Month: February 2001

Categories
Hot Properties Real Estate

High Point Rising

High Point Terrace is probably named for its elevated site, not its initial sale prices. The neighborhood is now experiencing tremendous growth in value. Certainly its central location is a factor, but its large lots also make for easy additions, leaving plenty of yard. This house is a prime example of how, several expansions later, these G.I. bill starter houses can become both spacious and gracious.

The house was built in 1948 by a young developer named Kemmons Wilson. It was still occupied by the original owner until five years ago. This owner made only two spatial alterations in an almost 50-year tenure. The east side porch was enclosed for an intimate TV room. Later a master bath and dressing room were added on the west end.

This being a Colonial Revival house, two flanking wings work perfectly. And because the lot is ample there was plenty of room to expand to the side. The current owners have been much busier than the first in their five years in the house.

The living room gained a fireplace with appropriate Colonial mantel and new, well-scaled ceiling moldings. The red-oak floors were uncarpeted, sanded, and clear-sealed to highlight their inherent color. The intimate TV room was converted into a two-person office with lots of built-ins and all the latest in telephone and cable outlets.

The back of the house was the real target. The original kitchen, breakfast room, and bedroom were all gutted and combined. Lots of glass was installed to fill these rooms with light and views to the very private backyard. The new kitchen’s painted cabinets up to the ceiling provide storage for everything imaginable. There’s even an island with butcher-block top and a cozy breakfast area. The other end is a keeping room. Bookcases have been added. In addition to an ample seating area there is a counter for stools facing the kitchen. This new space can accommodate a passel of folks and, when the weather is nice, opens to an adjoining rear deck.

Still not willing to rest, the current owners continued by adding a rear wing. It is a very spacious third bedroom and/or family room. It has lots of windows onto the backyard, and there’s still plenty of room if you wanted to make this a second master suite by adding another private bath and dressing room off the rear.

The backyard has a new ell to one side and a one-car garage to the other. The garage has enough room for a workbench and a paved potting area out back. The back of the property has been terraced with stones to form raised beds filled with sun-loving perennials. While the front, which faces south, is well shaded by two beautiful oaks, the back has an open, sunny demeanor that’s perfect for playing or just watching the grass grow. After this much work that’s really all that is required.

3792 Oakley Avenue

2,100 square feet, 3 Bedrooms, 2 Baths; $220,000

FSBO, 230-6943, e-mail: michael.reeves@alumni.duke.edu

http://www.geocities.com/highpointterracehome/oakley.html

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

John Prine

The Keith Sykes Song-writer Showcase gears up again this week with a bang as the best of the “New Dylans,” John Prine, joins Sykes and guest Roger Cook at the Black Diamond. The show starts at 8 p.m. on Thursday, February 22nd, with a $15 cover.

After having to cancel their last advertised gig at Young Avenue Deli to open for the North Mississippi Allstars in Chicago, Lucero is back at the Hi-Tone Café on Saturday, February 24th, with the Kansas City band Secret Liquor Cure. — Chris Herrington

The Circuit Riders, a group of talented youngsters from Oxford town, claim that their music is a hybrid of Southern rock and Americana, but I just don’t buy it. Their song “Hat Giver” begins like a tom-tom-happy Led Zeppelin (lyrically substituting mermaids on the Mississippi for Zep’s fantastical characters from Tolkien’s Middle Earth) then smoothly morphs into a rootsy mid-Seventies Stones rip-off. The twangy, jangly ballad “Around the Bend” sounds a lot like an unlikely duet between Uncle Tupelo and the Revolver-era Beatles. Their recording of an incredibly dated Faces cover, “Glad and Sorry,” begins with the spoken indictment: “We need everybody to support local music.” The irony is almost painful. But one thing is for certain, the kids can play the fool out of their instruments. They also have a good ear for intricate and eclectic arrangements. Hopefully they will, with time, stop using their influences as crutches and develop a sound all their own. Still, it’s great to watch young bands develop, and they are certainly worth checking out. Do so when they play the Hi-Tone Café Thursday, February 22nd. The Hi Tone also features C&W powerhouse The Derailers on Friday and the utterly amazing acoustic roots mob The Asylum Street Spankers on Sunday. Go Hi-Tone. That’s one heck of a weekend!

The Bluff City Backsliders are a skronky, sloppy, glorious mess of an old-time Memphis jug band. Between Jason Freeman’s throaty (Gus Cannon only wished) vocals, John (Lucero) Stubblefield’s plucky bass, Mike (Fatback Jubilee) Graber’s manic mandolin, Clint (Mash-o-Matic) Wagoner’s sawing fiddle, and Jack (Professor Elixir) Adcock’s awesome scratch board and spit-drenched jug-work this Memphis superband can deliver the soulful, spirited, and often very funny sounds that first made Beale Street famous. Throw in some zippy kazoos, a mean dobro, and effective, minimal drum-work and you have the swampy recipe for a nasty hangover. They are playing 8-11 p.m. every Wednesday at Beale Street’s Blues Hall. Ah, at last — something authentic on the street that Mr. Handy built. — Chris Davis

Props should go to Clutch for longevity, especially since all nine of their releases have borne a different record label imprint. Their latest, Pure Rock Fury, is on Atlantic records, and while, despite the title, some fans may complain that Clutch doesn’t rock as hard as in their early days, the band goes beyond that to contribute to the redefinition of the term “heavy.” This fine album demands a journey back through the Clutch catalog to witness the evolution of a band fusing hard core and hard rock through roots music, jazz, and go-go. Clutch will be at the New Daisy Theatre on Tuesday, February 27th, with Corrosion of Conformity, Spirit Caravan, and Clearlight. — Pat Mitchell

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

A Worthy Alternative

To the Editor:

The Friends of Shelby Farms wish to add to the statement made by Mayor Rout in The Memphis Flyer (City Reporter, February 1st issue). We agree with attorney Richard Glassman that Alternative F is worthy of serious consideration. We anticipate further discussion once the roadway is presented in specific detail. It is important to note that this latest alternative, like its predecessors, is subject to the federal laws pertaining to roads through parkland. The citizens of Memphis and Shelby County should have the final decision.

Steve Eppel, Friends of Shelby Farms, Memphis

In Defense of Ashley

To the Editor:

I am writing in response to a recent letter to the editor (February 8th issue) in which Ashley Fantz was taken to task for her article on Grandmaster Fu Wei Zhong. I too had a strong negative reaction when I first read an article by Ms. Fantz months ago. However, after I read and re-read that particular article (of all things to get irked over, it was a book review), I felt that my criticisms were perhaps not entirely fair and held back on firing off the two-page letter I had written.

I have subsequently read Ms. Fantz’s work with a somewhat skeptical (albeit amused) eye and have found that, while I do not agree with everything she writes, I find her work to be relatively balanced, well written, serious when needed, humorous when appropriate and simply fun to read. Sadly, it’s predictable in today’s oversensitive society that when you skewer a few sacred cows — even when done with tongue-in-cheek humor — those on the receiving end have a hissy fit.

Chris Leek, Memphis

Bogus Logic?

To the Editor:

John Branston’s Viewpoint column (“A Bogus ‘Choice,'” February 1st issue) posed the question, “Why do 118,000 students stay in the Memphis City Schools?” He uses the number of children enrolled in the Memphis schools as evidence to refute the idea of vouchers. He says that choice exists in Memphis through the optional schools, the Memphis Opportunity Scholarship Trust, and the ability to move to a desired school attendance zone. Well, what’s bogus is Branston’s analysis.

First, the vast majority of Memphis City Schools’ student population lives in poverty. People in poverty need before- and after-school care, free breakfasts, free lunches, transportation, etc. The schools located in the depressed areas of Memphis offer those services through a designation as an “entitled” school. Many optional schools do not provide these additional services.

Then there’s Branston’s idea that transportation is a small issue. He must not live in a household that has only one or even no reliable automobile. Reliance on public transit is problematic at best. When on a limited income, the additional time and expense of getting a child across town for school and then getting yourself to work are huge hurdles. Such parents do not have any options; even their housing is usually limited to the rentals that are eligible for government subsidy.

Second, the Opportunity Trust limits its assistance to low-income persons. Has Branston looked at the cost of the city’s top schools — Presbyterian Day School, St. Mary’s, Lausanne? A $1,500 check doesn’t go far for tuition, and tuition is just a portion of the costs for private schools. Would Branston feel the same if the waiting list for scholarship aid contained 116,000 names instead of its present 2,000?

Third, I’m one of those “mobile” folks who chose his school by buying a home miles from his workplace. Did I have any influence over Mayor Herenton’s annexation frenzy? My mobility has gone the way of doubled taxes and a neighborhood with “For Sale” signs and foreclosure notices everywhere. I was forced to go to the school board building three times last week: once to sign up for a spot in the 900-plus-person line, a second time for a roll call to keep my number 369 place in line, and a third time at 5 a.m. to languish in line until 8:25 a.m. This, just to hand in applications for my two oldest children for a chance to attend an optional program miles from our home. And, since few optional schools include kindergarten, who knows where my rising kindergartner will be next fall?

Last, Branston countered his own view by noting that the economically advantaged have fled to Germantown, Collierville, and private schools, leaving the poor to MCS. Doesn’t that clearly indicate that over 100,000 students do not have a choice? Branston concludes that my children will be in Memphis schools because I do not believe MCS is a poor choice for my children or I choose to ignore its problems. It is neither. My children will be in Memphis schools because I make too much money to get scholarships but too little income to send three children to private schools or buy a more expensive house in an “annexation free” Shelby County area.

By the way, does Mr. Branston have children in Memphis City Schools?

Raymond Miller, Memphis

(Editor’s Note: John Branston has two children in Memphis City Schools.)

To the Editor:

Mr. Branston with his Viewpoint column “A Bogus ‘Choice'” unfortunately defends the failing status quo against vouchers and charter schools and tax credits for private and parochial school tuition. Branston basically grants in the column that many public schools are largely failing. Branston also seems to grant that teachers’ unions and bureaucrats might rule the public schools. Branston is then struck by the fact that 118,000 students “choose” to attend public schools in Memphis. (Branston has obviously never heard of the mandatory school attendance law in Tennessee.)

Branston then diverts our attention to another bogus notion: that Memphis City Schools has sufficient “choice” through its optional school program for gifted students. But the point of Mr. Bush’s programs, as I understand it, is to expand the choices to all students, whether gifted or not. (And this doesn’t mean that elite students could not enroll in the Memphis City Schools optional program under Bush’s programs.) The heavily taxed citizens of America and their children deserve a greater range of choice. So, now, who is really missing the more important point?

Phillip Stephenson, Memphis

The Memphis Flyer encourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Or call Back Talk at 575-9405. Or send us e-mail at letters@memphisflyer.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 words.

Categories
News

In Huck Finn Country

CREDIT: photo by Mark Nomura

They don’t mess around with the visitor in Hannibal. You come for Mark Twain, you get Mark Twain. In fact, you don’t even have to worry about all the complexities and contradictions of one of America’s greatest writers, nor worry about the long life lived by anybody named Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

No, when you roll into this quiet little town on the Mississippi River, you get the old, warm, fuzzy Mark Twain, with white hair and suit, who wrote some really cute stories about children playing and having adventures. Not that there’s anything wrong with that — compared to most small towns, Hannibal is lucky anybody stops there for anything more than gas — but if you’re looking for Mark Twain, the Man of Letters, in Hannibal, you might as well look for a meal in a candy store.

It’s all Twain in Hannibal. South of town on Highway 61, the restaurant in Injun Joe Campground is Huck’s Homestead. Down in the old part of town, by the river, the Mark Twain Dinette is across from the Hotel Clemens. Pudd’nhead’s Antiques is right around the corner from Mrs. Clemens Antique Mall. There’s a Mark Twain Gift Shop and a Mark Twain Book and Gift Shop, as well as Tom Sawyer Dioramas and Gifts, a Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse, Mark Twain Cave, Mississippi riverboat Mark Twain, Sawyer’s Creek Fun Park, Mark Twain Outdoor Theater, and the Becky Thatcher home.

Well, actually, it’s the Laura Hawkins home, and this is where things get a wee bit odd in Hannibal. After a while, you might wonder if you’re in Mark Twain’s hometown or that of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I confess there were times in Hannibal when I wanted to tell people that Tom and Huck weren’t real, that Laura Hawkins wasn’t really Becky Thatcher — and, for that matter, that Mark Twain wrote some other books that they might enjoy.

Out in front of the Twain home, there’s a sign that reads, “Here stood the board fence which Tom Sawyer persuaded his gang to pay him for the privilege of whitewashing.” Call me a wet blanket, but I’m more intrigued by the fact that America’s Greatest Voice To Be sat on this street one day, looked at this fence, and thought of that story. I was also intrigued to learn that Hannibal’s town drunk at the time was named Finn.

Or you can call me a cynic. While I was enduring a film about “that rascal Huck” at the Mark Twain Museum, I remembered that later in life Twain wrote another story about Huck. In that one Huck came back from “the territories,” which he had lit out for at the end of his book, and he was quite thoroughly insane. I also remembered “The Mysterious Stranger,” about Satan coming to a place just like Hannibal, and Letters from the Earth, in which angels discuss, hilariously, how foolish humans are.

Hell, on the cover of the Hannibal Visitors Guide they have a kid in a straw hat (presumably Huck) holding a frog (presumably a jumping one from Calaveras County). To a Twain purist, this is like Beale Street publishing a picture of Elvis with a saxophone.

But, like I said, you can’t begrudge Hannibal for playing up the Local Hero angle. Without Mark Twain, Hannibal would be Jonesboro, only smaller. So you roll with it. You tour the two Clemens family homes, go through the museum to see one of his white suits and translations of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in Icelandic, Norwegian, Chinese, Finnish, Hindi, and a bunch of other languages. You read that Clemens misspelled a word so Laura Hawkins could win the spelling bee (how cute) and see his actual “orchestrelle,” which appears to be a large music box. The newer museum in town has 15 original Norman Rockwells of Twain scenes and a heck of a collection of old woodworking tools. The tools have nothing to do with Mark Twain and are therefore a unique presence in town.

You can even go nuts and make plans to visit during the first few days of July, when National Tom Sawyer Days features a National Fence Painting Championship (raising the possibility of Regional Fence Painting Championships), a jumping-frog contest, and a Tom and Becky in the roles of King and Queen. There’s also, in a nod to more modern entertainment, a Hannibal Cannibal 10K Run and by all accounts a heck of a fireworks show over the river on July 4th.

Or you can take a different tack altogether: Leave the details of Tom and Huck World to your imagination and go read one of Twain’s books. Better yet, skip the sweet, cute stuff and get yourself a literary meal, something to sink your teeth into. One could make the argument that the very literary heart of America lies in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but you wouldn’t guess it from hanging out in Hannibal.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Babyface: A Collection

of His Greatest Hits

Babyface

(Epic)

A lot of blame can be indirectly attributed to Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds and his track record as a producer for artists such as Boyz II Men, Sheena Easton, Bobby Brown, TLC, Whitney Houston, Madonna, Brandy, and even that old geezer Eric Clapton. His silky yet clattery production formula has become something of a template for the screechy teen-pop that has infested the charts and the airwaves these last few years. And that doesn’t even take into account his own tepid work as a solo recording artist, which is chronicled on this estimable greatest hits package.

So if his production and solo work are slick and formulaic then how to explain the undeniable attractiveness and, um, soulfulness of his singing? ‘Face, as he is known in music biz circles, has a very expressive voice: quavery, melismatic, full of feeling, kind of like Little Anthony’s (of the Imperials) without the pop drama and sissyman blues quotient. Babyface always turns in a solid vocal performance in the midst of forced funk beats and overly lush production. Edmonds has a well-known affection for ’70s singer/songwriter material (a la James Taylor and Bill Withers) and this shows even on these bloated tracks. However, when he does go for a more stripped-down production style, the instrumental track becomes more grating because there are fewer melodic instruments to cover up the clattering percussion and clichéd drum machine programming.

He sells millions and has arrived as a biz insider who can be depended on to shore up the sagging careers of aging veterans or smooth over teen pop’s rough edges. Kenneth Edmonds’ dream of having a successful, long-term career in the music industry has certainly come true for him, but his sound is mainly headache-inducing. Shame about the wasted voice though. — Ross Johnson

Grade: C

Bow Down to the Exit Sign

David Holmes

(1500 Records)

Movies with “found” soundtracks are often great (Tati’s Playtime, Altman’s California Split), but soundtracks seeking films are often dicey (Eno’s Music For Films, anything by Radiohead). The underlying aesthetic of both ventures is the same, though: the attempt to conjure one medium through the imaginative use of another. Only it’s more successful in movies than it is in music, because a movie rarely plunges the viewer into darkness to concentrate on sounds. In contrast, records are often incidental soundtracks that complement the lives of their listeners but rarely stop them cold. I mean, who has time for staring into the blackness and contemplating imaginary images backed by bass, drums, and keyboards?

Dublin, Ireland, musician David Holmes does, but based on the drippy imaginary “trailer” description in the liner notes, here’s hoping he sticks to making music. Besides, the concept grounding Bow Down to the Exit Sign (as well as 1997’s Let’s Get Killed) is plenty rich and evocative: The Foreigner Bears Witness To Bizarre Tales of the City. His second attempt to draw a chalk outline of urban America through unlikely samples and found hepcat conversations is coarser, less campy, and meaner than its starry-eyed predecessor, which might signify Holmes’ growing discontent with the quality of life in our big cities. Then again, it might signify an attempt to reach down into its concrete heart for a little bit of old-fashioned film noir menace, which Jon Spencer aptly approximates on “Bad Thing.” But who cares if the film part of the equation is ever completed when Holmes gives you actual songs as funky as The French Connection, with lyrics and riffs and propulsion and even a chorus on the first track (“Trying to keep it real/but compared to what?”) that I’ve wanted to hear my whole life? — Addison Engelking

Grade: A-

Mass Romantic

The New Pornographers

(Mint Records)

An ad hoc act composed of musicians from various indie outfits, the Canadian-heavy New Pornographers play a decidedly lo-fi brand of pop music that might be compared to the cream of the Elephant 6 crop. But as the smart, driving, vaguely retro Mass Romantic proves, the Pornographers’ tunes are more accessible and direct and less willfully esoteric than those by many of their Southern counterparts.

Sharing vocal duties are critical darling Neko Case, former Zumpano singer Carl Newman, and erstwhile Destroyer member Blaine Thurier. Newman has an athletic voice that bops along with energetic melodies like the new-wave “The Body Says No,” and Thurier sounds like the Canadian counterpart to Britain’s career eccentric Robyn Hitchcock. But the real standout on Mass Romantic is Case, who belts just a few songs, most notably the title track and “Letter from an Occupant.” Still full of sass and spirit, she displays surprising versatility as a vocalist, shedding the torch-and-twang of last year’s stunning Furnace Room Lullaby and re-creating herself as a pop chanteuse of unexpected power.

The Pornographers half-bury such dynamic vocals and well-developed melodies in guitar buzz and production distortion. But it all works: The effect is a slow revelation of the songs’ many charms over several listens. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

Lost Souls

Doves

(Astralwerks)

The Doves are an almost entirely organic three-piece band that rose from the ashes of not-so-organic Sub Sub — stalwarts on the British techno scene for a good 10 years. Displaying a backward logic in modern rock, Doves shed any and all hint of electronica, falling squarely between dance-pop like the Happy Mondays and sonic blueprinting a la My Bloody Valentine, making for a House of Love living in a Radiohead world, if you will. So, yes, there is that inevitable ghost lingering about, but any topical, semi-underground British pop is going to have a hard time avoiding such a cultural icon.

Now that the name-checking is out of my system, I will say that the songs are built around some inescapable hooks, and when all is said and done, that is what’s paramount, not whom you’ve borrowed a sound from. The guitars are affected but kept in check, no matter how much it seems they want to display some serious histrionics. Instead, underhanded somberness, or maybe even menace, prevails ahead of just showing off a pedal selection. Vocals are spot-on and avoid heavy-handedness — a welcome stance in a world filled with Brit-pop Freddie Mercurys. Kudos are also in order for the subtle Raging Bull-ish cover art. Hey, it could have been the standard abandoned airport imagery, which is becoming a little hard on the peepers. Whenever Radiohead decides to give it up, they can rest easy knowing that bands like Doves are making confident pop in their wake. n — Andrew Earles

Grade: B

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Book Features Books

Defining Moments

The Body Artist, By Don DeLillo, Scribner, 128 pp., $22

Don DeLillo is a writer’s writer. Ask many contemporary fiction writers whom they read and an inordinate number of them might answer, “DeLillo.” That’s because he has all the gifts, because he has come to represent an artistic integrity and a willingness to take risks missing from much fiction today, and because, for all his erudition, he is as entertaining as the human race. He may be the most beloved of the postmodernists. He’s not impenetrable, but neither is he Robert Ludlum.

DeLillo’s last novel was the gargantuan Underworld, a bursting-at-the-seams, complex zodiac of a novel, a book seemingly as large as its subject: the 20th century. It should have won all the major fiction awards, and, as time passes, its importance will only be magnified. Now DeLillo has followed the massive with a missive, a 128-page novella about intimacy and loss.

The Body Artist is the story of Lauren, the titular “body artist” who uses her torso in experimental performance art, and Lauren’s husband, film director Rey Robles, who dies after the first chapter. Lauren’s return to the home they shared coincides with the appearance of a strange young man, an ageless creature really, almost a blank, a human template, who is “impaired in matters of articulation and comprehension.” Suddenly he is just there in the house, seated on a bed in his underwear, as if he had been transported from another dimension.

Lauren names her guest Mr. Tuttle and begins to carry on an almost one-sided conversation with him. His replies, when he replies at all, are enigmatic non sequiturs. As the author describes it, “There’s a code in the simplest conversation that tells the speakers what’s going on outside the bare acoustics. This was missing when they talked.”

Mr. Tuttle also comes and goes like a revenant, like the birds to the feeders at Lauren’s window, visitations she is enchanted by. Soon Lauren begins to suspect that Mr. Tuttle is aping conversations she and Rey had. How long has this stranger been in the house? she asks herself. Is he really there now? Or is he just a catalyst to propel Lauren into the next phase of her life? If this is a haunting, it’s a haunting by what? She tries to capture Tuttle’s oblique statements on tape, as if preserving them is saving something: a part of Rey, a part of herself.

“His subject is people in landscapes of estrangement” reads one of Rey’s obituaries. “He found a spiritual knife-edge in the poetry of alien places, where extreme situations become inevitable and characters are forced toward life-defining moments.” Clearly, this is a precise summing-up of DeLillo’s entire, brilliant oeuvre and this new addition to his body of work. The Body Artist, ultimately, is a discomforting examination of Lauren’s search for that “life-defining” moment.

Fans of DeLillo will be delighted with this short, numinous story, a neoteric Grimm tale, an ultramodern spectralogy. The story is made up of particulars, precisely observed and described; each line meticulously crafted and essential to the whole. “[Lauren] was alert to the clarity of the moment but knew it was ending already,” DeLillo writes early on, and the action of The Body Artist seems to take place between such twinklings of observation. It is a work of such refined and well-tuned writing it seems to be a high-wire act, a poem written with a switchblade.

“Time seems to pass,” DeLillo writes at the opening of the novel. “The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely …. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness.”

The Body Artist is DeLillo’s most delicate work, a finely etched cryptogram, where mystery is made concrete and the concrete is made mysterious. Its magic is like Beckett’s: serious comedy built slowly and carefully, like that spider’s web. Put another way, this is a novel made of spun glass, brittle, elegant, and sharp at the edges — further proof that Don DeLillo is one of our finest and most important writers.

Categories
Opinion

About Bob

I write in defense of the bump and grind.

And the spotlighted shoulder-roll invitation. Pigeon-toe coyness. The peep-show nod of a bolo hat, sheer black tights, and a bar-back chair. A hand holding a cigarette, its smoke outlining the curve of a woman’s hip.

I write in defense of Bob Fosse.

Not that Bob Fosse, the man, the choreographer, the director, the self-styled dancin’ man, needs defending. He won mainstream accolades galore: an Emmy, a Tony, and an Oscar in one year. It’s his artful mixing of the bawdy and the sophisticated on stage before anyone else and better than anyone else that has been seemingly forgotten in modern musical theater. Consider contemporary adaptations of Fosse style. And if you think you don’t know Fosse, you do. His razzle-dazzle combination of jazz, burlesque, ballet, acrobatics, and Tin Pan/vaudevillian choreography has influenced every major performing artist from MTVers to Carnegie Hallers. Yet, try as some might to mimic the choreographer’s magic, it’s clear that stage entertainment will never be as complex, interesting, or fun as Fosse made it.

True, Fosse, the biographical musical which opened to a full house Tuesday night at The Orpheum, was not choreographed by the man himself but by Ann Reinking, his protegÇ and current Broadway diva since Liza with a Z gained 400 pounds. Though the show appears to be Fosse turned up a notch, with almost identical staging of his most famous numbers from Chicago, Sweet Charity, Cabaret, The Pajama Game, and Dancin’ — missing are Pippin and Damn Yankees — Reinking has carefully placed transitional interludes between numbers as a way to introduce the audience to a different side of the artist. But she doesn’t mess with the essence of Fosse’s special brand of vaudevillian entertainment. “Steam Heat,” Fosse’s trademark piece, stands out in the revue as does “Big Spender” from Sweet Charity. The show is a genuine ode to Reinking’s mentor. And as with anything associated with Fosse, the musical maintains its unapologetic sexiness.

But not every musical that Fosse placed a hip-swivel and finger-snap to has avoided sexual contrivance. Nineteen ninety-seven’s Broadway revival of Cabaret, directed by American Beauty‘s Sam Mendes, is a crotch-grabbing mÇnage Ö trois screw-fest that took Fosse choreography and added a helping of over-the-top titillations. The revamped version is not much like Fosse’s 1972 Oscar-winning film version starring Liza Minelli as the too-talented for a strip club Sally Bowles and Joel Grey as the emcee. Mendes downgrades Bowles to a karaoke-level star in this 100-percent perverse adaptation. “Two Ladies” doesn’t indulge the imagination and, oddly, Bowles’ love interest is a closet homosexual — a twist that isn’t alluded to in Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, which the musical is based on. All of this is not to imply that Mendes’ version isn’t worthy; it won a slew of Tonys for a reason. But there is a distinct absence of Fosse’s talent for making the raunchy complex and the profound more digestible.

The film Cabaret was very different from the stage version. It was revolutionary in its depiction of a bleak, upsetting future run by a government of hate bent on destroying all free thinking. Though it wasn’t the first film to feature androgyny, Cabaret‘s Joel Grey in clown makeup likely inspired fascination among glam-rockers and was cinematically echoed by films like A Clockwork Orange. Fosse’s film was a post-modern feat, showing shadows of shadows, stage-like devices such as red ribbons strewn across the ground of a Jewish ghetto to intimate bloodshed, and people in fun-house distortion behind glass bricks. When was the last time a musical was turned into a beautiful, well-choreographed film? Forget Evita. During its dance scenes, the camera managed to cut off all the actors’ feet.

Broadway has become anesthetized, cleaned with giant Disney sponges, its subway stations dripping with plastic cartoon numbers. The hookers of Times Square who could have easily sung their tired hearts out in Sweet Charity have been replaced by Donald Duck and Goofy. What is playing on the Great White Way? Annie Get Your Gun, Beauty and the Beast, Rent, Seussical (starring Rosie O’Donnell, no less). New York Times theater critics as recent as Frank Rich and as far back as Walter Kerr have lamented that there’s nothing exciting happening to characters on Broadway.

Fosse, however, offered dancers a chance to become more than wallpaper for the actors. For the choreographer who died of a heart attack after rehearsals for a mid-1980s Chicago revival, singing, dancing, and acting were interchangeable. And the most concise example of that is Fosse, a musical revue that he had nothing to do with but is dedicated solely to him.

Fosse, Through February 25th, The Orpheum

Categories
News News Feature

BEHIND THE SHRINKING APPEAL

Noticeably absent Sunday in a Commercial Appeal story about the daily decreasing the size of its pages was a disclosure about the potential millions of dollars in paper costs the newspaper stands to save after the switch.

The story, penned by the paper’s editor and president Angus McEachran, mentioned several other benefits the smaller paper size will yield, such “less clutter” and being easier to read in cramped spaces. But the paper failed to mention that in reducing the size of the printed page, The Commercial Appeal will be reducing its operating expenses and possibly reducing its news hole Ñ the amount of space available for news stories.

When there’s less paper space, stories must be cut or shortened. And when papers elsewhere have used smaller print to keep from reducing the number of stories, as the CA’s new design does, some readers have gotten upset.

In his column, McEachran maintains that by using a new, smaller, typeface the paper will be able to reduce the size of the paper without cutting into the number of stories. He goes on to write that the “letters will be clearer and appear bigger although their computer-assisted design actually makes each word more compact.”

McEachran did not respond to the Flyer‘s request for comment.

The Commercial Appeal is not the first newspaper to adopt the “smaller is better” logic. Papers nationwide, including USA Today, The L.A. Times, and The Washington Post have already made the switch. Major newspaper publishers have discovered that by going from 54 to 50 inches they can save a bundle on the cost of newsprint. And with the cost of newsprint currently on the rise, many papers have succumbed to temptation and cut back on paper usage. The Boston Globe, which recently reduced its paper size, expects to save about $4 million this year. News industry experts estimate that newsprint can constitute as much as 60 percent of a paper’s total costs, so the Memphis paper’s profitability could improve significantly.

Nationwide, page sizes aren’t the only newsroom causalities. At many of the other shrinking papers the editorial staff has also been cut. At The Asbury Park Press, the second largest paper in New Jersey, newsroom staff has dropped from 240 to about 180 since 1997. And The Akron Beacon Journal announced earlier this month that it will lay off some 60 employees in order to meet financial goals set by Knight Ridder, its parent company.

According to sources at The Commercial Appeal, the paper has a hiring freeze on new reporters and positions left empty after the departures of Sara Derks, Bobby Hall, and Larry Rea. Warren Funk, The Commercial Appeal‘s director of human resources, did not respond to calls from the Flyer, nor did Deputy Managing Editor Otis Sanford.

It’s possible The Commercial Appeal is feeling pressure from its parent company, Scripps Howard, to help maintain the company’s impressive profit margin of nearly 30 percent in its newspaper division. As the second largest paper in the Scripps chain, the Memphis paper would seem to be in a position to greatly impact profit margins. But the newspaper division is the slowest growing of the Scripps ventures. (The cable channels Home and Garden Television, the Food Network, and Do it Yourself are more aggressive properties).

Whether or not the CA will have less news when pages are reduced a couple of inches remains to be seen. And the new size may be indeed be easier to handle in cramped spaces and beneficial to trees. But other beneficiaries will no doubt include Scripps Howard and its stockholders.

Categories
News News Feature

RAP PROTEST HITS NARAS

A Germantown woman prominent in Republican affairs, Cherrie Holden, has decided to publicly resign from the 32-member Board of Governors of the local chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Holden, who is also a member of the state Board of Education from Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District and was a state coordinator of the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, has for the last year been one of five officers in the local NARAS chapter, holding the position of secretary-treasurer. She is business manager for High Stacks Records, which specializes in gospel recordings but recently did a retro album featuring the music of former Stax artists.

Her resignation is not meant primarily as a statement directed at the local chapter or even at NARAS at large, Holden says. She intends it as a protest against what she sees as alarming tendencies in the popular music industry — notably its acceptance of that nitty-gritty street variety known as rap.

Holden’s letter of resignation from the Board of Governors goes as follows:

“Our chapter has grown so much in the past several years and our industry has greatly changed. Along with these changes has come a very different focus for our organization. We have moved from a representative organization to a membership organization. The recognition of our art has also changed. No longer is there honor in rewarding the music industry’s finest for bringing the world music as a form of art. We find our industry now rewarding and lifting up the avocation of hate and violence through anger-filled lyrics of spoken-word obscenities known as Rap. We applaud beautiful young teenagers dressed up to allure, singing words that imply explicit knowledge well beyond their years. These are the role models that influence the youth of our nation.

“Thomas Carlyle once said, ‘Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine.’ I believe, as did Carlyle, the unique gifts we are given by God are to be used to offer this world refreshment from the daily struggles we face. So strongly do I believe that we have lost our focus that I feel I must resign from the organization that is lauding these things of which I wholeheartedly disagree. Once I believed that my service on this board could perhaps slow down or even reverse this disturbing trend by filling one position to hold an anti-vote. I was wrong and perhaps thought too highly of my personal ability to influence in this matter. I encouraged several of you serving now to join me in this effort. My apologies to you for leaving though I do encourage you to listen to your convictions.

“I hope that one day soon our country will understand the significance of rewarding that which is pure and wholesome and uplifting. I love you all and appreciate the opportunity to have worked with you.”

Holden said she had been somewhat aggrieved when the Memphis rap group Three 6 Mafia won a Premier Player award from the local NARAS chapter. “They’re angry and hate-filled,” she said. “We should not glorify that stuff. I’ve mainly been on the board to represent the local gospel community and spotlight them. If that [rap] is what the people want, I can’t approve it. I guess I’ll just make room for somebody that agrees with the philosophy of the organization.”

Holden said she had a telephone conversation Tuesday with local NARAS director Jon Hornyak, who called her from Los Angeles, site of this week’s Grammy Awards celebration. “He understands my position,” Holden said. “He said his position was one of free speech, that he didn’t want to exclude any genre of music. I can understand that, too.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

TEQUILA MADNESS

A lovely letter from Bahama Breeze, the tropical-themed restaurant located in
the Destin-esque stretch of Germantown Parkway between Joe s Crab Shack and
that place with the cool go-cart races, reminded Fly on the Wall that
Thursday, February 22nd, is National Margarita Day.

These two questions came to mind: Does Hallmark make cards for this occasion?
and Does anyone have Jose Cuervo s home address?