The Black Lips return from blurry India debacle
Rowdy indie foursome plays Variety to promote “200 Million Thousand” album
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, February 22, 2009
By SONIA MURRAY / smurray@ajc.com
Zach Wolfe
Atlanta’s Black Lips release their new album, ‘200 Million Thousand,’ on Tuesday. They’ll also play at the Variety Playhouse on Friday, where guitarist Cole Alexander is apt to play in his ‘tighty-whities.’
The Black Lips with Gentleman Jesse and His Men
When: 8:30 p.m. Friday
Where: The Variety Playhouse, 1099 Euclid Ave.
Tickets: $15 at box office, 404-524-7354; or Ticketmaster,
404-249-6400; or www.ticketmaster.com
MORE ON THE BLACK LIPS
• Music Scene: The original India incident report
• Photos: Atlanta bands reach for national success
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Since its indie start some nine years ago, Atlanta’s Black Lips seems to have a tale to tell after almost every appearance, performance and record release.
With its album “200 Million Thousand” out Tuesday and a show Friday at the Variety Playhouse, this rowdy, psychedelic, garage rock foursome has its most buzzed-about story yet after the group was supposedly “kicked out of India” in January because a band member exposed himself “frontally” onstage.
Now, the whole story can be told — at least the story according to one of the members.
“Ahhh, India,” bassist Jared Swilley said playfully by phone from Lille, France, as if recalling a fond, long-ago memory.
“To tell you the truth, India is all still really, really confusing to me,” Swilley said. “It was an intense, like, 30-hour period. But this is basically the deal: It was a great show. … We had done like three shows before, and nothing. Then we finally have this great one, high-fiving in the back and everything.”
Next thing they knew, “we were kind of on the run,” he said.
The promoters, the Lips were told, didn’t appreciate guitarist Cole Alexander mooning the crowd.
“Honda — or one of the sponsors — pulled out, and everybody went nuts,” Swilley said. “We finally get to this hotel, and someone tries to steal our passports. … I think the promoters were trying to get some money out of us or something … because they claimed they lost all of this money because of the sponsors pulling out.
“But we caught them in the back of the hotel — it was like six of us to two of them. … We got our passports back.”
The gospel truth?
The group also has yet another yarn to weave as it promotes “200 Million Thousand” — as well as a gospel album the band recorded during the extra 10 days it had to stay over in Berlin. (Perhaps escaping angry promoters and would-be passport-snatchers in a foreign country can make even the most unabashed of punk rockers look thankfully toward higher powers.)
“Honestly, we were just listening to a lot of good gospel music out here on the road — this box set some friends back home did called ‘Goodbye, Babylon,’ [with] Elder Utah Smith, Dixie Hummingbirds, Mighty Clouds of Joy — and we just went for it.”
No big surprise to Lance Ledbetter, whose recent Grammy-winning Atlanta label Dust-To-Digital put out “Goodbye, Babylon.”
“I’ve had the pleasure of going record shopping on a number of occasions with Cole,” Ledbetter said, “and we both share an appreciation for what we call the golden era of gospel, the 45 RPM era. … And Jared comes from a long, long line of preachers.
“So yeah, this doesn’t seem like as much of a stretch as people might think,” he said. “What sets them apart from other bands is that they can be so curious about other genres of music. And so influenced by it. They are adventurous musicians and listeners.”
Adventurous has been a fair description ever since the then-teens recorded their first blast of gnarly, unrefined rock — or as Swilley calls it, “flower punk” — on their own label, playing smaller Atlanta venues such as the Star Bar in Little Five Points, the Echo Lounge in East Atlanta and the Drunken Unicorn in Midtown.
After three independent discs, hip label Vice Records signed the group — which also includes guitarist Ian St. Pe and drummer Joe Bradley — in 2006. What locals had felt for years finally began to reverberate nationally with feature stories in Spin and Rolling Stone magazines.
In 2007 — when the group released both the “live” disc “Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo” and “Good Bad Not Evil” on Vice — MTV did an online piece on Atlanta’s indie-rock scene and included the Lips (along with Manchester Orchestra and Deerhunter).
The New York Times tagged the Lips “the hardest working band” during the annual South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, after reportedly doing a dozen shows in three days.
“They’re an international sensation now, with India and everything else,” said Criminal Records owner Eric Levin, for whom the Lips played a midnight show outside, with firecrackers.
“You can’t just call them an Atlanta band now like you can’t call the Black Crowes ‘an Atlanta band,’ ” Levin said. “They’re like [Atlanta metal band] Mastodon — they’ve transcended.”
That’s why anticipation for “200 Million Thousand,” Levin said, is “white hot.” And if past Criminal shows are any indication, Levin expects the gospel-loving Alexander to perform at least “in his tighty-whities, again” in the Lips’ Variety Playhouse homecoming.
Pardon the Playhouse’s Brad Syna if he yawns at that possibility.
“They’ve done things at other venues,” Syna said. “I heard something about Cole and a dead octopus at the Drunken Unicorn. Cole is a little different. But the other guys are pretty regular. Everything will be fine. Who wants to do anything stupid when they have to be paid at the end of the night?”
Besides, Syna says, it’s his understanding that the kicked-out-of-India story was just something the band made up to see how many people would believe it.
So, Mr. Swilley of the long line of preachers, is the India story true?
Silence.
“This is something our family is going to read back home, right?” he finally asked.
We hope so.
“Well, I don’t know where that whole ‘full-frontal’ thing came from …”
A news release from your publicist, he’s reminded.
“Well, Cole did moon them — and someone may have seen something from an angle. … But like I said, the India thing is still kind of a blur. And the fans know what to expect when we get home.”
