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represent a dying breed in America,"
declares Craig lieske, guitarist-frontman
for improv-rock outfit Garbage Island and "facili
tator" for the 2005 New Music Series at the
Athens Institute for Contemporary Art (ATHICA).
The dying breed to which he's referring is a
handful of musicians bound by a common thread
of willful obscurity and virtually no commercial
potential with an unyielding drive to create artis
tically wholesome sounds.
of a success that he's planning on repeating the
experiment this year, "m probably do it again in
the Fall I just have to figure out the hook I'm
using this year," he adds.
Athens au Printemps
For the more immediate spring concert series,
Lieske is building the event to encourage musi
cians and audiences alike to look for different
And regardless of age or approach, the drive of
the collective "we"—encompassing local groups
like Garbage Island, Thimble Circus, Martyr &
Pistol and many others
on the bill—is an
essential spiritual and
philosophical endeavor.
"We do it out of a
purely personal need to
create, without the hin
drance of worrying
about 'moving units' or
'market strategies' or
any of that other crap
that permeates the
industry," continues
Lieske. "All of us know
that we won't be doing
Sprite commercials, or
endorsing a new line of
amplifiers. All of us
would love to be able to make a living doing this,
but we're also realistic. In a world full of
moussed-hair rock and teen starlets, we fall as far
to the left as one could possibly get."
In With the New
The New Music Concert Series began in 2001 at
the hands of curator Jeremiah Cymerman. After a
year of overseeing the event Cymerman moved to
New York City, at which point Lieske took over the
project in 2002.
At first Lieske organized the series as a bi
monthly event. Performances from a slew of
improv, experimental and minimalism masterminds
included Ladonna Smith and Davey Williams from
Birmingham; AL, as well as various artists from
Athens and Atlanta. But over time, Lieske says,
the concerts lost steam.
In August of '03, Lieske revived the series as a
smaller festival held at the Ricker Theatre & Bar.
Later that Fall, he did a second series of four
shows grouped according to style, featuring
themes of jazz, rock and collaborations between
musicians and visual arts.
Late last year, he reincarnated the series again
as four shows. But this time, he invited six dif
ferent musicians to each show to play in configu
rations that were drawn from a hat This self-
described "John Cage style* proved to be enough
ways of perceiving performances. "When we play
in this town, 99 times out of 100, we play in a bar
and are subject to small indignities peculiar to
that sort of social situa
tion," Lieske says. "This
doesn't do the kinds of
music we play any sort
of favors, since bar audi
ences generally aren't
into really deep lis
tening, which this sort
of [music] requires."
The concert series
runs simultaneously
with a gallery show
titled "Embedded: Living
With Technology" that
ATHICA describes on its’
website as a reflection
of "the inevitable inter
twining of messy, fleshy,
mortal humanity with digital-age images, con
cepts and approaches." And while Lieske explains
the pairing of the visual and musical elements on
display during the series as an unintentional col
laboration, the union of the complementary shows
is indeed a happy accident
This year's series has an intriguing roster of
skilled and integral experimental acts whose pres
ence is as humble as it is politically rousing.
Intertwining performances from such varied artists
weave a tangled web of experimental music from
the primitive to the high avant-garde. Bill Taft
(Hubcap City, ex-Smoke) performs with Jill Carnes'
Thimble Circus to create sweetly maniacal duets;
juxtaposing that music against Paul Thomas'
abstract excursions into audio/ video dementia
and Martyr & Pistol's bleak and foreboding orches
tral pop is a messy and fleshy line-up indeed.
Chad Radford
WHAT: “New Music Series Spring
• Concert”
WHERE: Athens Institute for
Contemporary Art (ATHICA)
WHEN: Saturday, May 14; 4:30 pan.
HOW MUCH: Suggested donation, $8
New Music Series Spring Concert Schedule
5:00 p.m. The Ether Frolic
5:40 p.m. Acquaviva
6:20 p.m. Martyr & Pistol
7:00 p.m. Paul Thomas
7:30 p.m. Jeff Chasteen
8:00 p.m. Thimble Circus, with Bill Taft
8:40 p.m. Big Eyed Beans From Venus
9.-40p.m. Kenosha Kid
10:40 p.m. Garbage Island
Curly wasn’t at all embarrassed when
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caught him
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