347 Augusta

Chocolate Mountain

Garrett — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:05:32 +0000

Just a sunny week or so ago, with my head in the clouds I shuffled from the woman’s section of Value Village heading to the mens pant department, rack. There in the middle of where the bahama shirts and Cosby sweaters meet in some outlandish attic-throw-away-bottleneck, stood an oddly tall man yelling “Who sings this song” as a question to the four or five lonely men idling over the idea of buying Paco Jeans. My path was bringing up the rear, and like the rest of the men in front of me I had no business answering this mans question. Working my way quietly through the blazer jackets I entered the pants department, rack. Personally, I never find anything there, well maybe once or twice. The oddly tall man found me, finding nothing. Looking down at me from across the pants rack he suddenly yelled,
“What song is that?”
“I don’t know” I said nervously, as all of the men now behind the oddly tall man looked on at me, with a sort of gleeful appreciation.
Quickly he boomed, “I hear a voice, and that voice sounds like Stevie Nicks, that tells me that it must be Fleetwood Mac.”
Quietly now, we stared at each other oafishly.

Jeff Clark: “It’s Elephant’s suxorz!”

Sean — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:57:12 +0000

Who doesn’t hate Atlanta’s best failing music critic, Jeff Clark? Attractive Eighties Women debase Jeff in this interview and call him a “coward.”

And even though he’s talking about a band whose members I am familiar with, it doesn’t make up for the fact that he’s a butt plug. No trackback for you:

It’s Elephant’s have a new, nine-song, 22-minute EP out called Gets Along. If I was drunk right now I’d probably say they sound like some satanic merger of Three Dog Night and Canned Heat, but the sober truth is they’re even worse than that. They’re solidly in the running for the most awful local band I’ve heard so far this century. That’s beating out a metric ton of competition, folks!

The 12:15 movie experience.

Garrett — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:43:27 +0000

It was 2:33 am, slightly foggy and it had appeared to have begun raining and stopped while the five of us had been watching Halloween II. Personally satisfied, my words were the first of praise, to be met by a very true response of dissatisfaction based on a mediocre plot and dialog. “I think I was just going in to this movie expecting an equal amount of psychological horror as blood covered gore,” a most trusted associate said. “It also seems like there was more room for a statement, and trying to make it without using the room provided, seemed lazy and useless.” The latter statement was made by a friend of mine, that when with overgrown beard, looked terrifyingly identical to the woods man Michael Myers.
Apparently, my experience was different and I would have never had guessed. Six minutes into the movie, I was almost breathing into a paper bag. The setting alone was a psychological nightmare for a person not to far removed from the rural countryside. Just a quick list; lonely road, giant killer man strapped into coroner van, pedo-necrophilia employees, car crash, giant killer man un-strapped from the coroner van. After that it was all smooth sailing.

Sure, the acting that went on when murders were not happening was bad. Also, the plot was kinda misguided and the story makes sudden and abrasive turns that you just have to ignore, accept or consider stupid. Seriously, we know Michael Myers lives in the woods for a year, and obviously can’t read. Pretty sure doctors don’t cover reading when your a weird, super strong redneck killer that eventually becomes mute. Yet, Michael Myers can walk all over the earth, with out reading one thing about his sister Angel, and find her. This is totally fucking ridiculous.

Right, it is also the original idea. Slasher movies don’t really make any sense in the first place. Still if you, like so many of us like the idea of a creepy blood-fest based on just a man, who now has supernatural powers explained by slightly campy dream sequences, hell bent on murder, then you will get into this movie.

My coffee is cold.

Its so late, its early.

Garrett — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 07:58:56 +0000

Watched this, twice while on Buddyhead. Pretty enjoyable, strange and slightly offensive.

Goodnight and good luck.

That ol’ weekend.

Garrett — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:07:18 +0000

So this about wraps it up. For those of you, the very very few, that visit this website and do not share couches with the majority of us, some of us that are in the band it’s elephant’s, had the unbelievable pleasure of playing with the great Sleeping in the Aviary two times in the last three days. First off; Tallahassee, Florida. We played a place called St. Michael’s pub, the Thursday night event is called “Back to the Garage.” This is what we were playing. Long story short, the first band, The Soft Targets, in my opinion played to long considering that all of us bands were drowning in a sea of punk rock dog-shit out in the audience. So, as no surprise to anyone, holding a event called “Back to the Garage”, offering all your can drink beer, all you can eat pizza for three dollars is a sure fire way to get every shit bag punker form here to who gives a fuck to fill up your giant bar with their stupid hair, and gigantic tick like girlfriends. I digress. After The Soft Targets played forever, SITA killed it. We played to know one, and drove home all night.
Last night, Vegan Coke played beautifully, Sleeping in the Aviary played lovingly and everyone seemed to stick around to watch us play Sunday Morning at the 529 in East Atlanta. It feels good to have great friends that love you no matter how much they can smell your feet in open air. It feels good to be in a room surrounded by people that you would take a flurry of bullets for. Thank all of you for making rough times a little easier and early mornings a little more bearable.
You, no names needed, are loved unconditionally. Even if you are stuck in Myrtle Beach, getting drunk and working.

The epic problem of content decision making.

Garrett — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:15:28 +0000

The first thing someone, anyone, might think of writing about on a blog site would be the obvious recounting of the day one just had. This is trite and mind numbingly boring, make no bones about it, stupid. See there is no solution there. Personally, all day long subjects pass through my mind, I think of cute little one liners, toss around the idea and usually chalk it up to a pointless venture. After all, who reads this shit anyway? Nevertheless, the following are a few things that were considered and deemed unrealistic to complete one blog on their own:

David T. Lindsey is a semi-nobody journalist for a local, free publication that dedicates itself to publishing very opinionated content about music, art, movies and any other things that said magazine feels should be covered. Mr. Lindsey is a exception writer and seemingly very intelligent. The problem is that most of my friends and, based on the monthly letters section in the magazine, most of the readers consider him some right-wing bigot. Personally, I really don’t care either way, but people just don’t buy “music/movie journalism” from a man that seems to write like his dream would be to front a Rage Against the Machine esq. band comprised entirely of Rush Limbaugh clones. It seems to me, that if people want politics, they would pick up News Week but trying to sneak in you own political opinion into a movie review is underhanded and boring.
This next one, is actually just for me. Unless you are the party in question, please disregard this.
Chad, some of us (very few mind you) are affiliated with the band it’s elephant’s. Now that you have googled your name and found this, I want to take a second to tell you that it’s elephant’s as a band thinks that you seem like a pretty nice guy and write very well. We apologize for standing so close to you in public, we will give it a break.
At some point today, I considered talking shit about people who call themselves friends, but turn out to be fair weather faces in a crowd that only call when they need something. Then I decided that in doing such, I would be guilty of talking shit about some personal relationship on a blog site; which is decidedly Mickey Mouse baby garbage. So, never mind.
What I actually decided to write about was the unbelievably terrible weather that those of us who are cursed enough to call the south home, live with every day. For those of you, and by those I mean the people in my imagination who read this, that do not live around here; imagine what it would feel like if a desert and a jungle would meet a few miles closer to the sun than we currently reside. That is what it is like from the months of March to November here. Breathing is an exercise that seems impossible at times.
Then I thought, who wants to read about the weather? If people want that, they can watch the weather channel. Trying to sneak your weather opinions into your blog post about how hard it is to come up with topics for a blog post is underhanded and boring.

Hairway to Steven…

Garrett — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:58:51 +0000

A few of us went over to The Earl last night to see Thomas Function and The Reigning Sound. Personally, The Reigning Sound has some good records, but my dollar was spent on Thomas Function, who I adore. Formed from the ashes of the great Alabama Jihad, who I also adored, I have been keeping up with this collective group’s efforts for as long as I can remember in my blurred hindsight. As usual they did not disappoint, at the same time, as usual they did not play Relentless Machines. Its cool though, I have been yelling out that song title for a while now and if they ever play it for me, I will consider it a gift. Again, personally my night could have been called the moment the tune Peanut Butter and Paranoia Jam was over, so I was a little bias on the headliner. Still, bias as I may have been, not one person in attendance last night could have prepared me for the mind numbingly boring set that The Reigning Sound then slept walked through. About halfway through someone bumped into me and jarred me awake. Victoria and I then made our way through the crowd of prep school graduate, punk rock indoor kids and hit the fucking door. At home, Vicki went to bed and I listened to Camarillo Brillo three hundred times to wash off the stench of unexcitement.

An exercise in sitting around and thinking about it

Sean — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 03:32:04 +0000

Last week, over at Skylar’s house, Bike was telling me all about 89.3, otherwise known as WFRG. “I heard this guy talking about the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012,” Bike said, “and then I put on my headphones.”

I was high at the time. Bike started talking and I became deeply interested in what he started talking about. “It’s this radio station on 89.3. It’s some sort of progressive radio.” The interest behind my eyes was not betrayed by the blank stare on my face, at least not then, or ever, and from what I can remember this conversation only lasted a few minutes.

We’re back in 1992 for 2008.

Garrett — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:24:14 +0000

For months now all that could be seen on this website was little movement based on what Brent was asking Sean to do. Everyone became quiet and there were no post that had nothing to do with anything, or even a few that had little to do with something. Just quiet movement of a picture or two. We recently decided that we also would like to have News Week writing stories about Marilyn Manson plotting our deaths. So here it is, a very optimistic, while crossing fingers promise for more content. By content of course we mean, plenty of nothing to do with anything or lots of little to do with something.

Everybody knows that nobody cares about you until someone else does first

Sean — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:03:02 +0000

It’s Elephant’s – Sam Loomis Hardware

It’s Elephant’s – Better in ‘77

With their first full length album, 2008’s raucous Little Trouble in Chinatown, Atlanta rockers It’s Elephant’s were tagged with phrases as disparate as “power-pop”, “art-rock”, and countless other “adjective hyphen noun” classifications. Following a year of touring, the band has streamlined its sound into what band members describe as “a teddy bear gone wrong”. That is to say, music that embraces the influence of the comfortable and familiar while subtly and affectionately undermining its constructs. The result is the stellar sophmore release Gets Along, scheduled for release on CD and colored vinyl June 26, 2009.

Witness the title track, “Sam Loomis Hardware”, in which sun-kissed harmonies soar over the angular clash of guitars, like a drunken Brian Wilson picking up brass knuckles and taking a swing at Ian MacKaye. Or “Better in ‘77″, where the rhythm section channels slinky Stax R&B as the base for singer Brent Jay’s aching croon.

The band, featuring Brent Jay (The Letters Organize) on guitar/vocals/bass, Garrett Range (The Letters Organize) on bass/guitar/vocals, Justin Shotwell (Charlie Hustle) on drums, and David Fountain (Wighat) on guitar/piano/vocals, will be celebrating the release of Gets Along with a show at The Earl June 26th with The Long Shadows and Whores.