and belly dancers, also fire dancers and whatever the promoter is putting together. My part will definitely involve lots of live music and violin playing, and an overall performance that most people don’t expect. It’ll be fun and interesting.
For Examiner, I caught some sweet, colorful footage while covering the SXSW Send-Off Party for Back Pockets, Reptars and the video performers Abby Gogo.
Abby Gogo, in one word, is versatile. They flip their garage rock sound in just about any way possible - from the slow, noisy kind to the fun and fast kind. They have punk tendencies and lyricism, but they successfully complement it with an experimental and quite sluggish music.
In this video, the band performs "Louder Than Dreams," a sick single off their self-titled album. The song shows off how versatile these cats are, with riffs that go against their typical repertoire and with lyrics that can amp up the coolest person (even though you can barely hear them in the video, thanks to the bad sound). Overall, Abby Gogo is a fun band to listen to and see perform.
Atlanta's lucky to have such a diverse local music scene! Well, at least I'm glad to witness all of it.
Oh, and check me out on YouTube because I always try to upload music videos!
This story was originally for Examiner, but the site is down (at least, every time I get on it), so I wanna share this story with you guys about Thomas Pridgen's new band The Memorials. I will have the entire interview (along with a few special others) up very soon, the schedule has been hella tight, but I digress...
When it comes The Memorials' Thomas Pridgen, whom some may remember from Grammy Award-winning group The Mars Volta, his new band has just one request when they perform at the Five Spot tonight. Don't tell them they sounded like Fishbone.
In their debut tour, The Memorials are bringing their highly rocking talents to Little Five Points after what seemed like a tough battle to kick off in the first place. In fact, they have been doing things in an indie/grassroots type of way when it comes to getting funding for their tour. "We're all doing this by ourselves, no one is really helping us out money-wise," drummer Thomas Pridgen says. According to their Kickstarter website, The Memorials have raked in a little over $1400 and are taking things one month at a time. "It's just crazy to see the hustle," he adds.
All that aside, fans are sure to get a quality from this band as they transcend from the studio to the stage. One thing for sure is that stage presence is not a problem. "I think people are freaking out on the energy on stage," Thomas Pridgen says. "Especially with people of color. They look at us strangely thinking we're gonna do one thing, but by the second song they're bobbing their heads, and then by the third song they're like 'fuck, I know this song.' And they love it."
Another surprise about The Memorials is their vintage twists as what Pridgen considers "a rare Black rock group." At one point, listeners of their new album, named after their band, will hear something strikingly similar to nu-metal. At another point throughout the album, listeners will get a few tracks that tap into Thomas Pridgen's breakthrough progressive rock sound. There is even a tinge of funk added to a few tracks, so this band has the predictability of Atlanta's snow patrol. Even Pridgen gets lost in identifying The Memorials' sound. "I'll be sitting behind the drums, and I have a crazy catalog of music in my head, and I can't figure out what we sound like," he says.
One thing's for sure, the trio aims to do their kind of music - no gimmicks, no targeted audience, and definitely no spandex. "I'm from the Bay, and we don't wear spandex," Pridgen says. "We don't need to put on no ridiculous costume or sing a certain way because white people listen to rock, we just need to play. We're a progressive rock band, so no matter what color we are all we have to do is play our ass off."
When doors open at 8 p.m., prepare to be blown away by the opening acts Just Like Vinyl (featuring Thomas Erak formerly of The Fall of Troy) and Bodega Roja. Cover will be $10.
Now I add yet another writing job on my plate: Little Five Points Music Examiner.
After some complications with my site, it is up and running so you must check it out!!!
Just to be upfront with you, the more views I get, the more cash I get, so when all you who enjoy my blog should take your happy selfs over to my examiner page.
My writing skills + ATL's best neighborhood + you lovely viewers = a win for everyone!
I've been making a lot of cool moves this past week!
1) I am working for Lee Bailey (famous announcer dude from RadioScope... you know? The guy with the sick, sick announcer voice) as the web intern for his website Electronic Urban Report (EUR) Network.
2) I am an Examiner! Yeah, although the many classified ad postings on Monster, HotJobs, and CareerBuilder (or any other job posting site) looks extremely shady, it's not that bad of a place to work for! Not to mention it is a "paying" job, so I'm not mad at all.
Anywho, I cover the Little Five Points music scene. In other words, I cover everything music-wise that goes on in the bars, coffeehouse, and other wicked places in the awesome Little Five Points area in Atlanta.
If you live in the ATL (or around it), check out my site to get all the happenings in Little Five Points, one of the most diverse and coolest areas in all of Atlanta!
The more readers I get, the more money I get, so please check out my Examiner page!
, and the band member really gave me a glimpse into the complications of the Atlanta indie scene and being a band in general. Here's an excerpt of it, but I suggest just go to the whole interview 
in the music player above!
," a sick single off their self-titled album. The song shows off how versatile these cats are, with riffs that go against their typical repertoire and with lyrics that can amp up the coolest person (even though you can barely hear them in the video, thanks to the bad sound). Overall, Abby Gogo is a fun band to listen to and see perform.
, his new band has just one request when they perform at the Five Spot tonight. Don't tell them they sounded like Fishbone.
, named after their band, will hear something strikingly similar to nu-metal. At another point throughout the album, listeners will get a few tracks that tap into Thomas Pridgen's breakthrough progressive rock sound. There is even a tinge of funk added to a few tracks, so this band has the predictability of Atlanta's snow patrol. Even Pridgen gets lost in identifying The Memorials' sound. "I'll be sitting behind the drums, and I have a crazy catalog of music in my head, and I can't figure out what we sound like," he says.