Atlanta Song Quotes

I hope so. Right now, I feel like I’m in a fucking fairy tale. Like at any moment I’m going to break into song and make friends with wild animals before hearts fly out of my ass.

Like so much in Atlanta, Stone Mountain had become a bland and inoffensive consumable: the Confederacy as hood ornament. Not for the first time, though more deeply than ever before, I felt a twinge of affinity for the neo-Confederates I'd met in my travels. Better to remember Dixie and debate its philosophy than to have its largest shrine hijacked for Coca-Cola ads and MTV songs.

Whenever the sixth tune on the flip side of the LP, “Atlanta Blues,” began, she would grab one of Tengo’s body parts and praise Bigard’s concise, exquisite solo, which was sandwiched between Armstrong’s song and his trumpet solo. “Listen to that! Amazing—that first, long wail like a little child’s cry! What is it—surprise? Overflowing joy? An appeal for happiness? It turns into a joyful sigh and weaves its way through a beautiful river of sound until it’s smoothly absorbed into some perfect, unknowable place. There! Listen! Nobody else can play such thrilling solos. Jimmy Noone, Sidney Bechet, Pee Wee Russell, Benny Goodman: they’re all great clarinetists, but none of them can create such perfectly sculptured works of art.

Black churches viewed education and litercay as paramount to the success of the African American community...."the vast majorities of HBCUs were founded to be seminaries and divinity schools...schools in church basements evolved into HBCUs: Morehouse College arose from the basement of Springfield Baptist Church in Augusta Georgia; Selman College, from the basement of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta; and Tuskegee Institute, out of a room near the local AME Zion church.

SpottieOttieDopaliscious [Hook] Damn damn damn James [Verse 1: Sleepy Brown] Dickie shorts and Lincoln's clean Leanin', checking out the scene Gangsta boys, blizzes lit Ridin' out, talkin' shit Nigga where you wanna go? You know the club don't close 'til four Let's party 'til we can't no more Watch out here come the folks (Damn - oh lord) [Verse 2: André 3000] As the plot thickens it gives me the dickens Reminiscent of Charles a lil' discotheque Nestled in the ghettos of Niggaville, USA Via Atlanta, Georgia a lil' spot where Young men and young women go to experience They first li'l taste of the night life Me? Well I've never been there; well perhaps once But I was so engulfed in the Olde E I never made it to the door you speak of, hardcore While the DJ sweatin' out all the problems And the troubles of the day While this fine bow-legged girl fine as all outdoors Lulls lukewarm lullabies in your left ear Competing with "Set it Off," in the right But it all blends perfectly let the liquor tell it "Hey hey look baby they playin' our song" And the crowd goes wild as if Holyfield has just won the fight But in actuality it's only about 3 A.M And three niggas just don' got hauled Off in the ambulance (sliced up) Two niggas don' start bustin' (wham wham) And one nigga don' took his shirt off talkin' 'bout "Now who else wanna fuck with Hollywood Courts?" It's just my interpretation of the situation [Hook] [Verse 3: Big Boi] Yes, when I first met my SpottieOttieDopalicious Angel I can remember that damn thing like yesterday The way she moved reminded me of a Brown Stallion Horse with skates on, ya know Smooth like a hot comb on nappy ass hair I walked up on her and was almost paralyzed Her neck was smelling sweeter Than a plate of yams with extra syrup Eyes beaming like four karats apiece just blindin' a nigga Felt like I chiefed a whole O of that Presidential My heart was beating so damn fast Never knowing this moment would bring another Life into this world Funny how shit come together sometimes (ya dig) One moment you frequent the booty clubs and The next four years you & somebody's daughter Raisin' y'all own young'n now that's a beautiful thang That's if you're on top of your game And man enough to handle real life situations (that is) Can't gamble feeding baby on that dope money Might not always be sufficient but the United Parcel Service & the people at the Post Office Didn't call you back because you had cloudy piss So now you back in the trap just that, trapped Go on and marinate on that for a minute

If you speak to the right elders, you can find out anything. It’s like that in Atlanta, too. It’s like that wherever Black people are—we carry hidden histories, passed down from generation to generation.

Again. This was the year in which a million people crowded into Atlanta—still alive despite the ashes to which David Selznick had reduced it—for the ceremonial opening of Gone With the Wind. Confederate flags flew everywhere, and hawkers peddled Rhett caramels and Melanie molasses and Tara pecans, and when Vivien Leigh heard a military school band bleating “Dixie,” she said, “Oh, they’re playing the song from our picture.” There was a grand unreality about all the festivity, this celebration of defeat in a war long finished, as though nobody could understand that a much larger struggle had already begun. That September, a group of Selznick’s technicians had been carrying out one of their last tasks, filming the title itself—Gone With the Wind—pulling the camera along on a dolly so that each word could be framed separately, when Fred Williams, the head grip, turned on his radio and heard that Britain had declared war on Nazi

Patterns of urban wildlife seem to lend credence to the antiurbanism of many environmentalists. Yet cities occupy just 3 percent of the world’s surface and house half of the human population. This intensification is efficient. The average citizen of New York releases less than one third of the US national average amount of carbon dioxide. Unlike those sprawling cities like Atlanta or Phoenix, New York’s carbon emissions from transportation have not risen in the last 30 years. Denver, despite its profligate lawns, water one quarter of Colorado’s population with 2 percent of the state’s water supply. Therefore, the high biodiversity of the countryside exists only because of the city. If all the world’s urban dwellers were to move to the country, native birds and plants would not fare well. Forests would fall, streams would become silted, and carbon dioxide concentrations would spike. This is no thought experiment. These outcomes are manifest in the cleared forests and such from suburban peripheries. Instead of lamenting a worldwide pattern of biological diminishment in urban areas, we might view statistics on bird and plant diversity as signs of augmented rural biological diversity, made possible by the compact city.

Harold Rome traveled with us, starting in the lowest of jobs as a specialist in revue. This is music without story or character. But by the 1950s, Rome had abandoned revue, and in Fanny in particular he exploited the musical scene—writing, in effect, partway to opera. Now, in Gone With the Wind, Rome expanded into an intricate interlacing of speech and song—aided, I imagine, by the instincts of Joe Layton. Naturally, he would know enough to delay Rhett Butler’s entrance till the Atlanta ball, have him defiantly escort the black-clad Scarlett onto the floor, and let him rip into an establishing song, “Two of a Kind.” This better suited Presnell’s sexy scooping up to high notes than Roberts’ more limited instrument, but the climax really comes when the orchestra takes over as Rhett sweeps Scarlett around the stage and the good folk of Atlanta go off like astonished firecrackers.