Ancient Archives

Creative Loafing recently caught up with James Joyce to find out how to make order out of chaos. Somewhere, somehow, he has proof that it happened, so don't try and deny it. Your first band's shite demo will see the light of day. The following is a transcription of exchanged thoughts:

A self-described librarian of rock, 33-year-old Joyce posts long-lost songs, photos, fliers and anecdotes from Atlanta’s underground music scene on his blog, Beyond Failure. He also has played with a bunch of Atlanta bands over the years — most recently with psych-funk collective Noot d’ Noot.

CL: How did you come up with the idea for Beyond Failure?

JJ: I’ve probably been in 20 bands or so. And I’m kind of by nature an archival person. I’m kind of a librarian.

That’s a rare combination for people in bands.

I think it’s because I’m a drummer. I’m just more systematic in the way I think and the way I organize myself. I’m more organized than a lot of my bandmates. Everyone has moved 100 times, and nobody has their old records, their old tapes, old flyers, old pictures. They started contacting me and asked if I had any of the old recordings, because theirs were all gone.

So I started digitizing all these old demo tapes, old records and seven-inches and stuff. And I started posting them up on this blog, rather than just emailing them to everybody.
Then I started posting stuff by bands I was friends with at that time, in the ’90s. I really like their music, and it’s really hard to find a lot of their stuff. Everything local is out of print. It’s good to just collect a lot of that stuff and make it available, for historical purposes. Because otherwise, you won’t be able to find it.

Find the rest at creative loafing.