If any of you have picked up The Penetrators DVD “Declassified” (available for purchase here: http://www.penetrators.com/loot.html ) I’m sure you’ve committed to memory the fact we played our first club gig on March 26th 1994. As coincidence would have it, the 15th anniversary of that date will be commemorated with “Operation: CRUSH CANCER” – A benefit for Brian (Spanky Twangler) Rogers at the Star Bar in Atlanta on Thursday March 26th and Friday March 27th.
Benefit or no benefit, this is one crazy-great line up of straight-up Surf & Garage Rock and Roll!!!!!
Here is the info:
[begin transmission] I'm proud and excited to present the "official" line-up for:
The Southern Surf Syndicate Spanktacular, Operation: CRUSH CANCER
At The Star Bar March 26th-27th. Benefit for Brian (Spanky Twangler) Rogers.
Thursday March 26th
9:00-9:30pm Slim Chance and the Convicts 9:45-10:15pm The Mystery Men! 10:30-10:50pm Myopic i (Debut!) 11:05-11:35pm The Holland Dutch 11:50-12:40pm Cletis and His City Cousins 12:55-close Thee Crucials
Friday March 27th
9:00-9:30pm The Surge! 9:45-10:15pm The Electric Cycles 10:30-11:00pm Dragline (Re-union!) 11:15-11:45pm The Penetrators w/ special guests 12:00-12:50pm The Woggles 1:05-close The Forty-Fives
There will be DJs each night and a fund-raising raffle too!
The Star Bar is located at 437 Moreland Ave Atlanta GA 30307
The Concussions Magic Fingers CD, released on Double Crown Records last year, won the WYCE- FM Jammie for top instrumental album of 2008! They performed at the awards ceremony as well, wearing their jammies of course! You can find out more about the event here.
The Dap-Tone Records recording studio was recently broken into, which is incredibly unfortunate, but it sounds like they're piecing things back together and should be able to get up and running soon.
Friends and associates, As you may have heard through the grapevine by now, Daptone was broken into last night. Unfortunately, there was a lot of equipment (mics, pre-amps, monitors, turntables, guitars, amps, computers, etc.) stolen and damaged. It is going to take us a while to go through everything and take full stock of what was stolen, and we are not supposed to touch anything until the cops come back to collect fingerprints so we can only guess what's missing from some mic drawers and cabinets.
And, no, we did not have insurance. We had been shopping around with different companies earlier this month but had not signed a check, so nothing was insured. We are working on replacing the gate in front, installing an alarm system, and getting insurance, but it is President's day so it's not going as quickly as we would have liked...
Thankfully, we all still have our health, ambition, tape machines, and sense of humor in tact. You can slow us down, but you can't stop us. Sleep well knowing we here at Daptone will continue to...
Keep putting Soul up,
Gabriel Roth
I've really gotten into the Dap-Tone roster of stars, including Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, and would highly recommend anything released by the label if you are into the 60's/70's soul/funk/R&B sound. Here is a tour MTV did of their studio a couple of years ago:
I've been diggin' Hulu quite a bit recently - it's a great way to catch up with late night TV, SNL and a bunch of other shows. I haven't dug into the movies that much yet, but found this gem, Surf Party, amongst 'em - enjoy! The theme song, performed by The Astronauts, can be found on this great box set at Amazon.com
The Cramps were really the only band from the punk era that mattered to me. The Clash and Sex Pistols had some great songs and I've definitely enjoyed listening to them over the years, but The Cramps were really the only band that I identified with. Back in high school I took a trip to Europe with my school German class. There were about 20 of us, many away from home without our parents for the first time, and it was one of the most exciting times of my life. I was open to anything, and everything was thrown at me all at once. Legally drinking a beer or three in public, at the age of 16? Sure! Staying up 'til 3am on the streets of a large city? Why not? None of my really close friends were on that trip, but I bonded with a guy named Ken who was in a punk band called The Pink Slips. He had cool hair and a leather jacket with the cover art from The Cramps' Bad Music For Bad People on the back, a cover which featured singer Lux Interior in a ghoulish artist's rendering. He told me about how great they were and how they were a huge influence on his band. Our first stop on our whirlwind trip around Europe was London, and the first place we went was King's Road, the birthplace of the UK punk movement. This was 1986, nearly a decade after punk was at it's peak there, so what we saw wasn't nearly as vibrant as it was before, but there were still tons of cool clothing shops, hair salons (all advertising mohawks and razor cuts, but not in a touristy way), and record shops packed with vintage vinyl. When I got back home I picked up a cassette copy of Gravest Hits in a used record shop, and at that point I had my first exposure to rockabilly (or psychobilly) and surf rock. It was no better introduction to this kind of music - there are only a handful of artists that did what they did with the amount of passion that Lux & Ivy delivered over 3 decades as the leaders of The Cramps. The book Incredibly Strange Music Volume 1 goes into great detail in an interview with them, revealing how they met, how they collected music (almost all vinyl) and how they immersed themselves in 50's/60's pop culture. Over the following years I slowly collected each of their releases - I didn't have a turntable at the time, so at first I collected cassettes, then moved on to CD's. In the 90's I was fortunate enough to have seen them twice - first with Brent Cole of What's Up Magazine at Oz in Seattle in 1992, then a couple of years later at KNDD's Deck The Hall Ball in 1994 (headlining a bill that included, and I'm not making this up, Sheryl Crow, Radiohead, Jesus & Mary Chain, Butt Trumpet and Fretblanket). I think they've swung through the NW a couple more times over the years, but as I've grown up and now have family responsibilities, it's not as easy to get down to Seattle for shows. In a way though, I'm glad I saw them when I did - it was definitely after their peak, but man, were they still a mighty force on stage. They were a great, great band and will be sadly missed by many.
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