I'm the kind of guy who recognizes my weaknesses just as readily as I do my strengths. Sure, I only have a cursory knowledge of quantum physics, and I'd barely be able to distinguish a sub-prime loan from a Subway sandwich. But today while watching "Prison Break," I realized something. If I ever get sent to prison, I think I'd be really popular with the other inmates.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I wouldn't survive a day in prison. You probably think a bunch of hardened criminals would relish the chance to rip a guy like me to pieces. I couldn't disagree with you more. Please, don't let my thick-rimmed glasses and collection of corduroy jackets fool you. I can adapt to any given situation. Would you believe I once spent an entire winter in Eastern Europe sleeping on an air mattress next to a drafty window in a flat with no heat? And then there was that time I sat through an amazingly lifeless version of Eugene O'Neill's 4-hour long play, Long Day's Journey Into Night. I think I can handle a prison cell.

Read the rest of Mr. Seay's rationalization here.

With a swift move of a pen, President Barack Obama opened access to care for more than 4 million low-income children will receive health insurance that would have otherwise gone without affordable care.

The legislation he signed Wednesday gives a much-needed $32.8 billion into the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), a federal and state program that has a national enrollment of about 7 million children living a little above, at or below the federal poverty level, the standard of which a person is considered poor.

"This is good," Obama said as he approached the desk to enact the legislation. "This is good."

He's right. This is a great move towards access of care for those who'd have few options otherwise. In Georgia, approximately 25 percent of the state’s 2.5 million children were considered impoverished in 2007.

Read the rest at Pine.

Have a secret fetish for gay porn you're keeping from your straight
boyfriend? Or, as a recent study suggests, you might just be keeping it
from yourself. A psychology professor at Queen's University in
Kingston, Ontario, noted scientist Meredith Chivers has spent a bit of
her time monitoring the question so many have tried endlessly to
discover -- what women want. Using science and volunteers, Chivers set
about the daunting task of discovering true desire.

Read more on Pine.

Andrew Wiggins leans back, takes a second to think and then counts under his breath, “Six, seven years ago… Atlanta's house show scene is cyclical. There used to be Squaresville, C-12 South, the Metroplex... all these houses I was too young to ever go to six or seven years ago. They all shut down in the space of a year, and then two or three years ago, I Can Fly started hosting shows, 141 Moreland started up, and we suddenly had all these house shows again.”

At 23, Wiggins is a relic of the Atlanta house show circuit. He has played in Atlanta for the past four years, first with Blame Game and Brickmason, and most recently with Hawks.  He's now organizing and recording We No Fun, a compilation record of Atlanta and Athens house show superstars – underground bands that have profoundly influenced each other and the Atlanta and Athens sound.

Of course, the components and roots of that sound are hotly debated. Chris Dortch's upcoming documentary, We Fun, sees those roots in Atlanta's more well known bands: Black Lips, Deerhunter, Mastodon, The Selmanaires, Anna Kramer and the Coathangers. While those bands are household names now, they were once so obscure that the only venues open to them were house shows.A few years ago, these bands were just as unknown outside of Atlanta as many of the bands on the We No Fun compilation are now. Wiggins characterizes the record as a sort of “mirror history” of Atlanta bands and music.

Read the rest of the article at pinemagazine.com

Kristin Klien, one of Vacation Gallery and Boutique's three co-owners, tells me this story:

"We're not necessarily making a lot of money, but we're growing. We've got pretty good word of mouth too - I was on the King Khan and the Shrines tour in Austin, TX, and this girl walked by in one of our spray painted Vacation t-shirts, and I freaked out like "Where did you get that t-shirt!?!"

She says, "oh, there's this cool new store in Atlanta and this is their t-shirt!"

I was like, "I know that store! That t-shirt is so cool! I made it!"

It's a good story, but the really great part, my favorite part, is all those exclamation marks. They're like jalapeños in grits -- unexpected, amazing, unforgettable. And the thing is, Kristin talks like that all the time.

That attitude's been captured in Vacation, the new boutique on Highland Avenue just around the corner from the Plaza Theatre. You've probably seen it a million times; it's got those two Joy Phrasavath-designed glass storefront windows, the inside is white-walled and high ceilings with a sparse selection of colorful racks, and, on any given Monday or Friday this summer, the place is filled with happy twenty-somethings in their best "going to a concert" clothes. Since Vacation's May 22 soft opening, the store's hosted free (and totally unpromoted) concerts almost every weekend of summer, culminating in The Duchess and the Duke laid back end-of-summer show August 25. It's become normal to see masses of happy people spilling out of Vacation on warm nights, effectively blocking half of Highland Avenue.

Of course, that sort of popularity's only to be expected when your three co-owners are the closest thing Atlanta's got to musical royalty. Stephanie and Megan Macksey, Klein's partners, have both worked at MJQ for years and are closely tied to the Atlanta Underground Film Festival; Stephanie played drums for Atlas Sound's fall tour. Klien, perhaps the most experienced of the three co-owners, has worked as tour manager for Deerhunter and Atlas Sound, as well as general manager for All the Saints, King Khan and BBQ, King Khan and the Shrines, and Mark Sultan (solo).

In essence, the three owners are like a switchboard for the products and ideas born from Atlanta's creative class. Klien and the Macksey sisters built the store with something like that in mind. "It's kind of like everybody we know is constantly creating these things," explains Klien (accompanied by hand gestures too fast to follow with the naked eye), "There's just no place in Atlanta to find this kind of stuff. We were touring, and we realized that every city we stopped at had one cool store, and we came back home and realized we didn't have one here. So we just said, "we need to make that happen in Atlanta!"

And that's why it isn't too surprising to glimpse a pile of vivid black and red underwear sitting across from Klien as she speaks, the sort of underwear you'd find in any boutique, except these have been accented with embroidered copies of herpes sores. "Those are Jen's," explains Klien, "she Googled STD's, and then knitted the actual pictures on. I think they're the coolest things in the world."

Read more at pine-magazine.com

The band is currently on an east coast tour, and band member Justin Sias has kept track of their trip.

Monday, 22 September
Chapel Hill
(By Justin Sias)

For small bands, touring has become an almost impossible task thanks to the meteoric rise of fuel prices, an issue Batata Doce luckily bypasses. In the fall of 2005, resident scientist Don Dudenhoeffer custom-designed a system that would allow a former transit bus to run off vegetable oil instead of the usual diesel fuel, a bypass we dubbed the veggie-greasel system. The bus was first meant for the band Elevado in hopes of driving the giant mechanical beast across the country and not spending a dime on fuel. After many failures, Elevado was successful. Three years later, Batata Doce carries the Dudenhoeffer torch, winning big as fuel prices soar and the competition crumbles in our Watch the Economy Tank Tour.

To make things more interesting for Russell Owens and I, our landlord had just foreclosed on our house (also known as Soundlab 84) right before the tour started, leaving us homeless, and living out of backpacks. Throwing five people and a dog into a big bus powered by nothing but grease, driving up the east coast and hoping for the best suddenly seemed like a great idea!

Unfortunately, as is usually the case when embarking on a long veggie-greasel adventure, complications quickly arose. Between Spartanburg and Charlotte, the bus had a fuel-filter meltdown, we were left stranded on the side of a dangerous exit ramp with a diesel auxiliary switch-over failure, an insane engineer and a grumpy ambassador. Multiple bottles of wine were consumed and the band arrived three hours late for the gig. It was one of the most problematic segments of the new band's travel history.

Missing our opening slot, we ended up headlining the night at BCHQ in Durham, NC, a bike Co-op very similar to Atlanta's popular SOPO Bicycle Co-op but with more space and art on the walls. The show went very well. Batata Doce has never been to Durham and not released music there, so naturally it was poorly attended though the small crowd of indie-folk-rockers couldn't help but dance and many bought CDs! Lead singer Leticia and I spent a majority of the set playing and singing in front of the stage amidst the bouncing crowd, invoking a small town late-night Sunday fun-a-thon in the middle of the Durham 'hood. The band slept in the bus on a dead-end street, woke up and drove to Weaver Street Market in Chapel Hill for a tooth brushing and coffee with internet.

Tuesday, 23 September
(By Justin Sias)

Weaver Street in Carboro, N.C., added to the drama of the gas madness. We decided to take advantage of the downtime and re-fuel in the back where I had done so many times before, testified by the lone Elevado sticker on the top of the grease-trap. This time it was short-lived.

Russell, our fearless engineer was perched atop the roof, five-gallon grease pale in hand, pouring the filthy slime down the large sock filters while Todd navigated the oil, pumping it from their grease storage into our barrels. I found myself arguing with the manager of Weaver Street Market that we had indeed been given permission to grab the sludge, failing to disclose that it had been three years previous and it hit me how much had changed in such a short time in regards to the energy crisis. He claimed that Griffin Industries now actually payed them for the right to the grease and that we were stealing. Before, they had been so excited that we would take it and could successfully run our vehicle with it. Rather than face the cops, we bolted to Justin Hughes' friend Tricia Mesigian's bar - Orange County Social Club - for a few cocktails.

Chapel Hill is an extraordinary music town. Known for producing many big early "indie" bands in the 90's, it attracts aspiring musicians from all over the country. Every bar and restaurant we visited found jukeboxes filled with Merge Records bands, including Justin's old band the Rock*A*Teens, highlighting the sentiment of a proud and tight-knit musical community. The town is covered in baby blue after the Tar-Heels of North Carolina. But college sports aside, this is a liberal town. Obama posters and stickers line the clubs, cars, and streets. McCain's presence is non-existent. As our bus cut through the small and winding streets, we were amazed and delighted by the audacity and sheer number of bicyclists. We also saw a woman walking her dog through the cross-walk, her eyes glued to what appeared to be a science fiction novel.

Parking was impossible as we arrived at The Cave. This place is literally the most underground venue and makes the downstairs of The Star Bar look like a palace. The stage is microscopic and quickly into the set it became clear that there was no space and as I started sludging around with bass in hand I was almost immediately decapitated by Hughes' guitar neck. Another spastic episode found Todd's symbols muted by my ass. But the funniest negative space mishap occurred during the dance fury of "A Menina" when Leticia's super curly hair got caught on the tuning peg at the tip of my bass. The song continued as we bounced in unison, trying to free the diva's head from the thrashings of a bassist gone wild. I was reminded of the time at Soundlab 84 when my roommate Ripley had strewn candles across the house lending the perfect ambiance to a rock and roll kim chi bonanza. Leticia did an impromptu dance move and had a Michael Jackson moment as her hair burst into flames!

Accommodations were excellent after the show at Russell's friends Eric and Pik's University of North Carolina housing apartment. That night Russell dreamt he was a contestant on ghetto american gladiator. In his dream he was - and I quote - "Running the Eliminator from the top to the bottom of the hill on Moreland Ave in front of Value Village Atlanta. Gangstas with homemade foam batons" were beating and pushing him down, blocking his path, and keeping him from the finish line. Eventually he won the entire race, but no one would pay him the money for winning or even return his entry fee. He also had the ever so common dream of having to "pee real bad" and thought he was already in the bathroom, except that in his dream I was telling him to "pee in a barrel in an abandoned lot." Luckily he awoke at the moment of bladder explosion and avoided "total Hurricane Ike flooding on Eric's floor."

Tuesday afternoon, I gargled scorching salt water, ingested massive amounts of ibuprofen while the rest of the gang devoured Thai food for breakfast and headed to Charlottesville.

Wednesday, 24 September
Charlottesville, VA
(By Justin Sias)

Tuesday I woke up with the feeling that knives were stabbing me deep in my throat when I swallowed. You don't realize how often you swallow till it hurts to do so. I ate four oranges and slept the entire way to Charlottesville. We arrived in the historic district in time to load in and find parking.


But again, parking was a nightmare. For no reason at all, available parking slots were littered with 'NO PARKING BETWEEN THE HOUR OF 5PM and 9AM'. I went on a stakeout to lock in parking. After an hour or so on foot, I found the perfect spot for the bus and was holding the slot when a woman in a new black Audi sedan tried to park there. I denied her by physically blocking her. Every time she would maneuver the vehicle, I cut her off like a goalie making his last stand. She became furious! She threatened and started to run me over, but still I refused to get out of her way and barked, "Are you going to hit me or what?!?" Finally, she ripped a loud wheelie and bolted, screaming obscenities with her middle finger raised high in the air. The bus arrived shortly thereafter and we were triumphant parkers!

Charlottesville is home to one of the University of Virginia. The weather was perfect and the people were super friendly and mellow. The band noted that the citizens of this cute place made many of our Georgia residents appear similar to characters in an episode of "Dukes of Hazard." We all immediately fell in love with Charlottesville. In the center of this quaint downtown area and up two flights of winding stairs, we found The Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, a teahouse, hookah bar, and restaurant with one of the friendliest staff and unique atmosphere. We were greeted with a hummus platter, glasses of high-end wine and all the tea and honey we could possibly shove down our faces.

Soon after our arrival, the eastern style floor tables were removed and replaced with drummer Todd's Ludwig drums, (Justin) Hughes' mysterious mesa boogie, my 60's custom bass amp, Russell's 66 Fender Bassman amp and Leticia's strings of stars and lights. During our set, the staff rang the Indian brass bells in high approval of our musical performance. We were told this was a great honor and rarely were they so excited by the bands that played there. This made us very giddy and we drank more red wine! The tea barista Jessie invited us to her house to watch vintage French movies and.

But in the meantime, we had to wait for the staff to close the teahouse so we hit Miller's, the only open bar we could find. We quickly made friends with the staff and barflies. One of the barflies visiting from Lake Tahoe was doing multiple shots at the bar. She insisted we play her ski resort because 50 percent of the staff was Brazilian. An hour later as we went to leave, I told her we would see her in Aspen. She promptly punched me in the face and replied, "I live in Lake Tahoe!" My ego and face bruised, I went with the band to Jessie, her boyfriend Michael, and their roommate Arianna's house where we watched French cinema and low-budget rock-and-roll zombie flicks.

Wednesday, 24 September
Washington, D.C.
(By Justin Hughes)

Leaving Charlottesville, we took a scenic route to DC that was probably not the best route for an Arlington Regional Transit vehicle to be taking, up over some nice hilly Virginia country. We showed up finally at the Velvet Lounge and were told by a neighborhood pedestrian that we needed to paint "Atlanta" on our bus instead of "ART." Then we played a show with our new friends the Candy Coated Pain Pills, a self-described lesbian blues band. The show was sparsely attended but those there (mostly the band plus a college friend of mine named Ryan Shephard) were going crazy, and the neighborhood saturated with Ethiopian restaurants and black historical landmarks was quite cool. We stayed with Sarah from TCCPP who made us some crazy green mixed drinks she was using to teach at the local bartending school where she works.


The next day (Justin) Sias and Leticia got dropped off at the National Zoo where they saw some orangutans, gorillas, cheetahs and red pandas. Meanwhile Russell and Todd got drafted into my scheme to visit my 90+ year old Grandma at the Riderwood Retirement Community outside of D.C., where I got to go have a nice Friendly's meal with Gladys, otherwise known as Mom-Mom, the Hughes family matriarch, who is also the proud owner of a super snazzy electric scooter.

Back downtown, Leticia and Sias were getting soaked in a fruitless attempt to find wireless to do some computer work, waiting for our not-too-happy bus to slug its way back towards them.

We then made the decision to stay with Ryan on our (supposed) one day off, who graciously let us have the run of his place and went off the stay with his girlfriend after showing us around his neighborhood and explaining why Washington is such an insanity-inducing city to drive around in (the city imposed some kind of mathematical grid over pre-existing towns and neighborhoods with no regard, which makes not getting lost there impossible). And then we left for Philadelphia. That's when the real magic began.

Read more at pine-magazine.com

Chances are, if you've been in Atlanta a little while, you've seen the Howlies. Known for their high-energy shows marked with an impressive level of technical skill, the four-piece rather effortlessly combines styles that range from a sort of raw garage style to more power pop melodies. They are easily one of our new favorite bands.

Check them out Friday, Aug. 29, at the EARL for the release of their new EP Sea Level. According to the band, all three songs on it are about getting it on.

And of course, read the interview below.

Holly Lang/Pine Magazine: You guys are all over the place right now with your tour. How's it going? Have you signed any bared breasts yet? And do you think Kirsten Dunst is going to listen to your album?

Aaron Wood and Justin Brooke/ The Howlies: Unfortunately, Aaron gave Kirsten Dunst a sleeve with no record in it. maybe she checked us out on myspace? I'm not sure how web-savvy she is. although, she was hanging with that bro dude from the Mac commercials...

The post-Dunst tour has been great but it would have been better if she had come with us. With any luck, you can ask us next year what the tour has been like post-Johannsen.

PM: What city's been the most receptive?

A and J: We sold out our Brooklyn show, but were they receptive? I saw heads bobbing ever so slightly. I think that means they loved us! Columbus, Ohio was good too. There are some straight up freaks in Columbus, Ohio.

PM: The word on the street is that you hit the top 20 in CMJ's Most Added. Is this something you sort of expected, or was it a surprise?

A and J: we were told to expect nothing, so yeah it was a nice surprise.

PM: Because of your vintage garage/50's/60's sound, you've been compared to Atlanta bands like the Black Lips and the Selmanaires. How do you feel about these comparisons, and what separates you from them?

A & J: Both of those bands have been big inspirations to us, and we're happy to be compared to them. having said that, we do our thing and they do theirs.

PM: Overall, how do you feel the national success of bands like Deerhunter and the Black Lips contributes to the success of the local scene?

A & J: Everywhere we go, people know about the Atlanta music scene. and it's not just Black Lips and Deerhunter, but Selmanaires, Gringo Starr, Carbonas, Gentleman Jesse and lots more. right now Atlanta is like London in the 60s, Seattle in the 90s, etc. We are happy to be a part of it.

PM: How'd you come to OverUnder Records (from New York and who is releasing their EP)?

A & J: We met them on a rainy Sunday night in Ybor city. That's in Tampa. At the time we were performing in underwear and tinsel wigs. I guess they liked what they saw...

PM: What do you think the future holds for the band? What do you want it to hold?

A & J: Actually our bass player Matt is from the future, and he says that 2012 is no big deal, so that's a relief. we're gonna keep doing this music thing as long as we can. things keep getting better and better for Howlies, so hopefully we gonna keep movin' up like elevators.


Go to the EARL Friday night. It'll be fun, we promise. And check out the below list for more dates across the southeast and southwest.

Aug. 30: Mercy Lounge (w/ How I Became the Bomb) Nashville
Sept. 1: Tin Roof Charleston
Sept. 4: The Pegasus Lounge Tampa
Sept. 5: Fuel Jacksonville
Sept. 6: Beta Bar (w/ The Intoxicators) Tallahassee
Sept. 8: Harry T's Destin,
Sept. 10: Egan's Tuscaloosa,
Sept. 11: The Jubilee (w/ The Apostle T.K.) Oxford
Sept. 13: Exit/In (Next Big Nashville Festival) Nashville
Sept. 16: The Falls San Antonio
Sept. 17: Dilinger's San Marcos
Oct. 4: Grey Eagle (w/ Mad Tea Party and Jem Crossland) Asheville

 

The full frontal aural assault that has gone by the name of Tenth to the Moon since the early 2000's has its roots in the 1980's Atlanta underground Destroy All Music/Lowlife Magazine scene. The band has had a revolving cast of local music talent over the past several years, having coalesced into a very tight, almost early 70's kraut rock sound with the addition of former Liars Club/King-Kill 33 guitarist Keith Lee as their new bassist. It's performance art with angry synthesizers, relentless drums, futuristic tribalism, and is more punk than any band with a guitar in it could ever be.

Tenth to the Moon's current line-up is: Mitchell Foy on drums and vocals, Doug Hughes on synthesizers, Sean Moore on drums and samples, Keith Lee on bass and Brian Ginn on guitar.

They're playing the Star Bar August 7 in a CD release extravaganza. You should go! Pine and Soundlab 84 are sponsoring it, and Stickfigure and ISP are putting out the CD, which you should buy the CD and listen to while reading the interview below.

Justin Hughes/Pine Magazine: How do you personally describe the band's sound/concept?

Mitch Foy/Tenth to the Moon: Tension happens when we choose one extreme over another, like a jealous lover that won't leave you alone. She'll haunt you until you satisfy her. But if you spend too much time going down on her and forget to come up for air, you've got problems. If you can swing around into that 69 and honor both sides of the equation with equal force and intensity, you're definitely on your way. The tension of opposites threatens to rip you apart until you can take no more and you blast off like a rocket. Tenth to the Moon: Primitive/Modern, Disciplined/Unrestrained, Clean/Dirty, etc.

JH: How did you get started with playing music/making noise/a spectacle of yourself?

MF: As a child, making a noisy spectacle is the best way to get attention and/or an ass whipping. Sometimes we get love and sometimes we get the belt. Then we grow up and spend all of our time trying to unlearn: it's okay to touch your privates in public. It's okay to shout out of line. It's more than okay, it's mandatory. But then you need a venue, a stage, on which to break all of those taboos in front of people.

Stepping into the White Dot or the Mudshack two decades ago, I discovered Deacon Lunchbox, Benjamin Smoke and Bill Taft showing me just how okay it really is. Holed up deep in the alien jungles of suburbia listening to bizarre sounds spilling from my radio, I heard WREK cooing, "It's okay. Touch yourself." Perusing the pages of Glen Thrasher's Lowlife Magazine I was both frightened and fascinated as my preconceptions of music were shattered.

JH: What was your experience of 80's underground Atlanta music and how does it inform/affect what 10th is doing now?

MF: Lowlife Magazine featured people on stage swimming in garbage and toys and broken instruments, half naked and writhing. The Eastern Stars, the Butthole Surfers, Ru Paul. Almost anything worthy of revilement and derision was embraced. Lunchbox, Taft and Benjamin used to put on open mic shows along Ponce de Leon and it felt like anything could happen. The Destroy All Music festivals blew our minds. The only rule at these events was that there were no rules and no one bent over backwards trying to fit in. I'm sure I'm romanticizing, but at the time this is how it appeared to my naïve eyes, and so it's one of the blueprints hanging around the back of my mind when working today. Rebel against your desire to fall into safe patterns of behavior. Put yourself in front of the oncoming train. I should also mention the influence of countless amazing shows we saw at the Metroplex and 688.

JH: What does the name mean? Do you aspire to play on the moon once the Chinese have fully colonized it?
 
MF: The men and women who have thrust themselves into space are not only true heroes, but symbolic of our desire to explore the unknown, places we go when we sleep or lose ourselves in orgasm. One of these men is Charles Duke who, with two others, manned Apollo 16. A southern boy, born in North Carolina and trained in Georgia, he was the tenth man on the moon.

In the future a dome on the moon fashioned into a replica of Dotties will showcase bands formed by the clones of Atlanta music stalwarts. I'm hoping Tenth can be the first to get naked on stage there.
 
JH: How did you hook up with Atlanta's most amazing synth player Doug Hughes?

MF: The guy is a legend. He was a musical cohort of Chris Swartz, who ran Perimeter Records in the '80's. If you can find a copy of the 'Nine Underground' LP, grab it -- it's the premier document of the industrial scene in Atlanta at that time. I met Chris in the offices of WREK and he offered to put out a Man's .. cassette on Perimeter right there on the spot. A couple of years later he phoned Keith (Lee, our bassist) and I about forming a rock band. The result was King-Kill/33. Doug moved back to Atlanta in the early 90's when I was forming Pineal Ventana and over several years, he recorded hours and hours of improvisation with his mobile studio, which we used on just about every CD we released. When that band folded in 2001 I shook the bushes to see who was available to make some music and Doug jumped out. Safe to say the band probably wouldn't have made it this long without his persistence.  Doug and Chris currently play together in the band Broken Symmetry.

JH: What's the skinny on the new album?

MF: There was a lot to prove. Personally I didn't want to release anything that didn't stand up to the Pineal Ventana records, which is one of the reasons it took so long to get a record out at all. The band has been through a TON of changes and mutations and frankly I can't say the process has felt particularly natural. Sometimes the entire band seems on the verge of destruction. Still, we wanted to make a CD that is at once alluring and daunting (that tension of opposites) to a degree that is demanding, perplexing, and engrossing. Something that really stands up to critical discernment. I think we did it. 

Gavin Frederick and Stickfigure have been supportive of Tenth since the very beginning of the band, and so the decision to release the record on his label was an easy one.
 

 

You've probably already heard of how a former Klansman has been arrested for the deaths of two Mississippi teens back in the heyday of Klansmen killings.

But, as you know, we want you to feel super informed, and while this isn't terribly tricky, we thought we'd offer up some resources as well as some interesting facts so you sound all smart at the bar or at a party this weekend.

The basic story: James Seale, now 71, was long thought to be the guy who kidnapped and killed Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, two black 19-year-olds hitchhiking along U.S. 84 just outside Meadville, Miss., near an ice cream stand on May 2, 1964. A Volkswagen stopped, picked up the pair, and drove down a dirt road into the woods of Homochitto National Forest.

There Klu Klux Klan members -- reportedly Seale and his cousin Charles Edwards -- tied Dee and Moore to trees, whipping them with beanpoles. After some time, members unknotted the ropes, and the teens, barely alive, were then bound with tape, weighted down with a Jeep engine block and weights from a nearby railroad, and drowned in a nearby river, where their bodies were found several months later.

This was the summer the world -- led by iconic newsman Dan Rather -- turned to Mississippi for another reason. Three young civil rights workers were killed during what is now called "Freedom Summer." The murders of the three workers -- which attracted a huge amount of mainstream media attention -- were later portrayed in Mississippi Burning. The murders of Dee and Moore went largely unnoticed.

Shortly after the funerals, both Seale and Edwards were arrested for the deaths, with Edwards telling FBI agents the teens were alive when they left them. According to an FBI report, an agent said to Seale: "You didn't even give them a decent burial. We know you did it, you konw you did it, the Lord above knows you did it."

"Yes, but I'm not going to admit it," Seale reportedly said. "You are going to have to prove it."

Read the rest here.