The Residents play the Variety Playhouse on Monday, Sept. 6 (2021). $35. 7 p.m. (doors). | Buy tickets
Read Chad Radford’s 2013 feature story, “The Residents: In the eye of the beholder
How avant-garde rock icon the Residents changed pop music, and singer Molly Harvey’s life forever” in CL Atlanta.
Today is the day folks. Go vote! The Republic is in distress. The future of America and the world depends on you fulfilling your civic duty. Your attendance is mandatory!
Mass Destruction Metal Fest IV is bacK! A Rippin Production’s rescheduled annual metal fest is set to take over the Loft at Center Stage Friday through Sunday, November 5-7, 2021. Mass Destruction has been upgraded to a three-day gathering—current weekend pass holders will be allowed attend all three days.
Bands on this year’s lineup (so far) include Vio-Lence, Repulsion, Nuclear Assault, Monstrosity, Massacre, Evoken, Cenotaph, Usurper, Thornspawn, MALIGNANCY, Cruciamentum, WITCHTRAP, ESTUARY, Antichrist Siege Machine, Vimur, Suffocation, Cirith Ungol, Exciter, Akhlys, Derkéta, Impur, and Maiestas.
Tickets are available now. $55-$175.
In the meantime, read “Vimur finds truth in the abyss: ‘Triumphant Master of Fates’ takes black metal to a grand scale”
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Dinosaur Jr. plays Heaven at The Masquerade. Saturday, November 13. $31 (adv). 7 p.m. (doors). 75 Martin Luther King JR Dr. SW. 404-577-8178. www.masqueradeatlanta.com.
Pre-sale for seated tickets begins Thurs., March 11 at 12 p.m. Eastern.
Venue pre-sale begins Wed., March 17 at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Tickets go on sale for general public on Fri., March 19 at 10 a.m. Eastern.
J., Lou, and Murph are back with a new album, titled Sweep It Into Space, due out April 23. Click here to pre-order a copy.
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The good folks at Atlanta Magazine recently asked me for a list of my favorite Atlanta-based albums of the 2010s. I narrowed my picks down to one album per year, which, in some cases, was quite difficult. Hard cuts had to be made. In the end, some great music got shouted out. Read the full list here in which Christopher Daniel, Christina Lee, and I shine a light on some of our favorite releases from the last decade. Read the full list at Atlanta Magazine.
Welcome to another episode of Rad/ATL’s Hidden Hand podcast.
The music you’re listening to is “The Coldest Nights,” taken from Orbit Service’s sixth and most recent album titled The Door to the Sky.
Currently based in Bailey, Colorado — a small town in the mountains near Denver — Orbit Service is the name under which Randall Frazier has created music since the early aughts.
Over the years, Frazier has crafted a spacious and drifting sound that’s bound by a singular and textured quietude. His voice blends with atmospheric drones, improvisation, elegant post-rock songwriting, and musique concrete to a psychedelic effect.
I spoke with Frazier on October 16, 2019, shortly before Orbit Service shared the stage with the Legendary Pink Dots at the Masquerade in Atlanta — his fourth tour with the group. For this conversation we talked about creating space with music, life in Colorado, and our shared affinity for the Legendary Pink Dots.
To learn more about Randall Frazier and Orbit Service look online at orbitservice.bandcamp.com.
Thank you for listening.
Savage Republic was born amid the Los Angeles punk scene of the early 1980s, when former UCLA students guitarist Bruce Licher and drummer Mark Erskine formed the band Afrika Corps. Before releasing their 1982 debut LP Tragic Figures, the group’s name changed and a menacing post-industrial clatter took shape around Middle Eastern imagery and surf rock ambiance. Savage Republic’s sound was contemptuous, noisy and politically-charged, settling in with song titles such as “Kill the Fascists!,” “Mobilization,” and “Attempted Coup: Madagascar.” They shared the stage with groups such as Sonic Youth, Public Image Ltd., Swans, Fugazi, and more.
Amid lineup changes, songwriter and guitarist Thom Fuhrmann joined Savage Republic in 1983, and first appeared playing keyboards on the song “Trek” from the group’s 1985 EP, titled Trudge (Play It Again Sam Records).
Over the decades, Fuhrmann has assumed a leadership role in Savage Republic. In 2019, he fronts the group, standing alongside drummer Alan Waddington, bass player Kerry Dowling, and long-standing guitarist and percussionist Ethan Port.
In 2014, the group released a full-length LP, titled Aegean, with songs such as “Arab Spring,” “Victory,” “27 Days,” and “Peloponesia” placing Savage Republic’s original aesthetic into a modern context. A 2018 7-inch single featuring the songs “God & Guns” and “Tranquilo” further sharpen the group’s stance against right-wing influences gaining a stranglehold on modern America.
After wrapping up a late summer Midwestern tour en route to record new material with Steve Albini at Chicago’s Electrical Audio, Fuhrmann made his way to Atlanta where we caught up over breakfast.
For this second part of my breakfast conversation with Savage Republic’s guitarist and frontman Thom Fuhrmann, we talk about the origins, evolutions, and tragic circumstances surrounding the work he’s recorded under the name Autumnfair, and more about what the future holds in store for Savage Republic.
To learn more about Savage Republic and Autumnfair look online at www.mobilization.com.
Speaking over the phone, Magnapop’s Linda Hopper and Ruthie Morris sound remarkably crisp for our 9 a.m. interview. Oh yeah—they’re in South Holland, a full six hours ahead of Georgia time, waiting to soundcheck before the evening’s show at Bergen op Zoom’s famed music venue Popmonument.
Magnapop is in Europe playing shows and preparing for the arrival of the group’s sixth album, The Circle Is Round, out Sept. 27 via Athens’ HHBTM Records. Belgium, Holland and the rest of the Benelux region have been Magnapop’s home away from home since the early 1990s, when Hopper passed the group’s Michael Stipe-produced demo tape along to a pair of Dutch journalists at a New Music Seminar.
“None of us are good networkers,” Hopper says. “I had two tapes with me. I gave one to someone’s dad and the other to these two guys. After that, we started selling out shows over here, which is really kind of miraculous.” Read the full story at Flagpole.
Mike Vallely was just 14 years old the first time he saw Black Flag play live. It was October 1984, at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ. The group was in the midst of a particularly creative year that yielded three bedrock West Coast hardcore punk albums—Slip It In, My War, Family Man—and a blistering live tape, Live ’84.
“Henry Rollins was fronting the band then, and seeing them play that show was a life-affirming moment for me,” Vallely says. “It changed my life, but more so, I say it was life-affirming, because it made me feel like, ‘OK, I can continue on my own path. I can do what I want to do in this life… Rollins, as the frontman of the band, really embodied that spirit.” Read the full story at Flagpole.
Hello, my name is Chad Radford and I am an Atlanta-based music journalist with 20 years of experience in writing, editing, and podcasting. Punk, hardcore, jazz, noise, post-punk, hip-hop, metal, modern composition, drone music, and all points in between are where my interests lie. I am an avid nature lover, and I buy too many records.
This site features exclusive content, links to articles I have written for other publications, and refurbished stories I’ve written in the past. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or send me an email.
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