Judi Chicago

By Lauren Begnaud

Photo by Dean Hesse

You might not recognize these guys in their everyday clothes. Judi Chicago’s Ben Coleman and Travis Thatcher tend to fab it up a bit when taking the stage on waves of their self-described “space disco” train wreck spectacular — mini-skirts, pink hearts and yellow-belted Judo duds tend to eradicate your memory of civi’s anyway. It’s just as well. A Judi Chicago show deserves it’s own little place in the world, far away from your boss’s pleated Dockers.

Coleman and Thatcher met through mutual friends and both began working at Georgia Tech’s radio station, WREK. Sharing common musical interests, Judi Chicago formed several years later as a side project when Coleman and Thatcher started hanging out and making sounds with miscellaneous instruments and toys. “We made really goofy songs. You know, Game Boy stuff,” says Thatcher.

The duo likens their music to the kind of Space Age dance stuff made popular in France and Germany during the late ‘70s. “I think it’s nice to outright say that you like disco music because disco still carries this whole hangover from the ‘disco sucks’ thing in this country,” Coleman says. “And there is still something that people feel is inherently cheesy about it.”

Musically, forming Judi Chicago (the name a tribute to both feminist author Judy Chicago and Chi-town house music so close to their hearts) was a way for Coleman and Thatcher to try something new and different from what they were used to playing. “I think the whole point was that we’d both been doing experimental stuff,” Thatcher says. “And that’s fine. We still try to incorporate that. But since I’d been doing it for so long and I was stuck behind a laptop looking boring it was like let‘s just do this for fun. The point of it is fun.”

Coleman adds that most of the band’s material is far from premeditated. “We’re really crazy about funk music,” he says. “We keep on trying to write a really great funk record and it comes out like Judi Chicago.”

Judi Chicago has managed to become known for their high-energy shows that get the crowd moving with their no-shame disco beats and bonkers presence, bouncing around in kimonos, tiny shorts and sweatbands. Coleman admits this was not part of the original plan.

“I think the performance element kind of took us by surprise. I think the music and the way we’ve written it led us to do stuff that we would’ve never intended to do when we did our first gig,” he says, as Thatcher nods in agreement. “I mean we had a bunch of ideas but I don’t think we’d ever thought we’d be prancing around in mini skirts. That’s just part of it.”

Both Coleman and Thatcher are adamant that their music is quite different from other duos popping up all over the country. Indeed, “Electronic Dance Duo” is pretty much its own genre at this point. To them, those bands base their music around hardcore and industrial electronic music more than other genres in the same arena. “I feel that there are bands like us all over the place, but they’ll never be exactly like us,” Coleman says. “What we do is so entirely hinged on us and that’s the thing, we aren’t hiding behind anything like laptops.”

In addition to opening for the likes of Gravy Train!!! and Battles, Judi Chicago also headlined for the Tales of Atlanta show at Lenny’s Bar sponsored by Vice Magazine and Colt 45 this past July. Each show gets crazier and recruits more dancing fans. The city is catching on to these boys’ idea of a good time.

“I think what sets us apart is that we are unabashedly saying this comes from house and disco,” Thatcher says. “It’s all about putting energy and soul into it rather than being concerned with being weird or looking cool.”

www.myspace.com/judichicago