“…I make’em a little bit wet in the fuckin’ crotch.”
-Tom Cheshire, Editor, Atlanta Scene-Guy, Obvious Alcoholic
P’s Take: Remember when you were a kid and you decided when you grew up you were gonna straight do EXACTLY what you wanted? Eat an all Oreo diet and have numchuks in every fucking room of the house, steady numchuks everywhere? Well, how is that working out for you? How many numchuks you have on you like, right now? Fucking none? Well…
In Atlanta everybody got em. See, last week me and T watched “WE FUN”, a doc about the Atlanta rock scene. The doc opens with King Khan typically not clothed, gutted like a toddler and Black Lips’ Jared up in Jared’s childhood bedroom with a group of various no-goods. Everybody is stoned, drunk and stupid. One chick is topless and some nerd in the corner is flipping a butterfly knife. Awesome.
The doc follows the scene and make a case for it, but the bands don’t seem to have much in common. Baby Shakes is a (mostly) hot Japanese girl band, Deerhunter is a suck Sigur Ros ripoff, Carbonas are basically a hardcore band and Mourdella has a girl who shoots fire from her sugar walls. Again awesome. What unites these Southern slackers, hipsters, douche bags, hot freaks et. al is their enjoyment of a good time.
In the doc we are told that Greg Shaw of Bomp! Records (Bomp, we are still waiting for free stuff) emailed the Black Lips just before signing them urging that they avoid the “Atlanta Syndrome”, the desire for bands from there to ignore the rest of the world and just play house parties in Hotlanta. So the Lips took their shit on the road, blew up and brought attention to what had been going on in their hometown for some time. Now everybody’s paying attention and throwing money (not much, but some) at oddballs who would have been doing their thing anydamnway.
And that really is why I liked the film. I didn’t like half the bands in it cause they suck. Not even subjectively, most of them bands suck in a scientifically provable fashion. But they straight be having parties and setting off firecrackers and doing what they want, paid, broke, young, middle-aged, good or suck, no matter what. You gotta hand it to them, they decided they were gonna stay 16 and stay home and the world came to them, suckas. And I’m pretty sure they got all kinds a numchuks.
T’s Take: Let’s see…”WE FUN” includes such visual delights as a wigged King Khan in his unmentionables, fireworks, rock and roll, drunken apartment parties, talking nipples, more fireworks and members of the Black Lips cavorting in beds with Mark Sultan and a topless woman that probably should’ve kept her shirt on for the benefit of the viewers, and that’s just the opening two minutes. What follows are sweeping shots of Hot-lanta landscapes and an explanation of the party themed freewheeling scene currently going on there.
But to be honest basically their scene breaks down like this. Either you’re in The Black Lips or you want to be The Black Lips or associate what you are doing with The Black Lips. Basically their entire “scene” as it were revolves around one band that brought national attention to the area by being one of the only acts to go out and tour the rest of the country. They’re also one of the only acts with the major rock and roll chops needed to cause a stir. If it weren’t for Bomp’s Greg Shaw pushing The Lips to spread their sweaty mustached love oer the world I’m not sure the current Atlanta “scene” would even exist. As a side note… Goddamn their drummer is a good time to watch do his thing.
The documentary does a good job of explaining how the current loose scene is a punk backlash to the stuffy arty scene that preceded it. It covers a bunch of bands like The Carbonas, Mastodon, Deerhunter, The Coathangers and King Khan & The Shrines (which I’m not sure if they even count as they’re German and Canadian). You’ll also get insight into the clubs, bands, labels, studios, and show goers that comprise the scene. It should be noted that the Atlanta scene is comprised of two types of women. The first being adorable chicks in summer dresses that dig the RnR, and the second being gnarly ass bitches shooting fire out of their vagagees. And when I say gnarly I mean… G N A R L Y. It should also be noted that you can almost smell the armpit stink of the sweaty Atlanta crowds through the lens. Hot-lanta indeed.
One of the best interviewees of the documentary is local figure Tom Cheshire (see opening quote) who in the midst of drunkenly reading poetry about writing “fucking pussy songs” explains that in order for a scene to be a recognized as a scene it needs to “make a noise”. Luckily The Black Lips have enough noise making abilities to shed a little light on the rest of what’s going on in their hometown. Oh yeah, and it’s out on DVD now so look for it at fine retailers everywhere.
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