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Kamikaze Koalas!
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Let me preface this with this disclaimer: It's my first Athfest; I've lived in Athens only a month and I'm totally new to the Athens music scene. So this is completely coming from the newbie point of view.
So the first band i see while walking down towards the 40 Watt is Eucalyptus and the Kamikaze Koalas, who totally floored me. Just a nice blues based rock band with a spanish feel and some insane energy. I made a nice photo of their front men, Eddie Torres and Roark Bailey.
From there, it was Justin Brogdon... whom i wasn't too impressed with. Now i'm not saying the music wasn't good or anything, it just wasn't my cup of tea. Hearing yet another Tom Petty cover just wasn't what i was hoping for from the main stage. I'd really liked to have seen the Koalas get more than 20 minutes and play the Main stage instead of the side stage rather than hearing Running Down a Dream for the zillionth time.
Ralph Roddenbery was a lot of fun and had a great sense of humor. Drew a huge crowd as well on Hull St. I love it when the artists show off their energy and creativity like that.
After wading through the sea of people, Charlie Wooton and Zydefunk started grooving out. I could stay for about 10 minutes of their set and i was really impressed. Good old-fashioned funk.
Myself and fellow Photojournalist Kelly Lambert are hitting the club crawl later tonight to try and spotlight more bands for our photo galleries, which should be up for tomorrow. I'm off to Music Hates You down at Nuci's and I'm looking forward to a killed show.
Tomorrow, Make time to check out Connelly Crowe, the high school winner of the "Battle Against Poverty" at 2:40 PM. I sat down with her to record her for a slideshow for our website and was thoroughly impressed.
Also the people at Donderos' Kitchen are out in the vendors area; they have some very nice raspberry sweet tea and some yummy brownies. - OnlineAthens
Discography
Fallen City Buildings / Super Jam EP (release in Apr)
Photos
Bio
Eucalyptus and the Kamikaze Koalas are a blues-rock band with influences as diverse as their backgrounds and musical tastes. Eucalyptus started as Roark Bailey's singer/songwriter project in 2004. Since then, the band has evolved from the solo act to a duo in fall of '06 with the addition of Eduardo Torres, and later to a trio when percussionist Daniel Sabio joined the two guitarists in early '07. The trio joined up with drummer and bassist Shawn Spencer for their debut performance at Athfest last year, but since then continued work as a trio. More recently, the band has emerged as a full quintet, including the new arrivals of drummer Dylan Banks and bassist Andrew Short. This reincarnation of sorts marks a turning point in the band's future...rising from an acoustic band with style to an all-out jam fest with in-your-face riffs and roots-grounded rhythms.
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