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"TEAM CLERMONT'S BIG WEEKEND" Want To Hear Some Underground Music, Huh? earn Clermont is three years old, and the baby music promotion company is celebrating its birthday by inviting music fans to a couple of nights of bands and other entertainers that the folks at TC enjoy. AT THE CALEDONIA Friday, August 4: Team Clermont's weekend kicks off at 6 p.m. Friday evening with an acoustic showcase featuring indie-pop svengali and recent Athens transplant Louis Schefano (formerly of Remy Zero, Little Red Rocket and Regia), Jeff Martin of the mood-pop band Idaho (also playing this weekend), and a "special guest" or three. The louder, prouder rock and roll kicks in later in the evening around 11 p.m. or so with Ceiling Fan. With the release of 1998's Trick Music, this quirky trio shed the old "underdog" statu: and emerged as a solid-but-unpredictable indie rock band capable of creating yet-unheard-of round- scapes and sneaking in a brilliantly post-ironic cover tune (or four). Next up: Cafeteria. Elements of twangy alt- country, folk rock and classic Bcatles-esque pop stylings collide on the band's new 14-song debut. Knee Deep (Backburner). Cafeteria originally formed as a duo in 1996 with Taylor Joiner on gu’tar and Brad Morgan on drums. Morgan cur rently keeps time with the Drive-By Truckers while Joiner conducts a gaggle of musicians con tributing backing vocals, pedal steel, banjo, man dolin, guitar and tambourine to his already solid repertoire. Guitar-pop purists The Lures headline the evening with their own sturdy blend of Costello- meets 'Mats rock. This Athens quartet has been finishing work in the studio with engineer David Barbe recording the follow-up to the recent debut full-length. When I Was Broken (Ten 23). Saturday, August 5: A program of enjoyable, uneasy listening dubbed "DJ Happy Hour" com mences with turntable action from Very Nice (local performance artist and smart-minded chanteuse Miss Deonna Mann) and Dr. Irene Moon—a young Athens entomologist (and Melted Men associate) obsessed with the mysteries of the sounds and aromas of life on this planet. (BL) AT THE 40 WATT CLUB Friday, August 4: Songwriters Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink are probably best known in Athens as the two lovely songbirds fronting the lovely-sounding rock band Little Red Rocket. Taylor plays g’uita: and key boards and sings. Fink plays guitar and trumpet and sings. Both have performed as a duo under the name Orenda & Maria but have neariy com pleted a studio session as The Azure Ray with Eric Bachmann (Crooked Fingers, ex-Archers Of Loaf) and Brian Causey (Crooked Fingers, ex-Man... Or Astroman?) behind the console for an autumn album release on Causey's WARM Records. Killer diller. The Azure Ray goes on at 9:30 p.m. (BL) Next on the bill is Idaho. I his California-based duo clocked in back in '93 with the devastating one-twc punch of The Palms EP and the full- length Year After Year, both on the Caroline label. To date. Year After Year remains one of the most stirring and revealing musical monuments to human longing emptiness and despair ever com mitted to wax, and the number-one, post-breakup album ever. Idaho is currently supporting People Like Us Should Be Stopped, a sampling of typically bravuric live performances culled largely from the tour following the now obscenely hard-to-find Year After Year. The band should also nlay a few selection: from the forthcoming Hearts Of Pa:m, due later this year. Leave your dancin' shoes in the closet and prepare to be soothed and over whelmed. (ED) The four characters in the highly-explorative, New York-based rock band Enon play next, and they are determined to t p the ante and step side ways away from the trends and schemes that pollute underground music. Eno.i formed two years ago after the breakup of much lauded bands Brainiac and Skeleton Key. Vocalist-songwriter John Schmersal (who was involved with Ohio-based Brainiac and John Stuart Mill) hooked up with and Rick Lee and Steve Calhoon (both of Skeleton Key) in New York, began tossing weird musical ideas around, assembles a few audio samples and—with ex- Barkmarket guy Dave Sardy behind the mixing console—managed to record one this year's most intriguing debut albums, Believe!. "It's a logical direction from where Brainiac was going, says Schmersal, speaking by telephone from his flat in Manhattan. "We're consciously going more pop... I think that Enon has gone more pop than maybe Brainiac would have, though. The record has a lot of rock, but that comes out more live, I think." Believo!'s strangest songs pulsate thanks to an abundance of samples and audible signals, heavy-handed, Bonham-on-Nyquil drumming and debonair, dynamic vocalizations. Songs range from skewed, freakish. '70s-style radio pop to ominous exercises in rhythms and noise. While Steve Calhoun is currently too occupied in New York with work and life to dedicate time to touring, the current Enon lineup includes Toko Yasuda (formerly of Blonde Redhead and The Lapse) on bass and Matt Schultz on drums. (BL) Five-Eight headlines the evening. I've been worried about Mike Mantione, of Five-Eight. I remember the dazed feeling I had in the day or two after Kurt Cobain's suicide. It was right there in Cobain's lyrics, over and over. The suicide was inevitable. A friend and I were downtown, and I said— not wanting the words to come true—"Mike's lyrics have all the same warning signs." My friend paused, then said: "Yeah, but Mike doesn't have a heroin addiction. That makes a big difference." And he was right. Years have passed, and Mike and his band- mates—always bassist Dan Horowitz and now also drummer Mike Rizzi—have wrung five amazing albums worth of material from Mantiono's tortured psyche. His lyrics might be about depression and fear, but his on -stage antics are absolutely fear less. He practically implodes on some songs, thrashing about, foaming at the mouth, and deliv ering the kind of shows you end up talking about five years later I thought the edginess Mantione had culti vated over the years might be getting dulled by the necessities of family and running a working rock band. Instability seemed to be the root of what was great about Five-Eight's songs. When Gasolina! (Velvel) came out in 1997 (on April Fool's Day, a cruel joke, it would seem), Five-Eight was poised for stardom. That record deserved huge success—it was practically flawless. The songs were great and the production was about as "national" sounding as it gets, but it wasn't meant to be. The new record, The Good Nurse (Deep Elm), is the most beautiful of left turns. It is nakedly hor.est, incredibly personal, full of the best kinds of flaws and honestly one of the best records to come out of Athens in ten years. It's haunting and dark and hopeful and everything that good art should be. (MP) Saturday, August 5: Able to crank out the ballsiest pile-driving anthems since the heyday of Rush, while at the same time spinning a plate on one finger and a basketball on the other, Trans Am grabs rock and roll by the short hairs! Able to pen tunes like "Television Eyes" and "Running Standing Still" while miraculously remaining on the nor.-nauseous side of cominess! Able to ruthlessly rock large concert halls with only minor structural damage! More than a man... more like three men, whose encyclopedic range of references (ranging from Kraftwerk to Pan Sonic and then waaaay back into the dank closets of '70s prog) make them far greater than the sum of their talents. The forthcoming full-length Red Line, due out this fall, is perhaps even more fragmented than the rari ties smorgasbord. It's the band's unapologetic "experimental" album, where jock-rockers like "I Want It All" and "Play In The Summer" are buffered by shots-in-the-da r k like the tribally percussive "Casual Friday," the unsolvable math-rocker "Village In Bubbles," and the white noise of "Where Do You Want To Fuck Today?" which would fit comfortably on Ellipsis Arts' OHM: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music boxed set. I hardly ever wear earplugs at rock shows, but I'm damn sure going to for Trans Am, and I recom mend you do likewise. Along with some of the new material, expect a few archaic covers and other surprises. And remember, indie kids, when you put your fist in the air, it's thumb on the out side. (ED) The Krush Girls round out the evening in the spirit of 40 Watt Disco Past. Two Athens music afi cionados—sometimes known as "DJ Ass Money" and "The Supervisor"... or Chris Bilheimer and Dan Donahue—will spin a wild mix of danceable stuff from the '70s, '80s and '90s. (BL) Ballard Lesemann, Marc Pilvinsky, Emerson Dameron FRIDAY, AUGUST 4: Caledonia Lounge 6-8 p.m. "Acoustic Happy Hour" with Louis Schefano (Regia), Jeff Martin (Idaho) and "special guests." 11:15 p m. Ceiling Fan 12:15 a.m. Cafeteria 1 a.m. The Lures 40 Watt Club 9:30 p.m. The Azure Ray 10:30 p.m. Idaho 11:30 p.m. Enon 12:30 a.m. Five-Eight "CD Release Party" SATURDAY, AUGUST S Caledonia Lounge 4-6 p.m. "DJ Happy Hour" with Very Nice (featuring Miss Deonna Mann and Dr. Irene Moon) 40 Watt Club 8:30-11:30 p.m. "Blue Ribbon Ball" (featuring Trans Am and MC Calvin Smith). Invitation only. 11:30 p.m. Trans Am 1:15 a.m. The Krush Girls Advance tickets are available at Lo Yo Yo Stuff, Big Shot Records and on-line at pitchatent.com and 40watt.com. Wt FLAGPOLE AUGUST 2, 2000