Month: July 2002

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Unanswered Questions

The fault may lie in ourselves for not looking dutifully enough under every stone. But there are, for whatever reason, too many mysteries left for voters to consider as they prepare to vote for a series of crucial positions on August 1st.

The first and most obvious question: Who is George Flinn? The enigmatic radiologist and broadcast entrepreneur, having come from nowhere as a public person, is asking us to elect him Shelby County mayor, in which office he would implicitly represent us for a four-year span and ask us to trust his judgment. With all due respect, has the good doctor — not his handlers, mind you, but Flinn himself — given us enough to go on?

Next question: What will A C Wharton do? The Democratic counterpart to the GOP’s Flinn is as well known in the community as Flinn is a mystery. Most people who know the man have an intuitive confidence in him. But we must say that he has done a good job of veiling his intentions on the vital issues of the day. He seems to know all the alternatives; we just wish he’d pick a couple — on consolidation and sprawl, for example — and spell out his guidelines.

To continue in this vein: Just how would Phil Bredesen “manage” the now thoroughly distressed state of Tennessee? Having done what he could through his campaign rhetoric to scuttle the cause of tax reform in the most recent General Assembly, doesn’t the no doubt highly capable ex-mayor of Nashville owe us something more than the six-letter word quoted above as an indication of what he would do in office?

We are loyal to the principle of the equal-time provision here, so Van Hilleary, he of the chipmunk smile and the indistinct agenda, is up next. What does the 4th District Republican congressman, who as the GOP’s gubernatorial frontrunner unloosed even more verbal torpedoes at tax reform than did the slavishly imitative Bredesen, have in mind? It is all well and good to say he’s for education — who isn’t? — but his most recent proposal, a corps of unpaid volunteer parents who would do what they could to help around the old schoolhouse, doesn’t exactly strike us as a master plan.

To proceed: Aside from the facts that they’re both ambitious for the same office (U.S. senator) and that they don’t like each other very much, just how do Lamar Alexander and Ed Bryant differ from each other and from the tiresomely repetitious GOP catechism of low taxes and less government? Especially at a time when they’re competing so hard for the right to express shibboleths of loyalty to George W. Bush, what kinds of helpful thoughts will they offer when and if the president’s economic policy — if we can use such a patently oxymoronic phrase — implodes?

And let’s not even bother asking anything of the boys now competing with Marsha Blackburn (whose simplistic government-bashing positions are all too well known) for Congress in the 7th District. They’re now fighting duels to the death over whether undeviating devotion to the posted precepts of the National Rifle Association is worth an A or an A+. (No, we’re not making this up!)

All of which is to say almost nobody running for office this year has done a credible job of enlightening us, the electorate, as to their intentions. Now do you see why the Flyer doesn’t endorse?

Categories
Opinion

local beat

According to the folks at 926 McLemore Avenue, Stax is back. Fifteen months after breaking ground for The Stax Museum of American Soul Music, things are looking good. An event on June 29th that celebrated the lighting of the Stax marquee and the Soulsville U.S.A. sign was attended by hundreds of well-wishers from the surrounding community, while the museum’s projected opening on November 15th promises to be a landmark event.

But The Stax Music Academy is perhaps the most important ingredient in the Soulsville enterprise. A training center for budding musicians, the academy fulfills part of the Stax legacy. The record company’s original run was driven by neighborhood talent, and it seemed that anybody could become somebody at Stax — something the academy is determined to make a reality once again for the Soulsville community.

“We believe that music helps build character through hard work, discipline, and team effort,” says Deanie Parker, executive director of Soulsville U.S.A., the nonprofit corporation behind the project. “Why not use music as a creative way to change the lives of thousands of children?”

The academy occupies 27,000 square feet of the Stax complex. Practice rooms and classrooms take up the majority of the space, which is augmented by a sizable choir room, a band room, and a multimedia lecture hall. A library that also houses a collection of Stax-related archives, music books, scores, and periodicals anchors the building.

For the last two years, the academy has operated as the Snap! Summer Music Camp, a six-week day camp held at LeMoyne-Owen College. More than 750 children, many from the Soulsville neighborhood, have attended Snap! lectures and workshops while honing their musical skills. Snap! admits children in the fifth through eighth grade, while other programs like the Stax Rhythm Section and the SMA Percussion Ensemble offer more specialized lessons to older kids. Two vocal programs, a gospel ensemble called the Spirit of Soulsville Singers and Street Corner Harmonies, which targets at-risk youth, round out the academy’s services.

Many teachers at the academy see their jobs as a way to pay tribute to their benefactors in the local music scene. Stax session men Nokie Taylor and Errol Thomas are both on the staff, as is Memphis jazz and blues veteran Calvin Newborn, a lecturer at the academy. “I’ve been to the mountaintop, and I’ve seen the promised land,” Newborn jokes in reference to his venerable New York jazz career. “Now, I’m coming down to earth in good ol’ Soulsville U.S.A.”

According to Taylor, “Seeing these kids learn is incredible. I’m able to share things that I’ve learned from all the professional musicians I’ve worked with — music lessons and life lessons. It’s interesting to see them go back into the community and teach what they’ve learned from me.”

For Scott Bomar, another instructor at the academy, the benefits of his job are twofold. “I’m on both sides of it, working with guys like Nokie and Errol and Skip Pitts, three musicians I’ve always looked up to,” he explains, mentioning erstwhile producer and academy co-worker Jonah Ellis as another mentor. “I feel like I’m learning and teaching at the same time.”

The Stax Music Academy’s Grand Opening ceremony is on Wednesday, July 24th, at 10 a.m. On Thursday, July 25th, Soul Classics 103.5 FM will be broadcasting live from the academy, while tours of the facility will run from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m. On Friday, July 26th, the academy’s Grand Finale will take place at The Orpheum theater at 7 p.m. Ticket prices range from $5 for general admission to $25, which includes a VIP reception. More than 225 kids will take the stage for the show, with all proceeds going straight back into the academy.

Former Memphian Rosco Gordon was found dead in his New York home on July 11th. Born and raised in Memphis, Gordon got his musical start as a teenager after winning an amateur contest at the old Palace Theater on Beale Street. In the late ’40s, he was a member of the famed Beale Streeters, agroup that included such talents as Johnny Ace, B.B. King, and Bobby “Blue” Bland.

At Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service, Gordon cut a handful of songs featuring his signature piano beat, including the seminal blues hit “No More Doggin’.” Gordon accented the offbeat on the number, creating the shuffle sound that became the foundation of Jamaican ska music. Though that single was released on Vee-Jay, he also recorded for the Chess, Duke, and Sun labels.

After taking early retirement in the ’60s, Gordon returned to the stage in the ’80s. Recent appearances included the 2002 Handy Awards, where he reunited with fellow Sun alumni B.B. King, Ike Turner, and Little Milton for a scorching version of King’s “Three O’Clock Blues.”He also headlined a show at the Young Avenue Deli three nights later. Despite his passing, it’s certain that Gordon’s musical legacy will continue to endure.

Andria Lisle will cover local music news and notes each week in Local Beat. You can e-mail her at localbeat@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
News

That’s Sprawl, Folks!

If you just bought a home that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a neighborhood of similar big, expensive houses, you probably think you’ve already paid your fair share to attain the good life. The mortgage is one monthly reminder, and real-estate taxes are another. But the price you’re paying is just the beginning of the costs that make it possible for you to live there. Much of the rest of it is paid by people outside of your suburb, people who never realize the benefits.

Myron Orfield is the author of American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality. He says the people who live in upscale suburbs get the advantages of good schools and nice roads, but they don’t pay all of the underlying costs. Much of that is passed on to others. According to Orfield, “Most of us aren’t able to live in the communities with $400,000 houses and massive office parks. Only about 7 or 8 percent of us can afford to live there, and the rest of the region really pays the freight for that.”

That’s because the rest of the region pays the county and state taxes that make the roads and nice schools possible. Orfield says a residential area alone doesn’t generate enough tax revenue to pay the full costs:

“We all subsidize that development, and so when all the resources of the region concentrate in 6 or 7 percent of the region’s population, it really hurts the vast majority of the people.”

And while the cost of supporting upscale neighborhoods is substantial, that’s just the beginning of the hidden costs of sprawl.

In most cases, those nice suburbs are nice because they’re situated away from the hubbub of work and traffic. The people who live there might have to drive a little farther to get to work, but, hey, when they get home, it’s a complete escape, worth the extra drive time. Right?

William Testa is an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago. He measures things by how efficient they are. He says driving a little farther from the suburbs to work and back isn’t necessarily a bad thing: “If people want to travel farther because they can live better, then it’s their choice. If they feel they live better with a longer commute, then we wouldn’t necessarily call that an inefficiency. When it can be inefficient is when people don’t pay for the costs of their own travel.”

And that’s the rub. If you decide to drive 30 miles to work instead of 10 miles, the taxes on the extra gasoline you burn don’t begin to pay the extra costs of that decision.

“The spillover costs that they don’t internalize when you decide to get in your car and drive someplace, such as to your job,” says Testa, “is environmental degradation. The cost of road maintenance isn’t directly paid for when you decide how many miles to drive. So economists would say that driving is not priced correctly to have people efficiently choose how many miles they choose to drive.”

When an upper-middle-income family chooses to live in an enclave with others in their tax bracket, it’s a given that the people who teach their children, who police their neighborhoods, and who fight their fires are not going to be able to afford to live there.

In fact, those who would work in the restaurants and at the service stations in many cases can’t take those jobs because they can’t afford the housing or the commute.

Emily Talen, an urban planner at the University of Illinois, says that’s a cost that can’t always be measured in dollars and cents. It’s a separation of the haves and the have-nots. According to Talen, “Social cost is that fragmentation, that separation, that segregation on an income level more than anything else.”

Talen says when people decide they can afford the good life in a nice suburb, they often think of their own success but not about the costs to others:

“This is what our nation is founded on. It is founded on the pursuit of happiness, and I think that has been kind of problematic. People are thinking in terms of their own individual happiness rather than about the common good.”

Talen says when a town decides it will only allow expensive houses to be built, it’s decided that all labor for its services will be imported from out of town. The expense of that decision is borne by everyone else, especially the lower-income people forced to commute.

Testa says that, in the end, that cost might be the greatest one to society at large: “This is un-American and very undemocratic and something that we ought to think about very seriously. Could we really live with ourselves in a society where there aren’t housing options available for people to make a livelihood, to follow the opportunity for their livelihood?”

Experts say there’s nothing wrong with pursuing the good life as long as everyone is paying their fair share of the cost. They say right now that’s not happening, and those who never benefit from a pleasant life in the suburbs are paying much of the cost for others to do so.

Lester Graham travels throughout the Midwest, reporting on the environment. This article first appeared on AlterNet.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Big Trouble

K-19: The Widowmaker starts off a lot like another good-ship-gone-wrong film of recent memory: Titanic. Much like the infamous luxury liner whose name has become synonymous with disaster, the Russian nuclear submarine K-19 was supposed to be the biggest and the best. K-19, like Titanic, starts off obviously but appropriately foreshadowing why the voyage is doomed from the beginning. Pride in both country and manufacturing is at play here: K-19 was a triumph of engineering and capability for a Russia desperate to assert itself as a world power at a time when World War III looked more like a looming inevitability than a worst-case scenario.

Harrison Ford is Alexei Vostrikov, a respected and feared senior navy captain brought in to supervise the finishing touches and maiden voyage of K-19 (nicknamed the Widowmaker because 10 men died in separate incidents during its construction). He relieves of his command K-19‘s Captain Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson) and hastens the ship’s preparations for its essential first mission: the firing of a test missile from the Arctic Circle. Vostrikov pushes the limits of both vessel and crew by crashing through the forbidding Arctic shelf and plummeting to crushing depths — all to prove to his crew that were they at war, there would be no opportunity to make mistakes, nor would there be time for fear. Tensions boil between Ford’s and Neeson’s captains. Polenin knows the limits of his craft and crew, while Vostrikov must exceed and expand them. And they are indeed tested when the reactor’s coolant system springs a leak and the lives of all aboard are weighed against the success of the mission. Vostrikov is placed in a political and logistical nightmare: If the ship explodes, it will detonate the sub’s warheads and destroy a nearby U.S. Navy destroyer — which would probably be interpreted as an act of war and could kick off WWIII. If the crew abandons the ship, they could be surrendering the Russian flagship and all of its secrets to the U.S. If they stay, they could die from hideous radiation poisoning. All the while, mutiny hangs in the air and the temperature of the reactor climbs ever closer to its terminal 1,000 degrees.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, who knows the craft of suspense (Blue Steel) and action (Point Break), has put together an effective, if unextraordinary, thriller. Tensions run high, of course, and there is plenty of expected sub-related excitement afoot — scenes with rivets popping out of the hull, water leaking, and the insanity that comes when claustrophobia and disaster combine. There is one particularly harrowing scene where men take 10-minute shifts repairing the leak in the reactor. Each enters the reactor after seeing the last worker exit, ravaged by radiation. The film is at its best when showing this kind of reality: the fear and determination of its crew, whose heroics are the kind typically reserved for movies about Americans in similar peril.

Beneath the veneer of explosions and last-second saves, however, there is a refreshingly complicated and engaging political adventure unfolding. Bigelow and screenwriter Christopher Kyle take a very objective perspective in showing us the realities of the Soviet political machine, as national priorities are juggled in favor of beating the Americans to technological superiority and control of the world’s interests — at the expense of safety and sense (a practice common in this hemisphere as well). Additionally, we are given a complex yet uncompromising treatment from both sides of the argument of the two captains, whose tensions rise to a surprising and satisfying climax, and we see that the Russian code of honor leaves no room for doubt. Ford and Neeson are a great match, both with their own brand of authority and concern. While their Russian accents leave much to be desired, their credibility as men who may hold the fate of the world in their hands is absolute. And in our current world, where that very fate sits in too many hands, this film shows us, challengingly, the honor and heroism of the “enemy” within.

— Bo List

If you see only one monster movie this summer don’t see Eight Legged Freaks. An agreeable but hackneyed comedy about giant, mutated spiders attacking a small, Southwestern mining town, Freaks hits the big screen one week after an even more ridiculous monster movie, the retro-futuristic Reign Of Fire. (Wouldn’t you have loved to have been in that pitch meeting? “It’s Matthew McConaughey fighting dragons in the future!“) And the differences between the two films are instructive: Where Reign Of Fire is a great bad movie, Freaks is merely a lazy, conventional one.

Several films over the last couple of decades have taken on material similar to that in Freaks (a community besieged by alien creatures, terrestrial or otherwise) and with a similar tone (jokey, amiable, cartoonish homage to earlier creature features) — obvious antecedents like Arachnophobia and Tremors, Tim Burton’s alien-invasion Mars Attacks!, and Joe Dante’s genre standard-bearer Gremlins among them — and all have fared better than Freaks, which reaches for freshness in what has become the stalest way possible: by incorporating oh-so familiar and half-hearted attempts at witty self-referentiality à la Scream. There’s the clip from one of those ’50s-era scare films playing on the television in the room of the preteen boy who, per convention, is the only person in town to understand what’s going on, and then there’s the same kid’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge speech about how “they never believe the kids.” And worst of all is one character’s desperately topical exclamation “It’s a spider, man” followed by a double-take just in case the viewer doesn’t get the lame pun.

Reign Of Fire, by contrast, pays truer homage to B-movie matinee fare through the utter conviction it invests in its preposterous narrative, charming partly through unpretentious fantasy escapism and partly through moments of giddy ludicrousness far more entertaining than the standard Mystery Science Theater 3000 kitsch. When ugly American McConaughey (sporting camouflage and one of those wild-eyed-Southern-boy stares) dukes it out with Englishman Christian Bale (wearing a Euroweenie turtleneck sweater!) in some fever-dream reenactment of a closed-door argument between George Bush and Tony Blair, it’s one of the most ridiculously entertaining things on the big screen this year, its unintentional comedy far outpacing any of the telegraphed laugh lines or too-familiar visual jokes found in Freaks.

Eight Legged Freaks, despite its too well-worn, genre-spoofing intentions and too by-the-numbers script, could have saved itself with its cast and its critters, but it flubs both. Kari Wuhrer (MTV’s Remote Control, countless second-grade “erotic thrillers”) and Scarlett Johansson (Ghost World) might make one of the most fetching mother/daughter tandems ever put on-screen, but the latter, especially, isn’t given enough to do here in her marginal, conventional scream-queen role. Instead, most of the action is given to the kid (Scott Terra), a Harry Potter look-alike who doesn’t register much of an impression, and David Arquette, who gives a slightly toned-down version of his standard schtick.

As far as the critters, the film is plagued by the technological “advantage” it has over the vintage B movies to which it seeks to pay tribute. While it may be cool to see the car-sized jumping spiders taking down dirt-bikers in mid-air, the dull two-dimensionality of the computer-generated spiders gets a little tiring after awhile, especially when compared to the cheaper-looking but more engaging mythic, painterly Reign Of Fire dragons (especially in scenes in which the fire-breathing baddies are viewed from a distance).

So if you’re only going to see one monster movie this summer ask yourself if you want to see a slapdash product that pays homage to great B movies (which, chances are, you haven’t even seen) or just a great B movie? — Chris Herrington

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We Recommend We Recommend

Night of the HUNTER

It was horrible. HORRIBLE. At least, I remember it that way. I was young. Too young and too impressionable to see anything like it. To be honest, it put me right off rock-and-roll music for some time. What happened is this: My friend said, “Look up,” and I did just as a wild-haired man wearing nothing but a loincloth swung out over the vast arena audience and onto the stage, where he picked up a guitar and began to wail, “She’s so sweet when she yanks on my meat. Down on the street, you know she can’t be beat. What the hell.” It was the Wang Dang Sweet Poontang tour, after all, and what did I expect from Ted Nugent? “Amazing Grace”? This is the same man who made the explicit declaration “When in doubt, I whip it out. I got me a rock-and-roll band. It’s a free-for-all.”

But who could have guessed at this particular juncture that this long-haired, self-proclaimed madman from Detroit Rock City, so freely (and raunchily) exercising his First Amendment rights, would lean politically just to the right of Attila the Hun? Who could have begun to imagine that decades down the road he would be the proud author of a cookbook? Who could have imagined that the leading celebrity blurb on the dust jacket of said cookbook would be from archconservative and gun nut Charlton Heston, declaring without reservation, “Ted Nugent is, beyond argument, one of the good guys”? That President George W. Bush, a close ally of the pious Christian right, would say to him, “We’re glad you’re here. You’re a good man”? Well, certainly anyone who paid close attention to the extreme phallocentricity and “if you can’t join ’em, lick ’em” attitude of his music might have guessed the politics but not the cookbook. Nobody could have ever foreseen that. Then again, Kill It & Grill It ain’t exactly Betty Crocker.

“Vegetarians are cool,” Nugent notes in his book. “All I eat are vegetarians — except for the occasional mountain lion steak.” He says that munching on a store-bought chicken, more feces than meat, will never give him and his Labrador, Gonzo, “a full predator spiritual high.” And having reduced the realm of spirituality to blood lust and predation, he adds, “We don’t just cook. We dance naked at the primordial campfire of life.”

Nugent likes words like “primordial,” and he rambles on and on like a death-hungry Kerouac stoned out of his mind on pure testosterone. Oddly enough, he manages to imbue his overcooked prose with the spirit of a true conservationist. Before the end of page one, he says of the hunter lifestyle, “Hands-on cause and effect provides valuable lessons in environmental responsibility. You can’t deny a gutpile.”

Nugent’s recipes are, much like his music, basic, bombastic, and, in many cases, irresistible, even to people who should know better. Who, short of a diehard vegan, can’t get their salivary glands in an uproar at the thought of wild-boar chops cooked with raisins and apples? Baked quail wrapped in pork and grape leaves, smothered in fresh seedless grapes, anyone? If Kill It & Grill It had more recipes like these and less macho psychobabble from Ted, it could be a fantastic guide to preparing wild game. But who really needs a faded rock star to tell them to dredge their meat in flour and fry it in butter, which is about as innovative as many of the book’s recipes get? Who needs to hear Nuge narcissistically going on about “scaring whitefolk with [his] oversouled R&B guitarspeak”? Besides, can a man really be such a gun-toting primal-man superhunter if any of his personal recipes calls for a can of cream of mushroom soup? Maybe if you snare your own can.

Say what you will about the man, his music, and his politics, but you can’t deny that he walks his talk and stands up for what he believes in. On his Web site, Nuge even claims that only by living the life of a predator can a person really learn to play a hard-rocking guitar. “Kill critter, add fire, ingest sacred protein fuel for the soul. There’s your damn recipe for ultra guitarnoize, kidz,” he writes. “Now I know you think I have confused the outline for introductory guitar lessons with my favorite recipe for good BBQ, but don’t jump to presumptuous conclusions, my cityfied comrades. For if you truly dream of celebrating and projecting the soul of man and this mind dazzling experience of God’s gift of life to its fullest through your creative juiceflow as flamed forth from your own electric guitar, then by no means underestimate the healing powers of nature.”

The Nuge will be demonstrating his meat-given guitar virtuosity at Horseshoe Casino on Friday, July 26th. Who knows? Maybe he’ll even give a cooking demonstration between sets.

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Record Roundup

I’m trying to avoid hyperbole here, but Time Bomb High School (In the Red; Grade: A), the just-released sophomore album from The Reigning Sound, transcends any qualifiers about “local music” whether or not it fulfills its increasingly considerable commercial prospects. In fact, the other records I’ve been thinking about most while listening to it constantly over the last couple of weeks are rather daunting comparisons: Time Bomb High School absorbs and reinvigorates pre-hippie Sixties rock and soul in much the same way that Bob Dylan’s “Love and Theft” absorbs and reinvigorates pre-rock blues and pop. And it is as concocted out of record-shop dust and marked by personal vision as DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing. Time Bomb High School may not be quite the enduring masterpiece that those two touchstones already are, but, with the lone possible exception of the White Stripes’ White Blood Cells (which draws on a different set of influences but, like Time Bomb High School, was recorded locally at Easley-McCain Studios), it’s the deepest and purest musical statement to come out of the recent garage-rock rebirth.

Lead singer/songwriter Greg Cartwright has long shown an uncanny knack for penning original songs that sound like lost rock-and-roll classics without sounding like he’s trying to write songs that sound like lost rock-and-roll classics. The catalogs of Cartwright’s previous bands — the Compulsive Gamblers and the Oblivians — are rife with such strokes of startling craftsmanship. The difference here, I think, is that Cartwright has finally found the perfect balance between noise and nuance. After the blistering garage-punk of the Oblivians, the first Reigning Sound album, last year’s Break Up Break Down, sounded like a radical departure — a mostly quiet record that evoked Byrdsy folk-rock and Everly Brothers-style country. As fine as it was, it also sounded like a solo record.

Time Bomb High School, by contrast, is the sound of a band coming into its own, with the uniformly great contributions of drummer Greg Roberson, bassist Jeremy Scott, and guitarist/organist Alex Greene as essential to the sound as Cartwright himself. This band gets into the bones and flesh of a whole era’s worth of great records without directly quoting any of them (outside of four covers, none of them standards), while Cartwright spikes them with a series of memorable lyrics. (“Reptile Style” is the best stuck-in-the-same-room-with-an-ex song since the Beatles’ “I Don’t Want To Spoil the Party,” and that’s just a highlight.)

Taking musical verities from one of American pop music’s greatest, and least appreciated, eras and investing them with such musicality, imagination, smarts, and soul has to be some kind of grand patriotic achievement in this time of national crisis. Somebody get these guys medals — or at least a fat record deal, so they can quit their day jobs.

His first non-self-released record since putting out Work Songs For a New Moon for RCA back in 1989, one-time would-be pop star Rob Jungklas makes a strong return to the record-making business with Arkadelphia (MADJACK; Grade: B+), an acoustic-based set of songs with a brooding and atmospheric, yet rootsy, musical tone that is something akin to PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love or some of the recent Tom Waits records. And, like Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels On a Gravel Road, Jungklas’ latest is regionally specific, a personal tour of Delta mythology. Jungklas’ earthbound vocals keep the record from truly earning those comparisons, but Arkadelphia is a sharp set of songs. “I don’t care what the Good Book promise/I don’t care what the preacher man say/I’m a’move when the spirit moves me/And the whiskey and the women help me to pray,” Jungklas sings on the opening “Drunk Like Son House,” and the record frequently lives up to that lyrical standard in both content and poetic impact.

Arkadelphia is a foreboding song cycle populated by a vengeful Old Testament God and ever-resourceful devil, characters who make appearances through memorable one-liners like “Sometimes, God will mumble/But the devil always enunciates” and “God rode through Clarksdale with a shotgun out the driver’s side/I’m gonna cut down anybody who doesn’t have the sense to hide.” But for all the record’s fire-and-brimstone religious imagery, the concluding song, “Poker Face,” finds Jungklas arriving at a place even more uncomfortable –in front of a mirror: “I am one man among many/I was raised up to do right/You don’t need to meet the devil at the crossroads/To lose your soul on this dark night.”

Arkadelphia also marks a return for local label MADJACK, which has been quiet lately but is still batting 1.000 when it comes to quality. Look for the label to be a lot busier in the coming months with the release of Lucero’s sophomore disc, Tennessee, and the national rerelease of Cory Branan’s The Hell You Say. And the business will kick off this week at the Hunt-Phelan Home with a CD-release party for Arkadelphia at 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 27th.

If you want a lighter, more delicate take on the blues tradition, Alvin Youngblood Hart‘s Down In the Alley (Memphis International; Grade: A-) should fit the bill. I generally get more excited by Hart’s electric forays into classic rock and hippie country than by his acoustic blues sets, but there’s no arguing with something as fine as this: Hart with a bevy of vintage string instruments and a catalog of traditional blues standards. On Down In the Alley, Hart’s underrecognized singing (check out that high-pitched howl that introduces “How Long Before I Change My Clothes”) is as nimble and nuanced as his always-masterful picking, channeling the long-lost likes of “Sleepy” John Estes, Charley Patton, and Skip James. As simple as can be, it’s the best blues record this blues-crazed town has seen since the last time Hart stepped into a recording studio.

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

Categories
News News Feature

Hot-air Bubble

With the “New Economy” now in shambles, it’s easy for media outlets to disparage the illusions of the late 1990s — years crammed with high-tech mania, fat stock options, and euphoria on Wall Street. But we hear very little about the fact that much of the bubble was filled with hot air from hyperventilating journalists.

Traveling back in a time machine, we would see mainstream reporters and pundits routinely extolling the digitally enhanced nirvana of huge profits and much more to come. The new-economy media juggernaut was not to be denied.

Sure, journalists occasionally offered the common-sense observation that the boom would go bust someday. But it was a minor note in the media’s orchestral tributes to the new economy. And the bullish pronouncements included an awful lot of hyped bull.

Five years ago, Business Week‘s July 28th edition was scorning “economic dogma” for its failure to embrace the glorious future at hand. “The fact is that major changes in the dynamics of growth are detonating many conventional wisdoms,” the magazine declared in an editorial that concluded, “It is the Dow, the S&P 500, and NASDAQ that are telling us old assumptions should be challenged in the New Economy.”

A column published on July 24, 1997, in the very conservative Washington Times, by economist Lawrence Kudlow, rang the same bell: “Actually, information age high-tech breakthroughs have undreamed of spillovers that impact every nook and cranny of the new economy.” Kudlow was upbeat about “even higher stock prices and even more economic growth as far as the eye can see.”

In 1998, the July 20th issue of Time was one of many touting the economic miracles of the Internet. “The real economy exists in the thousands — even tens of thousands — of sites that together with Yahoo are remaking the face of global commerce,” Time reported. The magazine could not contain its enthusiasm: “The real promise of all this change is that it will enrich all of us, not just a bunch of kids in Silicon Valley.”

When the last July of the 20th century got underway, Newsweek was featuring several pages about the national quest for riches: “The bull market, powered by the cyberboom, is a pre-millennium party that’s blowing the roof off the American Dream. It’s just that some of us can’t seem to find our invitations. And all this new wealth is creating a sense of unease and bewilderment among those of us who don’t know how to get in touch with our inner moguls.”

Meanwhile, insightful analysis of the new economy received scant mass-media exposure, but it certainly existed. While Newsweek was fretting about “inner moguls,” for instance, the progressive magazine Dollars & Sense published an article by economist Dean Baker warning that the country was in the midst of “a classic speculative bubble.” A crash was on the way, Baker pointed out, and it would financially clobber many working people.

Writing three years ago, with the stock market near its peak, Baker anticipated grim financial realities: “Many moderate-income workers do have a direct stake in the market now that the vast majority of their pensions take the form of tax-sheltered retirement accounts such as a 401(k). These plans provide no guaranteed benefit to workers. At her retirement, a worker gets exactly what she has managed to accumulate in these accounts. Right now, a large percentage of the assets in these retirement accounts is in stock funds.”

Overall, Baker contended, “the post-crash world is not likely to be a pretty one. The people who take the biggest losses will undoubtedly be wealthy speculators who should have understood the risks. The yuppie apostles of the new economy will also be humbled by a plunging stock market. But these people can afford large losses on their stock holdings and still maintain a comfortable living standard.”

Baker concluded his in-depth article by predicting a foreseeable tragedy that major media outlets rarely dwelled on ahead of time: “The real losers from a stock market crash will be the workers who lose most of their pensions, and the workers who must struggle to find jobs in the ensuing recession. Once again, those at the bottom will pay for the foolishness of those at the top.”

Now that the bubble has burst, most of the hot air about the new economy has dissipated. This summer, the media atmosphere is cool to scenarios for getting rich with shrewd investments.

Too late.

Norman Solomon’s most recent book is The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media. His syndicated column is published by AlterNet.

Categories
Music Music Features

sound Advice

Well, for starters, you can celebrate the return of local singer-songwriter Rob Jungklas with the CD-release party for his new MADJACK release Arkadelphia (see Local Record Roundup, page 33) on Saturday, July 27th, at the Hunt-Phelan Home. The house opens at 8 p.m., showtime at 9 p.m.

Then there’s another return of sorts as legendary drummer and regional favorite son Levon Helm brings his Barnburners back to Memphis for the first time since the 2001 Handy Awards. Helm doesn’t sing anymore, leaving the vocal duties to his daughter Amy and a generic if powerful male singer. But for Band fans who missed it the first time around, just watching Helm work a drum kit is a special treat. Helm and his young blues crew will be at the Lounge on Thursday, July 25th.

For you guitar-rock fans, there are a few notable acts hitting town this week. Knoxville’s Superdrag mesh Nirvana power riffs with Big Star (or maybe Teenage Fanclub) pop for a pretty heady alt-rock stew. They’ll be at Newby’s on Friday, July 26th, in support of their solid new album Last Call For Vitriol. Local popsters Crash Into June open.

And Chicago’s Dishes mix riot-girl-style punk with gritty garage rock for what should be a loud and energetic show at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, July 27th. They’ll be joined by dreamy locals Snowglobe and out-of-towners The Paper Hearts.

—Chris Herrington

I’m absolutely obsessed with at least one song by the power-duo Jucifer. On “Hero Worship,” the ever-radiant Amber Valentine comes on like a cross between Pixies-era Kim Deal and a star-struck Andy Warhol as she obsessively croons about how much she wants to be like MTV cutie Tabitha Sorin (“’cause I’m not happy with me”). Why Jucifer hasn’t found a larger audience, as the American fascination with all things metal continues to grow, is a curiosity. The group, which comes off as the perfect hybrid of Black Sabbath riffage and Pixies pop, should be just heavy enough for the headbangers and just smart enough to appeal to the indie crowd. Their 1998 album Calling All Cars On the Vegas Strip is an undersung treasure filled with punk fury, pomo logic, gothic sentiment, and big metal guitars. Best of all, Jucifer has no trouble recreating their recorded sound in a live setting, a rarity among duos. They will be at the Young Avenue Deli on Friday, July 26th, with the ever-radiant and occasionally nekkid Subteens. — Chris Davis

Categories
News The Fly-By

THUS SPAKE JEHOVAH

An issue of The Commercial Appeal on Monday of last week featured a full-page advertorial which appeared to have been placed by followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. In addition to an open letter from God Almighty, the ad featured several recent (yes, recent) pro-God and Pro-Moonie testimonials from such long-deceased Communist leaders as Lenin, Stalin, and Marx, as well as an open letter from Buddha, Confucius, and Muhammad. This advertisement may well represent the largest collection of endorsements by dead people since Florida elected the president.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

thursday, 25

Hmm. Seems that this issue of the Flyer is focusing on politics and the upcoming election. And it looks like things are getting pretty interesting. Sex scandals and drug overdoses and day-care scandals and sealed lawsuits and accusations of backroom deals concerning the new NBA arena. Looks like there s plenty of juicy stuff out there, even if we are being deprived of all the great details. And while he is not running in this year s election, the answer I want to know is: Who stole longtime mayoral candidate Prince Mongo s stuffed moose head, which, he says, came from a moose shot by Calvin Coolidge? A moose head on the roof of Mongo s new East Memphis residence, complete with a yellow streamer in its mouth and a mannequin head between its antlers. There on the roof to protect the neighborhood, with the spirit of his home planet of Zambodia emanating from the glass eyes to make sure nothing bad goes down over on Colonial Road. Who would do such a thing? I say we look at the past records of some of our prominent politicians and launch a thorough investigation. Maybe the home of city councilwoman Pat VanderSchaaf should be searched. Perhaps she got her hands on some pain pills — under the influence of which she said she shoplifted that wallet from Marshall s out in Raleigh — and just felt the need to scale the walls in the middle of the night and take the taxidermied head for her own house. Nah, even in the dark, that orange hair would have been seen. I also tend to believe she is innocent on this one, and I will continue to cherish my Free Pat VanderSchaaf bumper sticker. Maybe it was Councilman Ricky Peete. Have all the floors beneath the booths at all the local Shoney s been checked out? Kind of hard to get a stuffed moose head under there, but, hey, where there s a will, there s a way. Or how about Tamara Mitchell-Ford, ex-wife of our esteemed state Sen. John Ford? Maybe she took it to use as a hood ornament on her Jaguar to drive through another home of one of Senator Ford s girlfriends, as she did in Collierville not long ago. It would certainly be a lot scarier to have a giant moose head crash through the French doors and come at your face than just a plain old car. Maybe that was the family emergency Ford had to tend to when he disappeared from legislative meetings, missing a vote that could have kept the state government from shutting down. Or perhaps it was Republican gubernatorial candidate Van Hilleary, needing to sell the moose head to pay for grammar lessons because he makes so many grammatical mistakes in his television commercial, which is all about education. And has anyone else noticed that his voice sounds strikingly similar to Delta Burke s? Icky. Whoever stole the moose head, please give yourself up and face the music. I know that when my poor little cat goes to the giant Fancy Feast Flaked Trout Dinner in the sky and I have her stuffed and turned into a table lamp with a switch that makes her eyes light up, if anyone dares to try to make off with it, there s gonna be a mighty high price to pay.

In the meantime, here s a brief look at what s going on around town this week. Today, of course, continues the Stax Music Academy Grand Opening with Community Day Down in Soulsville, with a live broadcast by the WRBO 103.5 Soul Patrol from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and tours of the academy during those same hours. So come on down and get down and see the museum and help celebrate one of the best things that has ever happened for the children of Memphis. Tonight s Scream Tour II at the Mid-South Coliseum features performances by Lil Bow Wow, B2K, and IMX. The Memphis Redbirds play Las Vegas tonight at AutoZone Park. American Deathray Music, The Pretty Girls, and Fireball Rocket are at the Hi-Tone. And last but certainly not least, The Keith Sykes Songwriters Showcase starts at 8 p.m. tonight at the Lounge, followed by the legendary Levon Helm & The Barnburners.