Month: February 2004

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Sitting-In History

As Black History Month continues, so do the stories of Rosa Parks’ ride on the bus, Martin Luther King’s marches, and Malcom X’s famous “by any means necessary” statement. But it’s a lesser-known segment of black history that will be featured when the Memphis chapter of the National Black MBA Association hosts its second annual Black Film Festival.

The festival’s main film is February One, a documentary chronicling the events of February 1, 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina, when four freshmen at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University helped jump-start the civil rights movement.

Disenfranchised by the segregationist rules of the Jim Crow South, the Greensboro Four — Joseph McNeil, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair Jr.) — took seats at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and asked to be served. The store management allowed black people to purchase school supplies and toiletries but forbade them to eat at the counter.

Although the four were unsuccessful (they remained at the counter without food until closing), their resolve intensified. They returned the next day with more students, and the act sparked a sweeping, nonviolent protest. Hundreds of students staged sit-ins in more than 35 Southern cities. And while the Greensboro incident was the first of its kind, it hasn’t received the recognition of sit-ins in other cities, including Nashville.

“I believed it was a story worth telling,” says Rebecca Cerese, a producer of February One. Cerese will be speaking about the film at the festival.

“It’s unbelievable, even in North Carolina, how little people know about it,” she says. “We felt it was a really important, North Carolina story and one that impacted an entire nation.”

Cerese and colleagues at the Durham-based production company Video Dialog worked on the film over a five-year period and released the documentary in 2002. Executive producer Steven Channing originally developed the project as a historical drama, which was picked up by Showtime. After that project was shelved, Cerese suggested remaking the film as a documentary.

Cerese did most of the research and interviews for the 61-minute film, includes interviews with three of the Greensboro Four (Richmond died in 1990) on their decision to rebel and the impact it had on their lives. Narration and interviews with historians are included only to provide context, making February One more personal. According to Cerese, “That’s one of the reasons it resonates with people, because it’s just these ordinary folks talking about their extraordinary experience. I’m proud and humbled that they entrusted us with their story, and I think we did right by them.”

 

The 1960 sit-in at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina

During and since the production, Cerese has noticed a new appreciation of the Greensboro Four sit-in. The men’s alma mater erected a statue of the four activists and hosts campus-wide conferences each year. In a city that once rejected the sit-in as part of its history, the Greensboro Four have become heroes.

In selecting films for its festival, MBA members wanted to highlight African Americans during the month, but content was also key. “Diversity is important and inclusion is important, and this film is about both,” said association president Ann Strong-Jenkins. “We wanted to get the message out that the more we know about each other, the more we can begin to embrace different cultures.” To push this idea along, the organization is inviting middle-school students to the screenings as a black-history field trip.

February One was screened at last year’s IndieMemphis Film Festival but received limited interest. IndieMemphis organizers, however, were taken with the subject matter and put Cerese in contact with the MBA.

The film implies a call to action. “I really believe that folks need to start participating in our democracy and let their voice be heard,” says Cerese. “And that’s what these guys were doing. There’s a line in the film that says [the four] were teaching America how people deserved to be treated. I think it’s that simple.”

In addition to February One, the festival will include the 1996 film Soul of the Game, a documentary/drama about the rivalry among three Negro League baseball players and their shot at playing major-league. Cerese will be joined by retired major leaguer and Memphis native Reggie Williams for a discussion on race relations and black history.

The Black Film Festival runs Tues.-Wed., February 17th-18th, at the Malco Paradiso.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

A Clark Man

To the Editor:

Re: “Primary Colors” (February 5th issue). I am a veteran of the Korean War, and I have lived through a lot of presidential elections, all the way back to FDR. In my lifetime, there has never been a presidential candidate with the qualifications of General Wesley Clark to do the job that we need done in the White House today.

His military leadership, his diplomatic expertise in dealing with world leaders (to take care of the mess that has been created in Iraq), and his knowledge of the economy is unparalleled by any other candidate.

Herman Mullings

Hot Springs, Arkansas

Old Fart

To the Editor:

I haven’t written a letter to an editor since I was an angry young man in the late 1960s, but it’s time to begin a new era as an irritated old fart. As a regular reader of the Flyer, I was delighted that last week’s issue was probably the only media outlet that made no mention of the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake Super Bowl thing.

If you do cover this alleged story, please don’t spend more time than the split second that bounced the world Super Bowl Sunday. Personally, I’m not sure whether to be offended by the hypocrisy or to revel in the humor of the reaction. The combined time and outrage given to NFL players Ray Carruth’s murder of his pregnant girlfriend and Randy Moss’ running down a police officer do not approach the obsession with a split-second flash of a bosom protected by a starburst nipple guard.

In closing, I feel I must comment on the FCC, CBS, the wacko who is suing everyone, and all the other outraged wackos. Get a life, people! It was a breast, flashed for a split second. Personally, I think it was a rather nice bosom, but put it back in the cup.

Wes Culler

Bartlett

Editor’s note: Sorry to say, see last week’s Fly on the Wall (“Boob Tube”) on the “Super Bowl thing.”

The Real John Kerry?

To the Editor:

I respect the oft-published liberal opinions of B. Keith English (Letters, February 5th issue), but he’s violated his pedigree trying to defend John Kerry as the Democrat standard-bearer in 2004.

Kerry is a Boston Brahmin who was raised with a silver spoon in his mouth, not unlike the man he wants to oppose in ’04. Kerry’s not exactly a self-made man. But he has reinvented himself into a war protester, of all things.

Who cares if he fought in Vietnam? If he was, as he professes, against that war, he should have taken conscientious-objector status. The fact that he chose to fight makes him either terribly confused or a gigantic hypocrite. And if he could recognize and oppose an unjust war then, why couldn’t he recognize and oppose one now, instead of voting to authorize it? Will the real John Kerry stand up?

Keith, you don’t need and shouldn’t want Kerry as your standard-bearer. He won’t do you proud, but neither will any of the other choices of your party. Sadly, who you need is Adlai Stevenson.

Martin H. Aussenberg

Memphis

Artistic Hospitality

To the Editor:

Thank you for Chris Davis’ fine review of “Everything I See Is New and Strange” at the Dixon (“New and Strange,” January 29th issue). Memphis, which has always been so receptive to Walter Anderson, is now enjoying a closer, more complete look at his work than any city has ever known. Besides the two splendid exhibits at the Dixon, there is also an exhibition of 42 pieces at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. The Brooks is also showing some important Anderson ceramics donated by Burton Callicott. Meanwhile, the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, is hosting an exhibition on his life and work. One feels doubly proud — of Anderson and of Memphis’ latest gesture of artistic hospitality.

Christopher Maurer

Chicago

Editor’s note: Christopher Maurer is the author of Fortune’s Favorite Child: The Uneasy Life of Walter Anderson. He was interviewed in the January 29th issue.

Correction: Due to a production glitch, General Sessions Court clerk candidate Charles Fineberg was misidentified in last issue’s cover story. We regret the error.

The Memphis Flyer encourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Or call Back Talk at 575-9405. Or send us e-mail at letters@memphisflyer.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 words.

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Beat

The hills are alive with the sound of music — the North Mississippi hill country, that is. Guitarist Daniel “Slick” Ballinger, a North Carolina transplant to Como, Mississippi, took second place in the Blues Foundation‘s International Blues Challenge last month; Rev. Slick, as he was billed, was backed by Pontotoc harp player Terry Bean and drummer Kinney Kimbrough from Holly Springs.

Fifteen vintage Jessie Mae Hemphill tracks, cut in Como by musicologist and University of Memphis professor David Evans, were just dusted off and released as Get Right Blues by the local Inside Sounds label, while Corey Harris‘ latest Rounder Records release, Mississippi to Mali, features two collaborations with Sharde Thomas & the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band, recorded in nearby Senatobia.

Down in Oxford, Dick Waterman, a longtime blues promoter and photographer, has launched an online gallery at eBay, selling portraits of musicians from the hill country and beyond. The photographs can also be seen in Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive, recently published by Thunder’s Mouth Press.

Rounding out the mix are recently released archival recordings from producer Jim Dickinson‘s vaults, which are located at his Zebra Ranch studio in Coldwater at the northwest edge of the hill country. Jim Dickinson Field Recordings, subtitled Delta Experimental Project Volume Three, was released on the Birdman label in late 2003.

“It’s just my own personal favorite field recordings,” Dickinson explains of the dozen tracks that span four decades, 1960s to the present. “I don’t think anyone else would’ve recorded this stuff.”

Sleepy John Estes was cut at Dickinson’s former home in Collierville, while the Mose Vinson outtakes came from a session he produced at Sam Phillips’ Recording Service for the Center for Southern Folklore. Furry Lewis‘ version of “Turkey in the Straw” was recorded at The Orpheum theater, while Johnny Woods‘ “So Many Cold Mornings” was captured at Ardent Studios. Othar Turner and the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band were recorded on their home turf in Senatobia. The late Turner, a master of the cane fife, opens the disc, his sharp notes quickly overpowering the sounds of cicadas and frogs that initially dominate the field-recording vibe.

“I tried to keep it as natural as possible,” Dickinson says. “I was friends with all of these men. I like to think that they all trusted me. In many cases, we were playing together, so I felt a part of it as well.” He recruited other friends as sidemen: Ry Cooder, Lee Baker, Michael “Busta Cherry” Jones, and Luther Dickinson, his elder son.

The project is essentially the fourth volume in a series of recordings, begun with Beale Street Saturday Night, recorded and released under the auspices of the Memphis Development Foundation in the ’70s and continued with Delta Experimental Projects Volume One: The Blues and Volume Two: Spring Poems. Both were released on French label New Rose Records in the late ’80s.

Dickinson is even more proud of The North Mississippi Allstars‘ Tate County Hill Country Blues, another archival project released last month. He produced the album in ’98 for his sons Luther and Cody Dickinson, who play guitar and drums with the group. But the project was shelved after they signed a deal with ToneCool Records. “We gave this record to Dad and started working on ‘Shake Hands With Shorty’,” Luther explains, “but it was always in our contract that we could self-release it.

“When we started the band in ’96, we tried to sound as traditional as possible,” Luther continues. “Once we got a regular gig on Beale Street playing three hours straight a night, we started stretching out. Chris [Chew, bassist] was bringing in a gospel feel, while Cody and I were playing more rock and psychedelia. On Tate County, the concept was pure. By the time we recorded Shorty, the Allstars’ sound was more evolved.”

“In many ways, Tate County is the best thing they’ve done,” Jim Dickinson adds. “Their cover of R.L. Burnside’s ‘Snakedrive’ is amazing. That Bryan Gregory solo isn’t typical blues,” he says, comparing his son’s slide work to The Cramps‘ guitarist.

“Tate County was recorded while they were still learning the music,” Jim Dickinson continues, pointing out Cody’s biting vocals on T-Model Ford‘s “Let Me In” and the mellow jam sound on Fred McDowell‘s “Crazy ‘Bout You.” “People are responding to this album on the Allstars’ Web site, saying, ‘Oh, that’s where this song came from.’ It’s a wonderful missing piece of the puzzle.” —AL

Music Notes: Memphis cultural mainstay The Center for Southern Folklore gets a boost this week with the opening of its new Folklore Store, located at 123 S. Main at the Peabody Place Trolley Stop. The Folklore Store will be a showcase for the folk artists and craftspeople the center already supports through its other programming. It will also sell gourmet coffee, beer, and sandwiches. The Folklore Store’s opening celebration will be a three-day affair, Friday, February 13th, through Sunday, February 15th. Local musicians scheduled to perform at the store over the weekend include: The Daddy Mack Blues Band, pianist “Smoochie” Smith, Billy Gibson & David Bowen, The Fieldstones, and The Vance Ensemble The locally produced, internationally syndicated radio program Beale Street Caravan turns its attention to area music this month. The program will broadcast a set from onetime Hi Records soul man Otis Clay at the King Biscuit Blues Festival the week of February 18th and look at the new breed of hill-country blues from Jimbo Mathus & His Knockdown Society and the North Mississippi Allstars the week of February 25th. The latter program will also include a segment from local author Robert Gordon on Hi Records. Beale Street Caravan can be heard locally at noon Tuesdays on WEVL-FM 89.9, 6 p.m. Wednesdays on WUMR-FM 91.7, and 6 p.m. Saturdays on WKNA-FM 88.9 and WKNQ-FM 90.7 Congratulations to local songwriter Nancy Apple, whose song “The Kind To Break a Heart” was named a runner-up in the AAA/Roots/Americana category of the 2003 International Songwriting Competition Local concert series Tha Movement has a new disc out, Certified Vintage Mix. Copies can be purchased at the Cheesecake Corner in the South Main Arts District. The next Movement showcase is scheduled for Saturday, February 21st, at Young Avenue Deli Onetime local phenom Garrison Starr returns to the racks next week with the February 17th release of her latest album, Airstreams & Satellites, on Vanguard Records Reigning Premier Player Award “newcomer” winners Ingram Hill take a big step with the February 24th national release of June’s Picture Show, on Hollywood Records Oh, and congrats as well to Millington’s finest, Justin Timberlake, for his ubiquitous presence (and was that really his mother!?) and two wins at Sunday’s Grammy Awards. And was it just me, or was Dave Matthews and Sting’s joining up for that stiff take on “I Saw Her Standing There” a new low for popular music? Just when I thought last year’s James Taylor/John Mayer nightmare couldn’t be topped — CH

E-mail: localbeat@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Music Music Features

Uncompromised

The opening lyrics on Fate’s Right Hand, Rodney Crowell’s latest album, are inspirational: “The hour is early/The whole world is quiet/A beautiful morning’s about to ignite,” Crowell croons. Not surprisingly, he’s a man of his word. Up at 8 a.m. for a phone interview, he sounds bright-eyed and ready to talk.

Born in Houston, Crowell relocated to Nashville in 1972 when he was just 22 years old. He developed his stage presence and songwriting craft in a dive called Bishop’s Pub, alongside other burgeoning talents like Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, John Hiatt, and Lucinda Williams. Today, Crowell, now 53, recalls those trying times and laughs.

“I don’t think we knew we were any different,” he says. “Truthfully, I just think we were — and still are — artists first.”

After Emmylou Harris recorded two of his early compositions (“Bluebird Wine” and “Til I Can Gain Control Again”), she invited him to join her Hot Band as rhythm guitarist and harmony singer. In ’77, Crowell embarked on a solo career; two years later, he married Rosanne Cash. Along the way, he wrote number-one hits for Crystal Gayle, the Oak Ridge Boys, Highway 101, and a slew of others.

“As a songwriter, I have a commercial ear. I can write hit songs, but for the most part, I’m just living my life as an artist,” Crowell explains. “As pretentious as that might sound, it’s really quite simple. It’s like Guy Clark said to me early on: ‘You can be an artist or you can be a star. Either one’s okay — just pick one and do it to your best.’ I said, ‘Oh, I want to be an artist. Is that the right answer?'”

His own albums, including 1986’s Street Language (produced by Booker T. Jones) and ’88’s Diamonds & Dirt, were country and pop successes. The ’90s, however, brought change: Crowell and Cash divorced, and, in the middle of the decade, Crowell quit recording and touring. For all intents and purposes, he dropped out of sight.

“That’s when my life began,” Crowell says, citing the time he spent raising his four daughters and courting his second wife, singer Claudia Church. Then he falls silent for a moment, meditating on his six-year break from the music business, which ended with his autobiographical release in 2001, Houston Kid. “I don’t know if I reinvented myself,” he finally drawls. “I decided to make the records that I feel like making — albums that I can be proud of.

“I am not a country artist, especially in terms of what country is now,” Crowell continues. “I make records and perform for people as a singer and a songwriter. I admire people like Johnny Cash and Guy Clark. Their music comes from the soul,” he says, slowing down to add weight to each word. “I think that audiences today want to hear true music. It doesn’t matter what kind it is. Look at Norah Jones or Lucinda Williams. That’s basically the premise I work from. I assume that my audience is intelligent. To do anything less would be insulting.”

Of course, Crowell is still writing hits for other people. “Somebody asked me what it felt like for Patty Loveless to have a hit on my song [“Lovin’ All Night”]. I said it feels like I’ll be able to stay in business for another three years,” he says. “You know, there’s a corporate music biz in Nashville that allows very talented musicians and songwriters to make their livings and still be artists. The so-called plastic side of the music business obscures the actual heart and soul this town really has.”

Fate’s Right Hand, released last summer, represents a labor of love. Crowell took out a bank loan to fund the recording sessions before he landed a deal with T-Bone Burnett’s DMZ label, a subsidiary of Sony Music. “It’s the perfect setup for a singer-songwriter,” Crowell says. “They’re sincerely working in alternative ways to get music to the people. I’m a good guinea pig for that.

“Being a man alive in our culture isn’t a graceful proposition,” Crowell notes, alluding to the album’s introspective subject matter, which comes to light on songs like “Time To Go Inward,” “It’s a Different World Now,” and “Preaching to the Choir.” He relates the process of writing and recording, then adds, “I really worked hard on it. I couldn’t stop until it was right. It’s not that I’m a perfectionist. I just knew what it was supposed to be.”

He enlisted vocalists Kim Richey and Gillian Welch and players like Bela Fleck, John Jorgenson, and Will Kimbrough for the album. “You tend to gravitate toward those people,” Crowell says. “That music-business machine can be a pretty cold, old thing, and in contrast, these artists feel like a nice campfire. You go stand by them and warm your hands because you’re drawn to the fire.”

“Sometimes you gotta crawl through the middle of it all/But don’t compromise your heart for something crass,” Crowell sings on the album’s final track, “This Too Will Pass.” It’s a lesson he’s obviously taken to heart.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

3rd & Beale

Barbara Blue

(Big Blue Records)

Recorded in Los Angeles with members of Taj Mahal’s Phantom Blues Band (and with locals Nancy Apple and Susan Marshall), Barbara Blue’s 3rd & Beale is, at its best, a classic soul record that even one of Blue’s professed heroes, Etta James, would be proud to have made.

Blue, as her moniker suggests, is known as a blues singer, and deservedly so. On 3rd & Beale she dabbles successfully in several blues styles, from the relatively light bar-band blues of “Red Cadillac & The Blues” to the depths of Charlie Rich’s “Don’t Put No Headstone on My Grave.” And she tips her hat to New Orleans with, of all things, “Rainy Night in Memphis” and the piano-driven parlor tune “You Can’t Stop My Love.”

But despite her blues bona fides, 3rd & Beale makes the case that Blue — whose regular gig is as the human jukebox at Silky O’Sullivan’s — may really be a deep soul singer in an era without many. Blue shows her affinity for Stax/Hi-style soul, her gravelly vocals riding these classic-sounding grooves over a very Memphis bed of punchy horn charts, funky yet elegant Steve Cropper-style guitar licks (guitarist Johnny Lee Schell is the prime co-star here), and gospel-bred background vocals on standout tracks like “24-7-365, “Don’t Need No Man Like That,” and the more intense slow-burn of “If I Had You.”–Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Barbara Blue will celebrate the release of 3rd & Beale with a CD-release party Friday, February 13th, at the Lounge.

Get Right Blues

Jessie Mae Hemphill

(Inside Sounds)

It’s difficult to imagine today, but just 25 years ago, Como, Mississippi, blueswoman Jessie Mae Hemphill was playing for tips on Beale Street. In the late ’70s, Hemphill, granddaughter of famed hill-country musician “Blind” Sid Hemphill, was in her prime, performing on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood with Othar Turner’s Rising Star Fife & Drum Band and recording at the University of Memphis with David Evans. But last year, when the Martin Scorsese-produced PBS series The Blues premiered, Hemphill appeared as a shadow of her former self, ill after a stroke that occurred a decade ago.

Hemphill is nevertheless revered by such stars as Lucinda Williams, and, closer to home, players like Lorette Velvette, Richard Johnston, and Mr. Airplane Man’s Margaret Garrett. Her albums — culled from those U of M sessions — fetch big money today, while CD reissues on the HMG label seem impossible to find. It’s high time that Evans mined his vault for these 15 tracks. Although many cuts sound like outtakes or alternate versions of songs previously included on She Wolf and Feelin’ Good, the scarcity of available material makes Get Right Blues a godsend.

Hemphill plays unaccompanied on more than half of these tracks, tapping a tambourine with her foot on “Go Back to Your Used to Be,” or, on “Shake Your Booty (Shake It, Baby),” rhythmically jingling Choctaw ankle bells. She’s joined by Como musicians Glen Faulkner and Compton Jones on traditional hill-country songs such as “Get Right Church” and “Little Rooster Reel” and plays the diddley bow on “Take Me Home with You, Baby.” Fieldstones bassist Lois Brown and drummer Joe Hicks join her for a pair of songs, as does Evans himself, an accomplished guitarist in his own right.

While her percussive guitar style finds its roots in the hill country, Hemphill’s brand of blues ultimately belongs to no one else. Endlessly creative, alternately brooding and joyful, and always unconventional, Hemphill deserves to be celebrated. Hopefully, Get Right Blues will help shine a light on this local blues great. —Andria Lisle

Grade: A

The End of an Error

David Brookings

(Byar Records)

Richmond, Virginia, transplant David Brookings has been living and playing in Memphis the past few years. This is his first full-length record, engineered and produced by Rob Crockett and Christopher Swenson at Millington’s Puddin’ Truck Studio. It’s one of those gorgeous-sounding retro pop records and, though lots of those have been released in recent times, this one is a nice local addition.

Brookings wears his influences on his sleeve — lots of Beatles licks and Matthew Sweet-style harmonies here. Nothing shockingly original, but the whole record sounds good from start to finish. If you can write and sing like this without straining or sounding slavishly imitative, you’ve got something in my little book. My only complaint is with the lyrics. There are a few clichÇs (especially “Girlfriend on Drugs”), but I’m not going to quibble when the songwriting, performing, and production are this strong. — Ross Johnson

Grade: B+

E-mail: herrington@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

As Tennessee Goes …

With Tennessee’s potentially decisive presidential primary only a day away, John Kerry was sitting in one of those little captain’s chairs waiting for the TV crew, the latest in a series of local-press types, to start what could only be in the time allotted a pro forma interview in a small holding room.

“Senator, what does the congressman’s support mean to your campaign?” Kerry, who has increasingly become the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, was asked. The “congressman” was, of course, Memphis’ 9th District U.S. representative, Harold Ford, Kerry’s national campaign co-chair, who had just introduced the Massachusetts senator to a local crowd at the downtown Cadre Club, one that had plainly relished Kerry’s somewhat elongated speech. Eaten it with a spoon, in fact — point by elaborate exegetical point.

 

Senator John Kerry presses the flesh with the faithful at the Cadre Club on Monday night.

Kerry, whose manner in private is agreeably modest these days, responded: “Well, it means a lot. He’s a popular fellow around here. He’s a leader, and he’s one of the most popular, articulate Democrats in the country. So I’m honored to have his support, and I think it’s very helpful to me.”

Ooooops! The sound wasn’t working right, the senator was informed. Would he mind repeating what he’d just said after some adjustments?

“I don’t mind hearing it again,” Ford quipped.

“I’m not sure I can say that again,” Kerry quipped right back.

He could, of course, and did. And, when he was asked how important Memphis, and Tennessee, were to his campaign strategy, he answered simply, “I’m here!”

He sure was, and to the overflow Monday night crowd of some 1,200 — mainly Democratic partisans of all shapes and sizes — that had just heard Kerry, he did just fine. He took President Bush to task for gutting the economy and wrecking the nation’s good name in the world; excoriated “the most inept, reckless, arrogant, ideological foreign policy in American history”; deplored the “Benedict Arnold CEOs” who take their HQs to Bermuda, thereby escaping their proper share of taxation; pledged to strengthen education; and promised to deliver on Harry Truman’s dream of national health care.

All that and much, much more — even volunteering a rare commentary on his own operation within the last year for prostate cancer, one that must surely have contributed to his mid-year slump in 2003 but from which, the senator insisted, he had had a full recovery. Kerry certainly demonstrated stamina Monday night, shedding his suit jacket and pushing the hour hand on his personal clock.

That Kerry talked at such length (a decided contrast to the rhetorical chip shots of Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and the verbal mortar rounds, carefully concentrated, of General Wesley Clark) was received as an enormous compliment by the Memphis audience, conscious that they were listening to an all-but-certain Democratic nominee and a very likely president. It was like getting their own State of the Union address.

 

General Wesley Clark works a crowd of Tennessee voters in Nashville on Sunday night.

Afterward, though, many in the crowd — even some of those who were most impressed — wondered out loud if it was really necessary for Kerry to have talked so long. The consensus was that he was maybe 15 minutes over what would have been a good length — one reason for the overrun being that he had, in the free flow of his talking points, somehow missed bringing his peroration around to his usual concluding challenge for President Bush: “… three words I know he’ll understand — “Bring it on!” Instead, Kerry finished with a promise, once elected, to be able to say, a propos his own foreign and domestic goals, “Mission accomplished!” And the crowd, not to be denied, supplied the “Bring it on!” for him.

It was a night that local Democrats will long remember if Kerry goes on to be elected president. And the new champion lingered longer than planned on Tuesday morning, schmoozing with a crowd at Barksdale’s restaurant in Midtown for roughly an hour before hopping his chartered jet for Virginia and his expected victory party Tuesday night.

One of Kerry’s rivals, General Clark, had set up his party for Memphis. Clark had declared on Monday afternoon at B.B. King’s on Beale that whoever won Memphis would win Tennessee, and whoever won Tennessee would win the nomination. By that standard, Kerry was the optimistic one. His turnout was larger by far than those garnered in the last several days locally by the undeniably hard-working Clark and Edwards.

Clark had generous support, it was obvious, from members of Mayor Willie Herenton’s local organization, as well as from city councilman Rickey Peete, Clark’s primary host at B.B.’s on Monday. Edwards had the backing of a decent-sized core group, heavy with lawyers and other admirers, like the local Democratic chairman, state Rep. Kathryn Bowers. And Howard Dean, the absent ex-frontrunner, still had loyalists around here and there.

But Kerry now seemed to have everybody else, with the still formidable Ford organization in the van.

And, given what everybody sensed was a new vulnerability on the part of President Bush, who had arguably created more questions than he’d answered in an appearance on last Sunday’s Meet the Press, there was a general headiness in Democratic ranks. And a determination, it seemed, to have done with the contest even while only a distinctly modest fraction of Democratic delegates had yet been committed in primary states.

By election eve, the Zogby poll, which had Kerry at 45 percent of the projected Tennessee primary vote, was on everybody’s lips. That fact had created a certain bandwagon effect — bringing some fence-sitters to Kerry’s backup chorus Monday night. (Among them was state Senator Roscoe Dixon, previously committed to erstwhile frontrunner Dean. Absent, however, was city councilman Myron Lowery, who had been on local platforms recently with both Edwards and Clark.)

Not that there wasn’t a little surviving skepticism. There was, for example, local Democrat Steve Steffens, not one of Monday night’s celebrants. Steffens maintains an e-mail network of local Democrats.

Quoth Steffens to his network Monday night anent the general euphoria in party ranks: “I hate to be the crank who tosses the proverbial turd in the punchbowl, but haven’t we been here before? It was roughly four weeks ago when my guy Howard Dean had all but been anointed as the Democratic nominee … [W]hat do we do, good Democrats, if we anoint the good Senator Kerry and he turns out to have his own as-yet-unknown problems? How will he respond to the evil magic yet to be wrought by W’s Merlin, Karl Rove? What if he indeed turns out to be the second coming of Ed Muskie, as I have feared?”

As of this week in Memphis, and in Tennessee at large, that seemed to be a minority opinion, though.

(Go to the Flyer Web site, MemphisFlyer.com, for in-depth coverage of Tuesday night’s results in the presidential primary and local races.)

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

What a week. Note that’s a period at the end of that sentence, not an exclamation point. There’s just not much going on out there that I want to recommend. I wanted to suggest The Bo-Keys because their classic Stax groove is timeless and sexy: a perfect way to end your Valentine’s Day festivities. But they are playing at Proud Larry’s, and who wants to drive to Oxford to see a band that regularly gigs in Midtown? Jeff Evans, whose mix of trash-rock, blues, and hard-corn country always makes me grin, is playing at the Hi-Tone CafÇ with The Limes and Jack Oblivian on Thursday, February 12th. But I’ve recommended these guys so often you would swear I was on their payroll. (Yo Jeff, where’s that dolla at?) The Dillinger Escape Plan, a band that has earned rave reviews as grindcore innovators, are also at the Hi Tone (Friday, February 13th) with The Locust and Your Enemies’ Friends. But listening to all that screaming just makes my throat hurt (must be getting old). Besides, making up your own time signatures is an overrated exercise best practiced by groups that fail miserably at harmony, melody, and all of the other good things that make music listenable. The Glass, which is at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, February 14th, blends roots music with psychedelic punk. It’s an interesting combo, but it’s still post-rock, right? That leaves me only one choice.

This week I’m recommending The Final Solutions and The Ultracats at the Hi-Tone on Saturday, February 14th. The Final Solutions, when not berating their audiences or engaging in gross-out antics, have an aggressive punk sound with skanky Eastern European roots. It’s wild, angry, and supremely ridiculous all at the same time. And yes, that is a good thing. The Ultracats pairs Lost Sounds vixen Alicja Trout with blond belter Lori Gienapp (the Villains, Porch Ghouls, etc.) for a trip through garage-rock herstory. — Chris Davis

Baby-faced bluesboy Daniel “Slick” Ballinger wowed the crowd — and apparently the judges — earlier this month at the International Blues Challenge, his band finishing second in the competition and his gutbucket rhythm playing winning him the contest’s Albert King Award for “most promising guitarist.” With his flashy stage presence and durably simple music, Ballinger was the only act to inspire widespread dancing and clapping at the IBC, with blues partisans responding to his good-time hill-country grooves. You can check him out for yourself this week at Blues City CafÇ, where Ballinger performs Thursday, February 12th.

Memphix DJ extraordinaire Redeye Jedi will be working the wheels of steel Friday, February 13th, at Precious Cargo, behind a local rap group called Kontrast. MC Fathom 9, ex- of Genesis Experiment, is also scheduled to perform in what should be a great night for local hip-hop fans looking for something a little different.

Finally, Young Avenue Deli’s “On the Road” series, which features free, 9-to-5’er-friendly shows each Wednesday night, brings a particularly promising act to town this week in the form of Chicago trio The Audreys, whose blend of Nuggets-style garage rock and minimalist proto-punk would make them a fine fit in the Memphis scene. Look for the Audreys at the Deli Wednesday, February 18th. — Chris Herrington

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Macho Ado About Pau

The Chicago Tribune‘s NBA columnist Sam Smith is notorious for making stuff up. His latest laughable trade rumor has the Memphis Grizzlies sending Pau Gasol and Shane Battier to his hometown Bulls for Eddy Curry and Jamal Crawford. But one line in Smith’s February 9th column stuck with me: “The talk in Memphis is that the Grizzlies are down on Pau Gasol. It appears they don’t appreciate what they have .”

Judging from events of the past couple of weeks, I wonder if Smith doesn’t have a point. Though it’s been papered over with Gasol’s back-to-back monster games against Milwaukee and Minnesota, the booing incident against Golden State brought to the surface something that’s been true for the entire life of the Memphis Grizzlies: Gasol’s popularity with local fans has never been commensurate with his importance to the team or his production on the court.

I don’t believe that xenophobia has anything to do with this, but I do think Gasol’s reception is connected to a couple of other ingrained biases. Sports fans have a tendency to respond to players who “hustle,” or at least make a show of it. They swoon for the gritty overachiever. (Remember Stubby Clapp.) With Memphis’ history as a college/minor-league sports town, local fans seem particularly susceptible to this line of thinking. This is why so many Grizzlies fans thrill to the energetic exploits of players like Earl Watson and Bo Outlaw but are rarely heard grousing about Watson’s poor shooting or the fact that Outlaw’s limited offensive skills often force the team to play four on five at one end of the floor.

In other words, fans tend to respond more to athletes who make easy plays look difficult than to those who make difficult plays look easy. Early in the life of the Memphis Grizzlies, point guard Jason Williams was the victim of this bias. His flashy play was negatively compared with the steadier hand of backup Brevin Knight. For a while, the specious “style-versus-substance” argument (in truth, Williams was far superior on both counts) resulted in the insane notion, among not just fans but some members of the media, that the team would be better with Knight at the helm.

With Williams generally rehabilitated in the eyes of most onlookers, Gasol has become the new whipping boy, and if he doesn’t always seem to be giving maximum effort, well sometimes it’s because he isn’t and sometimes it’s because he doesn’t have to. One local sports-radio host is fond of the theory that Gasol pads his numbers with “plastic points,” as if Gasol’s penchant for scoring on the break and on dunks isn’t a result of his ability to run the floor, to handle passes in traffic, to finish with either hand, etc., and as if getting “easy” baskets isn’t a desirable outcome of every possession.

But there’s another reason that Gasol hasn’t been entirely embraced by local fans: Gasol’s body language and mannerisms on the court don’t always conform to the typical fan’s notion of American macho. There is, of course, a submerged misogyny or even homophobia (and, yes, maybe xenophobia too, since the difference in Gasol’s physical mannerisms is cultural) in the comments of fans who snicker at what they take to be Gasol’s effeminate gait. But if Gasol runs like a girl, other seven-foot basketball players should be so lucky.

I’ve come to think that Gasol has become the Howard Dean of the Grizzlies, with fans focusing on him, waiting, sometimes gleefully, for evidence that confirms their preconceptions. Last week at the Milwaukee game, instead of taking my usual seat along media row, I bought a couple of tickets in the nosebleeds and took my wife. Sitting a couple of seats down from us was a teen-age girl watching the game through binoculars and delivering a running commentary — apparently to herself. A few minutes into the game, Gasol was fronting Bucks center Daniel Santiago in the post. When point guard T.J. Ford floated a lob pass over Gasol, frontcourt mate Wright was late rotating over and Santiago got a lay-up. Make no mistake — Lorenzen Wright is generally a better defender and tougher player than Gasol, but on this particular play, it was Wright who was at fault. So what does our companion in section 244 have to say about the play? “Pau, you so soft. You gotta play like Ren.”

Don’t get me wrong: Gasol has played soft this season, though his play has improved considerably of late and his stats are misleading because of the way minutes are distributed in Coach Hubie Brown’s 10-man rotation. The question of whether Gasol has plateaued or is merely experiencing growing pains is a key one for the second half of the season. But fans shouldn’t let cultural biases and handed-down talking points obscure how crucial Gasol is for this team. Seven-footers with immense skills are hard to come by. Seven-footers with immense skills who actually produce — as Gasol has, rather unexpectedly, from day one — are even more rare.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Political Poker

Saturday morning, I got together with 20 of my neighbors and talked politics in the humming fluorescence of a junior high cafeteria. Almost all of us were strangers to each other; all of us were first-time participants at the Washington State Democratic precinct caucus.

I live in the northern part of Kitsap County, Washington, outside Poulsbo (population: 7,005) across Puget Sound from Seattle. North Kitsap is a mix of small farms and very small towns. Many of us commute to Seattle by ferry; others work here. The rest of us tend our horses and gardens, make our daily runs to the grocery and to pick up the kids. My precinct is 441 Big Valley. It is mostly defined by our road, Big Valley, which winds up the Great Peninsula for five miles between Poulsbo and the Hood Canal Bridge. Many families have lived here for generations.

What happens at a caucus?

Any registered party member can come and, quite literally, stand up for a candidate. There we were, standing up, around a junior high lunch table. Big Valley is such a small precinct we only needed three standers to give a candidate a delegate.

Now, what really happens? It’s noisy and hot and people are speaking their minds. Without beer or barbecue or any of the usual social lubricants. And it takes some gumption to deliver an impromptu speech in front of people you wave at over the fence. You stand a chance of making a fool of yourself or pissing someone off. Or making some friends.

At the end of the first tally, the battle for the uncommitted voters begins. Staunch supporters try to convince the undecided to commit to their candidate. A longshoreman articulated John Kerry’s support for unions and health-care issues. One of Howard Dean’s faithful held forth with vitriol on Kerry’s vote authorizing Bush to wage war. I signed in uncommitted with three others and listened to the pitches. We started out with four uncommitteds, three unwavering Deaniacs, and 13 Kerry supporters.

Dean’s people spoke of voting their hearts, even as they conceded points about Kerry’s electability. Kerry supporters said if they were to vote their hearts, they too would go for Dean, but now was the time to find someone who could beat Bush. One undecided participant asked Kerry and Dean supporters: “Without using the word ‘electable,’ what is the one word that defines your candidate?” For Kerry, “statesmanship”; for Dean, “integrity.” We ended up with three more Kerry delegates and one very passionate Dean delegate.

Caucus convener Remo Barr had just returned from Mexico. “Everyone I met down there supports what we’re doing here today. I didn’t wear my little bottle-cap,” she said, speaking of a style of brooch produced by Mexican folk-artists. “But it has beads hanging from it, and in the center it has the word ‘Bush’ with a line drawn through it.” That was the caucus theme: circle/slash Bush.

Of course, that’s not why we do it. Everybody in the room is a registered anybody-but-Bush. But all the other days of the year, we’re 20 people who live in relative isolation along a five-mile stretch of road. Saturday morning we were the Democrats from precinct 441 Big Valley. Someone at our table said, “This makes me feel like I live here, not just sleep here.”

I’ve participated in both a primary and a caucus. Voting in a primary is like a game of solitaire, deliberate and private. Participating in a caucus is more like a noisy poker game, unpredictable and requiring at some point that you show your cards. We need more poker games. Sure the democratic process is sacred, but let it be rowdy enough to be interesting.

Elea Carey is a writer and native Memphian.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

A Brush with Greatness

Girl with a Pearl Earring opens on a meticulously prepared meal of vegetables. Carrots, beats, and cabbage are painstakingly, if not artistically, sliced by young Griet (Scarlett Johansson), a properly raised and well-spoken young woman. We know immediately in the film that Griet, while of a poorer class, has intelligence, discipline, and even style. These are qualities not attributed to most women in those days. Rather, women had a place, and their virtues were recognized only amid their ability to stay within them. Flexibility was afforded the richer classes, where a woman’s appreciation for finery was easily interchanged for intelligence. But in this opening moment, with the vibrant orange of the carrots, the crimson of the beets, and the violet in a cabbage, we know that the film will be as subtle, baroque, and perceptive as both Griet and her master artist, Vermeer.

To fend off poverty, Griet’s mother sends her to work in the home of the well-to-do artist and his family. As she sets forth, she is encouraged to avoid listening to their Catholic prayers — stopping her ears if necessary. This is the world of 17th-century Holland. The artist is Jan Vermeer van Delft (Colin Firth). He is stoic, moody, quiet, distant. His wife Catharina (Essie Davis), is a woman of classical regency and good taste, and she is apportioned in a way that we now refer to as “Rubenesque.” She is with child again, and Griet is hired to help keep house.

With Vermeer always in his studio brooding over his next work, the home is run by Catharina’s mother, Maria (Judy Parfitt). Maria is a crisp old woman, corsetted and ruffled beyond recognizable femininity, whose matriarchal command is matched only by her keen grasp of the home’s financial necessities. No paintings equals no food. But Vermeer, dark and broody and all, can only seem to complete one painting a year. He walks a tenuous line with his patron Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), and Van Ruijven must be pleased at the expense of all else.

Van Ruijven takes a liking to the beautiful young Griet and commissions a secret work. With Griet Vermeer’s model, he is now charged with seeing beyond her station and into her soul to the commercial end of satisfying his funder. Vermeer sees much. Griet has an eye for composition and color, a hand for the mixing of paints, and sensitivity to ideas. To Catharina, Griet is a beautiful object that Catharina could never be and that Vermeer should never have.

In the film’s most deftly played scene, Catharina insists on seeing the secretive portrait of Griet and is horrified at the result. “It’s obscene!” she cries out at the striking, intimate image of the girl wearing her mistress’ pearls. “Why don’t you paint me?!?” The moment is desperate and profound.

To enjoy Girl with a Pearl Earring is to love Vermeer’s work. Every moment seems lifted from the Vermeer workbook, and every scene is as subtle and as distinct in its gorgeous mundanity as any of his works. It is a quiet gem of a film, elegantly performed and artfully rendered by director Peter Webber in his big-screen debut. He has managed to graft some warmth onto the usually humorless Firth and has in Johansson drawn a performance of great depth and pathos, even though Griet is girl of few words.

“You’re a fly caught in his web. We all are,” says granny Maria to the young Griet. The warning to the scared girl is not about the lasciviousness of the artist. Rather, it is a caution about the intentions and machinations of his patron, Van Ruijven. Artists, even one of Vermeer’s skill and talent, could never forget that they served at the pleasure of the patron and with no greater aim than acquiring a commission for a next work.

Meanwhile, in 21st-century America, this dependence has translated to government arts programs that wax and wane as presidential administrations come and go. Instead of individual works, though, whole genres of art are left to the judiciary of political non-aesthetics. They do not know a lot about art, but they know what they like.

This beautiful film shows us that while much has changed, most of us still only know what we like and like what we know. — Bo List

Barbershop was the rare film that managed to both overachieve and underachieve at the same time. What promised to be just another thrown-together, lowest-common-denominator comedy was actually charming and funny and culturally alive. Barbershop could have been truly extraordinary had the filmmakers had the guts to dispense with narrative entirely in favor of 90-minutes-plus of community and conversation. Instead, the film was held back by its commitment to a hackneyed, rickety duel-storyline structure.

Cedric the Entertainer as the loudmouth barber Eddie.

Barbershop 2: Back in Business, while pleasant enough, contains none of the surprise and considerably less charm and fewer laughs than its predecessor. Like most sequels, it could just as well be subtitled “Back for More Cash.”

The best thing about Barbershop 2 (and, come to think of it, this might be true for the first film as well) is the opening credits, a witty, engaging photomontage that traces black history through black hairstyles from 1967 to the present, making on-point comments about cultural influence and appropriation (Bo Derek’s beads and braids, Vanilla Ice’s high-top fade) along the way. Like the entirety of the first film, this sequence is nostalgic without being reactionary, moving without being saccharine.

Too much of Barbershop 2 looks back at the first film a bit too fondly, with too many of its bits reminding the audience of what they liked in the first film rather than providing laughs or insights of its own. It happens from Barbershop 2‘s very first scene. After Cedric the Entertainer’s loudmouth boot-strapping barber Eddie provoked laughs (and ire) for his barbs about Rosa Parks and Jesse Jackson (who may or may not be the target of this film’s talking-loud-and-saying-nothing alderman character) in the first film, Barbershop 2 bend backward for shock value in its opening moments when the character calls the D.C. sniper “the Jackie Robinson of crime” for “breaking into the white leagues of crime” (i.e., a crime not explainable by economic need and based on careful planning) then he leads his co-workers through a discussion of increasingly complex racial categories. (Of Prince: “He half Cherokee or something.”)

If Cedric’s Eddie was the breakout star the last time out, this time he’s front and center, as Ice Cube’s straight-man shop owner recedes a little bit. Eddie’s backstory gets fleshed out and provides an inspiration for the shop’s fight against gentrification when the chain shop Nappy Cutz opens across the street. And Eddie gets plenty of room to expound on questions of the day. (On Bill Clinton: “All I know is if you’re gonna have oral relations with an ugly fat girl with no self-esteem, lock the door.”)

If Barbershop wasn’t focused enough, Barbershop 2 suffers from the same affliction much more severely. Whenever it could get away from its pointless plot mechanics and just hang out in the shop, Barbershop was a joy, conveying the daily rhythms of the shop with a casual grace that was intoxicating. Barbershop 2 (helmed by a different director) is pretty stiff by comparison — overstuffed with dangling subplots and telegraphed laugh lines. — Chris Herrington