Here is the download:
Go Back To Europe - Live At WREK 2002-12-17
Go Back To Europe - How The West Was One
You may know Travis Thatcher as the yank in Judi Chicago (playing Friday night at the Drunken Unicorn), and you may know Alex LaRoche from who knows where but currently as a resident of San Francisco working for a company called Apple (and getting married on November 16th - Congrats!), but before all this they were a postpunk electronic (or whatever you call it) duo named Go Back to Europe based out of our fair city of Atlanta.
I played briefly in a band with Alex called Ananke back around this time (with Benjamin Lukens from The hal al Shedad and Sean Greathead from Wheeljack), and mainly knew him as that red-headed guy I would see at Under the Couch running the soundboard and taking money at the door. Travis was a guy I knew through the Lukens brothers, but didn't really get to know well until Noot d' Noot started playing shows with Judi Chicago earlier this year. Travis also introduced me to his other brilliant band Recompas, which seems to be more of a progression from the Go Back To Europe stuff - especially when you listen to the Live at WREK session included here. Also, I'm not sure if the pink panties are in reference to the Athens supergroup, but you might have to ask them about that.
For some reason, I seem to bond well with the musicians coming out of Georgia Tech. I would like to say it is due in part to WREK, as it is my favorite radio station in Atlanta, and one that really promotes musical diversity, and thereby exposes their students to new and interesting music that they in turn make themselves. It's great to see new generations of local musicians experimenting with their music and developing a diverse musical pallette resulting from their exposure to WREK programming. I have discussed this with Gavin before, but I think we are really lucky to have a radio station such as this in our town, whether we appreciate it or not.
Oh man, I'd totally forgotten about Alex. The name seemed only vaguely familiar until I got to the Under the Couch mention and then *ding* there he was. I knew him a little from some shows he set up there in the 97-98 range when I was playing in a garage punk band called The Drummonds. Super nice guy. He was always very accommodating to us, even though we were pretty far off from the other bands we always ended up playing with (like The Kossabone Red, for one example).
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you mean. Even when we started playing in a band together, he was a friend of Ben's and I didn't make the UTC connection until a few practices in. Good guy on the delay pedal.
ReplyDeleteI donated the mannequin they used in the artwork
ReplyDeleteThis is hilarious, I never realized it was a mannequin in the picture! I can be a little dense.
ReplyDeletethat mannequin is appropriately named pedro...btw
ReplyDelete