Or, Somewhere Something Cooler Is Happening and I’m Not There

Athfest was awesome. The worst part of the whole weekend was trying to decide who to go see. Here’s how it all went down:

• Dark Meat is not quite as mind-blowing when you’re standing 100 yards away from the stage surrounded by creepy 50-year-old dudes more interested in checking out high school girls than the music. I overheard a few hilarious conversations between parents and their kids involving the parents trying to look hip by saying how much they wanted to see Dark Meat. The band responded to the non-hipster segment of the audience by generally keeping it clean, encouraging the front rows to dance and substituting “hug” for an unprintable word in one chorus. It didn’t go over well – the crowd shrank by half by the end of the set.

• The Pegasi, as Julie Phillips notes in her blog, played by far the best show I’ve ever seen them play. A very drunk band member kept talking about how they started late so they had to be punk rock to finish their set on time, and they were. The result was a cross between ‘80s rap and Gang of Four.

• After that, we hurried down to Georgia Theatre, despite my hatred of overpriced Bud Light, to catch Folklore covering the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society and stuck around for part of Contraband. A live band playing the soundtrack to a Nintendo game – technically Ninja Gaiden, not Contra – is more interesting in theory than in practice.

• Rather than stay for Elf Power, we opted to head to Go Bar for Deaf Judges, but they were running behind, so we saw a mediocre Depeche Mode ripoff called Misfortune 500. Not only that, but Deaf Judges were terrible and we missed The Buddy System at Cine. Our only big misstep of the weekend.

• I can’t stand Modern Skirts – please don’t kill me, Ann Marie – so to avoid them we started off Saturday with Night Moves and Mother Jackson. Caledonia has a skylight. Who knew?

• Centro-matic was, as always, amazing. One of the most underappreciated bands around. Martin Matheny and his merry band of Democrats were registering voters at the 40 Watt, so we took a little break and hung out at Manhattan for a minute.

• With 45 minutes to kill before Don Chambers, we caught part of Still Small Voice and the Joyful Noise’s set at Flicker. They’re as good a little country-rock band as you could ever hope to see. The Chambers + GOAT show was maybe the highlight of the weekend. You hear the Tom Waits comparisons all the time, but he’s got some Copperhead Road-era Steve Earle in him too. Very foreboding. They were doing this really cool thing with the lights to throw his shadow up on the side wall curtains.

• The turnout seemed down to me versus last year, but organizer Jeff Montgomery said it was one of the biggest crowds ever. If that’s the case, they did a much better job booking the club acts, because it was easier to get around all weekend, the lines were pretty short and no one had to call the fire marshal. Good job.

The rumor mill

The big rumor going around was that, following R.E.M.’s concert Saturday in Atlanta, they’d play a surprise set Sunday at Athfest. Not true. I called Bertis Downs, who said he was at JFK airport in New York en route to Europe for the next leg of their tour. The timing of the Atlanta show coinciding with Athfest was unfortunate but had been booked six months ago, well before the Athfest dates were finalized, he said. The rumor got started by a printing error in the program that listed the 2 p.m. as TBA when it had actually been filled weeks ago, Montgomery said.

Now, on to the stuff I know you came here for. It looks like we’ll have a three-way race for Carl Jordan’s Athens-Clarke Commission seat. None of this is confirmed, but OneAthens Chairman Red Petrovs, former District 10 candidate Ed Robinson and political activist Myra Blackmon are rumored to be running in District 6.

In super-district 10, I’m 99.9 percent sure Elton Dodson will be seeking re-election. Attorney Regina Quick, the mastermind of the Dump Heidi campaign who ran against Doug McKillip as a Republican two years ago, will challenge him.

Blake.aued@onlineathens.com