my favorite atlanta-based rock band is not one of those trendy indie bands. you won’t see their name painted on the krog street underpass or read about them in paste. yes, our city has plenty of those and many are very good, but my favorite atlanta band has to be roots rock combo the beggar’s guild (web facebook myspace).

i love these guys because they play tight, well written rock songs about all the great rock themes. the music is catchy and fun and they are pretty incredible musicians. i have been to see them live many times and never left after a bad time. they also happen to be pretty decent dudes, the kind of musicians you want to support. even if drummer jon chalden is a cardinals fan. seriously it’s good enough to get me to overcome that objection.

anyway, the guys are playing tonight at smith’s in support of sam thacker and his cd release. i don’t know sam thacker at all, but i can tell you this, if the guys in the beggar’s guild are playing with him, he’s probably pretty good.

so go check ‘em out.

tickets $10 advance until 2pm today on ticket alternative, or $12 at the door.

For this week’s venue I’ll venture a few miles up Moreland Avenue from my East Atlanta neighborhood to Little 5 Points.

Without doubt my favorite music venue in L5P is the Variety Playhouse. For some reason my photostream over at Flickr doesn’t contain an image of the Variety Playhouse’s iconic marquee. However, I do have one of the inexplicably narrow door which is in the rear of the building:

(image used by permission)

The building which houses the Variety Playhouse started its life in 1940 as a movie theater; the theater occupied the space until the early 1960’s. For more than twenty years the building was not used for any sort of performances until it was resurrected as a performance space in the mid-1980’s. It wasn’t until the early 1990’s that Variety Playhouse gained its foothold as one of Atlanta’s better music venues. Remnants of Variety’s days as a movie / theatrical venue remain as the space contains a slanted main floor and what best can be described as “vintage movie theater” seating in the middle of the lower space as well as in the balcony. The seating is surrounded by fairly generous standing room areas including a patch of cement nearest the stage.

Because of the quality of the sound within Variety Playhouse as well as the size of the venue, it’s ideal for bands who come through Atlanta and are either too “big” to play in bars or are not “big enough” to warrant playing in the city’s largest venues such as Philips Arena or the Georgia Dome.

What I Like
• The sound is usually loud, but is mixed well and sounds great.
• Smoking is not allowed inside.
• Because of the standing-room locations if you get there early enough and you can almost guarantee a good place to see the show.
• It has three bars and all are located away from the music area. This keeps the “bar noise” down to a minimum.
• Shows rarely start at a late hour.
• Prices for shows are generally reasonable, and Variety Playhouse offers an online ticket purchasing option which is far better than Ticketmaster’s.

What I Dislike
• Parking/Traffic can be somewhat of a bother. I don’t much care for the parking lot behind the Variety Playhouse.
• People tend to talk a lot during shows (SHUT UP, PEOPLE. YOU ARE SUPPOSEDLY THERE TO HEAR MUSIC) and while the music is loud it can’t drown them out.

Address : 1099 Euclid Av, Atlanta, GA, 30307
Capacity¹ : Seated 750, General Admission 400-1050
Cameras Allowed? : Yes
Smoking Allowed? : No, smoking areas are provided outdoors
All Ages? : Yes (at least to the best of my knowlege)
Ticket Source : Ticketmaster, Variety Playhouse’s website, or at the Variety Playhouse’s ticket booth
Favorite Shows I’ve Seen Here : Bob Mould, Built To Spill, Manchester Orchestra, New Pornographers, Alejandro Escovedo, Steven Malkmus and the Jicks, Cracker, Dead Confederate

What’s your opinion of the Variety Playhouse?

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Sources
1: Wikipedia’s Variety Playhouse page

Welcome to the first of what I hope will be a running series of posts I write about Atlanta’s music venues. These will not be in any particular order and who knows, maybe every once in a while I’ll dip back and post about a venue that is no longer in business.

This week I will choose the venue which has probably gotten more of my money than any others since I moved to Atlanta in January, 1995 — The EARL.

I moved to East Atlanta in March, 1999 and a handful of months after that The EARL, which actually stands for East Atlanta Restaurant and Lounge, opened its doors for business. From the building’s front you’d never know that this bar contained a great little music room that has seen the likes of many “big name” acts.

If the three rules of real estate are “1) Location 2) Location 3) Location” then the three rules of concert venues should be “1) Act Booking 2) Act Booking 3) Act Booking.” Let’s be honest, you can create a great music venue, but if you don’t book acts that people want to come and see/hear you are missing the point. For almost ten years The EARL’s bookings have been stellar.

As an added bonus The EARL serves up some of the best bar food in town. Show up early for a show (which, be forewarned rarely starts before 9pm weeknight and 10pm weekend at The EARL) and eat.

What I Like
• The sound is usually loud, but is mixed well and sounds great. Earplugs are for sale from a gumball machine if you want protection from the loudness.
• There really is no bad seat in the room, in fact there are almost no seats in the room.
• There is a back bar which makes it easy to keep your drink on while continuing to hear the music.
• Shows start late.
• Prices for shows at The EARL are usually in the $10-$20 range.

What I Dislike
• Low ceilings and many smokers — I call The EARL “The Home of the ‘Two Pack Minimum’”
• The bathrooms in the music room are usually nasty.
• Shows start late. (My post, I can both Like and Dislike this.)

Address : 468 Flat Shoals Av, Atlanta, GA, 30316
Capacity¹ : ~300
Cameras Allowed? : Yes
Smoking Allowed? : Yes, although rarely shows are “Smoke Free”
All Ages? : No, 21+
Ticket Source : Ticket Alternative or at the door on the night of a given show
Favorite Shows I’ve Seen : Bob Mould, Alejandro Escovedo, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Dick Dale, Meat Puppets, Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, The Hold Steady, The Long Ryders

What’s your opinion of The EARL?

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Sources:
1: jomolo.net

yeah, not a clubber at all. in fact since i run most saturday mornings i am usually in bed by 10 in the evening while most of you are just getting wound up.

oh well.

i’ve never been in atlanta’s sutra lounge but when i came across the above poster in joe’s east atlanta coffee shop i thought, damn, now that is something i would consider actually going out for.

i’m not going to, i’m running the big peach 5k but i would.

i mean seriously, a night of dj’s mixing up nothing but prince and michael jackson? how badass is that?

if you go, enjoy and let me know so i can live vicariously through you.

okay, it’s not technically about atlanta, but it’s hard for me to think of atlanta without thinking of this song. it’s one of the two quintessential songs about georgia in my book, and my favorite. when i used to drive i-75/i-24 with alarming frequency between tennessee and points north and atlanta, it was always my ritual to play this song as i crossed the georgia/tennessee line back into georgia. usually these drives were late at night and hearing gladys belt out that she was going back to find a simpler place and time always got me pumped again.

so i give you our next song about atlanta, midnight train to georgia by gladys knight and the pips

UPDATE: i had to include this after someone reminded me of it’s existence. hilarious. enjoy.

One of my favorites from Goodie Mob. One of the best things about Atlanta is all the great restaurants. In this song the Goodie Mo B mentions one in particular that every ATLien must experience, The Beautiful. Without a doubt some of the best soul food I’ve ever tasted. Don’t know if JJ’s Rib Shack is still open but I bet it’s good too.

“Come and get yo soul food, well well
Good old-fashioned soul food, all right
Everythang is for free
As good as it can be
Come and get some soul food”

it’s like a bag of cheetos or a big, meaty burger from the vortex. no matter how bad you know it is for you, no matter how fattening, you just can’t help digging in.

that’s welcome to atlanta, atlanta’s rap anthem.

if anything could ever serve as a testament to the atl’s arrival as a hip-hop captial it’s jermane durpree howling “welcome to atlanta, where the players play.” before i live in atlanta, when i used to fly through here on delta and the flight attendant would announce, “welcome to atlanta,” when the plane landed this song would always pop into my head.

it’s also how my cousins in south carolina learned about old national highway. and as for me, well , i make my own rules, b&!t*h, call me the mayor.

and let’s not forget ludacris beling out one of my favorite lines in all of hip hop – “i’m big paper like pancakes, stacking ‘em up,”

love it.

i’ll see you guys on my way to the dec to hit jazzy t’s…..

Ever heard this one? It’s a good one. Alison Krauss belts out this song by, oddly enough the English band, Bad Company. Krauss and Union Station’s arrangement of the tune has a decidedly southern feel.

“Oh, Atlanta, hear me calling, I’m coming back to you one fine day. No need to worry, there ain’t no hurry, ‘Cause I’m, on my way back to Georgia, On my way back to Georgia.”

If you’re a fan of the ATL, maybe crank this as you taxi down Hartsfield-Jackson or sit in traffic on 75 north.

I went to the Coathangers CD release show at The Earl Saturday with a friend.  This makes three times I’ve seen the Coathangers, and the third venue.  The show did not disappoint, but previous shows at the Drunken Unicorn and Lenny’s had more lively crowds.  The girls were good, but I felt like they should have been playing a crowded, sweaty house party instead of The Earl.  I don’t mean that as a knock on the band’s ability – they seem to be having so much fun on stage, that they deserve to have a crowd showing equal levels of abandon.

I’ve got a few friends who can’t stand the Coathangers, but I’ve always liked them.  What can I say, I enjoy a lively show.  Still, they’ve definitly progressed as a band.  I’m not intimately familiar with their set list, but what I presumed were newer songs have more layers and depth to their sound if not always their lyrics.  [Update: I should note that when I say their new songs have "layers" and "depth", I mean relative to their old songs. The basic equation has not changed, and they are still a fairly sloppy garage-band kind of group.]

I got to the Earl in time to see one of the opening bands, Chopper.  Someone listened to a lot of Motorhead, which is generally a very good thing.  Suffice to say, they are quite different from the Coathangers.  I thoroughly enjoyed them, however.  They had some dirty, dirty guitar riffs and bass guitar.  Chopper itself was worth the price of admission.

My friend Andrejs invited me out to The EARL last night to see Mary O. Harrison and The Tiny Tears.  Mary O. Harrison is a pop songwriter from Atlanta whose music jumps from singer/songwriter, raucous rockers to Burt Bacharach/Stereolab styled gems.   A multi-instrumentalist, Harrison transitions seamlessly from guitar, keyboards to flute, sometimes all within one song and while singing.

With a brand new drummer backing her, Harrison and the band sounded tight and were obviously having fun on stage.  Playing songs from her 2008 record, Factory of Days, and several new songs, Harrison showed a wide range of songwriting skills.  The band ended the set with an anthem about “Facing my maker.”  The song slowly built and ended with an extended 2 chord jam.  Another highlight was the song, “My Old Island.”  The song blends Bacharach sensibilities with a Stereolab vibe.

You can listen to her entire album on her site, http://www.maryoharrison.com/.

You can catch Harrison preforming a solo acoustic show, April 18th on the Planet 420 Stage at SweetWater’s annual Earth Day Celebration in Candler Park.

http://www.myspace.com/maryoharrison