Month: May 2001

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

postscript

Profitable Parks?

To the Editor:

Andrew Wilkins’ article “Parks For Sale” (May 24th issue) brings forth the question, “In whose interest does the Riverfront Development Commission really serve?” Although deemed “not-for-profit,” someone is obviously profiting! The very thought of removing the downtown fire station and library and replacing them with “retail or housing” certainly indicates that other powers are at work. What are Benny Lindermon and his cohorts’ true intentions and source of motivation? Someone is going to profit by turning these spaces into retail or housing and I call into question the RDC’s integrity. This land was donated to the city for public use, not commercialization!

According to Mr. Lindermon, “The fire station and library create almost a barrier between downtown and the riverfront,” and he furthermore refers to it as a “dead zone.” Well, if they feel that way, tear down the fire station and library and create a park that would provide a real service to the public. How nice it would be to have another “green zone” overlooking the river. It would provide a beautiful setting for downtowners to escape for lunch, added space for the already overcrowded Memphis in May activities, and a more aesthetic look to Front Street.

Let’s keep Memphis beautiful!

Ted O’Brien, Memphis

Not Surprising

To the Editor:

It’s not surprising that Mayor Herenton would set up an expensive program that would only aid one of his fallen from grace Praetorian Guards (City Reporter, May 17th issue). What concerns me is that it duplicates the ex-felon employment program that’s been so effective in filling the ranks of the city council.

Neil Nokes, Eads, TN

NBA, NBA, NBA, NBA …

To the Editor:

If John Branston goes to the Racquet Club to watch an NBA game, he is defeating the purpose of going to the Racquet Club (“Random Thoughts,” May 17th issue). Next time I am at the basketball complex on Mount Moriah, I’ll look to see if anybody is checking out the Pete Sampras match.

I disagree with Branston’s assumption that just because the NBA franchise will not have a great many employees its impact will not be as great as an investment in a conventional corporation. Other than FedEx and St. Jude, how many local businesses or organizations bring positive national attention to the area, generate civic pride, and offer the other immeasurable benefits that a NBA team can bring? Our public investment in a new arena is no different from prudent decisions other cities have made.

Mario L. Lindsey, Memphis

To the Editor:

The Heisley group will do the same to your city as it did to ours. Heisley accumulated his wealth by purchasing and flipping failing businesses. Do not think for one minute that if a better deal comes along in a couple of years that he will not move the team again. Here are some warning signs:

HOW TO MOVE AN NBA TEAM:

1. Hire a snake-oil-salesman GM (Dick Versace).

2. Hire a rookie head coach (instead of Lenny Wilkins, who would have loved to come to Vancouver.)

3. Hold training camp in California instead of the home city.

4. Do not attempt to contact season ticket holders in the offseason to renew seats.

5. Do not attempt to market the team to the corporate community.

6. Have owner sing national anthem at the season opener (kiss of death).

Nail this guy down, Memphis.

Ralph Lay, Vancouver, Canada

To the Editor:

As a basketball fan since the Grizzlies joined the NBA in 1995, I’ve been checking out both Memphis newspapers, as it appears that your fair city is going to relieve us of our franchise. When I read that a “pursuit team” is in Memphis checking this and that out, I want to scream! Not once, after Heisley purchased the team and promised to do due diligence to make the city of Vancouver proud, did team management meet with any of the businesses or fans. The original owner wasn’t even contacted to buy ticket packages for the past season. Now I read of Coach Lowe throwing out the first pitch at a Redbirds game. What a joke! Heisley and his band of followers have to be scrutinized and watched. He pulled the wool over our eyes by singing “O, Canada,” then 49 games into the season told us that the business community had failed him. He had no intention of trying to make the NBA work in Vancouver. I hope the media in Memphis keep this man’s feet to the fire.

Brian Lind, Burnaby, B.C.

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
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Trial Heats

The 2002 Tennessee gubernatorial race is shaping up as a dead heat, according to the Mason-Dixon polling organization — which, however, has so far only polled instances matching either of two Democratic candidates — ex-Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen, who is already announced, and Nashville congressman Bob Clement, whose candidacy is now a moot issue — vs. the likely Republican nominee, Rep. Van Hilleary of Tennessee’s 4th District.

Clement’s long-rumored announcement Tuesday afternoon that he would not be a candidate confirmed reports that the congressman had been able to recover from the announcement last month of Bredesen, who sewed up common sources of money and support.

Two other Democrats — former state party chairman Doug Horne of Knoxville and former state senator Andy Womack of Murfreesboro — were not included in the poll, although their candidacies seem all but certain.

A gubernatorial rundown:

The “Try-Harder” Candidate

Womack, a visitor to Memphis last week, plans to make his official announcement of candidacy for the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial nomination this week in Nashville.

The State Farm insurance agent and 12-year legislative veteran, who retired from the General Assembly just last year, can calculate the odds. He not only knows what the line is, he knows what his line is.

“I’ve just got to work at it a little harder,” he said Friday morning at a stop at The Peabody, making only a modest variation in the vintage phrase which Avis Car Rental used in its efforts to catch up with industry leader Hertz.

In Womack’s case, the presumed leaders are named Bredesen, Horne. An obvious underdog, Womack is nevertheless prepared to compete all the way to next year’s primary election date against his two well-heeled opponents.

Some of Womack’s backers insist their man can raise $2 million for a governor’s race — a sum that would seem both to tax the former legislator’s capacity and to be only a pittance compared to what multimillionaires Bredesen and Horne can come up with.

No matter.

“I’m prepared to wear out a lot of shoe leather,” Womack says. “I never have run in an election in which I wasn’t outspent.”

As the 55-year-old Womack discourses on such past experiences as being a platoon sergeant in Vietnam, when he not only faced enemy fire but worked closely with civilians in numerous friendly villages, it is clear he has confidence in both his leadership ability and his affinity for the grass roots.

“I’m not going to have the big lick contributors, but I’ll have lots of ordinary people, and that’s who I’m running for,” he says. “I think Tennesseans are tired of the same old names. They want to shift gears a little bit.”

Which is Womack’s way of acknowledging that he isn’t exactly a household name. He is well known to followers of the legislature, of course, having served for six years as chairman of the Senate Education Committee and having sponsored the 1992 Educational Improvement Act which effected the reforms called for by former Governor Ned McWherter.

Womack thinks it’s time for more focused attention on education, both at the K-12 and higher-ed levels, which is one reason why he’s running. He also thinks that, as someone familiar with the practices of the insurance industry, he is well equipped to pursue the overhaul which he thinks TennCare needs.

He professes concern that, in these two areas, and in that of taxation as well, state government has for too long followed a “laissez faire” logic.

“I think my experience in the legislature gives me a pretty good grounding in how to fix that,” he says. Unlike many in state government, he does not shy away from the prospect of making unpopular choices. On taxes, for example, he says, “We can’t afford to take anything off the table.” That means looking at both the sales tax and the income tax, each of which has evoked strong opposition.

“Mainly, though, what we’ve got to do is establish what we’re going to do in government, then determine how we’re going to pay for it,” says Womack, who has a good many specific proposals in mind — involving changes in TennCare’s underwriting basis, for example, or instituting “dual-institution” credit for high-schoolers taking college-level courses.

How much campaign money does the Try-Harder candidate have on hand right now?

Womack grins. “My mother told me never to tell how much money I make.”

At some point in the future, when he’ll have to ‘fess up in the form of financial disclosure statements, we’ll know, of course, and that will be some gauge of how serious Andy Womack’s chances are.

There’s no doubt, in the meantime, that his intentions are quite serious indeed.

Bredesen Touches All Bases

As reports first began to percolate that Clement, his presumed chief Democratic rival for the governorship, would announce his non-participation in the 2002 race, Bredesen came, saw, and conquered at a Democratic Party fund-raiser here last Tuesday night.

The fund-raiser, at the East Memphis home of former Shelby County Democratic chairman John Farris, was kept scrupulously neutral in the intra-party sense by both Farris and state Democratic chairman Bill Farmer, who also attended, but virtually everyone on hand privately professed support for Bredesen’s gubernatorial bid. Included were Farris himself, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, and former Shelby County mayor Bill Morris.

The accessions of Herenton and Morris to Bredesen’s cause were especially interesting in that the Memphis mayor went through the entire 1994 gubernatorial campaign without endorsing Bredesen, then the Democratic standard-bearer, and Morris was the then Nashville mayor’s chief primary opponent that year.

Not only that, it is generally believed that political activists friendly to Bredesen made sure that Morris became the subject of investigative focus that year, resulting in his brief indictment on charges of improper use of county prisoners at his campaign events.

Although Morris was able to clear himself and to resume campaigning, his campaign suffered a loss of momentum which could not be recouped. Reminded of those circumstances Tuesday night, Morris said, “I’m not thinking of the past. I’m looking to the future.”

Herenton’s decision to back Bredesen not only contrasted with his reluctance to support his then mayoral counterpart in 1994, it was further evidence that he finds himself increasingly able to make common cause with his erstwhile political rival, former congressman Harold Ford Sr., who, in his turn, would meet with Bredesen last week and promise to support him as he had in 1994.

(Eight years ago the then congressman found Bredesen a handy medium through which to inflict some payback on Morris, who — Ford thought — had, early on, frozen him out of the Clinton-Gore campaign of 1992 and had shown a reluctance to give financial aid to the legal fund which helped Ford, ultimately with success, to acquit himself of federal charges of conspiracy and bank fraud.)

The Farris fund-raiser was only the latest Bredesen visit to Memphis over the past several weeks. Much of the previous weekend had been spent here as well — the candidate schmoozing with Herenton and other local dignitaries of the political and business worlds.

Bredesen had also touched bases, not only with former congressman Ford and his son and successor, U.S. rep. Harold Ford Jr., but with members of the family political organization. Former county party chair David Cocke, a longtime Ford ally, recalled Monday that he had received a friendly telephone call prior to Bredesen’s visit here last week, asking for Cocke’s support.

“He was making the same call to lots of other people, too,” Cocke said. “Nobody else was that active.”

Clement’s Departure

In the immediate wake of the Mason-Dixon poll, which showed him edging Hilleary by 38 to 37 percent — Rep. Clement managed a statement that sounded upbeat.

“I am encouraged by such positive numbers, in both favorability and support, particularly since my name has not been on a statewide ballot in 23 years,” Clement said. “These numbers are consistent with the very positive response I have received from Tennesseans from all regions and all walks of life during the past few months.”

But on Tuesday, just after noon, the Nashville congressman released a statement which said in part: “Since there appears to be no shortage of quality Democratic candidates for governor, I have decided that an expensive and divisive primary is not in the best interest of the Tennessee Democratic Party. I wish the best for all Democratic candidates for governor … I will be returning the money I raised for the Bob Clement for Governor Committee and will continue to focus my time and energy on serving the people of the 5th Congressional District and Tennessee.”

For the record, the Mason-Dixon poll had Bredesen doing marginally better than Clement against Hilleary — winning by 40 percent to 37 percent. And the poll’s match-up of the two Democrats, along with former Tennessee education commissioner and Board of Regents chairman Charles Smith, came out: Bredesen, 33 percent; Clement, 28 percent; Smith, 3 percent; and the rest undecided.

· Horne, meanwhile, made it clear that only Clement’s involvement in a gubernatorial race would keep him out. With the Nashville congressman now a dropout, Horne is sure to enter himself, as he insisted last week.

That set up the prospect of an inevitable Battle of Millionaires — an intensely fought one between Bredesen, a former health-care executive, and Horne, whose various interests run from publishing to trucking, but one kept free of rancor.

Farris noted last week that it was important for Bredesen (and presumably for Horne also) to raise significant grass-roots money for the race. “People don’t want to get the idea that anyone is trying to buy the office,” he said.

· Bartlett alderman Mike Jewell, who is head of the sheriff’s department prisoner-transfer unit, formally declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for sheriff last Thursday night at the Bartlett Performing Arts Center on Appling Road.

Blaming the current administration for an unclear agenda and an undesirable “image” (though declining to criticize personalities by name or to cite specifics), Jewell pledged to restore public confidence if elected. ·

Breaking Out Of the Box

As the deliberations of the Tennessee General Assembly turned into what members hope is the home stretch, each of the legislature’s two chambers late last week appointed a 15-member committee. The two groups together constitute a joint conference committee and will attempt to resolve a budget impasse which, unless resolved, would threaten the state with a $1 billion deficit by next year.

Several Memphians are prominent in the effort.

State senator Jim Kyle (D-Frayser, Raleigh) was named chairman of the Senate contingent, which also includes Sen. John Ford (D-South Memphis).

The House group includes both Rep. Joe Kent (R-Southeast Memphis) and Speaker Pro Tem Lois DeBerry (D-South Central Memphis). · — JB

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Reveal, R.E.M. (Warner Bros.)

Accompanying the release of R.E.M.’s 12th studio album, Reveal, is a question repeated by critics, music journalists, and fans alike: Does the band still have it? Depending on whom you ask, “it” refers to A) R.E.M.’s talent for crafting smart, sincere pop songs with intelligent lyrics, B) the band’s trademark jangly sound that influenced countless other groups during the last two decades, or C) relevance.

A lushly orchestrated, sunnily hopeful album, Reveal provides confident answers to each of these queries: yes, no, and who cares.

Reveal consists of a dozen tracks showcasing Michael Stipe’s sophisticated lyrics and vocals and Peter Buck’s graceful guitar work. Penning songs that are emotionally direct without being transparent or obvious, Stipe is at his most declarative here: A third of the songs have full sentences for titles. “She Just Wants to Be” and “Disappear” — with the chorus “Tell me why did you come here?/I came here to disappear” — marry straightforward lyrics to assertive, triumphant melodies that are imbued with a sense of grandeur.

Elsewhere, R.E.M. convey the airy feel of adolescent summers, the album’s running theme. Songs such as “Summer Turns to High” and the gentle “Beachball” shimmer with nostalgia for a time when there is more of life before you than behind you. While the band members are aging (Stipe is 41, which is something like 300 in rock years), they still know how to create the dreamy pop music of youth.

But anyone hoping R.E.M. will return to their jangly roots may find Reveal too synthetic. Many predicted the band would follow U2’s lead and return to their earlier sound, which R.E.M. jettisoned in favor of a starker, more electronic sound on 1998’s Up, the band’s first album without founding drummer Bill Berry. Without Berry’s solid, unshowy drumming, however, such a return is simply impossible.

So, instead of biding their time, R.E.M. take some risks on Reveal, saturating the songs with keyboards and programmed beats. “The Lifting” starts the album with a symphonic wall of synthesizers and background noise, and the soft “I’ve Been High” flutters by on looped beats and Stipe’s breathy vocals. Still, Reveal is more grounded than its predecessor, with more attention going to Buck’s guitar on songs like “The Lifting” and “All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star),” as well as to flourishes like the tender horns on “Beachball” and the Pet Sounds piano on “Beat a Drum.”

As for relevance, when an album is this good, who cares?

— Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

Blue River, Becc & Hank (self-released)

Two local musicians, Becc Lester and Hank Sable, have just released a CD that fairly swoons in acoustic bliss. Sable (aka Hank of Rod & Hank’s Vintage Guitars) has a crisp but dreamy finger-picking style and a real ear for a pretty guitar tune, and Lester’s voice soars and sighs its way through these mostly unplugged but emotionally charged songs.

Lester was a guest vocalist on Sable’s excellent 1996 release, Rusted, but here it’s more of a true collaboration, with several co-penned tracks by the duo and a joyful interplay of voice and strings. The title song is a juicy piece of country pop that would turn any Nashville songwriter green with envy and make up-and-coming songstresses on Music Row give their pearly white teeth to cover. The melancholy magic of “Some September Morning” is balanced by the up-tempo Spanish flavor of “Barcelona Rain.” The artists write from the heart about major rites of passage in their lives, and the sentiments come ringing through loud and clear. For instance, the lush delicacy of “Heaven Sent,” with Sable’s guitars floating through Regina Eusey’s zephyr-like viola and Lester’s delicate vocals, was inspired by the birth of Sable’s daughter. (Sable just finished making a CD with Eusey as well.)

Despite an occasional lyrical lapse into cliché, it’s an impressive effort (especially considering that this is Lester’s first foray into songwriting). If there’s any justice or good musical taste left in this world, these songs should be all over country radio. — Lisa Lumb

Grade: B+

Becc & Hank will appear at Nancy Apple’s Songwriters’ Stage at the Blue Monkey on Tuesday, June 5th.

Inspiration Information, Shuggie Otis (Luaka Bop)

Inspiration Information is close to drum-machine heaven — if there is such a place worth visiting. Recorded in the early ’70s and now re-released by David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label, this is a combination of 1974’s Inspiration Information and four tracks from 1971’s Freedom Flight by guitarist/singer Shuggie Otis, son of California R&B bandleader Johnny Otis (who in the ’50s chose to pass for a black man when he was actually Greek — but that’s another story). The record is full of primitive drum-machine technology and programmed organ beats, and Otis plays just about everything except the horns and the strings on this record.

Sonically, the closest reference point for Inspiration Information would be Sly & the Family Stone’s 1971 coked-out classic There’s a Riot Goin’ On, with its use of drum machines and scratchy funk. Otis doesn’t sound like he was drugged-out or in despair a la Sly on Riot, but he was equally as inventive in the studio. If anything, Otis may have influenced Stone’s last decent record, 1973’s Fresh.

Otis’ “Strawberry Letter 23,” which originally appeared on Freedom Flight, became a number one R&B hit for the Brothers Johnson when they covered it in 1977. Their arrangement was very similar to the version included here. Inspiration Information tanked upon its original release by Epic Records in 1974, and since that time Otis has done the occasional recording session or live gig but not much else. It seems that this album was his best shot and his swan song. Shuggie Otis may be a puzzling case of arrested musical genius, but this record will do nicely as a legacy. — Ross Johnson

Grade: A

The Optimist LP, Turin Brakes (Astralwerks)

On the margins of the recent wave of Brit-pop reside Gale Paridjanian and Olly Knights, two guys making sensitive folk music as Turin Brakes. Armed with acoustic guitars and arcing harmonies, they differentiate themselves from their peers — including the likes of Coldplay and Badly Drawn Boy — by stripping their songs down to the bare minimum.

A confident if flawed effort, the duo’s debut, The Optimist LP, contains some fine moments, including the fragile opener, “Feeling Oblivion,” and the shimmery “Future Boy” (which unfortunately contains some stunningly bad lyrics like “Syphilis is a bitch/but contracting HIV is worse”). And “State of Things” matches chugging, percussion-driven rhythms with a beautifully plaintive, pleading chorus to great effect.

But occasionally, Turin Brakes’ sound is too rigid and underdeveloped. Congas drive the too-slick “Emergency 72” and give the song a lightweight ’70s sound. And on the poorly structured “The Door,” a truncated chorus seems to promise a more dramatic melody than it actually delivers, lending the song a fragmented, unfinished feel.

Despite some tasteful alt-pop flourishes, The Optimist LP possesses a startling austerity that creates a feeling of cohesion rare to debut albums. But it’s this same minimalist approach that sucks the flavor from too many of these songs. — SD

Grade: B-

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

Categories
Book Features Books

Smut For Smarty-pants

The Naughty Bits:

The Steamiest and Most Scandalous Sex Scenes From the World’s Greatest Books

By Jack Murnighan

Three Rivers Press, 231 pp.,

$14 (paper)

PHOTO BY PHILLIP PARKER

Jack Murnighan, the man behind Nerve.com’s and Nerve magazine’s “Jack’s Naughty Bits,” has a new book out and guess what. It’s called The Naughty Bits ! And to start off we’ll head straight down, to the bottom, to the Old Testament, because in Murnighan’s closing pages and “for sheer quantity of nudge nudge,” the Bible, he declares, is “up there.” Getting “there,” though, is not half the fun. In fact, it’s more “like trying to distinguish body parts in scrambled adult channels on TV. If your attention wavers for even an instant, you risk missing the enchilada.”

What he means is you risk missing out not on Abraham and Sarah (too complicated), not on Sodom and Gomorrah (too obvious), not on the Song of Solomon (too poetic, yet its beautiful verses Murnighan recognizes) but on Deuteronomy 23:1, in which it is written: “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.” Why the testicularly challenged and unaccountably memberless should be denied Paradise Murninghan, who is not a theologian but the next best thing (a Ph.D. in medieval literature from Duke), chooses not to explain but merely to bring to your sweaty little hands and undivided attention. But if it’s the enchilada you want, that’s what he’s here to serve.

Take it or leave it that he happens also to be conducting you on a crash course in world literature. You know, the books you either once had half a mind to get to or, full-minded, dreaded ever seeing the sight of. But rest assured. Of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, even Dr. Jack, he of the “bourbon-addled memory,” admits that it’s read “in its entirety only by the real triathletes of literary studies.” What we get of Spenser is a scant 40 lines out of his unread thousands. The good Elizabethan topic? The fine art of flirting. This, though, is nothing.

The topic when it comes to the usual suspect, the man behind Ulysses: the fine art of rimming. But with this critical aside from the enlightening Murnighan, who, in his prefaces to these selections, is always and everywhere eye- if not mind-expanding: “Joyce opts for cadence and mellifluence instead of hard adjectives … and it’s a shame, for nothing would have given me more pleasure than to see the consummate wordsmith butt up against the aggressively corporeal — in all its ineffability.”

Praise be then, and more pleasure in the eyes of Murnighan, for his exciting excerpt from Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow — a scene of bowel-emptying love-making that could easily empty your stomach and send you, if not to the closest sink, to the closest dictionary to double-check your understanding of the word “ineffable.” (The “butt up” part we get but not nearly often enough.)

No dictionary required and no instance among “the world’s greatest books” in the case of Larry Flynt, who, as an “Unseemly Man,” had his way with, then wrung the neck of his beloved, a chicken. Poor chicken. Have you gotten a good look at the face on Larry Flynt? Or, for that matter, Jean Genet? Even so, Genet gets his too — no chicken, just a guy — and this unaccustomed bit of armchair psychoanalyzing from Murnighan so out “there” it may be true (but what of it?): “Genet seeks out these ‘queers who hate themselves,’ finding, perhaps, in their pained concessions to desire a Dantesque punishment for his own inescapable self-hatred.”

Well, at least Genet, damnation, was in good company. Dante’s story of Paolo and Francesca in the Inferno, in what Murnighan calls “the most archetypal of all naughty bits in the history of literature,” gets pride of place, before and above the low-down we get from Lawrence, Roth, Goethe, Toni Morrison, Shakespeare, Donne, Hemingway, M.F.K. Fisher (!), Hesiod, Boccaccio, Erica Jong, Plato, Rabelais, George Eliot (!!), Chaucer, Sir Philip Sidney, Sappho, Petronius, Ovid, Anonymous (?), Sade, Ariosto, Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy, and for those who really know their international best-sellers, Thibaut de Champagne, John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester), the Pearl Poet, Johannes Secundus, Jean de Meun, and Guillaume IX. Plus, and get this, of all nonentities, Kenneth Starr, whose report, we’re informed, “was written as, and is certainly meant to be read as, a love story.” And I thought it was meant to be read as an attempted coup d’état.

But I, a sucker for the truth be told, even be it in a dead language, am sticking with the 2,000-year-old poems in Latin of Catullus, whose “bawdy and satiric lyrics,” Murnighan argues, “are some of history’s wittiest barbs.” He’s right. In poem LXIX, a certain Rufus is made not to wonder why “no woman/Wants to place her soft thigh under you …” The problem? This Rufus has got a “a mean goat in the armpit’s valley.” But that doesn’t compare to the double-trouble of a playboy named Amelius in XCVII. Jack Murnighan has done the work digging up this guy’s dirt. Your job’s to get wind of it.

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Record Roundup

The latest musical enterprise from Greg Cartwright, one of the driving forces behind local punk/garage-rock bands the Oblivians and the Compulsive Gamblers, The Reigning Sound have established themselves as one of the city’s finest rock bands with a recent string of wonderful club gigs. The band’s recorded debut, Break Up, Break Down (Sympathy For the Record Industry; Grade: A-), delivers on the promise of those live shows, presenting Cartwright’s new band as a more garage-rockin’ update of the Byrds. Break Up, Break Down features the chiming guitars and sweet melodies of the best mid-’60s folk-rock but adds the organ textures (Alex Greene) and rockin’, R&B-oriented rhythm section (drummer Greg Roberson and bassist Jeremy Scott) of the same period’s garage-rock scene. Cartwright then pushes this sound to another level with the smart, subtle songwriting and distinctly soulful vocals that he has brought to all of his projects. The resulting hybrid is an alternate take on what one-time Byrd Gram Parsons called Cosmic American Music.

The record is a pretty big departure for an artist best known for the Oblivians’ trash-punk clamor. Relatively sedate and extremely melodic, Break Up, Break Down boasts a Beach Boys cover (Pet Sounds‘ “Waiting For the Day”) and even ventures into country territory with a cover of the Everly Brothers’ “So Sad” and the lovely “As Long.” The latter features Papa Top’s West Coast Turnaround’s John Whittemore on steel guitar and Lucero’s Brian Venable on mandolin.

The record begins and ends very strongly but sags slightly in the middle. My faves are the two openers — “Since When” and “I Don’t Care.” The latter is a kiss-off to an ex-lover where both the lyrics and vocal phrasing have a distinctly Dylanesque feel, Cartwright spitting lyrics such as “You told me repeatedly that you had aged beyond your years/But you don’t have to scream your mantra standing so close to my ears” as Alex Greene colors the spaces in the music with great organ fills. Easily one of the best local records you’ll hear this year.

The quirky, sunny synth pop on Shelby Bryant‘s Cloud-Wow Music (Smells Like Records; Grade: A-) is bizarre and personal in a way that might conjure other pop oddballs such as Syd Barrett, Daniel Johnston, or Donovan, but the music Bryant creates on this record is really such a genre unto itself that it deserves the unique moniker Bryant has bestowed upon it. Cloud-wow music is an apt description for a collection that sounds and feels every bit as innocent and dreamy as its cover art. The solo debut from Bryant, who might be best known around town as a member of the mid-’90s new-wave band the Clears, is an acquired taste, for sure, but if you can hear it on its own terms it is really quite beautiful.

Full of swooning melodies and sly, weird lyrics, a love-song epiphany on Cloud-Wow Music takes the form of something as ineffably perfect as this moment from “The Walk” — “My pants are tight/My mind is loose/Not frightened The sky above is speaking some inane thing to me.” Bryant might be one of the few people on the planet who could sing the lyric “My mind is on high/A puff above the clouds in the sky” and have the listener absolutely convinced that it isn’t a drug reference.

Bryant will have an official release party for Cloud-Wow Music on Friday, June 15th, at Shangri-La Records. Look for more on Bryant in that week’s issue of the Flyer.

Bugging us haters with their “Orange Mound killer look,” rap collective (more than 10 MCs are credited on the record) Concrete Mound come on pretty strong on their eponymous debut (Po’ Boy; Grade: C+), but unlike early Three 6 Mafia, for instance, the group seems to be merely reporting the facts of a rough life rather than spiking their gangsta tales with calculated sensationalism. The backing tracks, which rely far too heavily on a synth sound pitched somewhere between the horror-movie-soundtrack sound of Three 6 and the laid-back funk of “classic” Dr. Dre, are pretty tepid, but the rapping and the lyrics are more accomplished. Concrete Mound’s “Hard Times” is no match for Run-DMC’s, but it’s still pretty good and contains the following Inspirational Verse: “The system is against us/But that ain’t new/They say we all act alike/But nigga that ain’t true.”

In terms of content — lyrical and vocal — this promising and occasionally powerful debut is better than the letter grade I’ve given it, but I docked it a couple notches due to poor sound quality.

Vocalist and harmonica player in the defunct local blues band the junkyardmen, Billy Gibson goes solo again with The Nearness of You (Inside Memphis; Grade: B), a record that finds him crooning and blowing through a batch of jazz and pre-rock pop standards with solid results. Gibson and his band deliver decent takes on the likes of Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood” and Hoagy Carmichael’s title track, while Gibson steps to the mike for serviceable interpretations of songs such as “When I Fall In Love With You” and “Sweet Lorraine.” My favorite track, though, is actually the only Gibson original on the set — the bluesy, piano-driven “Darling, Please Come Home.”

Blues Is My Business (Lucy; Grade: C+), the second solo album from former John Lee Hooker sideman-turned-Mid-Southerner Paul Wood, is a by-the-numbers but well-executed blues-rock effort. Recorded locally at Sounds Unreel Studio with a host of local studio stars — Jim Spake, Scott Thompson, Dave Smith, Steve Potts, Reba Russell — Blues Is My Business features Wood’s workmanlike vocals and flashy, bar-blues guitar and takes the blues itself as subject matter on originals such as “Everything Dies But the Blues” and “The Mojo Man,” which begins with a promise the record doesn’t quite live up to: “I used to boogie with John Lee Hooker/Shook Muddy Waters’ hand/They sent me here to play the blues for you/’Cause I’m the mojo man.”

If we can believe the trendspotters, then hair-metal nostalgia is on the rise, and, judging from their new eponymous disc (RubyFlex; Grade: C+), Bad Apple seems primed to take advantage of that. More old-school arena/boogie-metal than most hard-rock bands around today, Bad Apple’s album is sort of what Saliva might sound like without the hip-hop influences, pop hooks, or major-label sheen. Songs like “Mountain” and “Star” have a bit of a Southern-rock feel, but the most memorable song is also the oddest: It’s hard to tell if the Zeppelinesque “Hippie Festival” is intended to be a joke (it’s very possible that it is), but it’s pretty funny regardless.

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

Categories
Editorial Opinion

By Their Right Names

According to scripture, one of humankind’s first tasks was to name the animals. Our species has done a far better job at that than in coming up with proper political classifications.

Consider that the oppressive government of North Korea still masquerades as a “democratic republic,” when no practice or administrative structure of that government can remotely be said to deserve either part of the title.

In our own country there are some verbal anomalies as well. To be sure, our two major political parties have evolved names for themselves which, in a rough sense, define the difference between them. The Democrats, true to their name, aim their appeal at the broad masses, while the Republicans evoke more distinctly the idea of a representative (as against a participatory) democracy.

But every now and then an officeholder finds himself in the wrong party and goes through a changeover. Some years back, for example, Richard Shelby, a senator from Alabama, judged correctly that his political positions were far too conservative for him to remain a Democrat. He changed.

And now, in a switch that will have far more profound consequences, Vermont’s Senator Jim Jeffords has publicly renounced his Republican affiliation — ancestral as much as anything else — and declared himself an “independent.” More to the point, he has promised to vote with the Senate’s Democrats on organizational questions — as he already does on most ideological ones.

Jeffords’ decision has brought upon him more of the kind of abuse from the Bush administration and GOP party elders that hastened his departure in the first place. The switch comes after the ill-advised tax cut which has just passed the Congress but in time to have major influence on such weighty matters as judicial appointments and environmental legislation. Most important of all, it gives the Democrats control of the Senate’s parliamentary apparatus and committee chairmanships.

What it will end up doing — especially if other Republican moderates such as Arizona’s John McCain follow suit — is restore a broken promise of the 2000 presidential election, in which George W. Bush (whose ultimate victory was, to say the least, technical) ran as a centrist and “compassionate conservative.” Since his accession to the presidency with a minority of the popular vote, Bush has governed instead from the extreme right, with a minimum of consideration for the rest of the spectrum. In his public leave-taking, Jeffords said as much.

Good for him. In the long run, he may end up a Democrat. In the short run, “independent” sounds just about right. In that same vein, “centrist” is utterly and absolutely wrong for Bush, who so far has been an unblinking servant of the party’s extreme right wing.

Dutch Treat

Our congratulations to the men and women of Memphis in May, who put on a number of first-class events this year — the stellar Beale Street Music Fest (which drew record crowds), the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, and the Great Southern Food Festival among them.

The weather cooperated beautifully and everything seemed to go off without a hitch. The MIM organization seems to have risen above its troubles of a couple of years back and soared to new heights. Kudos to Jim Holt, Diane Hampton, and the hundreds of others who made Memphis in May a triumph this year.

Categories
News

The Run To Little Harbour

CREDIT: Photo by Paul Gerald

It’s just one of the days that’s available to you on a quiet island in the Bahamas. Other options include lying on the beach, shopping in town, reading under a shade tree, or doing that special brand of “not much” that can only be achieved in the islands. But this day we choose the run to Little Harbour. We would get on the boat at 10, ride for an hour to a coral reef national park, do some snorkeling and scuba diving, then continue to the remote artist colony with the outdoor café on the beach.

So we head down to Froggie’s Island Adventures in Hope Town, where we remember that all times in the Bahamas are, well, Island Time. In other words, at the stated departure time of 10, there remains a line of parents and kids slathering suntan oil on themselves, checking to make sure they have everything, and negotiating with Froggie who’s diving and who’s snorkeling.

Ah, yes, Froggie. Real name: Tito. He’s a late-30s former Coast Guard rescuer who decided to kick back in the Bahamas for a while, and now he runs this little diving/snorkeling/outing business with a couple of boats, a captain, and his beautiful German girlfriend with the tiny bikini. He seems happy.

The boat pulls out around, well, who cares about the time? Days are forever down here. We make our way through the harbor of Hope Town, admiring the sailboats from as far away as Portland and Seattle, then we grab some ice near the lighthouse and head for open water. Froggie puts on some Sting to take the edge off the engine noise, and we tourists scatter about the boat: older folks in the shade with books, young boys running around, young girls sunning themselves on the upper deck, the scuba guys comparing reef stories from Honduras and Australia.

We stop at Sandy Cay National Park, which looks like regular ocean to us. As we all gear up, Froggie points to a dark area of the water and tells us to swim that way, for that’s the reef. He also warns us about dangerous eels by singing this little ditty, to the tune of “That’s Amore”:

“It lives on the reef and has big sharp teeth; that’s a moray. Put your hand in the crack and you won’t get it back from the moray.”

We jump in the water and immediately enter another world. At first, in 30 feet of clear water, your heart jumps when you look down because you think you’re flying and about to fall. The human mind doesn’t deal well with empty space beneath it. Nor does it deal well with the five-foot barracuda that comes over to check everybody out. It hovers under the boat and, like 99.99 percent of barracudas, bothers no one.

Over at the reef, it’s truly another world. Most people start out looking for the “big-money” fish like the barracuda, a grouper that comes looking for handouts, a sea turtle, or a thoroughly harmless reef shark that cruises by. But what they come back talking about are the tiny fish, purple on their front half and yellow on their back. Or the little black ones which, on closer inspection, have glowing neon specks on them.

Or, typical of humans, they come back talking about the more human experiences, like the snorkelers who wind up in a cloud of scuba bubbles on the surface — it feels like swimming in champagne and is totally cool — or how Froggie can free-dive to the bottom, lie on his back, blow an air ring, then swim to the surface through the expanding ring. All the guys want to be Froggie, all the girls just want Froggie.

Back in the boat, everyone assumes their previous positions and we head over to Little Harbour for lunch. Back in 1951, a couple of sculptors named Randolph and Margot Johnson pulled into this harbor in their schooner and commenced to live the ultimate “to hell with the world” life. They lived in a cave with their three kids and made art. Eventually, they built a thatched-roof hut. Then a foundry. Then a gallery. Then Pete’s Pub was developed just off the beach. I say “developed” because “built” would be an overstatement; the heart of it is the pilot house and deck house from the original schooner.

Pete’s Pub is one of those places that all the cheesy “island bars” in the world are modeled after. But it’s the real deal, as is the menu of whatever happened to have been caught that day. We cruised the gallery, toured the foundry, admired a rusty Jaguar that seemed to have sat there for decades, and then heard Froggie say, “Okay, on the way back we can go wading in a few feet of water and look for sand dollars and conchs.”

And we all think, Okay, Froggie, we’re with you.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

A Pitcher’s Demons

Everybody remotely connected to St. Louis Cardinals baseball — or Memphis Redbirds baseball for that matter — seems to have a solution to the Rick Ankiel crisis except the one person whose solution matters: Ankiel himself. That’s the trouble when an athlete’s ailment appears to be more between the ears than in an ankle, knee, elbow, or shoulder. Were Ankiel recovering from, say, elbow surgery, there would be a team of pitching and medical specialists devoted to mapping his road back to peak health and performance. A mental problem? You can find a shrink around every corner, in every seat at AutoZone Park.

The Cardinals have decided to send Ankiel down to Jupiter, Florida, for something called extended spring training. They feel the next step in the kid’s recovery is his removal from the arena, big-league or otherwise. The fewer eyes seeing him struggle, the theory goes, the better he’ll be able to regain his pitching faculties.

I don’t want so much to offer my own solution to getting this “phenom” back to the level where he broke Dizzy Dean’s Cardinal record for strikeouts by a rookie (194 last season). The only idea I have more than likely flies in the face of reason for an organization that’s invested millions already in this 21-year-old’s left arm. What I can do is remind every Cardinal and Redbird coach, every fan and media type, and yes, every shrink why none of us — least of all the Cardinals — should give up on Ankiel.

Simply put, you cannot teach what Rick Ankiel can do with a baseball. A curveball that falls off a table. A fastball, regardless of its direction, that hums into the mid-90s. A changeup that has big-league sluggers falling out of their spikes. I once heard it said of Larry Bird that his jumpshot could not have been learned or developed, no matter the hours of practice the legendary Celtic invested. No, that shot was God-given. Such is the case with Ankiel’s pitching ability. What can be taught — especially to a person as young as Ankiel — is an acumen for demon-wrestling. The ability to control the mental monsters that torture so many to the point they forget how to do what they do best, whether it be manage a stock portfolio or deliver a pitch 60′ 6″ into a catcher’s mitt.

Make no mistake, Ankiel has demons, whether or not he will discuss them publicly. (Would you?) To begin with, his father spends his days and nights behind bars in Florida, serving a prison sentence for drug trafficking. The fact that Ankiel’s father played the largest role in the pitcher’s development through high school only compounds his absence now. Ankiel has also had to wrestle with being the “next Koufax” since the Cardinals selected him in the second round of the 1997 amateur draft. He shot through St. Louis’ minor-league system in two years. Shortly after his promotion to Memphis during the ’99 season, Sports Illustrated ran a feature story asking why he wasn’t already in the big leagues. He was not yet 20 years old. At a time when most of his peers are trying to figure out how to get three meals out of their minor-league per diem, Ankiel was answering questions about when he’d replace Bob Gibson atop the Cardinals’ pitching pantheon.

What may be most remarkable about the kid’s story is that, until last October, he answered every last one of those questions with a smile and, as often as not, a strikeout. Which brings us to his current walk on the wild side. In his three outings for the Redbirds since his demotion from St. Louis, Ankiel managed to pitch 4 1/3 innings, walking 17 and throwing 12 wild pitches. Those balls he slung to the backstop with no one on base weren’t even included in the wild-pitch count. If anything, he’s deteriorating. (Keep in mind that Ankiel beat none other than Randy Johnson and the Arizona Diamondbacks in his first start of the season for St. Louis.) So what to do? I’d go a step further than the Cards’ latest prescription.

If I were St. Louis general manager Walt Jocketty, I’d call this young man and deliver him a paid holiday, a season’s worth if necessary. Go home to Florida, Rick. Stay away from Jupiter, and find a way to remind yourself why you first climbed a pitching mound. Rediscover the elements of pitching that made you smile. If I’m Jocketty, I insist that he report to the Cardinals on a regular basis, that he stays out of trouble, and that he picks up a baseball now and then, if only to have a catch with friends. Visit your dad, Rick. Find the people who mean the most to you and listen to them, instead of the countless coaches and “experts.”

Don’t give up on Rick Ankiel. He’s no Steve Blass. (Blass, the former Pittsburgh Pirate, was 32 when his sudden puzzling loss of control forced him to retire.) The Brooklyn Dodgers wrestled with how to handle their own left-handed prodigy in the mid-Fifties. The kid had all kinds of stuff, seemed to have a sharp mind, but simply could not find the plate. Over his first two seasons, he struck out 60 and walked 57. The Dodgers resisted the urge to trade him, refused to cut him from their roster, and waited patiently for the magical “control cure.” You’ve heard of the kid? Sandy Koufax.

You can e-mail Frank Murtaugh at murtaugh@memphismagazine.com.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Blade Runner

In my whole life, I’ve seen two lawn-mower injuries and read about one.

When I was a teenager, I saw where Timmy Poole’s big toe used to be, before he ran over his own foot with a lawn mower.

A few years back, in the course of my usual work, I had a little talk with a man who was all covered in bandages and angry red marks. Curious sort that I am, I asked him what happened. He told me that he was cutting the side of a hill with his riding mower, and the mower flipped over. After that, he and the mower rolled down the hill together, playing an ugly game of tag. From the look of the man, the mower did all the tagging, sometimes leaving a little bruise, sometimes taking out a fair-size chunk of flesh.

Two years ago, I read about a man who was blown up by a lawn-mower bomb. Poor old James Larry McAnnally, of Jasper, Alabama, straddled his riding mower, turned the key, and got blown right into the hereafter. The blast also killed the loyal McAnnally dog, who was standing near the mower when the deal went down. A few months ago, I called the Jasper sheriff’s office and asked if the crime had ever been solved. Nope, they told me, the lawn-mower bomber walks free.

I don’t mean to be harsh, but I’m pretty sure that the first two injuries were foreseeable and preventable. All Timmy had to do was just not pull the lawn mower over his own bare foot. That’s pretty basic stuff, like not hitting yourself in the head with a tire iron.

The second guy could’ve done a little mental calculation. Something like, Lessee, if I sit on top of this little tractor and ride it sideways on this steep hill, there might be a problem with gravity.

Unlike the other two, McAnnally had an enemy worse than himself.

All of which brings me to this amazing factoid: Careless lawn-mower use causes more than 55,000 injuries and about 75 deaths every year. Children under the age of 5 and adults over the age of 65 constitute 65 percent of the fatalities. So says the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS).

“In some cases, adults allow children to stand on the lawn mower while the adult mows the lawn,” says the AOFAS.

I know, some people just like to do funny things with children and vehicles. My daddy used to haul me around in the bed of a pickup truck, where the spare tire was strapped down, but I slid around like a hockey puck. That was just Jabo Jowers’ way. When we went to Charleston on vacation, Jabo told me that if he had any gunpowder, he’d stuff me into one of those cannons on the battery and shoot me out into the harbor, just to see if I could swim back. To this day, I’m not sure if he was joking.

Anyhow, back to the lawn mowers. The AOFAS offers some suggestions on how to prevent lawn-mower injuries. Most of them are simple, commonsense things, such as make sure the lawn mower is not missing any critical blade guards; heed the manufacturer’s warnings; pick up rocks and sticks (projectiles) before you mow; and, for cryin’ out loud, don’t turn the riding mower into some hellish kiddie ride.

These all make sense.

But here’s my favorite, straight from the AOFAS official position statement on preventing lawn-mower injuries:

“Wear protective eye gear, hand gear, and footwear such as goggles, gloves, and heavy rubber sole boots. (Hiking shoes with double wall leather and cleats are good. Golf shoes are even better.)”

What? No hard hat with a shatter-resistant full face shield? No hockey-goalie gear? No bomb-sniffing dog? (Y’know, if the McAnnally dog had been a bomb-sniffing dog, he and his master might still be alive today.)

Call me quirky, but I’m proud of the fact that I’ve made it this far in life without owning a business suit or any golf equipment. Before I’d run out and buy any golf shoes, I’d just get myself one of those robot lawn mowers, like the Friendly Robotics RL500. All a mowing man has to do is ring his lawn with wires (like one of those dog-zapping electric fences), then set the turtle-shaped RL500 free. Sure, it costs $800, takes half the day to cut the grass, and misses spots. But if you can keep the yard clear of humans while the RL500 is doing its work, nobody will get hurt.

If I had a giant yard and a trust fund, I’d get the Wolf Zero, a $30,000 mower that cuts the grass with laser beams. That means no nasty blades to cut you up or throw rocks at innocent bystanders. I know, $30,000 is a bunch of money for a lawn mower, but you have to consider that the Zero is also a two-seater car, good to go on the street. If a man could figure out how to re-aim those lasers to get Winnebagos out of the fast lane on the Interstate, I figure it would be worth every penny.

E-mail Helter Shelter at walter.jowers@nashville.com.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

The most promising event this week has to be the Phatidef Music Techno Rap Show, which is scheduled for Saturday, June 2nd, at the International Shell Complex (806 E. Brooks Road). Put together by local hip-hop production company Phatidef, the event promises over 20 artists — a mix of techno DJs from the mecca of electronic music, Detroit, and rappers from Memphis, though no names have been announced. The event will begin at 7 p.m. and tickets are $20. For more information see Phatidef’s Web site — www.phatidef.com.

Nashville singer-songwriter Kate Campbell has captured the people and culture of the modern South in song since her mid-’90s debut. Campbell’s latest record, Wandering Strange, is a Southern gospel album recorded at Fame Studios, the Muscle Shoals birthplace of some of the greatest soul music of the ’60s, with studio icon Spooner Oldham in tow. Campbell will perform at the Center for Southern Folklore on Saturday, June 2nd.

Accomplished post-bop pianist Mulgrew Miller, who served a stint in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the mid-’80s, will be performing at Centenary United Methodist Church (584 East McLemore Avenue) on Saturday, June 2nd, at 7 p.m. There is no cover charge for the event, but the performance is being given to benefit the church’s summer youth camp, so don’t be stingy when the offering plate gets passed around.– Chris Herrington

Any band that can entice Buck Owens to record with them has my seal of approval. And while I was once leery of the Austin-based Derailers — their sound was too muscular and showy for my country music tastes — their 1999 release Full Western Dress turned me right around. From their duet with Owens to their gender-inverted cover of the Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me,” I was enthralled. They found that elusive groove where classic country meets mid-century pop and penned gritty, heartfelt lyrics that would make even the great Harlan Howard proud. While their live shows are fueled by the kind of energy that can only be described as punk, these guys never lose their pure, honky-tonk sound. And though they lack the ragged sincerity of the Two Dollar Pistols, the virtuosity of BR5-49, and the plain-talking charm of Dale Watson, the Derailers rank high in the pantheon of country revivalists. I’ve recommended them a number of times in the past and recommend them again now. Any chance to scoot your boots with these guys should be taken. So get your Stetson re-creased. The Derailers hit the Hi-Tone Café on Saturday, June 2nd. — Chris Davis