Reflecting on 2013: Highlights from my year of musical tourism

• Chad Radford
• Krömosom at the Basement for the inaugural ATL Death Fest.

17. ATL Deathfest (May 28) - specifically Krömosom’s show at the Basement, and Sadistic Ritual, and Mangled’s sets at the Basement (May 28).

16. Spending an hour wandering around the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Okla. (Dec. 22).

15. The Breeders’s 20th Anniversary of Last Splash (LSXX) tour at Variety Playhouse (May 15).

• Joeff Davis
• Big Boi (from left) and Killer Mike at CL’s Best of 2013 party.

14. Killer Mike and Big Boi performing together at CL’s Best of ATL party at Centennial Olympic Park (Sept. 19).

13. Goblin making its first ever North American performance at the Loft (Oct. 1).

• Chad Radford
• RRRecords owner Ron Lessard.

12. Taking the commuter rail line from Boston to Lowell, Mass. to find the RRRecords store and pick up an armload of amazing records. When I asked the store’s owner Ron Lessard if he preferred the store/label being called “R-R-R” (as I have always done) “or triple R” records (as I often hear people say), he threw his arms in the air like Tony the Tiger and said “Rrr-ekids!” (Nov. 22).

11. Legendary Pink Dots performing songs from The Gethsemane Option at the Earl (Oct. 2).

10. Doing “tater shots” (one tater tot dropped into a shot of Jameson Irish Whiskey) with John Densmore from the Doors and Aaron Smith from Manic at the Yacht Club. The tater shot was Aaron’s idea. (May 6).

9. Leonard Cohen at the Fox Theatre (March 22).

8. Simon Joyner’s living room tour stop in Avondale Estates (Dec. 11).

7. Flying Lotus at the Masquerade (April 23).

6. Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge’s Venice Dawn performing songs from 12 Reasons To Die at Terminal West (May 18).

5. Meeting the Residents (or at least their representatives) (Feb. 5).

4. Sitting close enough to Charlemagne Palestine to get wine sprinkled on my glasses while he performed at the Long View Center in Raleigh, N.C. during this year’s Hopscotch festival (Sept. 6).

• Chad Radford
• Merzbow at Hopscotch 2013

3. Standing about three feet away from Merzbow - front and center - while he laid waste to King’s in Raleigh, N.C. during this year’s Hopscotch fest (Sept. 5).

2. Interviewing Philip Glass before he came to play a show at Emory University. A week later, when he took the stage at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts with violinist Tim Fain, he opened the show with a solo performance of “Mad Rush” - just him and a piano. Profoundly beautiful. (Sept. 27).

• Chad Radford
• Marcus Çapulcu Boshafter of Persons Unknown.

1. Seeing Christoph Heemann’s late night set in his hometown of Aachen, Germany was an absolute highlight. The show was the capstone of a 16-hour journey that began with a flight from Atlanta to Paris, France, followed by a surreal train ride across the Belgian countryside to a fairytale German town where my partner Laura and I were treated to refreshments including German beer and marijuana from Amsterdam. The show took place in a darkened basement venue underneath a health food café called “Common Sense” that stands in the shadow of the Aachen Cathedral (the final resting place of Emperor Charlemagne). Persons Unknown from Aachen and Matt Krefting from Easthampton, MA also performed. Sleep depravation and chemical intake married well with the dreamlike ambiance of Person Unknown’s Promethean industrial plod and Krefting’s mesmerizing cassette tape collages. I had caught my fourth or fifth wind by the time Christoph Heemann performed. The set was composed mostly using elements of sounds that he’d spent the last year-and-a-half putting together: recordings of heavily processed sine waves or analog synths with filters blended with field recordings. It was a mesmerizing set that wafted between long bouts of subtlety and sublime intensity, drawing strength from a definite vision, albeit a spontaneous, one-time only arrangement. (July 27).