I Am Not Above a Top Ten List: Matt's Albums of 2008

The Album: A dying expression of creativity? A sonic dodo? Perhaps sometime in the sooner-than-you-think future. Or perhaps only a wilting Phoenix that will rise from the ashes to confirm to the human race that no one song can stand alone--ever.

There's so much that goes on in a year that I can say with 100% confidence I am forgetting a LOT of music (which also tells me I need to better organize my music collection). Nonetheless, here are the ten I came up with in the span of 45 minutes whilst staring at the wall.

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Beach House: Devotion
To give credit where credit is due, I did not know a thing about this band until they appeared on the Gift Horse top friends (where I would I be without the brilliance of Tom?). Devotion makes me want to live out of a car and cruise the highways between Arizona, Nevada, and California for the rest of my life. What I mean by that, I can't clearly express. I just have to leave it at that.

Beach House also shows me what it would be like if Chan Marshall was the lead singer of The Zombies and they all went in on a Holy Grail.

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Cat Power: Jukebox

Speaking of Chan Marshall, her early 2008 release Jukebox was something I had to stumble upon later in the year. Her cigarette charred, stained glass voice is enveloping. To be very cliche, she doesn't just sing the words, she honestly does live them out every time she performs. A highlight of the year was seeing her performance at Bonnaroo streamed online. Below is a clip of her covering "I Feel" by The Hot Boys. Her drummer is also noticeably hammered.*

*To his credit the drummer is Jim White, the extremely talented Australian drummer of The Dirty Three.

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Colour Revolt: Plunder, Beg, and Curse

I was in New Orleans for Halloween and missed their set by an hour. I was in Athens the next week and was right on time. Their performance is one of my top shows of 2008 (if such a list might be conjured). Please listen to this album from a handful of very talented Oxford, MS gents.

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Department of Eagles: In Ear Park

I've talked enough about this band. Here's the album if you haven't had a chance yet:

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Dead Confederate: Wrecking Ball

I was very eager to hear what these guys had put together in a little studio in Austin. And I can't say enough how much I love this album. The mix is perfect, the songs are steady and as a whole, Wrecking Ball evokes exactly what this band is about.

www.deadconfederate.com

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Mike Doughty: Golden Delicious

Mr. Doughty continues to turn his solo acoustic musings into full-band tracks of pure enjoyment. Sure, it's pop. But it's GOOD HONEST pop. It's not trying to be anything else than what it is. Doughty isn't looking for Billboard charts and he's not looking for the approval of the Brooklyn hipsters. He's writing the music that comes out of him, pure and simple. The kind of free-filter oozing of aural beauty that is unique to every musician. The trick is to stop thinking about what you should write, and write what is there to be written. Doughty has that down pat.

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Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes

Another top performance of 2008. And enough people are throwing reviews out, that I'll just assume you know what I know.

www.myspace.com/fleetfoxes

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She and Him: Volume One

I love M. Ward and I've had the hots for Zooey Deschanel since "Elf". OF COURSE I'll listen to their musical collaboration! Paste Magazine has named Volume One as their Album of the Year. I'm very much looking forward to the promised Volume Two. Also, check for M. Ward's new solo release in '09.

www.myspace.com/sheandhim

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The Sparrow Quartet: The Sparrow Quartet

This was a gift for my significant other, which I rightly burned onto my computer before giving to her. How can you beat Abigail Washburn, Bela Fleck and Co. "plucking up" (just made that up, i swear) some scholarly bluegrass with a significant dash of the contemplative. Not to mention you can learn some Chinese! In all seriousness however, this is a great headphone album. And you can't beat Abigail's voice. Seriously I will be really mad.

www.myspace.com/abigailwashburn

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Widespread Panic: Free Somehow
Lastly, but not least-ly, my dear employer. This is not a plug, just a fucking good album that the hippies will never understand. I've said before that this is John Bell's best vocal effort to date. It is also the studio debut of Jimmy Herring with the band. And it would have been Terry Manning's (producer) attempt at "Wall of Sound-ing" the band, had the band not been like "WTF" to the early mix. I was able to get a listen to that first mix and let's just say all the doo-wops and string-soaked tracks were taken down from eleven. Top tracks from this album include "Angels on High", "Dark Day Program", "Her Dance Needs No Body", "Already Fried", and "Up All Night". Support you local blogger's salary and buy a copy...okay this is a plug.

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Well, that does it. One through ten. I encourage all the Rebel Forces regulars to jump on in to this list business.

One Part Mission Statement, Two Parts Daydreaming...

As the crackpot, uh "staff" here at the Forces write more and more entries, it is becoming clear exactly what we are trying to do with this blog. When we first started writing it we pretty much just wanted to lay down anything that had to do with anything regarding music, Athens and life. With great pride I purport that we are painstakingly still travelling alongst the path.
Bullet Points!

1. This site is intended to be used for promoting Athens music. A quick glance around the interwebs will reveal many other sites that are dedicated to this very same idea. I noticed that ours is a little different in one very important way: it remains positive regarding every band that we talk about. See points #2 and #5 below.
   
   
2. I vow to delete every single comment that I deem unworthy. Every other Athens blog has at least one post that contains a thread of comments that are hurtful, ignorant and unnecessary. You'll find none of that here because I usually don't give people the benefit of the doubt. You are a hypothetical music snob whose scope is limited to about fifty obscure bands that are very hard to listen to. Or you are in another band in Athens and you look at local music as a competitive market that you think you can control with your words (but you can't). All you can do is make music. Sorry I think I've said this multiple times in other posts. So far I've only had to delete one comment. But I don't respond, I delete.
   
   
3. Having called out most people for being dumb, we do not profess to know everything about Athens here at Rebel Forces. I know that there are really great bands left off of our list and really important monumental historical stuff has happened that we were not a part of. Anything that is left out and fits this category should be added and it is someone else's responsibility to tell us (THIS MEANS YOU! please). Also I don't consider myself an expert or a very capable writer. There is nothing competitive about this site so if we are way off base about something then feel free to tell us. We have very open minds here and that is why we discuss the happenings of many different bands playing many different styles of music. We don't love everybody but everybody gets a fair chance.
   
   
4. Although this site focuses on Athens in general, we will more often deal with a few specific groups because the contributors either play in these bands or are employed by these bands. Matt works for Brown Cat (Widespread Panic). J.J. plays drums for Blue Flashing Light. I play guitar for Gift Horse. We will write about these bands more than others because hey, you've gotta write what you know. See point #3 about telling us what's going on around here. By the way at no point do any of us speak for or represent any of our respective bands or organizations. We're just some dudes.
   
   
5. Okay, I think this is it for the "mission statement" because this is redundant. But please realize that this site is meant to represent a pretty sincere effort to do no harm to Athens music. Remember Athens is a very unique place. There aren't many towns like it. So please don't come here to be told what sucks. Please be humble and passionate. Listen to music.

In unrelated and less Buddhist news, I've been thinking a lot lately about how nice it would be to have mountains of cash. I wish I could say that I am completely unmotivated by the pursuit of money but I am just a lowly human being. Remember that scene from Office Space where Peter and Lawrence ask each other what they would do with a million dollars? No? Well here it is, cut right before the best part:

..."Look at my cousin man he's broke and he don't do shit."

Okay, If I had a million dollars I would do the following:

1. Open up a retail store in downtown Athens that sells nothing but local music and related artifacts. Only stipulation: you must be from the area in order to have your disc sold in my store. My store would be called...REBEL FORCES (eureka!). We would sell all formats: CD's, vinyl, and I would have an mp3 database. Bands would bring in one copy of their cheap demo cd or a rare live recording. I would take this cd and enter it into my mp3 database. When someone wanted music from this particular band but it isn't in stock at my store (or anywhere in existence), I could burn it and sell the customer a cheap CDR with the Rebel Forces logo stamped on it. We could also do this with DVR's of live video footage of shows in the same database and sell merchandise from Athens bands. This would include a huge stockpile of t-shirts, original artwork, flyers, movies, memorabilia, you name it.
   
   
2. In the back of this store there would be a small performance space. I would host as many in-store performances and record release shows as humanly possible. These would be relatively chill, relatively cheap, and open to music lovers of all ages. I envision the bigger bands that roll through town possibly playing an in-store show at 2 p.m. on the day of their Athens show. Something like that.
   
   
3. Along with continuing to write this here online version of Rebel Forces, I would start an independent monthly print magazine called...REBEL FORCES (too confusing?). It would be advertisement driven in order to keep it free for the fair citizens of Athens. It would be placed around in various bins just as the Flagpole is now, but Rebel Forces mag would be devoid of all political influence and contain no insight regarding the best place in Athens to eat tacos. Strictly music. Mainly features on bands and upcoming shows and stuff. Some reviews of shows and albums, but no bad reviews. Athens has a cool enough music scene that it's citizens deserve at least one printed paper that is strictly devoted to music. But the Flagpole is still a great publication. Tacos are delicious.
   
   
4. Start a record label called...well, you know what I'd call it by now. Make records with good local bands using local studios and then proceed to promote and sell the hell out of it in my own store. Your band's success is my success!
   
   
5. Make movies. Arthouse films scored by local musicians. Documentaries on bands and the scene and stuff. Random music videos. Maybe even a video magazine that you could subscribe to and get a new short film or collection of music videos every month. Guess what I'd call this video magazine?
   
   
6. Of course, I would continue to create my own music.

Sounds good, right? I'm a little bit of an idealist and a daydreamer, but I like talking about it. So back off. Just kidding. Any rich, bored people out there don't try to steal my idea please because now it is published and documented as my idea on November 11, 2008. I'll just sue you, take your money and then use it to fund my scheme. But if you are rich, bored and reading this feel free to become my benefactor and donate for a good cause. Support the arts. I am seriously thinking about a grant proposal that might help me do this. Not kidding.

In the meantime we'll just talk about some records and other random unimportant stuff. You know, dog fart films and my iPod.

I know that we aren't kicking up too much dust yet, but I hope this long-winded self-absorbed post gives you an idea of where the three of us are coming from. Thanks for reading.

New Orleans Day 2

Friday was the first show, and I spent the first part of the day double, triple, and quadruple checking ticket lists and website information for the evenings show. iClips.net was going to be on hand filming the show for a live stream set to feed through our site. Brushing up on my Javascript and page-building abilities, I made sure a player and stream were up and running to give fans on them there inter-webs a chance to see the band's sold out performance.

All along 20 minute drive to the venue, I could see a city still with many scars and wounds to heal from the Hurricane only 3 years ago. One particular example, The UNO Lakefront Arena (the scene for the weekend's shows) still had yet to replace their shredded sign on the roadside. All respect to the city and its inhabitants, one can't blame the city when half of its population still has not returned.

I was still nursing a hangover by the time I got to the venue at 2pm, but it did little to phase me. I couldn't wait to see what the band had in store for the evening. By tradition, Widespread Panic's Halloween show(s) features cover songs never performed by the band before that night--and most of the time never played again. On top of that, the band members always dress up in costumes along with most everyone in attendance.

The theme of the night for the stage, crew, and band was "Night of the Living Dead". I'll let some photos I took give you an idea:

It ended up being a very cool night with a handful of cover songs: "Mama Kin" (Aerosmith), "Baby Please Don't Go" (Lots of People), "Born on the Bayou" (CCR), "Time Waits for No One" (Stones), "Proud Mary" (Fogerty), and "Brown Sugar" (Stones). Third Day in NOLA (and one that I won't soon forget) to come...

Matt visits New Orleans

I flew to New Orleans yesterday. Widespread Panic is having their annual Halloween show tonight (and an additional one tomorrow) and the mgmt all came down to join the fun.

We landed and found ourselves in the middle of downtown by about 3pm CT. After checking-in and establishing an internet connection (for my own mental survival) at the ol' Iberville Suites, my boss and I went down to Acme Seafood to catch a much-needed meal. What was only going to be an easy shrimp po' boy and a beer turned into two pitchers of the local Abita brew, hushpuppies, po' boys, and six of the biggest half-shell oysters I have ever seen. Stuffed and quite nearly defeated, we left Acme a bit sluggish (and a good bit buzzed) and returned to the hotel

After we got back to the hotel, I went to my room, caught a movie on HBO and napped until dinner time. When I awoke I was still full from Acme Seafood and looking for something to do. The original plan was to head over to Jackson Square and see Vic Chesnutt and Elf Power play at One Eyed Jack's. Mulling it over, we come to the conclusion that we can catch both when they play Athens in February. As an alternative, the band's tour manager calls and has some extra tickets to offer us to the Rose Hill Drive show at the House of Blues. So, of course, we go.

When I first heard of Rose Hill Drive, I only heard their name. I thought they MUST be an emo band or perhaps something like Good Charlotte. I'm not at all knocking that type of music, it just is not my personal cup o' tea. However, I did remember seeing them on Conan months back, but I couldn't recall their sound. So I did what any logical person does these days and typed "myspace.com/rosehilldrive" into the computer and voila: "Sneak Out". They sounded like a nice mix of Stone Temple Pilots and Queens of the Stone Age--thus me being a diehard STP fan and my boss being all about QOTSA, off we went.

The crowd was pretty good--became bigger as the night went on, and these guys didn't disappoint. However, I was a little bummed that we missed the opening act: Colour Revolt (I've heard good things). Back to RHD, they lived up to the one song we heard online and also busted out a pretty decent version of Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun". The bass player has quite a set of pipes on him, and both he (and I think his brother) and the guitar player were well schooled on their crafts.

Afterwards, we went over to a bar called "Alibi" to catch up with some of the road crew as well as meet some new faces that would also be joining the festivities this weekend. One in particular was a NOLA local who has never seen Panic before, tonight being his first show. I always get excited when I meet someone who is about to go see the band for the first time. "You will not be disappointed" is what I kept reassuring him. I don't know if he believed me, but I'm looking forward to hearing about his reaction this evening.

The bar was a simple space, but the ceased to stop playing Panic on the stereo the whole time we were there--which was really weird and ironic. I'm not one of those people who listens to only Panic leading up to a show. In fact, I'm the complete opposite: I listen to anything but. It ruins the performance for me if I do.
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I was up at 8am this morning to catch and early-bird breakfast in the lobby and the complimentary USA Today. I've got to catch up on a little work and make sure all my ducks are in a row for the show tonight, and hopefully catch a nap before I head to the venue at 2. But I wanted to type a good bit about my trip.

I'll be back with more later.

*Rose Hill Drive and Colour Revolt will perform at the Melting Point in Athens next week on Thursday Nov. 6th. You should go.

New Jamz

Here's the new stuff we got since the last stuff we got:

Creedence Clearwater Revival-Pendulum, Department of Eagles-In Ear Park, Arizona-Glowing Bird, Celebration-The Modern Tribe, The Clash-Live: From Here to Eternity, My Bloody Valentine-rarity mix selections from Geek, Sunny Sundae Smile, This is Your Bloody Valentine CD, and The New Record by My Bloody Valentine, Mudcrutch-Mudcrutch, Mudhoney-Superfuzz Bigmuff disc 2 (Live in Berlin 10/10/88 and Live at KCSB 11/16/88), The Raveonettes-Lust Lust Lust, Torche-Meanderthal, Weedeater-God Luck and Good Speed, Between The Buried and Me/Clutch/Mastodon J.J.'s mix, Brendan Canning-Something For All of Us..., Brian Eno and David Byrne-Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, Dead Confederate-Wrecking Ball, Blue Flashing Light-The Mayor of Five Points, Mean Creek-Around the Bend, Motley Crue-Greatest Hits, Thin Lizzy-Dedication (Greatest Hits), Neutral Milk Hotel-On Avery Island, Secret Machines-Secret Machines, Ryan Adams & The Cardinals-Cardinology, Keane-Perfect Symmetry, Kings of Leon-Only By the Night, Of Montreal-Skeletal Lamping, Death Cab for Cutie-Narrow Stairs, Counting Crows-Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, Gnarls Barkley-The Odd Couple, Widespread Panic-Free Somehow, Jose Gonzalez-In Our Nature, Nada Surf-Lucky, Jack Johnson-Sleep Through the Static, MGMT-Oracular Spectacular, Drive-By Truckers-Brighter Than Creation's Dark.

some vinyl:
The Weight-The Weight Are Men, Pink Mountaintops-Axis Of Evol

and one 8-track:
Simon and Garfunkel-Sounds of Silence

Note, dear valued reader, the broad spectrum of sounds contained within the new jamz: classic rock, metal, hair metal, mainstream stuff, indie swag, softcore, southern rock, jammy jam bands... It ain't all good but come hell or high water we are going to listen.

As usual, only Athens bands get a link. Listen to them. Love them. I'm sorry to my friend Bop, but I am ashamed to say that I have still not gotten Guy Clark's Old No. 1/Texas Cookin' but all in good time sir.

October 13-19

Tuesday, October 14:
Olympus Mans. Georgia Theatre. 9:30 p.m. $5. http://www.georgiatheatre.com/.

Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band. Variety Playhouse. (ATL) 8 p.m. $22.50-$25. http://www.variety-playhouse.com/.

Wednesday, October 15:
Enoch, Brown Chicken Brown Cow, Distaster. Flicker. 8:30 p.m. $5. www.myspace.com/flickerbar.
Enoch Bledsoe of Twin Tigers, Ryan Hetrick, and some punk band, respectively.

Dead Confederate, Heartless Bastards. The Five Spot. (ATL) 8:30 p.m. $12.50-$15. http://www.fivespot-atl.com/.

Thursday, October 16:
Gift Horse, Beatrix Kiddo, Johnny Buffalo and the Mutinous Noise. Drunken Unicorn. (ATL) 9 p.m. $8. www.thedrunkenunicorn.net/.

Friday, October 17:
Cinemechanica, A.Armada, Bambara, Building the State. 40 Watt. Doors @ 9:00 p.m. $6 over 21. $8 under 21. http://www.40watt.com/.

Cinemechanica celebrates the release of their new jam Rivals with A.Armada, Building the State and Bambara. Those are some pretty cool laid back type of fellas in that Bambara. I like those guys.

Widespread Panic. Lakewood Amphitheatre. (ATL) 5:30 p.m. $25 - $75. Lakewood Amphitheatre.

The Magnetic Fields. Woodruff Arts Center. (ATL) 8 p.m. $26-$30. http://www.woodruffcenter.org/.

Saturday, October 18:

Widespread Panic. Lakewood Amphitheatre. (ATL) 5:30 p.m. $25 - $75. Lakewood Amphitheatre.

Sunday, October 19:

Widespread Panic. Tabernacle. (ATL) 7 p.m. $125. www.myspace.com/tabernacleatlanta.

Tunes for Tots benefit.

Spare Time

So here are a few links which may help explain what our contirbutors do when they are NOT writing for this fine blog, playing music in their respective "main" projects, juggling management and PR duties for one of Athens' largest bands, pruning the hedges, raping the horses, or riding away on the women:

When J.J. isn't playing drums in local Athens band Blue Flashing Light, he writes tunes and records bad ass drum solos for his myspace page currently titled Augusta Grown. J.J. has had this page for a while, and we have all sat around the computer and just laughed at how hilarious some of his songs are and how disgusting (in a good way) his drum solos are. By the way he won best drummer in Ohio back in the day after performing one of those solos.

When Matt isn't running things (yeah that's right, I said it) at Widespread Panic's Brown Cat Inc., he's usually selflessly devoting the his time to helping my band, Gift Horse. And we are eternally grateful. When he's not doing that, he somehow finds time to record and recently made a myspace page to showcase his talents. So far he's only got one tune up there that all made us say "Damn! Matt good!", but we all know that he's got more coming, right Matt? I'm pretty sure that last sentence contained a comma splice and possible haiku.

The efforts of these two gentlemen has inspired me to start my own myspace page in order to flesh out a few ideas. Yeah I know, unoriginal bastard. So now I have something to do too whenever I'm not doing whatever the hell it is that I do during the week.

Even though he's not a contributor, check out the myspace page that my friend and ex-band member Dede created. Dede used to play bass in a band I was in and now he plays guitar for Athens staples The Empties.

Isn't myspace great when it's not used to promote unwanted sexual advances for once?

Widespread Panic: GA Music Hall of Fame

This band is nothing new, but I do happen to be employed by these wonderful folks, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to make a little plug about their most recent accomplishment.

This Saturday September 20th, Widespread Panic will be inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Atlanta, GA. Live on freakin' PBS! When you're alongside the likes of Mr. Rogers and Charlie Rose, it's a damn good day.

These guys have been at it for over 22 years now, and don't show any signs of stopping. Just today (Sunday) the Athens Banner-Herald did a wonderful little feature on the band, their history, their members, their management, and got to the bottom of where the hell Brown Cat came from (SPOILER: their house cat).

If you didn't get a chance to read the paper today, you have peruse these fantastic articles at the following link:

Widespread Panic Athens Banner-Herald Feature

If you'd like to skip to the good shit (i.e. the article about me and the mgmt), go here;

Article on the Management

Congrats the Panic and everyone involved over the last couple decades!