New book highlights Atlanta music memories through concert flyers – WABE

As soon as upon a time, earlier than on-line mailing lists, Fb, Instagram and TikTok, Atlanta indie musicians needed to take it to the streets to promote their upcoming reveals. As an alternative of sending out an invitation to their hundreds of on-line buddies, native bands would create eye-catching flyers and staple them up throughout city. Atlanta creator, designer, writer and producer Henry Owings lately compiled a set of those memory-inducing photographs known as “Plus 1 Atlanta – Live performance Ephemera from a Storied Metropolis.” Owings joined “Metropolis Lights” senior producer Kim Drobes by way of Zoom to speak concerning the picture assortment and its vivid portrait of Atlanta music from 1962 to 2003.

Henry Owings has been concerned within the native music scene for many years. Along with his books “The Rock Bible” and “The Indie Cred Take a look at,” he based Chunklet journal, a humor and music publication based mostly out of Athens. He defined how he hit on the thought of a lovingly archived quantity of nostalgic live performance posters. 

“I don’t know what you’ve been doing the final couple of years, however I definitely wasn’t going and seeing any reveals,” mentioned Owings. “So I used to be engaged on a field set for the Athens band Pylon, and it gave me a glimpse into all of these things that, as a fan of Georgia music, I had at all times heard about however I had by no means seen. And so it’s one factor to speak to anyone who talks about seeing the Stooges at Richard’s in Midtown or no matter, nevertheless it’s one other factor to search out these artifacts.”

He continued, “I simply needed to truly maintain and scan them. And greater than something, I simply needed to get it proper, and my internal editor got here out, and a few precise editors got here out and helped me try to clarify 50 years of music on this city.”

The visuals are accompanied by essays from Owings and plenty of different native artists (together with a foreword by comic and actor David Cross) on memorable moments in Atlanta music. He attested to a precept of neutrality guiding his hand, saying, “What I needed to do was present Atlanta. I didn’t need to present my private biases. I needed to point out warts and all; I needed to point out the cool bands, I needed to point out the lame bands, and it’s not incumbent upon me to say which is which.”

As Owings namedrops venue after venue that at the moment’s concert-goers might by no means have heard of, a hidden historical past of Atlanta begins to emerge. He mentions forgotten levels just like the Level, the Metroplex, 688, Rose’s Cantina, P.J.’s Nest, the Rec Room, the Nitery and plenty of extra. He additionally immortalizes wilder-than-fiction tales from the Atlanta scene, just like the early days of RuPaul’s emergence in Midtown nightclubs or the time when Jerry Garcia may need thought-about dosing the native municipal water provide with LSD.

As for the unique occasion posters themselves, Owings treats them like hallowed artifacts. “I’ve type of largely been very allergic to holding on to these things. I don’t need to maintain on to it. If anyone provides it to me, it goes to a museum. If it’s from Atlanta, it’s going over to Emory, and if it’s from Athens, it goes to UGA. [These are] profoundly intimate recollections that persons are sharing with me, and I take it very critically.” 

“Plus 1 Atlanta: Live performance Ephemera from a Storied Metropolis” is out now. www.chunklet.com/product/plus-1-atlanta-book.