Month: June 2002

LEWIS’ TRAINER LAYS IT ON THE LINE

Post author By Frank Murtaugh
Post date June 7, 2002

Flyer: What kind of fight can we expect to see?

Steward: I think it will be very explosive, and emotional fight for the first three rounds, and then the big man knocks out the little man.

Flyer: Is this the greatest fight in history?

Steward: I don’t know, It’s gonna be hard to beat Ali v. Frazier but it has the potential because there’s two things that make great fights — emotion and dislike for each other — and both of them have that.

Flyer: How does it feel to be here in Memphis? Fighting in a city with a lot of history and the fight is the biggest deal at the Pyramid.

Steward: It’s always good to fight in a city that no one is used to having fights. And so the people appreciate it more than would be in Las Vegas, and you got the whole city coming out to really like host, and not just a casino, so I think it’s gonna be a very good turnout, and as a result the fighters are gonna fight a little bit better than they would in Las Vegas too.

Flyer: Is this about fighting or boxing or what is it about?

Steward: This is about fighting, it’s two guys who have been close to fighting each other for many years. And Mike Tyson had to give up his championship nearly five years ago because of Lennox Lewis then, So finally these two are here fighting in this town here and I think it’s gonna be an out pouring of events.

Flyer: Do you have any closing comments?

Steward: The fight won’t go but five rounds, Lennox Lewis knocks him out.

News The Fly-By

Cover-up

Post author By Walter Jowers
Post date June 6, 2002

A couple weeks back, I wrote about Rita Wilson, a vice principal at Rancho Bernardo High School in suburban San Diego, and how she set up an underwear-inspection station at a school dance. There, just outside the school gym, Wilson lifted girls’ skirts and checked under there for thong underwear. Students say Wilson also did a little shirt-lifting and pulling to make sure girls were wearing bras. Just for balance, she pulled up some boys’ togas (yeah, togas) to confirm that they were wearing something under there.

Wilson was suspended from the school, and some of her inspectees’ parents have demanded her resignation and threatened to file lawsuits.

Well, don’t you know, Wilson has gone on TV and defended her actions. “This was a safety issue, it was not a choice of underwear issue,” Wilson told NBC San Diego TV News. “I think that parents don’t realize what school dances are like now,” she continued. “I think [they would] if they could see inside a dark gymnasium with 750 students simulating sex.”

Wilson says her underwear-inspection station was really about protecting kids during freak dancing. “That’s what I wanted,” she said. “If they were going to freak, at least their bottoms were going to be covered. Freak dancing is not a fun thing to watch all night. I’ve had employees who have been freaked upon.”

Say what? Students and school employees alike getting “freaked upon”? This concept of freak dancing is new to me, so I did a little research. Apparently, when kids get busy freak dancing, they bump and grind front-to-front, front-to-back, and face-to-pelvis in varying combinations of couples, trios, and groups. This includes opposite-sex and same-sex couples and mixed groups hooked together like train cars. One of the main components of freaking is that it’s perfectly okay for a stranger to come up and grab somebody by the hipbones and just start humping away. I’ve never seen this firsthand, but if you ask me, it sounds pretty much like the monkey house at the zoo.

Now that I’ve got this new information, I think Wilson started out with a decent-enough goal, but she failed in the execution. If the idea is to stop kids from freak dancing in the high school gym, checking their underwear is not a good way to go about it. I spent four years in high school and nearly 20 years playing guitar in redneck bars. Believe me when I tell you: At any big gathering of high schoolers or young adults, there will be a fair amount of sex going on. We all know what goes on in the cars, bathrooms, and broom closets. A few of us even know what goes on in the high school auditorium, a dark cavern of echoes, sumptuous curtains, and easily managed ladders, ropes, and pulleys — a compelling tableau of danger and sexual adventure that some might find irresistible.

Once that resistance is gone, I promise that the scope, intensity, and frequency of the sex will not be affected by the girl’s underwear. I don’t care if you put a girl in great big grandma parachute panties and Elmer’s-glue ’em to her behind. If she’s got her mind made up, that won’t stop her. In fact, I can personally guarantee it will motivate her.

But here’s what I want to know: How did it become cool for teenagers to lap-dance strangers at the high school dance and hump each others’ behinds right there in front of Rita Wilson and everybody? I’ve heard all the usual excuses, which include a general coarsening of the culture, the adolescent need to shock their parents’ generation, MTV, Abercrombie & Fitch, and all the rest.

I’ve got my own idea: This freak dancing is the direct result of some sorry-ass daddying. It’s a bad day when we let our sons go to a dance and dry-hump their classmates, and it’s a worse day yet when we let our daughters walk out the door dressed like pole dancers on their way to getting dry-humped at the school gym.

I should’ve known this day was coming a few years back when I saw a little boy walk into a batting cage and stand right on home plate, where he immediately got clobbered with a 70-mph ball, which sent him crying to his mama. Clearly, we daddies are not explaining all the stuff that needs explaining.

I don’t really want to do it, but I’m going to volunteer to chaperone some school dances. Not just at my kid’s school but at the schools she might visit. If I see any of you dancing boys start simulating sex with a girl on the dance floor, the next sensation you feel will be my hand on your shoulder. Trust me, I’ll be killing your buzz one way or another. If you and your girlfriend are up to some mutual something, take it to the auditorium, where I don’t have to look at it.

Best I can tell, schoolhouses tend to be a little short of sensible alpha males. So I invite like-minded daddies to join me at the school dances. If the kids behave themselves, we can just lean up against the wall and talk sports. But if the kids go all zoo-monkey on us, it might take a few of us to clear the room.

Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

Post author By Flyer Readers
Post date June 6, 2002

A Modest Proposal

To the Editor:

Shelby Farms is the largest urban park in America. The naming rights to it are probably worth $300 million for a 20-year deal.

One reason NASCAR is so successful revenue-wise is the corporate naming rights marketed on the cars. Why couldn’t a deal with exclusive rights be struck to have one major sponsor on each county vehicle — including sheriff’s department squad cars. Some scoff at futurist ideas like this, but I haven’t seen anybody else come up with ways to lower or reduce the Shelby County property-tax rate.

FedEx paid the Washington Redskins $227 million for the naming rights to their stadium over the next 20 years. They made a similar, though less expensive, deal with the Grizzlies. The person who handles those agreements for FedEx should be named to this special task force as chairman, since they would have the expertise to make the above ideas actually happen.

Property taxes have put our seniors at risk, because the largest asset they have — their home — is at risk. They have to choose between food and medicine purchases or paying their share of the additional burden through higher property taxes. The folks who live from paycheck to paycheck are just about in the same boat.

Less disposable income means less dollars to spend and fuel our local economy when you are forced to pay higher property taxes. The NBA Pursuit Team did a great job in bringing the NBA here. It was no easy task, and I would hope some of the same people would join me in pushing for the creation of a Corporate Naming Rights Task Force.

This is a unique way of retiring the $1 billion-plus debt that the current administration has left us with. We must address this matter head-on, right here and right now. Solving this problem creates a situation where you can fund almost anything really needed by the school system once the county debt is reduced or retired.

Joe Cooper

Memphis

Warped Take On Tim?

To the Editor:

Ama Codjoe’s take on Tim Sampson’s lighthearted remark about racial harmony at the Overton Square Arts & Jazz Festival (Letters, May 30th issue) is sadly warped. The writer is confusing issues by categorizing racism as something born of modern reality.

I grew up in Midtown and continue to live here. I was educated in public schools and cherish the diversity to which I have always been exposed. I am also a Christian, which should provide a clear understanding of how I feel about all people. Having said that, one need be only moderately rational to understand why people who have not been exposed to such diversity would be apprehensive, even fearful, of many nonwhites — not because of some deep-rooted prejudice but quite simply from what they read in the newspaper and see on TV.

It is imperative not to confuse prejudice with the sad effects of modern reality. Over 80 percent of the crime in this city is committed by nonwhites and is mostly black-on-black. How can Ama Codjoe not understand why blacks might be looked upon suspiciously in stores or why some people choose to move to the suburbs or why so many people feel the way they do? I’m not saying it’s right, but it is understandable.

I would suggest that Ama work toward helping solve these obvious problems rather than simply be content to mislabel them. It’s much more complex than that.

Jerry Sanders

Memphis

Cardinal Ashcroft?

To the Editor:

Prince George W. and Cardinal Ashcroft, not satisfied with an Office of Homeland Security, have decided to turn the FBI into a domestic intelligence agency. Now we have our own versions of both the SS and Gestapo to keep us safe. Who would have guessed that after defeating the Soviet Union and the Taliban, our leaders would try to recreate them here at home?

By declaring open-ended war, Bush has stifled any critics of his juvenile foreign policy. No patriot would dare point out that by bombing civilians and overthrowing a government to catch a criminal — a Bush family tradition — he has inflamed the Muslim world toward holy war. Bush’s “carpet-bomb the village in order to liberate it” tactics in Afghanistan drove thousands of Muslim radicals into Pakistan, destabilized the region, and pushed it to the brink of nuclear war.

Bush has turned a national tragedy into a billion-dollar boondoggle for his cronies in the defense industry, a shield against his critics, and a guarantee of reelection. By 2008, Bush and Ashcroft will have turned America into a Christian police state.

That this childish president gets such high approval ratings is astonishing. Does everyone get their news from Rush Limbaugh and The 700 Club? When did bloodlust, bigotry, and contempt for law become American values?

Michael B. Conway

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.

Film Features Film/TV

The Sunshine State

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date June 6, 2002

As the A-list, big-budget follow-up to his insta-cult classic Memento, Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia was rightly one of the year’s most anticipated films, and if Memento was a singular creation for its novel backward structure, Insomnia is unique for perhaps even more unlikely reasons.

Nolan’s accomplished return manages to be simultaneously a testament to what a talented filmmaker can still accomplish in Hollywood and an unusual case study in the pandering and calculation that now infects the mainstream American film industry.

But first, the goods. A remake of an excellent 1997 Norwegian film (which, incidentally, did play in Memphis) directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg and starring Stellan Skarsgard, Nolan’s version skillfully adapts many of its model’s key elements and even improves on it in significant ways. The central mood and visual style of both films are that of sunlit noir. In the original, Skarsgard is a Swedish detective sent to Norway to help with a murder investigation during the summer, months when the sun never sets. A trail of moral questions follows him north, with the insomnia caused by his struggle to adapt to 24-hour daylight adding to his psychological unease. In an early scene, while attempting to apprehend the murderer on a fog-blanketed beach, the detective accidentally shoots and kills his partner then covers it up. Later, he’s contacted by the murderer (the original one, that is), who witnessed the shooting. The murderer proposes that the detective frame another suspect for his crime in exchange for not revealing the detective’s own complicity in his partner’s death.

Nolan’s film repeats this basic outline, with Al Pacino as an LAPD detective sent to Alaska partner (Martin Donovan) in tow, internal-affairs investigation hanging over his head, and perpetual sunlight slowly eating away at whatever mental stability he has left. And Nolan makes brilliant use of his locations. The opening landscape shots of a small plane transporting Pacino over the jagged Alaskan tundra are stunning, and the film’s restaging of the original’s foggy beach stakeout and accidental shooting conveys both the disorienting effects of the mist and the physicality of the rocky landscape. Nolan also adds a chase sequence over (and under) a river full of floating logs which adds action-movie energy while staying true to the film’s visual and psychological tone.

As straightforward storytelling, Nolan’s film is largely superior to its model (which, of course, emanates from a different sensibility). The acting outside of the Skarsgard/Pacino lead, which is a push is more directly engaging here, with nice supporting turns from Hilary Swank as an admiring local detective and Maura Tierney as the innkeeper at Pacino’s hotel. And most surprising of all is the frequently unwatchable Robin Williams as the area crime novelist who emerges as the murderer. I feared that Nolan would turn this character, who is creepy but pointedly mundane in the original, into a Hannibal Lecter/evil-genius type, thus playing into Williams’ penchant for grotesque overacting. Nolan does make the character a more active and menacing presence, but he mostly stays true to the original’s refreshingly realistic attitude, and Williams obliges with perhaps his most effectively understated performance. “You’re about as mysterious to me as a blocked toilet is to a fuckin’ plumber,” Pacino’s detective says to Williams’ killer, and in this movie, it’s not just bluster but the truth.

Yet however effective and engaging the film, it is also depressing not for what Nolan (or screenwriter Hillary Seitz) has changed from the original but why. In many ways, Nolan’s version is less a straight remake than a different film made from the same intriguing core materials, and that’s a good thing. But this American version also makes a series of key changes that all serve the same dubious purpose: to make the morally conflicted protagonist more sympathetic.

At the risk of giving away too many plot points, let’s look at those changes: In the original, the detective shoots a stray dog in order to extract a bullet for evidence tampering; in the remake, Pacino finds the dog already dead. In the original, the detective responds to the sexual come-ons of a teenage witness; in the remake, Pacino rebuffs these come-ons. In the original, the detective has a run-in with the innkeeper, which intimidates and frightens her; in the remake, Pacino and Tierney share a tender, somewhat comforting moment. In the original, the detective’s partner is shown to be a pretty decent guy; in the remake, Donovan is portrayed as more of a “bad cop” (in trouble for shaking down drug dealers) than Pacino. In the original, the detective is fleeing from trouble back home relating to an improper relationship (i.e., sexual relations) with a suspect; in the remake, Pacino’s tortured conscience and internal-affairs troubles spring from his falsifying evidence to ensure the conviction of a vicious child killer. In the original, the detective goes along with the murderer and tries to frame the teenage boyfriend of the murder victim; in the remake, it is Williams’ character who plants evidence on the teenager and Pacino who tries to stop him. And, finally, in the original, the detective gets off scot-free, leaving him, and by extension the audience, in a state of moral limbo; in the remake, per Hollywood convention, Pacino’s “crooked” cop dies but not before he redeems himself by preventing Swank’s doting junior detective from compromising her ideals.

That a film from such a well-respected, hotshot director and containing so many powerhouse actors (three Oscar winners), a film that, in so many ways, embodies the best that Hollywood is capable of, would nonetheless go to such outrageous lengths to ensure that its protagonist is palatable to audiences (and this in a film about moral ambiguity) might be a more troubling example of the marketing-driven dumbing-down of American film than computer-generated effects and product placements in lesser films. Nolan has been compared to Alfred Hitchcock as a result of this accomplished, intelligent thriller and with some justification. But Hitchcock never pandered to his audience, glossed over the darkest impulses in his films, or let his audience off the hook like this.

Chris Herrington

Music Music Features

Once and Again

Post author By Rebekah Gleaves
Post date June 6, 2002

What do you do at 32 when you’ve already starred in blockbuster movies, graced the cover of every teen magazine, had your own 900 number, and now find yourself relegated to the status of campy guilty pleasure? Well, Mary Kate and Ashley, take note — Corey Feldman decided to try music.

The movie-star-turned-musician will be playing the Hi-Tone on Sunday, June 9th, as one of the first stops on a tour to promote his latest album, Former Child Actor. The title song debuted on radio stations nationwide last Friday, and Feldman seems ready and eager to embrace his new role.

“Basically, with this album, I thought, Well, now that I’ve done my artistic endeavor with the last album, I can totally sell out with this one and utilize my labels and make them work for me instead of against me,” Feldman jokes. “So here I’m just putting everything out front. I was like, What’s the most exploitative fucking title I can come up with? And so the song and the album became ‘Former Child Actor.'”

Feldman describes his sound as a cross between the Red Hot Chili Peppers, No Doubt, and Eminem but with a heavy, straightforward rock-and-roll edge. And with this new album, he’s got fresh goals for himself as a musician and as an actor: “On a musical level, I hope this album sells 100,000 copies. On the film side, I’d like to continue doing great films, or return to doing great films, however you want to perceive it.”

Feldman says Former Child Actor is about categorizing. “My label is ‘former child actor.’ That’s the label that’s been put on me,” says Feldman. “That’s the box I’ve been placed in, but the song still works for everyone because everyone has a label that’s been placed on them.”

After hitting movie stardom young with roles in The Bad News Bears, Goonies, Stand By Me, The Lost Boys, Dream a Little Dream, License to Drive, and other 1980s favorites, Feldman found himself largely disregarded as an adult. Along with Corey Haim, Feldman epitomized mid-’80s film for those just slightly younger than the notorious Brat Pack, and it’s a past he’s had a hard time shaking. “That label has certainly held me back in many areas of my life. I believe I have a lot more depth than that, folks. I’m not just some teen-schlock guy who happened to be popular during the ’80s and has nothing to say anymore and just smiles and looks good for the camera.”

He’s all too aware that society — Hollywood in particular — has a short attention span when it comes to stars. Years ago, Feldman found himself rather cruelly tossed aside as early ’90s rebellion made a mockery of all things ’80s. After bouts with drug abuse, several arrests, and a divorce, a now 12-years sober Feldman has a perspective on society most people will never share: “Pop culture tends to brush people under the carpet when it gets bored with them. You take the Gary Colemans of the world who are so willing to kind of quietly sit there and allow the world to piss on them. I am not one of those, and I will not be one of those. I’m not going to be one of those guys who is easily swept under the carpet.”

But fighting the public desire to marginalize him has occupied much of Feldman’s time and thoughts. He becomes ruffled when questions turn to his earlier work and says he wants to be known for what he is doing now, not the movies he made as a child and teenager. “It drives me crazy when people ask me questions about Corey Haim. I get those questions all the time. It’s the same mundane questions: ‘What’s the Goonies sequel going to be about?’ or ‘Are you still friends with Corey Haim?’ or ‘What was it like talking with Michael Jackson?’ — just these retarded questions,” says Feldman. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t frown on fans who appreciate the work I did then, but it’s time to grow. We all do what we do when we’re little, and then we grow up and we try to do something a little more important, and that’s where I am now.”

With that in mind, Feldman says he is more particular these days about the types of films he agrees to do. “The only thing that I’ve done in the past year, filmwise,” he says, “is a film called Bikini Bandits Go To Hell. I play myself making fun of myself. If you’re all going to make jokes, then I’ll make them too. If I have to be the world’s clown, then I’ll do it. But have a good laugh, and then let’s move on to what’s next, to something more important.”

And that seems to be what he’s planning to do Sunday at the Hi-Tone. As much as some of us want to hang on to that kid from Goonies, he’s all grown up now.

Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Post author By
Post date June 6, 2002

Universal Truths and Cycles, Guided By Voices (Matador)

In the midst of the musically crippled 1980s, Bob Pollard and Guided By Voices, armed only with an unshakable faith in John Lennon, the potent jargon of war, and an abiding love of flying machines, got stewed as bats and sloppily set about the task of remapping the rock-and-roll genome. Obsessively mixing and matching so many disparate sonic elements, GBV developed a brand of arena-ready bubblegum that can only be described as short-form prog. The ease with which GBV tossed off complex two-minute anthems (not to mention their heroic onstage drinking) made them the darlings of true punks and frat boys alike, and Pollard gave voice to this odd appeal in “Quality of Armor,” a Beatles-flavored beauty from Propeller. “The worst offense is intelligence,” Pollard wailed. “The best defense is belligerence.” Lyrically speaking, songs like “Game of Pricks” from Alien Lanes rivaled Dylan at his finest, while tunes like “Radio Show (Trust the Wizard)” managed to both poke fun at and pay homage to drive-time radio and its requisite doses of Pink Floyd and Rush.

But beginning with Under the Bushes Under the Stars, it started to look like the absurdly prolific Pollard had run out of things to say, and keeper singles like Do the Collapse‘s wickedly catchy “Teenage F.B.I.” aside, they were never able to put together an album as complete and cohesive as Bee Thousand. Last year’s critically lauded Isolation Drills seemed neither intelligent nor belligerent. In fact, Pollard’s lyrics had become decidedly smug. GBV’s latest offering, Universal Truths and Cycles, is the closest the steadily shifting lineup of musicians has come to making a front-to-back brilliant LP in a long time. It’s almost like a guided tour through the group’s discography, beginning with Devil Between My Toes and ending somewhere around Mag Earwig. As usual, this disc finds Pollard sloshed and staring at the stars, and, thanks to the mad guitar skills of Doug Gillard, it has all the monstrous hooks and civilized aggression these self-proclaimed soft-rock renegades are famous for.

Frequent GBV flyers, however, will recognize recycled lyrical material that never quite measures up to vintage Pollard. Occasionally, his lyrics even lapse into the kind of accidental self-parody only Lou Reed can rival. On the other hand, rockers like the disc’s first single, “Everywhere With Helicopter,” manage to sound fresh in spite of the tried-and-true Pollardisms. “Cheyenne” comes on strong with the same bouncy pop that fueled earlier hits like “The Closer You Are (the Quicker It Hits You)” but without the ominous silliness that made that song great. In fact, all the quirkiness that made songs like “My Valuable Hunting Knife” stick in your head has been excised, making the whole affair duller than it could be and more than a little self-important. Maybe it’s finally time for Pollard, well into his 40s, to slow down just a little bit, regroup, and rediscover the wonders of robots, UFOs, and self-inflicted aerial nostalgia. Universal Truths and Cycles would be a career record for most bands, but given the legacy of GBV, it’s pretty average stuff, and maybe not even that.

— Chris Davis

Grade: B

Guided By Voices will be at the Young Avenue Deli Friday, June 7th, with My Morning Jacket and the 45’s.

Easy Now, Jeb Loy Nichols (Rykodisc Records)

A Missouri native who’s made his home in the U.K. since 1983, Jeb Loy Nichols originally worked as a designer and then fell in with the London reggae scene. His cohorts introduced him to the joys of dub and reggae, and he in turn introduced them to George Jones and Lefty Frizzell. In the ’90s, he led the politico-folksy reggae band Fellow Travelers, described by Spin as “the lonesome children of Merle, Marley, and Marx.” On his first two critically acclaimed solo outings, he swirled country, R&B, and Jamaican influences into the purest pop songs that side of the Atlantic. On this, his third release, he steps back from the country/reggae hybrid he’s renowned for to make some sweet soul music that is mellowness personified. On Easy Now, Nichols croons soul and R&B like the masters, channeling Nat King Cole, Marvin Gaye, and Hank Williams Sr. in his reedy, self-assured manner. Like Terence Trent D’Arby, another expatriate American who found his musical fortune in Europe, Nichols has the ease and confidence that make it all seem effortless. He’s a natural. Musically, too, this album reminds me of D’Arby on certain tracks in which funk melds with a soulful backbeat in an almost hypnotic ambience.

Nichols has an urban, thinking man’s J.J. Cale groove, adding subtle country and Caribbean touches to this soulful music, which makes it irresistible. (The pure country-pop of the opening track is as luscious and effervescent as strawberry wine.) Barefoot music par excellence, Easy Now gets my vote for the best laid-back listening for summertime 2002. — Lisa Lumb

Grade: A-

The Rough Guide To Bollywood, Various Artists (World Music Network)

The Very Best Bollywood Songs II, Various Artists (Outcaste)

The most outré sonic adventure wouldn’t make the composers of Indian film music blink. Churning out songs for the hundreds of musicals that appear every year, these music teams run through more styles per minute than even the headiest mixmaster, so you might want to sample this pair of compilations selectively: The stuff collected herein can make even jaded eardrums do backflips.

The Very Best Bollywood Songs II, with selections ranging from 1949 to the present, is wilder than the Rough Guide collection, with bushy-tailed beats and wigged-out strings springing from every crevice. On “Zindagi Ek Safar,” baritone Kishore Kumar even yodels. The Rough Guide To Bollywood is neater both sonically (fewer violin sections) and organizationally (it begins in the ’70s and is ordered chronologically). It’s also more tuneful: You’d likely find yourself walking around all day humming, say, Asha Bhonsle’s “Piya Tu Ab To Aaja” if it weren’t followed by Bhonsle and Kishore Kumar’s equally catchy “Pyar Diwana Hota Hai.” Both discs peak with the same song, “Yeh Dosti Hum Nahin.” This theme, from 1975’s Sholay, is a sound clash between corn-fed Oklahoma! strings, Ma-and-Pa-Kettle-style banjo-plucking, and a freaked-out synthesizer.

Two testaments to crass commercialization at its most delicious. — Michaelangelo Matos

Grades: B+ (both albums)

Tangent 2002: Disco Nouveau, Various Artists (Ghostly International)

Hey, are you all right? Gosh, that was a nasty spill you took. Really looked like it hurt. Here, let me help you up. Say, what is that you tripped over, anyway? Oh, Jesus — not another new electro compilation! I’m so sorry about that. You’ve really got to keep your eye out for those suckers, you know? They’re everywhere.

So it’s nice to find one that isn’t a mere rehash of the same handful of songs and/or artists à la the comps that have become as ubiquitous in hipster record stores as a Now disc in a Sam Goody. Tangent 2002: Disco Nouveau is a poppy, song-oriented affair, and its artists seem to regard electro with a sense of romance rather than as the hot and sleazy one-night-stand material of most dance-floor-oriented comps. Adult’s “Night Life” conveys both the giddiness of clubbing and a tongue-in-cheek distance from it, as do tracks from Susumu Yokota and Lowfish.

And “Make Me,” by veteran electro revivalists DMX Krew featuring Tracy, is great pop trash like it oughta be, the Kylie Minogue record you only wish she’d made with Stock/Aitken/Waterman. It might never get on the radio, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself falling for — or over — it anyway. — MM

Grade: B+

News The Fly-By

What’s In Store

Post author By Simone Barden
Post date June 6, 2002

Have you noticed all the out-of-state license plates? Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin. And just try finding an available hotel room.

Memphis has been invaded.

But not just by the celebrities and boxing fans who’ve crowded in for the Tyson-Lewis fight. More than 700 Schnuck Markets, Inc., employees — who are occupying at least 300 of those hotel rooms — have come to transform Seessel’s into Schnucks in less than 72 hours.

“We’re already changing the economy here,” said Randy D. Wedel, Schnucks’ senior vice president of marketing and merchandise, with a wink.

Schnucks opened its doors in the former Seessel’s locations on Wednesday, June 5th, at 9 a.m. Seessel’s closed its doors on June 2nd at noon. The Seessel’s grocery store tradition ends after almost one-and-a-half centuries.

In the end, you could get a pound of Angus tenderloin for $3.99 instead of $16.99 and half a gallon of “not from concentrate” juice for $1, marked down from $3.69 — everything was reduced for “quick sale.” But if you expected tears to roll and Seessel’s customers to beg for the doors to stay open, it didn’t happen. The last hours of Seessel’s being Seessel’s were surprisingly unspectacular:

11 a.m. Only a dozen or so cars are in the parking lot of the Midtown store on Union Avenue. It is calm and quiet inside, with more burgundy-shirted Seessel’s employees running around than shoppers pushing blue carts.

11:30 a.m. At the Truse Parkway store — across Poplar from Clark Tower — is the same emptiness. Outside and inside. The produce is gone, no fresh bread, no more “quick fixin’ ideas” for dinner, no weekend grocery-shopping madness. Customers search the store for reduced items and stroll from aisle to aisle. “Groovin’ on a Sunday afternoon,” sing the Young Rascals from the store’s speakers.

11:50 a.m. In the Truse store, the only check-out counter that remains open is the express line: 15 items or less.

“Attention, Seessel’s shoppers. We’ll close in approximately five minutes. Come back and see us when we reopen on Wednesday at 9 a.m. as Schnucks. Thank you for shopping at Seessel’s.” One more frozen pizza goes through the scanner.

Noon. The cashier looks around and asks, “Is that it?” She answers her own question, “I don’t know,” and shrugs. Someone might be hiding in the bathroom. No, all clear. That’s it. The doors are closed. Goodbye.

12:05 p.m. It isn’t Schnucks yet. First, Seessel’s employees have to count whatever is left in the store, and Seessel’s doesn’t officially become Schnucks until midnight. But the transformation begins when a few people begin to show up at the closed doors. A woman in despair: “Where can I now get fresh produce around here?” A man in need of medicine: “Is the Perkins [Road] store still open?” No, sir. Seessel’s has closed its doors. Come back and see us when we reopen on Wednesday, June 5th, at 9 a.m. as Schnucks.

The large rectangular Seessel’s sign ruling over the parking lot gets divested first.

Midnight. Why are all these people waiting in front of the store? The parking lot at the Truse store is packed. Same thing at the Perkins and the Union stores. It’s the “Schnuck Markets Mid-South Retagging Project.” There are at least five people in every aisle, trying to figure out where to put the Schnucks price tags. Seessel’s tags were lemon yellow and midnight blue; Schnucks tags are baby-girl pink. Sometimes they don’t fit where they’re supposed to. The ends are sticking out, but they remain in place.

It’s the first shift for Schnucks’ midnight workers from Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. But, really, for the next 60 hours or so, there won’t be a regular shift. “They’re here until the job is done,” said Larry Meggio, Schnucks’ director of marketing. Restocking, redecorating, rearranging — Seessel’s has to be transformed, and it has to be transformed fast.

12:30 a.m. At the Union store. What was Seessel’s not even 12 hours ago is already Schnucks. That’s what the large sign above the entrance says. The letters are red and streamlined, not burgundy and curvy like Seessel’s.

Where is the old Seessel’s sign? For now, it rests at the local sign company that removed it. But owner Craig Schnuck said he’d like to preserve it in one of the local museums. It’s a big sign, and space seems to be a problem, at least for the Pink Palace Museum, the only place that’s been contacted so far.

It’s past midnight on Sunday, June 2nd. Seessel’s is Schnucks. It’s official. Besides the new name and the new logo, what will actually be different on Wednesday, June 5th, at 9 a.m. when the Schnucks stores open?

Memphian Marie Sheldon has shopped at Schnucks stores in St. Louis several times, and she has the answer.

“Cinnamon ice cream.”

Politics Politics Beat Blog

Politics

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date June 6, 2002

Fathers and Sons

As the twigs are bent, so will they grow — sometimes in unexpected directions.

by JACKSON BAKER

The sons of some famous political fathers are making news — or attempting to — in their own right. Rick Rout, the son of outgoing Shelby County mayor Jim Rout, is, as of now, the only candidate who has declared for the chairmanship of the county Republican Party to succeed current chairman Alan Crone in intraparty balloting next year. Rout has had business cards printed proclaiming his interest.

And Sir Isaac Ford, the youngest son of former 9th District congressman Harold Ford Sr. and brother of current U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., seems determined to remind voters of his presence on the August 1st countywide ballot as an independent candidate for Shelby County mayor.

On his own initiative, said a spokesman, young Ford recently solicited posters on the theme of how to improve education from students at the 64 city schools found to be substandard in recent state testing. And, the spokesman said, he was scheduled to honor some 85 entrants at a banquet at Jillian’s.

Other members of the Ford family, including the former congressman, are still presumed to be backing the mayoral candidacy of Democratic nominee AC Wharton, who faces a well-financed challenge from Republican nominee George Flinn, an independently wealthy doctor and broadcast magnate whose main concern right now is bringing aboard the partisans of defeated mayoral rival Larry Scroggs.

If Isaac Ford’s independent candidacy, which has attracted minimal attention so far, gets any traction, it may have to be factored into the total picture too.

Young Ford has set forth his mayoral program in a series of position papers, some of which espouse ideas that are, to say the least, potentially controversial. One such proposes that African Americans in the county should receive “billions of dollars worth of local bonds, federal money, state money, and local big businesses’ money” as “reparations” for slavery.

· Meanwhile, state Senator John Ford (D-District 29, Memphis) professes to be unconcerned about his Democratic primary challenger, civil rights attorney Richard Fields, who has indicated he will confront Ford rigorously on several alleged breaches of propriety in office.

“Nobody’s going to be paying any attention to that guy. He’s got no standing at all,” said Ford, a long-term senator and member of an established Memphis political family.

The senator, who chairs the Senate General Welfare, Health and Human Resources Committee and belongs to a number of other influential legislative panels, says he plans to do no active campaigning. “I don’t need to. The people are already coming to me on their own,” he said.

Ford and his brother Joe Ford, an interim Shelby County commissioner who has been newly nominated by Shelby County Democrats to continue in that role, were conspicuous Thursday in their attendance at a fund-raiser for Shelby County Circuit Court clerk Jimmy Moore, who runs on the Republican label and is being opposed this year by Democratic nominee Dell Gill, a frequent candidate.

Moore, a onetime member of the local Democrats’ Finance Committee, has generally enjoyed backing across party lines and has been especially favored by members of the Ford family.

· 7th District congressman Ed Bryant (R-Henderson), now opposing former Governor Lamar Alexander in the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Fred Thompson, is boasting his showing in a straw poll conducted in Nashville this week by a would-be successor, state senator Mark Norris of Collierville.

The poll, conducted by Norris in a hospitality suite at the Renaissance Hotel after the annual Statesmen’s Dinner last week, showed Bryant the primary winner over Alexander by a margin of 296 votes to Alexander’s 163. Though acknowledging the sampling is “not scientific,” Bryant has mentioned it in a news release and in several public appearances, including one Friday at Memphis’ downtown Plaza Club.

For his part, the usually unflappable Alexander has fairly sputtered with contempt about the announced strawpoll results, saying at the formal opening of his Memphis headquarters on Poplar Avenue Saturday that Bryant’s claim didn’t “even deserve a comment.” Aides took a lighter approach, with both Kevin Phillips and Josh Holley, his press liaisons, saying the straw poll wasn’t “worth the [figurative] straw” in it.

Both the former governor and Holley defended as accurate their own home-grown poll results from Whit Ayes and Associates, which show, among other things, that Alexander leads Bryant everywhere, even in the congressman’s 7th District bailiwick — attributing such results to “name recognition.”

Alexander, whose basic contention is that he would make a stronger opponent for Democrat Bob Clement in a fall race, said not even a Bryant victory in the primary would disprove such a thesis. “I am better able to attract independents and Democratic voters,” he said flatly.

Norris’ straw poll showed him as the winner over his several rivals for the GOP 7th District congressional nomination, with 145 votes, 36 percent of the total. A spokesman for second-place finisher Marsha Blackburn of Williamson County dismissed the poll as meaningless and cited the results of Blackburn’s own straw poll, taken at her headquarters and showing her to be the unanimous winner. ·

A Game Of Chicken

The GOP contestants for Congress in the 7th District scrap at their first forum.

by JACKSON BAKER

Last week saw the first major gathering involving all major aspirants for the Republican nomination for Congress in the 7th District, and the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses and idiosyncrasies were on abundant display.

The forum, which took place at Pickering Community Center in Germantown, featured Marsha Blackburn of Williamson County, Forrest Shoaf of Davidson County, and Sonny Carlota, Brent Taylor, David Kustoff, and Mark Norris, all of Shelby County.

All except Carlota, a mild-mannered Philippines-born physician and frequent candidate in Lakeland elections, can be said to have serious designs on the seat, which is being vacated by incumbent Ed Bryant, now seeking the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate.

Shoaf may be regarded as a bit more of a long shot than the others, each of whom has some degree of established name ID, but the diminutive Nashville barrister and military veteran is playing catch-up with a series of radio ads which promise, among other things, that he’ll go to court to try to block any income-tax legislation passed by the General Assembly.

State senator Blackburn’s appearance in Shelby County was by no means an unusual event; she’s spending what aides describe as “a couple of days” in the Memphis area every week, knowing that, while the 7th sprawls all the way from the eastern edge of Memphis into the periphery of Nashville, big Shelby can account for as much as 40 percent of the total Republican vote.

Her statewide fame as an archfoe of higher taxation and big government is not quite as well established in the Memphis area as elsewhere, but she’s doing her best to update Shelby Countians, preaching the gospel of across-the-board spending cuts, selective deregulation, cracking down on driver’s licenses for aliens, and, most of all, diehard opposition to a state income tax.

She has her work cut out for her in Shelby inasmuch as it is home for lawyers Kustoff, who ran the crucially successful Bush campaign in Tennessee in 2000 and Norris, her state Senate colleague who represents the county and parts of two adjoining ones, as well as Taylor, a Memphis city councilman who has assiduously worked the district’s rural stretches.

All the candidates professed themselves opposed to what some (funeral director Taylor, especially) call the “death” tax and some refer to as the “inheritance” tax; all professed alarm about government spending and the threat of more taxes; and all toed the line as opponents of abortion. Needless to say, they all favored job development.

The differences were mainly those of style: Each of the male candidates delivered his remarks while standing behind the table at which they all were seated. Blackburn opted, Liddy Dole-style, to walk back and forth between the table and the overflow audience.

Kustoff, riding a wave of brand-new and well-received TV commercials, emphasized his key role in winning Tennessee for the Bush ticket; Norris played up his service as a county commissioner and legislator; and Taylor, in general, sounded a populist note on behalf of the hinterlands he has cultivated (sometimes by donating leftover council-reelection money to local parties in the district).

All was not mere boilerplate and politics as usual, however. An encounter between Taylor and Norris, one which could reverberate quite late into the primary campaign, drew the most attention.

Norris, an inventive politician who has mastered the art of holding his ideological ground while making personal connections across various lines, had readied a gimmick for the evening.

In part designed to establish contact with the audience, in part designed to counter what he would later term “a whispering campaign,” it began with the affable state senator’s toting up to the front of the room several paper bags. Norris, best known as a lawyer, announced (with a slight but meaningful glance in Taylor’s direction) that he wanted to set to rest a “rumor going around” expressing doubts about the legitimacy of his simultaneous identity as a farmer.

Reaching into one sack and pulling out a half-carton of eggs bearing his name and campaign logo, Norris said he wanted to give away egg cartons, as long as they held out, to each person present, “and I can guarantee you,” he said, they were all laid on his Collierville farm and personally harvested by himself.

As the crowd murmured in appreciation of the ploy, Taylor suddenly interjected, “You know, when he put his hand in that sack, I didn’t know whether he was going to come back with something from the back end of a chicken or from the back end of a horse.” To which Norris shot back, “You probably wouldn’t know the difference.”

The show of combat between Norris and Taylor indicates not only differences in style, of course, but also the degree to which they, along with Kustoff, whose style is more above-the-bar, will be competing intensely for the common Shelby County base.

Each of the three can demonstrate mathematically that, even with votes split between them, Blackburn’s Williamson County vote would not be enough for her to win. What each of them may not realize as fully as do observers at the Nashville end of the district is that Blackburn — who must, of course, cope with Shoaf’s competition on her home ground — may not be so easily confined to her base constituency. (Her Senate colleagues, especially, regard her — for better or worse — as a statewide force.

To judge from this first encounter, the battle for the 7th in Republican ranks can be expected to be intense, colorful, and perhaps even bruising. ·

Music Music Features

Sound Advice

Post author By
Post date June 6, 2002

I would be remiss in my duties if I did not implore you to leave work early on Friday, June 7th, go directly to the Young Avenue Deli, and begin to slam beers in order to enhance your enjoyment of Dayton’s finest rockers, Guided By Voices. In the opinion of this diehard fan, GBV have been putting out some pretty forgettable material lately, but their songs are two minutes long, and they’ll probably play for three hours, which means they’ll play more than a few songs from their glory days. And since GBV have been cranking out fantastic pop tunes about robots, airplanes, liquor, weed, bad love, outer space, and, of course, rock-and-roll since 1986, there is plenty of material to choose from. And, heck, if they just played “Motor Away” over and over, I’d be plenty happy.

While the group has never completely recovered from guitarist (and, in the estimation of some, the soul of GBV) Tobin Sprout’s departure a few years back, Doug Gillard’s guitar work is not to be underestimated. Though the recorded material seems to suffer from an abundance of production and a lack of inspiration, GBV’s live shows are always a kick in the pants and a fine excuse to jump up and down in a beer-soaked arena-rock frenzy for hours on end. Better still, The 45’s will be on hand to open. While everybody has been cooing and gurgling over the White Stripes, this stunning, organ-driven ensemble has quietly continued to soup up their garage-rock hot rod. And it is one sweet machine, let me tell you. Perhaps only ? and the Mysterians did it better and, even then, only on “96 Tears.” Either GBV or the 45’s would be a heck of a show. Both is almost too much to ask for.

If GBV’s fantastic power pop just ain’t your thang, maybe you’ll want to go visit the Hi-Tone on Thursday, June 6th, to catch a show by honky-tonkers The Brooklyn Cowboys. These citified troubadours have quite the pedigree, what with connections to the late Gram Parsons and all. But there’s one real problem with their music: They are the Brooklyn Cowboys, you see, and it seems they have grown a little too urbane to play real, honest-to-God country music. Their most recent release, The Other Man In Black (The Ballad of Dale Earnhardt), is a rockabilly-tinged mess that sounds like a parody of a spoof of a send-up of Hee Haw, with singers employing the kind of Southern accents you only find on reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard. If it was supposed to be funny, it isn’t, and if it was intended to be a serious homage, then it’s a hoot. Don’t get me wrong: These guys are great players who can whoop up quite the hillbilly ruckus, and that goes a long way to make up for other glaring deficits. And occasionally, as The Other Man In Black‘s fourth track, “Learn How To Love Me,” proves, once in a while, they can get everything absolutely right. Chris Davis