tidbits, fragments, and ephemera is a sometimes substantial but not making any promises glimpse at some information and news related to Generation X in the Deep South.
The Lizard Man of Bishopville, 1988
excerpt: “That first Monday in July 1988, Christopher Davis was a quiet 17-year-old on the high school basketball team telling Easterling a harrowing story. He described how he’d had a flat tire driving home from a night shift at McDonald’s and how, as he put the jack back in his trunk, he saw a 7-foot-tall creature with scaly skin and red eyes run toward him. He told her how it caught up as he sped away and made a thud as it landed on his roof. He described seeing its three-fingered claws on his windshield until finally he swerved enough to throw the thing off.”
Summer music festivals at Lakewood, 1992
Thirty years ago this month, Atlanta’s fairly new Lakewood Amphitheater hosted both the HORDE tour (on August 7) and Lollapalooza (on August 20). The HORDE tour that year featured Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Widespread Panic, the Aquarium Rescue Unit, Phish, and Bela Fleck. Lollapalooza’s line up for its second incarnation had Lush, Pearl Jam, Ministry, Soundgarden, Ice Cube, Jesus and Mary Chain, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Lakewood was opened in July 1989 and has since changed its name several times.
Joey Bowker as Nashville’s Bat Poet, late 1990s
In his 2011 obituary, The Nashville Scene had this to say: “With the death over the weekend of Joey Bowker — the enigmatic public-access zany known far and wide as The Bat Poet — Nashville loses a one-man resistance movement against all that is slick, soulless and done for the money. Bowker, 59, presided over one of the weirdest spectacles in the history of Nashville TV programming: a fleabag variety show featuring hand puppets, stuffed-animal warfare, wrestling matches, and local celebrity cameos ranging from attorney Bart Durham to country warbler Miss Melba Toast. These were embellished with crude first-generation video effects and supported by plotlines that could only be followed by kids and the deeply, irretrievably stoned.”
level:deepsouth is an online anthology about growing up Generation X in the Deep South during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. The anthology is open to submissions of creative nonfiction (essays, memoirs, and reviews), fiction, poetry, and images (photos and flyers), as well as to contributions for the lists.
level:deepsouth 