God bless those wacky folks in South Memphis. They re not content to just display an opinion with a yard sign like all those NBA NOW, No Taxes NBA, and even Eternal Egypt NOW signs popping up everywhere. Some Memphian decided that, in this case, if you want to really voice your opinion, you better say it with Krylon.
If you think back to years ago, during the 1970s when downtown had about two bars and two restaurants, who would have thought that tonight would be the grand opening of Peabody Place Muvico Theatres, a 22-screen cinema in the heart of downtown. Tonight s opening, a benefit for St. Jude Children s Research Hospital, includes food, live music, and movie screenings. And just down the street in the fabulous AutoZone Park, the Memphis Redbirds take on Las Vegas. Down in Tunica, the good ol Pointer Sisters are playing at the Isle of Capri. And here at home, tonight s Songwriters In Their Own Voice concert at the Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center is hosted by Nancy Apple and features Keith Sykes, Teenie Hodges, and Delta Joe Sanders. The Boondogs are at the Blue Monkey tonight; Reni & Bob Simon and Randy Haspel are at the Blue Moon; Dash Rip Rock is at Young Avenue Deli; and for a cold beer and a great time, find Effie s House of Love. You won t be disappointed.
Let’s see. Took the week off from this column last week in order to get away from the world for a while, and after hiking several hundred feet down into the bottom of an abandoned quarry in a Missouri state park — illegally, as the quarry is off limits and has “No Trespassing” signs posted, due in part to the fact it seems that rescue teams have recently had to go in and get people out safe and alive — and hiking back up and spending the night in the woods, fulfilling our promise to the park ranger that we would indeed not turn our pup tent into a crystal meth lab for the night, I found myself in something of a perilous situation. It had nothing to do with the quarry but with some nasty insect bites. It had nothing to do with the actual insect bites but with the itching they caused. After leaving the campsite and finding myself on an observation deck in Cairo, Illinois, overlooking the site where the Ohio River feeds into the Mississippi, I thought it odd that I was the only one out there looking at the spectacular view. So while watching the two majestic bodies of water clash currents to form one river flowing south toward the Gulf of Mexico, I found myself absentmindedly scratching away at the chigger bites. I mean scratching. For dear life. Just digging away. No big deal, huh? Well, that’s what I thought until I turned around to leave the peak of the observation deck only to discover that there was another tier of it above me, lined with, oh, about 25 people who’d been staring down at me the entire time. I felt kind of like an Illinois tourist attraction. Oh, well, at least I got to drive through my favorite new town, Future City, Illinois. Now they have a plan. And now I’m tired of writing about that. What about those Bush girls?! Or, should I say, Busch girls? Does that Jenna have determination or what? Not once but twice now busted, once for drinking underage and then again for attempting to, using someone else’s ID in an Austin bar. I’ve got a little piece of advice for you, Jenna: If you’re going to try to down some beers using a fake ID, get one with your own picture on it. That little detail comes in awfully handy. And I do so wish I could have heard the conversation between her and Diddy about the matter. I can hear George now: “Now, Henna, Jennie, Jamie. Wait. Laura! What the hell did we name this kid? Oh, yeah. That’s right. Thanks, honey, and get back to your literacy work. I’ll be there to help in a minute. Tell Mom she’s doing a great job, too, and that I’m still trying to get her picture off the dollar bill. Now, Jenna, what have I told you about drinking before you turn 21? Drinking underage is a serious offense in this country and in many other nations, because if you are underage, that means you are not of the age in any nation that has age restrictions on drinking, and that includes this country, because you are the same age here as you are there. So from now on you will not drink at this age until that age changes to an age that the law says you may drink. Is that understandable and understood by you and me? By the way, how cold is the beer there?” Or something like that. At any rate, looks like the Secret Service people supposed to be watching them just haven’t quite figured out how to keep a Busch girl down.
I’m a city girl by design. I like tall buildings and hustle and bustle and the general grit that comes with a city.
Conversely, my parents live in a small town in Texas. And when I say small, I mean with two (or is it three?) sit-down restaurants; visiting almost entails paying a scruffy looking guide and traveling by mule. Okay, not really, but it is small; the only place that was ever open past six p.m. was a coffee house — and it only lasted three months.
Anyway, as a self-described city gal, I’ve always had a bit of disdain for the suburbs. I grew up in one, near Atlanta, and I loved it, because we’d play four-square on the street at dusk or touch football on the Edgertons’ front lawn in the summer.
But as an adult, I don’t play touch football very often. I’m more interested in nightlife and culture now. And, although this point could be argued, I consider myself an artist, or at least artistic, and the suburbs have always seemed a little antiseptic to me.
When I first moved to Memphis, I could never find the highway and effectively, just forgot that suburbs existed. Then, and I think this happens with anything unfamiliar, I realized I was a little scared of the suburbs.
I’d go out there and I wouldn’t know where anything was and there were tons of cars and all these very clean people around and I’d be out in my cut-offs and flip flops, looking like something the cat dragged in (or threw out, let’s be honest), and everywhere I looked I saw miles and miles of shiny, plasticky Targets and cheesy chain restaurants and home improvement stores. I was completely out of my element.
This past weekend, though, I went on a mini-break. And I stayed at someone’s house … in a suburb. There was green grass, plenty of parking, a hot tub, and even some preciousness in the form of four tow-headed children playing hide ‘n’ go seek.
It was nice, as I’m sure you can imagine.
Then I got back to my efficiency-plus apartment (all the conveniences of home … except for a bedroom) or as I like to call it, “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” derived from all the noise that frequently interrupts my important phone conversations and television shows, not to mention my much-needed beauty sleep. Instead I listen to the well-traveled flight path directly over my head and think about bombings.
But I digress. I’m back from my mini-break and I’m lugging the dog up the stairs in her kennel and she’s crying and I’m thinking, for probably the millionth time this month, how much I’m sure my neighbors hate me. And then I open my apartment door and a swarm of flies comes, well, flying at me, and I scream and drop the dog and she cries some more. (Appearantly, someone forgot to take out the trash before she left on her mini-break.)
It’s obvious to me that I’m not ready for a house in the suburbs; I think the forgetting the trash thing makes that pretty clear. I can barely take care of myself, much less one of the largest investments a person can make. And I still feel like I belong in the city, yet the suburbs were awfully nice.
I guess this is why people have houses in the Hamptons. I might just have to settle for a hotel room in Cordova.
( Mary Cashiola writes about life every Friday @ memphisflyer.com. You’re invited to come along.)
There are two art openings tonight. One is for Together We Paint, new paintings by four local artists at Cooper-Young Gallery. The other is at the University of Memphis Fogelman Executive Center for X: There to Here, a decade of photographs by Michael Mosby. Take my word for it and stop by here between 5:30 and 7:00 to see this show. It will make you happy. KISS FM is having its big annual summer concert tonight at, of all places, the DeSoto Civic Center, featuring Evan & Jaron, Joey McIntyre, The Baha Men, The Ateens, and Run-DMC. Exodus is playing at Automatic Slim s; The Fieldstones are playing the Hi-Tone; and last but certainly not least, Big Ass Truck is at the New Daisy tonight with opening act yes, you want more of them; you re screaming for them; you can t wait Accidental Mersh. Yeah.
Atmosphere
(Rhyme Sayers)
The perpetual miracle of pop music is the way undeniable cultural eruptions emanate from unlikely or marginalized sources. Whine all you want about plastic teen-pop (which produces its own miracles occasionally) and corporate consolidation, but our most democratic art form constantly renews itself, giving voice to lives that might otherwise remain unexplored.
The latest case in point could be Atmosphere, an indie-hip-hop duo from lily-white Minnesota. Consisting of DJ Ant and MC Slug, Atmosphere has recently released the finest indie-hop record I’ve ever laid ears on. Slug, the group’s 27-year-old, multiracial mouthpiece, has been an iconic figure in the Twin Cities for years now but has recently seen his reputation start to spread nationwide, even drawing rave reviews from such rock-crit gatekeepers as Robert Christgau and Greil Marcus. Lucy Ford, originally released as two vinyl EPs, shows why.
Ant’s soundscapes are sharp and tasteful but don’t generally call attention to themselves. Rather the music just sets a solid foundation for Slug’s impassioned, witty flow — a deeply personal, excursionary vocal style that may not be “tight” by conventional hip-hop standards but can snap back on beat for moments of head-bobbing abandon.
Slug’s pleas and testimonials here can be remarkably introspective and confessional — hip hop as “therapy on top of turntable riffs” — but Lucy Ford may also be the most empathetic album in the genre’s now 25-year history, a tour de force for an MC with “enough love to pass around and then some.”
The album opens with “Between the Lines,” a triptych of edgy character sketches. The song begins audaciously with a compassionate yet wary portrait of an overcooked cop (“See the policeman/Notice the lonely man/How do you think he keeps his head on straight?/Feel his rhythm “) then moves on to a potentially psychotic young woman who has lost it at the movies (“Lovely little case study/Castaway cutie/Masturbating in the back of that matinee movie” — take that, Chuck Berry!) before finishing with a suicidal rapper — who may or may not be Slug himself — trying to make it through a tour (“Tonight’s the last day/Put the butt in the ashtray/Lock the door and slit both wrists backstage”). The vignettes are separated by the tightrope-walking chorus “I just/Might just/Feel somebody/I just/Might just/Kill somebody.”
All over Lucy Ford Slug takes hip hop places it’s never been before — catching a “glimpse of religion” watching a 40-year-old woman masturbating (a motif, obviously) on “The Woman With the Tattooed Hands,” taking a road trip to Fargo in a “car full of anxiety” on “Mama Had a Baby and His Head Popped Off,” witnessing a grain-elevator suicide on a farm in northern Minnesota on “Nothing But Sunshine.”
And Slug also flips emotional tones with easy virtuosity — playful on “It Goes” and funny on the off-kilter blues “Guns and Cigarettes,” deadly serious on the angry treatise “Tears For the Sheep” (which begins “A city of fools/I want to bash whoever’s responsible for this incomprehensible lack of passion”) and the hip-hop-as-emo “Don’t Ever Fucking Question That” (a valentine right down to the “I love you”).
In addition to “Between the Lines,” the standouts (song-of-the-year candidates) are “Like Today” and “Party For the Fight to Write.” The former is a bohemian rewrite of Ice Cube’s “Today Was a Good Day” that makes the mundane — sleep in, grab your headphones, hit the record store, book store, coffee shop, plop down and rubberneck (“In the summertime/Women wear a lot of skin/And if I sit in one spot I can take ’em all in”) — seem somehow visionary. The latter is a propulsive, bass-driven anthem that casts an understanding yet militant eye on the splintering factions in the so-called hip-hop community. On this song, Slug is a spy in the house of bling, mistaken by hip-hop moguls and soldiers as “Happy-go-lucky/Just another face/Head-bobbin’ nobody” before he rises to issue a challenge — “Alright/Get your money right/But tonight I want you to take a side.” But Slug spikes the thorny metasong with an inspired, unifying chorus: “Some got pencils and some got guns/Some know how to stand and some of them run/We don’t all get along/But we sing the same song/Party for the fight to write.”
Half flat-out brilliant and half way beyond filler, this collection of “theory, stories, truth, and myths” might be the most compelling and vital record I’ve heard all year. Anyone who wants to love Eminem but doesn’t think he’s enlightened enough should go find this record right now. For more info on Atmosphere check out www.rhymesayers.com. — Chris Herrington
Grade: A
Split Lip Rayfield
(Bloodshot)
There’s been an abundance of new-timey bluegrass groups lately: the jazz intonation of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, the country inflection of the Scud Mountain Boys, and the punk infusion of the Bad Livers all represent variations on the genre, while the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou? reintroduced consumers to Ralph Stanley, bluegrass originator and fiddler extraordinaire. The possibility that bluegrass would emerge — in the 21st century, no less — near the forefront of alternative country trends seemed highly unlikely, yet popular opinion proves otherwise.
Enter Split Lip Rayfield. Like all “real” bluegrass bands, this Wichita-based group features guitar and mandolin punctuated by a drumless rhythm section of banjo and bass. Bassist Jeff Eaton thumps a stand-up fashioned out of a Ford gas tank — and he plays it with panache, getting a robust sound from the album’s fast-paced opener, “Movin’ To Virginia,” on through the jaunty title track to the sweet and lowdown “It’s No Good.”
Replete with kazoo solos and car crashes, Never Make It Home could easily slip into the Southern Culture On the Skids arena of hokum and hucksterism, but the sheer earnestness of Split Lip Rayfield keeps the album grounded. While four-part harmonies dominate all 14 songs, each track stands on its own emotionally. From the wistful chorus of “Record Shop” (“Find your lover undercover/You take all my vices from me/You will soon discover that the road ain’t as easy as it seems”) to the repentant “Thief” and jubilant, twangy “Dimestore Cowboy,” this bluegrass quartet displays natural vocal talent and a flair for songwriting.
Relative greenhorns today, Split Lip Rayfield have the ability — and propensity — to inspire the next generation of bluegrass fans. After all, even Ralph Stanley was once a newcomer to the scene. You read it here first: Flash-forward 50 years and I guarantee that Never Make It Home is a hillbilly classic.– Andria Lisle
Grade: A-
Split Lip Rayfield will be at Last Place on Earth on Thursday, June 7th.
Shaver
(New West)
This latest release from Shaver is also likely to be the group’s last since guitarist Eddy Shaver died of a heroin overdose on New Year’s Eve 2000. The pairing of the late Shaver’s aggressive Southern boogie leads with Billy Joe Shaver’s (his father, by the way) songwriting and quavery vocals was an unlikely combination that worked very well in the studio. This pairing gave guitarist Shaver’s hard-edged playing a thoughtful context to blaze away in, and the rock band format seemed to energize the elder Shaver into a kind of high-energy performance he never gave as a solo singer-songwriter. Father and son benefited artistically and commercially from this sometimes awkward pairing.
Despite losing his mother, wife, and son in the last two years, Billy Joe Shaver sounds anything but tragic here. There’s pathos and loss, but defiance and humor figure just as much on this recording. In that sense, The Earth Rolls On fits in with much of Shaver’s solo work, where an almost mindless brand of outlaw rebellion prevails. Luckily the defiance is leavened by some very funny lyrics and over-the-top vocals that settle somewhere between a shout and a bray. Hope he keeps the band format now that he’s touring behind this record, because Shaver never sounded this lively in his Texas troubadour days. — Ross Johnson
Grade: B+
Billy Joe Shaver will be at the Hi-Tone Café on Thursday, June 7th.
You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com
A cardinal’s bright call can be heard above the distant roar of traffic on the Interstate 240 bridge spanning the river downstream. An abundance of fish and birds dart around our canoe, and the nearly pristine river banks are filled with trees and dotted with animal tracks. The bridge seems a surreal intrusion into this verdant strip of nature.
Make no mistake — dramatically rechannelled and used as a sewer and dump for decades — the Wolf River is every bit an urban stream. But through the passage of time and the efforts of the Wolf River Conservancy, the stream is slowly healing and soon will be one of Memphis’ top ecological and recreational resources. In three to five years, conservancy executive director Larry Smith says, a mountain biker will be able to ride from the mouth of the Wolf downtown for 22 miles through forests and wetlands along the river to Houston Levee Road. Along the way are four “doorway” parks — Kennedy, Gragg, Douglas, and Shelby Farms — where residents have access to the greenbelt and river.
Greenbelts are a national trend, Smith says, because cities are beginning to see rivers as a resource rather than just a dumping ground. Not only can the Wolf be used for canoeing and fishing, but its greenbelt is home to almost every species of West Tennessee wildlife and is an important factor in recharging the drinking-water aquifers Memphians hold so dear.
“We are so far ahead of so many cities because the land is bought and the trails and bridges are already in place,” Smith says. “We just need a sponsoring agency like public works or the park commission to jump behind us, because it’s all public land.”
Signs, maps, and minor repairs to the trail are also needed, probably requiring a full-time project director until the trail is up and running, Smith says. Stretching 250 feet on both sides of the 100-foot-wide river, the forested greenbelt blocks out the city and is home to deer, foxes, bobcats, coyotes, minks, beavers, and all kinds of native birds and fish.
During our four-hour trip from Shelby Farms to the Warford Street Bridge, only the sound of overhead bridge traffic broke the serenity of birdcalls as our paddles moved steadily through the muddy brown water.
To the untrained eye, the Wolf seems untouched by development. Trees and grass line the river’s banks, marred only by the occasional beer can or junked car. In spots the earth has been trampled bare by a host of animals drinking from the river. But all the trees and greenery have regrown since the river and forest were razed to build a new straighter and deeper channel, Smith says. The river used to twist and turn through the city on its floodplain, but a new channel was finished in 1962 to accommodate more floodwater and open up the floodplains to development.
“[The present channel is] like the straight piece cutting through the “S” of the dollar sign,” Smith says. As a result of channelization, the wetlands and meanders along the floodplain have dried up, but he says the river is fortunate in that it has been allowed to heal rather than being rechannelized.
Smith is chest-deep in the river, searching the bottom for freshwater mussels. The growing population of mussels is a sign of a healthy ecosystem and good water quality, he says. The river’s animal and plant populations were hurt by the channelization and pollution but through time have reestablished themselves.
Though the Wolf receives treated sewage and runoff from several industries, Smith has no concerns about swimming in the river, though the water should not be consumed. Also, the Memphis Health Department has issued a ban on eating anything caught downstream from the Germantown Road Bridge. But Smith says almost all freshwater fish are contaminated with some kind of pesticide.
All the industries that dump into the Wolf have to be issued a permit, he says, with only a certain amount of effluence allowed. The Wolf is lucky, Smith says, because only nine industries are allowed to dump into the river. Among cities that already have a greenbelt the Wolf is one of the cleanest urban rivers in the country, he says. “They are considering basing permits on the TMDL — ‘the total maximum daily limit’ [of pollutants] — for each river, but right now permits are issued in a vacuum,” Smith says.
To most Memphians the Wolf is little more than a brown flash seen from the window of a speeding car, but Smith has been trapping and canoeing on this river since he was old enough to ride a bicycle. He still spends much of his time here, checking on the health of animal populations and making sure polluters are within their permit limits.
On visits throughout the country, Smith has seen how cities are slowly becoming aware of the importance of fresh water: how New Orleans gets its drinking water from the heavily polluted Mississippi; how Orlando has just determined sewage water must now be treated for drinking. “In ten years water is going to be more valuable than oil,” Smith predicts. It’s a hard concept to grasp in Memphis, where rivers and streams criss-cross the landscape and a giant aquifer holds some of the best drinking water in the world.
Smith frequently uses the Wolf as an outdoor classroom to lecture school children (and whoever else will listen) on the important linkage of Memphis drinking water to the Wolf River. While many of our rivers, including the Mississippi, are heavily polluted, and development in eastern Shelby County threatens our aquifers, government officials don’t seem to care, Smith says.
But the situation isn’t hopeless. The Wolf River is a good example of how time — and citizen involvement — can rebuild a natural resource.
“It’s a different river than it was in the 1950s,” Smith says. “And in the 1960s it was declared dead. But now it’s definitely on the rebound.”
You can e-mail Andrew Wilkins at letters@memphisflyer.com.
Skip Johnson is mad. In the last year or so, a 28-year-old picture of Johnson’s fuzzy head has shown up in big-time national magazines with the caption: “Haircut: Friday 3 p.m.” Back when the picture was made, Johnson was Grace Slick’s significant other and a rock-and-roll management type. So, don’t you know, he had big hair — about the size and shape of Epstein’s hair on Welcome Back, Kotter, along with the handlebar mustache from Spinal Tap’s bass player.
The picture is part of an ad for FusionOne, a company that sells “synchronization services.” The pitch is that a big-haired FusionOne customer wouldn’t forget a haircut appointment because his cell phone, Palm Pilot, and pager would keep bugging him until he went.
Of course, Johnson is suing everybody connected to the ad — FusionOne, the Black Rocket ad agency, and the Corbis Corporation, which put a couple dozen photos of Johnson on its Web site. This isn’t exactly shocking. I’ve done some calculations and I’m pretty sure that within 10 years, every American will be assigned a Social Security number and a lawsuit while still in the womb.
There’s double irony here: First, Johnson’s lawsuit has gotten him in the news, so the picture of his ’70s head is showing up all over the place. Second, Johnson and the defendants are getting a load of free publicity. Most likely, they’ll all get richer from the controversy.
When I heard about all this, I thought to myself, Why did these Black Rocket ad people go to all the trouble of digging out a 28-year-old photo? They could’ve put a photographer on any street corner in Nashville and gotten a bunch of pictures of ’70s hair belonging to people who would’ve been glad to sign a release.
It’s just a fact of life with a lot of musicians: The day the band breaks up, the hair freezes. There are at least 100 men in Nashville who look just like ZZ Top. There are just as many Peter Framptons, excluding Frampton himself, of course, who has handled baldness with dignity. And, shoot, you can’t drive across town without seeing a guy that you’re pretty sure was in Lynyrd Skynyrd.
It’s hard to give up the band hair. It’s almost as hard as selling the amp. You never know when somebody’s going to need you to fire up the mighty Twin Reverb and do that special wah-wah thing that only you can do.
I say this with all empathy. My own hair still parts down the middle, all by itself. I could fix it if I wanted to spend an hour with gel and spray, but it’s just not worth it. At this very moment, I’m just two feet away from a fully functional 1978 Music Man 210-HD amp. I’m ready to gig.
Anyhow, back to Skip Johnson. He has evolved. After working with the Who, Neil Young, Elton John, and Prince, Johnson managed a world tour of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. In 1998, he was the project director for a dinosaur exhibit at the Philadelphia Civic Center.
Today, at age 48, Johnson wears a tie to work, and he has an all-new hairdo. It’s a piled-up, curled-up, all-gray man-perm.
It looks like meringue.
Understand, I’ve got plenty of sympathy for men with middle-age hair trouble. Lately, I’ve started wondering if I’ll outlive my hair. If I do, I will shave my head and keep it shaved. Or, heck, I might even go to one of those hair-replacement places and let ’em transplant some of my ass hair up to my head. But I have left orders with good friends — if they see me with a combover or a man-perm, they must shoot me with a dart full of Thorazine and shave my head before I wake up. If I reoffend, they must reshoot and reshave me until I come to my senses.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think trying to fix up a man’s balding head with a big bunch of grandma-on-her-way-to-church curls is just wrong. It’s unnatural and hard to look at, like when our rabbit tries to sex up the neighbor cat. Just last night, on TV, I saw a man with a perm that clearly started behind his ears but was stretched up and tacked down to his forehead. If a gust of wind had come up, the business end of the perm would’ve popped up like a commode-seat lid, broken off and gone flying.
You men, stop trying to put hair someplace it’s not. And quit with the mostly-air perm jobs. Remember my guideline: If your hairs are further apart than guitar strings, it’s time to shave your head. And here’s another one, at no extra charge: No hair on a man’s head should go in a circle. Circular hair is Shirley Temple hair. I’m amazed that I have to explain this.
To the Editor:
Regarding Andrew Wilkins’ article “Parks for Sale,” (May 24th issue): I’ve been on Beale Street since day one of revitalization 18 years ago. The former Handy Park was run-down, full of vagrants sleeping on benches, bands playing on corners with little if any dignity, and skateboarders everywhere, running over patrons.
The new Handy Park has public restrooms (badly needed), a visitor’s center, a stage with a professional sound and light system, security cameras and lights, dressing rooms (so we don’t have trailers parked on Peabody Place), and, yes, picnic tables to sit on, not sleep on, and concessions that folks enjoy. Sounds American to me.
I’m glad I don’t have to call the police every morning to clear the park of vagrants sleeping on the benches. The new Handy Park means the city and Beale Street can put their best foot forward to the tourists of the world. I see improvements, not the past problems.
Preston Lamm, President, Beale Street Merchants Association, Memphis
To the Editor:
As I understand it, President Bush’s newly approved tax relief plan will provide refund checks for all American taxpayers for up to $300 for singles and up to $600 for married couples. That sounds great for all those who believe in lower taxes and getting nice checks in the mail. However, in a political climate of an “unpopular president” there might be some who disagree with this plan.
I propose to start a grassroots movement for those who oppose this tax relief. This movement is easy to take part in, will get the point across, and at the same time provide extra funding for all the government programs Bush’s adversaries want to continue.
A one-time $300 to $600 per household refund for any (except the very poor) is negligible. What would happen if all of the proponents of the government programs and funding corrections that the previous administration wanted to save and/or revive decided not to cash their checks? That money would instantly become available for these programs, and as Americans taking this action we would be taking control of the situation in a way that no government official could “spin” or negate.
This is a call to action for anyone who wants to send a clear message to President Bush. Save Social Security! Eliminate the national debt! Eliminate budget deficits for good! Tear up those refund checks!
Michael Naya, Memphis
To the Editor:
Kudos to the Memphis Bar Association and its survey on judges (City Reporter, May 24th issue). Hopefully a greater percentage of Memphis Bar Association members will participate in the future and more importantly, the survey results will continue to be made public.
Douglas R. Bergeron, Esq., Memphis
To the Editor:
My wife and I are from the Orlando area and attended what we expected to be the grand finale of barbecue events in Memphis. As we strolled the rows of massive and ingenious cooking booths at the world championship barbecue contest, we discovered that we would not be allowed to taste the “Q.” Why should I ever come back to such a show if we are not allowed to second-guess the judges?
The reason given to us for the lack of tasting was a health department ban. If this is true, I say the health department is lazy and not operating with the best interest of the people it serves.
We have been to numerous cooking events where a book of tickets was purchased and could be redeemed at the booth for a sample of the cooking. If the cooking was sanitary enough for the judges it is surely sanitary enough for the public.
Ray Means, Lake Mary, Florida
Editor’s note: We’re just taking a guess here, but we suspect that requiring all the barbecue cooking teams at the MIM cooking championship to provide enough food to feed the entire crowd might be a bit much to ask.
To the Editor:
Chris Walker’s Last Place on Earth’s imminent closing is a loss to a scene that has existed since the Sex Pistols came through town in 1977. Musicians local, national, and international have played LPOE’s stage, offering sounds ranging from Delorean’s beauty to Diarrhea of Anne Frank’s noise. No more will the pleasant smell of baked bread greet us as we exit a concert at LPOE. We owe Chris Walker our appreciation. Thanks, Chris, for the rock. Not to mention the roll.
Jon Fox, Memphis
Editor’s note II: Due to the fact that none of you had anything remotely new to say on the subject, we are declaring a moratorium on NBA letters this week.
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.
Hi Records is generally and justly thought of as the home of Willie Mitchell and Al Green, but before Hi replaced Stax as the city’s greatest soul provider it was the home of Hit Instrumentals (what the “Hi” originally stood for) in the form of two titans of the long-defunct jukebox market: Bill Black’s Combo and Ace Cannon. But now, with Hi Records Years collections from each of these two significant local acts, that side of the Hi story gets its due.
The continuation of a series that has also featured Hi soul artists Ann Peebles, Syl Johnson, and Otis Clay, these two 18-song compilations contain liner notes from music historian Colin Escort, who wrote the definitive Sun Records history, Good Rockin’ Tonight. The pieces captured on the two albums may seem pretty dated, but at their best — like the instrumentals of Booker T. and the MGs and the Markeys — these sides are a testament to the economy of the Memphis sound; Black’s and Cannon’s respective groups lay down tough, soulful grooves with no unnecessary flash.
Black was, of course, the bass player for Elvis Presley’s Sun-era group, forming his own combo after parting ways with the King. The 18 songs on this collection — which should be complete enough for most listeners — follow Black’s astoundingly successful instrumental group chronologically, from its founding to Black’s death in 1965 from a brain tumor.
Most of the cuts on The Best of Bill Black’s Combo — The Hi Records Years (Hi Records/The Right Stuff; Grade: B) charted, and the lead cuts, “Smokie Part 2” and “White Silver Sands,” both hit Top 20 pop and number one R&B. The changing lineup of Black’s combo features the formative work of some of the era’s finest regional talents, including Chips Moman, Tommy Cogbill, and Ace Cannon himself.
This collection mixes Black originals with covers of then-contemporary hits such as “Don’t Be Cruel” (Black never worked with Presley again, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing onto a good thing), “Tequila,” and Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie.” This stuff probably sounded a lot better at the time, coming individually out of a jukebox or as background music at a crowded bar or nightclub. But all together as one document it can be a bit of a drag to listen to, so much so that the likes of “Tequila” and “Blue Tango” are refreshing purely as changes of pace.
Honestly, unless you were there and harbor some nostalgic attraction or you’re a music historian or you just blindly love any music associated with Memphis, I have a hard time seeing how these decent little R&B shuffles could hold much interest today.
Cannon’s music holds up much better. The Best of Ace Cannon — The Hi Records Years (Hi Records/The Right Stuff; Grade: B+) covers a decade in the formidable sax man’s career, starting with his hit “Tuff” in 1961 and ending with the more modern-sounding “Drunk” from 1971.
Cannon’s music didn’t chart as well as Black’s, though it was every bit as prominent on jukeboxes and sure sounds better today. The bulk of this collection consists of lean, tasteful instrumentals, with Cannon’s slow, moaning blues sax spread over a reserved rhythm section of drums, bass, guitar, and organ or piano.
As with Black’s combo, the material here balances interpretations of pop hits of the day (“Kansas City,” “Searchin’,” “Heartbreak Hotel”) with original or more obscure material, but some of Cannon’s interpretations are so reworked that the sources are almost unrecognizable, and the music is all the better for it. This is the case with Cannon’s bluesy take on Johnny Cash’s “I Walk The Line” and his jazzy rendition of Hank Williams’ “Moanin’ the Blues” (here shortened to “Moanin'”). But not all is well. Cannon’s take on “Cotton Fields” (which would be treated to a great version a few years later by Creedence Clearwater Revival) is done in an arrangement too jaunty by half and marred by some histrionic, white-bread backing vocals and misplaced handclaps. It’s an atrocity.
Cannon’s music shows tremendous growth over the course of this collection, as the late ’60s and early ’70s see him getting into straight, hard funk on “Soul For Sale,” “Drunk” (the only cut with lead vocals), and (of all things) Pete Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer” with surprisingly credible results.
R.L. Burnside may have become a college-radio cause celebre in the mid-’90s, when hipster labels Matador and Epitaph joined Oxford’s Fat Possum in figuring out how to market old blues to young alt-rockers, but he’d been making high-quality blues records for a long time prior to that “discovery,” as two new collections attest.
Well Well Well (MC Records; Grade: B+) collects live recordings made by Burnside at five different locations from 1986 to 1993. This record adds something useful to the Burnside discography by capturing spontaneous and unguarded moments prior to Burnside’s repackaging that reflect something of the man’s personality outside of the image Fat Possum has cultivated for him. A hard, violent, and bemused take on the classic “Staggolee,” recorded at a friend’s home in New Orleans in 1986, is Burnside uncensored but detectably aware of the “badass” image he’s playing with. Even better is the extraordinary “Grazing Grass Rap,” a Richard Pryor-worthy monologue he delivers at a 1986 show in Charleston: “I was out in this yard, man. I was so hungry. I’d been hitchhiking for three or four days and I ain’t got no money in my pocket and I’m eating grass here on the front yard. This little girl, she came to the window and she looked out there and she saw me. So she looked back and told her mother. She said, ‘Mother, there’s a man out here that must just be plumb near about to starve to death, ’cause he’s eating grass.’ So [the mother] gets up, comes to the window, looks, and after she sees that I’m a black man, she says, ‘Mister, there’s better grazing in the back yard, ’cause we ain’t mowed that one.'”
Nothing else on the record can touch that, but the same intimate and relaxed mood informs the mix of Burnside originals and blues standards — Muddy Waters’ “Can’t Be Satisfied,” Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Mojo Hand,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “How Many More Years.”
Also from Burnside is Mississippi Hill Country Blues (Fat Possum/Epitaph; Grade: B), a straight reissue of a 1985 solo record that was mostly recorded in the Netherlands. Mississippi Hill Country Blues, as a studio recording, has better sound quality than Well Well Well but isn’t quite as interesting a document. It’s probably best recommended to recent Burnside aficionados who have never heard his more traditionally acoustic, pre-Fat Possum material. This record also contains three very early Burnside cuts, recorded in Coldwater, Mississippi, in 1967: “Rolling and Tumbling,” “Mellow Peaches,” and “I Believe.”
You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@mempisflyer.com.