Month: March 2005

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Peace Team

To the Editor:

The Memphis Peace Team would have more usefully spent their time in the Palestinian territories (The Fly-by, February 24th issue) carrying their message of peace to Hamas and the Al Aqsa Brigades while watching them build suicide bomber belts to strap on teens, rather than “overseeing” Israeli checkpoints. But I guess that would have taken some courage, to confront murderers instead of meeting farmers. The best part of the story, though, was the complaint about “mainstream American media,” whatever that is. It could have been a whine from Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. I guess the Peace Team watches Al-Jazeera for fair and balanced news.

Barry Chase

Memphis

New Restaurant!

To the Editor:

It has been rumored that state senator John Ford and Mayor Willie Herenton are opening a new Mexican restaurant on Beale Street. It’s going to be called “NACHO DADDY.”

Joe Mercer

Memphis

Social Security

To the Editor:

There’s been a lot of talk recently about Social Security. The system is there for insurance, not investment. So if everything else goes to hell in a hand basket, Social Security is still there to keep us from being destitute in retirement. It is recommended by those who want to radically change the system that investing in the stock market is the way to go, but the Dow Jones industrial average has been as low as 41 during the Hoover years to as high as 11,722 during the Clinton presidency. When George H.W. Bush left office, it was at 3,306.

The stock market is anything but a sure bet for your life savings. And for many, SSI-disability is their only income. Instead of scrapping what we have, let’s decide how we are going to strengthen Social Security.

Jim Deaton

Memphis

Tort Reform?

To the Editor:

In response to the February 24th letter titled “Tort Reform,” organized medicine must vehemently disagree with Ms. Burney’s viewpoint. Medical-liability reform is about the continued access to quality medical care and the lowering of health-care costs by encouraging physicians to practice careful and prudent, but not defensive, medicine.

Medical-liability premiums in our area have risen an average of 84 percent over the past five years. Many local doctors are choosing to discontinue performing risky procedures, while other doctors are retiring early. When these important procedures are not readily available or when these doctors are gone, citizens of Memphis will lose their access to care.

Consider the following facts: 100 percent of Tennessee’s cardiac surgeons have been sued; 90 percent of Tennessee’s obstetricians have been sued; 67 percent of all Tennessee doctors have been sued. Yet, less than 1 percent of all malpractice suits result in trial victories for plaintiffs. Are two-thirds of all doctors practicing in Tennessee committing malpractice? No.

Medicare’s reimbursement formula will result in a 31 percent decrease in payments to physicians over the next seven years. I don’t know of any business that could have a long-term plan when faced with such a decline in revenues. TennCare changes will result in over 300,000 uninsured citizens statewide and approximately 15,000 to 30,000 uninsured citizens locally.

Such a perspective is grossly misguided and detrimental to the citizens of the state of Tennessee. Medical-liability reform will benefit patients, as well as the practice of medicine. It will ensure that the quality of care is maintained and that we do not become the next crisis state.

Wiley T. Robinson, M.D.

President, Memphis Medical Society

Hypocrites on Abortion

To the Editor:

I am no longer surprised by what hypocrites the conservatives of this country have become. When it comes to abortion, most Republicans and conservatives say they want to end it. However, President Bush is doing everything in his power to drive more women to have abortions.

The number-one reason given by women for having an abortion is that they fear they cannot support a child financially. So what have Bush and the Republican Party offered: cuts in Medicare, food stamps, and job training.

Another slap in the face is the fact that the Tennessee Senate is working to prevent gays from adopting any of the 9,853 children under the state’s custody. Apparently, it is better that the taxpayers pay for these unwanted children than for them to be put into loving homes. I guess this is the “compassionate” conservatism we’ve been hearing about.

Aaron Prather

Cordova

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Ford Stalled

Will he or won’t he? Up until the last week or so, the question of a 2006 U.S. Senate race by 9th District U.S. representative Harold Ford Jr. had seemed a done deal, and a formal announcement had been expected by the end of February. But the ever-fermenting controversy involving the congressman’s uncle, state senator John Ford, has put the whole matter on hold, and pressures — some subtle, some not so subtle — have begun to mount against Ford’s making the race.

For one thing, sentiment has begun to change within the close-knit group of Ford family members and advisers. “They’ve gone from 60-40 in favor a month ago to 60-40 against,” said a source familiar with behind-the-scenes developments. In particular, former congressman Harold Ford Sr., now living in Florida and working as a business/government consultant, is said to have developed serious doubts about the wisdom of his son’s running — at least in the current environment. Strategy talks among family members have focused on possible spillover from problems now swirling around John Ford.

The state senator’s difficulties originally stemmed from embarrassing disclosures about his multiple households in child-support hearings. These got national media attention and were joked about by Tonight Show host Jay Leno. Subsequently, questions were raised about the legitimacy of John Ford’s legal address. But the state senator’s situation became most grave when IRS filings in the child-support matter became public and revealed that a major component of his unexpectedly high income came from a financial relationship with a TennCare provider. The facts that Ford is a member of the General Assembly’s TennCare oversight committee and chairman of another committee which handles TennCare legislation quickly raised conflict-of-interest issues.

The Senate Ethics Committee, chaired by majority leader Ron Ramsey, a Republican, has stepped up its investigation of the various Ford matters — though public and media attention have figured larger than partisan motives. If anything, Ford’s senate colleagues, Democratic and Republican, have signaled that they will not be rushed to judgment and intend to give their colleague every due consideration. Legislative leaders in both parties confide that talk of criminal prosecution may be off the mark, considering that the statutes governing the TennCare matter are more likely to provide penalties for the company which hired Ford than for the senator himself.

None of that serves to reassure the camp of Representative Ford, which foresees the John Ford controversy as likely to garner serious media attention for some time to come. Accordingly, members of the congressman’s political circle — possibly without Representative Ford’s direct knowledge — have sounded out John Ford about the prospect of his cutting bait, even to the point of his resigning from the Senate or, if necessary, pursuing plea-bargaining arrangements with legal authorities. By nature, the independent-minded senator is inclined to resist such counsel — especially if he feels fortified by his Senate colleagues.

Hence, the nightmare prospect for Representative Ford that his potential Senate race would be endlessly connected in the public mind to open-ended media attention concerning his uncle’s notoriety.

The same thought has occurred to other Tennessee Democrats — notably Governor Phil Bredesen, who was quoted over the weekend as saying the publicity given John Ford’s problems “can’t possibly be helping” the congressman’s Senate ambitions. Said Bredesen, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press: “I feel very sorry for him, because it is something that is beyond his control and not something he has had a part in. … I think the publicity against John Ford is hurting Harold and frankly that bothers me.”

What may bother the governor, in particular, is the fact that, as a Democratic candidate for reelection, he will share the state ballot with his party’s Senate nominee. The only other declared Democratic candidate for the Senate is state senator Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville. Nashville mayor Bill Purcell had at one time considered a race and, some say, may again.

Even those corners of the media that have thus far taken a Ford Senate candidacy for granted are suddenly expressing doubts. The Lebanon Democrat‘s Clint Brewer, something of a Ford confidante, noted this week that “rank and file” Democrats had begun to wonder about a Ford candidacy and added, “Of course, Ford has never actually solidified his intentions to run.” And the Washington insiders’ publication The Hill recently wondered if “the growing controversy” over John Ford may have affected “the resonance of the Ford name statewide.”

The congressman himself was elaborating to the media on previous affirmations distinguishing (and distancing) himself from his uncle and insisting that he still intended to run. But Representative Ford told The Jackson Sun over the weekend that the race was “still a year away” and that, prior indications notwithstanding, he was in no hurry to announce.

n Successorss-in-waiting: Meanwhile, if Representative Ford does in fact make the Senate race, who’s in line to succeed him as the 9th District’s congressman?

Two potential candidates have recently expressed interest: Shelby County commissioner Joe Ford, the incumbent congressman’s uncle, and public relations man Ron Redwing, a former aide to Mayor Willie Herenton.

Commissioner Ford said Monday, “I’d be very interested in doing that. I’m [51], the right age to be considering it, and my experience as both city councilman and commissioner has prepared me for it.”

Redwing is being seriously touted by a number of friends in local Democratic and government circles. “I think I’ve shown a serious commitment to the community and want to use my skills and talent to extend my commitment to the people of the 9th District.” These two are but the harbingers of what could be quite a long list.

n Chairs in transit: Democratic chair Kathryn Bowers opened up the headquarters of her campaign for the state Senate on Saturday; and new Republican chair Bill Giannini got himself elected and installed on Sunday at the biennial Shelby County Republican convention.

Both Bowers and Giannini served notice as to the shape of their priorities.

State representative Bowers, speaking to supporters at her Elvis Presley Boulevard headquarters, promised to do everything in her power to forestall the TennCare cuts announced recently by Governor Bredesen but so far held up by judicial review. Two other candidates — Shelby County commissioner Michael Hooks and James Harvey — are competing in the forthcoming Democratic primary for the seat recently vacated by Roscoe Dixon, now an aide to county mayor A C Wharton. Four Republicans — Mary Lynn Flood, Jason Hernandez, Mary Ann McNeil, and Barry Sterling — also seek the seat.

Giannini, elected by acclamation at White Station High School, looked ahead to the 2006 countywide elections and even further — lamenting the upward curve of latest property reassessment and thereby targeting county assessor Rita Clark, a Democrat reelected only last year and not up again until 2008.

n The GOP backstory: Though the new Republican chairman, unlike his last several predecessors, avoided a direct challenge, it was a near thing. Giannini, a relative unknown in local Republican ranks, had opposition from GOP conservatives — whose candidate, Terry Roland, finally accepted a place on Giannini’s ticket — and the party establishment, which tried unsuccessfully to recruit Germantown lawyer Kevin Snider to run against him.

n Hooks back in: Though Bowers escaped one potential opponent when House colleague Joe Towns was declared ineligible for failure to pay past fines assessed by the state Election Registry, she saw another one, Shelby County Commission chairman Michael Hooks, reinstated.

After listening to testimony from lawyers for both Hooks and the state of Tennessee, Chancellor Arnold Goldin ruled in Hooks’ favor and ordered Hooks reinstated as a candidate. Goldin thereby struck down a prior adverse ruling against Hooks by the state Election Registry and state Election Commissioner Brook Thompson, who had declared the Shelby County Commission chairman ineligible to run for the Senate seat because Hooks had not met financial-disclosure deadlines.

Reviewing a record that showed historic inconsistency between enforcement actions and deadline requirements of state and local election officials, Goldin said it would be “fundamentally unfair” and “difficult to justify” disallowing Hooks’ candidacy for the District 33 seat.

Expressing gratitude at the decision, Hooks said of the state officials who originally ruled against him: “They don’t have a hard-on for Michael Hooks. They’re just interpreting the law and trying to do their job. I think the judge did the right thing to let the people decide who they want to be their state senator. It won’t be determined by nit-picking or hag-nagging. It’ll be on the issues.”

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Bonus Army Lesson

The phrase “support our troops,” in popular political language, has become the rallying cry for those who supported the preventive war launched on Iraq — a country that posed no threat to America and has since been turned into a greenhouse for the cultivation of terrorists.

From a marketing standpoint, the phrase is an ingenious antidote to the so-called Vietnam War syndrome — a pseudopsychological remnant of America’s exit from the Vietnam War, tail between legs, because its citizens couldn’t stomach the needless death of thousands of its young.

The Vietnam War syndrome gave rise to the Powell doctrine, named after retired general and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose experience in Vietnam convinced him that when America goes to war it should do so with overwhelming force.

Though Powell was supposedly the voice of restraint in George W. Bush’s first administration, even those within the inner circle who disagreed with Powell bought into his war doctrine, as was evidenced by the “shock and awe” campaign that initiated the Iraq war.

It’s not that soldiers don’t deserve our support. They do, namely because good soldiers are the embodiment of courage, willing to risk their lives in the name of national defense.

Even Gandhi appreciated true warriors. “My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected,” he wrote. “Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice. I can no more preach nonviolence to a coward than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes. … As a coward, which I was for years, I harbored violence. I began to prize nonviolence only when I began to shed cowardice.”

Using this logic, soldiers, by and large, are closer to appreciating nonviolence than the majority of those in the peace movement.

So yes, we should “support our troops.” But it doesn’t logically follow that such a sentiment means supporting the policies that put troops in harm’s way uneccessarily. Unfortunately, many of the president’s supporters have somehow been convinced that public criticism of the policies dreamed up by privileged people in secure, plush offices is tantamount to not supporting the troops.

So how are troops really supported? For an excellent historical reminder that soldiers are supported by organized action outside of the political process, get a copy of The Bonus Army: An American Epic authored by Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen.

The Bonus Army tells the story of how the GI Bill came to be. In the summer of 1932, 45,000 World War I vets marched on Washington demanding bonus pay promised them before the war. But a bill that would have allayed their grievance was defeated in the Senate after it passed the House.

Fearing the racial implications of an integrated “bonus army” erroneously believed to be controlled by communists, President Herbert Hoover, Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, and others decided that the protesting soldiers had to be removed from Washington by force. And they were, with tanks, tear gas, and bayonet-tipped rifles.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt seized the moment and used the issue to help propel him to the White House. In the book’s prologue, the authors discuss how they set out to answer a question raised in a 1994 thesis paper. “‘Why,’ [it was] asked, ‘had historians seen the Bonus March as an insignificant event?'”

Following that lead, the authors “discovered an odyssey that began in Portland in 1932, wove through the Great Depression and into World War II, and returned finally to Washington, where in June 1944 FDR signed into law the GI Bill.”

Because of the GI Bill, the book notes, the doors of colleges and universities were blown open for the middle and lower classes. The number of college grads more than doubled between 1940 and 1950.

By the cutoff date of July 25, 1956, 2,232,000 vets had enrolled in college using the GI Bill. Their educations produced 450,000 engineers, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 22,000 dentists, and more than a million other college-trained men and women.

In addition, 11 million homes were financed by GI Bill loans in the 1950s. The economic and social impact on American society was staggering. You might mention these facts the next time a neocon starts ranting how government programs only make things worse.

“The enduring legacy of the Bonus Army,” write Dickson and Allen, “goes well beyond the GI Bill. … [They] taught an American lesson to those who fretted over revolution: If you have a grievance, take it to Washington, and if you want to be heard, bring a lot of people with you.”

In other words, supporting our troops means more than writing letters to soldiers, putting a flag sticker on your SUV, and tying a yellow ribbon around your old oak tree.

As you read these words, there are veterans in VA hospitals paying for their own meals while the president’s budget, among other things, would more than double the co-payment charged to veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year to use government health care.

Why? To pay war bills while giving disproportionate tax cuts to those who least need it. That’s how this administration is supporting our troops.

Sean Gonsalves is a syndicated columnist and a staff reporter for the Cape Cod Times.

Categories
Music Music Features

On the Road Again

Austin’s South By Southwest Music Festival might be the biggest and best annual musical gathering in the country. But even if you don’t have the time or inclination to make the daylong drive, brave the crowds, and spend the dough to do SXSW yourself, Memphis’ proximity to Austin yields a chance for local music fans to sample the festival every March, because bands make pit-stops in the Bluff City on their way to or from Austin.

The number of SXSW-related shows hitting town this month is down a little from last year (as are the number of Memphis bands heading to Austin, from 10 last year to four, officially, this year: Lucero, Bloodthirsty Lovers, Retrospect, and Epoch of Unlight). But the dynamic still spurs a richer, deeper club schedule than at any other time of the year, and the following cheat-sheet doesn’t even include SXSW bands with Memphis stops scheduled for later in the spring (Hella, Mosquitoes, Golden Republic, Dead Meadow) or late additions sure to pop up after press time.

Thursday, March 10th

Melissa Ferrick (with Garrison Starr)

Hi-Tone Café

Ferrick and former Memphian Starr both broke out during the alt-rock/Lilith Fair boom of the mid-’90s and have kept on touring and putting out records long after major labels determined that left-of-center women were the absolute last thing they were interested in.

Saturday, March 12th

Taylor Hollandsworth

(with Harsh Krieger and

40 Watt Moon)

Young Avenue Deli

On his debut EP Shoot Me Shoot Me Heaven, this Birmingham, Alabama, rocker offers a more than credible take on the bluesy, swaggering, post-Stones punk-blues of bands such as the New York Dolls and the Heartbreakers.

Luke Temple

Hi-Tone Café

This uber-talented Seattle singer-songwriter drops his debut album, the Beatlesque Hold a Match for a Gasoline World, next month. With his novel arrangements, precise singing, and smart songwriting, Temple could be on the verge of something big.

Sunday, March 13th

Tristeza and Nora O’Connor

Hi-Tone Café

This is an odd pairing: an indie rock quintet (San Diego’s Tristeza) that specializes in moody instrumentals and a veteran alt-country siren (O’Connor) with the vocal chops to go mainstream. A former member of the Blacks and Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire and a recently ubiquitous background singer, O’Connor’s torch-song-y country is every bit the rival of similar but more heralded artists such as Alison Moorer and Mindy Smith.

Wednesday, March 16th

The Reputation

(with I Can Lick Any Son of a Bitch in the House)

Young Avenue Deli

Elizabeth Elmore’s college band, Sarge, was one of my faves: a nifty little pop-punk answer to the sharp-fanged, male-centered relationship analysis of early Elvis Costello or a less grandstanding alternative to Exile in Guyville. Elmore’s lyrics are only slightly less distinct in her grad-school band, the Reputation, but she still rocks out with a surly Chrissie Hynde flair.

Thursday, March 17th

Son Volt and Anders Parker

Newby’s

Over the past decade, Jay Farrar’s solo career has drifted into irrelevance with each passing year as his onetime Uncle Tupelo sidekick Jeff Tweedy has turned Wilco into one of America’s biggest bands. Maybe that’s why Farrar is touring under the name of his post-Tupelo band, Son Volt, even though the “band” contains no other original members. Son Volt, second edition, has a new album out in September, with the original lineup celebrated this spring in a live record from New West and a retrospective sampler on Rhino. But regardless whom he’s playing with, one imagines that Farrar’s deep, rich voice remains a powerful weapon. Parker, the driving force behind alt-country-connected Varnaline, opens the show in Memphis and got an assist from Farrar on his latest solo record, Tell It to the Dust.

Friday, March 18th

The Apes (with Vending Machine and the Klopeks)

Young Avenue Deli

This Washington, D.C.-based quartet, which eschews guitar in favor of an organ-driven hard-rock/garage style, has made Memphis a regular stop on their trips to Austin over the past couple of years. This spring, they’ll be playing a showcase for their new label, Birdman Records, which will be releasing a new full-length, Baba’s Mountain, next month.

Zombi (with Simon and SonsofBitches)

Hi-Tone Café

This could well be the sleeper show of the month. The instrumental duo from Pittsburgh builds horror-movie soundtrack music (they may share a hometown with director George Romero, but their music evokes Italian scare-master Dario Argento) from a battalion of keyboards, synthesizers, and drums. Watching them re-create the sound live should be quite a sight.

Sunday, March 20th

The Bloodthirsty Lovers (with Noise Choir)

Young Avenue Deli

This longtime “solo” project from ex-Grifter Dave Shouse is now a collaboration with ex-Big Ass Truck guitarist Steve Selvidge. Rounded out as a live band by a New York-based rhythm section, this ostensibly “local” band doesn’t play around town much at all. In fact, this will be the first local appearance since the late 2004 release of their album The Delicate Seam.

Monday, March 21st

Enon and Swearing at Motorists (with Circuit Benders and Color Cast)

Hi-Tone Café

Five years ago, Enon’s debut, Believo!, sounded like a totally original brand of industrial dance-pop: Philly soul as performed by robotic droids or something Prince might concoct if cryogenically frozen and thawed out during some future dystopia. I’d lost track of the band since then, but the new Lost Marbles and Exploded Evidence, which sounds totally different and yet oddly the same, brought my old appreciation back in a familiar rush: disco-funk baselines bouncing off girl-group vocals, straightforward songcraft blended with car-factory percussion, a new spin on indie-rock trip-hop. Ohio’s Swearing at Motorists proffer a more earthbound strand of lo-fi indie rock.

Guitar Wolf and Fantasy’s Core

(with the Secret Service)

Young Avenue Deli

A week packed with Japanese bands begins with Tokyo’s loudest, fastest punk-rockers, who boast more than a couple of connections to Memphis’ own garage-punk and trash-culture scenes. They bring with them Nagasaki’s Fantasy’s Core, a bunch of yakuza-movie enthusiasts who operate under the slogan “Eccentricity & Chaos & Eros & Humor Rock’n’Roll!!”

Wednesday, March 23rd

DMBQ and The Immortal Lee County Killers (with the Oscars)

Young Avenue Deli

These labelmates on garage-rock-oriented Estrus Records promise perhaps the loudest show of the month. DMBQ is a psychedelic Japanese rock band featuring members of Shonen Knife and Damo Suzuki. They’ve been around since the late ’80s and attack with a sound that submerges screaming Hendrixian guitar solos and triple-time Bo Diddley beats in art noise. Not as out-there as countrymen the Boredoms but definitely in the ballpark. Southern boys the Immortal Lee County Killers aren’t from these parts, but their heavily blues-based garage-punk fits neatly into one of Memphis’ most fruitful sounds over the past decade.

Electric Eel Shock (with The Thieves)

Hi-Tone Café

This Japanese punk trio has a domestic full-length out this month called Go USA!. The same album apparently did pretty well in Europe, where it was released with a different title: Go Europe!. If that amuses you, as it does me, and you like basic, noisy punk rock, then this is for you.

Thursday, March 24th

Clem Snide and The Marbles

Hi-Tone Café

Though not as flashy as some of the louder bills on the calendar, this might be the best show of the month. Recently relocated from Brooklyn to Nashville, Clem Snide marries elegantly arranged but never-too-neat acoustic-based rock to one of the most compelling and distinct songwriting personalities you’ll ever hear. Band bard Eef Barzelay walks a tightrope between empathy and sarcasm, sans net, on nearly every line of every song. (Barzelay to a sensitive young thing who thinks his pain is unique: “The first thing every killer reads is Catcher in the Rye.”) He’s back in vintage form on the band’s new The End of Love after the relatively straightforward sincerity of the underrated Soft Spot. Unlike most low-key, lyric-focused bands, Clem Snide delivers live, especially with their penchant for inspired, totally straight-faced covers (on their last two visits: Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” and P.Diddy’s “Bad Boy for Life”). Opening act Marbles is actually Apples in Stereo founder Robert Schneider gone solo, trading that band’s ’60s-style rock for a more ’80s blend of synth-pop but with the same supernatural skill for melodies and hooks.

Cephallic Carnage

Full Moon Club

This Denver metal band records for stalwart Relapse Records, which means they’re more likely to spin your head around with ear-splitting riffs and avant-garde sounds than get high with your girlfriend backstage after the show. Not that the Full Moon Club has a backstage.

Saturday, April 2nd

Heartless Bastards (opening for

The Drive-By Truckers)

New Daisy

Okay, let’s get this out of the way first: Regardless of what you may read elsewhere, Heartless Bastards singer Erika Wennerstrom doesn’t sound like Janis Joplin, not even when she really belts it out, as on “Runnin'” from her band’s recently released Fat Possum debut, Stairs and Elevators. Joplin was a force of nature. But you can see where the comparison comes from, because this Cincinnati band plays a brand of blues-rock you might have heard at the Filmore West back in ’67. Yet, there’s something more agreeably modest about Heartless Bastards than any other good blues-rock band I can think of. Chalk it up to Wennerstrom’s honest, matter-of-fact songwriting, which is often inspirational without ever striving for that effect. I can’t vouch for the band live, but Stairs and Elevators is one of my favorite records of this young year, and you can always head down for the headliners: The Truckers are one of the best live bands on the planet and now boast the best trio of songwriters in one rock-and-roll band since, I dunno, the Beatles?

Categories
Music Music Features

Local beat

Last December, I pegged guitarist Ron Franklin‘s group, The Entertainers, as one of the best bands of 2004. Their self-released album, 50,000 Watts of Heavenly Joy, was an edgy concoction of roots rock-and-soul that, in my book, deserved a listen alongside more popular local releases such as Harlan T. Bobo’s Too Much Love and the Reigning Sound’s Too Much Guitar. Now, I’m happy to report, Franklin’s latest project, The Natural Kicks, have just released a 10-song album that’s an early contender for best local release of 2005.

“The alternate tunings I use with the Entertainers caused me to bleed every day,” jokes Franklin, “so I started the Natural Kicks as a cop-out.” Explaining that he laid the groundwork for the group early last year, when he was living in Amsterdam, he adds, “I stole the band name from Ray Charles’ ‘It Should’ve Been Me.'”

“I started remembering all these songs that dated back to when I was just a kid learning to play guitar,” Franklin says. “Stuff like the Kinks’ ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’ and a Motown song called ‘Leavin’ Here,’ which I first heard on a Who record. For some reason, I had Jack Yarber‘s drumming style in my head.”

Upon his return to Memphis, Franklin recruited Yarber and bassist Ilene Markell. Armed with a handful of covers — including Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” and Huey “Piano” Smith’s “Talk to Me” — and five original tunes, he booked a recording date for the trio at Willie Mitchell‘s famed Royal Studio.

“It’s my favorite place in the world,” Franklin proclaims. “I couldn’t see recording these songs anywhere but Pop’s place. The vibe in there is very distinctive.”

The Natural Kicks’ album, pressed on Franklin’s own Miz Kafrin Projects label and distributed by Pennsylvania’s Get Hip Records, is a vinyl-only release. “Comparing the sound quality of CDs to vinyl, there’s a dramatic difference,” says Franklin, an avowed analog fan. “It’s like looking at a Xerox of a Van Gogh painting and then seeing the actual oil on canvas. People don’t mind shelling out a few bucks for a vinyl album, but who wants to buy a CD when you can burn one?”

Franklin has more projects planned for 2005, including a documentary film starring Monsieur Jeffrey Evans called The Man Who Loved Couch Dancing and a vinyl release of the film soundtrack, which includes cuts from Evans, Tim Prudhomme, occasional Entertainer Alicja Trout, and Detroit garage god Mick Collins.

This Saturday night, the Natural Kicks are hosting a record-release party at the Young Avenue Deli with Prudhomme’s Half Staff. For more information, go to MizKafrin.com.

“I just sat in with the Natural Kicks once or twice, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting in on a recording session,” Jack Yarber says with a laugh. “I like Ron’s songs. We can do some country-type rhythms, then switch to fast ’60s garage or Bo Diddley-esque rhythms. Playing drums like that is a workout and a challenge.”

Yarber’s own band, The Tearjerkers, are celebrating a record release of their own: Their sophomore album, Don’t Throw Your Love Away, came out this month on stalwart indie label Sympathy for the Record Industry. The songs were culled from sessions at Bruce Watson‘s Money Shot studio in Water Valley, Mississippi, and at Jimbo Mathus‘ Delta Recording Service in Clarksdale.

But the Tearjerkers have undergone a lineup change since the album was recorded: Guitarist John Whittemore has taken a leave of absence, leaving Mathus to fill in. More recently, Mr. Airplane Man‘s Margaret Garrett joined the group.

“Margaret sings a lot of leads, which makes it easier on me,” Yarber says. “She’s gotten everybody excited about the band again. We’ve come up with a bunch of new songs, and we’ve already recorded some at Scott Bomar‘s Tri-State Studio.”

In April, the Tearjerkers are headed to London along with dozens of Memphis musicians — including Booker T. & the MGs, The Hi Rhythm Section, Jim Dickinson, Tav Falco, The North Mississippi Allstars, and The Bo-Keys — for the It Came From Memphis Festival, curated by local author Robert Gordon.

E-mail: localbeat@memphisflyer.com

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Categories
Opinion

London Calling

Say you’re traveling about town the first week of May, and you come across an offer on the street for a free CD. No strings attached. It’s yours for the taking. You could even be in on the making, because the CD will be part of a public-art project by Anita McKeown and she’s asking right now for inspiration.

The idea is this: Memphis, Tennessee, in sonic form. Not its well-documented music, but its “found sounds,” the everyday, overheard, and overlooked noises, major and minor, that generate the city’s rhythms. It could be the sound inside a laundromat. It could be the sound of a bus stopping and starting. And, as a contributor, you could be anybody — a doctor, a construction worker, a lawyer, a musician or artist even. Send your sound ideas, along with information on where to find them, to anita@memphis45s.com. The mailbox is open. She’s ready to read.

Then she’ll be recording, sampling, manipulating, and producing 3,000 limited-edition audio CDs that she’s planning to make available in time for the Beale Street Music Festival and throughout Memphis In May, which this year is saluting Ireland, which also happens to be McKeown’s native country.

“I’m interested in the idiosyncratic, day-to-day sounds in your life, the sounds you hardly notice,” the artist said recently by phone from London, where she makes her home. “And maybe, in the process, people will begin to think, God, I never really gave it any thought.

“This is my motivation: to provoke, in a nice way, something new, even if it’s just a thought, and something different, especially in a city that’s already culturally loaded in relation to music. It’s all about reconsidering the mundane. How even the everyday can be a rich source of material and ideas.

“What is the sonic landscape of Memphis today? It can’t be only blues, soul, and rock-and-roll. No city is that non-multidimensional. The answer is going to be different for different people, and I want there to be a potential for dialogue — that’s what I’m interested in. Of course, it’s going to be mediated by me, by what’s happening inside my own, for want of a better word, psyche.

“The CD — seven three-minute versions in all [inspired by the three-minute classic 45 pop single] and available at seven “listening posts” [locations to be determined] — may be quite abstract. It may even be quite uncomfortable to listen to. But it’s an artwork. And it’s a giveaway.”

It will also be just one element in a multipart project McKeown is calling “Memphis 45s”: a site-specific DVD in May to be projected in a public space (yet to be determined); a Web page with all source material freely available, including an ongoing virtual gallery; and future plans to expand the project. A Bravo Award by First Tennessee Bank is funding the project.

How McKeown, an artist with a major interest in public art and community participation, found herself in Memphis in the fall of last year is a story in itself. She’d traveled the United States before but never the South. So when the UrbanArt Commission and the Memphis College of Art agreed to a research residency in 2004, McKeown booked her flight. Without a car but with eyes and ears open, McKeown fell for the city in ways that came as a surprise, a pleasant surprise. (Added surprise: The artist grew up a few miles from the ancestral home of Andrew Jackson, one of the city’s founders.)

“I felt at home in Memphis,” McKeown said. “More at home than I’ve ever felt in the 15 years I’ve lived in London. I mean, the way people in Memphis interacted, the open, friendly atmosphere. I’d walk down the street, and people actually said hello! I thought, It’s easy for me here.”

It wasn’t necessarily easy for the Irish in 19th-century Memphis, however, a history McKeown wants to continue to explore. Nor for race relations in Memphis then or necessarily now, an issue she’s particularly attuned to having grown up in a divided Ireland. Even her London neighborhood is in some ways a mirror image of Memphis: Deptford, in South London, is near the Thames and has a history of river trade. According to McKeown, it’s also one of the most ethnically diverse areas of Europe, the site of some 15 spoken languages, which may have Memphis beat, given Deptford’s compact size. As for the “soundscape,” does Memphis compare?

Anita McKeown is listening. In May, we shall see — and hear.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

For Keeps

When I was a kid, my mother spent days in the late summer turning our garden’s fresh fruit into preserves. I remember a pantry that held mismatched glass jars filled with strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry preserves. Mom never bought any canning equipment or containers. Instead, she re-used empty pickle and mayonnaise jars, which she decorated with little square labels listing the content and date.

Modern-day home canners would surely shake their heads over Mom’s methods, which she applies to this day. For them, part of the success of preserving foods lies in the jar, in particular the mason jar. The mason jar is sturdier than most commercial jars and is better suited for preserving safely.

The mason jar was invented out of necessity. There were no refrigerators, no quick-stop corner stores. Food had to keep through long winters. It was preserved by pickling, drying, and smoking. For storage, early families used earthenware jugs sealed with corks, plugs, or parchment and tin containers that had to be soldered for sealing.

It was war that eventually led to the discovery of a new way to preserve food. Napoleon offered 10,000 francs to the person who could deliver nourishing food to his soldiers. Nicholas Appert, a French chef, won Napoleon’s challenge by preserving food hermetically using jars sealed with pitch.

Then a small revolution in home canning took place in the mid-1850s, when John L. Mason, a 26-year-old tinsmith from New York City, filed a patent for a reusable glass jar — the mason jar. What was special about Mason’s jar was its seal. The neck of the glass container was threaded so the top could screw on. The screw-on top plus a zinc lid with a rubber ring provided a tight seal.

Others had tried to improve seal mechanisms before Mason. A wax-sealed tin can eliminated soldering but didn’t do much to improve the food’s quality. (The acids in the foods tended to react with the metal and made the food inedible.) In addition, it did not make preserving foods more affordable because the cans were limited to one-time use. Things changed once glass jars, which were first sealed with a tin lid and wax, became common. Those jars, called the all-glass wax sealer cement jar (wax was commonly referred to as cement) or “standard” fruit jar, remained popular even after Mason’s invention.

Mason sold several of his early patents to Lewis Boyd and his Sheet Metal Screw Company. Boyd, who is most famous for inventing a white “milk glass insert” for zinc screw lids which reduced the risk of food and metal reacting in a non-tasty way, produced the mason jar for many decades, even after Mason’s patent had expired.

Mason’s jar made life during his time much easier. A family’s survival depended on the availability of food. Reusable glass jars made preserving food affordable and the tight-sealing lid was one step to guarantee that food could be eaten even months after it was preserved.

Today, old canning jars are collectors items. (eBay lists close to 1,000 items under the term “mason jar,” which cost from a penny to $700.) Grocery-store aisles are packed with commercially preserved foods, and home canning has become a hobby. Mason jar is now a generic term for any home-canning glass jar, some of which still use the basic sealing mechanism patented by Mason on November 30, 1858.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

FOOD NEWS

Back in 1999, when Aimer Shtaya was preparing to open his restaurant on Echles Street near the University of Memphis (now the site of Azalea Grill), he chose a name, the Morocco Cafe. The name reflected the restaurant’s Mediterranean/Middle Eastern cuisine — falafel, hummus, roasted meats — plus, Morocco was that year’s Memphis in May honored country. But just before he was scheduled to open, Shtaya saw the Humphrey Bogart/Ingrid Bergman classic, Casablanca, and he changed his mind. Forget Morocco Cafe. His place would be called Casablanca. But it was too late. The restaurant’s sign reading “Morocco Cafe” was being made, as were the menus and banners and everything else. So that was that.

But now that is this: Casablanca, Shtaya’s new restaurant located at 2156 Young (725-8558) behind Dish at the Cooper-Young intersection. The menu’s the same as it was at Morocco Cafe, but the decor more closely reflects the movie that inspired Shtaya. The colors are deeper, and there are stills from the film on the walls.

After the Morocco Cafe closed in 2003, Shtaya traveled and took care of some personal business. He became restless, however, and he missed his customers. He picked the Cooper-Young location because of the other restaurants in the area, such as Do, Dish, Blue Fish, etc., and because most of Morocco Cafe’s customers came from Midtown.

Shtaya has put tremendous work into the restaurant. He had to build his own parking lot behind the building in order to get a business license. He also built the kitchen from scratch.

Casablanca is due to open sometime this week. The hours will be from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on weekdays and until 10:30 p.m. on weekends.

Speaking of renovating, the folks with Dan McGuinness Pub are busily turning what used to be Patrick’s (in the East Memphis shopping center on Spottswood off Perkins Extended) into an Irish-style pub. The goal is to be open before St. Patrick’s Day.

Dan McGuinness is once again using Guinness’ “Irish Pub Concept” to help them create a turn-of-the-century pub. Guinness developed the concept as a way to guide bar owners through the process of converting a bar into an Irish pub, from staffing and stock to decor.

This will be the third Dan McGuinness location. The original is in Peabody Place, and the second is in Nashville.

Remember the crepe craze? Remember the rounded pans and how carefully you had to manipulate the batter just so and then how the crepe tore anyway and you just got so frustrated that you sold your crepe pan at a yard sale, along with your macramé plant hanger?

This flashback comes courtesy of Le Creperie, located at 6641 Poplar, Suite 101 (752-4546). Le Creperie opened about three weeks ago and serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Crepes include the “Peabody,” filled with chicken, Swiss cheese, broccoli, onions, mushrooms, and topped with Parmesan cheese, and the “Memphis Belle,” filled with chicken and spinach in a béchamel sauce and topped with cheddar cheese. There are a number of filling options for the dessert crepes, including pineapple, strawberry, pear, and blueberry. The “Klondike” is an ice-cream bar wrapped in a crepe and topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. The most popular crepe so far is the “Bananas Foster,” bananas in a rum sauce with vanilla custard.

Le Creperie is open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m Saturday, and 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.

Leadership Memphis is holding its annual auction and dinner. The dinner is being catered by Wendell Price of the World Beat Grill, and several food-related items are up for bid, including a wine-tasting for 24 and “Lunch with a Leader,” a chance to break bread with community leaders such as Shelby County mayor A C Wharton and Germantown mayor Sharon Goldsworthy. Kelley Hurt will perform.

The event is being held at the Pink Palace Museum on Saturday, March 5th. Tickets are $50. For more information, call 278-0016.

On Thursday, March 3rd, at 7 p.m., Glass-House 383 will host an “Around the World Wine Tasting,” with wines from such countries as Argentina and Chile paired with gourmet cheeses. The cost is $15 per person, and there will be reserved seating. To make a reservation, call 527-0055. GlassHouse 383 is located downtown at 383 S. Main. n

Categories
Opinion

Ridiculous & Beyond

Can a hung jury ever be the best outcome in a criminal trial?

The answer could be “yes” in the trial of former Shelby County Medical Examiner Dr. O. C. Smith. After deliberating for almost three days, the jury remained deadlocked Tuesday and U.S. District Judge Bernice Donald declared a mistrial. Prosecutors now must decide whether to retry the case.

To Smith, the benefits of a hung jury are obvious. If the government elects not to retry him — with the same evidence in a case already three years old — he goes free.

But not unscathed. Smith has endured the ordeal of indictment, trial by jury, unfavorable publicity, and the considerable cost of defending himself.

Federal prosecutors can only claim a tie, but they will get credit for having the courage to take on a respected member of the Memphis law enforcement community without fear or favor. There was always a possibility that the Smith case would simply go away after no attacker was found in the first few months and the publicity died down. Investigators and prosecutors could have simply rolled over and pointed out that it took more than 15 years to catch the Unabomber.

A conviction could have opened the door to appeals of other cases in which Smith gave critical testimony. Convicted cop killer Philip Workman, for example, probably gets a lifetime reprieve because of doubts that Smith’s case has raised. Smith gave important testimony against Workman in a clemency hearing.

If Smith had been acquitted, would a task force have been reconvened to look for the attacker? Would finding him be U.S. attorney Terry Harris’ “number-one priority,” as he declared on June 3, 2002, the day after Smith’s alleged attack?

Would Smith, who resigned under pressure, have gotten his old job back?

And what of the attacker? Would Smith have again been assigned round-the-clock police protection because the mad bomber is still out there, madder and more motivated than ever because of the trial and all the publicity? Does the bomber take it up a notch?

A mistrial lets both Smith and federal prosecutors save face. The bomber goes into the file with Nicole Simpson’s killer. People who think Smith did it will continue to think that. People who think Smith was attacked will continue to think that. With luck, we will hear no more of the bizarre bombing at the morgue.

“As far as a federal crime goes, it’s such a ridiculous point we’ve gotten to,” said U.S. attorney Pat Harris, special prosecutor from Arkansas in the Smith case, in the 2003 videotaped interview. Amen.

TO HARRIS AND CO-COUNSEL BUD Cummins, also from Little Rock, the Smith trial was the culmination of a two-year investigation by 17 law enforcement agencies following up 112 leads. To defense attorney Gerald Easter, it was “the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives] and the boys from Little Rock up here persecutin’ O.C. Smith.”

Both sides were exaggerating.

The 17 agencies included the likes of the IRS, the Germantown Police Department, and the Secret Service. The heavy lifting was done by the ATF, federal prosecutors, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the Memphis Police Department, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, and the FBI. The Shelby County District Attorney General’s Office was conspicuously absent.

Easter’s folksy suggestion that federal cowpokes from across the river were on a vendetta is absurd — which is not to say it didn’t score points with the jury. As Cummins pointed out, federal prosecutors have broad powers to get assistance from other agencies. His Memphis colleague, Terry Harris, testified that Smith has been his personal friend and professional colleague for more than 14 years and is known as “our doc” to local cops. The poignant words of Harris made it clear that no one relished prosecuting “our doc.”

As the trial unfolded, it became clear that “the boys from Little Rock” were not getting unanimous cooperation from local law enforcement. A total of 23 witnesses came from various law enforcement agencies — 14 of them from the ATF or the Memphis Police Department — and four of them were called by the defense.

Lt. Richard Borgers of the MPD was the first cop on the scene.

“He [Smith] appeared scared to death and looked like he was about to pass out,” he testified. “No, I don’t believe he could have done it to himself.”

Lt. Marcus Worthy of the MPD was the first crime-scene investigator on the scene. He testified erroneously about the position of Smith’s hands on the window grate and erroneously again about whether Smith’s truck had been impounded and processed after a bomb-sniffing dog hit on it. The truck was never processed, apparently because Smith, according to MPD detective Connie Maness, was “upset” by the suggestion.

As one of the boys, Smith got special consideration from Memphis police. After spending a few hours in the hospital after the attack, he was allowed to return to the crime scene for much of the day.

“I was pretty upset that he had come back to the scene,” testified ATF agent Mike Rowland, who feared that the attacker might still be lurking nearby.

Rosemary Andrews, a prosecution witness who works as an attorney for the Shelby County district attorney general, gave more comfort to Smith than prosecutors.

“He looked like he had been in a fistfight,” she testified about her visit to Smith the day he was attacked to help him write his statement.

Mike Willis, the former commander of the MPD bomb squad who removed the bomb from Smith’s neck, testified, “Our job is to render safe, not to investigate.” He and two other bomb squad officers who testified offered no opinion about the attack.

Lt. Steve Scott of the University of Tennessee police force was the person who discovered Smith bound in the stairwell outside the morgue. Scott, who was friends with Smith and shared an interest in weapons, remained bravely at Smith’s side until he was rescued. His testimony reduced Smith to tears.

Sheriff’s deputies Dirk Beasley and Gary Hood testified about a possible suspect they encountered three days earlier, but it turned out the man was in jail the day of the attack.

Unlike Easter, prosecutors Harris and Cummins did not directly ask their witnesses the crucial question, “Do you think Dr. Smith could have done this to himself?”

Which, of course, was the only question jurors had to ask themselves.

Smith did not testify in his own defense. Before sending them off to deliberate, Judge Donald instructed jurors, “The fact that Dr. Smith did not testify cannot be used by you. Do not even discuss it in your deliberations.”

Schooled in combat, Smith employed a strategy of passive resistance from the moment he was “attacked” to the appearance of the last defense witness, his wife Marge, who five times refused to directly answer Cummins’ questions about whether her husband regularly carried a gun, as several witnesses testified.

“He was authorized to carry a gun,” she said repeatedly.

The brains-over-brawn strategy served Smith well. In his account, the attacker splashed an acid solution in his face two times and sucker-punched him in the gut. From that point on, Smith offered only token resistance because he was unsure if the attacker had a knife or gun. A Marine commander called as a defense witness said such a response would not be inappropriate in the circumstances.

While he did not testify, Smith played an active part in his defense. Under his tutelage, defense attorney Jim Garts, a self-described C student in chemistry, hammered for hours at the “12 percent solution of sodium hydroxide” the government said was in the bottle splashed in Smith’s face. His point seemed to be that there was such a small residue left in the bottle that nobody could tell for sure what percentage of acid was in the bottle.

What effect this had on the jury is not yet known. If chemistry is inherently confusing to laymen, then confusion could equal doubt in some minds.

Back in 2003, Harris confronted Smith in the interview, and Smith went into an explanation of sodium hydroxide. Harris quickly steered the interview in another direction.

“You’ll beat me on science,” Harris said.

Categories
Art Art Feature

Child’s Play

When Tom Lee was young, he drew cartoons to vent his anger and to express ideas that were outside the mindset of his Southern Baptist preacher father. The adult Lee is still venting through cartooning — in this case, all over the gallery walls of Second Floor Contemporary for his exhibit “What’s This?”

In the exhibit, he’s challenging assumptions and asking a lot of questions — about black-and-white morality, about polarized political thinking, about sacrifice — that are delivered via a children’s marching song, lovable killer aircraft, torn-raw canvases, and relentlessly turning circular saws.

Charcoaled directly onto the walls are Lee’s version of the children’s song “This Old Man” and his cartoon squadron of plump killer jets. With weapons of destruction loaded under their wings and the sign of the cross on their tail fins, these eager little crusaders blast out of their hangars spewing rockets to the accompaniment of “This old man/he play/won/he play” (untitled wall panels 1, 2, 3, and 4).

In cartoon panel number five, one of the little jets falls from the sky into the overlapping blades of circular saws. Smoke from the wreckage billows into the sky, and the words “knick knack” written across the smoke complete the shape of a large cross.

Frame six finds the determined little jet rising back up as its nose breaks out of the waves created by the teeth of the turning blades. In frame seven, the word “son” hovers in blank space above an ocean filled with circular saws.

Lee’s lyrics tell the story of an old man who demands a son’s complete obedience so that he can triumph (“this old man/he play/won/he play/knick knack/on a/son”). The song and cartoons bring to mind myriad and complex dynamics — the Son of God crucified and risen, parental expectations, political patriarchy hungry for conquest, and doctrines that require blind sacrifice. The saws engulfing and resurrecting the little plane contain elements of many ideologies’ hopes for life after death — the kamikaze pilot, the Islamic soldier killed in battle, Shiva the dancing Hindu deity (who forever turns as he/she creates/destroys/creates/destroys), and the phoenix, another fearless flyer that rises out of the ashes.

No cartoon characters come miraculously back to life in Lee’s last three wall panels. Instead of charcoal characters, the artist uses torn canvas and bleached bones to depict a more vulnerable state. In panel eight, a crime-scene victim is outlined with embroidery. Lee has written “knick” next to the man whose right leg has been amputated at the knee. The word “knack” and a homemade bomb are placed on the victim’s other side close to where his left forearm was ripped from the canvas.

Wars are equal-opportunity victimizers and in the next frame, “Patty’s whack” is administered by an eight-foot circular saw that juts from the wall and cuts a large piece of raw canvas nearly in two. The vertical slit, roughly sutured with red thread, creates a disconcertingly powerful image of a woman “whacked” by war.

The far back wall of the gallery contains the conclusion to Lee’s song, “gives him back a bone.” In a chillingly minimal and unglorified depiction of sacrifice, the artist completes his cycle of 10 panels using stark white bones hanging against a stark white wall.

“What’s This?” projects a sense of urgency. Before you exit the gallery, look back down the hall to the back wall and that blade ripping through the canvas. It’s pointing directly at you. Though the edges around the torn canvas have been crudely stitched, the rift is still there, just like the one in our country and our world split by ideologies.

In his artist’s statement and in conversation, Lee speaks of breaking down barriers, avoiding categorization, questioning rather than concluding, and reasoning from multiple points of view. This exhibit challenges us to do the same. n

“What’s This?” at Second Floor Contemporary through March 11th