New Year's Rock in Charlotte, NC

Once compared to a musical Mad Magazine, the Alt Champs have been a near-legendary staple of the Charlotte music world for, no lie, decades. I first met the guys in the band back in the early 90's when we were pursuing our various early-90's rock stardom dreams. Turns out the the core of the band-- Brent Dunn, Mike Mitschele, Rick Randall, and Dave Massi-- have nearly rocked together since stepping foot from the cradle. They've been friends a long, long time, more than most long time band buddies can even aspire to.

And it shows in their performances and recordings. I was asked to join the champs about two years ago, and I have been the carny showing up at Ringling for the first day ever since. The sound is a kind of Zappa-meets Skynrd-meets Ween stew, different from yet associated with all of those stalwarts.

I think it best if I let Kenny Hart from indie-music.com clarify:

What can you say about a band that couldn't take themselves seriously if you paid them to, who write songs that skewer all styles of music from AC/DC rock to the Beach Boys' surfin' sound and even some Bee Gees-inspired sound? Oh, did I mention Motown? Some of that here, too. There's a little bit of everything on Welcome to Fort Awesome, Alternative Champs' MoRisen Records debut.

Fronted by former Jolene member, Mike Mitschele, the Champs have a varied musical background. They've been kicking around the North Carolina music scene since the late 1980's, according to their press kit, and they have had some songs played on ABC Family's hit television show Wildfire.

Frank Zappa is probably dancing in his grave -- or wherever he is -- listening to this group. And like many of Zappa's tunes, the Champs' songs are not for tender ears; Mom and Dad, don't play this record when the kiddies are around. While the music is infectious, the lyrics can be, well, a bit risque. Oh, you need an example? Try this on for size; "Mississikki" is a song about strippers:

Happy hour at the Sloppy Beaver (boner)
Sliding down that sweaty pole ...
... headed outside into my car, nose in the jungle (blow job) ...
... Tell me, have you seen my Mississikki?

Yeah, pretty sick, but it's meant to be -- it's satire. These guys are poking fun at all the crap that's out there, while being as entertaining about it as possible. The truth is, it's totally hilarious and I found myself laughing uncontrollably at times, especially at the geek-roasting high-IQ-types-bashing "Mathematics" and "Mathematics2":

If Sally took a ride down a banister rail
Only to find her leg impaled.
If the artery was severed and no pressure was applied
How long would it take till the poor girl died ...

And:

If Billy took a four-inch icepick in his hand
And stabbed it in the back of a nearby man
And the hole that he made was a millimeter wide
How long would it take till help arrived?

The "cleanest" song on the album, not to mention that it's also one of the funniest, is "Animals Sleep In The Craziest Places". After all, roadkill is kinda funny when you think about it. And possums are only slightly less stupid than armadillos:

Mister Possum what are you thinking of
When you're napping in the road? ...
How do you sleep with worms and bugs? ...
Animals sleep in the craziest places.

You gotta love it. And just wait until you hear the "bonus track" that's really just tacked onto the end of track 14, "Rockingham," at about the 5:45 mark: it's a killer country-spoof, "Sassy Frassy Lassy From The East of Tallahassee". The title (if, indeed, that IS the title) should give you the idea.

There's something to be said about being intentionally insane. These guys are like a musical Mad Magazine, a lyrical National Lampoon. They're downright fun to listen to, completely un-serious. An absolute treat.

The show was at the Visulite Theater here in Charlotte, and we Champs opted to throw a Prom/New Year's hybrid party. So we had the usual New Years-isms (a ball drop, though it really was "ballz" that dropped,) confetti, champagne, etc., but we also had chaperones, school principals, and tons and tons of eager decked-out prom goers, ready to rock. And, in the tradition of all great proms, we gave the event a theme-- "The Final Countdown," evoking both the strains of the Europe classic cheese metal song (which we played,) and the visual image of modernist space stuff.

We were thus tasked with the job of decorating the event. Among the decorations were forty some-odd silver covered mobile pieces, shaped like space shuttles, saturns, stars, and astronauts, which hung from the ceiling. Balloons galore filed the theater's aisles and ceiling space, the latter for the inevitable midnight balloon drop. And my assignment was to create the photo-booth background, the prom photo being a classic staple of any pimply faced teenaged prommer.

And so I found myself, two days before the event, stretching, gessoing, and stapling canvas to a 6' x 8' frame-- easily the largest piece I have ever worked on. Due to size and cost limitations, I was forced to work on rough-hewn drop cloth canvas, and in acrylic paint, not my favorite because of the way it dries. The result, though, was pretty sucessful, and thanks to Brent of the Alt Champs, now a slew of prom pics, featuring many different characters standing in front of my space art backdrop, can be seen here. Great photography by Charlotte's own Hamilton Chesson.

It's fun to watch the people change in front of the backdrop, as it stays the same. And yes, that's me and my wife Patty in the first few images.