Month: January 2003

Categories
Hot Properties Real Estate

Time Warp

Having finally settled on just the right spot, I turn the soil to plant a new hosta selection with particularly striking leaf variegation. Abruptly, a tiny, old china saucer with squiggles of blue lines reminds me that children played house in my yard at the turn of the last century. My glorious new hosta is forgotten as I, hoping to unearth a tiny cup as well, gently sift the soil, finding instead fat earthworms and the occasional lump of ancient bituminous coal.

My house tilts away from its current track-lighted interior spotlighting canvasses and quilts to a time when coal was hauled in daily to stoke winter fires, and gas lines remaining in the attic supplied the first inhabitants with sputtering light against the night. I’m cast back a hundred years into a time warp, a moment of reverie, which reoccurs every time I spot that little saucer on my sideboard.

I round the corner of Goodlett and Southern, turning back toward the University of Memphis campus. Townhouses from the 1990s and post-WW II homes are the norm here. Between two rows of these townhomes, a smaller, older structure terminates the view. This little house shows the regular rows of bricks turned end-wise to bond the wall together as the courses were laid up. No 20th-century building, this.

The Memphis and LaGrange Railroad, begun in 1845, was the first line out of the city and extended initially 40 miles. Before FedEx, when goods traveled by the iron horse or by horse and buggy, this house was the carriage building to the Philo Goodwyn plantation. Philo Goodwyn was born in Kentucky in 1824. When he was 9 years old the family relocated to New Orleans. He, likewise, relocated his family to Memphis in the early 1840s, inhabiting a home on Adams Avenue and locating a plantation home in 1846 along the new railroad where cotton could easily be shipped into Memphis. It would have been a grand house to have had, since even the carriage house was built of such fine material as brick. Now all is vanished but for this delightful remnant.

In 1989, when the surrounding townhomes were built, this structure was reworked as a residence. The two original downstairs rooms were finished for living and dining. A fireplace opens into the living room, and a spiraling stair winds up out of the dining room. Some of the original brick walls were left exposed inside, and pecky cypress boards finish the interior.

New construction provided room for an eat-in kitchen with a surprisingly long run of counter and cabinets. A half-bath and a laundry closet complete the ground floor. Upstairs, two bedrooms were created along with a full bath. Closets are not plentiful, but the current owner converted the smaller of the two bedrooms into a spacious dressing room which, for a couple, makes a lot of sense.

This surviving structure from an earlier era has been quite successfully adapted as a comfortable living space today. The scale of the rooms and the low-ceilinged garret of the second floor all impart a distinct sense of its age. The original brick and the pecky cypress add a note of appealing rusticity. Modern conveniences like central heat and air, ample off-street parking, and a brick-walled patio don’t hurt either. It’s a delightful time warp and, no matter where you find it, I’d recommend it.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

January is the quietest time of year for national acts coming through town, and this week is no exception. But the local club scene does get a reprieve from the winter doldrums in the form of the International Blues Challenge (see Local Beat, facing page), an annual blues battle of the bands sponsored by the locally based Blues Foundation that draws up-and-coming acts from around the country and the world. The International Blues Challenge has scored big hits the last two years — last year with the novel Pere Ubu-meets-Bo Diddley vibe of Detroit’s Chef Chris and His Nairobi Trio, who took home the big prize, and the year before with local-boy-makes-good Richard Johnston making the leap with his unexpected win. Previous winners also include blues-circuit stalwart Sean Costello and great crossover hope Susan Tedeschi. No telling what will emerge this year, but among the unavoidable dullsville bar-blues bands will likely be some true finds and future celebrities. Catch a rising star up and down Beale Street all weekend.

And if you’re looking for a taste of blues outside Beale, a good bet is New Orleans’ popular modern blues master Mem Shannon, a former cab driver who expanded his vehicular interests with the Handy-nominated anthem “S.U.V.” Shannon will perform at Huey’s Midtown location on Sunday, February 2nd.

— Chris Herrington

It’s beginning to sound a lot like Austin over at the Hi-Tone Café. Last Saturday, Texas troubadour Roger Wallace tore the place up. On Sunday, February 2nd, Wayne “The Train” Hancock, an infinitely more versatile performer than the stunning, if somewhat monochromatic, Wallace, will be stopping in to tear things up all over again. Hancock can offer the kind of eerie yodel that hasn’t been heard since Hank Sr. took his last ride, and he does so without sounding like some kind of pathetic imitator. His pinched nasal twang can be as grating (and when connected to the right song) as gratifying as Webb Pierce’s. When his band, virtuosos all, decide to swing it out, the wild West Coast sound they create is more in the spirit of Hank Penny’s wild countrified jazz than Bob Wills’ jazzified country. Local rockabillies The Snipes will be on hand to open.

Over at Young Avenue Deli this week is Wisconsin-based retro rockers The Mystery Girls, whose classic garage sound mines early ’60s R&B. They will be playing with The Reigning Sound on Monday, February 3rd.

— Chris Davis

Categories
News The Fly-By

City Reporter

Making Two Into One

Herenton urges consolidation of city and county schools.

By Mary Cashiola

When the city and county government finally consolidated, it was a function of “personality, party politics, angry suburban reaction to annexation and a city-imposed wheel tax, public health concerns related to adequate sewers, demographic changes that portended a serious declining tax base in the central city, competing school systems in search of an adequate revenue base,” and so on.

Sound familiar, at least a little bit?

Those were the reasons, according to a July 2001 study commissioned by the Memphis City Schools board of education, for the consolidation of Nashville and Davidson County.

Memphis mayor Willie Herenton recently proposed the city council hold a referendum to surrender the city schools’ charter, thereby consolidating the two local school districts. Although he discovered that the city council does not have the jurisdiction to do so, he has vowed to move forward with the plan, seeking an opinion on the matter from the state attorney general.

“Until we reform how our schools are governed and until we have the ability to unify the school districts, our children will continue to suffer,” said Herenton. Tuesday morning he released information showing a 35-cent savings to city residents’ property taxes under a unified school system.

But how has the proposal been discussed with the two school districts it would involve? When asked about the MCS board’s recent retreat, Herenton said he wasn’t invited. Nor has he appeared before the county school board.

If the city schools did end up surrendering their charter, it would be the county schools who would have to run a district three times their size.

In July 2001, facing a similar issue, the MCS board received a study on consolidation in Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville. The study made no recommendations on Memphis’ situation but outlined what had happened in other places. Generally, it read, “Larger districts tend to be less personal; involve more red tape; remove teachers and principals further from district-level decision-making; require more time in transit; and have lower attendance rates and higher dropout rates; while parental involvement and community support may wane some, too.”

It also raised the question of whether consolidation actually lowers taxes.

Nashville’s consolidation appeared to be well-received, but costs rose due to an increase in services and to assure salary equity. Educational costs also increased in Knoxville.

“Constant-dollar school expenditures have actually risen by 49 percent since consolidation occurred. … Given that most spending is done in the classroom, there will not be revolutionary amounts of savings from consolidation, as all the existing students will still need to be taught,” read the report. The initial operating budget proposal asked for $16 million more than the previous two districts’ budgets combined, mostly because of equalizations between the two systems.

By state law, when two districts consolidate, they have to match the higher system’s per-pupil expenditures. In Memphis, per-pupil expenditure is $7,368 while Shelby County’s is $6,024 or a difference of $1,344. If $1,344 extra had to be spent on the 44,610 students currently in the county’s system, it would cost an additional $59.96 million each year.

That’s not completely unlikely either. According to the report, per-pupil expenditure in Chattanooga jumped from $4,487 in 1997-1998 to $6,440 in 1999-2000, a 43.5 percent increase over three years.

And Knoxville’s consolidation might have another lesson for Memphis. “Every account concurred that the way Knox County arrived at consolidation was not the way it should be done. They definitely do not recommend having the city school system simply surrender its charter, creating consolidation by default. Without a plan, there ends up being unnecessary uncertainty, fear, litigation, and so on.”

An Opportunity to Excel

School board approves first charter school.

By Mary Cashiola

With no debate and only a little confusion about voting procedure, the Memphis City Schools board Monday night approved Tennessee’s first public charter school.

The Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering (MASE) will eventually serve about 850 eighth through twelfth grade students from the downtown Medical Center district, focusing on science, math, engineering, and technology. Sponsored by the Memphis Biotech Foundation, the school will have a longer school year as well as Saturday classes.

“We’re going to bring in kids in the seventh grade who may or may not be at grade level,” said Dr. Steven Bares, the Biotech Foundation’s president and executive director. “If they’re willing to work, we’re willing to take them and get them on an [advanced-placement] track in science and math.”

Bares said the curriculum is focused on remediation; the idea is not to see how many A students they can get into MIT, but how many C and D students they can give the opportunity to excel in math and science. And in the long run, the school could help the Memphis economy as well.

As head of the Biotech Foundation, Bares is charged with helping Memphis become a magnet for technology-based companies. “When I came on board in September 2001 and we started talking about making Memphis a leader in medical research, we said, ‘What’s it going to take?'” The underlying issue is how are we going to create the work force,” said Bares. “I can talk about 37,000 employees right now, but the thing that was being said under everybody’s breath was, ‘What are we going to do about the schools?'”

When charter-school legislation was passed, the foundation saw a way they could help train their work force and help downtown students.

“I’m a chemist by training,” said Bares. “We were the guys using the Bunsen burners back in high school. They called us geeks back then, but what we’re creating now is really a good thing for this community.”

Two charter-school applications were denied based on problems with their school plans. Under the new legislation, those schools have 15 days to cure deficiencies and submit revisions for reconsideration.

To Catch a Thief

Law expands suppression areas.

By Janel Davis

Following the success of its neighborhood crime-suppression efforts, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office plans to expand the sting operations to other parts of the county where their agency has primary jurisdiction, including the Northaven area.

According to Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Shular, the neighborhood north of Frayser and other sections of the city will be targeted for various offenses ranging from traffic violations to aggravated assaults. “When [crime] gets to a point where it reaches a critical level, everything becomes zero-tolerance,” said Shular.

In recent suppression operations in Whitehaven, Binghamton, and Midtown, the Sheriff’s Department was called in to assist the Memphis Police Department. To combat rising numbers of serious offenses, the operation, usually consisting of 150 officers, pinpoints major intersections for any traffic violations, while fugitive-squad officers canvass the neighborhood for wanted suspects. “Once an initial traffic stop is made, that can give officers probable cause for a vehicle or individual search,” said Shular. “For example, if, while a person is stopped, an officer sees a gun lying on the back seat, they can then search the vehicle and deal with the offender.”

Officers involved in the operation are told which crimes to target, which fugitives are known to reside in the area, and then given the goals to accomplish. A portable booking area is set up to process offenders on the spot.

The latest suppression operation, held last week in Hickory Hill, lasted five hours and yielded 34 arrests (including 26 fugitives) and 195 traffic citations.

Reaching Out During a Retreat

Center City Commission reviews its progress and problems.

By Janel Davis

The Center City Commission (CCC) retreat got off on a cold note — with temperatures, that is. When the downtown redevelopment and revitalization organization met at the newly renovated (meaning, cold and empty) Power House for its annual review and planning meeting, the heat of their ideas was no match for the cold building. Nevertheless, a quick location change was all it took for the organization’s board and staff to map out its future goals for the 6.5-square-mile area under its jurisdiction.

After presenting the strategic plan update for 2002-2006, CCC president Jeff Sanford reviewed his organization’s nine goals, including a self-sustaining Main Street Mall, diverse residential neighborhoods, improved transportation and access, and a world-class medical district. “While there are currently $2.1 billion worth of projects currently under way in the area, this is still only 30-40 percent of what needs to be done,” said Sanford.

Sanford cited a history of downtown deterioration and bad infrastructure, homelessness and street disorder, and lack of affordable housing as obstacles to further development.

As with other projects under way throughout the city, the area is experiencing a lack of minority development participation, he said. Sanford described outreach efforts by Myron Hughes, vice president of planning and development for the organization’s Central Business Improvement District, and other staff members, including hosting informational sessions and requiring CCC projects to adhere to Minority and Women Business Enterprises (MWBE) goals. “We must develop developers,” said CCC board chairman and city councilman Rickey Peete, who suggested establishing an apprenticeship program requiring minority contractors to partner with larger companies in order to compete for bids. “The day for giving [minorities] a little bit is over.”

Fellow board member and city council member Barbara Swearengen Holt echoed Peete’s sentiments. “It’s an embarrassing situation.This should become a priority and the priority should become a reality,” said Holt. All of the $2.1 billion in development projects currently under way with the CCC are within Holt’s council district.

While most involved were in agreement to develop more MWBE participation, finance board member Lee Askew of the architectural firm Askew Nixon Ferguson was satisfied with things as they were. “I’m pleased with what Memphis has done so far. If I had to choose between getting the job done and [acquiring] mixed participation, I would choose getting the job done.”

Sanford also presented an update on the development of a five-block section of Main Street Mall from Adams to Gayoso. The development, which began in 2000, is designed to draw residents, businesses, and visitors back to an area with renovated and newly constructed properties.

A key element to this development has been the agreed-upon failure of the mall as a pedestrian and trolley-only traffic area. “By not having cars on Main Street, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot,” said Askew. While most agreed that the area would thrive with vehicular traffic reintroduced, Sanford warned of the risks of reimplementing this system. “The capital cost for remaking it open to traffic will be expensive … and all types of traffic and parking may not be able to be accommodated on Main Street.”

Several components of the the CCC’s strategic plan are already under way, including the Riverfront Master Plan, the Streetscape Master Plan, and the Medical District Master Plan. “Our goal is to make downtown a 24-hour environment,” said Sanford.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Internal Strife?

Seated on the bench, Billy Richmond watched and waited while the young ballplayer first dribbled, then rolled, and finally carried the ball toward him. Without hesitating, Richmond swiped the ball from the boy’s hands. The young Memphis Tigers fan was, after all, only 4 years old. Richmond, the personable Tiger sophomore, then added his signature to the rest of the team’s autographs on the ball, eliciting a large grin from the child — and himself.

Seated next to his aunt, Bettye Hilliard, a 25-year employee of Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center, Richmond knows the hospital halls well. To be here again — this time as a Tiger — and hand out posters, backpacks, and wristbands as part of the team’s January 17th visit brought out Richmond’s trademark mischievous smile.

“This was fun to be able to be with the kids and the nurses and their parents. We brought a lot of excitement to the hospital today,” Richmond said. “It was a fun experience for all of us.”

Richmond smiles a lot, and easily. But Monday, in the Larry O. Finch Center, Richmond, who turns 21 this month, was humbled, and most assuredly not smiling as he delivered a message to anyone who would listen: “I just want to apologize to the people of the city of Memphis for how I handled myself,” Richmond said. “I take full responsibility. I hope everyone out there will forgive me. I was out of line.”

“It’s something that I have to change,” Richmond added. “I feel like the players follow my lead, and if something is not going right, I take full responsibility.”

Richmond felt compelled to apologize for a heated verbal exchange with freshman teammate Jeremy Hunt that almost turned physical Saturday in St. Louis, where the Tigers lost for the third time in four games, 69-66. The brief struggle occurred near the end of the first half, when a frustrated Richmond (who scored zilch in only seven minutes) and Hunt engaged in a shouting match.

But now that Richmond has apologized, will it help?

There is growing gossip in Memphis about internal turmoil among the Tigers. Some say Richmond is the culprit. This supposition is based on Richmond’s public history — his dismissal from Vanderbilt, his suspension for fighting during the Arkansas-Pine Bluff game, and the rift with Hunt.

Only a few people witnessed Richmond and the rest of the Tiger team reaching out to children at Le Bonheur. His detractors didn’t see him and Hunt, the two hometown stars, seated like towering Santa Clauses as children lined up to visit them. The moment wasn’t highly publicized, and few saw the two friends joking with each other, walking around the hospital lobby, playing with kids, and talking with parents, nurses, and doctors.

But Anthony Thomas did.

Thomas, a 13-year-old from Turrell, Arkansas, was at Le Bonheur being treated for a serious sinus condition that has caused inflammation of his eye cavities. He had a Polaroid picture taken with Memphis coach John Calipari, whom he graded as “good.”

Tameka Burts also visited with Richmond, Hunt, and the other Tiger players and coaches before gathering armfuls of signed memorabilia and heading off to the Intensive Care Unit, where she has worked for six years.

“I thought it would be a nice thing to do because a lot of these kids in ICU are in critical condition,” Burts said. “I thought the souvenirs would be a nice thing to see when they wake up. This visit is just wonderful. It’s wonderful,” Burts added.

The children in the hospital’s dialysis room also received posters, and then a group of Tigers — including Hunt — visited each child.

“I like watching them on TV when I have a chance,” said 13-year-old Jerika Coleman, who spends hours in the room, ridding her blood of impurities due to kidney failure. But most people don’t have her perspective on the team.

The focus on the Tigers by the media is something Calipari accepts. He knows it can be a love/hate relationship. “These are young kids. They make mistakes,” Calipari says. “Billy says dumb things. He’s not a bad guy.”

Of course, the children at Le Bonheur already knew that.

Categories
Opinion

Do Something!

In his book about the making of the modern Middle East, Six Days of War, Michael Oren records a Jewish leader’s devastating putdown of the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban: “He doesn’t live in reality; he never gives the right solution, only the right speech.”

So, to localize that, what about our own seemingly unsolvable problem of public schools? Suddenly, it seems that everyone wants a solution, and they want it now.

The order of the day is DO SOMETHING.

Enough Memphis Board of Education meetings that last six hours, as the one Monday night did. Enough $575,000 studies and blueprints for action. Enough task forces and special committees on education. Enough on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand editorials and reports. Enough legal opinions and polls of public opinion. Enough report cards with the same glum news. Enough of the city and county mayors not being on the same page. Enough portable classrooms at crowded suburban schools.

The immediate cause of all this urgency is two schools that could not be more atypical of the Memphis and Shelby County public schools. One is a proposed new high school in Arlington, a municipality in northeast Shelby County where it is a good bet that 90 percent of the citizens of Memphis have never set foot. The other is an expansion of Houston High School, which has by far the highest family income in the county.

The political leadership of Shelby County is determined to start building those schools this year and to do it without raising an additional $3 for city schools for every $1 it spends at Arlington and Houston.

Memphis mayor Willie Herenton is determined that this “piecemeal” solution will not happen without fundamental changes in city/county school funding and organization. If he can’t tie the city’s problem school system to the county’s crowded school system at this critical time, then he will have to hear people say for the rest of his administration that yes, Memphis and Mayor Herenton have done some good things but they didn’t do anything about the bad schools.

“There is enormous waste of valuable resources within the board of education,” he told Shelby County state lawmakers at a meeting at the University of Memphis Tuesday. At the same time, he said, “Achievement levels are getting worse. We’re spending more, but our children are not getting an increase in their academic performance.”

Herenton has rarely seemed so determined. For all his reputation as a fighter, his three terms as mayor have been marked mainly by compromises and patience on the schools issue. He kept quiet during the tenure of his successor, Gerry House. He gave her successor, Johnny Watson, two years and installed his finance director, Roland McElrath, as Watson’s assistant. He compromised with former Shelby County mayor Jim Rout on Cordova High School and the Grey’s Creek Sewer extension which opened up development east of Cordova. He gave the leaders of the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce three years to try to work something out in both public and private meetings.

Now he sees county leaders and suburban mayors trying to piece together a solution to their debt problem without addressing the underlying issue of two governments and two school systems.

One way or another, Herenton is determined to force the issue and make the city schools the county’s problem. The opinion poll showing support for an appointed school board that was released Tuesday was supposed to turn up the pressure, even if polls are often wrong.

“Let the people vote!” Herenton told lawmakers, the media, and several county and suburban officials attending the meeting.

The people, of course, already have the right to vote for an elected school board, thanks to some hard work by state lawmakers some 10 years ago. In a referendum, people would in effect be voting to give up the right to vote.

“The appointed school board is just not going to happen,” said Rep. Ulysses Jones after Herenton made his remarks.

Alternately, Herenton believes the city school board could dissolve itself and achieve a unified school system that way. But some board members are not inclined to bump themselves off.

Michael Hooks Jr., chairman of the MCS board, said he would only support a unified school system if it was part of a unified city and county government.

“A lot of what’s going on is left over from his administration as superintendent but he wants to point the finger at the board of education,” Hooks said. “We’re getting distracted. Let’s focus on the 64 low-performing schools.”

Herenton’s unified school system would lower property taxes in the city of Memphis by 86 cents and raise them 51 cents in the county, for a net savings for city taxpayers of 35 cents. No county elected official has endorsed it.

If the county wants new schools, Herenton has said, let them pay for them.

He is through giving the right speech and is ready for a solution to what he sees as the biggest blot on his own record as mayor and the city’s image. If he has to take on his old rivals, the suburban mayors, and his old friend, county mayor A C Wharton, in the process, he gives the impression that he will do that.

Categories
Art Art Feature

HOW IT LOOKS

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

The Power and the Glory

It was, as they say, a night out not fit for man nor beast when the Powerhouse, a museum of sorts conjured into being by the previously nomadic arts entity Delta Axis, opened its doors for a sneak preview last Thursday. But unfavorable conditions notwithstanding the local cognoscenti braved near-arctic blasts to see the newest addition to the blossoming South Main Arts District — an addition which had been compared in its early press to the Guggenheim’s famous satellite in Bilbao, Spain. How could anyone resist?.

“That was out of my hands,” says Powerhouse’s star curator Peter Fleissig of the hyperbolically inclined advanced coverage. “They did it before we wanted to do anything.” Dr. James Patterson, president of Delta Axis also back peddles from the grand comparison. “We didn’t want them to make those comparisons. We’re just Delta Axis,” he says.

The Powerhouse’s south gallery once housed a gigantic boiler. Its silvery dungeon-like walls are scorched in places and the effect is positively hellish. It feels like a torture chamber, and to his credit, Memphis’ celebrity architect Coleman Coker has, in his interior design, done little to combat the building’s inherent creepiness. If anything, the glowing frosted glass stalls defining The Powerhouse’s offices and public facilities only add to the building’s otherworldly appeal. In the center of all this fire-blasted emptiness William Eggleston sat hunched over a keyboard playing what sounded like the sound track to a 1930s horror film. Eggleston, the father of modern color photography, is Memphis’ most obvious art star, and though he was on his best behavior, his ill-tempered reputation filled the cavernous south gallery even as his eerie music flooded the building.

Oddly enough, no photographs were on display anywhere in the Powerhouse. “We could [have shown Eggleston photos and] done a package show.” Patterson says. “But we didn’t want to. Everyone is doing photography right now.” In the absence of photography the artist became the artifact and Eggleston’s one-night-only concert will function as The Powerhouse’s winter exhibit. When it opens to the public on Thursday, January 30th, visitors will, according to Fleissig, “see, perhaps a video of William Eggleston’s performance here, or perhaps just hear the sound of it.”

“It’s the same [caliber of ] artists [that you will see at Bilbao],” says Fleissig, floating the possibility that not all comparisons to the Guggenheim are entirely without merit. “We’ve got [shows planned for photographers] Mitch Epstein, Paul Graham, and Bill Eggleston. But what we really want is for the artists to respond to the space. It’s meant to be experimental. Like a musician making an album in the studio, Memphis will be like a laboratory. A place where an artist can make something before it goes out to the world. We’re looking for new work. The artist might not be so sure about it. So perhaps showing in Memphis rather than at the Guggenheim, there’s less pressure on them.”

“We’re a small arts organization,” says Patterson. “But I truly do believe that we can do things here that, artistically speaking, are as internationally important as what they do [at the Guggenheim] in Bilbao. It doesn’t take a big budget. Everything’s not about money and budget. An idiot can do a great show for a million dollars. We can do things that [bigger museum systems] can’t because of their huge beaurocracy and their huge overhead. They have built these big institutions that cost a lot to run and they have to meet those demands by doing shows that people in the arts community don’t necessarily want.” By providing an interesting space that operates on a shoestring budget with relatively little beaurocracy, and by attracting a curator as deeply connected into the international artworld as Fleissig, Patterson believes that Delta Axis can fill a much-needed niche and bring the artworld’s top talent to Memphis.

“People in Memphis are very self-deprecating,” Patterson continues, “and they don’t believe that they have anything to offer culturally. As a person who has worked for Delta Axis for 10 years, let me tell you, Memphis is magical in the international art community. Artists don’t necessarily want to move here, but they want to visit. They are fascinated with our culture. When we go to an artist in London and say, ‘Hey, we have this Powerhouse in Memphis, across the street from the Civil Rights Museum, two blocks from the river, three blocks from Beale Street, and we want you to do a show ‘ they want to experience Memphis.”

On the day after the Eggleston event Mitch Epstein is at the Powerhouse trying to figure out how his show, slated for the fall, will fit into the space. It’s a photography exhibition documenting the failure of his father’s businesses. In one photograph an American flag hangs on a coat hanger draped in plastic like it had just returned from the dry cleaners. Another shows a wall of keys, presumably to all of his father’s rental properties. Epstein moves the photographs around to see how they look in the light. There is something decidedly less glamorous about Epstein’s performance than what had occurred on the night before, though it is in many ways more exciting. Seeing Bill Eggleston in Memphis is no difficult task. But seeing Epstein, a photographer of note since the late ’70s is rare indeed, and watching him work with and struggle against the space is inspiring. The Powerhouse may not turn Memphis into Bilbao over night, but one thing is certain. The artists are coming.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Tallahassee

The Mountain Goats

(4AD)

The second-most quotable album of 2002, after the Streets’ Original Pirate Material, comes from what would seem, outwardly, like a diametrically opposed source. Rather than a brash, beat-driven geezer, John Darnielle is a ‘zine writer (Last Plane to Jakarta, now available on the Web with a .com after its title), death-metal fan, and acoustic-guitar-wielding singer-songwriter. As the Mountain Goats, Darnielle has nurtured a fervent cult, and Tallahassee, his first album for 4AD, allows newcomers the privilege of discovering what the fuss is about.

To call the album “literary” is to shortchange both Darnielle’s cognac-dry melodies and pinched-but-urgent vocals. But every line of every song is so meticulously composed and manages to sound so un-self-conscious, if you love words it can make your head spin. And that goes especially for his metaphors: On “International Small Arms Traffic Blues,” he evokes both unrequited love (“My love is like a powder keg/In the corner of an empty warehouse/Somewhere just outside of town/About to burn down”) and the uneasy peace of a longstanding relationship (“Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania/Trucks loaded down with weapons/Crossing over every night, moon yellow and bright/There is a shortage in the blood supply/But there is no shortage of blood/The way I feel about you, baby, I can’t explain it/You’ve got the best of my love”).

“No Children” sharpens the knife further: “I hope if you think of me years down the line/You can’t think of one good thing to say/And I hope if I found the strength to walk out/You’d stay the hell out of my way.” Pretty damn lucid for a guy who notes earlier, on “First Few Desperate Hours,” that “I speak in smoke signals and you answer in code.” Don’t bet on it.

— Michaelangelo Matos

Grade: A-

The Bootleg Series Vol. 5:

Live 1975 — The

Rolling Thunder Revue

Bob Dylan

(Columbia)

By 1975, Bob Dylan was no prophet. His most celebrated work was nearly a decade behind him. He had looked lost as Alias in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, had appeared onstage only a handful of times from 1966 to 1973, and was already gaining a stage and studio reputation as more of a holy presence than a bandleader. In short, he was quietly evolving into his current role as a tireless touring musician who happened to be one of the most compelling figures in rock-and-roll.

Although I was shocked and delighted when he regrouped with 2001’s “Love and Theft,” I’ve never been particularly interested in noncanonical Dylan. Life’s just too short. And that goes double for the whole Rolling Thunder medicine-show-circus-fantastic-voyage-look-Bob’s-back -with-Joan-Baez-and-Sam-Shepard’s-there-too! fiasco. The official document of the second “Rolling Thunder” tour, 1976’s Hard Rain, was a gigantic disappointment after his four previous LPs — Before the Flood, Blood on the Tracks, The Basement Tapes, and Desire. But history is mutable. Thanks to Columbia’s The Bootleg Series — the outstanding archival Dylan project that illuminated a shadow career with its first three volumes and officially released the epochal 1966 Manchester Free Trade/”Royal Albert Hall” concert as volume four — two previously unreleased CDs of the original Rolling Thunder lineup have been brought to the public for the first time.

Culled from shows in Massachusetts and Canada, the composite concert is a wild ride, and the most compelling and dynamic material connect from some unlikely angles. “Isis” and an enraged “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” turn into waltz-time maelstroms courtesy of the 13-piece, seven-guitar(!) backup band. The solo acoustic “Simple Twist of Fate” and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” emphasize the feral, gritty, and wry vocal style Dylan favored at the time. And an electrified “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is much more palatable as music and jeremiad. Through it all, including the interminable “Hurricane” and a lugubrious finale, Dylan’s ease as an artist and power as a public musician sound as clear as they will be for nearly 20 years. When he sings “So easy to look at/So hard to define” during “Sara,” he could be describing his own post-Rolling Thunder career. It’s almost proph well, you know. —Addison Engelking

Grade: A-

Listening Log:

Kings of Crunk –Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz (TVT): Macho belligerence as predictable as it is largely incomprehensible and generally devoid of social purpose, only saved by the occasional cameo appearance by far more talented cohorts. Stupidest lyric among the countless contenders, from “B***h”: “Who we talkin’ about? Any nigga that act like a woman.” Oh no! Not a woman. (“I Don’t Give A ” [with Mystikal])

Grade: C

Girl Interrupted — Ms. Jade (Beatclub/Interscope): The Timbaland/Missy formula delivering the goods, even in its most generic form. (“The Come Up,” “Ching Ching,” “Feel the Girl”)

Grade: B+

G.H.E.T.T.O. Stories –Swizz Beatz (Dreamworks): This serviceable guest-star-laden producer’s showcase only proves that the Ruff Ryders-associated Beatz is a second-tier force in what is rapidly becoming a producer’s medium, without the recognizable sonic personality of a Timbaland or Neptunes, much less Mannie Fresh. Not bad, but this “story” collection only delivers about half of what the more provocative cover art promises. (“Shyne,” “Good Times,” “Guilty”)

Grade: B

200 KM/H in the Wrong Lane — t.A.T.u. (Interscope): American debut from Russian, teenaged, lipstick-lesbian-lovers dance-pop duo who have already gone platinum across the Eastern Bloc — now that’s marketing. Turns out “Russian” is the problem, though, since this stuff is so lacking in the funk department that it makes for better magazine fodder than radio play, though their vocals have more life in Russian than English. On the other hand, the lead single, on which one teenage girl professes romantic love for another, is a first of sorts, and how many other teen-pop acts would cover the Smiths to communicate their social agony? (“All the Things She Said,” “Show Me Love,” “How Soon Is Now”)

Grade: B

Mollie’s Mix –Various Artists (Kill Rock Stars): Kill Rock Stars is arguably the best punk record label of the last decade or so, not that you’d know it from this disappointing roster sampler, which is too often as amateurish-in-a-bad-way as scoffers believe all such music is. In this context, Sleater-Kinney sound even more monumental than they really are, and second-tier contenders the Bangs and the Gossip offer the kind of subpar performances more likely to ward tourists away than spur their interest. Nice to hear ex-Geraldine Fibbers frontperson Carla Bozulich back on wax, though. (“Bless Me” –Tight Bro’s From Way Back When; “Oh!” — Sleater-Kinney; “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” — Carla Bozulich)

Grade: B-

Nuclear War –Yo La Tengo (Matador): Hoboken’s finest use a long hiatus between proper albums to cover Sun Ra four times over in a too-prescient-for-comfort single/EP. Highlight: the call-and-response kiddie-chorus on “Version 2,” the tots singing with discernible potty-mouth glee, “It’s a motherfucker/Don’t you know?/If they push that button/Your ass got to go!” n

Grade: B+

— Chris Herrington

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

POLITICS

BOMBSHELL OR DUD?

If the current scramble to reconfigure the school systems of Shelby County were a board game, then the card played Tuesday afternoon by Memphis city council attorney Allen Wade would have been marked “Bombshell” in big letters on its backside.

The fine print on the other side, as Wade outlined it to a rapt audience of council members and onlookers at the council’s “retreat” at the Oaksedge complex, was that the Memphis school board, which city mayor Willie Herenton wants to abolish, has no legal right to exist in the first place.

Wade passed out copies of his legal opinion that two conditions — the failure to renew a 99-year charter creating the school board in 1869 and state laws distinguishing between “special school districts” so chartered and municipal systems — made the currently constituted city school board null and void.

Though some partisans of Herenton’s proposal to dissolve the board in favor of county control of all schools were delighted (notably council member TaJuan Stout-Mitchell), members of the Memphis school board itself seemed unfazed.

Deni Hirsch, who attended the retreat as a spectator, merely noted, “We’re here. It’s a fact,” while her colleague Lora Jobe responded later, “Wade needs to research a little longer. Obviously we exist.”

And even Wade seemed to acknowledge that , just as certain published rules of thermodynamics preclude a bumblebee’s ability to fly but did not prevent such a thing occuring, the council lawyer’s mere statement would not by and of itself cause the school board — which this week ratified a rival reorganization plan proposed by Shelby County mayor A C Wharton — to up and go away. Just as one still encounters bumblebees in the air, so one can find school board members meeting, drawing their modest pay, running for election — and making policy on the wing.

Herenton, who made a pitch for his single-district proposal to the council members — similar to one he had made previously to Shelby County legislators — scoffed at the action of the school board, which he had castigated for a solid month before formally proposing its dissolution last week.

“In its wisdom,” the board had approved the Wharton plan, Herenton noted sarcastically , pointedly adding, “and I use that term advisedly.” In the county mayor’s plan, the city board would enable the construction of new school facilities in Shelby county by waiving its right to its share of capital construction funding, according to the state Average Daily Attendance (ADA) formula which allocates such finds to the city and county on a 3:1 ratio.

Both the mayor and city finance director Joseph Lee made the case to council members that costs of maintaining a unitary school system in place of separate city and county systems would be more economical in the long run. They acknowledged, as did Wade, that the means to achieving a unitary system would involve a “transfer” of authority from the city board to the Shelby County school board, not an arbitrary surrender of the city board’s charter, achieved presumably by popular referendum.

A presentation in favor of the Herenton proposal by public relations executive Becky West was greeted skeptically by several council members, who saw its polled conclusions seemingly favoring the plan to be based on what council members Janet Hooks and Tom Marshall called “skewed” — or leading — questions.

PREVIOUSLY POSTED

SHORT BREAD

The state’s financial crunch, warned about by a cost-cutting Governor Phil Bredesen last week, is likely to cut quite close to home. Or so believes Rufus Jones, the able city lobbyist who served more than a decade in the state House of Representatives before leaving to make an unsuccessful run

for Congress in 1996.

“If we don’t heal this split, we’re going to be losing dollars. Every which way,” said Jones at a Tuesday lunch at

the University of Memphis, which followed a meeting of the Shelby County delegation with various government officials.

The “split,” as Jones defined it, is the widening gap in opinion between spokespersons for the city of Memphis on one hand and variouscounty entities on the other over the issue of education specifically, how to amend relations between the Memphis school system and the Shelby County system.

Both Memphis mayor Willie Herenton and county mayor A C Wharton were heard from by the legislators, as were various suburban mayors, speaking more or less as a body. Neither the twain nor the triad met, and that is more or less what Jones had in mind.

Disunity over the school-reorganization issue — Herenton proposes consolidation, the suburban mayors are adamant against it, and Wharton splits the difference — is an impediment to agreements on a variety of other issues for which the city and county need state aid.

The newly elected chair of the legislative delegation, Rep. Carol Chumney of Midtown, is still hopeful that the various conflicts can evolve into a regional consensus, however. To this end she has proposed broadening delegation contacts in Nashville with those of adjoining Tennessee counties and in Memphis with those of counties in adjoining states.

“We need more people sitting at the table. From all around,” Chumney said this week. “We need a combined urban-suburban consensus on the school issue.” Though she ran for county mayor last year on a platform which emphasized city/county consolidation, she is leery of solutions like that proposed by Herenton which emphasize a sudden dissolution of divisions into one unitary school system.

“It’s always a good idea to get the facts out before rushing forward with something,”said Chumney, who noted that Herenton had proposed many dramatic initiatives in the past, only to “drop them like a hot potato.” Of the Memphis mayor’s current proposal to unify the schools by abolishing the Memphis school board by referendum, legislative action, or whatever other means proves necessary Chumney observed skeptically, “Is this a serious thing? Or just the idea of the week.?”

Economic ideas like the desirability of impact or development fees should get a fair hearing before consolidation, lest the city and county property tax be counted on to pay for increased short-term costs, Chumney said.

Categories
News

COUNTY BOARD APPROVES WHARTON PLAN

Advantage, Wharton.

The Shelby County Board of Education Thursday approved Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton’s plan to build new county schools, including a controversial high school in Arlington.

The key part of the Wharton plan, approved earlier this week by the Memphis City Schools Board of Education, would let the new construction go forward without strictly following the standard funding formula for city and county schools. Instead of getting $3 for every $1 spent for new county schools, the city system would accept a package of money and existing schools in annexed areas.

The board’s action is not the last word, only the last volley in an ongoing exchange between Wharton and Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton. Herenton wants a unified school system with a countywide board. Wharton’s plan preserves the separate county system. A unified system would be the 14th largest public school system in the country.

“Bigger isn’t better, it just costs more,” said County Schools Supt. Bobby Webb.

At a Memphis City Council retreat Tuesday, Herenton argued that a unfied system would save money. Along with lawyers working for the city, the mayor also suggested the current school structure is illegal and might be dismantled by the courts.

Shelby County plans to build or expand 11 schools in the next three years, with the $45 million Arlington High School the biggest project. The total cost of all the proposed projects is $246 million.