Month: March 2005

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

Budget Cuts

To the Editor:

Thanks for your coverage of the effects of the city budget cuts on park-system employees (“Tightening the Belt,” March 10th issue). It is sad that for such a small amount of money saved, the Mallory-Neely and Magevney houses are now closed to the public. The staff worked hard to build up educational programs, including walking tours of Victorian Village, downtown Memphis, and Elmwood Cemetery, as well as hosting mother-daughter teas, Victorian birthday parties, receptions, and weddings.

Kate Dixon, the historic properties manager at Victorian Village, was there the day after Christmas, a Sunday morning when Memphis was covered with ice, to bake scones and brownies and make sandwiches for a group of seniors arriving from Nashville for lunch and a tour.

It troubles me that after many years of dedicated service, city employees are being treated in such a callous manner. It is dismaying that our city cannot manage its finances in a more responsible way.

Deede Wyatt

Memphis

Air America

To the Editor:

Thank you for your story on the emergence of a progressive alternative to the sewage that is right-wing radio (“It’s On!” March 10th issue). I think that Air America is a mixed blessing so far. When it works (e.g., the Al Franken show), it’s great. But sometimes it threatens to become a mirror image of conservative talk radio — the last thing that liberalism needs! Hopefully, the success of the Franken show will make it the model for future development of intelligent talk radio (conservative, liberal, or whatever). Franken succeeds because he is intelligent, informed, respectful of other views, and very, very funny. His on-air behavior (not just his politics) is the polar opposite of Savage, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Fleming.

The interview with Mike Fleming helps prove my point. As always, the most effective way to demonstrate Fleming’s shortcomings is to simply ask him to open his mouth. He comes across as shrill, hateful, defensive, incoherent, ignorant of issues, and completely lacking in respect for anyone who disagrees with him. The only “humor” on the Fleming radio program results from his ability to mangle the English language.

B. Keith English

Memphis

To the Editor:

I can’t help being shocked at the news that Mike Fleming has a large listenership. The surprise is not at the acceptance of his neosegregationist views but the fact that his listeners ignore his hilariously illiterate syntax and mispronunciation of common words. His popularity unfortunately spotlights Memphis as a hillbilly town.

Carolyn Adler

Memphis

Jim D. to the Rescue

To the Editor:

Opinions are like a certain part of our lower anatomy — everybody has one. But before making it public, one needs to show discretion. Whatever Black Oak Arkansas (Sound Advice, March 3rd issue) turned into, anybody who saw Knowbody Else [the band’s earlier name] witnessed a brilliant entertainment phenomenon. I have produced rock and roll bands for 40 years, and my work with Knowbody Else remains among the most creative experiences of my life. Sadly, our collaboration never saw the light of day, and by the time the band recorded for Stax, genius drummer Keith McCallum was gone and equally incomparable lead guitarist J.R. Brewer was on his way out.

The whole Black Oak Arkansas story wasn’t pretty. They inevitably “Spinal Tapped” and self-immolated, like their old stage show. But they did what they wanted. They became rock stars and they liberated a generation of kids. I still listen to: “White, Mix, and Smith,” “It’s Good That I Came,” “Till I’m Like Uncle Hugh.” Timeless masterpieces.

Jim Dandy could dance like James Brown on steroids and hit the double splits off the drum-riser with his arms shooting flames from asbestos bandages soaked in lighter fluid and kerosene and sing like a soul trapped in hell.

What can you do?

An artist’s self-expression is a soul-searching attempt at communication, a striving for immortality, an opportunity to entertain, inform, and stimulate an audience. Uninformed criticism is negligent blasphemy.

The history of Memphis music is peopled with misfits who failed to conform — artists who would not have had the opportunity to express themselves in other artistic communities. What once made us great is drying up and blowing away. If you’re not on the edge, you are taking up too much room.

Jim Dickinson

Coldwater, Mississippi

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

thursday, 17

Beyond St. Patrick’s Day: It’s the first day of the three-day Antique and Design Sale at the Palladio LLC Warehouse (685 Cox). Local author Emily Yellin discusses her book Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II in Buckman Hall at Rhodes College, 5 p.m.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

New Blood

After much back-and-forthing and premature word-of-mouth about his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2006, former 4th District congressman Van Hilleary finally is officially in. He made a formal announcement of candidacy Monday via press release and filed official papers with the Federal Election Commission and the secretary of the Senate.

That’s bad news for another former congressman, former U.S. representative Ed Bryant, who represented the 7th District from 1994 to 2002, when he vacated his seat to make a Republican primary race for the Senate seat now held by Lamar Alexander. Bryant and Hilleary, both by-the-book conservatives, are regarded as having overlapping voter and financial support, and, more importantly, both gained statewide name recognition two years ago, when Hilleary was the GOP nominee for governor.

Both Bryant and Hilleary have reason to be concerned about another Republican candidate, Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker, who has so far raised upwards of $2 million for the 2006 race and reportedly has good support in the GOP establishment, both state and national.

But another likely Senate candidate, 9th District U.S. representative Harold Ford Jr., sees a rosier outlook for the two former Republican congressmen.

“I don’t think he’ll get the nomination,” the congressman said about Corker’s prospects on Friday, after his attendance at President Bush’s Social Security forum at the Cannon Center. “I think Bryant or Hilleary will. It doesn’t matter how much money you have if people don’t know you.”

Ford’s statement was an acknowledgment of the fleeting nature of name recognition in politics. The seat being vacated in 2006 is that of Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who is considered likely to make a presidential race in 2008. Of the six Republican candidates who ran for that seat in 1994, only Frist remains well known across the state, at least among voters at large. Corker, who later served two years as former Governor DonSundquist‘s finance director, has a more limited range of recognition, centered around his political base in Chattanooga.

Corker is, however, busy making up for that shortcoming. He was in Memphis Monday night for a well-attended fund-raiser at the home of high-stakes entrepreneur Brad Martin. And the Chattanoogan’s supporters in Shelby County include the local GOP’s last three party chairmen: David Kustoff, Alan Crone, and Kemp Conrad.

Bryant is being backed by a number of local establishment figures as well — notably former national Republican committeeman John Ryder. Hilleary’s local organization has yet to take shape, although Mike Carpenter, president of the Associated Builders and Contractors, has been helping Hilleary locally for some months. Carpenter, however, is dropping out of state politics to concentrate on his own forthcoming race for the Shelby County Commission.

Not to be ignored in all this conjuring, of course, is the only woman in the GOP primary race, state representative Beth Harwell of Nashville, the immediate past chairperson of the state Republican Party and no doubt the possessor of many political IOUs stemming from that service.

Harwell’s former statewide role is a reminder of an unresolved issue concerning Hilleary, who exercised some political muscle last year to get himself voted in as Ryder’s successor as national GOP committeeman from Tennessee. Does he get to keep that office, which entitles him to speak for all Tennessee Republicans, even as he vies against several others for senator?

At the very least, it’s a possible point of controversy.

Meanwhile, pending an announcement from Representative Ford, state representative Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville remains the only Democrat formally in the U.S. Senate race.

n At President Bush’s Social Security forum Friday, Representative Ford was one of several local dignitaries acknowledged by the president. At one point, while speaking of the possibility of maintaining a social safety net under his Social Security plan, Bush ad-libbed, “Harold understands that.”

That may be wishful thinking. The congressman has not signed on to the Bush proposal, having aligned himself, along with virtually all other Democratic members of Congress, in a solid front to oppose the president’s plan — or at least to oppose that portion of it calling for private investment accounts funded by the Social Security tax.

Beyond that point, though, Ford seems willing to rethink the premises of Social Security — a fact which continues to be highlighted by several national publications and pundits. USA Today featured Ford on its front page last week as one of six national figures it considered undecided on the issue of changing Social Security.

That’s probably an overstatement. But the congressman has put forward ideas of his own. He has introduced a bill — the ASPIRE Act — that would confer a government-funded grant to newborns to be used for investment purposes. He suggested Friday, after Bush’s presentation, that the president might think about something similar if he wants to alter the structure of Social Security.

As Ford sees it, any investment add-on should not only be funded from sources other than the Social Security tax, but should have a progressive component, like that contained in ASPIRE, whereby citizens below a defined poverty line could expect proportionately greater investment fodder.

The Memphis congressman added a new wrinkle to that concept Friday. Among the issues he raised was this one: “What happens if people lose? Will some kind of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation be created?” Ford seemed to be floating the idea of a governmental machinery that would cushion against losses that might occur through bad investments in sour lemons such as Enron and WorldCom. A fail-safe mechanism, as it were, one that would allow profit but prevent unreasonable loss.

n Believe it or not, the 2006 Shelby County countywide election has already begun — with prospective candidates detaching themselves from the woodwork and beginning to organize campaign staffs and fund-raisers.

The aforesaid Mike Carpenter intends to run for the District 1 county commission seat now held by John Willingham. Carpenter, who was among the unsuccessful applicants last year seeking to fill a vacancy in another District 1 seat, indicated he would campaign on the need for a new school-funding formula as well as on opposition to the concept of a converting The Pyramid into a casino, a longtime project of Willingham’s.

Another applicant for that District 1 vacancy last year is Mike Rich, who intends to run for the district seat currently held by Marilyn Loeffel and who has been attending commission meetings with some regularity of late.

The commissioner who ended up filling the District 1 vacancy last year, George Flinn, is likely to draw opposition from Karla Templeton, Willingham’s daughter and yet another former applicant for the seat. That’s if her father, who continues to have complications resulting from heart surgery, follows through on his current intention to run again for his own seat. If he doesn’t, his daughter will likely turn her attentions to that seat.

Loeffel is known to be thinking of a race for Shelby County clerk, from which incumbent Jayne Creson has indicated she will retire. Loeffel is one of several commissioners who, in 2006, will have served two terms or more and would be prevented from running again, according to term limits established in a referendum passed by county voters in 2002. That referendum is under legal challenge from fellow commissioners Walter Bailey, Cleo Kirk, and Julian Bolton. A ruling by Chancellor Tene Alissandratos is expected soon.

Add-ons and Elaborations

Shelby County commissioner Michael Hooks, a candidate in the forthcoming March 24th Democratic primary to fill a state Senate vacancy, notes that he was not convicted of a drug offense some years ago, as I indicated last week, but saw the charges dismissed because of faulty search procedures. Hooks, who underwent a highly publicized and evidently successful rehabilitation, adds, “I’ll say for the record: That was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Public or Private

The issue of privatizing public functions surfaced twice locally within the last week — once when President Bush arrived here last Friday to push his plan for partial privatization of Social Security and again when a dispute arose on the Shelby County Commission concerning a move to out-source the management of the county’s correction facilities.

To recap what we’ve said before, we remain dubious about the president’s Social Security proposal. Any way we look at it, it would substitute risk for guaranteed benefits — and that would seem to run counter to the very purpose of Social Security.

The issue of privatizing the county’s correction facilities is more complex. On one hand, it would definitely seem to jeopardize the livelihoods of jailers and other personnel. On the other hand, it might indeed save the taxpayer some — as yet uncertain — sums of money. Other issues, notably public safety and quality of oversight, are involved. It is a matter requiring that Shelby County commissioners, all 13 of them, try to suspend their prejudices as they reach a decision.

And they might also set aside, as red herrings, the matters of last week’s indictments of prison personnel for drug smuggling and the question of how and by whom the county’s inquiry into privatization got going in the first place. The commissioners, sitting as a body, will have the last say. That’s what counts.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Caveat Emptor

Last Friday, at the Cannon Center in Memphis, President Bush dismissed observations from Democrats and others that his Social Security proposals are part of an effort to dismantle the New Deal: “That’s what you call political propaganda,” he insisted.

But it’s impossible to ignore that the Bush plan — as much as we can know of it — does nothing to bring solvency to the system, eliminates a portion of guaranteed benefits, and shifts a good deal of risk to the American people — as well as a disproportionate measure of wealth to Wall Street.

While in Memphis, the president expressed concern for “our grandchildren,” the demographic for whom he is certain Social Security will fail. “This is a generational issue,” he said. “It is an issue that is very important for members of Congress to understand — that a lot of grand-folk/parents care deeply about not only their own security. But once they’re assured, they care deeply about the security of their grandchildren.”

Security? The likelihood is that our grandchildren will not only assume more personal risk but pay the price, in trillions of dollars, for swelling an already gigantic national deficit.

In 2000, when America was happily contemplating a budget surplus, Vice President Al Gore said we should take a chunk of that extra money and put it in a “lockbox” to ensure solvency. He was laughed out of the political arena. “Lockbox” became a punchline for late-night comics. But as the mighty surplus has vaporized into a record deficit in the wake of massive tax cuts, record spending for Medicare, and the war in Iraq, all the laughter has died away.

Bush told Memphians to be wary of propaganda. That’s certainly something he knows about.

As TheNew York Times and others have recently reported, the Bush administration has engaged in the creation and distribution of prepackaged news supporting its domestic and foreign agendas. The president’s barnstorming tour of America, wherein he discusses the warm fuzzies of ownership and investment with handpicked panels of supporters, is a fine example of propaganda.

It has been said that the Democrats need to put forward their own plan for saving Social Security. Why should they, when President Bush has yet to put forward his plan? At this point all anyone has seen is a slick marketing package designed to test the waters and see how Joe & Jane Six-pack will respond to the notion of trading their guaranteed benefits for the assumption of risk.

The president’s proposal is not, as some have suggested, an actual plan to phase out Social Security. It’s more like a feasibility study to see if a Social Security phase-out plan can be packaged like a late-night infomercial.

“I’m going to continue traveling our country until it becomes abundantly clear to the American people we have a problem,” the president said. “And [until] it’s abundantly clear to those who will receive Social Security checks that nothing is going to change. So I want to start by saying to the seniors here in Tennessee and folks listening on your television set that for you — for those of you receiving a check today and for those of you, like me, near retirement — nothing is going to change.”

Well, except for the fact that you’ll have fewer benefits, higher risk, a staggering national deficit, and perhaps no insurance against disability. But you will own something. And ownership is the American Dream. Buy if you will, but caveat emptor: “Let the buyer beware.”

Chris Davis is a Flyer staff writer and proprietor of “The Flypaper Theory,” a Weblog.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Take That

I went straight from watching a tepid A&E
Biography on Bruce Willis to the theater to see his latest foray,
Hostage.

Less journalistic exposé than video-montage love letter, the
Biography episode did manage to interview some Willis
collaborators who identified key elements to his sometimes-baffling longevity and success. Unlike Misters Stallone and Schwarzenegger also
born of the 1980s action genre Willis actually succeeds at playing the average Joe caught in unaverage circumstances.

Muscular without being grotesque, resourceful without being superhuman, and vengeful without losing his humanity, Willis
has been able to age with some grace (he turns 50 this week) and turn in performances that allow him to grow as well as hone his
reliable, sellable traits. I’ve always liked him, and
The Sixth Sense affirmed for me his ability to act, while affirming for him, I think, the
notion that less can be more. Since then, his heroes have been granted a potential for restraint and calm that previous action-ers have
lacked. Hostage definitely benefits from the finishing-school training that
Sense afforded him.

Hostage begins with a prologue of sorts. Willis is Jeff Talley, first-rate hostage negotiator, in the middle of a seemingly
routine talk-down with a deranged father holding his wife and son at gunpoint in a dingy L.A. house. The neighborhood is surrounded by
police, and only Talley has his cool. When the opportunity to take the gunman out arises, Talley passes. “No one dies today,” he replies. But
the negotiation goes wrong and all three family members end up dead. Talley is devastated.

A year later, Talley is the chief of police in Ventura County, an uneventful, crimeless hamlet. At a nearby deli, three
goodfornuthin’ local boys ogle the daughter of a wealthy accountant (Kevin Pollak) and get flipped off in return. Thus sets into motion a
routine carjacking that becomes quite a deal more than that when the boys get a look at the rich fortresslike house the family lives in. Surely,
there must be something more interesting in the house. Sure enough unbeknownst to all but the father, there is a CD hiding in a
Heaven Can Wait DVD case that contains a secret something-or-other related to some shady, high-stakes deal with mystery men we never see.
These boys have jacked the wrong house on the wrong day.

Talley is called onto the scene, loses one of his officers to gunfire, and quickly hands jurisdiction of the seemingly hopeless
situation over to the sheriff’s department. He heads home to his troubled wife and daughter (played by real-life daughter Rumer). But Tally
is abducted himself and informed that unless he cooperates with the mystery men, his own family will be killed. Cooperating means
reestablishing control over the hostage scene and making sure nobody goes in or out until yet more mystery men can arrive and deal with
the home and whatever secrets it may hold. So, Talley is on a race against time, balancing two hostage situations and having to
somehow wrestle control back from the sheriff and issue baffling orders to a bewildered team of law-enforcement officers.

A twist: The young son in the house, Tommy (Jimmy Bennett), manages to wriggle free and hide in his
maze-o-secret-passages with his sister’s cell phone and calls Talley. Suddenly, Talley has a link to the inside and can at least secure the DVD while waiting for
the evil reinforcements. But no there are two DVDs of
Heaven Can Wait. Is it the 1978 one with Warren Beatty? Or the 1943 version
with Gene Tierney? Darn! Why couldn’t they have chosen
Ishtar?

Hostage is getting a lashing from a number of critics for a crime no greater, I think, than averageness. Very little
distinguishes Hostage from other suspenseful movies with similar themes. That said, it is successful at generating suspense and providing surprise,
and, for the most part, at presenting real people behaving truthfully in extraordinary circumstances.

Willis turns in a respectable, low-key performance (his several heroic tasks are performed and directed plausibly), and the
supporting cast returns the favor. Only the three hoodlums veer toward overacting at times, and while I could nitpick for their being over the top,
I can’t imagine I would behave any less manically if I found myself shut into a fortress with hostages and police
everywhere. The camera develops a strange infatuation with one of the hoodlums, Mars (Ben Foster) and can’t decide whether to
make this sociopath a misunderstood romantic or a Christ figure.

Average, yes. Distinguished, no. But
Hostage delivers as promised and is worth, at least, the ransom of a matinee ticket price.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Darius the Great

Some of us were there. Many more of us saw it on television. And almost all of us have heard about it by now: the two missed free throws that ended a game, an era, and the hopes of an entire city; Darius Washington, the valiant freshman who had been fouled in the act of shooting a three-pointer and had a chance to win the game against arch-rival Louisville — and thereby crown the University of Memphis Tigers’ season with a bid to the NCAA tournament.

It had been a disappointing season, redeemed mainly by the emergence of Washington — D-Wash, as he came to be called — as a super point-guard and playmaker who kept the Tigers’ season hopes alive, at times almost single-handedly.

Upon seeing his last shot rim the basket and fall away on Saturday, Washington hit the deck, clearly devastated. He had literally to be lifted off the FedExForum floor by consoling teammates. They didn’t blame him, nor did we, nor should he blame himself. As one of his teammates said, the team wouldn’t even have been on the brink of such unexpected success without Washington’s heroics — including a heart-stopping steal of a Lousville pass in the crucial last few minutes.

Not only was young Washington named to the all-tournament team for his exploits, he had previously been designated Conference-USA Freshman of the Year. Clearly, he will make many more shots than he misses in the years to come — especially when it counts.

Ralph Branca, the old Brooklyn Dodger pitcher who in 1951 yielded the pennant-wining home-run ball — the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” — to the Giants’ Bobby Thomson, suffered the same kind of despair that Washington did, initially. Why me? he asked a friendly clergyman. Because you can take it, said Branca’s priest, meaning that as a tribute to the forlorn pitcher’s strength of character.

We might say the same of Darius Washington. He too can take it, though it will surely hurt for a while. As far as we’re concerned, his heart and talent are as great as his stature is small. And, with any luck, we’ve got three more years to watch this prodigy.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Roll Call

For more than a decade, Ron Pope has headed the Memphis City Schools department responsible for enforcing truancy laws. With the school district trimming its budget and reorganizing several administrative positions, Pope’s truancy team may be dissolved.


Who: Eight certified teachers, or
“attendance teachers,” are responsible for delivering
truancy warnings to parents of children with more
than five unexcused absences from school. The attendance teachers handle all 190 schools
in the district.

What: District administrators recommended last week that truancy and
attendance be handled by individual school personnel. Pope estimated the budget
for the attendance-teacher program at about $400,000, which includes mileage and
gas. Last year, the teachers delivered more than 30,000 truancy notices, and once
parents were notified, the department saw a
roughly 50 percent correction rate.

Deputy Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, who made the
recommendation, anticipates cost savings as well as better
attendance rates. “To me, everything is tied
to attendance, especially student
achievement,” she said. “When attendance teachers go
up to that door to take a notice to a parent, they really don’t know why the child has been
out of school. But the student’s teachers, counselors, and principals know why he/she is
out and are better able to assist them with the underlying reasons for truancy.”

When: If the recommendation is approved by the school board, the attendance
teachers will be reassigned to new positions in
the 2005-2006 school year.

Where: The attendance teachers have been headquartered in the Truancy
Assessment Center on Poplar Avenue at Claybrook.
Most of their work is done in the field, which can sometimes be dangerous. During Pope’s
tenure, two teachers have been the victims of carjacking, including 70-year-old Joe
Sharp, who was shot last week while delivering a parent warning in North Memphis.

Why: “I think it’s more a matter of what’s
humanly possible for an attendance officer to
do,” said Pope. “If each one of them worked
truancies on 10 schools each day, they still
wouldn’t reach each one in a timely manner.”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Food News

Square Foods is adding beer to its shelves.

“Shop Well, Eat Well, and Live Well,” the motto printed on receipts from Square Foods may have to be amended to include the line “Drink Well.” After their license is approved this week, the three-year-old, natural-foods grocery, located on Madison Avenue in Overton Square, will finally be selling beer.

“I didn’t really want to carry beer, and there was an agreement with our landlord that we wouldn’t sell beer on the premises,” says Jeanice Blancett, owner of Square Foods. “But I had so many customers who came to me and said, ‘If only you carried beer, I wouldn’t ever have to shop anywhere else.'”

Blancett plans to carry singles and six-packs of high-end and microbrewery beers. “And, of course, we’ll also carry Pabst,” she says. “You’ve got to carry Pabst.”

In addition to its natural and organic grocery items and a range of bulk goods, Square Foods offers a full-service deli. Unfortunately, dine-in customers will have to wait until they get home to imbibe: Beer sales at Square Foods will be strictly “to-go.”

Some clichEs will never die, thank goodness. Take, for example, Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral, a new book by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays that explores the well-known relationship between death and food in the American South.

With chapters like “Dying Tastefully in the Mississippi Delta” and “I was So Embarrassed I Liketa Died,” the authors relate classic Southern tales of boozy black humor, crack on the difference between Baptists and Episcopalians, and pass along some deliciously heart-stopping recipes for everything from fried chicken to vodka cake. And there’s no discrimination between white trash and haute cuisine here: Formulas for hot-dog stew are listed right alongside the Methodist Ladies’ Chicken Lasagna Florentine. Recipes for Southern staples such as stuffed eggs abound, and there are several variations of Southern paté. (That’s pimento cheese to you and me.)

The authors will have booksignings at Square Books (662-236-2262) in Oxford on Monday, March 21st, and at Burke’s Book Store (278-7484) on Wednesday, March 23rd.

Art to Dine For, a fund-raiser for Experience Art in Memphis, brings a lot of creativity to the table. For each of the 25 tables, a chef and an artist will partner to create an “experience” with endless possibilities. For example, last year, a dancer and chef put out a spread that included frog legs arranged in basic ballet positions. Another artist made ceramic fish to complement the fish entrée.

Chefs participating in this year’s Art To Dine For at The Peabody March 20th include Erling Jensen, Scott Lenhart, Karen Carrier, and Michel Leny. Artists include Wayne Edge, Lester Jones, Fred Burton, and Susie Hendrix.

Experience Art in Memphis hosts community art programs, most notably Arts in the Park, which is moving this year from fall to summer, June 17th to 19th, and from East Memphis to Midtown at Christian Brothers University.

Individual tickets for Art To Dine For are $150; tables for 10, $1,500. A silent auction starts at 5 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m. Di Anne Price will perform.

For more information, call 757-1373.

The specialty at Bach’s Lunch?

“We have many,” says Marla Howerton, a spokesperson for the restaurant.

Two locations of Bach’s Lunch opened last fall. One is in the Renaissance Center in East Memphis (1714 Aaron Brenner, Suite 114); the other in the Morgan Keegan Tower downtown (second floor, 50 N. Front).

According to Howerton, many people come specifically for the restaurant’s fruit salad, a super-sweet mix of fruit and raspberry sauce topped with brown-sugar-y, Rice Krispies-ish “crunchies.” Ditto for the Mediterranean pasta salad, the salmon, chicken, and turkey wrap sandwiches, the homemade desserts, the ramen-noodle slaw, and the “Red Bliss” potato salad. In sum, says Howerton, “It’s always delicious.”

Bach’s Lunch also offers catering and take-home dinners. Both locations can be reached at 432-BACH. n

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Beat

Guitarist Dave Shouse hasn’t graced a Memphis stage since October 2003. But this spring, the indie stalwart’s latest band, Bloodthirsty Lovers, has three gigs planned for the Bluff City. Their first local appearance will be this Sunday, March 20th, at the Young Avenue Deli — just after the Lovers travel to Austin, Texas, for the South By Southwest music festival.

“We have to go and strut our wares,” Shouse says of the weeklong music showcase, which he’s visited with his other bands, the Grifters and Those Bastard Souls, several times over the last decade. “Our goal this year is to get in and get out without getting pissed off in the process,” he adds, chuckling.

Since the Grifters’ break-up in the late 1990s, Shouse has grown wary of the corporate music machine. He says he’s still trying to recover from a pact with the devil — aka V2 Records — that he made for Those Bastard Souls’ 1999 release, Debt & Departure. “I couldn’t get out of that deal quick enough,” he reveals, explaining that he turned in a proposal for a $6 million project, which subsequently ended the contract.

“It’s sad, but I’ve become so callous since the V2 stuff. It’s like chasing something you think you’ve always wanted, and once you get it, it kicks your ass. My self-esteem got flushed, and I had to retool and start up again. This time around, I’m focusing on trying to be happy and realizing that if I enjoy making music, I should just make it.

“When I began Bloodthirsty Lovers, I didn’t want to deal with anybody,” Shouse says. “I recorded our first album myself on the computer and did the artwork myself.”

A year after he self-released the album, French Kiss, a New York-based indie label expressed interest in the eponymous-titled CD. “I thought they could pick up distribution, and it seemed like a feasible deal because,” he says, “it was a label run by musicians. No contracts or anything, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I ended up with a good label, a good publicist, and a great booking agent but just a phantom band.”

Originally, Shouse saw himself as the sole creative force behind Bloodthirsty Lovers. Hired guns like drummer Paul Taylor and keyboard player Shelby Bryant occasionally fleshed out his musical ideas, but the name fronted a concept more than an actual band.

“I planned to have a trio and shift the focus away from guitars and toward electronics and samples,” he says. “Then, after I’d made the record, I realized I had to go play these songs live.

“I’ve played with so many people since I left the Grifters,” he adds, “and I learned that I really missed that stability — having people to hang out with, commiserate with, and jubilate with. Ten years ago, with the Grifters, I was hanging out in a flower shop, drinking and playing music four nights a week. Sure, we’d write songs, but sometimes we’d play for hours and not come out with anything more concrete than a great time. I missed that impulsive approach to music.”

So, Shouse recruited guitarist Steve Selvidge to collaborate on the Bloodthirsty Lovers’ second album, 2004’s The Delicate Seam.

The two recorded The Delicate Seam on a home computer, bringing drummer Kevin March (Those Bastard Souls, Guided By Voices), keyboardist Ross Rice, and a few other musicians into Easley-McCain Studio to finish the project.

“Kevin came through town, and we took him over to the studio to work on the album. He didn’t know what he was doing, and we ended up rewriting a few songs to fit his mistakes. Having to do that made me happy,” Shouse marvels. “I realized this was what I’d been missing. Getting people together and just making music is the important part.

“Now,” he claims, “the band has progressed to a point where I’m ready to get a little more unhinged. My wife warns me against using this word, but I’m ready to ‘Grifterize’ things. Steve and I know we can write songs — let’s make music.”

Since Guided By Voices broke up at the end of the year, March is able to devote more time to Bloodthirsty Lovers. Rounding out the group with bassist Kevin McGinnis, Shouse is pleased to take this project on the road. “We’re doing 25 shows in 29 days,” he says, “but beyond the tour, everything’s still nebulous.

“We have to go on instinct, but I like that. We’ve got the potential to do some unusual things, veer off, and make some new music. I can’t wait to see what happens.”

Bloodthirsty Lovers will be playing Sunday, March 20th, at the Young Avenue Deli; Saturday, April 9th, at the Hi-Tone Café; and at Memphis In May’s Beale Street Music Festival on Sunday, May 1st. For more information, go to BloodthirstyLovers.com.

by ANDRIA LISLE