Get Out!

Get Out! February 16 – February 28

It doesn’t surprise me anymore that young people often gravitate toward the music of their parents’ record collections, especially when their parents are musicians or huge music fanatics. It rubs off. It didn’t used to. If I’d been as fascinated with what my mom and pop liked when I was a teenager as so many current kids seem to be with the tunes of their elders, I’d have been snappin’ my fingers along to Bing Crosby and Perry Como at a time when The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, Van Halen and AC/DC were blasting out of the cars in my high school parking lot, and that just would not have flown, my friend. Things are different now, anything goes, and 17-year-olds plunk down bucks for “vinyls” of old ’60s and ’70s classic rock bands at record stores on a constant basis. The members of Atlanta area quintet Rae and the Ragdolls are barely into their twenties yet they embrace the sounds and styles of hippie-dippie ’60s/’70s rock as if it’s the most natural development imaginable. They go way overboard with the Haight-Ashbury peace signs ‘n’ bellbottoms cosplay routine, risking the whole thing coming off like a big dress-up party, but they write original songs, and some of those songs are pretty good, a few could even be called exceptionally catchy in that same way “No Rain” by Blind Melon was the second most annoying song of 1993 (after “What’s Up”) yet you still couldn’t pry that damn melody out of your head. They’re dopey but enthusiastic, and while they missed out on twirling along with Janis and Jimi at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm, they can still play Woodstock, Georgia, where they’ll be on Feb. 24th at Madlife Stage & Studios.