Common and N.E.R.D. help everyone unleash their inner geek

- JESSICA O'NEAL

Common and N.E.R.D. indulged a league of geeked out, hipsters at the intimate concert hall of The Tabernacle in Atlanta.
  

I was surprised when I learned the show was called "Souled Out." It should have been named, "Unifying the Ghetto Nerd." It was a celebration of the 21st century beatnik. However, the unique crowd was to be expected from the home of eccentric music artists like, Cee-Lo Green or Outkast.
    

Skinny jeans, high top sneakers, with light bling scattered on novelty tees was the main dress code among the afro-centric and diverse crowd. Pharrell Williams, lead singer of N.E.R.D. embraced the stylish audience shouting, "They'll want to be dressing like you next year."

Atlanta artist, Janelle Monae, began the parade of psychedelic hip-hop. I must say, I wasn't too keen on Ms. Monae before she performed. Her theatrical R&B album never intrigued me. The skeptical group of girls beside me felt the same way. Not only did she convert us, Monae had liberated souls making you unafraid to loss control during the rest of the night.

    

Imitating her alien robot persona from her album, Metropolis: The Chase Suite, this odd petite girl stormed out rocking a female version of an old Temptations outfit. Her voice reflected Sarah Vaughn or Ella Fitzgerald, singing on funky, rock tunes. She moved like James Brown in his prime, but had the swagger of Andre 3000 with her own futuristic jerks.
    

From the beginning of the show singing the high energy "Violent Stars Happy Hunting," to sobering the mood with her remake of Nat King Cole's "Smile," Monae had you with her every step of the way.
    

There was nothing sacred or untouched on stage, she crowd surfed and fiercely pulled her doo-wop styled Mohawk. The cynical convert beside me explained it best, "God she's weird, but I'm loving her."
    

N.E.R.D. made it a point to keep the crowd hyped, although the third part of the trio, Chad Hugo, was nowhere in sight. With their vast instrumentation in the background, N.E.R.D. brought the crowd to a newer level of high; Pharrell was giving it up for the "CNN junkies." He said he didn't need to remind us to vote because he knew we (geeks) would. The same way he knew we would love the band's rendition of the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army."
    

Politics guided N.E.R.D.'s playlist from their album, Seeing Sounds. As Pharrell and band mate Shay Haley rapped to the pulsating rhythms of "Kill Joy," saying "to you they might look beautiful, but they're rotten in the inside…Beautiful losers." Pharrell sarcastically screams, "This one's for John McCain."
    

When they played their oldies like "Brain" or "Lapdance," the audience marinated in Pharrell's energy. The lead singer actively interacted with the crowd, and the band created a mosh pit on stage during a spirited performance of "Rock Star."
    

Even with all the distracting groupies on stage during, "Everybody Nose" and "She Wants to Move," I was still embarrassingly lusting over Pharrell. The women wanted to be with him and the guys wanted to be him.
    

But, before he left the stage he wanted to make sure we were all voting for his candidate. He whispered to the crowd, "Who are you voting for?" and the band chanted "O-ba-ma" as they left the stage.
    

Common brought a different type of vibe to the modern crowd. He brought the same energy as N.E.R.D. and accomplished it better. The rapper/actor didn't require an entourage to back him up to get the crowd's hands in the air. All he needed was the talent that has kept him around for over a decade.
    

The show was theatrical. The stage was set like the inside of a club where a bar, bartender, and girls were all included. There were bits of dialogue between him and female clubbers on stage before he performed each of his classics. One lucky female crowd member was brought on stage to get a drink while Common serenaded her to the romantic track, "Come Close."
    

Along with tracks from his albums Be and Finding Forever, he performed around seven new tracks from his LP, Universal Mind Control, which will be released at the end of December. Title track, "Universal Mind Control," and a song he performed at the end of the show called "Gladiator" found Common experimenting with tempos and I found myself begging for more.
    

The rapper kept the political theme going as well. He encouraged the crowd to vote for what's right. He added to the rhetoric, "I'm not saying not just vote for any candidate, but I'm talking about Obama."
    

Common demonstrated that hip-hop and intellectualism grows better with age. He was the ideal ending for the night.
    

This concert not only satisfied us southern, hip-hop geeks, it empowered us.

Check it
N.E.R.D. - Spazz

Janelle Monae performing Violent Stars/Happy Hunting

Modern Skirts Have a Hard Time Rocking-out in Front of Adults and Children

-COLIN DUNLOP

 In full disclosure, The Ashford Manor "Concerts on the Lawn" was not the first time I saw Modern Skirts live. In fact, the last time I saw them I was hammered drunk, in the small, dark and dingy 40 Watt Club, belting out lyrics alongside a strictly 18-plus crowd.

    

But Monday night the band was not playing its normal scene — far from it. The Athens quartet was front and center on the back lawn of a classy, yet rustic bed and breakfast.
  

To say the band played a family-friendly show for a family-friendly concert series in a family-friendly town is an understatement.
    

In the antithesis of their normal eclectic wardrobe, the polished members came on stage in button up collared shirts and looser-fitting jeans — not ones made for teenage girls. Even the on-stage banter was curse free.
    

The set reached just under two hours, thanks to the 30-minute intermission, and the band's power-pop tunes translated nicely from their normal drunk college-aged crowd to sugar-buzzed children.
    

What didn't translate so well was a Skirts staple — high impact on-stage energy.
    

Starting promptly at 7, "My Lost Soprano" sailed through the speakers and into the chilled dusk air — but the open-air venue muffled the songs normal punch. The audience couldn't have felt the music rattle through their bones, I thought. But as cheers rose up at the end of the first song, it was very apparent they weren't looking for a skeletal jolt.
    

The Ashford Manor series, now in its eighth season, is wildly popular in Watkinsville, a town 15 minutes from the musical Mecca of Athens. In fact, the Skirts played Athens just three days before, but still managed to pack out the Manor. It seems the call for talented bands to play a family-friendly venue sounded (see Packway Handle Band's June performance) and Modern Skirts was more than happy to oblige.
    

The band sped its way through a first set dominated by highlights from "Catalogue of Generous Men," its first album. The band took its time with the second act, which, as expected, was geared toward its recently released sophomore album, "All of Us In Our Night." It was during the latter set I made two observations: I hate the way "My Bully" sounds played outside but love the way "Pasadena" does.
    

Don't get me wrong, I love "My Bully" — it's my favorite song on the first Skirts CD — but it demands to be played loud in close confines. "Pasadena," on the other hand, has never been my favorite. But it managed to reinvent itself as a perfect end of summer anthem more potent by a crisp fall breeze — a feeling unmatchable in a hot, sweaty, crowded club.
    

But that's the magic of Modern Skirts.
    

Its musical talent and versatiliy means the band can play a 1 a.m. show to a stinking, drunk college crowd, or make a 10-minute drive and croon to hundreds of small children and aging hipsters in the waning evening hours. While I won't fault the Skirts for branching out for its listeners, I can't say I'll be attending anymore of its outdoor shows.
    

No, I like seeing my bands blind-stinking drunk, cramped in a dingy club.

Check it
Modern Skirts - Pasadena

Modern Skirts performing Shaker in the Band

This is What Happens When Things Get Too Emo

- ALEX BERRY

Soft spoken but kind of chatty, solo acoustic act The Final Goodbye chuckled at himself while attempting to motivate the crowd—which included myself, three other girls and Tasty World's bartenders. Filling in for two emo/punk bands scheduled to play Tuesday night, The Final Goodbye's lone singer and guitarist, Johnny B, didn't introduce himself nor did he present song titles before performing them. He simply dove right into carelessly strumming and singing his enjoyably catchy, lovesick tunes.
  

Currently on tour, Atlanta based The Final Goodbye's sound mimics an amateur version of Dashboard Confessional—think slightly whiney, yet melodic, voice and simplistic acoustic guitar chords. His side-swiped dark brown hair falls gently across his eyes as he sings songs from his EP "Don't Take This Lightly" at times almost at a whisper as if the concert were more like a private VH1 session.
    

In between unintroduced tracks during the just under thirty-minute set, Johnny B joked about his "crappy voice" and filled the dark forgotten venue with rants on the weather. Attempting interaction with the "crowd," he asked us nonsense questions which went mostly unanswered save for an occasional "wooo" from a dreadlocked bartender.
    

But when he began playing again, his basic two-chord strum on his chocolate framed guitar that bled violet into its wood grain hollow body, echoed serenely out the open windows of the warehouse style bar in downtown Athens, Ga.
    

A slight stamor slid into his boyish, yearning voice from nervousness and inexperience as he crooned typical emo-lyrics, "We all need someone to say goodbye to, We all need someone to hold on to." The term "emo" music derives from the deep emotions emulated in the lyrics and mellow tunes. Generally this category is chastised as over exaggerated belly-aching. Though The Final Goodbye's music may fall into this whimpering, high-school daydreaming genre, his music is also sincere, somewhat unrefined, yet it resonates the emotional pull his voice demands.
     

Aside from the ranting, The Final Goodbye's presence and short, soft punk-rock anthems of longing were packed with potential. I can almost hear the polished instrumentation behind his soothing voice. Nothing worth jumping out of my seat for, but The Final Goodbye is definitely deserving of a second listening on a late afternoon drive.

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The Final Goodbye - Corey and Topanga

Don't tell your Mom: We've Been Getting Stinky, Dirty and Sexy with RJD2

- DANA ZELMAN

Do you like sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll? How about a good romp among some drugged-out, writhing, sweaty bodies? Like to get a little dirty? Well then this Saturday night's show at the Georgia Theatre by the Philadelphia DJ known as RJD2 might have been just for you.
  

This was a great dance show, provided that you came prepared for some debauchery and didn't mind the infestation of drugs. His music could be the love child of fellow electronica artists Sound Tribe Sector 9 and DJ Tiesto, with an extra emphasis on hip-hop's characteristic resounding bass. RJD2 performs in front of a video projection, and even though he doesn't use any instruments other than turn tables, he is very interesting to watch. He moves through his music precisely and has a real gift for seamless transitions. This leaves little punctuation in his music, however, and the songs blend together to form one long, exhausting set. His mixes are expertly crafted, most of them building up to an orgasmic climax.
    

This was a dance party if I've ever seen one. The crowd moved with an almost electric, sexual pulse; I felt like a real badass for just being there. The mostly white male crowd was eccentric, with plenty of Athens' requisite obnoxious frat guys and smelly, dreadlocked hippies — not exactly the audience you'd want to bring home to Mom. Thinking of a few notably wild-eyed people gyrating next to me, the puffs of pot smoke ejected into the air every few minutes, and the mess of empty 32-oz. beer cups at my feet, I doubt anyone was legitimately sober at this show. It was a free-for-all, a debauched celebration of self-indulgence. The crowd was inconsiderate and aggressive, and I was elbowed out of my spot on several occasions; it was every man for himself in a heavy-breathing orgy of dancers.
    

RJD2 rocked the crowd, but he was also humble. Unlike his crowd, he pushed just a little, but not too much. His show was balanced, not only between hip-hop bass and electronic melodies but also between audio and visual.
    

The visual element of his show, a video projected on the screen behind him, was absolutely perfect for this potentially hallucinating crowd. It was a video remix, a fun house mirror to his music. It would sometimes show a live camera of what he was doing on the beat machine, but most of the video content was beyond weird. Old-school vampire movies and 80s dance-offs were mixed with soft-core porn and images of popular cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force and The Matrix. The cherry on top was a really notable sequence of people eating hot dogs. I got a few laughs out of that video, and so did the rest of the crowd, which was already high and giggly.
     

RJD2's fans aren't exactly your Red Cross volunteers (or maybe they are, via court-ordered community service), but don't let that stop you from venturing to one of his shows. He puts on a funky and energetic show, really showcasing his talent as a modern musician. My mother would never approve of me coming to such a blatant display of human vice, but I came to this show to get down and dirty — and I got dirty. 

    

I need a cigarette after just thinking about it.

Check it
RDJ2 - Smoke and Mirrors

Work it Out from RDJ2