Music Midtown in Atlanta, GA: Day 1
This is more of a narrative of what happened during Friday at Music Midtown in Atlanta, GA…
Almost all of the pictures taken today were on a disposable digital camera, so there will not be many pictures until I can get it developed.
i'm tempted GOING to do karaoke tomorrow (in a sort of “damn the torpedos, full speed ahead” sense) – not only is it going to be karaoke, but it's going to be AWESOME KARAOKE. know why?
1. HEAVY METAL MUSIC
2. FULL LIVE BACKING ROCK BAND
3. GET TO SAY PERFORMED ON STAGE AT MUSIC MIDTOWN IN FRONT OF “THOUSANDS”*
seriously! i saw the coolest thing when i was walking around – before any bands were really scheduled to play we heard a cover of “i wanna be sedated” by the ramones, so we went in search to find out where this music was coming from and found this band playing. when the song finished, the guy on stage left and it soon became apparent that this was karaoke that anybody could sign up for! it's a group called metalsome monday that performs for karaoke, and the band is AWESOME! i was impressed with how well it makes everything sound!
after we saw metalsome monday we saw a few songs by red letter agent, got some food, and wandered to the stage that lou reed would be at. when we arrived at that stage we saw the second half of francine reed doing blues/rock, and she was really getting into the act and was very nice and friendly – i heard her start “one monkey don't stop no show” (i had a version already by someone else and liked the song) and these girls beckoned to me from the best buy tent so i went over and saw they had cds of different artists there for sale, so i bought francine reed's cd since it had that song on it, haha… afterwards she was signing autographs, so i had my cd booklet signed by her – she signed it “to glenn – love & peace & chicken grease – francine reed” and said that nobody else had theirs signed like that, hahahaha. i got my picture taken with her too – she had me come around to the side of the table where she was sitting for autographs, and i told her that now i felt like a big shot getting to be on that side of the
table and that made her and the people in line laugh.
in between sets they would pop this message on the screen, where if you sent a text message to a certain number it would pop up on the screen in front of the crowd, hence this picture:
my friend gary left shortly after lou reed started to go see interpol. lou reed was awesome! he even did this amazing guitar solo and ended up blowing an amp of his and had to have a replacement take its place (“this one's a real vintage amp!”). when it blew he started singing something like “lou reed murdered his amp down in atlanta… you guys paid all the money and what do you get to see? ME!” and started flexing his muscles while the amp was switched, haha. i didn't really know many of his songs offhand but a few sounded familiar.
the white stripes were INSANE. jack white was going non-stop around the stage from instrument to instrument, and meg white was on the drums like crazy too. again, i hadn't really heard much of their stuff and only barely knew of some of their work, but it grew on me as the set went on. they played pretty much non-stop until 11:30 and then said “goodnight” and left the stage. we all stayed there for 10-15 minutes and kept cheering until they came out for an encore, and then they said they thanked us and left again.
picture by gregor smith
used under a creative commons license
* “thousands” not guaranteed. attendance at fesival = thousands. people watching karaoke much less