Month: April 2002

TURN TO THE LEFT

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date April 26, 2002

This past Saturday,the Shelby county Democratic Party hosted a celebrity fashion show featuring such notables as Mayor Willie Herenton, Senator John Ford, and city councilman Rickey Peete. Also on hand to strut his stuff was 5th District hottie Joe Cooper (left). Have mercy!

Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Post author By
Post date April 25, 2002

Uninvisible

Medeski, Martin & Wood

(Blue Note)

Miles is grinning in his grave.

If any album has come close to capturing something akin to what Miles Davis created out of the ether in the late ’60s and early ’70s — such fusion crucibles as Big Fun, On the Corner, and Get Up With It — I think Medeski, Martin & Wood’s Uninvisible is probably it. And from three white boys. Crazy, ain’t it?

What Davis always said he was doing at that time was channeling the cool of the New York City streets, the metasexual ecstasy of the heroin plunge. You know, the shit that makes your hair stand up and makes the squares run. And with Uninvisible, MMW have — forgive the pun — tapped that vein of luscious grooves punctuated by the hyperrhythmic, sometimes cacophonous approximations of the city’s sounds: frenetic automobile traffic in all its noisome glory, Latin music jumping from the high windows of the barrio’s apartments, funk and soul rolling out of Harlem’s, the stop-and-go rush of millions of souls, and the hypnotic color of it all, the merging of it all, the trip of it all.

But absent are some of Miles’ extremes — beautifully distortion-box-crippled guitars, tornadoed riffs, time signatures lost in space, and quadruple-time drums skittering off to the asylum — and present are turntablists (yeah!) and vocalists (uh, Colonel Bruce Hampton tells a tale, and the guy from the Crash Test Dummies hums and grunts, but I guess it’s okay). Throw in flugelhorn, bass clarinet, and congas, not to mention all kinds of saxophones and guitars, and you’ve got as original a mix of instruments as you’re likely to encounter any time soon.

With nine albums in 10 years, MMW have built themselves a nice little oeuvre. Throughout their time together, they have collectively and separately worked with artists running the musical spectrum: Iggy Pop, Cibo Matto, David Byrne, John Scofield, Bob Moses, John Zorn, Chocolate Genius, the Word, Gov’t Mule, and Either/Orchestra, to name a few. It seems to have paid off. The metamorphosis of their sound is a joy to witness, since the road they take is not heavily traveled, and these guys only get cooler with every fantastic album.

And if you think you’re the coolest cat around, or you just like to feel that way, this is the music to which you need to be driving through the summer nights. If it’s to be classified properly, you need a limber tongue: Uninvisible is, to put it mildly, a deliriously groovy trip-trance jazz-funk fusion … oh — I’m so sick of these confusing, fumbling, hyphenated descriptives — let’s just call it “tripjunk” and be done with it.

Though a bit muddled, the powerful influence of Booker T. & the MGs and the Meters is still coming through in many of the tracks (especially on the title track, featuring the horns of Afro-beat band Antibalas), which is the usual on MMW albums. Medeski’s organ seems to be mixed lower than Wood’s bass throughout Uninvisible, so what was once organ-driven has become more bass-driven, the lower register mixed high and mighty and driving, with Martin’s drums and assorted percussion falling somewhere between.

From the title track’s first fat bass-riff drop into funked-up organ to the drums-and-turntable-driven “Pappy Check” to the African space walk of “Retirement Song” to the twisted dream of the six-and-a-half-minute “Nocturnal Transmission,” this album charts new territory for the new urban jazz, taking its cues from hip hop and the mind of the hustler as it lays it down.

In place of DJ Logic, who’s been considered the unofficial fourth member on the last few albums, are DJs Olive and P Love turning in some progressive scratching, though “Off the Table,” the last tune, wouldn’t suffer in the least if Olive’s sampled Ping-Pong session were mercifully cut from it. It’s a pretty arbitrary end to an album, formed in the free sessions of MMW’s new Brooklyn studio, that otherwise comes across tight and controlled. But, hell, that’s about five seconds of nearly an hour’s worth of impeccable tripjunk. You know, the kind that gets up in your soul. — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: A-

Conscious Contact

Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons

(Terminus)

It’s no surprise that — despite his Western connections — Jerry Joseph landed on the Atlanta-based jam label Terminus Records. Widespread Panic have been covering Joseph’s “Climb To Safety” for years, and the Jackmormons have spent the last few years touring extensively with Gov’t Mule, so the Southern boogie-rock connection seemed inevitable.

But Joseph’s music isn’t really jam-based. Even when the group cuts loose with a funky organ riff (“Little Boo’s Fireworks”), they rock much harder than they roll. The Jackmormons straddle a no-man’s-land on the music scene, part posturing alternative rockers, part jangling balladeers. It’s a world that accomplished musicians like Tom Petty have successfully bridged. While the Jackmormons aspire to Petty’s tongue-in-cheek aphorisms, they don’t — yet — display the creativity necessary to reach that level.

Nevertheless, Conscious Contact is full of bright moments: The clever opener “Coliseum” has a catchy riff that sticks around long after the song is over; the hard-rocking “Ching-a-Ling” is tailor-made for the dance floor; and the swirling, jangling rhythms of “The Kind of Place” seem destined for heavy rotation on college radio stations nationwide. The autobiographical “Pure Life” and “The Fastest Horse In Town” show off Joseph’s songwriting talents; moody and allegorical, both numbers cut deep into his soul.

Pianist Chuck Leavell (who’s played with the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton) and organist Randall Bramblett (Traffic) augment the Jackmormon trio on several numbers, while Vic Chestnutt holds down the backing-vocal duties on the sentimentally soulful “Your Glass Eye.”

Tellingly, Conscious Contact was produced by Dave Schools (of Gov’t Mule and Widespread Panic fame) and engineered by Sugar’s Dave Barbe. Armed with this group of pedigreed musicians, Jerry Joseph & the Jackmormons are well on their way, and Conscious Contact is a decent start.

— Andria Lisle

Grade: B

Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons will be at the Young Avenue Deli on Thursday, April 25th, with Mofro.

Project Human

Dieselboy

(System)

From the title of Dieselboy’s latest mix CD, you might think he was dropping the squelching-robot textures and overdriven bass splotches of its predecessors in favor of some old-fashioned blood, sweat, and grit. No such luck. The Pittsburgh drum-n-bass DJ is dropping tracks as dank and growly faced as ever. Project Human is cleaner-lined than 2000’s The 6ixth Session, but for the most part it’s missing the earlier set’s intimations of a possible revival within drum-n-bass of old-school rave’s giddy sense of possibility.

That doesn’t mean the disc is entirely devoid of fun, from Dylan + Ink’s jumpy “California Curse (Technical Itch Remix),” whose N.W.A. samples give it some fun, to Kernal + Rob Data’s “Hostile,” whose super-speedy percussion starts resembling log drums. And the woozy, dizzying filtered drums on Robbie Rivera’s “Harder and Faster (Weapon vs. E-Sassin Remix)” hearken to the way The 6ixth Session rode the cusp between drum-n-bass and Goa (or psychedelic) trance. But too often the disc’s mood is monochromatic: Drum-n-bass used to be a big kaleidoscope of emotion; now it’s mostly just dark and scary, and, as a result, fairly boring.

— Michaelangelo Matos

Grade: B-

Dieselboy will spin at Headliners on Saturday, April 27th.

Theater Theater Feature

The Unbearable Whiteness Of Being

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date April 25, 2002

When Rebecca Gilman’s Spinning Into Butter, a play confronting the slippery nature of racism in America, moved from Chicago’s Goodman Theatre to New York, it found a slavering crowd of reasonably hostile critics waiting to shred it. Nobody wanted to come right out and say that the playwright was wrong in her assumptions or that the piece was poorly written, but almost everyone wanted to show how the play was overly simple: a primer for the few unfortunates among us who have never really stared down our secret demons and seriously considered the issue of racism before.

And while it’s hard to deny that the piece makes for a superb introduction to the ugly issue, I strongly disagree with anyone who claims that it is simplistic. In fact, Spinning Into Butter is a complex, courageous work by a writer who is not afraid to take huge political risks. And while it may not address even a single issue that has not crossed the mind (if not the actual lips) of your average East Coast critic, it makes all of these private ideas public and accessible. Running the gamut from genuinely entertaining to genuinely shocking, Gilman’s play gets to the heart of the matter and beyond as she explores not so much the roots of racism as the root system. We are never confronted with simple solutions or solutions of any kind, for that matter. We are only shown how this evil proliferates and grows wild even in the most liberal circles and how it ultimately corrupts even those who seem to be far above the petty prejudices that lead to discrimination. It also shows how the politically correct school of thought has created an environment in which even heartfelt efforts to level a racially divided playing field have created a killing field laden with deadly linguistic traps.

Though, like any good farce, Spinning Into Butter twists and turns like a country road, the premise is fairly simple. An African-American student at a highfalutin, predominantly white East Coast college has been receiving threatening letters. The faculty rushes willy-nilly to turn this horror into a “meaningful learning experience” by creating a series of “race forums.” In actuality, these forums are just an exercise in vanity and an opportunity for various faculty members to congratulate themselves for being so very progressive.

Only one of the deans, Sarah, a white, razor-witted Midwesterner and avid student of African-American culture, understands how utterly useless and potentially offensive these forums are. She also knows that, regardless of intent, her own motivations are the product of guilt and ultimately racist in nature. She admits that, try as she might to walk an enlightened path and make the world a better place, she finds many black people to be rude, loud, ignorant, lazy, and terrifying. She knows that it’s wrong to judge an entire race based on the actions of a few and that her feelings, like those of the scary, undereducated people she won’t sit by on the subway, are the result of a failed system. She desperately wants to exorcise these feelings but doesn’t know where to begin. Her admissions, which are entirely at odds with her public record, are rewarded with nothing but contempt by foolish academics who seek catharsis in the creation of empty gestures and the general proclamation that hate is bad. To say much more, to even attempt to give this play the critical workout it deserves, would give away too many of the vital plot elements that make it so very rich and compelling.

Director Bob Hetherington has assembled a top-notch cast, including Brent Lowder, John Moore, S.A. Weakley, Ann Sharp, John Rone, and Jordan Nichols. In the midst of so much general excellence, Anne Dauber still manages to stand out as the conflicted Sarah, finding humor even in her darkest moments. It’s the sort of performance that makes even a devout non-hugger like myself want to rush backstage to squeeze the daylights out of the actor while shouting, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Usually, I’m quick to take issue with plays that take on hot-button issues. All too often, they are precious attempts to generate some sort of sympathetic magic, and the playwright hopes the “importance” of the issues addressed will imbue his or her work with an equal degree of importance. They are windy affairs, predictable and full of high-minded platitudes offered up to an ultraliberated crowd that has, presumably, already seen the light. Spinning Into Butter is aimed at this same liberated crowd, but instead of confirming their convictions, it challenges them. Or, given the tepid New York reviews, perhaps it even threatens them. Using the numerous, nearly slapstick plot devices, it accomplishes all of this at breakneck pace with an abundance of humor. Spinning Into Butter is not only a textbook example of how to create good, politically charged theater, it is an excellent example of just how exciting the form can be. It’s the sort of show that you’ll still be talking about months after it has closed.

Through May 26th.

Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

Post author By Flyer Readers
Post date April 25, 2002

Coolidge Was Cool

To the Editor:

Jackson Baker (Politics, April 18th issue) wrote: “‘The trouble with Don,’ mused a seasoned GOP political handler recently, ‘is that he’ — the governor, mind you — ‘has started to believe in government.'”

On the lighter side, if that is true, then the governor is no Calvin Coolidge. No devotee of laissez faire ever abhorred government more than Coolidge did. “If the federal government should go out of business,” he said, “the common run of people would not detect the difference.” The federal establishment justified itself, he added, “only as it served business.” In Coolidge’s view, government’s grandest service was to minimize itself, its activities, and its expenditures.

Arthur Prince

Memphis

Agrees With Tomorrow

To the Editor:

For the first time ever, I finally agree with Tom Tomorrow (This Modern World, April 18th issue). I find it difficult to believe a religion that claims to have a benevolent god does not mind the killing of innocents. I am a dedicated libertarian, so narrow-sighted, close-minded opinions always make me laugh. Neither of the major parties is getting it right. Since libertarians do not have enough public support to change public opinion, my advice is for Americans to quit voting strict party lines, start voting your true beliefs.

Levi Gay

Memphis

Master Of the Obvious

To the Editor:

I don’t know what the argument is about (“A Road Not Yet Traveled,” April 11th issue). It’s so obvious that a second outer “belt” would be the most useful and least congested way of routing I-69 through the Memphis area. If you look at the major cities in the U.S., you’ll notice that most of them have two belts. To run I-69 directly through downtown would congest downtown even more and add to the pollution problem. If Memphis leaders had any brains, they would want a highway that will be an international link as well as a belt to relieve traffic congestion.

As far as Cordova’s objections: Perhaps we can save a few bucks by skipping them. No on- or off-ramps.

Lou Summers

Memphis

Motto Info

To the Editor:

In the April 11th edition, a letter writer quoted the phrase “In God We Trust” to support his claim that “Christianity was the foundation upon which the U.S. government was built.” It may surprise that writer to learn that “In God We Trust” first appeared on U.S. coins in 1864 and was not included on all newly minted coins until 1938. The phrase did not appear on paper money until 1957. “In God We Trust” was declared the national motto of the United States by a joint resolution of Congress in 1956. See the Web site of the U.S. Department of the Treasury (www.ustreas.gov/opc/opc0011.html).

Kent Overturf

Memphis

A “Non-Review”?

To the Editor:

As a young artist in Memphis, I found David Hall’s latest “non-review” disappointing (“Shoulder To Shoulder,” April 11th issue). It was frustrating to read another such piece by Hall because so much good art and bad art goes unrecognized. If the show is bad, give it a bad review. If there are artists who are underappreciated, then write about them instead of listing them in some “who’s who” of the underground scene. Politics is part of life in every city, in every area of discourse. Let it go. We do not need reviews about the politics of art. We need reviews of art.

Alan Duckworth

Memphis

More Griz

To the Editor:

I have lived in Memphis for 30 years and I vehemently believe that the Grizzlies coming here is the best thing that has happened to this city. It’s not just the thrill of being able to see a live NBA game. What these players and this organization have given us thus

far in community outreach is nearly immeasurable. The players are constantly at area schools reading to our children. They are involved with Le Bonheur, Habitat for Humanity, Toys for Tots, Target House, and Ronald McDonald House. The list is endless. I’m surprised they found time to actually play basketball. And now rumors are flying of Jerry West coming to Memphis.

When I first moved to Memphis, I asked my father what other cities were comparable to Memphis. He told me Atlanta. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Atlanta host the Olympics a few years back? The eyes of the world are going to be focused on Memphis in a month due to the Tyson-Lewis fight. I hope the scoop the media comes away with is how good the barbecue is, not our inability to build our newly acquired NBA team an arena.

Suzan Quinlan

Memphis

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

We Recommend We Recommend

Folk Tales

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date April 25, 2002

Meet the Spelvins, Helen and George. The blissfully happy husband-and-wife team have spent the better part of their golden years traveling the length and breadth of this great country assembling what must be the world’s most stunning folk-art collection, all the while becoming accidental experts in the increasingly well-documented field. Ask Helen her opinion as to why the untrained brushstrokes of so-called outsider artists are appealing and you are liable to get an ugly earful. The former elementary school teacher might just rip you a new one (or at least make you stand in the corner with a dunce cap), pointing out that just because these artists lack MFAs doesn’t mean they are untrained. They may have learned principles of painting in high school, or they might have apprenticed for a relative who worked wood or painted signs for a living. And don’t get her started on the term “outsider art.” She rejects that term absolutely or, at the very least, applies it only to poseurs who didn’t start producing their crude wares until they had some sort of business model firmly in place. She’ll likely tell you that most of the people labeled “outsider artists” have been so dubbed by meddling outsiders and that most of the artists she and her husband have collected are more involved in the affairs of their community than the average politician. Then again, she might not say anything at all.

Folk art, in its many manifestations, has been praised for its authenticity, while collectors and advocates have fairly recently been reviled for their objectification of the often undereducated craftspeople they seemingly exploit. While the Spelvins claim to have shied away from “art brut,” pieces created by prisoners, mental patients, etc., it is clear that they too have joyously engaged in their own, not-so-unique brand of objectification. Their theory is that most folk artists received their artistic vision only as the result of some personal loss or hardship, whether it be real or imagined. The late Frank Boyle, one of Memphis’ best-loved folk painters, would certainly fit the Spelvins’ mold, having received his artist’s calling after years of drug and alcohol abuse led him beyond the brink of despair. But compared to many of the artists collected by the Spelvins, Boyle’s story seems positively tame.

Take, for example, E.B. Hazard of Oleander, Alabama, who never intended to be classified as any kind of artist. The electrified metal frames he constructed and strung with crushed tin cans were devices for communicating with aliens. Hazard, who suffered a fatal heart attack after attaching a number of car batteries to one of his constructions, claimed that not only was he kidnapped by aliens from the planet Noolicalaki, he actually sired two “space-babies.”

Another artist in the Spelvins’ collection is Max Pritchard of Berea, Kentucky. Pritchard found the Lord at a Waffle House while staring at the pattern in his oat-bran waffle. He took this as a sign that he should carve printing blocks and use them to make message boards proclaiming the Holy Word of the one true and living God. And so he went about his business printing Bible verses like “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion” on cracker and cereal boxes. Pritchard found himself spending the night in a D.C. jail after he began shouting out the Word of the Lord during a meeting of the Promise Keepers. He thought a highly religious person like himself would fit right in with those pious guys. He was wrong.

There are 10 additional artists included in this touring show and each one has a story that ranges from the tragic to the totally bizarre. A woman left at the altar began painting ghostly brides on black velvet. A man from a less than perfect home started painting portraits of presidents while obsessively trying to help his own boys earn merit badges. A laid-off greenhouse worker mixed media to create cartoon images on old record albums to honor his mother who died of lung cancer. And in spite of the unspoken rules and regulations which require folk art to be crude and naive, each piece in the Spelvin Collection is graphically ingenious, calling to mind such noted artists as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and even Picasso.

There is one catch to this whole story: Helen and George Spelvin do not exist. Neither do any of the artists this imaginary couple so diligently collected. They, like all of the art in this exhibit at the University of Mississippi Museums in Oxford, are the creations of University of Tennessee art professor Beauvais Lyons, who has previously occupied himself with the creation of inspired installations that mimic important archaeological discoveries. The Spelvin Collection is a natural extension of this same archaeological urge and a fun one at that.

Through May 31st.

Sports Sports Feature

Bluff City?

Post author By Chris Przybyszewski
Post date April 25, 2002

Grizzlies general manager Billy Knight — a good guy and a good GM — just got canned. Welcome to the real “Big Time,” Memphis. In pro sports, changes can occur at any moment and the public gets little — if any — insight into the situation. The Grizzlies brain trust has shut out everyone, including members of its own staff who might leak information anonymously. Simply put, the Grizzlies management is wearing a poker face right now. So are they hiding a royal flush (i.e., does owner Mike Heisley know what the hell he is doing?) or are they bluffing?

Much of the spotlight has fallen on president of basketball operations Dick Versace. Versace has a spotty career record at best and is widely disliked by many members of the media. His most notable accomplishment was a coaching stint with the Indiana Pacers. According to the Grizzlies’ media guide, Versace “developed” Pacer Reggie Miller to All-Star status. (One can only wonder what Reggie thinks about that.) He got the job with the Grizzlies because then-new owner Heisley was a longtime buddy. Here are some of Versace’s Grizzlies career highlights:

n According to Craig Daniels of The Toronto Sun, Versace tried to make the Grizzlies PR staff pay his $10,000 NBA-instituted fine for saying that the Toronto Raptors would tank in Canada. Versace reasoned that the staff did not prep him on the question of Toronto’s viability and so were personally (and fiscally) responsible. The good thing is that since PR personnel get paid so much more than team presidents, no one on the staff would have felt the pinch. Not that much, anyway.

n Versace hired head coach Sidney Lowe (which was a good thing). But then, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Stephen Smith, he bragged to people in the stands of Vancouver’s GM Arena about how he would coach the team, should he (humbly) get the opportunity to do so. Versace started such antics after only 20 games into Lowe’s career. Lowe would go on to record the two best regular seasons in Grizzlies history and played a major role in developing the team’s young talent.

n During the 2001 draft, Versace wanted Eddy Curry, who eventually went to the Chicago Bulls. Billy Knight insisted on Pau Gasol. According to veteran NBA writer Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune, Versace went so far as to threaten Knight’s job if Gasol didn’t pan out. Knight won the battle and Memphis drafted the eventual 2002 rookie of the year. Chicago, to put the matter delicately, did not.

* After the 2002 season, Versace fired GM Billy Knight and blamed the firing on owner Michael Heisley. Rumors from insiders say that Versace was furious that Knight got the credit for drafting Gasol.

And Versace may not be done. So here’s a word of warning to Grizzlies head coach Sidney Lowe: Watch your back. Any number of scenarios could develop that would leave him out in the cold. One is that Versace could fire Lowe, “demote” himself to coach, and then let Lakers mogul Jerry West run the head office as GM and president. Another scenario is that West could become president (West has said he doesn’t want to be GM), and Versace would become GM and coach.

Give this to Versace: He’s opportunistic. If either of these scenarios happen, he would take control of a team that should easily win over 30 games next year. Versace would also benefit from West’s presumably adroit touch in the front office. Versace would be known as the man who turned the Grizzlies into winners, even though he’d be using the talent acquired by Knight and developed by Lowe.

But will Lowe really get fired? Heisley has said publicly that while he wants Lowe on the team and he would be surprised to see the coach go, that decision is not in his hands. Heisley charged Lowe with developing talent this year, not winning ballgames. Lowe has one more year on his contract, and here’s hoping he gets to fulfill it. But if Lowe can’t pull off 35 wins or so next year, don’t count on him being around the following season.

Peter Vescey of NBC says that West is leaning toward coming to Memphis. But in what capacity, no one seems to know. Change, power struggles, good guys getting fired. It’s all part of the big leagues, Memphis. Get used to it. The best — or worst — may be yet to come.

News News Feature

CITY BEAT: Stranger than Fiction

Post author By John Branston
Post date April 25, 2002

STRANGER THAN FICTION

DYERSBURG, Tenn.– As an attorney in Dyersburg, Charles Kelly has seen his share of strange cases come his way. But the case of the heavyweight championship fight may be the strangest one yet.

About a month ago Kelly, a 1960 graduate of Central High School in Memphis, got a call from boxing promoter Brian Young in Nashville. The question: Could Kelly find investors to put up the crucial $12.5 million site fee for the Mike Tyson/Lennox Lewis fight, and could he do it one week?

The laid-back, silver-haired lawyer with a stack of business cards for a crappie fishing guide on his desk pulled it off. Now the only thing more surprising than a heavyweight title fight in Memphis may be that the financing is coming from some unusual sources in Dyersburg.

“It’s strange,” admits Kelly, who is about to add well-known Memphis defense attorney and part-time actor/comedian Wayne “Cousin Bubba” Emmons to his office. “I have wondered what am I doing with this in Dyersburg, Tennessee, 80 miles away from Memphis.”

Stranger than fiction, maybe. What we have so far is a heavyweight championship fight (not recognized by some boxing associations) being held in Memphis after being turned down by Las Vegas and New York, pre-staged at two Tunica casinos, promoted by novices from Nashville, and financed by, among others, a Dyersburg businessman convicted of bank fraud 15 years ago. All that plus Mike Tyson, who is so unpredictable that there is talk of holding separate weigh-ins for the fighters lest there be another brawl.

Kelly was referred to Young by a former Kelly-client they won’t identify. And while Kelly is willing to talk about his involvement, most of the investors aren’t. The site fee is a standard requirement for a big fight, but negative public reaction to convicted rapist and ear-biter Tyson coupled with reticence on the part of fight investors in this northwest Tennessee town of 20,000 people has made it difficult to pin down details.

Last week Kelly said First Citizens National Bank in Dyersburg, headquartered just across the street from the historic courthouse square and Civil War monument, was issuing letters of credit for the investors. But bank officials denied knowing anything about that when visited by a reporter, although bank personnel seemed familiar enough with the story and even eager to run it to ground.

First Citizens and Security Bank, Dyersburg

On Sunday, the local newspaper, the Dyersburg State-Gazette, following up on last week’s story in the Flyer, reported that First Citizens and Security Bank did issue the letters of credit. The newspaper said the banks declined comment.

Kelly said he first took the deal to Don Crews, president of First Tennessee Bank in Dyersburg.

“Don Crews thought it was a viable business deal and moved forward to handle it,” said Kelly. “He was going to handle the main letter of credit plus personal letters. Then the headquarters bank in Memphis said no the night before the letters were to be issued and the plug got pulled.”

Both Crews and First Tennessee CEO Ralph Horn declined to be interviewed. Sources told the Flyer that First Tennessee got a strong negative reaction to the fight from its employees and customers, but the real reason for balking was that the request came from an outer office that wanted it approved in one day, and that was too little time.

“When you get one head of sheep or cattle on the run it spooks the others,” Kelly said of the reluctance of Memphis banks to handle the fight financing.

Kelly said there are six investors. The only one who would comment is Billy York Walker, head of Dyer Investment Company LLC in Dyersburg and former president of Farmers Bank. In 1987, Walker was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in federal court in Memphis, according to court records. The charges included making false entries in the bank books with intent to deceive the officers, directors and the FDIC and making false statements on a loan application. He was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to make restitution of $269,687. He served his sentence at the federal correctional facility in Marion, Illinois and was released in 1991.

State records show that Dyer Investment Company LLC was established in 1994.

In a brief telephone interview last week, Walker said the investors are “country people” who value their privacy, but they’re not hiding from the media.

“I think how we got involved with this is about as absurd as the fight coming to Memphis,” said Walker. “We were contacted by a Nashville group about possibly handling the site fee. We looked at it and thought it was a long shot. It was so convoluted I didn’t see any way it could happen. But we decided to take it one step at a time and see what happens, and that is what we did. This is the first fight we’ve ever been involved in and probably the last.”

After talking for a couple of minutes, Walker said he had to take another phone call and would call back. He could not be reached again. The Flyer was also unable to contact Dyersburg road builder John Ford, head of Ford Construction. Sources told us Ford helped put the site fee together. Ford told the State-Gazette he is not a direct investor but is involved with Dyer Investment Company.

The investors stand to make a profit on the site fee if the bout goes off as scheduled on June 8th and sells out The Pyramid at prices of up to $2,400 per seat.

Kelly said he’ll be there. He likened it to being in the delivery room when your baby is born.

Courthouse Square in downtown Dyersburg

(Care to respond? Write mailonthefly@aol.com.)

News The Fly-By

Down Here

Post author By Walter Jowers
Post date April 25, 2002

We Southerners do have our peculiar ways. Ask folks who aren’t from here, and they’ll tell you we talk funny, eat greasy, and drive crazy. And they’re right.

Well, don’t you know, it looks like we’re building our houses assbackward besides. So says Joe Lstiburek, an engineer and real-enough Ph.D. at Building Science Corporation (BSC), a Boston-based architecture and consulting firm that specializes in fixing building design problems. My smarty-pants sources say these BSC guys know what they’re doing.

Lstiburek has put together Joe’s Top Ten List of Dumb Things To Do in the South. Number Ten on the list is our vented attics and crawl spaces. “Venting attics in the South was dreamed up by some disgruntled Yankee pissed about the Civil War and wanting to get even,” Lstiburek writes on the BSC Web site (www.buildingscience.com). Joe’s thoughts on Southern attics go something like this: The main idea of venting an attic is to flush heat out of the attic during hot weather. Problem is, most of the heat in an attic is radiant heat, which is caused by the sun beating down on the roof. Pulling in hell-hot, humid air from the outside won’t do anything to stop the radiant heat, and it won’t make the attic significantly cooler.

So, attic ventilation is useless, right? Well, no. It’s worse than useless. More often than not, it actually causes bad things to happen. Here’s why: We put our air-conditioning ducts in our attics. Unless the A/C installers do a perfect job of sealing the ducts (and they seldom do), the ducts leak. “The moment leaky ductwork is installed in a vented attic,” Lstiburek writes, “there is approximately a 25 percent increase in heat transfer to the conditioned space.”

Worse yet, there’s a fair chance that the moisture-laden summertime air will come in contact with something — ducts, fittings, the ceiling — that’s cool enough to make water droplets form. In our little home-inspection business, hardly a summer day goes by that we don’t see water dripping off A/C refrigerant lines in an attic. Sometimes those drops rust out a furnace. Sometimes they make a puddle big and heavy enough to collapse a ceiling. Sometimes they soak the attic insulation and create a fine environment for mold.

In our part of the world, there’s yet another source of humidity in the attic: bathroom vent fans that are ducted right into the attic. We see this in just about every new house we inspect. It’s forbidden by the mechanical code, but local builders do it every day, and the local codes inspectors let them slide. Frankly, it’s inexcusable, and all of you new-house buyers ought to be raising hell about it.

I know some of y’all are thinking: “Okay, so how can I get a nice unvented attic in my new house?” Well, I say check the BSC Web site. They’ve got details and pictures and books and consultants ready to take your call. But there’s a catch: Even if you know how to build a good unvented attic, most building codes won’t let you do it. Codes require attic ventilation. Ironically, the very same codes inspectors who’ll let leaky ducts and assbackward bathroom vents slide would nail you if you tried to build an attic without vents.

There’s more: The folks who manufacture the asphalt-fiberglass shingles we use down South don’t want to guarantee shingles unless the attic is ventilated. Apparently, they think a vented attic will keep the shingles cooler and make them last longer. But it’s not high attic temperatures that wear out shingles, it’s ultraviolet radiation, according to Lstiburek. Of course, the shingle manufacturers aren’t going to drop their attic-ventilation requirements anytime soon. If their shingles fail prematurely, they can usually find something wrong with the attic venting and avoid paying off on the shingle warranty.

Now, about our Southern crawl spaces: The building codes require that they be vented. But Lstiburek says that’s a terrible idea. “Crawl spaces are real simple to understand and deal with,” Lstiburek writes. “When you vent crawl spaces you bring in hot, humid air and cause moisture and mold problems.”

I’m with Joe on this one. Crawl spaces are naturally cool. That’s why dogs like to crawl under porches. On a hot, summer day, we home inspectors actually enjoy going into a crawl space. It’s just crazy to put vent holes all around a crawl space so hot, humid air can get in. Once that air is in, you’ve got all the problems you get in attics, except worse. I’ve seen water condense on ductwork, insulation floor framing, and foundation walls. On a hot, humid day, there’s a slow but steady rain in your average Southern crawl space.

When we see mold and fungus growing, it’s usually in a crawl space. Combine all that funk with the usual leaky air-conditioning ducts, and you’ve got all the ingredients for rot, allergies, and illness. As Lstiburek says, vented crawl spaces made sense in the South only in the days when the houses were built on brick piers and there weren’t any A/C ducts.

I know you’re wondering: What’s Number One on Joe’s list? It’s this right here: “Northerners coming South to design buildings.”

Can I get an amen?

Opinion Viewpoint

No Land Bridge!

Post author By Thomas Kroll
Post date April 25, 2002

If, on May 7th, the city council gives the go-ahead to the Riverfront Development Corporation’s master plan without modification, the city of Memphis will start down the path of an expensive, poorly conceived project that will change it forever.

The cornerstone of the project is a land bridge connecting a major section of downtown to Mud Island and creating an artificial lake.RDC’s rationalization for this is their conclusion that Memphians have an unfulfilled desire to come to the river. In reality they plan to create approximately 50 acres for some future unknown development and to open many downtown areas to the development of multiresident housing.

The RDC claims that the project will cost less than $300 million. Their estimate is presented as a detailed budget (with estimates down to the dollar level), when in reality it is at best a guess at the true cost. If inflation, the cost of closing and/or moving the many businesses and Coast Guard station located on the harbor, and the cost of bridging over the mainline railroad track are considered, the cost is easily more than double their estimate.

Memphis will lose its vital and active harbor. For 10 years, from the start of construction, the riverfront will be the site of a massive landfill. The fill required would be the equivalent of a large truckload dumped every four minutes, seven days a week, 24 hours per day for four years.Imagine the views from our newly completed Performing Arts Center and the newly landscaped Riverfront Drive during this massive construction effort. Instead of a welcoming waterfront, for years it will be fenced off to allow for construction.

The plan is built around the completion of the land bridge. In fact, 80 percent of the cost of the project (which I estimate to be at least $680 million) is related to closing the harbor and preparing for and building the land bridge. This results in new land that will cost an unbelievable $11 million per acre. To make the new land competitive for developers, Memphis will have to absorb most of this cost.

Memphis can provide land for growth at a much lower cost.

The impact on downtown is unacceptable. For years, the landfill will be under construction, just when we are beginning to attract new tourists and residents. Once the bridge is in place, we will be looking at a barren 50 acres while the newly filled land settles and developers are found. Special foundations and pilings will be required to overcome the poor ground conditions, further complicating and increasing the cost of construction.

Claims for new jobs created by the land bridge are pure speculation and don’t account for the many jobs lost through closing the harbor. The funds used for creating this new land will be unavailable for other developments that have equal job-creation potential.

The environmental impact has not been evaluated. Permits are not in place. The potential requirement for an environmental impact statement is real and could further delay the project, increasing its cost. The creation and maintenance of a large artificial lake has unknown implications, including leaching of pollutants, accelerated algal growth, and groundwater changes.

The eventual result of the land bridge is likely to be the loss of Mud Island Park and Museum, the loss of The Pyramid, and the delay or loss of many other potential waterfront improvements.

There are many projects that would enhance the Wolf River harbor and make the waterfront a more attractive place to visit. These projects would not need to focus on creating more land for development and would not need to compete with the land currently unused in the downtown area.

The plan for a land bridge needs to be stopped now!

Thomas Kroll, a Harbor Town resident, is the retired president of an engineering and consulting firm.