Out late recently, we were talking about the long-defunct (31 Oct 1998–8 Jan 2005, r.i.p.) Echo Lounge in East Atlanta and the concerts we had seen there. Well, we were talking about that cinderblock place where we used to see concerts? and couldn’t remember it’s name at first. “E” something? Finally got there.
The bands I remember seeing were Sparklehorse–a favorite of mine–and Peaches–a favorite of some friends who we had never heard of (Peaches, we’d heard of our friends before) but whose antics immediately won us over. Also an Appalachian singer/dancer (don’t ask) named Jesco.
First: Sparklehorse.
I found the poster below by starting, simply, with an image search on “Echo Lounge Atlanta”. One poster comes up from Pop-Catastrophe.co.uk but my browser warns that it’s a malicious site, so I demurred. The image is bad but some of the bands put us in the late 90s (I did a lazy-search on when Magnapop, Kid Koala, Los Straightjackets, and The Strokes were mutually active).
Google then listed a similar image from @shellachappen on Tumblr:
Bingo. Sparklehorse.
However, we didn’t necessarily see him that time at Echo Lounge so I hunt for any combination of key words to get me there and found a Sparklehorse fan site with a list of all concerts he performed (r.i.p.). Two dates: 13 Mar 1999 (a Saturday) and 28 Mar 2003 (a Friday). Venue concert posters are notoriously ephemeral and exclude years, but the “Fri, 3-28, $10” gives it away when cross-referenced with the Sparklehorse fan site.
Setlist.fm has an entry but no setlist for the 2003 concert, but no entry at all for the 1999 one, and it doesn’t track the concert lineup so no potential to have an opener jog my memory (The Roy Owens, Jr. from the 2003 concert jogs nothing at all). It was one of those two day but I give up on which.
Now: Peaches.
Peaches’s website has a list of all of her concerts going back to 2000. From there, she lists concerts at the Echo Lounge on 13 Oct 2003 and 27 Apr 2004. Same as Sparklehorse: multiple concerts with no clue. Howeverrrrr, I remember Electrocute opened for her (and I’m pretty sure I purchased an Electrocute cassette single! at the concert). OK…
Bam! Gig poster for the two of them from an 27 and 28 Oct 2003 concert at The Casbah in San Diego posted on the artist’s Pinterest page.
And one from the two days prior, 25 and 26 Oct, at El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, this one a numbered print on sale:
When I do this personal history crate digging I always think of the bleakbleak Black Mirror episode where you can record your life as it happens. In contrast: it’s so fun to become archeologist when you randomly feel like it years after the fact.