The perfect ‘best of’ collection from the undisputed kings of Cabbagetown! A twenty two track, double album featuring recordings from their first four full lengths performed live at the Star Bar during an extended residency in 1998 and 1999.
Features:
Professionally recorded, mixed and mastered
Limited edition of 300 copies
Download code includes bonus material
Digital available exclusively at Bandcamp
"Chris Lopez wrote some of the most eloquent, sardonic, romantic, and, well, basically the best rock and roll songs of the 1990s. His band wrapped them in a florid southern reimagining of 1950s garage rock that always sounded sloppily, scarily out of control and yet dead serious. The wild success the Rock*A*Teens deserved was instead deferred onto a generation of indie bands who weakly shuffled down the path the R*A*T’s blazed. This double LP offers a rare glimpse of them onstage in their hometown of Atlanta during an extended residency at the Star Bar. It’s wild, sloppy, hilarious, and dangerous, like the R*A*T’s themselves. I would tell you it has all of Lopez’s best songs on it but you’d need four more records for that."
—Will Sheff, Okkervil River
"The Georgia-based Chunklet imprint has compiled A Major Motion Picture, a superior double live LP that draws on earlier, rowdier material, including tracks from their best, 1999’s near-perfect Golden Time."
—Jordan Mamone, Time Out New York
"As we’ve mentioned in a bunch of other reviews, lots of our favorite bands are woefully under-represented on the aQ list, generally, it’s because those records predated the list, so when a record gets reissued, it’s often a chance to finally lavish praise on a record that’s been a favorite for years (or decades). In this case, it’s not a reissue, but instead a live record from Georgia garage punks the Rock*A*Teens, who are currently are covered on the aQ site by just a couple sentences about one of their records, which is really a shame, cuz we LOVE these guys. So until someone mounts the lavish, deluxe reissue campaign these guys and their incredible records deserve, we can revel in this sweat soaked high energy live set cobbled together from an extended residency at the Star Community Bar in Atlanta, between 1998 and 1999, courtesy of aQ pal and Chunklet mastermind Henry Owings, who continues to dig up incredible rarities (we’re still loving the recent Don Caballero record, and are hoping he’ll do a Bar-B-Q- Killers reissue, another legendary and underappreciated Georgia outfit), and incredible this is.
If you’ve yet to discover the Rock*A*Teens, imagine a swampy, reverb drenched, fifties style, garage rock rockabilly, filtered through something more modern, swaggery and dramatic, the same sort of gospel tinged swampiness of Woven Hand, but more rocking, feverish, loose limbed and wild. Brooding, sweat soaked, bloody knuckled, broken bottled, booze soaked, psychedelic blooze stomps and echo drenched slow burn ballads in equal measure, all whirring organs, reverb galore, buzzing distortion, wild tribal drumming, and stunning, timeless songwriting, all wound up into something gloriously gritty, grimy, ecstatic, cathartic, murky and emotionally charged. Just check out the samples and you’ll be sold. "Black Ice" might be one of our favorite songs EVER, in a body of work that has an impossible number of potential all time faves. Every record a stone cold gem, and this live set manages to transcend the limitations of the ‘live record’ and transports the listener to a dive bar in Georgia, lit with Christmas lights, packed with punks, this band crammed onto a little stage in the corner, conjuring up musical demons, and angels, and creating a gorgeous, noisy, heart breaking din. AWESOME. Includes a download too."
—Aquarius Records