| Page 3 of 5 < > |
U Rock, U Roll
Afterward, metal fan William Drumheller complained that such performances were too rare in Charlottesville. "Nothing coming out of this town," he said, "is something your parents would hate."
Chapel Hill, N.C.
A 1999 graduate of the University of North Carolina, I always find Chapel Hill pleasantly isolated from the world, with students ambling along brick walkways and beside the town's low stone walls. East Franklin Street, the main drag, distills the college town essence: It's got an old-timey drugstore (Sutton's), a neon movie marquee (at the Varsity Theatre), a killer indie music store (Schoolkids, in two adjoining storefronts) and a string of bars and cheap restaurants.
  Of Montreal pumps up the crowd at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Ga. (Rich Merritt) |
But for a hip, vaguely countercultural atmosphere, you've got to go to West Franklin Street, where fine dining restaurants and wine bars mix with stores selling everything from vintage clothing to bongs and hookahs ("All products intended for tobacco use only," says the sign at Hazmat). At Internationalist Books, you'll find literary magazines and left-wing periodicals with names like the Northeastern Anarchist.
Happily, the music listings in the Independent, a free weekly newspaper, led me to a West Franklin venue: Local 506, a concrete-floored, smoke-filled club whose entryway is covered in handbills and whose vertical gutters are plastered with band stickers.
Inside, in the glow of a black light, I scanned a club schedule before moving to the building's back half, where boxy, riser-style benches (not to mention a cage for dancing) lined a small room with a modest stage. From an inky corner near the soundboard, I watched two local bands open for the Makers, a punk rock/glam rock hybrid that records on Seattle's Sub Pop label.
The Makers exploded onto the stage behind frontman Michael Shelley, who looked like Prince and strutted like Mick Jagger. Given his persona, it didn't seem too surprising when Shelley pulled down his shirt mid-set so a female audience member could touch his nipple. It did seem a bit odd when she massaged it with an ice cube before about 30 onlookers.
Nipple icings aside, Chapel Hill's scene struck me as darker, edgier and weirder than Charlottesville's. The town's top clubs have less light, more graffiti in the bathrooms and a spareness that occasionally verges on dilapidation. One, the Cave, has been plastered to resemble a dank tunnel.
The gritty ambiance jibes with Chapel Hill's reputation as an indie rock town. In the early 1990s, it was widely tagged the "next Seattle" because several local bands -- indie rockers Superchunk, Polvo and Archers of Loaf -- seemed poised to duplicate the meteoric rise of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the rest of Seattle's grunge scene. Instead, it was Ben Folds's piano, as well as the Squirrel Nut Zippers' hot jazz, that went big time.
Since grunge was still a dominant influence at the time, those artists were innovators, local music journalist Gavin O'Hara told me over coffee. "Some of the most restless and experimental music in the country has been made here."
It's not just rock, either -- bluegrass, alternative country and hip-hop (though that scene is more Durham-centric) live here, too. Grammy-nominated Tift Merritt, for example, whose mix of country, rock and soul sits a bit outside the Nashville mainstream, launched her career in the area.
You have to go to nearby Carrboro for Cat's Cradle, the local scene's most prestigious (and possibly dirtiest) venue. Still, I was at Wetlands Dance Hall, a newer spot near campus, when I saw one of my favorite bands of this odyssey, Chicago-based Palaxy Tracks. After a set of wistful, slightly melancholy rock, I told one of the guitarists they'd played a great show and that it was a shame it had been to a nearly empty room.
He smiled and thanked me. The band had, in fact, already joked about the "crowd" from the stage.
