Month: January 2022

My old friend Robert Cheatham passed away last week after a long illness.  Robert had a huge impact on the Atlanta arts scene, which you can read about in this remembrance published in the AJC.

Like many in my circle of friends, I first met Robert via my involvement in Eyedrum.  However I already knew who he was, because I had spent many years farting around in the weirdo music scene in Atlanta where he was well known.  WREK had a radio show called Destroy All Music that featured all sorts of extreme and improvisational music, and back in the late 1980s that radio show had spawned a similarly themed music “festival” every year or two —  just a room with people doing crazy stuff.  Robert’s “band” Tinnitus was a perennial presence on that radio show and at those DAM festivals.  I’m sure I probably saw him on stage at some point, whether it was at Klang or the TULA arts center or wherever.  I knew of him but hadn’t met him.

In 2002, Hormuz Minina roped me into joining the Eyedrum board of directors, which is fancier than it sounds.  It was just a collective of about a dozen people who were running an arts venue in their spare time — nobody got paid, we just put on shows and paid the rent.  Anyway, Robert was at the first board meeting that I attended, and for me it was like meeting a rock star.  OMG the Robert Cheatham is sitting in this folding chair right next to me and we are even talking about stuff!  What?!

Eyedrum was primarily run by artists for artists (visual, musical, whatever) so the programming was amazing and unique, but you also needed people to build the infrastructure and make the physical place work.  I’m an electrical engineer and quickly saw a lot of electrical work that needed to get done (run power for outlets, overhead lighting for stage, etc.) and got to work on that.  Robert had side gigs in construction so knew how to build walls including hanging drywall, and so between the two of us we built out the new space that Eyedrum has leased. To this day, when describing what I did at Eyedrum, I say that if you walked into the MLK space, anything physical that your eyes landed on was either built by Robert or built my me.  I put in lighting for the gallery areas, serviced the air conditioning, and built the semi-circular stage in the back performance area.  But Robert built the walls, the bar, the office, probably the shelving, and on and on.  It was a great collaboration.

When we first got the back space at 290 MLK (an extra 3000 square feet, doubling Eyedrum’s footprint), I set to designing a stage for performances.  Previously we had been cramming performers into a little floor level spot in the front among the visual art — actually Robert had built an angled overhang there to … reflect sound out I guess, I don’t really know.  But it was going to be a nice luxury to have a separate area in the back where we could build a proper stage riser with more space.  Quickly we settled on the back corner as the right place for the new stage, and I liked the idea of a semi circle shape since it seemed like the audience would be spread out.  But the key decision was how big to make that semicircle?  I mean, you had to pick a number — a 15 foot radius out from the corner? 20 feet?  Several of us met in the new space and had a long discussion about it, and I distinctly remember two things that Robert mentioned. He wanted the stage to be big enough to hold a large ensemble of musicians, specifically a) his Brahvar Music Ensemble and b) the Peter Brotzman Septet.  Brotzman had recently been booking a tour across the USA, and Robert lamented that we couldn’t book it at Eyedrum because our stage wasn’t big enough (and uh we didn’t even a stage).  So that became my sizing principle for that stage: fit 7-10 music performers on it.  Drums, guitars with amps, keyboard player, vocalists … Cram them all in there.  In the end we settled on an 18 or 19 foot radius and I got to building the stage, and Robert built the walls.

Robert was a wonderfully energetic supporter of all kinds of art performance.  One particular memory was when we (Eyedrum) held a big fundraiser at the Atlanta Contemporary arts center (the one on Means Street near Georgia Tech that used to be Nexus).  We had managed to book Gogol Bordello, a gypsy punk band who had already performed at Eyedrum about a year prior (this was waaaay before they got big maaaan). Oh god Robert was absolutely delighted, dancing around and cheering. 

I personally was deeply involved with Eyedrum from 2002-2010.  I don’t recall if Robert left before or after me, but around 2010 we were all getting a bit burned out, and with Eyedrum losing its lease on 290 MLK, it was a motivating force for many of us to move on.  But that was especially true for me (and maybe Robert), since I had put all of my sweat equity literally into that space.  

Another touchpoint that Sharon and I shared with Robert was that we both lived on Harold Avenue in Lake Claire (an Atlanta neighborhood east of downtown, next Candler Park and not far from Little Five Points).  Well, by the time I met Robert, he wasn’t actually living there anymore, having divorced his first wife and left that house behind.  But I absolutely knew which house he had been in, because it had totally effing freaky sculpted concrete all over the place, from the driveway entrance on into the house itself.  As you see in the article, Robert specialized in making outdoor structures out of tufa, a type of concrete, usually taking wild curved forms.  We got a plant stand from him and it’s been a feature of our front yard for years.

As an experiencing gardener and landscaper, Robert had another funny impact on our front yard.  In May 2013, the huge post oak that dominated our front yard fell during a long weekend of soaking rain (exposing the roots that turned out to be rotten).  On the way down it pretty much destroyed a Japanese maple tree that was the feature of our corner landscaping, a big beautiful mushroom-shaped ornamental.  The crown of the falling oak sheared off nearly all of the branches of the Japanese maple, leaving just one forlorn branch sticking out of the trunk, Charlie Brown Christmas tree style.  I cut that one branch off and resigned myself to having to pull the trunk / stump out and start over.

Robert and friend / neighbor Sean were walking by a day or three later, and I recounted how I planned to remove the remainder of the oak.  They both pretty much laughed out loud at me, explaining that even though the tree looked dead, it had a perfectly healthy root system that was champing at the bit to push out new growth.  Just leave it alone!  So I did, and within months I could see that they were going to be right, with littel branches starting to sprout out.  Within 5 years it looked like a tree again, and now, 9 years later, it’s bigger than ever and is once again the feature of the corner.  There was a whole ecosystem lurking down there under the surface, just waiting to shove a whole new tree out of the seemingly dead stump. Amazing.

R. I. P. Robert.

My old friend Jon Kincaid passed away last week. Jon was known to everyone in town as the host of the WREK radio show Personality Crisis, a fantastic and wide-ranging weekly show that ranged all over rock music, from LA’s Paisley Underground to early Athens to British Invasion, from Cool For Cats to Squeezing Out Sparks. Blank Generation XTC-Ray Specials. I have been a diligent listener to it for literally 30 years.

I first met Jon as a WREK DJ, of course, where I typically worked a regular afternoon RRR shift (“rock rhythm and roll”) when Jon would be hanging out at the station. My earliest memory of Jon was the day I came in with one of my favorite LP’s, Ace Frehley’s solo album, and played “2000 Man” off it. Jon immediately came into the studio to check it out, and that is when I learned that, duh, that was a Rolling Stones cover. That is how much of an idiot I was, not noticing the “Jagger/Richards” credit on the label, or knowing a damn thing about rock history in general. Like many truly smart people, Jon was super low key about this information, but you quickly learned that he was at a whole ‘nother level.

In those early days I would also bring in a music zine from New Jersey, where I’d grown up and would go back to on school breaks. This monthly newsprint thing happened to have a really comprehensive roundup of band developments, sort of like the “support your troops” column in Atlanta’s Stomp and Stammer. Jon would come in and devour that information, seeking out tidbits that he didn’t already know about.

Behind the scenes, Jon really was an incredible force for productivity and correctness in WREK’s daily operations. For many years it was Jon literally opening the mail and being the first to encounter the new recordings that bands and labels were sending us, processing them over to the music directors who would review and decide. It was Jon doing the drudgery of “voicing automation”, recording the 5-10 second audio bits that you hear from WREK’s automated playout system that runs when there’s no live DJ. When we built the new digital system and opened up voicing to everyone (instead of limiting to four designated “voices”), Jon stepped up and cleared the backlog. I am sure that his must be the #1 voice in that system, and you know that all of those voice recordings are probably done perfectly, certainly without any of the cringey “eeyow” stuff you get from new kids on staff who have never sat in front of a mic before. His show promos were the best, and he even made a hilarious “How Not To Make A Promo” instruction sheet for our production studio that itemized all the stupid mistakes that newbies would make. (Remember dbx?) His neat handwriting was all over the places, and many staff experienced his gentle, low key guidance.

I had a few silly inside jokes that I would reference with Jon, and all of them involved imitating memorable people we knew. Every time I saw him (in person) I’d say “Dayyyyyyy Jon” in a really meathead voice just like Jack Rabid used to do in the syndicated Music View segments that followed PCrisis every week. Or I’d yell “hey hey!” with a really bright face and hopping up and down, mimicking fellow WREK staffer Derek Riley who was very high energy (also this was invoked anytime the Cramps came up in conversation). Or I’d try to get him to imitate one of his friends, or countless figures in rock and roll. Jon had a perfect little snippet for them all. I’m sure everyone had these little touchstones with Jon.

Jon’s knowledge of music was truly encyclopedic — he was literally on another level, going into the truly trivial. He would remember the day of the week of shows he’d been to 30 years ago, and the weather that day. For that reason I’ve always assumed that he was actually had savant memory, which seems like a cool skill but if you look into it can actually be a burden. I never asked him specifically about this (or if I did he just brushed it off) and now I never will. But his memory was truly astonishing, and back in the day I recall that he easily won some national trivia contest held by Tower Records.

Last week, his sister Tammy recounted how incredibly smart he was on an objective basis, having scored so highly on the SAT that he got admitted into truly elite universities (you name it). But he elected to stay close to home and attend Georgia Tech, and I’ve often heard him say that wanting to work at WREK was part of that. He’d been listening since high school (or maybe since junior high?) and I’m sure walked into the studio to join up as soon as he could. I eventually learned that he and I both shared the dubious achievement of those really freaking high SAT scores. And here we were farting around in a college radio station, slouching through engineering school. He and I (and Dave Slusher) actually graduated from Georgia Tech on the same day, having both taken a little too long to get it done.

Much of my memories of Jon are bound up with shows that we went to. I was standing next to Jon at so many shows, usually to one side of the stage or the other, a bit back, away from the densest crowd but still with good sightlines to the stage — and certainly a safe distance from any knuckleheads in the mosh pit, especially if the frat boys had shown up. Venues like the White Dot, the old Masquerade (all three venues), the original Cotton Club in midtown, The Point, the Roxy, the EARL, Echo Lounge. Bands like Joe Strummer’s Havana 3am, Mudhoney, Alex Chilton, Dick Manitoba, NRBQ, Die Kreuzen. It was from Jon that I learned to go get the week’s new Creative Loafing as soon as it came off the presses, Tuesday nights at their Willoughby Way offices, to read the club ads and be among the first to know of some band coming to town.

Jon had a bad health spell in early 2004, a no-kidding brush with death. The music community rallied and even put on a benefit show for him at the Variety Playhouse featuring Drivin’ N Cryin (of course) and a reformed Nightporters. Thank to modern medicine, Jon recovered, and got nearly another 20 years.

Not long thereafter, Dave and I set up the www.PersonalityCrisis.org website for Jon as an outlet through which he could publish. From Sept 2006 to Feb 2008, Jon posted a longer-form piece there every couple weeks. I guess once he joined Facebook (in 2008-2009) he stopped posting on the blog, and at some point the website itself went completely defunct. But we still had the domain registration and the site files, and upon the news of Jon’s passing last week, Dave and I quick restored the site. It’s a great snapshot of his writing — scroll down the posts on the right side and just click around!

For years I had wished the Jon would post his radio show playlists online somehow, but it was too tedious of an ask. But in early 2014 he mentioned getting a new smartphone, and I immediately asked / begged / cajoled him into simply taking a picture of the playlist at the end of the show and posting it to Facebook. He then continued to do that for nine years — that photo album is public and available here, and is a fantastic resource for the best of rock and roll.

In recent years, notwithstanding the occasional encounter at the EARL or wherever, most of my interaction with him, if you’d call it that, was diligently listening to his radio show every Sunday night. Well not actually on Sunday night, as I don’t listen to any WREK shows live — I use their mp3 archive to timeshift to when I have time to listen, and refer to the playlists mentioned above to know what I was hearing. During voice breaks, Jon would go on at length about the material he was playing, or maybe the recently departed artist it was in tribute to, but he’d also talk about what was happening in his own life. Sometimes it would be as personal as health problems, or maybe a short rant about an Atlanta sports team (I have said for years that Jon always seemed happiest when they were losing.) I mean, his voice breaks could go on for 10 minutes while he talked about whatever, and it was like he knew all his friends were listening (and I guess some of us were probably even calling in).

Besides the PC website and the playlists, I’m trying to do one more thing. We have a number of Jon’s radio shows recorded, and I’m trying to get with current WREK staff to re-air them in his old Sunday night timeslot, which is still open on WREK’s schedule. Just to hear Jon on the air in his usual Sunday night slot, one more time. If and when they do air, I will post them to the PC website so that we have at least a few of his shows for posterity.

No matter what though, thanks to WREK’s mighty automation system and the incredible music library that Jon helped build, you’ll still be able to hear Jon’s voice pretty much every day at 91.1 FM or at www.WREK.org .

Bye, Jon.