Tristian Wilson, who was jailed on charged of theft, forgery, and burglary, in Marion, Arkansas, escaped after his loving wife forged a letter authorizing his release and faxed it to the jail from a local McDonald’s. Tristian was captured and will now be standing trial alongside his wife for a first-degree Big Mac attack. — Chris Davis
Plante: How It Looks
HELLOS AND GOODBYES
I’ll never equate the opening of college basketball season with, say, Opening Day (note the caps) for baseball season.
But there is still a kind of excitement to a college hoop team’s debut performance that induces its share of goose bumps. Particularly in the 21st century world of college basketball, you know there will be new faces. And devoid of helmets, caps, or any other form of disguising regalia, a new hometown cager hits the floor like an acting-school grad on Broadway. Sweaty palms and all.
The University of Memphis tipped off year five of the John Calipari Era last Thursday at FedExForum. The fact that the game was part of the opening round of this year’s Coaches vs. Cancer classic was of mild interest to the estimated crowd of 7,000 who made it through the turnstiles at the new Tiger den.
The fact that the U of M was playing Savannah State was not. This was about welcoming a new group of talent, one that can inch the returning veterans that much closer to — go ahead and say it — the Final Four.
Old friends were up to their usual tricks. Sean Banks scored 15 points in 23 minutes, Anthony Rice tied the school’s alltime record with his 163rd career three-pointer, and Rodney Carney had a pair of cloud-breaking dunks. But a pair of freshman drew the biggest cheers as the hometown Tigers waxed the visiting Tigers, 102-40.
Point guard Darius Washington impressed with eight assists and only two turnovers in 30 minutes of action. His play had Calipari in midseason form when it comes to hyperbole, the coach comparing his rookie playmaker to the man he’s replaced, last year’s Conference USA Player of the Year, Antonio Burks.
And then there was Joey Dorsey, the 18-year-old Baltimore native who arrived in Memphis via prep school in North Carolina. As Calipari’s second man off the bench, the 6’9” freshman scored 10 points and grabbed, count ‘em, 16 rebounds (the most since Duane Erwin pulled down 18 in a game last November).
Coach Cal was more down to earth in his assessment of Dorsey’s debut. “He better rebound,” stressed the coach in his postgame remarks, “because he’s gonna miss a lot of shots. But look at [the Detroit Pistons’ All-Star] Ben Wallace. He misses half his free throws and a third of his layups . . . but he gets the rebounds.”
Twenty-four hours later at the Liberty Bowl, there was a foreboding air in my corner of the press box. As the Tiger football team took on C-USA rival Southern Miss on the turf below — and on national television to boot — the last minutes of Danny Wimprine’s playing days in Memphis ticked down. And you had to wonder if the countdown was on for tailback sensation DeAngelo Williams as well.
If Friday night was indeed the twin Tiger terrors’ last appearance at the Liberty Bowl, it was some kind of send-off party. Coach Tommy West preaches the gridiron gospel that says to win, your stars have to make plays . . . period. When the Tigers fell behind, 19-7, early in the third quarter, Wimprine responded with a 68-yard touchdown pass to Ryan Scott.
With Memphis still down, 26-21, late in the third, Williams sprinted around left tackle for a 75-yard touchdown run that proved to be the game-winner . . . and quite an exclamation point on his Liberty Bowl career should he be playing on Sundays next fall. (Williams’s 15th rushing score of the season broke Dave Casinelli’s school record.)
The 28 senior who said goodbye to their home stadium Friday night did so as, undeniably, the greatest class of football players the U of M has ever seen. In beating longtime nemesis — and C-USA gold standard — Southern Miss, the Tigers earned the delightful bonus of a second consecutive bowl game.
And the significance of the win was hardly lost on West, who was, well, emotionally composed in his postgame reflections. “This was a huge win,” said West, now 23-22 in four years on the Tiger sideline. “[The Golden Eagles] had beaten us nine out of ten times. When I first came here, Southern Miss — they told me — was our biggest rival. I thought, how can this be a rivalry . . . we never beat ‘em. All the things involved in it — and it being Southern Miss — this was a huge win.”
I was in the front yard when my buddy Thumper drove by slowly. He tossed something out his window at me.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he hollered, speeding away, as I held out my hands to catch the flying package.
It was a dressed and frozen rabbit, which I placed, still wrapped in plastic, in a big bowl of hot water to thaw. I had all day to decide what to do with it.
At a fancy restaurant, I recently saw rabbit on a menu, roasted with tarragon and rosemary. I was struck by how this preparation resembled the way one might prepare chicken. Indeed, the tastes-like-chicken comparison surpasses only the rabbit’s mating capacity in the annals of rabbit cliché.
But why, I wondered, would a rabbit taste like a chicken? A rabbit is a mammal, like a cow. A chicken is a bird. My farmer friend Bob doesn’t ask why. “Rabbit’s a little drier,” he says, “not as fatty. But you can do anything to rabbit that you would to chicken. We always have some rabbit stock simmering on the stove.”
I scoured the Internet in search of interesting ways to cook rabbit. The best site I found was http://diju.tripod.com/Rabbit/recipes.html, where I was tempted to try “Beer-Butt Rabbit,” in which open cans of beer are stuffed with chopped garlic and onions, and the rabbit, rubbed in spices, is draped over the beer cans on a grill. But I had only three cans of Pabst left, and I didn’t want to split the last one with Thumper.
Another recipe read, “Grill for two hours, or until legs and wings wiggle freely.”
Was that an avian slip or are the front limbs of rabbits really called “wings”?
I settled on a recipe for braised rabbit with prunes. If you want the recipe exactly as it appeared, you can find it on that Web page. I modified it in a few key ways, substituting breadcrumbs for flour, adding whole garlic cloves, and most important, I swapped fresh plums for prunes.
Plums! Now is the season, and my little tree is finally producing fruit. How could I go to the store and get dried plums (aka prunes) when plums hang ripe on the tree? Okay, technically, plums and prunes are not exactly the same. Prunes are a type of plum that is usually dried. But I’m not here to split hairs; just rabbits.
I cut off the arms and legs (which really did resemble wings), drumsticks, and thighs. I sliced across the long torso, through the vertebrae, until I had manageable chunks. I treated the liver and heart like everything else. First, I seasoned the meat with salt and pepper and dredged it in breadcrumbs. In a large cast-iron skillet, I melted four tablespoons of butter on medium heat and slowly browned the rabbit parts. Once everything was brown and crispy I placed it all in a big cast-iron pot and added two cups of chicken stock. Then I added two pounds of fresh, split, and pitted plums (more plums would be fine). Finally, I added the whole cloves of a head of garlic and another 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs. I stirred it all together and baked it with the lid on, stirring occasionally, at 375 for about 2 1/2 hours, or until the rabbit was falling-off-the-bone tender.
Thumper came over with a container of fresh feta cheese. We made a salad while the rabbit cooled to an edible temperature.
It was an Atkins evening of rabbit and salad vinaigrette, which complemented each other beautifully. The best part was the liver, drenched in plum sauce.
Thus began my exploration of the plum. The next day I marinated salmon in soy sauce, garlic, and ginger. Meanwhile, I cooked some chopped bacon and fresh plums and a little cider vinegar. When the plums dissolved, I added the salmon and the marinade to the pan and fried it home. Ooo la la.
Yes, the plum and the rabbit have taught me plenty. But there is so much more to know. If anyone ever tries “Beer-Butt Rabbit,” please tell me what it’s like.
“Chefs and Chiefs,” the annual benefit that helps support educational programs at the Chucalissa Archaeological Museum, will be held at Chez Philippe in The Peabody hotel at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, November 14th. Chez Philippe’s Jose Gutierrez will be joined by other chefs, including Karen Carrier of Automatic Slim’s, Cielo, Beauty Shop, and Another Roadside Attraction catering, Nick Vergos of the Rendezvous, Erling Jensen of Erling Jensen restaurant, and Stan Gibson of the University Club of Memphis. New to this year’s event will be chefs Lee Craven and Trish Berry of Madidi, the upscale restaurant in downtown Clarksdale, Mississippi, owned by actor Morgan Freeman and attorney Bill Luckett.
Native-American cuisine will be served, and although the dinner’s setting is swank, the event is geared toward a comfortable come-as-you-are atmosphere. A silent auction and a flute performance will entertain guests.
“Some people donate things they find in the attic. We encourage Native-American items, but we accept anything,” says Charles H. McNutt, president of the Friends of Chucalissa and a retired archaeology professor from the University of Memphis. “We have some things that go for $30 and some that go for $3,000.”
Tickets for the event are $150 per person. For more information, call 452-7554.
Colder weather means “Soup Saturdays” at Memphis Botanic Garden’s café, Fratelli’s. Every Saturday through mid-December, restaurant owner and chef Sabine Baltz will prepare four homemade soups from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“Every week the soups will be different,” Baltz says. “If it’s successful, I may continue it after the first of the year, while it’s cold outside.”
On November 13th, featured soups include butternut squash, cream of asparagus, old-fashioned chicken with dumplings, and Italian wedding soup. All soups will be served with toasted asiago bread.
In addition to “Soup Saturdays,” Fratelli’s also holds “Tuesdays on the Terrace.” On the last Tuesday of the month, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Fratelli’s will host a wine tasting and serve finger foods. On November 30th, the theme will be “Pansies and Pinots.” The cost is $20 or $15 for members.
Fratelli’s still serves the paninis and focaccia that were the trademarks of the downtown deli before it moved to the Botanic Garden last spring.
Baltz likes the new site, which is centrally located in East Memphis. The garden also offers a beautiful backdrop, especially when it’s warm enough to enjoy the terrace.
“It’s really kind of an overlooked little jewel,” Baltz says.
Midtown has a new choice for Middle-Eastern/Mediterranean food: Boogey’s Bistro, 288 N. Cleveland.
“Especially in Midtown, people love the fresh hummus and falafel,” says manager Nikki Melton. “It definitely has a Midtown flavor. We’re casual, relaxed, and we welcome all people to come.”
The restaurant opened in September and is owned by Terry Digel and Najeh Salim. Salim, a native of Jerusalem, is the primary chef responsible for creating dishes like the restaurant’s specialty, shwarma.
“Shwarma is turkey thighs that are seasoned and cooked on the rotisserie, then shaved and served on homemade pita bread,” Melton says. “We also have lamb dishes served with rice and salad and hummus made fresh every day and some vegetarian dishes.”
In addition, the menu features such American favorites as hamburgers, fries, and salads, and Digel makes homemade desserts. The restaurant is open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
A $5 raffle ticket will win a dinner for two a month at 12 participating restaurants in DeSoto and Shelby counties. The funds will benefit First Book — Mid-South, a branch of the national organization that helps provide books for children of low-income families.
“Each certificate is a little different depending on what the menu is. For one restaurant, it might be $75, or for another it’s two entrées and two drinks,” says Eileen Saunders, co-founder of the local First Book. “There’s a wide range of restaurants like Bonne Terre, Timbeaux’s, and McAllister’s in DeSoto County and the Magnolia Grill, Capriccio, and Brontë café in Memphis.”
Tickets can be purchased through November 30th at the Book Haven, 579 Goodman Road, Southaven, or by mail at Table for Two, P.O. Box 1796, Southaven, Mississippi, 38671. The drawing will be held on December 8th. For more information, call 662-404-0816.
Following the 4 p.m. performance of excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado by the Ole Miss Opera Theatre November 14th, Café de France will be serving desserts and coffee at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens. For more information, call 761-5250.
To the Editor:
I awakened the morning after the election with a pervasive sense of sadness. It was as if there had been a death in the family.
That almost ineffable American love of liberty and justice and hope has been replaced by fear and a world made more complicated and fearsome by those who gain by hatred and fear. The political landscape has transmogrified into a strange and alien place. God save our nation.
Kingsley Hooker
Memphis
To the Editor:
How utterly pathetic that in deciding to violate its 15-year policy of not endorsing candidates, the Flyer should have done so for a pusillanimous proctocephalic like John Kerry, an empty suit who could not even garner total support from his own base. The kind of liberalism that provides such a distorted view of reality as to permit such a choice simply confirms my conviction that it truly is a mental aberration.
Donald E. Hampson
Memphis
Editor’s note: “asshead”?
To the Editor:
I watched George W. Bush bumble through his post-election press conference. It’s a rare event, and I thought a good old-fashioned “Bushism” might cheer me up.
As the meaningless rhetoric dripped off his forked tongue, the one thing that haunted me was his claim that the best way to protect America is to spread liberty. If history tells us anything, this means more invasions, more war, and more misleading information.
Yes, freedom is on the march, but unfortunately, it is leaving piles of rubble in its wake.
T.D. Cripps
Memphis
To the Editor:
In his letter to the editor (November 4th issue), Doug Logan suggests that the Democrats should present a candidate with conservative views on the topics of abortion and homosexuality in order to win the Southern states.
I have a better suggestion: How about if the Southern states redefine their conceptions of morality and freedom, observe the separation of church and state, and learn to vote based on the common good?
As a 21-year-old heterosexual female from Georgia, I reject the notion of compromising in a fight for human rights just to get a vote. Maybe what Logan really meant to suggest was: “Why don’t the Democrats nominate a Republican?”
Liz Wiedemann
Memphis
To the Editor:
Conservative Republicans would vote for the devil himself if he could put an end to abortion and gay marriage. They couldn’t care less about a gazillion-dollar deficit or whether Saddam Hussein complied with the U.N. resolutions about developing WMD. They don’t care if over 1,100 Americans have died needlessly in Iraq. They don’t care if prisoners were tortured and killed and sequestered in secret locations in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Kerry actually put the nail in his own coffin in the final debate by saying he would not consider any nominee for the Supreme Court who opposed Roe v. Wade. The conservative base came out in record numbers to send a clear and unmistakable message: If Kerry or anyone else tries to stop our cause to protect unborn life or legitimize a gay person’s desire to practice “unholy” acts in the bonds of “holy matrimony,” then they will make you pay a price.
Joe M. Spitzer
Memphis
Values?
To the Editor:
When are Americans going to wake up and realize that religious extremists constitute the greatest threat to the United States, much as they do in the rest of the world? A case in point is the furor being raised over Republican senator Arlen Specter’s comments regarding Roe v. Wade. Talk radio is working in concert with religious right-wingers. Aggressive anti-abortionists are the same voters who just bought into the “values” package that put Bush back in the White House. I thought values meant civility, caring, and love, as Jesus taught. All I see is hypocrisy and hate being flaunted by these fundamentalists.
Ron Lowe
Nevada City, California
Gray days and another four years of George W. Bush: It’s enough to kill the most optimistic of liberals. Mosquitos, I think, are arriving in Memphis just in time. Nope, I’m not referencing those pesky insects that plague the Bluff City from May to November. I’m talking about Mosquitos, the sugary New York-meets-Brazil musical trio — a band capable of piercing the gloom with a superhero-strength ray of sunshine.
Mosquitos’ eponymous debut, released in the summer of 2003, was borne of guitarist Chris Root’s attraction to Brazilian singer Juju Stulbach. “I was acting in a film, and one of Chris’ friends was directing it,” Stulbach relates in her breathy, girlish voice in a recent phone interview with the Flyer. “Chris was blowing up balloons, and I was sitting on the stairs with half my body outside, smoking and humming some songs. Apparently, he fell in love with my feet.”
Root, a guitarist with the rock band AM60, was intrigued. “He told me he’d always wanted to hear Brazilian music, and I happened to have a few CDs with me,” Stulbach says with a laugh. “My visa was running out, and I was on my way back to Brazil.”
After she returned to Rio de Janeiro, however, Stulbach received a call from Root. “He said he wanted to write music with me, but I told him I’m not a singer — I’m an actor,” Stulbach recalls. “I thought the guy was nuts. A week later, I was picking him up at the airport. We wrote six songs together.”
Back in New York, Root got another friend, Jon Marshall Smith, to add keyboards to the material. In a letter to Stulbach, he also proposed a name: Mosquitos. “I said okay, do whatever you want,” she says, “and then on the way to the meeting with [record label] Bar/None, I met Jon.”
Root had pitched the band to the indie label before they’d even performed together. Then, one of the songs off that first CD landed on an episode of The O.C., and Mosquitos performed a sold-out show at Austin’s South by Southwest music festival. Next, they toured with the French electronica duo Air. Before the release of their second album, Sunshine Barato, Root, Stulbach, and Smith found themselves a legitimate group.
“I actually came to New York to be a dancer. Then I got involved in theater, and now I’m a singer,” Stulbach says, still a little surprised at Mosquitos’ success.
“When my parents heard the first CD, they were like, ‘That’s cute. It’s nice that you did that.’ I don’t think they knew that Chris was that serious.
“It’s all his fault,” she says with a mock groan. “It’s a very sweet story of how life just happens.”
Sunshine Barato means, literally, “cheap sunshine.” Its lyrics — half in English, half in Portuguese — provide clues to Stulbach and Root’s personal relationship in incomplete sentences that loosely sketch the truth. “A song about a telephone/I’m alone and I’m thinking of you,” Root sings on the title track before Stulbach answers him, charmingly, in her native language. Part bossa nova and part indie rock, the tune draws equal parts of Yo La Tengo’s “My Little Corner of the World” and Astrud Gilberto’s “The Girl From Ipanema,” with a sampling of the Velvet Underground’s “Stephanie Says” thrown in for good measure.
“I could already hear the love for bossa nova in the rhythms of AM60,” Stulbach claims. “Then Chris showed me some Beach Boys, and we went into a whole Beatles thing. He was a Paul fan, and I was a John fan, but we switched. I fell in love with Bowie, the Kinks, and the Velvet Underground too, and I showed Chris more Brazilian stuff like Rita Lee and the fathers of bossa nova.”
Mosquitos’ influences don’t stop there: Although it’s sung entirely in Portuguese, “Avocado” is flavored with rootsy, Americana-based music, while “Domesticada” thumps and wails. A handful of songs, including “No Fim Do Pais” and “So Voce E Eli,” harken back to the beaches of Rio and Gilberto’s whispered vocal style.
Root’s love-song-cum-lullaby “Dream Awake” is a joyful low-fi ballad which marks its time with castanets, while on the electronica duet “Free As Love,” the young lovers list the items that make their world go ’round (“Wasted times, rainbows, and sunshine”) with an earnestness that sounds as extreme as it is enjoyable.
“Love and sunshine, hugs and kisses — those are positive things that people really need,” Stulbach says. “We just provide a couple of minutes that aren’t devoted to death and destruction.” She pauses to choose her words carefully. “We want to fill your heart.”
The last track on Sunshine Barato hammers that point home. “Everybody’s left the beach/Summer is over, but we’re not going anywhere,” Stulbach sings on “27 Degrees.” “We’re just waiting for the sunshine to come back again.”
Now that Tennessee is increasingly tinted red on the political color map, what do Democrats in these parts do? Well, like they say, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody some good. But it’s still an ill wind. Which is to say, it creates opportunities for some, dilemmas for others.
Out of nowhere, Governor Phil Bredesen is on the short list of White House Democratic possibles for 2008. In the morrow of President Bush’s reelection victory — predicated on his control of electoral votes in the American heartland — Bredesen’s name has turned up in surveys of potential Democratic candidates prepared by the mainline national media.
Putting together a potential 2008 presidential-candidate list in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Peter Wallsten and Nick Anderson included Bredesen among a small group of governors “seen widely as effective communicators of a populist Democratic message in GOP-leaning states.” Adam Nagourney put Bredesen on his short list of Democratic prospects in the Sunday New York Times, and USA Today had the Tennessee governor on its list in a Friday story.
Which leads to a hypothetically possible (but unlikely) Bredesen versus Bill Frist scenario. It’s surely no secret that Frist, the state’s senior senator, intends to vacate his seat in 2006 to organize a 2008 presidential run unemcumbered by a legislative saddle.
n By the way, the name of Harold Ford Jr., the 9th District congressman who intends a run two years from now for Frist’s seat, has itself turned up in a 2008 presidential preference survey of potential candidates by the national polling firm McLaughlin & Associates. Ford (who will be 38 in 2008) weighed in at 1 percent among respondents.
Republican candidates for the Senate seat are getting serious. Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker has started organizing a campaign, and former 7th District congressman and unsuccessful 2002 Senate candidate Ed Bryant sent out a letter last week notifying potential supporters that he would be running.
At a pre-election rally in Memphis, Bryant had said this about Corker’s efforts: “He shouldn’t be starting his fund-raising now, when we have the Bush effort going and various other races important to the party. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about that.”
For state representative Beth Harwell, who has been doubling as state Republican chairman and who also is mulling over a Senate race, Bryant had this left-handed praise: “I think it’s great if Beth runs.” He said the possibility reminded him of the 1994 Republican primary for the 7th District congressional seat, which he eventually won. “You remember? It started out with me and [then-Germantown mayor] Charles Salvaggio and [former local GOP chairman] Maida Pearson. If Maida hadn’t been in, there probably would have been a Congressman Salvaggio, and I’d probably have been shoveling trash in Jackson for the next several years.”
Yet another attendee and possible Senate candidate at that Memphis rally was former 4th District congressman and ex-gubernatorial candidate Van Hilleary. “I’m ahead right now,” said Hilleary, referencing a statewide poll showing him in the lead over other potential GOP contenders, “but I’ve got to worry about Corker.” Going on with tongue presumably in cheek concerning the wealthy Chattanoogan, he asked rhetorically, “How much money do you think he’ll raise before the end of the year — $18 million?”
Urged by a GOP well-wisher to consider running in 2006 against Bredesen, the Democrat who defeated him two years ago, Hilleary replied, “I don’t think he’ll be easy to beat.”
The new one-vote Republican majority in the state Senate has created a lot of pre-session hustle and flow among members of that body.
First, Lt. Governor John Wilder of Somerville, a nominal Democrat who survived a Republican challenge from Ron Stallings of Bolivar, has acted swiftly to nail down the vote of GOP Senate colleague Curtis Person of Memphis, a Wilder loyalist, along with enough other GOP members to apparently ensure his reelection as Senate speaker.
But the new lineup of committee chairs will surely number one less Democrat, leaving two Memphians, John Ford (chairman: General Welfare, Health & Human Resources) and Steve Cohen (chairman: State & Local Government) among the vulnerable.
Next, Democratic caucus chairman Joe Haynes of Nashville faces a challenge for his post from Dresden’s Roy Herron and Clarksville’s Rosalind Kurita. And Memphis senator Jim Kyle, a Bredesen confidante, is reportedly interested in the job of Senate Democratic leader, a position now held by Ward Crutchfield of Chattanooga.
Former city attorney Robert Spence’s school-board race for Position 1, At-Large, was widely regarded as a trial run for a 2007 mayoral bid. If so, his lackluster third-place finish behind incumbent Wanda Halbert and second-place finisher Kenneth Whalum Jr. may have set him backward on the track.
The Delicate Seam
The Bloodthirsty Lovers
(Frenchkiss)
The Grifters and Big Ass Truck were the two biggest Memphis bands of the Nineties, but beyond that they didn’t seem to have much in common. The Grifters had a cohesive, less varied sound; Big Ass Truck was eclectic. The Grifters were strictly guitar-bass-drums; Big Ass Truck was one of the first rock bands to sport a full-time hip-hop DJ. The Grifters played punk clubs on the indie-rock circuit; Big Ass Truck drew big crowds at colleges.
But all that aside, the fact that two of the driving forces behind those seminal local bands — the Grifters’ Dave Shouse and Big Ass Truck’s Steve Selvidge –have now joined forces isn’t that surprising. Shouse and Selvidge are from an odd-couple pairing. Strip away the bluesy grit and punk aggression of the Grifters and the hip-hop and jam elements of Big Ass Truck and you’re left with something quite similar: a rock sound rooted in Seventies prog and glam and oddly divorced from the city’s blues heritage.
Shouse and Selvidge form a fruitful partnership on The Delicate Seam, the second album released under the moniker the Bloodthirsty Lovers but the first to include Selvidge. The band’s eponymous 2001 debut was essentially a solo effort from Shouse, who has collaborated under the Lovers rubric over the past few years with other notable local musicians, including drummer Paul Taylor, the Clears’ Shelby Bryant, and the Satyrs’ Jason Paxton.
The squiggly electro opening on the lead track, “The Mods Go Mad,” suggests more of the out-of-character dance-rock that made the Bloodthirsty Lovers such a rewarding departure, but it’s a red herring. Despite programmed beats, this is a rock record conceived in the image of such velvet goldmine gods as Bowie and Eno, Ronson and Bolin. You can hear this in the sculpted psychedelic guitar forays of “The Conversation.” There are departures. “El Shocko,” which effortlessly combines elements of country and doo-wop and Beatlesque into a swinging, humming whole, sounds like nothing from either player’s previous oeuvre, while “Happiness” is an exceptionally pretty bit of alt-pop. And the album-closing “Medicated” subcontracts lead vocals to guest female singer Katie Eastburn.
But most of The Delicate Seam is dramatic, urgent art-rock. Those looking for contemporary references might think of alt-rockers such as the Flaming Lips or Built To Spill, but the Bloodthirsty Lovers are less loopy than the former and less direct than the latter. Chances are you won’t quite know what these cryptic, impressionistic songs mean, but hooked up to Shouse and Selvidge’s swooning atmospherics and asteroid-trail guitars, you’ll feel them.
—Chris Herrington
Grade: A-
The Late Great Daniel Johnston:
Covered Discovered
Various Artists
(Gammon)
While certainly of interest to longtime fans, The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Covered Discovered seems intended specifically for the unconverted who may have dismissed Johnston either as a cause celebre among indie musicians or as an eccentric songwriter with a cartoon voice. Or it may be for those who simply have never heard of him before. Not only does the set feature a disc of covers by an impressive array of artists, it also includes a disc of the originals (including one new track, “Rock This Town,” from Johnston’s upcoming collection, Lost and Found).
Overall, these two discs are a triumph of packaging. Listeners can readily compare the covers with their respective originals and more effectively discern what these varied artists take from Johnston, who, in fact, is not dead. For the most part, they work hard to preserve his sense of innocence, some even improving on the originals. Bright Eyes turns the resigned paranoia of “Devil Town” into a lilting sing-along, while Sparklehorse and the Flaming Lips add new dimensions to the ballad “Go” but keep the simple directive intact: “Go go go go go you restless soul/You’re gonna find love.” Many artists, most notably Clem Snide, TV on the Radio, Vic Chesnutt, and even Guster, excavate the melodies from the originals’ muddy production and arrange them to sound like their own.
Only a few tracks sound ill-considered: Calvin Johnston covers the self-aware “Sorry Entertainer” with a big, knowing wink, Death Cab for Cutie make “Dream Scream” deadly dull, and E of Eels can’t manage to wipe that smirk off his face on “Living Life.” Regardless of such missteps, which are almost obligatory for any tribute, The Late Great Daniel Johnston is the most accessible and arguably the best collection of the singer’s simple, amiable, unassuming songs. — Stephen Deusner
Grade: B+
The husband-and-wife duo of Val and Mike Joyner, also known as Bella Sun, have been a local fixture for a few years now, performing at Midtown bars and coffee shops such as Java Cabana and Sip. With Val’s scratchy, earthy, idiosyncratic vocals matched up with Mike’s active, soulful acoustic-guitar accompaniment, the duo has a distinctive sound. But that successful sonic strategy gets a boost on No Crystal Stair, a debut album the couple will celebrate this week with a record-release party at the Hi-Tone Café. Recorded with a fuller band sound, No Crystal Stair embellishes the duo’s vocal-and-guitar foundation with punchy horns, Latin drums, wistful cello, bluesy electric leads, and sighing organ.
The result is a mix of funk and folk and rock and soul that never sounds less than natural. The music evokes contemporary acts from Erykah Badu to Tracy Chapman, but it also has some of the organic spirit of early Seventies post-hippie acts such as Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell.
Bella Sun will celebrate No Crystal Stair Friday, November 12th, at the Hi-Tone Café. Another local original, Ron Franklin, will open the show.
Another interesting duo, punk-blues tag-team Mr. Airplane Man, whose locally recorded C’Mon DJ is one of the year’s best Memphis albums, will play the Buccaneer Lounge Friday, November 12th.
— Chris Herrington
Somebody needs to hang a special medal around the necks of those rowdy boys in Chapel Hill’s Two Dollar Pistols, a band that fuses the rocking spirit of Faron Young with the lean honky-tonk sounds of Earnest Tubb. For the past eight years, they have clung to tradition, ignoring all progressive trends in alt-country without ever seeming like they were living in retro-world. But most important, the Pistols, whose critical acclaim exceeds their record sales, introduced America to Tift Merritt, one of the purest, most precise voices to roll down the Hillbilly Highway since Emmylou Harris joined the Flying Burrito Brothers. The 1999 release Two Dollar Pistols and Tift Merritt is a seven-song EP filled with beautifully executed tearjerkers and an absolute must-have for fans of classic country music. It showcased Merritt’s natural twang and her ability to shift gears from gutsy to gorgeous, and it earned her a lot more attention than the Pistols have ever gotten on their own. Since then, Merritt has gone mainstream, and with every new release, she moves further and further away from the high-and-lonesome, mixing elements of Memphis soul and classic rock with beautiful melodies that can only be described as lullabies.
Merritt plays the Hi-Tone Café on Sunday, November 14th, with Split Lip Rayfield, a hit-and-miss bluegrass band that’s been described as, “equal parts Carter Family and American Chopper.” Their four-part harmonies are wonderful, and their arrangements for banjo, mandolin, and guitar should appeal equally to metal heads and bluegrassaholics. Unfortunately, their self-consciously clever lyrics tend to be of the “outside the trailer park looking in” variety and that’s too bad, because these guys have too much talent to be relegated to the ghetto of novelty acts. — Chris Davis
M iles Copeland, brother of the Police drummer Stuart Copeland, has lived a life most folks would consider positively surreal. His father was an American spy and his mother was a British spy during World War II. He spent the first 20 years of his life moving back and forth between America, Great Britain, and the Middle East. He started his career as a music promoter during psychedelia’s last hurrah in the early 1970s but distinguished himself pushing punk rock and new-wave music. In the 1980s, he founded IRS records and hit it big again promoting a bubblegum punk act called the Go-Go’s. Now, as unlikely as it seems, Copeland is promoting the Bellydance Superstars, a Riverdance-inspired stage show featuring Middle-Eastern music and miles and miles of undulating tummies.
Flyer: Before we start talking about belly dancing and Middle-Eastern music, I have to know what it was like growing up in a family of spies during the Cold War?
Miles Copeland: Back in those days, the spies were all friends. My father knew the Russian agent, and the Russian agent knew my father. It’s not like what you see in the James Bond movies. [All the spies] related to each other because they had the same job. They were just working for different governments with different agendas, and since foreign policy reflects domestic policy, there was a lot of stupidity on both sides. It wasn’t as “us vs. them” to the degree that one imagined.
And now the obvious question: How does someone known for promoting acts like Sting and the Police, the Sex Pistols, and the Go-Go’s end up pushing Middle-Eastern music and belly dance?
Well, it’s not so strange really. Rock-and-roll has always sought new influences and absorbed the sounds of other cultures. It all started with white folks getting into black music in Memphis. Elvis’ music was cross-cultural. Now rap artists sample Arabic music. Rock-and-roll’s just a big sponge soaking up everything it can. It’s always looking for a new vibe or a fresh inspiration. The Police, for example, brought punk energy to a pop sensibility and added elements of reggae. Why reggae? Because there was a vibrant Jamaican culture in England, and so English musicians naturally ripped off bits and pieces.
Did you develop an affinity for Arabic music while you were living in the Middle East as a kid?
I grew up with Arabic music playing on the radio, but when I went to buy records, I was buying Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and the Doors. But I do think it made me more interested in Arabic music.
You started promoting more world music after the success of Sting’s Desert Rose album. How did you move from focusing on world music and world-music hybrids to promoting a belly-dance revue?
I had to ask myself, How the hell do I promote Arabic music to Americans? The answer was to spice it up: to bring in belly dancers. Whenever Michael Jackson or Madonna put a show together, there are always lots of dancers involved, right? Well, once the dancers were involved I saw the music differently. Immediately I thought of Riverdance. That’s an example of a small world-music thing transcending ethnicity and going mainstream.
Are Americans — who don’t seem particularly inclined to embrace Middle-Eastern culture these days — lining up to see the show?
What I discovered was that belly dance is a phenomenon among American women. It’s become a way for them to celebrate their femininity, and it’s also a health-related activity.
It turns out that 90 percent of the belly-dance paraphernalia in the world is sold in America. In fact, it’s almost an American form now. It’s sort of like how the Beatles adapted American musical styles, regurgitated them, and sold them back to the world. That’s what’s happening with belly dance in America.
And I’m guessing that’s why you’ve also developed a line of belly-dance costumes and supplies.
The U.S. has the best belly-dance teachers and dancers in the world, but it’s under the radar and a little amateurish. The best a dancer can hope for is doing one big show a year and dancing in restaurants. My aim was to make a high-end product to help expand the form.
Have you felt comfortable moving from rock-and-roll to wiggle-and-jiggle?
[Gaining credibility] was my first job because I could just hear people saying, “God, Miles is doing belly dance, and he’s going to pervert the art. He’s only looking for pretty girls.” Yes, we have a requirement that all of our girls look good, but that’s a secondary consideration. The first consideration: Are these the best dancers we can find?
So when [British punk impresario] Malcolm McLaren was throwing you out of his office for actually getting live gigs for his bands, did you ever once think, Hmmm, maybe I should consider belly dance?
If somebody had told me two-and-a-half years ago that my life would be immersed in belly dancing I’d have said, Whaaaaaaa? But now it all seems perfectly natural. n
The Bellydance Superstars take the stage at the New Daisy Theatre on Beale Street on Friday, November 12th, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door.