The classiest amateur show in town made its 10th appearance last Thursday at the Morton Theater (excuse me, Morton Theatre). As uplifting as a decent church service, and as dependable as the winner in the World Music category giving props to the upcoming solstice, even if it occasionally veers towards hokiness & self-indulgence, the Fpole Music Awards are still a good bang for your Athfest buck. And even if it lasted nearly four hours, or about as long as the televised portion of the Academy Awards, I didn't start to get bored until the third hour. And I sure can't say that about the Academy Awards.
While we're on the subject, the big winners--in a Hollywood sense--would have to be Dark Meat and Of Montreal. If you're the kind of person who's interested in winners (and if you're reading a low-profile blog, how could you not be), you can check them out, along with video of the show, at Fpole's website, http://flagpole.com/Awards/. They also have video of the UGA drumline kicking off the show, which was pretty awesome, even if one of the Fpole's managing editors climbed inside my head and stole the joke I was going to make about this being the closest anyone in the audience had ever been to a football game. Too bad, because it was a pretty good joke too.
The music performers represented as wide a cross-section of Athens Music as possible: Indie, Folk, Jazz, Hippie, Rock, and Hip-Hop. And though award shows are a time for celebration and love, I have to mention that my head is still pounding from Moyuba!'s bongo-fest. Not really a drum circle, with five members it was more of a drum parabola, but their relentless tribal drumming ricocheted off the natural reverb of the theatre until it sounded like an army about to go fight a war, or at the very least go roast a pig or something.
No pictures of the actual award itself on-line, but it does feature a masterstroke of postsrutcturalist Saussere-ian wordplay by placing the word 'Flagpole' on a flag. Nice one. But an award show isn't about the award, or about winning, or which band is better, or even who plays, it's about memories, and this show was packed with them. We learned that with his deadpan wit, someone should immediately give Mercer West (spelled 'Mercre' while inside the Morton) his own late night talk show. On the other hand, we learned that Michelle Gilzenrat shouldn't be allowed within a hundred feet of a live broadcast until she gets her tourette's syndrome sorted out. And for anyone taking part in the downstairs betting pool, what were the final odds that Gilzenrat would be the potty-mouth instead of Mercer? Certainly higher than the odds that Dark Meat's Jim would be the only presenter who insisted on bringing his beer out to the podium with him when the Morton doesn't allow any food or drink into the actual theater because it's 100 years old and made out of wood. How oh so very rock'n'roll.
Actually, Michelle was a very charming, and occasionally funny, co-host. The other master of ceremonies, Clay Leverett, had his good moments--like using the sparkle mirrors on the award podium to reflect the spotlight back into the audience, along with his not-so-good moments--like always complaining about the sound guy turning down his mike, or feeling the constant need to sing along with Kenosha Kid's instrumentals. He also told us to "give it up" so many times that by the end of the show I started to think I was (pick your favorite):
a) a mormon cheerleader on prom nite
b) an altar boy right after sunday mass
c) a congressional page in an airport restroom
d) r.e.m.
Let's just go ahead and make this the negative section of our post. You know that show on local cable, "Classic City Dining"? Well they had the hosts of that show out to present some awards, and they were only slightly less brittle and smiling than they are on their show.
Oh, and when C-Fre$h said during his performance--which was great, by the way--that we've never seen anyone like him before. Um, I'm pretty sure I have. Just saying.
Alright, back to the positive.
Which just turned negative since I can't embed the awesome video from The BuddyRevelles that won one of the Sprockets music video awards, because the copy & paste capabilities of the internet/youtube are totally and utterly failing. And after ten minutes of trying, including my successful attempts at copy & pasting other videos, I refuse to take any responsibility whatsoever. Here's a link instead.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ShvpcC9jmmQ
The song's neither here nor there, a finely assembled wall of shelving in a late 90's indie rock sense, if you're looking for that sort of thing. But the video is creative, watchable, and funny.
Other highlights included Tofu Baby trying to pronounce "Perpetual Groove" though her constant lisp as she announced the nominees for Best Jam Band, and the Of Montrealers doing their theatrical non-sequitir livening up the party thing. Have to figure Kevin was the guy dressed up in the deep-sea-diver outfit flopping around on the floor and cleaning up confetti with his legs.
The show ended with "Spring Tigers vs. Twin Tigers", a subject already covered on these pages. It was cool and different how they divided the stage in half and had each band alternate songs, but even if Spring did nothing to embarass themselves, I still gotta to with the Twins, who sounded even better live than they do on their recordings. They're just a few hooks away from doing something memorable and fantastic.
It would've been nice if the show ended there, but then they brought everyone out to sing Queen's "We Are the Champions". On a night that featured the very best of what the Athens Music Scene has to offer, I'm pretty sure that this moment--whether being sung in mocking insincerity or misguided earnestness--wasn't one of them.
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