Update 28-Jun-2009: WREK repeated this show last week! Click here to listen (after Tue 30-Jun 7:30pm ET, click here). I checked with Allan and he's working with Jim Pribble to put together a reunion show later this year, possibly including Tim Campion!
Also, since I posted this, one of the guys has created a Clobber page on MySpace, were you'll find a handful of their studio recordings plus links to other folks and event news -- www.myspace.com/clobberatlanta .
Last Tuesday night WREK aired a December 1996 performance of Clobber on the weekly show The Underground Recordings. UR is a show where they dig up old Live@WREK recordings out of the "underground" basement storage room and play them on air.
WREK has an automatic mp3 archive system, so I loaded those archive files up in a computer and edited it out the incidental crap before and after the show, and you can download that edited show here:
http://www.eyedrum.org/clobber.mp3 (50 MB download)
Clobber was a great Atlanta band formed by a friend of mine, Allan Ross. Allan was (and probably still is) a master of the crunchy punk guitar sound favored by the likes of Jawbreaker, J Church, Jawbox and other J-named bands of the mid-90's. And while Allan's screamed vocals were a weak spot (he's too big of a personality to share frontman roles onstage), the band was otherwise flat out incredible, with really good bass and drums backing Allan up front. Clobber started out with Allan and bassist Shannon Mulvaney teaming up and then luring drummer Tim Campion out of his post-Insane-Jane retirement to create the power trio. Shannon quickly left (probably due continuing demands of his other more, uh, popular bands) and was replaced by Jim Prible on bass. To itemize the bands that these guys had been in would take too much space, so suffice it to say that this was practically a supergroup in the Atlanta scene.
Here they are playing in WREK's old studio, with Joe Whitaker doing his usual fantastic job of mixing the show. (Joe used to tell me that really good bands made mixing sound easy) I'm pretty sure of the lineup of Clobber playing here; of course it's Allan on guitar and screaming, and Jim on bass, but while I thought it was Tim on drums at this point in time, it doesn't quite sound like him to me and so it's probably Joel Suttles (formerly of Mercyland, another great band) who came on board when Tim's family duties mandated a final retirement from indie rock. Joel was OK but Tim was just about the planet's most entertaining drummer to watch, kind of Keith Moon flailing with a Ringo Starr moptop bouncing around. Tim had a snappier drum style than Joel, but Joel still gets the job done. [update: it WAS Tim, see below]
As usual, they are absolutely smoking in this recording. I can just see Allan careening around with his heavy vintage Gibson guitar swinging, stomping on pedals and colliding with Prible. Jim is tearing through his bass lines, but he just stands there like Ox as if nothing's happening with that shiteating grin on his face.
The first song and the 2nd half of their set were songs that made it to their CD released on Amy Potter's Half Baked label (Crash Course In Humility), but the first half is mostly songs that weren't released and which I'd forgotton about. Somehwere in the middle they cover a Chris Lopez song, perhaps from the Rock*A*Teens or maybe from his prior band. Allan's guitar control is just incredible, typical for this kind of pop-punk band, rejecting the drunken bloozy Stones style favored by your average bar bands for a tighter, sober, workmanlike stop-start dynamic. Allan will probably claim he was drunk to excuse the mistakes that only he can hear, but I don't buy it -- it's just on. Only occasionally does he resort to a gratuitous pick slide :)
This is actually one of their last performances. They played their last show a couple weeks later at Dottie's, then the guys went their separate ways (Allan moved to Seattle).
In an odd coincidence, I will actually be meeting up with Allan in New York next week, seeing him for the first time since he moved away from Atlanta a decade ago to become a rock star (or at least be very close to rock stars). I'll update this post with corrections when I get back.
[update: Allan's doing great. He said that at the time of this show, Joel had just left the band, so Allan talked Tim into coming back and just helping finish out the last few shows of the band's career. Cool. Allan says they knew this would be essentially their last recording session so they used the first half of the set to capture songs that hadn't been recorded yet. And to bust ass on the performance in general.]
Listen to the show!