Month: August 2003

Categories
News

Meeting Mandy

The local homeless were just taking up their positions when my friend dropped me at the Rochester bus station. It was before dawn and I needed coffee, but the only stuff available was out of a machine. So I had a nice cup of “1-A-3” (dark, no cream or sugar) and hid my face in a book.

We went through Syracuse and Albany, brick-and-smokestack cities that made me think of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. But the snow had a glistening crust on top, and it looked like we were traveling across a big birthday cake with candles and white icing. The sun was just coming up, but nobody on the bus was talking.

North of Albany, the country started to open up and get hillier, and the scenery changed to the kind of rolling, haystack farms you see in old French paintings. I started getting excited. I was headed for Mandy’s mountain hideaway! Mandy was a friend of a friend back home, and in those days I was the kind of traveler who jumped at statements like, “Dude, if you’re going to New York, you should visit my friend Mandy. She’s got a cabin in the Adirondacks.”

We went through Saratoga, famous for its springs. I saw the Lincoln Baths building and the Saratoga Spa Park. I saw people cross-country skiing through the woods along the road and all over golf courses. Then we started uphill, and the woods got deeper and closer to the road. The Adirondacks were beginning to rise to our left, and when the view opened to the right, I could see mountains that I knew from checking the map were in Vermont. Vermont! I sure was a long way from Tennessee. A sign said this was voted “America’s Most Scenic Highway” in 1966 and 1967.

I was sitting at the station in Plattsburgh when Mandy came in — “wild and woodsy,” just as described to me. She was short and stocky — not fat at all but thick and muscular, obviously a person accustomed to working and walking — and she was wearing unlaced duck boots, thermals visible through torn jeans, a down vest over a long-sleeved plaid shirt, and one of those caps with the earflaps. She stuck out a wool-gloved hand for a firm shake, and a moment later we were on the road to her cabin. Two souls of the road had found each other.

That was at about 7:30 p.m., and a conversation had begun that would last until past 2 o’clock in the morning. She said it had been 26 below zero the previous night at her place. She told me her land had been in her family for three generations. “Before that it was out of the family for three years, but before that it was in the family too.” Her 160-year-old cabin, the original pioneer building on the property, had been expanded “about 100 years back.”

I asked Mandy what she did for a living, and over the next 48 hours or so occupations would pop out of her mouth like clowns from a circus car. Among them — and these are just the ones I can remember — were river guide, back-country cook, gourmet chef at a private camp, horseshoer, registered nurse, taxidermist, writer, musician, candy maker, and BTI technician. That last one describes a treatment used against black flies, which are murderous in the north woods in June and July.

Finally, we pulled onto a small road, drove past a couple of houses in the dimly lit woods, then turned left onto a plowed road that was just exactly wide enough for her truck. I could make out the side of a cabin in the glow of the headlights.

A Malamute named Jack hopped on the end of a chain and put his paws all over me. A yellow Lab named Reggae, age 11, was much mellower but clearly glad to see mom come back. We entered a neat kitchen with a table hidden by a pile of stuff, then a cozy room with a woodstove, a stereo, a mattress to sit on, pictures all over the walls, and bookshelves. The books were mostly travel — Ireland, Alaska, the Adirondacks, Oregon — and religion/philosophy/spirituality of the Eastern variety. Mandy’s answering machine message went, “You have reached Mandy and the Adirondack Renaissance Amazon Women’s Preserve.”

During that night, we had a conversation — kept warm by the stove, cool by the beer, and mellow and rambling by the pipe — about life in the mountains, working and wandering in Alaska, not having a TV set, traveling so long you forget where you are, listening to John Prine, following the Grateful Dead, looking for spiritual meaning in life, the problems of “owning stuff,” third-time-around dÇjÖ vu, and a couple dozen other topics that completely got away from me by the next morning.

After the last candle was blown out and as I drifted off to sleep, we were still talking from neighboring rooms. I finally thought to look out at the stars. There was no moon, no electric light, no clouds, and the cold country air was perfectly clear. The Big Dipper looked like you could reach out and grab it. I saw stars that I hadn’t seen since summer camp, when we used to lie in our sleeping bags and stay up all night watching for shooting stars and satellites. Mandy said that every couple of weeks she saw the Northern Lights, and sometimes they filled the whole sky. I felt the High Mountain Magic, and through the frosted window, Orion wished us good night.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Questionable

It’s been a decade since the final curtain fell, but I’ll never forget the production of Charles Busch’s Vampire Lesbians of Sodom staged by a small, short-lived union of artists called Nice Boys From Good Families, under the direction of Brian Mott. It was produced at the then un-air-conditioned Marshall Arts Gallery in the middle of August. The unrelenting humidity made the show a steam bath, the capacity crowd, packed in like cord wood, and the blazing stage lights only made things worse. Anyone interested in seeing the show’s stars, Kevin Jones and Ann Marie Hall, in a state of undress only had to pass by the gallery’s garage doors, which were up, allowing the actors to get a little fresh, if still stifling, air between quick changes. Miserable doesn’t begin to describe the conditions under which this determined troupe of actors was working. And if the hellish location didn’t clue observers into the inspired poverty that brought VLOS into being, the set, a nickel-and-dime affair amounting to little more than some lushly painted backdrops hung like shower curtains on a bare stage, drove the point home in no uncertain terms.

But the capacity crowds came night after putrid night. And in the middle of a miserable August, they laughed until tears of joy mingled with the torrents of sweat pouring down their faces. It was, as DIY performance goes, an object of near perfection. I rhapsodize about these bygones for one reason only: Mott, who was once able to release the full force of Busch’s campy brilliance against nearly impossible odds, has not been able to repeat the magic working under the aegis of Memphis’ only professional theater, Playhouse on the Square. This past Friday night the wonderfully climate-controlled Circuit Playhouse was nearly empty, and laughs were few and far between. And while some of the blame may rest with questionable choices made by Mott and his actors, I suspect the working conditions made all the difference. Vampire Lesbians of Sodom was produced by a passionate group trying to make the absolute most they could out of nothing. The Lady in Question looks like a show that was schlocked together by professional corner-cutters looking to fabricate a relatively complex set as cheaply as possible. Any failings of the cast (and there are a few) are dwarfed by a looming, less than versatile, overwhelmingly tan set that might as well have Waiting for Guffman stenciled on it in big red letters.

Architect and designer Michael Walker seldom misses. In fact, he’s responsible for the most stunning designs to ever appear on a Memphis stage. (Far East, anyone?) But even conceptually, the design for The Lady in Question fails. The immovable unit set, a dollhouse recreation of a German manorhouse, can’t service a play that needs to move seamlessly and cinematically from a Bavarian train station to a manor to some creepy catacombs to the Swiss Alps. The serviceable but uninspired lighting design does nothing to aid with clunky awkward transitions or to define changes in location. The unbearably tan monstrosity neither provides an appropriate counterpoint for Busch’s colorful characters nor does it reflect the silver and black grandeur of the classic movies The Lady in Question so meticulously mimics. Its bland seriousness, unreflective of the play’s sources and style, casts a pall over the audience and obscures the frothy confection that is The Lady in Question. Given Walker’s track record, something must have gone terribly wrong.

The Lady in Question apes the Nazi-laden backlot thrillers of the 1940s so closely that, at first, it’s hard to know if you are watching a spoof of an old movie or just an old movie adapted to the stage. It tells the story of Gertrude Garnet, a onetime honky-tonk queen turned classical diva, on tour in Europe during the onset of WWII. The self-interested Garnet is, against both her will and her nature, drawn into a plot to free an American hostage from a Nazi prison. In the original production, Charles Busch put on the drag to play Garnet, and while it is not specifically a drag role, this no doubt helped the audience leap into parody mode. At Circuit, with the inestimably talented Mary Buchignani, a bona fide female, as Garnet, the spell takes longer to cast. And in this kind of comedy, time is of the essence.

Buchignani is a known commodity as a comic and character actress. Seldom does she get to play the glamour girl, however, and you have to wonder if the actress is totally comfortable wearing the feathers and furs. Often she seems to be acting in quotation marks — “can’t you see how grand I am?”– and not in a way that speaks to the character’s undeniable pretensions. She has no idea how truly fab she is, and in this role that’s a fatal flaw. Another known commodity, Jo Lynne Palmer, does some of her best work here and some of her worst. Sure, her accent drifts from Bavaria to Transylvania to Jackson, Mississippi, all in the span of a diphthong, but as both a stern German battle-ax and a flaky American actress, she hits all the right notes. Alas, Palmer has been given the show’s slapstick moments, and within the great all-encompassing tanness of it all, the slapstick stands out as forced and uncomfortable. Cort Winsett has all the rakish charm and angular mannishness to make him the ideal noir hero, and in a sexually deviant role partially inspired by the film The Bad Seed, Carol Wolder is both hysterical and terrifying.

Mott and Co. play the whimsical Lady in Question straight. Good for them. But there’s a fine line between straight and bland, and in this case, the set has made all the difference. n

Through August 31st.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

The Body in Question

Much of culture consists of fictions that endow natural processes with symbolic importance,” writes Michael Sims in the introduction to his fascinating and very fun new work of nonfiction, Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form (Viking). Then he goes on to observe: “There is no better example than our reaction to the talents and limitations of what we have variously called a machine for living, the temple of the soul, and our mortal coil — the human body. Every part and function of the body plays its symbolic role.”

With that in mind, take then the penis’ prepuce (aka foreskin) and that spectacular piece of fiction rich in symbolism and known to the Dark Ages as the Holy Prepuce — the centerpiece of the Christ child’s circumcision, the key moment in the redemption of humanity (“when the incarnated god first suffered human pain,” in Sims’ words, according to Thomas Aquinas), and an object of veneration throughout Christendom. Churches sought it or a smidgen of it as a miracle-worker. The court of Charlemagne stored it in a purse, thus inaugurating a fashion accessory. Agnes of Blannbekin envisioned eating it at Communion. And Catherine of Siena thought the “matrimonial” ring on her finger was a metamorphosed version of it. But beware phony foreskins. Specimens of the Divine Prepuce were in such supply to answer such demand that quality control required connoisseurs to judge it for authenticity. As David M. Friedman put it in his history of the penis, A Mind of Its Own (and as Sims quotes him in Adam’s Navel), “The most common of these tests was a taste test” (emphasis Friedman’s and let’s leave it at that).

Moving up a notch anatomically and a notch nominally but equally stomach-turningly, consider the focus of Sims’ title and the locus of the University of Sydney’s Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki’s fact-finding research into the navel — more precisely, the navel’s contents: lint. Thanks to this dedicated physicist and the contributions of some 5,000 volunteers, we now know that one-third of those surveyed said that their navel lint was a particular color (blue the commonest) and that the hairier the gut, the fluffier the belly button. However, as Sims notes, “[T]he navel-lint project may [emphasis the author’s] harvest unforeseen benefits, but scientists are not waiting with baited breath.” (Unlike editors at a magazine called The Annals of Improbable Research, who awarded Kruszelnicki an IgNobel Prize in 2002.)

And so it goes throughout Adam’s Navel, starting from Homo sapiens‘ hairy noggin to his/her hard-working big toe. Sims digs down deep into trusty sources (Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species; a scientific paper titled “The thermoregulatory advantages of hominid bipedalism in open equatorial environments”) and spans the globe digging up less than reliable commentators (Pliny the Elder writing in the first century C.E.; Yvonne (Mrs. Moses) De Carlo camping it up big-time in Cecil B. DeMille’s camp classic, The Ten Commandments), but the author’s interest here is skin-deep and that’s okay by him. His mission: a cross-cultural look at the naked ape as visible to the naked eye throughout history, art history, mythology, religion, and science and never mind any innards. Meaning: There’s weirdness enough simply on the surface of things and that goes for your hair, eyes, eyebrows, ears, earwax, nose, lips, tongue, arms, hands, fingers, breasts, genitals, butt, legs, feet, and toes big and small.

Consider: By the end of the fifth month, the unborn fetus is completely covered in hair. Baby laps it up the last few weeks of pregnancy. Mix in some mucus, bile, and “other substances,” and there you have it: your first bowel movement and everybody gets a good look at it.

Or: The skin of the hand can be removed like a glove, so you too can have an unidentified cadaver on your hands — literally. Simply don the removed skin, ink the deceased’s fingertips. Fingerprints last a good long while, as excellent an I.D. as ever there was one, barring bones, teeth, and everything else gone to mush.

Or: Our relative the gorilla’s knees can’t lock, so its upright stance looks … well, it looks “like Groucho Marx standing at attention.”

Or: the word “preposterous”: It derives from the Latin, meaning literally “ass-backward.” Or: the word “fascinating”: It derives from the Latin as well, fascinare: “to bewitch.” From fascinum, from Fascinus, a lesser deity in charge of sorcery; his symbol: (again) the penis! The word “impudent”: related to the name of the middle finger in Medieval Latin: impudicus: referring to “the finger’s possible role in insults” or to “its useful length in exploring the female genitals — a theory that assumes that, like impudent, impudicus derives from pudendum.” You make the call.

Or: that dingbat: ž. It comes not from the heart but from the buttocks, from cleft to curves. Maybe. (This news in the same chapter where Sims lifts lyrics from Alejandro Escovedo’s love song “Castanets”: “I like her better when she walks away.”)

Or: Frida Kahlo, a really late bloomer, according to Ovid and Petronius, who both refer to women’s fake eyebrows made of fur, a real class statement for the upper-crust of Greece and Rome cursed with two distinct brows.

Then consider the words of Oscar Wilde: “The great mystery of the world is not the invisible but the visible.”

Then consider the words of Michael Sims, former editor, former bookseller, former rare-books librarian, author of Darwin’s Orchestra: An Almanac of Nature in History and the Arts, contributor to the Nashville Scene and other alternative weeklies, and speaking by phone from Nashville, where he lives, fresh off a sinus infection, worsened by a national book tour but bettered by the unexpected attention being paid to Adam’s Navel:

“I’ve been reading around this topic for 20 years, easily: the intersection of cultural and natural history. But for this book I spent two full years doing nothing but researching and writing full-time. I started using all kinds of stuff I’d stumbled across and filed in the brain here and there. That was the ‘guideline,’ but the book did involve a lot of condensing. I’ll do endless jumbles of notes, sift through them, then go to another set of notes and sift through it, go back, see how things connect, what really connects, what ‘story’ there is that I can’t resist.”

Which has got to refer to the subject of sex, and Sims doesn’t deny it.

“I may have worked the hardest, and at first been the most afraid of, those sections of Adam’s Navel that are ‘radioactive’ culturally. I read a lot about the evolution of sexuality and nurturing and motherhood, but I hadn’t written much in that ‘corner.’ So I was a little worried about approaching the genitals and the breasts. And yet the Sunday Times of London specifically mentioned that those were their favorite chapters!”

And the titled object of interest?

“Reading around, I thought, No, I have absolutely nothing to say about the navel. Even it was too trivial for me. Then I ran across Karl Kruszelnicki, and I knew this was just too good to pass up. The same with earwax. I did consider slipping in a fictional article or something. But at no point did I want to undermine my credibility. This is a topic on which you don’t have to make up anything. People already have been for 10,000 years.”

Michael Sims reading from and signing

Adam’s Navel

Off Square Books, Oxford

Monday, August 18th,

5 p.m.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

You’ve heard of “new Dylans,” right? Well, back in

post-Born in the USA 1986, John

Eddie was a “new Springsteen.” A New Jersey-based

bar rocker who was frequently joined onstage by the Boss himself, Eddie was a

well-hyped signee to Columbia Records, his only quasi-successful eponymous

debut apparently consigning him to the state of next big thing that wasn’t. But,

nearly 15 years after his last record, Eddie is on the comeback trail with a fine new

album on roots label Lost Highway, appropriately titled

Who the Hell is John Eddie?

Recorded locally at Ardent Studios with Jim Dickinson at the helm and

a passel of local luminaries sitting in, the record finds Eddie dropping

the Springsteen bent and settling for “Rodney Crowell with a broader

sense of humor,” and it works. Rowdy rockers with titles such as “Low Life”

and “Shithole Bar” convey the mood. But

the highlight is “Forty,” which contains

the following inspirational verse: “I guess

I’m fucking 40/That’s what my mamma said/But Bruce Springsteen’s fucking

53/And the Stones are almost dead.”

Eddie will perform locally this week on Friday, August 15th, on The

Peabody rooftop as part of 107.5-FM The Pig’s “World Class Concert Series.”

Showtime is 8:30 p.m., and the only way to get

tickets is to register online at RadioPig.com.

Elsewhere, there are a couple of promising shows at the Young Avenue Deli

this week: On Thursday, August 14th, Chicago’s We

Ragazzi, whose late-2002 release The Ache

is one of the most durable and interesting indie-rock

records I’ve heard this year, will join The Mercury

Program and Color Cast. Then, on Saturday, August 16th, the Deli

will host a benefit show for their Cooper-Young neighbor, the Memphis

Digital Arts Cooperative, whose second annual film festival is scheduled for early

September. The MeDiA Co-op has reportedly lost some funding sources for

the festival in the aftermath of last month’s windstorm damage, and they could

use the support. The Gabe & Amy Show,

Dan Montgomery, and Lucero frontman Ben

Nichols are scheduled to perform.

— Chris Herrington

Does anybody really need a reminder as to why they should be

calling Ticketmaster and ordering up their tickets to see

Mavis Staples at The Orpheum on Monday, August 18th,

and Tuesday, August 19th? Because in the ’60s, legendary Stax artists the

Staple Singers fused glorious sacred music with groovy secular music to create one of

the most distinctive sounds in the history of modern pop. With hits like

“Respect Yourself,” “We’ll Get Over,” and

the “sha-na-boom-boom” song, “Heavy Makes You Happy,” the Staple

Singers’ repertoire became the soundtrack for social protest in the ’60s and ’70s. At

the center of it all was Mavis Staples, whose unmistakable voice can melt butter

and peel the paint off the walls. Mavis’ first solo record was produced by the

Artist once again known as Prince, and she’s recently cut the rarest of duets with

none other than Bob Dylan. Staples hits Memphis on tour with

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, which, while weird,

is a good thing. Oh sure, Petty has cranked out his share of cheese in

the past 10 years, but “Refugee” still

rocks and you know you haven’t been able to get “Don’t Come Around Here

No More” out of your head since you saw that creepy video in the ’80s.

Now I know it’s not really prom season, but still if you’re a fella you

might want to consider busting out your powder-blue tuxedo with the ruffled shirt

and the flared pants. Ladies, I recommend a formal gown of burgundy with a big

bow right across the bum. And a tiara. Gotta have a tiara. If you can afford to rent

a limo do it, otherwise hire somebody to drive your old Pinto around for you

so you and your date can sit over the gas tank and neck. Because as far as the

Memphis rock-and-roll scene is concerned, Saturday, August 16th, is prom night and

the Hi-Tone Café is the high-school gym,

all done up in streamers and balloons. This special prom-night event is brought

to you in part by some of the good people in

Automusik (thanks, Rock Unit #2!) and features music by electro-rockers

The Pelicans, one of the more interesting bands to crop up on the scene in

the last couple of years. Also appearing: The Mutant Space Bats of

Doom. Now, we don’t know much about the Space Bats, who are new on the

scene, but with a name like that they’ve got to be more fun than a bowl of spiked

sherbet punch. — Chris Davis

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

A Moving Target

Of all the facts that are taken for granted in this political and governmental year, none has been more uncontroverted publicly than the following, concerning the office of Sheriff Mark Luttrell, still in his first year as Shelby County’s chief constitutional law-enforcement officer:

As the scenario goes: The highly regarded Luttrell, formerly county corrections department supervisor, came into office after campaigning last year on a pledge of fiscal solvency, promising to eliminate the excess spending that had characterized the administration of his tarnished predecessor, A.C. Gilless. The new sheriff, who beat several opponents handily, then set about fulfilling his promise.

First, he eliminated more than 500 positions, most of them in a blatantly overstaffed jail, where nepotism and cronyism had long padded the payroll. The savings attributed to this amounted to $19 million.

Next, Luttrell found himself pushed to the wall by the requirements of a budgetary process he has characterized as “Draconian” and was forced to make a series of further reductions. These, after some serious bargaining with the administration of county mayor A C Wharton and the Shelby County Commission, finally came to some $8.5 million — cutting his departmental needs to the bone.

Luttrell had fended off even further and more damaging cuts by several means, including a public threat to sue Shelby County government, direct appeals in the media (including an op-ed in The Commercial Appeal), and telling appeals on his behalf, like those made by several sheriffs’ deputies to the Shelby County Commission on Monday.

All these approaches had their effect, and both the administration and the commission eventually signed off on an understanding, made public at the commission meeting, that Luttrell could avail himself of another $2 million during the course of the current fiscal year if he could make the case that he required it.

All in all, an impressive accomplishment for a persevering public official, and there is much in this accepted version of events that still rings true.

There is, however, another way to look at it — and one that stands all these circumstances, and the accepted interpretation of them, on their heads.

Commissioner Tom Moss couldn’t shake a doubt or two after Monday’s meeting — which concluded with Luttrell’s having been granted a budget in the neighborhood of $126,250,000 and that tacit understanding of another $2 million to come. “Where,” asked Moss, “did that $19 million go?”

His question was predicated on the following circumstance: That Luttrell’s requested budget of record for the current fiscal year was $134 million and that figure, minus his currently awarded budget of $126-and-a-quarter million, yielded a figure of $7-and-a-quarter million.

How did that square, Moss wondered, with the previously reported voluntary cuts of $19 million, which, when added to the $8.5 million in additional reductions required by the budgetary process, add up to more than $24 million? That’s a difference of $17 million.

In other words, if the reported cuts were to be subtracted from his requested budget, Luttrell’s budget for the current fiscal year would be expected to be in the neighborhood of $110 million — not $126 million.

As it turned out, Moss wasn’t the only commissioner puzzled by the discrepancy in the arithmetic, which depends on some highly creative accounting. It is the sort of calculation that Commissioner Bruce Thompson, at several points in the budget process, characterized (though not especially with reference to the sheriff’s department) as “moving target” bookkeeping.

Here are some of the particulars, as vouched for by the commission’s chief administrator and acknowledged budget maven, Grace Hutchinson.

™ The figure of $19 million in reported cuts in paid positions includes a number of positions that had been vacant for some time, as well as many that had never been filled. The actual fiscal reduction in jobs actually held by real functioning employees? Perhaps as low as $4 million.

™ Further, last year’s baseline figure of $138 million against which the current budget is measured is not the true yardstick, because it includes an add-on figure of some $13 million in additional ad hoc appropriations granted to Luttrell during the course of the year. Without that, Luttrell’s budget for the coming year would be the same as that enjoyed by his “spendthrift” predecessor.

™ Moreover, the case can be made that the legitimate cuts made by Luttrell — and these are quite real, consisting in the main of jail positions — when added to and/or subtracted from the actual budgetary figures from the relevant years, leave him in possession of some $7 million more this year than he enjoyed last year.

That figure is arrived at by taking his face-value budget of fiscal 2002-03, with its additions, which is $138 million, then subtracting the face-value $19 million in claimed cuts, which leaves $119 million, and then comparing that figure to the actual allocated spending-money budget of $126,250,000, which the sheriff’s department will have at its disposal this year. That’s an apparent gain of $7 million. Confused? So has almost everybody been during the course of the current budget year. It’s just that Luttrell has been such a success in his public relations that few critics have taken a long, hard look at his numbers. Stay tuned. We’ll probably revisit this subject.™

In Passing

The calendar of late has included an usual number of deaths of prominent public figures, with a conspicuous overlapping of mourners.

There was the death of Memphis school board member Lee Brown, whose quiet and conscientious mien had impressed all members and all factions of an often fractious board. Although Brown, who doubled as a minister, had attempted to downplay his illness, he had been suffering from the effects of cancer for more than a year.

There was the passing, reported last week, of 80-year-old music legend Sam Phillips, the “godfather of rock-and-roll,” whose public and political concerns had always been more extensive than were generally realized. Phillips lay in state at Memorial Park Funeral Home last Wednesday, attracting an unending line of people, ranging from his faceless fellow citizens to the famous, who paid their respects from 3:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. A “celebration” the next day at the Cannon Performing Arts Center downtown crowned the observance.

There was the death of longtime Memphis political eminence Bill Farris, who himself had almost reached the age of 80. Hundreds of visitors would pay their respects at the Farris home on Sweetbrier on Friday and attend the funeral on Saturday at Eudora Baptist Church. Among them were Governor Phil Bredesen and former Governor Ned McWherter and countless eminences from the political and governmental worlds, including all factions and parties. (Symbolizing this was the participation in the funeral rites of Republican Brent Taylor and Democrat John Ford, both principals of funeral homes and both friends of the deceased.)

Two Memphians, entrepreneur Charlie Burch and Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, recalled in their visits to the Farris home on Friday separate occasions on which they had sat in a back room at Farris’ and knocked back a cocktail with — the aforesaid Sam Phillips.

Finally, there was the death just this week of Oscar Mason, a longtime local Republican activist who had been instrumental — even of late, when his health was visibly failing — in attempting to broaden the appeal and outreach of his party to his fellow African Americans.

It is often said after the death of someone prominent that we are the less for their passing. After last week, we are much the less. But much the greater too for the public legacies and contributions of the deceased. ™

The Whole Truth? (Not Really)

The following exchange, lifted directly from a videotape of the event, occurred last week during an attempted interview of MLGW officials by Bill Lunn, a reporter for WMC-TV, Action News 5. Lunn had for two or three minutes been questioning MLGW CEO Herman Morris in Morris’ office about details of the utility’s ongoing cleanup after last month’s windstorm, then attempted to move on to another matter — the still hazy one of why MLGW turned away offers of help from Mississippi-based Entergy, Inc.

Before Morris could answer, MLGW public relations officer Mark Heuberger, who had arranged the interview, interrupted: “I let you into his private office and you’re bringing up this crap!”

“Well, these are legitimate questions,” Lunn responded.

Heuberger then said, “Well, we’re not gonna — you know,” and signaled that the interview was at an end.

Lunn said that, up until that point, Morris had attempted faithfully to answer without evasion all questions put — unless one counts the following answer to a pointed question of Lunn’s about points raised in the Flyer‘s coverage of the post-storm aftermath:

“I don’t read the Flyer,” Morris maintained.

Lunn said he was dubious about the authenticity of that answer. ™

Categories
News The Fly-By

Arnold to the Rescue

A weird week in California gets even weirder.

NEWS ANALYSIS by MATT WELCH

This is how weird the past week has been in California:

On Monday, crippled smut publisher Larry Flynt became the most prominent Democratic politician to announce he was running for governor, on a platform of building casinos all over the state to pay for the truly mind-blowing $38 billion budget deficit. On Tuesday, Flynt’s organization held a National Prayer Day asking the Deity to afflict Fox Television commentator Bill O’Reilly with a brain aneurysm, so that his “blood vessels bulge out of his head and explode without mercy.”

But that wasn’t even the crazy part. Flynt’s call for a popular TV personality’s agonizing death (during which, the Hustler publisher prayed, O’Reilly would “lose control of his own bowels”) didn’t merit a single mention in any California newspaper indexed by Lexis-Nexis. Not one. There was just too much other crazy stuff going on.

Where to start? Let’s just take the Huffington couple. In 1994, Arianna and Michael set out to reshape American politics by earning the Republicans one of California’s two seats in the U.S. Senate, using Arianna’s brains and ambitions and Michael’s money and American citizenship (the wife was a Greek import mesmerized by Newt Gingrich). The couple proved so unnerving — Michael looked like a lost puppet, Arianna a mad ventriloquist with an elaborate accent and ties to the bizarre Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness cult — that Time magazine devoted a long article to the pressing topic of “Should the Huffingtons Be Stopped?” The voters finally decided they should, and the couple eventually divorced.

Last week, with recall politics turning the state upside down, both Huffingtons took out preliminary papers to run for governor in the unprecedented October 7th election that will A) decide whether or not the hated Democrat incumbent Gray Davis should be tossed out on his ear, and B) if so, which candidate among untold dozens should replace him in a winner-take-all vote.

Much negotiation with teenaged Huffingtonites undoubtedly ensued. Finally, Arianna announced her candidacy on Wednesday. On Thursday, her ex-husband revealed that not only was he not running, he was throwing his support behind Austrian-born actor Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of the mother of his children. Did I mention she’s now a populist left-winger who rails against the “embittered cult of right-wing zealots” leading the recall? Or that her ex-husband is an uncloseted homosexual?

It gets funnier, literally, thanks to the remarkably low barriers to entry on the ballot — $3,500 and 65 signatures. Single-named comedian Gallagher, known for smashing watermelons on stage, says he’s running.

So is embittered former child actor Gary Coleman, who is being championed by the Oakland-based weekly newspaper the East Bay Express.

“I would actually cut back on the buses,” he told the paper. “All buses do is hold up traffic.”

Comedian Steve Young tried to auction off his entrance fee on eBay, but the humorless dot-com shut down the bidding.

Angelyne, a massively busted blonde mildly famous for having her curves displayed on a few prominent Hollywood billboards since the 1980s, has also thrown her thong into the ring.

As of Friday morning, only 13 people were fully qualified for the ballot, but a staggering 359 were pending.

Are we barking mad? You bet! How did we get here? A brief primer:

California adopted the recall mechanism in 1911 as part of a slate of Progressive reforms to roll back the corrupting influence of railroad barons. (Another feature introduced then was the ballot initiative whereby citizens could propose legislation, gather enough signatures to put it on a ballot, then vote it into law. This has been a tool for political mini-revolutions, most notably Proposition 13 in the 1970s, which drastically slashed property-tax rates and signaled the beginning of a nationwide tax revolt.)

Democrat pols and their union backers, who have been busy portraying the recall as an “ultra-conservative coup attempt” (in the words of California Labor Federation executive secretary Art Pulaski), surely can’t be pleased that the reforms introduced by their forebears are being used, gleefully, by Republicans. (And, it should be said, the initiative process has made legislators’ jobs more difficult by imposing a crazy quilt of laws, processes, and government programs.)

Every sitting governor of the past 50 years has endured at least some half-hearted recall attempt, but no one could collect enough signatures, until now. What changed? Gray Davis took over a state with swollen coffers in 1998, with his party firmly in control of the legislature, then managed to expand government as if the dot-com boom would last forever, while navigating clumsily through a multi-billion-dollar energy-crisis fiasco. Almost every state in the union has some budget crisis triggered by recession and overspending, but California’s is by far the worst, driving its bond rating to junk status even while creating a long-term need to borrow tens of billions of dollars just to pay government salaries.

The other two factors: Davis is a particularly loathsome character. (The Los Angeles Times interviewed 30 people at a shopping mall this week and not a one would say a kind thing about the man.) And a loose cannon of a Republican politician, United States congressman Darrell Issa, bankrolled the signature gathering with $1.5 million of his own money. The process went from a long shot to a done deal in a remarkably short time.

The sheer goofiness of the spectacle since then has been tough sledding for people and institutions dedicated to preserving the gravity of public life. The Los Angeles Times editorial page called it “a circus without solutions” in perhaps its 125th editorial condemning the recall.

“The easy access to the ballot is an invitation to hordes of candidates, making it unlikely that there will be a way to hold debates,” The New York Times editorial board complained. “Given the fecklessness of the news coverage at most California television stations, the number of candidates and the crazy rules for the election, the person with the best name recognition begins with an enormous advantage.”

The horror! The only person who seems tuned into Californians’ increasingly giddy frequency is Schwarzenegger himself. His announcement on The Tonight Show, on a night when even his closest advisers assumed he would withdraw his name from contention, was a classic pop-culture milestone in the state’s political history. Naturally, the fuddy-duddies condemned it.

Republican speechwriter Doug Gamble, writing in the Los Angeles Times, called Schwarzenegger’s choice of Jay Leno as a political venue “an insult to everyone who takes politics and California’s problems seriously.”

This is exactly backward. Davis has taken politics seriously his whole life, and Californians will be paying the price for decades to come. The same people lamenting the frivolity of the recall are the ones who shake their heads sadly every time voter turnout decreases another notch.

California, which was flying so high just three years ago, had been uncharacteristically down in the mouth of late. But after the Terminator’s surprise announcement, you could hear an audible squeal of delight and even pride in our weirdness.

“This is going to be the best election ever from a theatrical standpoint,” novelist Roger Simon wrote on his Web site. “Ah-nold, Arianna Huffington, and Larry Flynt! Who could ask for anything more? Can you imagine the debates? They will outdraw the Super Bowl! Everyone can say all they want about all the nuts rolling across the continent into California, but who would want to miss this?”

Matt Welch is an associate editor at Reason magazine.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

You Forgot It in People

Broken Social Scene

(Arts and Crafts)

Broken Social Scene is a social scene unto itself: The Toronto-based collective has a double-digit roster of musicians revolving around a more or less permanent core of 10 members. From record to record and from show to show, the line-up and instrumentation rotate like a pick-up volleyball game.

On the band’s second album, You Forgot It in People, this transitory nature translates into a diversity of sound and an of-the-moment urgency, as if with each song they are trying to capture the few seconds before the inevitable turnover. Songs range from airy pop (“Looks Just Like the Sun”) to druggy interlude (“Pacific Theme”) to tunefully propulsive indie clatter (“Almost Crimes”). The overall effect, however, is not divisive but organic and cohesive.

Squeezing so many performers into such concise songs results in some oddly inspired instrumentation. On “Almost Crimes,” Brodie West’s sax breaks the surface for a few breathy notes before swimming out of the song for good. The count-offs and control-room commands on “Looks Just Like the Sun” which amount to something like a DVD director’s commentary give the track an absorbing spontaneity and an almost documentary atmosphere, as if the mechanics of recording it were just as important as the performance.

By far the standout on You Forgot It in People is “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl.” Accompanied by a gently plucked banjo and a handful of sympathetic strings, Emily Haines repeats the same few couplets over and over, building them into coded mantras that, as a 29-year-old man, I can’t possibly decipher “Park that car/Drop that phone/Sleep on the floor/Dream about me.” But everyone, no matter his or her age, should be able to identify with the bittersweet catch in Haines’ voice and the dreamy need to obsess and be obsessed over.

Despite its cluttered sonic palette, the music on You Forgot It in People remains targeted and purposeful, sharply simple and winnowed down to its many indispensable elements. It’s pop in its hooks and tunes but also pop in a different sense of the word: a quick explosion. Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

The Marionette and

the Music Box

Unwed Sailor

(Burnt Toast Vinyl)

Rock music, it seems, can be subdivided endlessly, bands falling into such narrow genres that the defining terms are meaningless to most music fans. With The Marionette and The Music Box, Unwed Sailor has added yet another rock subgenre to the lexicon: This, folks, is music for children’s books, or, more appropriately, music for a children’s book, Jamie Hunt’s exquisitely illustrated story of, well, a marionette and a music box. The jaded music-reviewer side of me wants to scream out in anguish is this what modern music is all about? but, ultimately, the beautifully lilting eclecticism of the album won me over.

Unwed Sailor play melodies that lurch and whirl just like an old-fashioned music box might, balancing acoustic guitar arpeggios with the ring of a battered harmonium, the steady chimes of a glockenspiel, and the resonating deep hum of an electric bass. Hardly rock-and-roll, it’s more of the shoe-gazing style of music made popular by groups such as Low, Bedhead, and Labradford. Deeply complex and meditative, Unwed Sailor’s music is ultimately irresistible.

Andria Lisle

Grade: B+

Unwed Sailor will be playing at the Young Avenue Deli on Sunday, August 17th, with Circuits Made Simple and Questions in Dialect.

Shivering King and Others

Dead Meadow

(Matador)

Nobody needs to hear another band further flog the dead horse that is a Tony Iommi riff. Dead Meadow knew this from the get-go, balancing their love of Black Sabbath with an ardor for both Led Zeppelin and Spaceman 3. Scooped up by Matador for their third full-length, Dead Meadow’s label debut isn’t just another release for the venerable indie but a shot at greatness. Matador’s two most recent candidates for a great album were from Interpol and the New Pornographers, and while Dead Meadow are a throwback like the former, I would expect critical references to MTV’s Closet Classics as opposed to that of John Hughes soundtracks.

A breathy gallop and reedy, ethereal vocals are the two main factors that separate Dead Meadow from the fading stoner-rock movement that seems to be their albatross. Shivering King and Others downplays a little of their ’70s-rock leanings in favor of more British shoegaze elements, so when I write “early Deep Purple meets Ride,” I want you to know that it’s not a joke, it’s a welcome reality. With just as many quieter hippy-bongo happy moments as there are pummeling psychedelic lurch-alongs, this is Dead Meadow being “all-over-the-map” and, as a result, this is Dead Meadow being great.

Andrew Earles

Grade: A-

Categories
Music Music Features

Many Rivers Crossed

With So Many Rivers, her 12th album, honky-tonkin’ blues pianist Marcia Ball celebrates 25 years as a recording artist. She’s built a solid career on her Louisiana-meets-East Texas style, imprinting her wholly individual approach on the modern blues scene. Ball is a talented songwriter and an adept performer who draws from the same spiritual wellspring as roots-rockers like Joe Ely and John Prine. Those guys may be guitarists, but Ball still has more in common with their aesthetic than she does with, say, Tracy Nelson or Lou Ann Barton, her closest colleagues in the blues sisterhood.

Ball doesn’t try to fit into any single genre; she draws on swamp-pop, Southern soul, and boogie-woogie piano, oftentimes within the same song. Alternately sophisticated and downright earthy, Ball pounds the ivories like a gentler, classier Jerry Lee Lewis, proving that she could hold her own in any juke joint, barroom, or bordello — and still manage to accompany the Baptist choir on Sunday morning.

“People who have more than one of my records know that I’m more than just blues,” Ball says over the phone from her Austin, Texas, home. “I don’t have traditional blues fans; I have Marcia Ball fans,” she says. “[My band and I] dance around several styles of rhythm and blues. I’ve been inspired by Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters as much as singers [like] Irma Thomas, Mable John, Candi Staton, and Ann Peebles. Then, of course, Professor Longhair was a big influence of mine.”

Ball got an early start playing piano: “My grandmother and aunt played — popular music, not classical — and I started lessons when I was just a girl. I joined a band when I was in college at LSU. I was 18 and just singing with the group. I began playing keyboards and that just evolved into something bigger,” Ball says.

It’s always interesting to see whose songs Ball chooses to cover. Past albums (including Presumed Innocent, the W.C. Handy Awards’ 2002 “Album of the Year”) have incorporated offerings from Randy Newman, Dr. John, and Delbert McClinton, as well as Stax stalwarts Isaac Hayes and David Porter and Big Easy pianist Allen Toussaint. On So Many Rivers, Ball tackles several songs by Danny Timms, including the Wayne Toups-led zydeco frenzy “Honeypie” and the epic “Hurricane on China Lake,” as well as the Muscle Shoals classics “Three Hundred Pounds of Hongry” and “If It’s Really Got to Be This Way.” Ball drawls out the lyrics on the joyful-sounding “Three Hundred Pounds,” which is delivered in a stripped-down Dixieland style, while she soars effortlessly on the latter, a gentle Southern soul ballad.

On So Many Rivers, however, Ball’s originals overshadow the cover songs. With tracks like the New Orleans strut “Baby, Why Not” and the pleading blues “Give Me a Chance,” Ball displays newfound confidence as a songwriter. She shows off her jazzy roots on the big-band-inspired “The Lowdown” then pulls out all the stops for the country-soul tune “The Storm.” Ball holds her own as a composer — her originals sound like vintage classics, comparable to Dan Penn’s seminal catalog of Southern soul songs.

“I’m always trying to grow and learn; there’s always a next step to take,” Ball says. “Someone like Dan Penn is writing songs every day. He’s taught me that you really have to keep at it.”

“If I hear somebody say something I think is interesting or important or silly enough to be a hook, I write it down and worry at it until I get a song,” Ball continues. “I can be riding in a car or just hanging out, but, ultimately, I have to sit down at the piano and work it out. There’s some combination of groove and lyric that’s right for me. It doesn’t have to be serious. It can be fun, like ‘Three Hundred Pounds’ or it can be ‘Let the Tears Go Down.'”

It’s been a busy year for Ball: She’s just returned from a whirlwind trip to the Notodden Blues Festival in Norway, which capped off a series of high-profile festival appearances. After catching her performance at California’s Monterey Jazz Festival, Martin Scorsese, executive producer of the upcoming PBS series The Blues, asked Ball to participate in a segment on piano blues directed by Clint Eastwood.

“Clint really does love music so much. Touch on that subject, and he’ll go off for hours,” Ball recalls. “They took me to Carmel, and Pinetop [Perkins] and Jay McShann were already there. I just hope I don’t end up on the cutting-room floor,” she jokes.

After a short break at home (“It leaves me just enough time to water the lawn,” Ball says with a chuckle), she hits the road again. “I can’t wait to get to Memphis,” Ball says. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since I saw the Stax Revue in Norway last week. I got to hear Eddie Floyd do ‘Knock On Wood.’ Those are my grooves,” she says, dreamily adding, “I want to sink my teeth into some barbecue and go to the Cupboard for a plate lunch or Buntyn’s for a piece of pie.”

“Twenty-five years in the music biz?” Ball finishes, laughing. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. I hope I’m just at the halfway point.”

Marcia Ball,

with the Wild Magnolias

Memphis Botanic Garden

Thursday, August 14th

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Our Town

Regional cinema is something that “indie” filmmaking can and should be about but too often isn’t: Think of Kevin Smith’s New Jersey, Victor Nunez’s Florida, or Abel Ferrara’s New York. The Polish brothers, director Michael and writer/actor Mark — their debut, Twin Falls, set in Idaho; the follow-up, Jackpot, taking place in Nevada; their latest, Northfork, centering on a Montana town being evacuated to make room for a new dam that will submerge it — seem to be bidding to become the cinematic poet laureates of the landlocked west. This is an honorable goal and, it just so happens, one in which there isn’t much competition.

The brothers’ latest creation begins seven days before “the state officially drowns Northfork,” as a local radio announcer says in between spinning vintage country songs from the likes of Lefty Frizzell and Hank Williams. A band of men-in-black (among them James Woods, Peter Coyote, and Mark Polish) have been dispatched as either Angels of Death or Angels of Mercy (depending on whom you ask) by the state-funded Evacuation Committee to roust the few remaining holdouts and move them to higher land. Meanwhile, a sick young boy (Duel Farnes) is visited –in fever dreams or an alternate reality — by a motley band of angels that features a mute cowboy named Cod, a wooden-handed nutty-professor type named Happy, an androgynous fairy named Flower Hercules, and a flamboyant old biddy named Cup of Tea.

Northfork seems to want to be some sort of meditation on American loss, with one character speaking evocatively of being a “witness to death” and of “a birth someplace else.” But the way the film juxtaposes the sight of Old Glory waving with a preacher intoning, “Our town is dying,” the way it establishes Northfork’s birth in 1776 and “death” in 1955, and its use of the endlessly trendy Oprah-style idea of “angels” among us make one wonder about just how conservative this particular vision of a passing America is and exactly what losses are being mourned.

As the film wound interminably to its conclusion, the great mystery of Northfork became whether the film combines the worst aspects of iconic auteurs Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, and Terrence Malick or just corrupts their best aspects. Like Jarmusch’s similarly meditative Dead Man, Northfork is a very different kind of Western, and the Polish brothers frequently tap into Jarmuschlike deadpan jokiness. They also convey Lynch’s serial oddness and, despite those flourishes, Malick’s windswept sincerity. And you can add the goony humor of the Coen brothers too, in this case a bunch of purposefully anachronistic jokes (“fast food,” “weapons of massive destruction,” one character saying to another, named Willis –and I’m not making this up –“What you talking about, Willis?” and atonal regional humor: “Canada oughta claim that bunkheap they call Minnesota and throw in Wisconsin for free.” (Okay, I laughed at that one.) This is a volatile mix and in Northfork it never really coheres, resulting in a film that’s ponderous where it seeks to be transcendent.

What the film does have going for it are moments of undeniable visual poetry: a coffin emerging in the middle of a vast body of water; a one-room prairie church with the minister (Nick Nolte, still in police-mug-shot mode) preaching against a missing rear wall, cattle drives and mountain ranges serving as a backdrop for his apocalyptic sermons; a lone house whose proprietor has built an ark around it in an attempt to save it, Noah-style, from the coming flood.

The Polish brothers also understand –and get tremendous mileage out of — the fact that any single object placed in a wide-angle shot amid their Montana landscape of vast prairies and distant mountains — a car, a swing set, whatever — automatically looks more interesting. Actually, the natural landscape might be Northfork‘s most compelling character. The film is otherwise saved by at least a couple of solid, grounded performances, from young Farnes and especially Woods, who, unlike the other name actors who people the film — Darryl Hannah, Anthony Edwards, Ben Foster — doesn’t seem to just be hoping he’s found his Tarantino but seems to actually believe in the message of Northfork, whatever that might be.

— Chris Herrington

Body-switcher movies must be pure gold. Cast any two able-bodied comedians, throw together a relationship (typically parental) in which both parties think it would be easier to be the other, some high-stakes duties that both must perform in the other’s shoes by the end, and, ta da, you’ve got a formula that works, practically mapping itself out along the way.

The late 1980s, which thrived on formula filmmaking, saw a spate of body-switcher movies all in a short burst: 18 Again!, Vice Versa, and Like Father, Like Son. Not masterpieces by any means, they were nonetheless successfully funny because they featured older, seasoned actors who were kids at heart themselves (George Burns, Judge Reinhold, and Dudley Moore, respectively) and paired them with up-and-coming young fellows who had proven themselves as legitimate comedic and dramatic centerpieces on popular sitcoms (Charlie Schlatter, Fred Savage, and Kirk Cameron, also respectively). Prelude to a Kiss came along in 1992 and asked more challenging questions than merely “What’s it like being my dad for a day?” by switching the souls of an old man and a young bride (Meg Ryan) on her wedding day, with the old man none too eager to reveal the switch so he can enjoy his newfound youth for a while. Veering away from formula, that film succeeded in testing our understanding of true love by forcing the young groom (Alec Baldwin) to decide if he still loved his wife, even if she was in the body of an old man.

Never fear. Freaky Friday never asks any difficult questions. Based on a popular children’s book by Mary Rodgers and remade from the 1976 film that paired Jodie Foster and the elegantly hilarious Barbara Harris (there is also apparently a 1995 TV film with Shelly Long as the mom, though not a serious candidate for inclusion in the canon), Freaky Friday follows the formula like this: Anna (Lindsay Lohan) sleeps late, is failing English, and gets detention a lot. Mom Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) has more cell phones and palm pilots than is reasonable, organizes everything in her life, and is generally uptight on all fronts. Anna is in a garage band that has scored an audition at the House of Blues on the same night as Tess’ rehearsal dinner for her wedding to Ryan (Mark Harmon). An argument at a Chinese restaurant yields magic fortune cookies, and the rest is formula.

By the beginning, you see, we know what the other will learn about the other. By being her mother for a day, Anna will learn a great deal about her mother’s accomplishments as a pop-psychologist, what true love is all about (via Ryan), and what it’s like to try to run a family. Tess will learn how hard it is to be a teenager these days, the discipline it takes to be a good musician, and what first love is all about again. This shall be done via sensitive stud Jake (Chad Michael Murray). Jake rides a motorcycle, and in Disneyland, this makes him a rebel. So, naturally, Tess doesn’t approve. There is a delightful twist here. Anna in Anna’s body is unsuccessful at snaring Jake’s attentions completely, and Tess in Anna’s body fails entirely. However, Anna in Tess’ body manages to charm the young man into thinking that maybe the whole age thing might not be such a big deal — even with Anna trying her best to be Tess. This necessitates the freakiest part of Freaky Friday — Anna in Tess’ body simultaneously juggling the affections of both fiancÇ Ryan and gentleman-caller Jake, while Tess in Anna’s body can only feebly spectate.

You know, there’s something really nice about watching Jamie Lee Curtis have this much fun. Always a charming actress (even while navigating her umpteen Halloween forays) and able funnylady, she’s obviously having a great time here. When Anna — as Tess — decides it’s time her mother spruced up her stately appearance and emerges from a platinum-card shopping spree freshly shorn and in contemporary attire, there’s something triumphant about it — a true rejuvenation. Lohan, no stranger to Disney remakes (The Parent Trap) also fares well, though it is admittedly more fun watching an adult play kid again than a kid play grown-up.

There’s nothing new in this Freaky redux, but if you can handle the cotton-candy-flavored pop feeling that the film exudes throughout, you’ll be rewarded with a truly funny, occasionally touching (if unreal) look at how mothers and daughters relate and how you should always pay attention to what your fortune cookie says. — Bo List

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Beat

Garage rock, part trois: Later this month (Saturday, August 30th, to be exact), local entrepreneur Sherman Willmott is releasing a 17-track compilation titled A History of Memphis Garage Rock: The 90s. Cooler than a K-Tel collection — and right up there with Rhino’s Nuggets box — this third installment in Willmott’s garage-rock reissue series (parts one and two covered the ’50s through early ’70s) solidifies Memphis’ position on the national scene.

“I was tired of seeing overhyped garage bands come through town that couldn’t hold a candle to the great Memphis bands we’ve had for the past 15 years,” Willmott explains. “I thought it was time to spread the word on [musicians like] Monsieur Jeffrey Evans, Jack Yarber, and Greg Cartwright.”

“Fifteen years ago, I didn’t know much about garage rock,” Willmott admits. “But after surviving the renaissance of independent music in the ’90s, I’ve come to broaden my horizons. Seeing what’s popular on a national level, I realized that what we had here was superior to any other regional scene. It’s one of those situations where you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”

Willmott’s indie music shop, Shangri-La Records, was a big part of the local scene. “At the very least, Shangri-La gave any band an outlet to distribute their music — and get paid for it,” he says, adding that “of course, the first tip of the hat should go to Alex Chilton and Tav Falco. Tav, especially, led people to discover things that are already here.”

Willmott’s favorite ’90s garage band, ’68 Comeback, was directly influenced by Falco’s Panther Burns. “When their three-guitar attack kicked in, it cronked my head,” he says. “It’s like going from mono to stereo then on to the next level.”

’68 Comeback’s “Paper Boy Blues” is included on the sampler, alongside other Evans gems from stints in The Gibson Bros. and Monsieur La Fong. Both Yarber and Cartwright are well-represented with cuts from The Compulsive Gamblers and The Oblivians, as well as Yarber’s solo work (as Jack Oblivian) and Cartwright’s own Greg & the Tip-Tops. Rounding out the collection are songs from Impala, Lorette Velvette, The Grundies, Snakehips, and The Satyrs, alongside a never-released track from Eric Friedl (Oblivians’ guitarist and proprietor of Goner Records) and James Arthur‘s collaborative AAAA New Memphis Leggs. Finally, although Oxford’s Neckbones and New Orleans stalwarts The Royal Pendletons and their erstwhile time-keeper King Louie Bankston aren’t exactly locals, their contributions to the Memphis garage scene earned them a valid place on this comp.

“So many bands have taken advantage of the affordable Memphis sound,” Willmott says, pointing to The White Stripes and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, which both recorded at Easley-McCain Studios, “but that’s not my point. From a quality standpoint, the Memphis bands blow away most of the garage bands currently hyped on major labels. If you didn’t hear it the first time, here’s a nice package for you to check out.”

The Hi-Tone CafÇ will host a CD-release party for A History of Memphis Garage Rock: The ’90s on Saturday, August 30th, with 11 bands — including ’68 Comeback, Impala, the Compulsive Gamblers, Greg & the Tip-Tops, the Cool Jerks, King Louie, and the Royal Pendletons. The Baron of Love, aka frequent Flyer contributor Ross Johnson, who penned the liner notes for the disc, is scheduled to emcee.

Because many of the groups have broken up, rumors are flying around town as to which musicians are expected to show up. But Willmott is not fazed. “I don’t know who’s playing. That’s the excitement,” he says. “Jeff managed to pull off five different versions of ’68 Comeback; Greg Cartwright, Ross Johnson, Nick Diablo, and Jeff Bouck are still around, so there’s enough guys around to fill out the band. There’s a thread going through this music, with just a handful of guys forming the cornerstone.”

Women who rock: Don’t miss the estrogen-fueled program scheduled for the Hi-Tone this Friday, August 15th. The show, masterminded by scenesters Lacey Fitzgerald and Krissy Woods, will feature DJ sets from the duo, as well as performances by Melissa Dunn and The Ultracats.

“I’m a girl on the fringe,” Dunn, the guitar-playing niece of Stax great Duck Dunn, says with a laugh. “I started playing music because I thought I was gonna get all the boys!” Although the artist/musician didn’t start composing songs until she was well into her 20s, she spent the next decade touring Europe with Lorette Velvette, fronted her own group, Kretzer, and sang back-up on Sonic Youth’s “Little Trouble Girl.“ Although she released a song on Makeshift Records last year, Dunn hopes “for posterity’s sake” to document her latest combo, which features Sami Qreini on drums and Harlan T. Bobo on lap steel.

“In Memphis, you have the ability to be creative and do the shows you want to,” Fitzgerald says. “The venues are so open to ideas like DJ nights and fashion shows. It’s nice how real the people are — everything seems accepted here.”

Although neither she nor Woods have DJed before, they’re both looking forward to the event. “I’ve been scheduled to DJ three times, but someone else always takes over the turntables or the party ends before I can get up there,” Fitzgerald laughs. “But Krissy and I are always making mix tapes for people, and DJing is the same thing. We’ll be playing dance music, punk, and old new wave. No pretenses, no snobbery, just fun music.”

“I don’t know why we stopped playing,” says Lori Gienapp of the recently reformed Ultracats. “Bo Graham asked us to play a party at the Buccaneer, so we thought, why not? And we fell back into it.” Gienapp says that she and bandmate Alicja Trout also plan to take the duo into the studio. “We’re gonna record with Andy Saunders and get something going with that,” she says, adding that the project will eventually be released on Lamar Records, a coalition of Gienapp, Saunders, Jared McStay, Stuart Sikes, Brian McKay, Tripp Lamkins, and Jerome Brock.

Congrats to The Gamble Brothers, who were the grand prize winners of Disc Makers’ 2003 Southeast Region Independent Music World Series, held late last month in Nashville. “We went in with the intention of having fun — hopefully winning, but also to check out a possible venue,” Al Gamble modestly reports. “It’s nice to get all these great prizes, but also the timing is right; On September 9th we’re releasing Back To The Bottom on Archer Records, and [winning] will help us get exposure outside Memphis.”

Although the band has yet to collect all their prizes, they did come home with a Fender Stratocaster guitar, a Fender bass, and a handful of Shure microphones. “We’re actually gonna donate the guitar and maybe a few other things to the Save the Music program,” Gamble explains. What’s next for the group? A trip to New York for an outdoors Lincoln Center gig later this month, and, hopefully, some Triple-A radio play. Go to GambleBrothersBand.com for more news.

You can e-mail Local Beat at localbeat@memphisflyer.com.