Atlantis Music Conference and Festival 2008, Part 1: Why is there glitter on this couch?

Indie rockers don't really do red carpet arrivals. The independent recording world exists for the most part outside of the bubble of light created by a media pit full of photographers. It was a blessing, then, that the first flash-bulbed arrivals to the Atlantis Music Conference and Festival 2008 opening party at Midtown's swank Opera club happened before sunset, keeping our sheltered, singer-songwriter-listening journalist types' corneal damage to a minimum. But then the evening got pretty iridescent pretty fast.

A smorgasbord of urban and alternative music, the Atlantis Music Conference and Festival exists as an opportunity for advancement for everyone from fledgling artists to PR types. Ninety-five percent of the artists at Atlantis are unsigned, and most spend the whole week trying to change that, mingling with A&R reps, agents and general movers-and-shakers, angling for that ever-elusive recording deal. (We'll leave out, for the moment, the arguments over whether getting signed is actually a desirable-- or necessary-- anymore.)

And in order to attain such a goal, apparently, one absolutely must dress to the nines. Because that's what we saw at Opera: Lots and lots of shiny, well-dressed people, and a few that weren't so much well-dressed as they were... eye-catching. Like the guys pictured above, for instance. They're members of Atlanta band The Falcon Lords, and they walked up as we were munching on our complementary buffet food atop our inexplicably glitter-coated couch to shake hands and receive compliments on their wholly spandex attire and gold spray-painted footwear. (I'm still pretty skeptical of anything that's been painted gold, understandably, so I watched their approach with slight unease.) They were friendly and outgoing, though, and I have to say, the gimmick worked. I went home and immediately looked up their MySpace page to see what kind of sound people who look like that could possibly produce. They accomplished step one: create interest.

The evening offered dozens of other introductions to everyone from BMI reps to PR agents to bands. One in particular (I never heard their name correctly) had been the very first to arrive at the red carpet in their Hummer limo, hanging out of the sun roof as they drove up. (Which of course meant they had to subsequently cram themselves back through the sun roof to exit the vehicle. No one does that gracefully.)