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Road Trippin
A ride through some of the wildest, coolest, strangest and most interesting musical landmarks of the Southeast
By Mark Sanders
Page 3 of 5
- Lee Valentine Smith
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, 295 Ponce de Leon Ave.
Beauty and the Beats
If you need an explanation for some of OutKast's wilder 'dos — Big Boi's pimp-ish press and curl; Andre 3000's straight, Cher-like booty-length wig — consider where the duo got its first break: Lamonte's Beauty Shop in East Point's Delowe Shopping Center. That's where they hooked up with then-store manager/producer Rico Wade, who introduced them to LaFace Records President L.A. Reid. The music mogul soon signed the group to his burgeoning label, and the rest is, uh, hair-story.
- Craig Seymour
Delowe Shopping Center, corner of Headland and Delowe drives
ATHENS, GA.
Party People
Just inside the front door of the modest green house across from the Taco Stand on Milledge Avenue is the "stage" where the B-52's played its first show on Valentine's night, 1977. "A lot of things started here," laughs Cindy Wilson of the B's. "There wasn't much to do [in Athens] back then. Parties were what it was all about." The group, which would soon put Athens on the musical map, had no intention of doing anything more than a one-off show. "That was as far as we'd planned ahead — three or four songs, just to have fun," Wilson says. The audience that night was mostly friends and party hoppers, including Wilson's eventual husband, Keith Bennett. "I saw Barbie dolls hanging up in there and a band set up with a gong," Bennett recalls, "and I thought, 'This is a party I should check out'."
- Lee Valentine Smith
R.E.M.-ember When
394 Oconee St. is where Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe practiced in the remains of the old St. Mary's Episcopal Church. The church is also where they played their first show, on Sat., April 5, 1980, for local scenester Kathleen O'Brien's birthday party. They were called Twisted Kites at the time, but the name changed to R.E.M. the next week. The church was torn down in 1990 to make way for the Steeplechase Condominiums and today only the weathered steeple remains as a landmark near the Nuci's Space rehearsal complex. But across from Oconee, near Wilkerson Street, is the old railroad trestle featured on the cover of R.E.M.'s 1983 album Murmur.
- Lee Valentine Smith
394 Oconee St.
AUGUSTA, GA.
Brown and Out
On Sept. 24, 1988, James Brown stormed into an insurance seminar being held next to his personal suite of offices. Apparently, Papa had just scored a brand new bag — of PCP — and, armed with a shotgun, he accused several seminar attendees of using his private bathroom. The police were summoned and Brown led them on a whirlwind sightseeing tour of Georgia, South Carolina, and Georgia again, before the cops shot out his tires. The Godfather of Soul was convicted of multiple offenses, including assault, drug possession and failure to stop for a police officer. He did 15 months in a South Carolina pen and 10 months in a work release program before being paroled in February 1991.
- Scott Harrell
CHARLESTON, S.C.
I Loves You, Georgy
As a young man, Charleston's Dubose Heyward worked as flunky for a cotton broker near the city's busy waterfront. There, he observed and learned from the lives, stories and folktales of African-Americans who worked on the waterfront. In 1925, Heyward published a novel, Porgy, based on a real-life Charleston character, Goat Cart Sam, who, like Porgy, was a crippled beggar who got around in a goat-pulled cart. In 1927, Heyward and his wife, Dorothy, turned the novel into a play, which drew the attention of New York composer George Gershwin. He took the story and put it to music, creating America's great opera, Porgy and Bess. The story is primarily set in a large three-story tenement and courtyard called Catfish Row, which was based on the real-life Cabbage Row, home at the time to many black dockworkers and their families.
- John Grooms
Catfish Row, 89-91 Church St.
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Calendar
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Wine & Paint @ Blackfinn Ameripub- Ballantyne
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Face to Face Foundation Gala @ The Revelry North End
- Fri., April 19, 6-10 p.m.
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An Evening With Phil Rosenthal Of "Somebody Feed Phil" @ Knight Theater
- Fri., April 19, 7 p.m.
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Kountry Wayne: The King Of Hearts Tour @ Ovens Auditorium
- Fri., April 19, 7:30 p.m.
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Queen Charlotte Fair @ Route 29 Pavilion
- Through April 22, 4-11 p.m.
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Esports in Charlotte Takes Off: A Guide to Virtual Competitions and Betting
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Canuck in the Queen City 7
A Canadian transplant looks back at her first year as a Charlotte resident
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Homer's night on the town 41
If you drank a shot with the Knights mascot on Sept. 20, you were basically harboring a fugitive
