Month: April 2003

So Where Are They, Mr. Blair?

Post author By The Independent
Post date April 25, 2003

Editor’s note: The following ran as the lead editorial in the April 20th edition of The Independent, one of several daily newspapers published in London, England.

In case we forget, distracted by the thought of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, looted museums, and gathering political chaos, the proclaimed purpose of this war, vainly pursued by Britain and the U.S. through the United Nations, was to disarm Saddam Hussein and to destroy weapons of mass destruction deemed a menace to the entire world.

A month has passed since American and British troops entered Iraq, more than a week since the fall of Baghdad. But thus far not even a sniff. Not a drum of VX or mustard gas, not a phial of botulin or anthrax, not a shred of evidence that Iraq was assembling a nuclear-weapons program.

But that wasn’t what they told us. Remember Colin Powell at the Security Council two months ago (though today it seems another age on another planet): the charts, the grainy intelligence satellite pictures, the crackly tapes of the intercepted phone conversations among Iraqi officials? How plausible it all sounded, especially when propounded by the most plausible figure in the Bush administration.

And what about those other claims, wheeled out on various occasions by Messrs. Bush, Blair, Cheney, and Rumsfeld? The Iraqi drones that were supposed to be able to attack the U.S. East Coast, the imports of aluminum tubes allegedly intended for centrifuges to enrich uranium, the unaccounted-for lethal nerve and germ agents, in quantities specified down to the last gallon or pound, as if exact numbers alone constituted proof. All, it seems, egregious products of the imagination of the intelligence services — one commodity whose existence need never be doubted.

Maybe the Saddam regime was diabolically cunning in the concealment of these weapons, but the shambolic manner of its passing suggests otherwise. Maybe, as those “U.S. officials” continue to suggest from behind their comfortable screen of anonymity, the weapons have been shipped to Syria for “safekeeping.” But that theory too is dismissed by independent experts.

Indeed, it collapses at the first serious examination. Why should Saddam part with his most effective means of defense, when the survival of his regime and himself was on the line? Nor will that hoary and disingenuous line advanced by our political masters wash any longer — oh yes, we know a lot more, but if we told you, we would be showing our hand to Saddam and endangering precious intelligence sources.

Just believe us, old boy, the government told us, and you’ll see we were right all along. And the British, being on the whole a reasonable and trusting people, mostly accepted the word of their rulers.

Well, Saddam is now gone. And with him has disappeared any conceivable risk to those intelligence sources (assuming they ever existed). So just what was this information on the basis of which Washington and its faithful ally launched an unprovoked invasion of a ramshackle third-world country? A country with a very nasty regime to be sure but not a great deal nastier than some other potential candidates for “liberation” in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Having rushed into war to suit its own military and domestic electoral timetable, the Bush administration now has the nerve to claim that a year may be required to establish the whereabouts of the WMD — and that it may never do so unless led to them by cooperative Iraqis. But no longer can London and Washington rely simply on the impossibility for the former Iraqi regime to prove a negative, that the weapons do not exist. It is up to the coalition of two to provide proof positive that they do.

This pointless war cannot be unmade. But we urgently need to know that the invasion was not illegal as well. With Britain and the U.S. in full control of Iraq, a month should suffice. If no “smoking gun” has turned up by then, a full parliamentary inquiry is essential — into the competence and accountability of the intelligence services and into how our government used them to sell a mistaken and reckless policy.

We Recommend We Recommend

The End

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date April 25, 2003

Weapons of mass destruction,” grumbles Wesley Creel, administrator of programs at the Pink Palace Museum. He is setting up the television for a screening of I Am Become Death: They Made the Bomb, a French documentary about the Manhattan Project and its role in ushering in the atomic age. Without provocation, Creel begins a monologue about the invention of the crossbow and how it led the pope to declare that such a terrible WMD would surely bring about the end of everything that ever happened. “Any idiot could learn to use a crossbow in three hours,” Creel continues, explaining that the first armor-piercing weapon, the English longbow, could take years to master. “There’s the Gatling gun, machine guns,” Creel says, as his list of doomsday devices goes on and on. It would appear from his comments that to Creel doom is in the eye of the beholder.

“People don’t understand chemical weapons, and they don’t understand biological weapons, but they understand hot lead ripping the flesh,” Creel says, suggesting that we most fear the things we least understand. A mushroom cloud explodes on the television screen.

Arthur MacCaig’s film I Am Become Death begins with theoretical physicist and father of the H-bomb Edward Teller discussing his pacifism and his desire to not become involved in warfare or politics. But Teller, along with a number of other top scientists, including Albert Einstein, was summoned to a meeting with President Roosevelt in which Roosevelt spilled the beans about a secret German plan to build an atomic bomb. At that point, pacifism didn’t matter. Politics didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting the bomb before the Nazis did. And while some of the original Manhattan Project scientists, especially Bob Wilson, have expressed a certain amount of guilt about the 200,000 dead in Nagasaki and better than half that number dead in Hiroshima, not one regretted his role in the project. It was something that, at the time, had to be done to stop the original Axis of Evil. Still, it doesn’t make the images of flesh-free skeletons lining the streets of Japan any less upsetting.

“I never lost one night of sleep over this,” says the man who dropped the bomb, Brigadier General Paul Tibbets Jr., in one of the documentary’s more disturbing moments. Tibbets talks about looking down and seeing the ground bubbling like molten tar where he had dropped the bomb. No matter what the alternatives were, it’s more than a little stunning that such a terrible image wouldn’t give a man pause, that the ghosts of half a million dead Japanese men, women, and children would not occasionally haunt the dreams of the man responsible for their sudden dispatch.

I Am Become Death also considers the role of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the wafer-thin American scientist who headed the Manhattan Project and who is largely credited for its success. Oppenheimer was a Communist, and the U.S. military knew this. They also knew he was the best man for the job, and they were not about to let politics stand between them and the development of the bomb. It stands in sharp contrast to the paranoia that reigns in post-9/11 America. After all, can anyone imagine an Islamic fundamentalist being tapped to lead a top-secret U.S. military project today? Probably not. Of course, it was politics that ultimately brought Oppenheimer down, after he voiced his disapproval of the H-bomb, which was 500 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He called it an agent of genocide, noting that there were no targets large enough for its awesome power. But this was in the 1950s, and Senator Joe McCarthy was poised to aim his anti-Communist fury at Oppenheimer and by doing so turn a national hero into a despicable, America-hating villain.

Between its focus on using fear to create peace, the development of WMDs, and the politics of paranoia, there are any number of points in I Am Become Death that reflect contemporary concerns. And while the organizers of this event, the U of M’s library system and the Pink Palace Museum, hope to stimulate discussion, their goals seem curiously unrelated to the film’s content. U of M physics professor Don Franceschetti, who has been working in an advisory role on the “Research Revolution: Science and the Shaping of Modern Life” film series, of which I Am Become Death is a part, hopes the discussion will be of a more ecological nature. Franceschetti notes that many species are endangered because of the burning of fossil fuels. He hopes the film may get people considering the positive uses of nuclear energy, which, barring accidents, is cleaner than some alternatives. Of course, if life on planet Earth is what you hope to discuss, a film called I Am Become Death, which never once considers the use of nuclear power outside the context of its military applications, might not be the best springboard.

At one point in the film, Oppenheimer expresses his greatest fear: Once the race to create the better doomsday device was begun, it could not be stopped. As U.S. troops scour the Iraqi desert looking for chemical and biological weapons and diplomats prepare to discuss North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, it’s obvious that Oppenheimer was terrifyingly correct.

A screening of I Am Become Death and a public forum will be held at the Pink Palace Museum on Saturday, April 26th, from 2 to 4 p.m.

News The Fly-By

The Condo Curse

Post author By Walter Jowers
Post date April 25, 2003

Every now and then, co-inspector Rick and I get hired to check out a condo. Most of the condos we see were built in the ’70s and ’80s. When we inspect one of these ’70s-’80s condos, we head straight for the little room that holds the gas-fired furnace and water heater. In that room, we’ll find a cornucopia of defects and hazards so grossly wicked and reprehensible that just looking at them could strike a man blind.

For example, let’s start at the return-air duct. The inlet — the hole where air is sucked into the furnace — is supposed to be at least 10 feet away from the furnace. Two reasons: 1) You don’t want air rushing into the inlet disturbing the gas flame and creating a “dirty burn.” A dirty burn can generate carbon monoxide, which can kill you. 2) If you get a dirty burn and carbon monoxide spills out of the furnace, you don’t want that carbon monoxide to get sucked into the return inlet. If carbon monoxide gets in the return duct, it’ll be distributed through the whole condo.

Often as not, we find the return-air inlet just outside the door to the evil little furnace/water-heater room, about two to three feet away from the furnace. That’s downright dangerous.

Inside the evil little room, space is tight. That gives installers fits when it’s time to run the vent pipes (think exhaust pipes) out of the condo building. Usually, they run the water-heater vent to the furnace vent, then run the furnace vent up through the ceiling. In a multistory condo, the vents are usually stacked vertically; that is, the vent from the bottom floor becomes the vent for the second floor, and so on. To do the job right, the installers would have to get all this pipe lined up perfectly, with no leaks, and keep it at least an inch away from anything that will burn.

That never happens. Inevitably, the pipe joints get misaligned, and the vents end up touching paper-faced walls, ceilings, and insulation. The result is leaky vents that spew carbon monoxide and might catch something on fire besides.

Often, the vent pipes aren’t sloped properly. That slows down the gases in the vents and increases the chance of carbon monoxide spilling out into the condo, getting sucked into the return-air inlet, and killing you.

Now, as if the fire and asphyxiation threats aren’t enough, there’s the mold threat. If you don’t already know — and I hope you don’t — some people have had water leaks turn their houses into giant mold farms. If you get enough mold in your house, it might just make you sick — so sick that a judge or jury might just award you tens of millions of dollars for your trouble. Within the last year or two, trial lawyers specializing in mold cases and bootleg mold-testing companies have sprung up and grown like Georgia kudzu.

What’s that got to do with the evil little room in the condo? Well, most of the time, installers don’t put any catch pans or drains under condo furnaces or water heaters. I know, I know — a regular old gas furnace doesn’t leak water. But in the summer, water drips off the air conditioner’s coil, which is usually located on top of the furnace. And, as everybody knows, water-heater tanks blow out when you’re out of town for a long weekend.

In most condos we see, condensate leaks and water-heater leaks just spill out onto the floor and into the condo(s) below. Big leaks can cause ceilings to collapse, ruin carpets and furniture, and even grow a whopping-big crop of toxic mold.

In the worst of the evil little rooms, especially those in 1970s condos, we’ll find an obsolete, dangerous electrical panel, such as the infamous Federal Pacific Electric “Stab-Lok” panel. Some of these boogers are even wired with skinny aluminum cable, which is a known fire hazard. It’s a double whammy, all in one box.

I know, some of you are thinking, Omigosh! I live in a condo. I’ve got all these problems. I’d better fix them. Well, here’s the problem: You probably can’t fix them without tearing up somebody else’s condo. If you’re in a multistory unit, your ceiling is somebody else’s floor, or your floor is somebody else’s ceiling, or both.

Even if you could fix just your condo, you’ve probably only reduced your asphyxiation risk. As long as somebody in a condo near you has fire hazards, you’ve got fire hazards. If somebody else gets a leak and grows big mold, you might just end up breathing it.

That’s why I call this collection of messes the Condo Curse. Unless you get the whole condo complex fixed, all you can do is load up your personal condo with smoke detectors and carbon-monoxide detectors, be on the lookout for leaks and mold, and hope for the best.

Here’s the closest thing I have to good news: The Condo Curse is pretty much limited to condos 20 years old or older. Some of the newer ones don’t have all these problems. Some of the brand-new ones don’t have any of these problems.

Music Music Features

Coming Out

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date April 25, 2003

If the name “Memphix” is more familiar to the worldwide denizens of the crate-digger/beat-miner subculture than to even the average music fan in the record label/DJ collective’s hometown, it’s nothing all that unusual. Subcultures are like that. So, historically, is Memphis.

But after a few years of quietly plying their trade –putting out a few 7-inches, hosting shows, making connections locally, nationally, and even globally — Memphix (which consists primarily of local DJs Chad “Chase” Weekley and Luke “Red Eye Jedi” Sexton, with Chicago-based producer and record collector Dante Carfagna; local DJ Erymias “Armis” Shiberou seems to have emerged as an auxiliary member of the crew) appears to be in the midst of a quiet coming-out party set to get a lot noisier in the coming year.

Central to this emergence is the success of Chains + Black Exhaust, a legally sketchy CD collection of obscure black rock and funk 45s — “tough black men playing tough black music” is how one fan described it in an Internet discussion –compiled by Weekley and Carfagna and slipped into the musical ether sometime last fall. The compilation is the result of years of vigorous crate-digging on the part of Weekley and Carfagna (the latter is currently collaborating on a book-length history of rare funk singles with like-minded DJ savior and subculture superstar DJ Shadow) and an attempt to shed some light on a relatively underappreciated subgenre — black bands playing hard funk and acid rock in the late ’60s and early ’70s, proof that artists such as Band of Gypsys-era Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, and Parliament-Funkadelic weren’t anomalies.

Memphix pressed 1,000 copies, selling over 300 on the site TurntableLab.com and over 100 locally at Shangri-La Records, which, at last check, still had some in stock. The comp has since become something of a cult item, getting considerable play on New York’s renowned free-form station WFMU and becoming the subject of considerable acclaim and conjecture in Internet forums such as those on the rock-critic/music-fanatic site I Love Music (ilXor.com) and the crate-digger-oriented Soulstrut.com.

Listening to Chains + Black Exhaust makes it easy to understand the ardor: This collection of obscure singles, largely from the South and Midwest, has the character of an exotic, alluring alternate universe, where scuzzy guitars get busy over hard funk beats and most of the singers have chitlin’-circuit credentials — and occasionally the inexplicable occurs. You can hear this right at the top, on the record’s first proper cut (after a truly hilarious intro skit), one of two Memphis singles, “Yeah Yeah” by the appropriately named Black Rock. The track opens with an arty, nearly ambient guitar intro that sounds like something from a DJ Shadow record (and may be, though Weekley says the track hasn’t been sampled) before giving way to a pure funk breakdown that later erupts into something that can only be described as a proto-post-punk sheet of guitar noise, leaving the listener to ponder that this was recorded by an African-American band in Memphis during the Stax/Hi era.

The comp’s other Memphis cut, “Get High” by Gran Am, is no less unexpected, with a rumbling beginning that could be Steppenwolf which then cuts into James Brown call-and-response which then finally brings the funk.

A few tracks fit into well-known subgenres: “Cynthy-Ruth” by Black Merda (a Detroit band with Mississippi roots recording in Chicago, according to Weekley) is late-Hendrix minus guitar flash, right down to the soundalike vocals. “Life is a Gamble” by the Ohio band Preacher has the intergender, multiple-vocal interplay of Sly and the Family Stone. But most of the rest is the sound of Southern soul evolving into acid rock and vice versa –grimy, vibrant music made more so by the fact that the comp was recorded straight from the 45s, with skips, crackles, and all.

But the music itself isn’t the sole reason that Chains + Black Exhaust has become something of a phenomenon. A lot of the interest seems to stem from the mysterious nature of the project. The disc’s original jacket design had the title and record label (the fictitious “Jones Records,” an invention to prevent “any heat from coming down on Memphix,” Weekley confesses) on the spine, but a foul-up by the printer kept that information off the finished product. Weekley instead made homemade, hand-written stickers with the information and applied them to some copies; other copies shipped out sans info. Whether you got a copy with this barest of information was totally a matter of chance, but Chains + Black Exhaust otherwise contains no information: no track listing, no liner notes, no contact details.

This cryptic quality derived from a variety of factors: partly legal necessity, partly a strategy to cultivate interest, and partly pure accident. But the result has been that the comp has grown into some sort of subcultural archaeology project, with beat miners, rock critics, and other hardcore music fans scrambling to determine the origins of the disc and figure out exactly what its contents are. Attempts to piece together the track listing are floating all around the Internet, as fans from every corner of the wired world share bits of information to unravel the mystery. “It’s exciting to us to see people out there trying to figure it all out,” Weekley admits, and Carfagna has even prodded the game along on at least one site.

But the comp’s lack of information has also engendered a bit of controversy. “It’s the Secret Crate-Digger’s Code,” one I Love Music poster sniffed in a discussion of Chains‘ lack of a track listing. Others have taken issue with the original artists not receiving proper credit.

Weekley is sensitive to this criticism but maintains that it was never Memphix’s intent to keep the contents of the disc a permanent secret. “It’s basically a bootleg, yes, but we’ve always considered it a demo,” Weekley says. “[And] the reason it came out so ghetto was that it was a demo. We had to put it out that way to build up the hype.”

Mission accomplished, Memphix is currently working with Now Again Records, a subsidiary of respected Los Angeles-based hip-hop indie Stones Throw, to license the music and give the much-sought-after disc a proper re-release, with track listings, liner notes, and the works. Memphix is even trying to track down the masters of the cuts to get better sound quality. The final product is liable to be a little different from the version currently circulating, depending on how licensing negotiations go. (One track Weekley mentions adding to the comp is “Drugs Ain’t Cool” by Ebony Rhythm Method.) The current plan is for the legit version of Chains + Black Exhaust to hit the racks in January 2004. Weekley surmises that it might sell as many as 25,000 copies, and, if it does, the Memphix brand will become a major force in their little corner of the music world. “There are a million people trying to do what we’re doing,” Weekley says, “but most of them don’t come correct.”

In the interim, Memphix has plenty of other projects on tap to keep them busy. The label’s debut full-length, Jeux de Ficelle, a 13-track mix in the vein of DJ Shadow, produced by Carfagna under the moniker Express Rising (under which he’s released Memphix singles), is due out this summer. Weekley says the plans are for an initial pressing of 1,000 LPs and 1,000 CDs and says he’s already got 500 pre-orders.

For their 7-inch releases, Memphix has followed a low-supply, high-demand theory, turning their releases into collector’s items and sought-after objects. But that philosophy will change for the full-length. “For something like this, we’ll definitely press more copies if the demand’s there,” Weekley says, “and we’re hoping to get it picked up by a [bigger] label.”

Chase, Red Eye Jedi, and Armis also work the wheels of steel for Inner Sounds, an ongoing weekly set Thursday nights at the Hi-Tone Café (unless the club has a band booked, as it does April 24th), where they spin hip-hop, soul, and funk. The collective’s presence continues to be felt in American and British hip-hop and DJ magazines, most recently in an article by Chase in the New York-based Elemental on “10 Memphis Funk & Soul 7-inches.” (Weekley hints that a Memphis-only equivalent to Chains + Black Exhaust is on the Memphix wish list.)

And on Monday, May 5th, Memphix will host a special show, again at the Hi-Tone Café, with acclaimed New York soul and funk band Lee Fields and Sugarman 3, a group Memphix hooked up with in part through their colleagues at Stones Throw. Red Eye Jedi and Bo-Keys bassist Scott Bomar will collaborate on an opening set, Jedi spinning and Bomar playing bass and guitar.

It’s hard to believe two guys from such unlikely DJ enclaves as Munford, Tennessee (Weekley), and Kennett, Missouri (Sexton), are making such a splash on what is traditionally an urban and cosmopolitan scene, but it’s happening, and Memphis may not be able to sleep on Memphix any longer.

Film Features Film/TV

Who Are You?

Post author By Bo List
Post date April 25, 2003

It was a dark and stormy night (I have always wanted to begin something with that, thanks to years of watching Snoopy struggle with his own writings.) By mysterious circumstances, 11 strangers are thrown together at a decaying hotel, trapped between flooded roads and hindered by downed phone lines. Included: an aging movie starlet (Rebecca DeMornay), her ex-cop chauffeur (John Cusack), a quarreling young newlywed couple (Clea DuVall and William Lee Scott), a convicted killer on his way to prison and his police escort (Jake Busey and Ray Liotta), the prostitute with a heart of gold (Amanda Peet), and a young boy with his mother and stepfather (Bret Loehr, Leila Kenzle, and John C. McGinley, respectively). Oh, and the buggish hotel clerk (John Hawkes).

Everyone has a secret and a problem that complicates their otherwise nightmarish stay at this generically dismal hotel. The young mother, while fixing a flat tire, gets hit by the movie star’s limo, with no hospital in sight and no way to call for help. The convict is being transported to a higher-security prison and must spend the night handcuffed to a toilet. But, as with almost all assemblies of wildly disparate individuals, people start dying horribly. Meanwhile, in another part of the state, a judge awaits the arrival of a mentally ill death-row convict who is contesting his death sentence. The storm outside provides the backdrop for some scary stories and is the odd connection between the killer in the judge’s office and the unknown murderer stalking the hotel where the guests check in but don’t check out.

Director James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted, Cop Land, Kate & Leopold) has assembled a fine cast of oddballs. Cusack emerges from the pack as the central figure in the fight to stay alive, and it is nice to see him gradually losing some of his baby fat and looking more adult and authoritative. At 37, he still looks like he could be holding up an “In Your Eyes”-blasting boombox outside some beautiful teen’s window, but he is finally maturing vocally and physically into more of a grown-up. Liotta, however, carries with him the predestination of scariness. If he’s not in a simpy comedy (Operation Dumbo Drop, Corrina Corrina), chances are he’s going to scare the bejeezus out of ya. There’s a twist here, and he’s not the villain one would expect in a Liotta-laden film, but it’s not very long before he peers those Clockwork Orange-y eyes into the sight of an impending kill. Eek! Rebecca DeMornay amuses briefly as the washed-up starlet. Upon checking in, the hotel clerk observes, “Hey, didn’t you use to be that actress?” The same could be said of DeMornay, who spent the early ’90s getting A-list work in titles like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Guilty As Sin, and Backdraft but disappeared from prominence and into TV and straight-to-video film. Very sad, but nice to see her back in a major release.

Identity succeeds by taking its cues from some of the greats. The environs are definitely Psycho-tic Hitchcock: Filmed somewhat obviously in a studio instead of on location, the hotel is almost archetypal in its run-downedness. It looks like people should die there, and if I were in a similar predicament (no roads, no phones), I might easily drive by it and sleep in my car, having seen too many movies where unkempt inns were hosts to murders and monsters. The plot is not unlike Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (political correctness has swept the play version of this story into a new name that hints at its story: And Then There Were None) where characters drop off one by one until the murderer is revealed. This is the same device used in just about every horror movie, though more obviously adhered to here than most: The killer’s trademark is to leave the victim’s hotel key under (or in or around) the body. It’s a countdown 10, 9, 8, 7 . And, like The Sixth Sense, Identity lulls you into thinking you know exactly how everything works and then turns you upside down until you are again fooled into thinking you’ve figured it all out.

Identity is refreshing in that sense. It’s a slasher movie, yes; but an intelligent one and one that both frightens and provokes. Not in a Sixth Sense way, as there are no heartstrings to pull, but on just the right level that will make you think (though not too hard) and scare you witless without giving you nightmares. It may, however, give you pause when considering where to stay for the night when you have a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, stranded in front of a Bates-y motel. Call Triple-A.

Art Art Feature

Free Art Tomorrow

Post author By Bianca Phillips
Post date April 25, 2003

When you step into the old Tennessee Brewery on Tennessee Street downtown, you can’t help but feel a bit inebriated. Only these days, it’s not the beer that’s intoxicating but the empty, grand old building’s architectural drama.

Look up and you see the wrought-iron railings of the open, winding staircases that frame each floor. The windows were strategically placed so that natural light floods in, throwing ornate shadows from the decorative latticework of the railings. It was once the site of a bustling beer industry, and hundreds of feet traversed that very floor each day. The worn concrete, scattered with flakes of rust, seems to welcome new feet after years of abandonment.

The 113-year-old Tennessee Brewery, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, has seen good times and bad. In 1900, the brewery was owned by John Schorr and was said to be the largest in the South, pumping out up to 250,000 barrels of Goldcrest beer a day. In 1999, it was at the center of an environmental court case that could have resulted in its demolition had current owner Kevin Norman not stepped in. He purchased the crumbling landmark after the previous owners refused to make necessary repairs to prevent its destruction. Norman funded the process of getting the building back up to code requirements.

Now, the old building sits vacant, looming over the Mississippi River like a giant ghost, but Norman and a local group of artists appropriately called ArtBrew have banded together with a plan for the brewery. They want to turn it into an affordable living/work space for artists, complete with performance and exhibition space, “arts-friendly” commercial and retail space, and arts education and outreach programs for the community.

“Artists are really priced out of the downtown market, and that’s a shame. We’re hoping to remedy that situation,” says ArtBrew member Michael Eck. “The price of rent will probably be comparable to getting a studio loft in Midtown. There are a couple of artists’ cooperatives in Midtown in such raw spaces, and they’re just making do with what they have. This would put a solid roof over their heads and offer them a permanent home to begin to develop and grow.”

ArtBrew has commissioned the Minneapolis-based Artspace Projects, Inc. to take a look at the building and determine the idea’s feasibility. Artspace is a nonprofit organization with a successful track record for helping groups like ArtBrew obtain funding for these kinds of historic renovations. They function essentially as a real-estate developer, pulling funding from historic tax credits, affordable-housing tax credits, charitable foundations, and corporate donations as well as traditional bank financing.

After the funding has been pulled together, Artspace either co-owns the building with a local partner like ArtBrew or steps down entirely, depending on what the artist collective has in mind. Artspace often retains a general-manager status for several years to ensure the project is fulfilling its mission as an artist community.

Since most of the rooms of the brewery are large and built in such a way that it would be difficult to divide them into apartments, ArtBrew has selected the Float Factory, an old warehouse located at the corner of Virginia Street and South Main, to be the main live/work space for the artist collective. The brewery would actually only house four to six apartment spaces reserved for international and out-of-state artists to serve as their artist-in-residence home. A couple of those spaces may also be reserved for accomplished local artists who would be hand-picked to stay in the brewery for six months to a year.

The remainder of the brewery’s rooms would be converted into a number of arts-related spaces: a dance studio, a cinema, various studio spaces, gallery and exhibition space, nonprofit and for-profit commercial and retail office space, a media cooperative, a publishing cooperative, an iron-forging shop, arts classrooms and workshop space, and possibly even a microbrewery to revive the building’s heritage.

When Artspace visits, they’ll be performing a marketing survey to determine if there is a real need for such a space for artists in the downtown area. If they decide there is and determine the Tennessee Brewery and Float Factory are practical spaces for such projects, they’ll try to obtain the funds. The average Artspace project takes about three years from the research phase to completion of construction.

“There’s so much inspiration with the river flowing by and the great buildings downtown,” says Eck. “All these people are moving downtown for the excitement of living downtown, but it’s not very exciting here if there aren’t creative people living and creating.”

An open-to-the-public community meeting with Artspace representatives will be held inside the Tennessee Brewery (477 Tennessee St.) at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 24th.

Book Features Books

City Reporters

Post author By Leonard Gill
Post date April 25, 2003

Maybe you knew or maybe you’ve heard tell of the Lauderdales, one of Memphis’ oldest, finest families. Or maybe you didn’t or maybe you haven’t, and if so either way the story goes this way:

First, a fortune was built on jute factories in Indonesia, millinery mills in Nova Scotia, and linotype foundries in Itta Bena, in addition to a fleet of steamships and dirigibles to go with a chain of short-lived sno-cone parlors. Then what? Times changed or maybe the times simply lost interest. The Lauderdales fell on hard times. Very hard. Mama and Papa Lauderdale took off with the jewelry, the silver, and the car for somewhere (parts unknown? the great hereafter?). Uncle Lance got struck by lightning. And poor little unrich Vance, age 27, got stuck with an empty mansion and a pile of unpaid bills.

Then, times changed again. It was back in 1991, when the newspaper you’re now reading was brand-new and it stepped in with an offer Vance couldn’t refuse: The Lord and readership willing, the paper would pay him — but for what? A weekly thousand words or so on the odd questions curious Flyer readers had about their old hometown. (Or was it curious questions from odd readers?) You know, the “lost” Memphis that Memphians grew up with, the city’s hidden history readers once knew or heard tell of: the beaten signs and boarded storefronts they’d passed a million times and couldn’t make heads or tails of. Faded postcards and vintage photos they’d fished out of a drawer. An out-of-the-way municipal marker here, a mysterious gravesite there. Former nightspots; shuttered hamburger joints. Weird monuments; weirder stories. People, places, things. Stuff. And in the case of a lot of it, the exact whereabouts: unknown. The explanation: inexplicable. Found: the original WHBQties. Lost: the Tropical Freeze drive-in at Poplar and White Station.

Well, that Ask Vance column (one part native intelligence, one part hard research, one part harder legwork, two parts pure invention or beside-the-point but hilarious preamble to some honest answers) proved very successful. So successful, in fact, that The Memphis Flyer‘s sister publication, Memphis magazine, in 1995 made Vance a counteroffer he couldn’t refuse: that publication’s back pages (plus pay).

Then, times changed — again. Now Vance is in that magazine’s front pages. And now he’s booked, under cover, in Ask Vance: The Best Questions and Answers from Memphis Magazine’s History and Trivia Expert (for $19.95), a compilation of columns brought to you by Bluff City Books, a publishing startup from Contemporary Media Inc., parent company of The Memphis Flyer and Memphis magazine. The excellent editing credit for the book goes to Memphis and Flyer senior editor Michael Finger, who knows Vance like the back of his hand. (Or did he once give Vance the back of his hand? Nobody knows.) The handsome layout credit goes to Memphis magazine art director Murry Keith. But one unanswered item you’ll search in vain to find. I quote:

Dear Vance: A ‘Qtie I think who went on to be crowned Mrs. America I believe had a date in junior high with a friend of mine I’m pretty sure once. This was in 1960-something. Who is she and where is he? Am I odd, curious, both? You should know. — L.G., Memphis.

Vance Lauderdale will be signing Ask Vance at Burke’s Book Store (1719 Poplar Avenue) on Thursday, April 24th, from 5 to 7 p.m. Call the store at 278-7484 to reserve copies. You can also order Ask Vance from the Memphis magazine circulation department at 901-575-9470.

More publishing news just in and also on the homefront: This month, Sanctuary Publishing in England has brought out Waking Up in Memphis: Discovering the Heartland of Blues and Rock ‘N’ Roll ($18.95) by Andria Lisle (Local Beat columnist in the newspaper you’re now reading) and co-author Mike Evans on what made and makes Memphis music great. Lisle’s legwork and love are written all over it — whether it’s an evening out at Wild Bill’s (where she figures she’s put in a good 1,000 hours), rubbing shoulders with the late Othar Turner at his annual goat barbecue in north Mississippi, sampling the menu at the Big S Grill with R&B legend Rosco Gordon, getting saved under the direction of Rev. Al Green at the Full Gospel Tabernacle, hanging out with “East Memphis’s Persian Princess” and classical guitarist Lily Afshar, or paying tribute to Jim Dickinson, who’s paved the way for sons Luther and Cody and the new Memphis sound.

“During the decade and a half I’ve lived [in Memphis],” Lisle writes near the close of her and Evans’ book, “the city has taken on a mythic quality, and in more recent years I have seen reality and fiction combine into a new fabric as strong as the old tapestries of Sun and Stax.”

Andria Lisle, participant observer to much of this city’s music scene, has woven a fabric of her own.

News News Feature

HOW IT LOOKS

Post author By Ed Weathers
Post date April 25, 2003

Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Post author By
Post date April 25, 2003

Pig Lib

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

(Matador)

Stephen Malkmus thinks he’s so clever. The former Pavement frontman titled his 2001 solo debut eponymously and packaged it with photos of himself looking contemplative in a tropical setting, knowingly echoing the self-indulgence of so many solo debuts both famous (Paul Simon) and forgotten (Roger Daltrey). Stephen Malkmus wasn’t a solo debut so much as it was a “solo debut.”

But if Malkmus is so smart, he would have realized that the follow-up album is supposed to be the “sophomore slump,” when the artist flinches and dilutes the qualities of the debut. It’s the typical Act II for so many artists, but if he intends to adhere to the archetype, Malkmus screws up by not screwing up: Pig Lib develops the sound he toyed with on Stephen Malkmus and refines it considerably with sharper songwriting, confident guitarwork, and a more cohesive, organic feel. Pig Lib is perhaps the best he’s sounded since Crooked Rain Crooked Rain.

While songs like “(Do Not Feed the) Oyster” and “Craw Song” sound like vintage Malkmus, on other tracks he takes a different tack, pushing the songs further while still managing to keep them rooted in familiar territory. For someone whose pre-solo work is so strongly identified with indie rock, Pig Lib is defiantly, agreeably anti-indie. In fact, Malkmus’ two big influences here seem to be Led Zeppelin and granola-inflected jam bands like Widespread Panic. “Witch Mountain Bridge” borrows not Jimmy Page’s king-size riffs but Zep’s misty mountain imagery; it’s Malkmus’ D&D epic. “Dark Wave” and “Sheets” hijack ’70s glam rock for their catchy choruses, while “Animal Midnight” is as close to emotional sincerity as Malkmus is likely to get.

The album’s climax — not just its high point but the culmination of its rising action — is “1% of One,” a noodly jam-band epic.The story of a blind Dutch mixer, the song tries to locate the instant when music hits the listener, the nanosecond when the synapses fire and the brain recognizes a tonal frequency. Is the fact that the track is mostly nine minutes of guitar solo some sort of cosmic joke or is it a serious contemplation about listener perception? I doubt even the Jicks themselves know.

As a “sophomore slump,” Pig Lib fails miserably. It’s simply too accomplished, too idiosyncratic — actually, too much fun — to adhere to the rock-and-roll narrative Malkmus started with his solo debut. Pig Lib is the sound of a musician shedding the quote marks and becoming a true artist — again. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

Burn, Piano Island, Burn

The Blood Brothers

(Artist Direct )

It’s as welcome as good weather to see the hardcore genre move from its cookie-cutter agendas (and sound) to the art-damaged, autistic spazz-rock being popularized by the Blood Brothers. And they are popular. This is not flavor-of-the-moment fake hardcore à la A.F.I., nor does it share air with the lowest-common-denominator “positivecore” of aging adolescents Avail. It explodes all over the room yet it can be hummable to the nth degree. Grooves lurch, speed up, then stop for vocal interplay, a piano interlude, or a skeletal hook, yet this record does not beat you over the head with the stylistic masturbation or “eclectic” pseudo-intellectualism of, say, Mr. Bungle.

Jesus Lizard may well have the most poorly aging sound of the ’90s, but at least now we can thank the Blood Brothers for updating that sound so successfully. I would call that a small miracle. And we haven’t even mentioned the true zinger yet: They pull it off with two full-time vocalists — a trick that would otherwise clearly spell S-H-I-T. One guy is the melodic screamer, and the other guy sings like a girl. I don’t mean that in a disparaging sense. I mean that he literally sings exactly like a woman a woman who can really sing. It works; sounds like it couldn’t, but it does. The lyrics are suitably surreal for a vocal-obsessed unit that doesn’t appear to be drowning in nonmetaphorical politics. We can only hope that this record trickles down to high school kids and blows some minds. The future will be quite bright if younger prodigies take Burn, Piano Island, Burn up a notch.

— Andrew Earles

Grade: A-

Monday Night at the

Hug and Pint

Arab Strap

(Matador)

It’s been exactly two years since I reviewed an Arab Strap album for this publication. An entire era to some, but to Arab Strap it’s just a wrinkle in time. Other than the urge to choose poor album titles, not much is new. A band that once bowled me over is now no more than pleasantly entertaining. Maybe it’s all in my wary head, or maybe the answer is in the titles. The Week Never Starts Around Here (1997): commentary on very heavy drinking. Philophobia (1998): the fear of love. Elephant Shoe (1999): mouth it into a mirror. The Red Thread (2001): the mythical connection between those in love. Monday Night at the Hug and Pint (2003): a fictitious pub where hugs are literally a menu item.

For a band that can have an unusually barbaric take on how love, stripped to the vital organs of infidelity, alcoholism (optional), jealousy, fire, pain, and euphoria, can really mess everyone up, they’ve dulled their edge for this one. Matador vetoed the album’s original title (The Cunted Circus), and spiked lyrics pop out at a slower rate. Monday is even formulaic in its mix of folk-disco, rock-disco, and the token two or three dynamic “slowcore” numbers that seem to always appear in the Arab Strap album script. Conner Oberst and Mike Mogis from Bright Eyes play guitar on two tracks, though reading this sentence (or the liner notes) is the only way to know this tidbit. It adds nothing to the sound. I like this album, I really do. I’ve listened to it repeatedly and have picked out my favorite handful, but I’m a fan. Those who are not should start with Elephant Shoe, or, if you are well-balanced and happily attached (as a deafening silence echoes back), I encourage you to forego starting at all. —AE

Grade: B-

Listening Log

Monster –Killer Mike (Aquemini/Columbia): Outkast’s bad-ass little brother gangster walks through Stankonia. (“All 4 U,” “A.D.I.D.A.S.,” “Rap Is Dead”)

Grade: B+

The End of the Beginning –Murs (Definitive Jux): L.A. MC plays indie-hop Everyman to onetime collaborator Slug and labelmate Mr. Lif’s best and brightest. “Straight low-budget” and “underground thuggin’ it,” but still drops rap’s first Harry Potter rhymes for his (mostly white) audience. (“You & I,” “Last Night,” “18 w/a Bullet [Remix]”)

Grade: B+

Atmosphere — The Quails (Inconvenient): From positive radical message to danceable punk sound to the way their passionate voices intertwine, this San Francisco trio is what Sleater-Kinney might be if they were garage-rock mortals. (“Atmosphere,” “Soon the Rest Will Fall,” “Memo from the Desk of the Quails,” “Shine a Light”) n —Chris Herrington

Grade: A-