Endless summer, I wish

Summer meant ditching textbooks for swimsuits and exams for beach trips. But although many students hit the coastal road, Greensboro kept rocking with plenty of audio-visual delights to fill those hours usually occupied by classes. Highlights of auditory summertime stimulation included some new venues and terrific triad tunes. On the visual side, summer brought a round of those lovable B-movies from the Mix-Tape film series, and HBO’s newest hit series, True Blood. Summer ’09 in Greensboro were all about house shows and new beginnings. CFBG (Campaign For a Better Greensboro), a brand new dance and art space with a penchant for punk shows opened in April, sending sounds swirling down Chapman Street on balmy summer nights.

A hallway of a venue, CFBG opens with a pool table front room and a back stage room built like a black box speckled with works of art from Spanish spiritual artist Angelo Romano. The lack of stage gives the shows an intimate feel, which taps into the camaraderie of Greensboro music scene. Headed by Max Benbassat, a busy man looking to spread the artistic word and run for city council, CFBG is gaining ground and booking bands to provide entertainment to Greensboro citizens, and as the acronym suggests, make it a better place. A little ways down the road, the Chapman Garage proved how much fun sweating could be when sweet summertime spontaneity bloomed from a triple-header by ‘neo-soul’ rockers, The Leeves. Starting with a nice afternoon community-garden show on June 20, followed by an evening display at the Green Bean, the Leeves pressed on to play a third impromptu set at the corner of Brice and Chapman, blasting tunes long into the hours known as “wee”.

An ocean of sweaty dancers engulfed the garage that night, spilling bodies into the band, making amps look like little islands in a sea of raving kids packed into a 20-by-25-foot cinderblock sweatbox. Being scrunched like sardines didn’t deter the excitement and dancing one bit. Crowd-surfers and sweaty shirtless brigades of dudes added flare to the wonderfully chaotic all-night show. The Leeves ran through their repertoire to much crowd acclaim, particularly during a fresh cover of the Clash classic, “Spanish Bombs.” The cinema scene rolled on with a summer session of midnight movie mayhem. WUAG’s movie show guys unleashed an “Attack of B-movies” on patrons at the Carousel Cinemas each Friday in July. It all began with Death Race 2000, “a brutal cross-country car race of the future” starring the late-great David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone. Followed by Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, a 1979 gem from the “Godfather of Gore” noted for its zombie versus shark fight scene. Then Night of the Comet highlighted the peril of valley girls in a 1984 world reduced to red dust. While Italian horror-classic, Demons, delivered a ghoulish movie-within-a movie theater experience.

TrueBlood wrestled boredom from those rainy ‘stay-in’ summer Sundays. In its second season, the vamped-up show has gathered a steady roll of fans to become the most watched HBO program since the Sopranos. Originally a hard plot to sell (vampires, shape-shifters, and telepaths, oh my!) viewers are now hooked harder than Bill’s fangs into Sookie’s neck. With two episodes left till next summer, be sure to tune-in Sunday night, and head on down to Bon Temps, LA for a bloody goodtime. So the summer sun is setting, and soon we’ll be knee deep in papers and projects. In the meantime, take advantage of some of the fun coming your way.

For those who wanna bowl with a White-Russian, WUAG presents the Big Lebowski Rock-n-Bowl on August 26, complete with movie screening, costume contest, drink specials, and hours of unlimited bowling. On August 27, DotMatrix Project will feature Greensboro indie-rock from Decoration Ghost, proto-punk Sin Tax, and Joshua West at the Green Burro. Check out the “Save the Sound” at CFBG for some punk rock on August 28, featuring the Leeves, S. Burns,

Summer meant ditching textbooks for swimsuits and exams for beach trips. But although many students hit the coastal road, Greensboro kept rocking with plenty of audio-visual delights to fill those hours usually occupied by classes.