Month: September 2001

Categories
Opinion

Cape Corn, Arkansas

This should be on the videotape I send to the Survivor producers: me fighting my way through a seemingly endless jungle of cornstalks. With no compass or food. Miles of corn and every step closer (or farther) from my destination.

It’s opening day at the Mid-South MAiZE, a five-acre cornfield in Crittenden County that boasts three miles of twists and turns and the more-than-occasional dead end. Chris Taylor and Justin Taylor, the men behind the maze, sit in a booth, waiting for the crowds, but the sky rumbles threats of rain and the air is hot and sticky.

Part of a MAiZE franchise started in 1995 by Brett Herbst, the maze near Memphis was mostly the brainchild of Chris. He had worked at one of the corn mazes in California and wanted to do his own, so he called up his college buddy and asked him if he was interested.

“He convinced me it was a cool thing,” says Justin.

They leased a field from a farmer, designed a maze in the shape of the Memphis skyline, and then, using a grid, cut the design into a field of foot-high corn.

“It was like, go over eight rows and up six and come at me with the weedeater,” says Justin of the process. “We just thought the landmarks of The Pyramid and the Memphis bridge would be neat.”

In coming days, clumps of schoolchildren — staggered in groups of 10 — will be running through the maze, trying to beat their teachers, but today it’s fairly quiet. It’s possible to walk the maze in about 15 minutes if you know where you’re going. For most folks, though, it takes about 45 minutes to an hour.

I’m about to ask Chris and Justin for a hint — I heard once that a surefire way to solve a maze is to run your right hand along the wall; it might take you a week or two, but eventually you’ll get out — but then the Taylors, who are not related, tell us about the signs.

As with any navigation, you have to use guides: stars, landmarks, brightly colored flags. In this case, it’s the 10 yellow signposts with corn trivia questions and multiple-choice answers. Pick the right answer, go the right direction. Simple enough.

At 2:15:07, my companion and I begin. We walk at a leisurely pace, enjoying the sound of wind rustling through the corn stalks.

Roughly 15 minutes later — and after figuring that corn was first cultivated 4,000 years ago and taking a turn to the right — we are completely lost. (Turns out cultivated corn made its first appearance about 8,000 years ago.) We’ve run into one dead end, doubled back, taken the other path, made another turn, and another, and we’re lost. We could double back again, but we have no idea where exactly we came from. At this point, we barely know up from down, right from left. The only thing we’re keeping track of is how many frogs we’ve seen (64). We continue walking aimlessly.

I’m beginning to be reminded of my life, frogs and all.

Up ahead, we see Justin sitting on top a wooden bridge. If this were Survivor, Justin would be host Jeff Probst, waiting to give us an update.

When we finally mount the bridge, Justin says he saw us get lost. Stuck in the “2001” of “Mid-South Maze 2001.”

There will be “corn cops” stationed on this bridge later on, making sure that no one gets too lost. During weekend nights in October, the maze will be haunted; glow sticks will be on sale to help maze-goers navigate.

As we set off again, Justin tells us, “The second half is a little trickier.” That’s reassuring, since we did so well on the first half. He even keeps his mouth shut — a pointed silence — as we begin to take a wrong turn off the bridge. We quickly correct ourselves.

Then we journey along, much as we did before. At one point, we even take out the ol’ trusty quarter and give it a flip. Then we go the opposite way.

After a little while, we see the bridge up ahead and assume the maze will take a turn and that we’ll go under it. We get closer, only to realize that the path takes us right back onto the bridge.

Grrrrr, how did we get back here?

We climb the bridge in an attempt to get our bearings and see where we went wrong. But as we get to the top and look around, we realize it’s not the same bridge. Not only that, but there’s a signpost on the other side. We’re on the right path! If only out of sheer luck.

From here, the maze is a breeze. Suddenly we’d gotten smarter or faster or just luckier. We finish with a record time of 43 minutes and 31 seconds. (I didn’t say it was anyone else’s record, only ours.)

“It’s been an adventure so far,” Justin says of the project.

Too true. Now if only I’d had my video camera.

Get more information about the Mid-South MAiZE at www.cornfieldmaze.com.

Categories
Music Music Features

Big-Time Beats

Back when the grunge wave subsided and a slight lull set over the music scene, media prognosticators predicted that electronica, already a burgeoning subculture in Europe and a few major U.S. cities, would be responsible for the next great pop-culture revolution. And while such trends are never initiated by marketing directors or rock critics, for a while it seemed that they might be right: The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land debuted at the top of the Billboard Top 200 albums chart in 1997, and their song, “Smack My Bitch Up” (which now sounds so quaint in this Eminem age), stirred up a lot of controversy. MTV took time out of its busy Road Rules/Real World schedule to create and market Amp, a show featuring videos by electronica acts such as the Chemical Brothers, Underworld, and Orbital, spawning two well-received compilations in the process.

Thanks to nü-metal and teen pop, however, electronica never became the Next Big Thing, but it has become a big thing. Instead of overtaking the music scene in a sudden, earth-shaking wave, electronica — in its basic form as well as its many permutations — has gradually and quietly insinuated itself into mainstream culture. Moby and Fatboy Slim have become celebrities, albeit dubious ones, and BT, who has worked with artists as disparate as M. Doughty and DJ Rap, recently produced ‘NSync’s would-be avant-garde single “Pop.” Despite the fact that Amp has been relegated to MTV2, house turntablists are now a staple on MTV’s beach parties and awards shows.

If electronica has seeped into mainstream consciousness, then other musical elements have filtered into its aesthetic, diluting and mutating the genre into a hydra of offshoots. Disco adds flair to the dance music of Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk, while ’70s lite-rock mellowness informs Air’s most recent albums and punk adds fury to Atari Teenage Riot’s political rants.

With the Crystal Method, it’s good ol’ rock-and-roll. The duo — Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland — released their debut, Vegas, back in 1997, when electronica was still emerging from the underground. In July, the group released its long-awaited sophomore album, Tweekend, and launched its high-profile minifestival, dubbed the Seven Day Tweekend Tour, which features a rotating lineup including Überzone, Adam Freeland, and Beck collaborator DJ Swamp.

Perhaps as a result of a prominent slot on the hard-rock Family Values tour and the four-year interval between releases, Tweekend is a much more focused, hard-hitting album than Vegas, its sound streamlined to reach a wider audience. Jordan and Kirkland construct each song on a tight rhythmic base and then elaborate on that theme until they arrive at melodies and mood. There are few tempo changes from song to song and most feature a limited set of signature noises and sounds. If it’s a little bland at times, Tweekend certainly has one thing going for it: From the silly heavy-metal album cover (depicting a bikini-clad babe sunning herself on the beach while nuclear reactors smolder off-shore) to the nifty Peter Frampton-style talk-box vocal on “Ph.D.,” it is perhaps the most rock-and-roll electronica album in recent years.

Guitars punctuate almost every song on Tweekend, and the beats are heavier, more percussive and thudding, than those on the previous album — closer to the pounding drums of Orgy or Korn than, say, Roni Size or Orbital. Approximating the get-in/get-out approach of the best pop music, Jordan and Kirkland have pared down the songs on Tweekend to clock in at three to five minutes, as opposed to the meandering nine-minute tracks on Vegas. The result is a highly accessible album full of shorter, more digestible chunks of music.

Tweekend also features a very impressive roster of collaborators, most of whom reinforce the rock sound. In addition to producing several tracks, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine contributes a supremely funky guitar to the first single, “Name of the Game,” and Jon Brion, who has worked with Aimee Mann, Macy Gray, and Fiona Apple, produces and plays Wurlitzer on the atmospheric “Over the Line.” Perhaps the most curious cameo is by Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland, who sings on the dark “Murder,” the only song on Tweekend to emphasize vocals and to employ a more traditional song structure. “You know it’s hard, you know it’s murder,” Weiland sings, his vocals almost unrecognizably new wave, before launching into a nü-metal scream. A should-be single, it’s one of the album’s highlights.

Of course, Tweekend is a dance album and incorporates other elements into the mix. Occasionally, the sound suggests sluggish disco, while a faux-soul chorus turns up on “Ten Miles Back.” In addition to Morello, “Name of the Game” also features DJ Swamp on turntables and raps by Ryu of Styles of Beyond. Unfortunately, as the album progresses, the songs get longer, the guitars fall away, and Tweekend becomes just another run-of-the-mill dance exercise. In other words, the Crystal Method fare best when they rock out.

It’s promising, then, that rocking out is Jordan and Kirkland’s goal on the Seven Day Tweekend Tour. At a recent show in Philadelphia, the duo stood behind two keyboard stations like a techno Elton John and Billy Joel, re-creating the sound of both Vegas and Tweekend with surprising, almost dubious, clarity. But they varied the tempos and structures dramatically, building to intense, ear-piercing climaxes and making the songs more dynamic and aggressive.

While rock musicians can jump around with their guitars and twirl their mike stands, Jordan and Kirkland are pretty much tied to their cumbersome equipment. Perhaps realizing that this immobility makes for a fairly static concert, the duo have synchronized an intricate light show to create more of a spectacle. Rigged to an arch above the stage, multicolored, seizure-inducing lights and lasers pulse and flicker in time to the songs, alternately wowing and annoying the audience. More than re-creating a rave atmosphere in a concert space, the spectacle recalls the glory days of monumental light shows by groups like Pink Floyd.

If hard rock informs Crystal Method’s electronica, then Überzone — the opening act for this week’s local show — builds its songs on hip-hop beats and grooves. The brainchild of Southern Californian Q (who bears a striking resemblance to James van der Beek), Überzone combines old-school scratching and rhyme throwdowns with flurries of techno beats and ambient synths.

Überzone’s catchy and surprisingly diverse debut album, Faith In the Future, twists and pops with hip-hop and dance rhythms. Like the overwhelming majority of recent rap releases, almost every song on Faith In the Future features a collaborator, forming a very eclectic roster. Over wicky-wicky beats, Beenie Man spouts his growling patois on “Science Fiction,” while former Helmet frontman Page Hamilton sounds alarmingly like Seal on the smooth and soulful “Frequency.” But the big guest-artist coup on Faith In the Future is an appearance by godfathers of rap Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force on “2Kool4Skool.” As the crew trade back-and-forth rhymes, Q rises to the occasion, answering them with an increasingly hyperactive mix that threatens to short-circuit and explode.

But Überzone is never simply the backing band for a crew of guest musicians. On solo tracks like the rubbery “Bounce” and the ambient, synth-saturated title track, Q’s beats are too strong and his grooves too hypnotic to be upstaged. Ultimately, he emerges as the star of Faith In the Future, rightly so.

Neither the Crystal Method nor Überzone will be that Next Big Thing that electronica once promised. But thanks to their signature blend of seismic beats and rock chops, Jordan and Kirkland have indeed become a big thing. And with a boundary-breaking sense of adventure and stellar grooves to match, Überzone is on its way as well.

Local beat

by CHRIS HERRINGTON

“Brooklyn might suit me just fine” might be a line from the Lucero song “All Sewn Up,” but it would make just as much sense coming from the mouth of Inside Sounds owner Eddie Dattel. Dattel, whose local record label produced Eternal Egypt, the companion CD to the current Wonders Series exhibit at The Pyramid, will see the album travel with the exhibit to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in November.

Eternal Egypt is the fifth Wonders Series disc that Inside Sounds has produced (the label also did the listening companion for The Dixon’s currently touring Visualizing the Blues exhibit) and certainly isn’t the first to travel with an exhibit. “I’ve been on Home Shopping Network talking about these CDs,” Dattel says. “This isn’t the first time, but to be at the Brooklyn Museum of Art is a big deal for us.” Though most Wonders exhibits originate in Memphis before touring the country, it isn’t a given that Inside Sounds’ companion CDs will travel as well. As Dattel says, “For us it’s more of an accomplishment because these other shows aren’t contractually obligated to pick up our CDs. They just think that they are the best available.”

An instrumental New Age collection, Eternal Egypt was produced and arranged by local composer Grayson Wells with assistance from world-music stalwart Richard Graham. “Grayson is one of these cutting-edge musicians and composers who uses a lot of sampling,” Dattel says. “He’s at the right age [31] where he has the classical background but also is tapped into the techno world. I thought he would be a good choice for this because he’s somebody who can easily master musical genres that he may not be familiar with. So I knew he’d be able to do what I needed. I wanted the CD to have the [cinematic] feeling of being on a journey and also have some authentic, traditional Middle Eastern music.”

Dattel says that the album, available in local record stores as well as at the exhibit, hasn’t sold quite as well at The Pyramid as others, most notably the label’s companion to the 1997 Titanic exhibit. But it has done well on the open market. “We’ve found this weird niche with belly dancers,” Dattel says. “Belly-dance schools are starting to use it in their classes.”

A couple of area music and cultural festivals of note this weekend: In Brownsville, Tennessee, located on the “Music Highway” between Memphis and Nashville, Blues Festival 2001 takes place at the West Tennessee Heritage Center and at the home of blues legend Sleepy John Estes. Music on Friday night will run from 5 p.m. to midnight and will feature artists from Brownsville and nearby Jackson. Saturday’s lineup, from 1 p.m. to midnight, boasts a couple of notable Memphis performers. J. Blackfoot, the soul singer who got his start at Stax in the ’70s as the lead singer for the Soul Children, will headline the festival with a 9 p.m. closing slot. Pulling double duty will be local one-man-blues-band Richard Johnston, who will perform at the Sleepy John Estes stage at 1 p.m. and again on the Main Stage at 4:30.

Of more local interest this weekend is the annual Cooper-Young Festival, set for Saturday. The musical lineup this year features local acts such as Charlie Wood, FreeWorld, Ed, Planet Swan, Dahrius, and Valhalla. The headliner will be Sun rockabilly performer Sonny Burgess, who will take the stage at 5:30.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Short Cuts

Take Off Your Pants and Jacket

Blink-182 (MCA)

Who knew back in the early ’90s that Green Day and not Nirvana were the true harbingers of our collective rock-and-roll future? As the already questionable grunge “movement” has devolved into Modern Rock and metal has crawled back to reclaim arenas, it turns out that skate-punk is the most artistically fruitful of the currently commercially viable rock forms. The teenage angst of this music is more ordinary and far less forced than that of its heavier rivals for chart dominance. Ordinary music for ordinary kids, skate-punk doesn’t sell teenagers a romantically exaggerated vision of alienation; it reflects their everyday confusion and hormonal commotion back at them in music at least as honest as it is calculated. It also, of course, sounds good, employing the same kind of catchy, backbeat-driven riff aesthetic that locates the roots of both heavy metal and punk in the same place: ’50s rock-and-roll. By comparison, most nü metal just sounds like sludge.

But if Green Day were once the niftiest little punk-pop band anyone could imagine (too pop for diehards and avant-gardists, maybe, but just right for radio), their ascendant little brothers Blink-182 are even niftier. With Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, the band has crafted a near-great, teen boy rock-and-roll record — just a couple of notches below teen classics such as the Who’s Meaty, Beaty, Big, and Bouncy, the Replacements’ Let It Be, and the Beastie Boys’ Licensed To Ill.

Jacket is more youth-centered than the band’s 1999 breakthrough Enema of the State (this band loves juvenile album titles — too bad OU812 was already taken), which marked itself as a college record with the great one-two punch of “Going Away To College” and “What’s My Age Again?” Jacket is clearly a high school record, and if this regression feels like commercial calculation (taking dead aim at the TRL demographic that embraced the Enema single “All The Small Things”), it also feels dead-on.

Some tracks go for Big Subjects: “Stay Together For the Kids” is a divorce plaint that never gets too heavy-handed, and the lead-off “Anthem Part II” sets the tone (“Drown the youth with useless warnings/Teenage rules are fucked and boring”). Later, “Give Me One Good Reason” focuses the commiseration with a bit of subcultural solidarity.

But the record succeeds best in limning the everyday sexual terror of teendom. In an era of sexual one-upmanship in pop music, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket makes first dates, first kisses, concert crushes, and other innocent romantic entanglements sound like the big deals that they truly are. They hide the fear in flashes of crude, boyish humor (more dick-centric than a Kevin Smith movie) but lose their cool when faced with actual interaction with the opposite sex: The woe-is-me “I’m too scared to move ’cause I’m a fuckin’ boy” is the record’s truest lyric.

Blink-182 hooks this treatise on teendom to inexhaustibly simple music that nails the whiplash hormonal highs and lows, and they put the whole thing over with the perfectly anomic, monotone whine that permeates the entire record. Leave your cynicism at the door and you’ll be singing along with every song after three listens. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Live At The Apollo, Volume II

James Brown

(Polydor/Universal)

I wish it was better. I mean, somewhere there has to be a tape of an entire James Brown show as astonishing as the seven minutes of “Brother Rapp/Ain’t It Funky Now” available on 1991’s Star Time boxed set. This re-re-released recording of the James Brown show from June 1967 ain’t it. This expanded double CD reshuffles the track order and offers a scant 19 minutes of new material that transforms a pretty swell distillation of pre-P-Funk soul power into a windy, variety-show program complete with filler instrumentals, the JB dancers, and four or five introductions of the star (“James Brown, ladies and gentlemen!”). Not exactly a budget funkateer’s dream.

Nevertheless, I’m not really complaining, though the 70-minute-plus Say It Live and Loud from Houston ’68 is a superb single-disc option. Whas’ever it is, primo live Godfather is nothing to take lightly, and the contradictions in the complete show are more than apposite for an artist who has always ransomed joy for epic theater and sheer rhythmic momentum. The superior set list makes Volume II more exciting than the first Apollo record, especially if you prefer “Cold Sweat” and “There Was a Time” to world-historic crowd noise; the slow ones, like “I Wanna Be Around” and “That’s Life,” are ingenious blends of workingman’s soul and Rat Pack Vegas, and the band’s ballad dynamics augment the rapt audience squeals and portend the rattling swing of the uptempo numbers. The show has turns on a dime, JB chastising the band for missing cues only he can hear, vocals on the edge of collapse, suit-and-tie funk trances, prescient bongo fury, 20 more minutes of “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World,” and reprises that accelerate into hyperspace as JB bursts into encore after encore. It’s hard to walk away from once you start playing it. But I wish it was better. — Addison Engelking

Grade: A-

Nitelife

Martin Taylor

(Columbia)

Scottish guitarist Martin Taylor has withdrawn from his more classic approach — a style worshipful of legends Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian with its shunning of electric effects for more traditional and technical fretting — to take a dive into more commercial waters with Nitelife, his newest release and first for Columbia. Taylor is considered to be a very important jazz guitarist, a keeper of its doctrines, and by venturing into smooth, less challenging territory, he risks disappointment among fans and critics alike.

Co-produced by Memphis sax man Kirk Whalum, who plays on several tunes, Nitelife is an uneven album that sometimes limns the many reasons a pop sensibility should rarely be allowed to meddle with jazz. Whalum is more of an overproducer on much of the album and renders several tunes so much bubble-gum garbage, such as the Isaac Hayes-penned Dionne Warwick hit “Deja Vu,” by stomping all over Taylor’s guitar with a lame Casio beat, while others, like “Doctor Spin,” are quite strong in their fusion.

Some tunes, though, seem part of a much better project that was scrapped and thrown in the mix. Taylor’s version of French songstress Edith Piaf’s “Hymne a L’amour” is very nice, with Taylor accompanied only by minimal strings. Also wonderful is Taylor solo on Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” Taylor’s own “Across the Pond” is a Celtic/ambient/jazz piece that does seem to journey from one shore to the other in its course, beginning in old Scotland or thereabouts but sadly ending up in a cheesy New York night club before Taylor jerks it out of there and shows it why he’s considered to be one of the best. It is this, Taylor’s integrity, skill, and imagination as a guitarist, that ultimately saves Nitelife from drowning in the still waters of smooth jazz. n — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: B-

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

RECORD REVIEWS CHRIS HERRINGTON, Editor

Blink-182’s not-so-secret life of boys.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

September Morning

As the sun climbed into a cloudless blue sky the city went about its business as usual. At the Starbucks on Union the line of commuters waited for their mocha lattes. On the radio George Lapides was offering sports trivia. Joggers were jogging. The birds were singing. Life was good. Memphis was getting ready for another day, and a beautiful one it was.

It was Tuesday, our deadline day, and we were preparing a cover story on Memphis nightlife.

And then we started hearing the news, the horrible, unbelievable news that transfixed the country and that will probably forever change the way we see ourselves and our place in the world.

It began as an unfolding kaleidoscope of images, each more horrific and unbelievable than the last. First, we learned that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. Was it terrorism or just a terrible accident, we wondered. Then 18 minutes later, another plane struck the other tower and the intentional nature of the attacks became more apparent. Before we could begin to let the enormity of these events sink in, we learned of yet another suicide-plane attack on the Pentagon. Then the towers collapsed, one after another, taking countless more lives; then another plane crashed near Pittsburgh. Rumors flew over the airwaves and around the office as reports came tumbling in from various sources. There were four planes, no, five. More attacks would come. The airports were closing …

What the hell was happening?

The horror grew with each new revelation, with each numbing report of more death and destruction. Then came the queasy fear, the certain knowledge that America was no longer a safe haven, insulated from the messy but distant terrorism that plagues so much of the rest of the world. We seemed suddenly vulnerable, at the mercy of an evil too big to comprehend. Was there more to come?

We called friends and family, no matter where they were, seeking assurance that they were okay, seeking affirmation that they too had seen the news, had shared the nightmare. Our nightlife cover story seemed trivial now, pointless, a remnant of an easier, happier time, a time that suddenly seemed long ago and far away.

The terrorist suicide-plane attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania were a wake-up call for all of us. A “Pearl Harbor” moment for a new generation. Only this time there is no enemy country to invade, no clear way to fight back. The Japanese attack of 1941 was merciless and a surprise, but at least we knew where Tokyo was. This time it will do no good to mobilize our industries or stage a draft. The “enemy” is faceless, anonymous, and uses our own commercial airliners against us. Sophisticated missile defense systems and smart bombs are useless in the face of such actions.

Diplomacy seems equally futile. We are dealing with a foe whose soldiers find their greatest victories in suicide killings of civilians, whose hatred of America justifies any act, no matter how heinous. How we travel, how we live, how we view ourselves and our relations with the rest of the world are irrevocably altered.

As a weekly newspaper, the Flyer cannot offer breaking news in a situation such as this. That job is best left to television and the daily papers. We can, however, offer some perspective on the situation, some analysis of the events and their aftermath. And that’s what we’ve attempted to do this week. The paper is a day later than normal, but events have transpired to make it so.

As I left downtown at day’s end Tuesday, I couldn’t help noticing the utter normalcy everywhere. Carpenters pounded nails on a new house; the trolley clattered by; runners jogged along the the Bluff Walk; the river ran as it always does, reflecting the setting sun. It all seemed the same as ever. But it wasn’t. Not really.

— Bruce VanWyngarden

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
Sports Sports Feature

Much To Learn

Last Friday night I worked the yardage chains for a high school game between TSSAA Division 2A Bishop Byrne and Mississippi Division 5A Southaven. Division 2A is in its first year of existence in Tennessee and comprises the state’s smallest private schools. Division 5A is Mississippi’s largest school category.

Since the game was at Bishop Byrne, the chains were on the Southaven side of the field, giving me the satisfaction of listening to the Southaven players and fans scream in despair for three quarters as their team struggled with the smaller squad. (Full disclosure: I’m a Bishop Byrne grad.) In the fourth quarter Southaven’s wishbone offense finally started to wear down the exhausted line of BBHS, because most of Byrne’s linemen played both ways.

Southaven pulled away in the fourth, allowing crowd and players alike to breathe a sigh of relief as they piled on 22 points in the fourth quarter for a sloppy win. Here’s my question: Did Southaven gain anything from the experience, other than a mark in the win column?

At all levels of football, the idea of playing a smaller or larger squad is a common practice. Collegiately it can give the smaller school a good cash bonus from TV proceeds. It also allows the small squad to play a tough opponent, making the rest of the schedule easier in comparison. Such games allow the larger school to flex its muscles, loosen any early season kinks and get some confidence.

That was the goal for the University of Memphis as it played NCAA Division I AA University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. While the offense clicked to the tune of a 43-10 victory, the defense took a definite step backward, contributing to most of the squad’s appalling 13 penalties for 110 yards. Worse, three of those penalties were in the Tigers’ red zone, leading to the only Mocs touchdown. The Tiger offense fared significantly better, putting up hefty numbers as running back Dante Brown ran 18 times for 158 yards and one touchdown while also catching one TD strike from Travis Anglin. Anglin also put on a show, passing 15-22 for 145 yards and two TDs and running 17 times for 78 yards and two scores.

More important than just padding stats, the game allowed the coaching staff to see exactly what it has. Brown is in his first year out of JUCO Middle Georgia College and is still the new guy, though Tiger head coach Tommy West did recruit him for Clemson. Also positive is Anglin’s passing efficiency (21-29, first in C-USA) and his running yardage, which ranks eighth in C-USA.

But what to say about that defense? What should be the Tigers’ strong suit has so far been its Joker. The coaching staff emphasized the point with this week’s MVP awards. While Brown deservedly pulled the honors for offense and frosh punter James Gaither earned the nod for special teams, no defensive player found his way to the honor. Senior linebacker DeMorrio Shank says that no one deserved it. “We didn’t play as well as we felt we should have,” he says. “It wouldn’t be good to pick a standout player on defense because there really weren’t any. We could have improved at all areas of defense.”

Those are harsh words for a defense that allowed only 10 points, 30 yards rushing, and 201 yards passing against pass-crazy UTC. But according to Shank, he and the rest of the defense know their efforts were not good enough. “We set a higher standard for ourselves,” he says. “We know what we can be. We’re not doing the things we can do. We have to keep our heads in the game. We have to keep poised. We’re a blue-collar football team and we didn’t play that way Saturday.”

West was also very unhappy with the defense’s performance, though he says he has gained some perspective. “I probably feel a little better about the game now, after reviewing the tape,” he says. However, “I would have felt better without all the penalties.”

West notes that the penalties kept the Mocs in the first half of the game, not the Tiger defense giving up passes. “We kept a bunch of their drives alive,” West says.

West doesn’t have much else to say about the penalties. He knows that the Memphis defense is experienced enough to fix itself by the Tigers’ next game against upstart South Florida, which beat Pittsburgh last week in only its eighth Division IA game. In the week off, West is still concentrating on his offense, whose prodigious effort this past week shadows some deficiencies. “We’re inconsistent at wide receiver, from a blocking standpoint,” he says. “I don’t think they understand when you are a target or potential target and when you are a decoy.” West wants Anglin to run. That means reading his first option, and then taking off if that isn’t there. The Tiger offense features three to five receivers, so they have to do their job to keep defenses honest, giving Anglin room for his short passing game. That in turn should open the field to allow for longer gains from both the passing and running games.

Probably the most positive thing about the UM/UTC romp has nothing to do with the score. The coach and the staff know that their mistakes could have cost them a game against most Division IA teams and that they need to get it in gear to have a chance to be one of C-USA’s four bowl bids. If the team can learn from the UTC experience, that’s more important than the win itself.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

With two legit classics under his belt — in the form of 1982’s Marshall Crenshaw and 1983’s Field Day — and a host of pop nuggets lurking in the rest of his catalog, Marshall Crenshaw is one of the most accomplished singer-songwriters around, even if his commercial success never matched his artistic triumphs. In his prime, Crenshaw displayed an unrivaled ability to evoke vintage sources such as the Beatles and Buddy Holly without sounding the slightest bit retro. And those who caught Crenshaw’s Memphis gig last year attest that his gifts remain undiminished. Crenshaw will be back at the Hi-Tone Café on Saturday, September 15th.

But if you’re looking for something a bit more raucous on Saturday night, then you might want to head to downtown’s newest music venue, The Lounge at Gibson Guitar Plant, for a local double-bill that promises to be plenty rousing: Eighty-Katie, riding the wave of a fine new debut album, and the surging Subteens, coming off a great performance at the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival a couple weeks ago. — Chris Herrington

On to the hearsay front. Not so long ago the following monologue was delivered by an employee at a popular downtown beer joint: “So, anyway, this girl was totally offended. The band had played some song that offended her and she didn’t just want her money back, she wanted an apology. She wanted me to apologize to her. So I just looked at her and told her, ‘Ma’am, you do know that you came to see a band called Anal Cunt.'” David Mamet, eat your heart out. Now I’ve got no idea what A.C. sounds like, and though I’m no Puritan, the chances are mighty I’ll not be investigating the matter anytime soon. But I know there are plenty of doped-up meathead thrill-seekers out there primed to take on anything that appears even remotely transgressive. Interested parties may catch Anal Cunt at the Map Room on Thursday, September 13th.

If that doesn’t sound like your kind of thing there are a number of other fine choices this week. Memphis’ own rock legend, Alex Chilton, of Big Star and Box Tops fame, will be at the Young Avenue Deli on Friday, September 14th, with the fab 45s, whose song “King of Mexico” ranks among the most insidiously catchy numbers ever recorded. Saturday, September 15th, brings the good Reverend Horton Heat‘s campy brand of retro rocket juice to the Deli, with local heroes Lucero in tow. There will be plenty of punked-up gender-bending when the Demolition Doll Rods hit the Hi-Tone Café on Wednesday, September 19th. But for my money there is really only one show in town this week: Greg Hisky’s Dixie Whisky Boys do their 10th annual tribute to Hank Williams Sr. at the P&H Cafe on Friday, September 14th. Like the tasty beverage that gives Hisky’s group its name, this event just gets better with age. — Chris Davis

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Open All Night

Now don’t go misunderstanding me. I’m not trash-talking anybody here. I think Playhouse on the Square serves a valuable purpose within our community, especially when it comes to education and outreach. But when I sit back and consider our city’s two professional theater companies in purely artistic terms, it seems that the Memphis Black Rep, an organization spawned by the ever-expanding Playhouse empire, is rapidly positioning itself as the more significant. Here’s why:

Playhouse on the Square is, outside of its educational branch, exclusively in the import business. It produces a fairly healthy mix of newer plays and musicals as well as classics and standards, all of which were developed elsewhere and have little or no actual connection to our community. Playhouse is our somewhat commercially tinted window to the world of live performance, offering up occasional nods to more interesting, if less marketable, theatricals. The Black Rep is just a little more ambitious. In addition to producing a balanced slate of culturally significant works such as The Trial of One Short Sighted Black Woman and Day of Absence, alongside lighter endeavors such as 5 Guys Named Moe and Once on This Island, it has begun to produce a body of original work.

Last season’s The Soul of a People, a compiled script using poetry, prose, and music from the Harlem Renaissance to trace the African-American experience from slave ships to the present, was an auspicious, if troubled, premiere. This year’s season opener, The 24/Seven Cafe by Ruby O’Gray, who recently won an Ostrander for her performance in The Trial of One Short Sighted Black Woman, focuses on life in a greasy spoon modeled after the Harlem House Restaurants, at one point in Memphis history the only place where black people could be served a piping-hot meal 24/7. While both of these very different new works could stand a good deal of fine-tuning, they represent a giant leap for the Memphis theater community. By developing experimental (Soul of a People) and commercial (24/Seven) work, the Black Rep not only seeks to create a pride-based bond with the community at large, it puts itself in the position of becoming cultural exporters. It has opened up a trade route which might very well make Memphis’ unique theatrical voice available to the world. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Regardless of vision and ability, those in the business of mounting proven shows from elsewhere are craftsmen, and that’s no pejorative. But those seeking the title of artist must, as a matter of course, make their own gravy.

The 24/Seven Cafe isn’t exactly groundbreaking work. It’s a feather-light sitcom with one meager through-line holding it all together: Will Allene, a melancholy young waitress at the cafe, find the love she so richly deserves? It’s a tried-and-true recipe for entertaining fluff, and playwright O’Gray mostly gets it right. There is not an ounce of pretension in her script, which is infused with sight gags and bolstered by delightfully lowbrow humor. And while the story itself may be a bit threadbare, it is told through the eyes of 10 unforgettable characters.

Bullshittin’ and brawling their way through the show, the gigantic Bob Muse and the diminutive Tony Anderson make a fine comic duo. Muse’s Thomas is a potty-mouthed letch with a heart of gold who lives to look up women’s skirts, while Anderson takes on the role of Fred, a presumably pious man whose head can still be turned by a well-turned behind. Precious Morris (the sassy Carla), DeAara Lynette (the heartbroken Allene), and Folami Jones (the accident-prone Rita Mae) are equally fine as the cafe’s tough and tender trinity of waitresses whose telephone greeting, “We’re all night and we’re all right!” becomes something of a mantra. Rozell C. Henderson makes such an attractive suitor that on Saturday night a majority of the female audience let out a spontaneous “I do” when he made his proposal of marriage to Allene. Dee Latch (as Etta), the self-sacrificing concubine Saffrita Mae in last season’s Trial of One Short Sighted Black Woman, has taken yet another stab at playing the faux-ho with a secret. Women will hate her immediately, but, fellas, prepare to collect your jaw from off the floor. The remainder of the ensemble adds just the right amount of texture to the show, but Louise Davis’ standout performance as Mrs. Bea, a sloshed undertaker whose taste for the bubbly leads to a stumbling comic trip through the snow wearing nothing but a slip, is absolutely unforgettable.

Director Harry Bryce has seen to it that any deficiencies in the script are masked by a microscopic attention to detail. The bacon, eggs, and sausage that are constantly being prepared on stage torture the audience with the irresistible odor of breakfast. It is a simple but potent reminder that, unlike film, theater is an art for all the senses.

While The 24/Seven Cafe won’t go down in the canon of great American literature, it is thoroughly entertaining throughout. O’Gray should be mighty proud of her work. So should we all. This play belongs to us. Others may only borrow it for a while. n

Through September 30th at TheatreWorks.

Categories
News

A Special Spot

In the sometimes foggy world that is my memory, Cades Cove lives in a clear and sunny spot. It’s all alone there, surrounded by tree-covered mountains on a long autumn afternoon, with the shadows stretching out over the fields where deer are grazing. It’s red, orange, yellow, and a dozen shades of green. It seems untouchable, a perfect memory of what a day can look like.

Technically, Cades Cove is a place in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You can find it on a map and drive to it in a car; something like 2 million people do so every year. But I don’t think of it as a place in the normal sense, like West Memphis is a place. Besides, in my memory the only other people there were some kids sneaking through the tall grass, trying to get closer to the deer.

I prefer to think of Cades Cove as a state of mind, a place that I visited not just physically but also emotionally and spiritually. In that sense, I’ve never really left. Whenever someone says “fall” to me, I return immediately to Cades Cove, where the sun is always setting and the creeks are always running low.

Physically, I went there one autumn a few years back, when I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Or maybe it was when I was in Knoxville to see a football game. I can’t remember — and don’t care, really. My mind is still trying to comprehend the simple beauty of the little white church with the red maple tree next to it.

Even if you survey the actual history of the actual place called Cades Cove, it doesn’t seem to be of this world. The Cherokee called it “the place of the river otter,” but they only hunted there. The first whites arrived at the beginning of the 19th century — some of them veterans of the Revolutionary War — and did what we did all over the continent: They killed off the otters along with the bison and elk, cleared land, drained wetlands, ran off the Cherokee, planted crops, and started digging for minerals. But there were no minerals, farming and cattle operations were hemmed in by the mountains, and the roads were almost impassable. So even at its peak, the population of the cove was less than 700 people. It seems Cades Cove just wasn’t meant to be a part of this world.

Such was their isolation that during the Civil War, the folks up there — as did a lot of the people in the mountains — mostly sided with the Union. What did they have in common with the other people in the South, anyway? A band of Confederate soldiers came through occasionally to take prisoners and steal livestock, but for the most part the war skipped Cades Cove. What it did do, however, was make the people of the cove believe that the outside world was no damn good, and vice versa.

Over the next 40 years virtually nobody else moved in. When the national park was created in 1934, there were a few dozen families still living there, with only a few last names. Some of the people had never left the cove. The last actual resident of Cades Cove, a certain Kermit Caughron, died in 1999.

The cove, with some effort, seems to have been frozen in the time of Mr. Caughron’s youth. Cattle are allowed to graze to keep the fields down. Old buildings have been restored and newer ones taken down. River otters, barn owls, and elk have been reintroduced. Native grasses have been planted and wetlands restored.

Those old roads have been replaced, too, of course. To get there today you need only drive about eight paved miles from Townsend, Tennessee, up winding Abrams Creek. The drive has the distinct feel of coming into a big place through a small entrance. You’ll find a one-way loop road that leads through fields, forests, apple trees, azaleas, daffodils, fences, and log buildings. You can visit the old grist mill and buy meal, or you can rent bikes; on Wednesday and Saturday mornings the road is closed to cars. You can hike to waterfalls and viewpoints. In winter you can cross-country ski.

But the main thing you can and should do is see the place. See the morning mists and the afternoon shadows. See the deer and the mountains and the creeks and the trees. See a glimpse of what things used to look like, back when people were more connected to the land, when there was no electricity, when the weather and the season had direct consequences for day-to-day life.

You just might see something that will find a special spot in your memory and stay there, all by itself, for a long time.

Categories
News News Feature

Getting Things Done

If you live in the suburbs long enough, sooner or later you realize that you need to become productive. Get some chores done. Fix up the holes in the den ceiling, clean the yard, repair the dishwasher, reupholster some furniture. That sort of thing.

Recently, I looked at our house and decided that productivity was definitely in order. The linoleum in the kitchen is worn through, the appliances (in their original, auto-gag avocado green) are not working properly, the dog has ruined the carpet in every room (at least once), the roof needs replacing, the siding needs painting, and the storage room in the garage is so full of old street-hockey sticks, skateboards, bicycles, and gardening tools that you can’t even get the door open.

So I went and found a copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, who is dubbed “the personal productivity guru” right there on the cover. The book is tremendously popular with the business audience, but it’s also finding a surprising following among those of us who have been slobs long enough and are intrigued by this notion of productivity and relaxation all rolled into one.

Allen’s got a method which, he claims, will lead to productivity in even the most stubborn sluggard. Basically, you just need a big box — or file folder, or desk drawer — to serve as the repository for all your fleeting ideas, plans, goals, and dreams. Just write them down and toss them in.

Once a week or so you go through this repository and figure out the steps you need to take to accomplish these items. If something takes two minutes or less, you do it immediately. If it takes longer, you decide whether to delegate it (make the kids do it), defer it (my standard modus operandi), or toss it (my fallback M.O.).

If you don’t believe it’s this simple, Allen has a splendid Web site — www.davidco.com — where you too can learn about setting up the various calendars, notebooks, and file folders you’ll need to become productive and relaxed.

For my part, folders weren’t enough. I went whole hog and complicated the equation by purchasing a Palm Vx (which Allen actually endorses). This ideal little organizer wasn’t sufficient, though, because I soon needed to “sync” my Palm Vx to a Personal Information Management program on my computer. This entailed buying a new computer (Pentium IV, of course), a 17-inch LCD monitor, Klipsch THX-certified computer speakers (300 watts, with a subwoofer!), and — well, let’s just say I’m wired for action.

All the while, the ceiling remained unfixed, the bedrooms needed painting, the dog needed his shots, the dishwasher still made its typical belching noises, and the car still needed a brake job.

Then I happened upon the missing techno element: When I got to page 93 of Allen’s book, I found that he advocates the use of a Brother P-Touch labeller, a device which I have wanted for years but for which I could never work up a good rationale for purchasing. I went and bought one right off, and it changed my life. The P-Touch is the high-tech spawn of the old Dymo punch labellers — you remember, the spinning wheel of letters and the squeeze handle that embossed them on a piece of plastic tape. The new P-Touch labellers are much smoother — there’s a keyboard, and they’ll produce laminated labels with five lines of type, and several different fonts — and are capable of withstanding either freezer or microwave.

If you think I’m alone in my enthusiasm, hear what Allen has to say: “Thousands of executives and professionals and homemakers I have worked with now have their own automatic labellers, and my archives are full of their comments, like, ‘Incredible — I wouldn’t have believed what a difference it makes!’ The labeller will be used to label your file folders, binder spines, and numerous other things.”

Thousands of executives and professionals and homemakers, just like me. Labelling everything. The sugar bowl: SUGAR. The pantry: FOOD. The fridge: CLOSE DOOR. The toilet in the kids’ bathroom: FLUSH. It’s endlessly useful, as you can see.

The trouble is, I got just a bit involved in the technological side of my system and sort of forgot the productivity part. I realized this when I found myself in the den with a dirt rake, scooting all the file folders and computer boxes and software manuals into a spare closet. There, in the heap, lay the tiny Palm Vx, forlorn and unused. Rather than let a labelling opportunity slide, I got out the P-Touch and printed a label — DO WHAT? — and stuck it on the screen so I’d know, next time, just what kind of trouble I was making for myself.

You can e-mail David Dawson at letters@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
News News Feature

THE AFTERMATH