Ritual De Los Corndog
Jul. 16th, 2007 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonBuckle up because once you cross Ponce De Leon, Monroe Drive gets carjacked into Boulevard and everything becomes a slow motion roller coaster ride down the historic Fourth Ward. Forget Planet Coca-Cola, Turner-Town or the Aquariumopolis! This is the real Terminus or at least what's left of it. On North Avenue you'll see white trash hookers flash earwax colored smiles, on Ralph McGill flocks of children with eyes too old for their bodies watch you cruise by, on Irwin Avenue you'll see old men sit in broken chairs waiting for a bus that never seems to come, on Auburn roaming gangs of Jesus Grannies wage a philosophical battle of wits and wills with the happily destitute. Finally, as you barrel up on the rail line, Boulevard splits into two: One dives down under the tracks, takes you through a dark tunnel and spits you out into Cabbage Town. The other slams into Dekalb Avenue, hitting it with all the grace and force of a drunk driver at a demolition derby (which upon impact now becomes Decatur Avenue). It's on the corner of this culture crash that you'll find this years Corndogorama!
Lenny's sits in a ghettofied strip mall. It shares a rather large parking lot with retail stores and beauty shops that seem to be perpetually closed. For the Corndogorama this year they got the whole thing fenced up, so when you first approach it looks closer in appearance to a detention camp rather than a rockabilly carnival. Initially, everyone says the same thing upon arrival: "I liked the old Lenny's better!". I can dig. They want Rot-Knee back at the Karoke mike, the cramped intimacy of the dance floor, the anything-goes back patio and the je ne sais que atmosphere that just oozed last minute coke deals and one night stands. But inevitably once you get a few in you and your beer goggles adjust to the sheer size of the place you quickly find your groove, either booty shaking with the locals to the Clash or manning the bar with an air of detached cool with the other jaded hipsters. No it's not the "Old" Lennys but then again should sober memories prevail one quickly realizes that even the Old Lennys wasn't the "Old Lenny's".
So here I am with my buddy Jacques, to catch the 9:45 Mastodon show and take part in the festivities. I've never been to a Corndogorama before. I know it started over a decade ago as a bit of a laugh for Cabbagetown locales and over the years it's evolved into something else. Sipping on a Guinness I wandered around the fair grounds sampling Corndogs, jager shots and funnel cakes with abandon. Hipsters and Scene Lifers intermingled casually. The MARTA roared overhead. Old friends waved from across the crowd. A band that sounded halfway between Cash and Clash rocked the back room. I strolled around taking in the sights. It was while I was watching a tatooed June Carter lookalike flirt with a junk thin rock n roll kid that it hit me. This whole thing was actually a subconscious enactment of long buried mating rituals to phallic solar dieties, who though forgotten in name, never the less manifest themselves through a mass ritual straight from the depths of the collective unconscious, (and what are festivals but rituals undertaken by communitys instead of covens).
Behold Mortal Women! The Mighty Corndogius, priaptic all night love God of the Confederate Tribesmen, has descended from the hills of the Bible Belt to walk amongst, spreading a wave of post-coital bliss and divine hangovers in his wake!!!!
Finally Mastodon. This is it! The and I mean The show to catch if you were in the area. The mike checks finished. The crowd filling the front parking lot in the hundreds, squirming, restless, drunk and horny for Metal. Finally after a bit of a wait, the band musters up on stage arming themselves with guitars or manning the drums like a machine gun nest. This is what metal bands should look like: Bearded, potbellied, mohawked and giving you a look that lets you know that at any mintute, at just the slightest cunt hair of a provocation, are going to leap off the stage, find you in the crowd and proceed to start whipping your ass right there in front of your woman. The crowd is psyched as it is but then Rot-Knee comes up on stage, decked out in a stained wife beater and sporting a white shao-lin beard. He barks out a welcome, introduces the band generously and a gives a brief tribute to Jason Swinks. The crowd goes crazy. Fifty fists pump into the air and give the secret salute to their lord-king Satan (known also as "the devil horned fist of totally rocking out"). Then it begins! A chugging guitar, a helltrain bursts out of the air, a Frank Frazettaesque drumbeat invokes the forces of darkness down from the trembling dark, a whirlwind of sonic fire is unleashed sweeping through the crowd, stoking the embers of rage within, setting heads, limbs and torsos thrashing, fists pumping, beer bottles cracking and panties soaking in demonic anticipation. Then the singer sets it off, a growl rips out across the night that sounds like Captain Caveman sodomizing a pitt bull. The beat is infectious. I slip back into 'scene mode' ready for a pit to break out any minute. None does. Too bad I guess. Still the band doesn't let you down. One song blurs into the next without sounding repititious. If you have the ear for it you can catch the melodys that occasionally erupt suddenly out of a guitar barrage before slipping back into what most experts define as "The Ear Rape"! Not a bad show all in all. I laugh, I thrash, I drink some more and before I know it's all over.
We leave the club soon after that. Satisfied that i've lost my corndog virginity and having now soaked up enough metal induced testoterone to last me the next month. All in all not a bad time and yeah, i'll definetly be at next years Corndogorama. See you there?
Lenny's sits in a ghettofied strip mall. It shares a rather large parking lot with retail stores and beauty shops that seem to be perpetually closed. For the Corndogorama this year they got the whole thing fenced up, so when you first approach it looks closer in appearance to a detention camp rather than a rockabilly carnival. Initially, everyone says the same thing upon arrival: "I liked the old Lenny's better!". I can dig. They want Rot-Knee back at the Karoke mike, the cramped intimacy of the dance floor, the anything-goes back patio and the je ne sais que atmosphere that just oozed last minute coke deals and one night stands. But inevitably once you get a few in you and your beer goggles adjust to the sheer size of the place you quickly find your groove, either booty shaking with the locals to the Clash or manning the bar with an air of detached cool with the other jaded hipsters. No it's not the "Old" Lennys but then again should sober memories prevail one quickly realizes that even the Old Lennys wasn't the "Old Lenny's".
So here I am with my buddy Jacques, to catch the 9:45 Mastodon show and take part in the festivities. I've never been to a Corndogorama before. I know it started over a decade ago as a bit of a laugh for Cabbagetown locales and over the years it's evolved into something else. Sipping on a Guinness I wandered around the fair grounds sampling Corndogs, jager shots and funnel cakes with abandon. Hipsters and Scene Lifers intermingled casually. The MARTA roared overhead. Old friends waved from across the crowd. A band that sounded halfway between Cash and Clash rocked the back room. I strolled around taking in the sights. It was while I was watching a tatooed June Carter lookalike flirt with a junk thin rock n roll kid that it hit me. This whole thing was actually a subconscious enactment of long buried mating rituals to phallic solar dieties, who though forgotten in name, never the less manifest themselves through a mass ritual straight from the depths of the collective unconscious, (and what are festivals but rituals undertaken by communitys instead of covens).
Behold Mortal Women! The Mighty Corndogius, priaptic all night love God of the Confederate Tribesmen, has descended from the hills of the Bible Belt to walk amongst, spreading a wave of post-coital bliss and divine hangovers in his wake!!!!
Finally Mastodon. This is it! The and I mean The show to catch if you were in the area. The mike checks finished. The crowd filling the front parking lot in the hundreds, squirming, restless, drunk and horny for Metal. Finally after a bit of a wait, the band musters up on stage arming themselves with guitars or manning the drums like a machine gun nest. This is what metal bands should look like: Bearded, potbellied, mohawked and giving you a look that lets you know that at any mintute, at just the slightest cunt hair of a provocation, are going to leap off the stage, find you in the crowd and proceed to start whipping your ass right there in front of your woman. The crowd is psyched as it is but then Rot-Knee comes up on stage, decked out in a stained wife beater and sporting a white shao-lin beard. He barks out a welcome, introduces the band generously and a gives a brief tribute to Jason Swinks. The crowd goes crazy. Fifty fists pump into the air and give the secret salute to their lord-king Satan (known also as "the devil horned fist of totally rocking out"). Then it begins! A chugging guitar, a helltrain bursts out of the air, a Frank Frazettaesque drumbeat invokes the forces of darkness down from the trembling dark, a whirlwind of sonic fire is unleashed sweeping through the crowd, stoking the embers of rage within, setting heads, limbs and torsos thrashing, fists pumping, beer bottles cracking and panties soaking in demonic anticipation. Then the singer sets it off, a growl rips out across the night that sounds like Captain Caveman sodomizing a pitt bull. The beat is infectious. I slip back into 'scene mode' ready for a pit to break out any minute. None does. Too bad I guess. Still the band doesn't let you down. One song blurs into the next without sounding repititious. If you have the ear for it you can catch the melodys that occasionally erupt suddenly out of a guitar barrage before slipping back into what most experts define as "The Ear Rape"! Not a bad show all in all. I laugh, I thrash, I drink some more and before I know it's all over.
We leave the club soon after that. Satisfied that i've lost my corndog virginity and having now soaked up enough metal induced testoterone to last me the next month. All in all not a bad time and yeah, i'll definetly be at next years Corndogorama. See you there?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2007-07-16 08:29 pm (UTC)So Mastodon is pretty good? I've not given them a listen, but I've been scared away since a redneck at a Tool concert told me they were good "if you like electronical metal."
Their drummer took the stage for one of the songs -- I understand it was quite good, but I was so high as to make it difficult to gauge what exactly was going on.
~rl
no subject
on 2007-07-16 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-07-16 08:34 pm (UTC)