Live Limbo by Limbo District

Rec of the day: LIMBO DISTRICT "live limbo" (chunklet LP) lathe of various live bits by this great, neglected georgia band, midway 'tween no wave scuzz (esp. field/kramer-era contortions) & athens art rock. beautiful weird packaging & revelatory listening.
–Byron Coley

One thing’s for certain about the few who actually saw Limbo District perform: they never walked away without an opinion about the band. Mark Cline from Love Tractor called them “an art band’s art band.” Others describe performances that cleared venues within a song of beginning their undulating set. Regardless of differing opinions about them, Limbo District thrived on irritating through continued chaotic provocation.

Twenty-five months. That’s how long Limbo District were an active band. Three distinct line-ups performed from April 1981 until the band disassembled in May of 1983. The band did several tours up and down the east coast, performing at legendary clubs like the Mudd Club, CBGB and the Pyramid Club in New York, the 9:30 Club in DC, Benny’s in Richmond, the Antenna in Memphis, and the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill. All of this activity was done in tandem with their Athens peers in Pylon, R.E.M., the Side Effects, Oh-OK, Is Ought Gap, the Method Actors, but with one distinct difference: Limbo District never had so much as a record. Or for that matter, a cassette, a sticker, or even a t-shirt.

Instead, Limbo District retreated deeper and deeper into Eastern and African polyrhythms imbued with a nuanced understanding of the exploding New York No Wave scene. All Limbo District wanted to find was a record label so that, like their Athens contemporaries, they could be loved and hated, ignored, dismissed and respected, all outside of the Classic City. History can be a fickle bitch, especially for a band predicated on adventurous ideas and avoiding Western convention. Limbo District disbanded in May of 1983 in a cacophonic haze of heroin, schizophrenia, love triangles, shoplifting, and deportation.

“Live Limbo” shows a band in a persistent creative state. While the core of the band remained constant, three line-ups of the band emerged, showcasing the oblique guitar musings of Spaniard Margarita Bilbao or the sharp and jagged post-punk shards of Tim Lacy and Kelly Crow. With Davey Stevenson on bass and Jerry Ayers on Roto Toms, vocals and Farfisa organ were an alternating to-and-fro between French exchange student Dominique Amet and lyricist Craig Woodall. While Dominique’s vocals had more in common with a smoky French chanteuse á la Edith Piaf rather than anything in the punk rock milieu, Craig’s lyrics careened towards the more angular realm of Vanessa Briscoe Hay from Pylon.

Limbo District performed at any Athens venue that would host them: the 40 Watt, Tyrone’s O.C., I&I, the Last Resort. In Atlanta, they were fixtures at all the usual haunts: 688, TV Dinner, the Nitery. Heck, they even played several times at the Strand in Marietta. Fortunately, people were lugging their tape recorders and boom boxes to their performances and documenting the neurotic din that Limbo District would unleash on unsuspecting attendees.

Undeniably, live recordings of Limbo District have a distinct Velvet Underground bootleg aesthetic to them. Even when the fideltiy is non-existent, the band’s performance defiantly radiates through the low-fi clutter. “Live Limbo” serves as a vivid snapshot of one of the most revered—yet maddeningly oblique and deliberately obtuse—bands of the early Athens scene.

Edited and sequenced by Henry Owings and Jason NeSmith (who were two of the producers of the famed Pylon Box), over a dozen live recordings were utilized as source material for “Live Limbo.” While certain recordings were known to be from specific dates and venues, many were largely unidentified tapes that sat neglected in shoe boxes for decades before Owings and NeSmith came along and dusted them off. Cobbled together from these archives, this album offers a glimpse into the unmitigatingly perplex puzzle of Limbo District, showing a band that was continually skidding towards creative implosion.

In a lathe cut edition of 100, “Live Limbo” is meant to be as deranged, depraved, and savage as the band’s caustic live performances. With album art based on the original designs of Bill Georgia, Chunklet’s in-house design monkey (Owings for those taking notes) went on a day-long bender with laser prints of Bill’s iconic designs, destroyed them (using coffee, peach brandy, and beer along with the help of several kitchen appliances), reassembled them with cellophane tape and staples, and then personally silkscreened the results on individually spray-painted album jackets. Each copy is a unique piece of art, including a dayglo orange Limbo sticker, a two-sided page of press clippings and reproductions of flyers from some of the exact shows that “Live Limbo” were taken from. Live photos by Terry Bolling, shot mere months before they broke up, are shown on the labels and a bristol-board insert. An additional insert features guitarist Kelly Crow’s tour Polaroids from various shows along the east coast. Each record comes with a postcard featuring one of 13 never before seen Limbo District flyers. Finally, an individually burned parchment of handwritten Craig Woodall lyrics is included.

After all these decades, Limbo District is ready to be celebrated with the world. Brace yourself. Things might get insane.

There will be a total of two listening parties scheduled in the very near future at Ella Guru in Atlanta and Lo Yo Yo Stuff in Athens.

We're All In This Together. Except you. You're a dick. LOCAL PICK UPS WELCOME!

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