Month: April 2005

POLITICS (WEEKEND EDITION)

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date April 23, 2005

THIS AND THAT

Jerry Stokes of Memphis, a 49-year-old attorney and former divorce referee, was appointed by Governor Phil Bredesen Monday as the successor to retired Circuit Court judge George Brown. The governor’s office released the following statement announcing the appointment:

NASHVILLE — Governor Phil Bredesen today announced that Memphis attorney Jerry Stokes will fill a vacancy in division six of the 30th Judicial District’s Circuit Court, created by the retirement of George H. Brown, Jr. The 30th Judicial District Circuit Court covers Shelby County.

“Jerry Stokes has more than 20 years experience working in private practice and is highly regarded in the Shelby County legal community,” said Bredesen. “Through his years practicing law, Jerry has proven himself committed to the improvement of the legal system in Tennessee and has worked diligently to represent those who may not otherwise have had access to the courts system in Shelby County. I have great confidence that he will serve the citizens of the 30th Judicial District with fairness and integrity.”

Stokes has been practicing law since 1981, working in private practice with Stokes, Wilson and Wright Law Firm. The firm handles mostly personal injury, debtors’ bankruptcy, criminal defense and plaintiff cases. Stokes has also worked as a part-time assistant divorce referee for Shelby County since 1998, when he was appointed by then Mayor Jim Rout. He has also served more than 100 times as special judge in the General Sessions Criminal Court of Shelby County.

“I’m overwhelmed and honored that the Governor has appointed me to this position,” said Stokes. “I certainly appreciate his confidence in me, and will do all I can to serve the citizens of the 30th Judicial District to the best of my abilities.”

Stokes, 49, holds a bachelor’s degree in radio, television and filming from the University of Memphis and earned his doctor of jurisprudence degree from Southern University, Baton Rouge. He is a member of the National Bar Association’s Ben F. Jones Chapter and the Memphis and Shelby County Bar Association. In 2003-2004, Stokes received the highest rating among divorce referees (8.9 out of 10) in a survey commissioned by the Memphis and Shelby County Bar Association. From September of 2003 to February of 2005, Stokes served on the Speedy Trial Plan Committee Task Force at the request of Judge James Todd, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Western Division of Tennessee.

Stokes’ appointment is effective immediately, and he will stand for election to a full 8-year term in 2006.

Elections of 2006 (Cont’d): Presuming that Marilyn Loeffel, the soon-to-be-term-limited county commissioner, is still interested in running next year for Shelby County clerk, she won’t have a free run at it.

Debbie Stamson, wife of Juvenile Court clerk Steve Stamson, announced this week that she will run for the clerk’s job, at present held by Jayne Creson, who has said she will retire.

In a statement mailed to potential supporters, Stamson — an employee of the clerk’s office for 25 years — says she has “Jayne’s full support.”

“During my twenty-five years, I have worked in every department in the clerk’s officeÉ.I know the important of running an efgficient office and living within a budget as Jayne Creson has done for the past eleven years.”

Stamson’s election next yea;r, if it comes to pass, would create the first husband-and-wife pair of clerks to serve in Shelby County government.

Secret Weapon?: Local Democrats were exhorted Thursday night at a party fundraiser by veteran broadcaster Leon Gray, who will soon be an afternoon feature on the local Air America outlet, WWTQ, 680AM, dispensing “progressive talk” as an antidote to arch-conservative commentator Mike Fleming on WREC, 600AM.

News

GOVERNOR NAMES STOKES TO SUCCEED JUDGE BROWN

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date April 22, 2005

NASHVILLE– Governor Phil Bredesen today announced that Memphis attorney Jerry Stokes will fill a vacancy in division six of the 30th Judicial District’s Circuit Court, created by the retirement of George H. Brown, Jr. The 30th Judicial District Circuit Court covers Shelby County.

“Jerry Stokes has more than 20 years experience working in private practice and is highly regarded in the Shelby County legal community,” said Bredesen. “Through his years practicing law, Jerry has proven himself committed to the improvement of the legal system in Tennessee and has worked diligently to represent those who may not otherwise have had access to the courts system in Shelby County. I have great confidence that he will serve the citizens of the 30th Judicial District with fairness and integrity.”

Stokes has been practicing law since 1981, working in private practice with Stokes, Wilson and Wright Law Firm. The firm handles mostly personal injury, debtors’ bankruptcy, criminal defense and plaintiff cases. Stokes has also worked as a part-time assistant divorce referee for Shelby County since 1998, when he was appointed by then Mayor Jim Rout. He has also served more than 100 times as special judge in the General Sessions Criminal Court of Shelby County.

“I’m overwhelmed and honored that the Governor has appointed me to this position,” said Stokes. “I certainly appreciate his confidence in me, and will do all I can to serve the citizens of the 30th Judicial District to the best of my abilities.”

Stokes, 49, holds a bachelor’s degree in radio, television and filming from the University of Memphis and earned his doctor of jurisprudence degree from Southern University, Baton Rouge. He is a member of the National Bar Association’s Ben F. Jones Chapter and the Memphis and Shelby County Bar Association. In 2003-2004, Stokes received the highest rating among divorce referees (8.9 out of 10) in a survey commissioned by the Memphis and Shelby County Bar Association. From September of 2003 to February of 2005, Stokes served on the Speedy Trial Plan Committee Task Force at the request of Judge James Todd, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Western Division of Tennessee.

Stokes’ appointment is effective immediately, and he will stand for election to a full 8-year term in 2006.

News The Fly-By

Altered Perception

Post author By Mary Cashiola
Post date April 22, 2005

I recently said goodbye to a friend who’s moving to New York. I won’t get started about how all my friends keep moving away—that’s a different column—but I started thinking about all the ways that 1,100 miles are going to change her life.

There’s the cost-of-living difference, the crazy real-estate values, and how she’ll be selling her car and riding the subway or taking cabs. Cabs! I mean I see them drive by sometimes, but I’ve never actually seen anyone here in the process of hailing one.

But maybe it’s not as different as I think.

A few weeks ago, I said to her, “You’re going to have so much fun. There will be lots of single people for you to hang out with.”

You see my friend is in her late 20s—as, to be fair, am I—and she’s never been married. Assuming that the South is a little more matrimonially inclined, I thought New York would be a good place for her.

And then, on a lark, I checked the stats from the latest census data. According to those numbers, there are roughly 179,000 people in Memphis (over 15 years of age) who have never been married. In New York, there are 2.4 million people in the same category.

In the Big Apple, that’s 37 percent of the population. In the Bluff City, it’s 36 percent of the population. New York might be a bigger pond, but the number of fish in the sea is almost statistically equivalent. Which pretty much blows the theory that Southerners couple up sooner and more often.

In fact, it may be time to forget the idea that the nation is culturally divided along the Mason-Dixon Line. I have to confess: I didn’t go to the Southern Women’s Show a few weeks ago or maybe I’d understand what Richard Simmons and a doggie fashion show—two of the events—have to do with being a Southern woman. Maybe the entire idea of regionalism is more antiquated and less authentic than we think.

During the last presidential election, we divided states into “red” and “blue,” and in some ways, it worked out regionally. However The Stranger, a Seattle weekly, printed an interesting idea after the election: The most important factor politically wasn’t geography but urbanism. Red states typically are more rural, where voters tend to go for the GOP, while blue states have large urban centers with more Democratic voters. Think about the heartland state of Illinois—mostly red, but it’s blue at the top where Chicago sits, and it’s blue enough population-wise to color the entire state.

Have we become a nation culturally divided into country and city mice? People more comfortable around skyscrapers against those more comfortable under open sky? People who shop at Target versus those who shop at Wal-Mart?

In Dallas, a city of 1,188,580, the percent of people who have never been married is a little higher than 34 percent. In Chicago, that number is about 41 percent.

Compare those numbers to those of the sleepy burgs of Joliet, Illinois (population 106,221) or Abilene, Texas (115,930) or North Tonawanda, New York (33,262), or our own neighbor Fayette County (32,289). In these pastoral places, roughly 28 percent, 26 percent, and 24 percent of the population has never been married.

This is only an idea and certainly not a scientific analysis. I’ve simply picked places I’ve been or lived. But if marriage is a significant cultural institution, it’s worth noting how the percentage of “I do’s” differs.

Does the metropolitan marriage divide correlate to other cultural aspects? And where do the suburbs fit in? Could we split ourselves into “Urban cowboys,” “Burbers,” and “Bumpkins”? I don’t know but it would certainly explain the whole city-versus-county thing.

News News Feature

A Cornucopia of Death

Post author By Arianna Huffington
Post date April 22, 2005

Faint the last month black. It’s been an orgy of mourning, a cornucopia of death. We’ve had Terri Schiavo, Pope John Paul II, Prince Rainier, and Charles and Camilla’s wedding — which felt as grim as any funeral. All brought to us in no-longer-living color. If nothing else, the media have outed themselves as the ultimate necrophiliacs. I expect CNN and Forest Lawn to announce a sponsorship agreement any day now.

The pope’s interminable interment was the magenta-colored cherry on the death sundae. The television coverage was so over-the-top and utterly uncritical, it was as if John Paul had been, well, the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Now, I’m certainly not suggesting that the last week should have been spent trashing the late pontiff. His many achievements — taking on communism, embracing the Third World, speaking out for the poor, and standing up against war — surely deserved recognition and praise. But you’d think the wall-to-wall coverage would have included some serious discussion of the two tragic failures of his reign: his woeful mishandling of the church’s child-molestation scandal and how his archaic position on condoms contributed to the deaths of millions of people, especially in Africa.

The molestation outrage is a black mark that can’t be whitewashed.

More than 11,000 children were abused and close to $1 billion in settlement money was paid out, but the pope did not go much beyond decrying “the sins of some of our brothers.” He didn’t meet with any victims or offer solutions to dealing with the problem or address the decades-long cover-up. He even rejected a “zero tolerance” policy calling for the immediate removal of molester-priests because of concern that it was too harsh.

Too harsh?! This is a man who wouldn’t allow a priest to become a bishop unless he was unequivocally opposed to masturbation, premarital sex, and condoms. So, in his perversion pecking order, priests had to be dead-set against “self-love,” but when it came to buggering little kids, there was some wiggle room.

And let’s not forget that John Paul appointed Cardinal Bernard Law, who was one of the architects of the sex-scandal cover-up and who even faced potential criminal prosecution for his role in the concealment. But instead of making an example out of Law, the pope gave him a cushy sinecure in the Vatican. Adding insult to the grievous injury suffered by abuse victims, Law was one of the nine cardinals specially chosen to preside over the pope’s funeral masses. It is a disgrace — and an indication of how detached the Vatican became under this pope.

The other stain on the pope’s legacy is his tireless opposition to the use of condoms — even in places like Africa, where AIDS killed 2.3 million people last year and where the disease has driven life expectancy below 40 years in many countries.

But even in the face of that kind of suffering, John Paul fought against condoms. Any time a church official even suggested that people infected with HIV should use condoms, they were either removed from office or censured.

On the other hand, the pope’s passing might have saved the political skin of one of his culture-of-life cohorts, House majority leader Tom DeLay. If you have a series of looming ethics scandals about to come crashing down on your head, having the media focused 24/7 on something else is a very lucky break indeed.

The presence of DeLay at the pope’s funeral in Rome, along with President Bush, the first lady, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and George Bush Sr., was a stark reminder of our perverted priorities. The pope dies, and it’s Must Holy See TV; 1,547 American soldiers die in Iraq, and President Bush has yet to attend a single one of their funerals. Not a single one. •

Arianna Huffington writes for AlterNet and Ariannaonline.com.

Sports Sports Feature

Griz vs. Suns

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date April 22, 2005

With a dramatic win over the San Antonio Spurs Monday night, the Memphis Grizzlies set up a first-round playoff match-up with the Phoenix Suns and, perhaps more importantly, erased some of the bad karma from an awful road trip last week. The Grizzlies will head into their second postseason appearance with a little momentum and will be facing an opponent that virtually everyone associated with the team feels the Griz match up well with.

Phoenix might be the most exciting team in the league and might own the league’s best record, but no one thinks they’re the kind of juggernaut that previous league-wide win leaders have been. They’re beatable. And here’s how the Grizzlies can make it happen:

Limit turnovers.

The phenomenal success of the Suns this season has been built on one big acquisition and one big idea: The team acquired Steve Nash, who rivals Jason Kidd as the best pure, up-tempo point guard in the game. They surrounded him with a small but outrageously athletic team — ostensible shooting guard Quentin Richardson at small forward, ostensible small forward Shawn Marion at power forward, and ostensible power forward Amare Stoudemire at center. Going against the prevailing grain of NBA strategy, they rolled them out onto the court and let them run. The result has been the most exciting fast-breaking team since Magic Johnson’s “Showtime” Lakers of the ’80s.

Phoenix will fast-break at every opportunity, not only on missed baskets but on made ones too, if the opposing team relaxes for a second. No team in the league is as likely to convert a turnover at one end into a made basket at the other.

One of the biggest reasons the Grizzlies have been so competitive against the Suns this season is that they’ve done a good job limiting their turnovers, reducing their season average by more than two a game against the Suns. In the two Suns games in which the Grizzlies equaled or surpassed their season turnover average — December 23rd at Phoenix and March 20th in Memphis — they lost. In the two games in which they kept their turnovers down — January 19th at Phoenix and February 1st at Memphis — the Grizzlies won.

Defend the three.

The Grizzlies can limit Phoenix’s transition opportunities by reducing turnovers, but they can’t stop them from running. So the Grizzlies have to do a good job of defending the three-point shot in transition.

When you think of fast-break basketball, the image that likely comes to mind is a flashy pass leading to a big dunk. You’ll see plenty of that from the Suns, with Nash finding Stoudemire, a thunderous power dunker, in the open floor. But Phoenix might be most dangerous on the break because of the team’s knack for finding open three-point shots. The Suns have Johnson (the second-best three-point shooter in the league this season) and Richardson (the three-point shootout winner over All-Star weekend) spotting up on the break. And if Nash can’t find those two, there’s always power-forward Marion, also an adept three-point shooter. And if all else fails, Nash (a Top 10 three-point shooter this season himself) can pull the trigger.

The Grizzlies need to get out on Phoenix’s shooters, even if it means giving up a highlight dunk or two. Phoenix is the best outside shooting team in the league, and the Grizzlies will be better off giving up two points than three.

As with turnovers, you can trace the Grizzlies’ success against the Suns this season to their ability to defend the three, holding Phoenix below their league-best 39 percent in Memphis’ two wins and allowing them to shoot better than that in their two losses.

If the Grizzlies have success in those two areas — limiting turnovers and defending the three — they should be competitive against the Suns. But to win, the following three areas are musts:

Compete on the boards.

This series isn’t exactly a clash of the titans on the boards, as Phoenix and Memphis are 29th and 28th (out of 30 teams), respectively, in rebounding percentage. Phoenix’s small frontline and lack of physical rebounders/defenders is the main reason why most observers think the Grizzlies match up better with Phoenix than the other elite teams in the West.

But even if Phoenix isn’t terribly big, they are extremely athletic. With Pau Gasol and Stromile Swift back to 100 percent and the team not having to rely on slow-of-foot Brian Cardinal, the Griz should be able to hold their own on the boards, but Stoudemire’s and Marion’s quickness off the floor still makes the Suns dangerous on the offensive glass.

Get better point-guard play.

This has been an ugly area of late for the Grizzlies, with starter Jason Williams either pouting on the bench or throwing up bricks on the court and with backup Earl Watson’s already sketchy ability to run the offense regressing. The Grizzlies’point-guard tandem doesn’t have to outplay MVP candidate Nash in this series, but they certainly have to be better than they’ve been over the past couple of months.

With his tough-nosed defense, you’d think Watson could be a key player with his ability to harass Nash, thus slowing down the league’s most effective offense. But the reality during the regular-season series was that Watson’s offensive deficiencies were more of a factor than his ostensible defensive attributes. Watson’s averaged three turnovers in only 16 minutes a game against the Suns, and his deplorable play in the Grizzlies’ home loss in March got him yanked in favor of third-stringer Antonio Burks.

Williams, on the other hand, has thrived offensively against the Suns (not coincidentally, Nash is a poor defender), pumping his season scoring average from 10 to 16 and shooting well. With Williams’ success against the Suns coming up against a long shooting slump, something’s got to give.

Points from Pau.

There might not be a better reason for optimism in this series than the fact that the Grizzlies have gone 2-2 against Phoenix despite getting little production from Gasol.

Gasol was fine in the first game against the Suns, but he played hurt in the second game, sat out the third game due to injury, and played only 15 minutes in the fourth game.

But Gasol looks close to 100 percent now, having scored in double figures in 11 of his past 12 games, and there’s no reason he can’t thrive against the Suns. Gasol should be able to use his five-inch size advantage to score against Marion in the post. And even if Phoenix decides to guard Gasol with Stoudemire, it should still be a favorable match-up: The Suns’ young star may be emerging as a dominant offensive player, but that production hasn’t translated to the defensive end yet. Actually, the Sun player best equipped to defend Gasol is probably seven-foot reserve Steven Hunter, who has averaged only 14 minutes a game but could play a bigger role in this series.

If the Grizzlies can do all of the above, they could well pull off a playoff upset. Of course, given the likelihood of significant player turnover this off-season, along with the equal likelihood of a series loss, perhaps how the team fares in the coming week is less important than how a few particular players fare. Going forward, four players seem to comprise the core of this team: Gasol, Mike Miller, Shane Battier, and James Posey. You know what you’re going to get from Battier. Posey could be an important player in this series, theoretically, with his ability to both hit threes and defend the perimeter, but more likely his lost season will come to a quiet close.

So that brings us to Gasol and Miller: With immense offensive skills and plenty of room for growth (they are only 24 and 25 years old, respectively) they’re the two most important players on this roster. The Grizzlies need Gasol to confirm that he can be a reliable playoff scorer (and a better showing defensively and on the boards wouldn’t hurt either). Miller has struggled mightily in 12 postseason games with Memphis and Orlando. Does he have the mental makeup to match his physical tools? He’s been healthier and more effective this season than ever in his career and over the past month has emerged as the big-time scorer his skills have always suggested he could be. For these players, the next few games pose a big test. •

Music Music Features

Royal Treatment

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date April 22, 2005

It took more than 25 years — from 1976’s Have a Good Time to 2003’s I Can’t Stop — for old partners Al Green and Willie Mitchell to collaborate on a secular soul record. And now it’s taken only two years for them to follow it up.

The new Everything’s OK (Blue Note; Grade: A-), recorded last summer at Mitchell’s Royal Studios with mostly the same cast of Hi-connected characters as I Can’t Stop (guitarist/collaborator Teenie Hodges a notable absence), doesn’t have quite the vintage Hi Records quality as the initial step in Green and Mitchell’s reconstituted partnership.

If I Can’t Stop sounded like a perfect recreation of one of Green and Mitchell’s second-tier ’70s albums, Everything’s OK is slightly less impressive but slightly more distinctive. There are more blues here, from the chitlin-circuit-ready “Perfect to Me” to the funky “I Can Make Music” (featuring Bobby Rush on harmonica).

The vocals on Everything’s OK don’t have the ease or subtlety of Green’s best ’70s work, but the slight strain of the vocal performance is only a minor problem and only then in contrast to what were perhaps the greatest studio albums in soul history. The richness of his mid-range slightly diminished, Green relies more on dynamics that swing low with guttural groans or up high to the soaring improvisations no one else has ever matched. There are many moments on Everything’s OK when Green sounds like a man who has come to reclaim the falsetto shriek that inheritor (and future Blue Note label mate?) Prince took to the bank.

One difference between Everything’s OK and I Can’t Stop is that whereas the earlier record was all original compositions, here Green and Mitchell slip in a ringer that reminds — and confirms — the artist’s supernatural ability as a cover artist. The deathlessly mawkish “You Are So Beautiful” may be the last thing in the world you want to hear, but a singer of Green’s genius can change your mind in a hurry, and his slow-burn performance of the song might be the most compelling on the album. Memories of Joe Cocker fade away as Green merely uses the song as a template for his repertoire of purrs, sighs, groans, shivers, and high-register flourishes.

That pattern continues for much of the album. A lot of the best tracks here (“Be My Baby,” for instance) seem barely written as songs. They exist as vehicles for Green and Mitchell to work their aural magic.

But Mitchell’s Royal Studios isn’t just a place for revisiting the past, as another new local album recorded at the famed studio attests. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Ron Franklin has been cutting some ace records in town over the past few years with a rotating cast of collaborators he’s dubbed the Ron Franklin Entertainers. With the eponymous album from The Natural Kicks (Miz Kafrin; Grade: B+) he’s now leading a more concrete band, a three-piece where’s he’s joined by bassist Ilene Markell and Tearjerkers frontman Jack Yarber on drums.

Like so many other Memphis bands past and present, the Natural Kicks play garage-rock with blues and rockabilly roots, but Franklin lends that sound a pop-soul brightness that sets him apart. You can hear it on the compelling mix of originals and covers (where the covers sound like originals and the originals sound like covers) on The Natural Kicks: the Bo Diddley beat that helps the original “Leiden Girl” motorvate along or the way Franklin & Co. turn Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” into a swinging sock-hop-ready jam.

Franklin’s a talented singer/guitarist, but his real gift might be as a conceptualist, and the harder-rocking, real-band setting here dampens the playfulness that made Franklin’s previous records so enjoyable. Even in more conventional form, however, he still sounds like no one else on the local scene. •

The Natural Kicks play the Young Avenue Deli Saturday, April 23rd, with Viva Voce.

Music Music Features

sound advice

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date April 22, 2005

I’ve never been one to hide my prejudices, so I’m just going to come right out and say it: I love Brazilian singers. I love Rita Lee from Os Mutantes and could listen to Astrid Gilberto reading the phone book. These days I’ve got a little thing for Juju Stulbach, the actress and dancer turned sultry crooner for Mosquitoes, a band that blends amped-up bossa-nova beats with beautiful indie rock and tosses in a smidgen of retro lounge appeal for good measure. Best of all, these Mosquitoes don’t bite, and their sunny, infectious songs are a perfect complement to a Memphis springtime when the monsoons have stopped, the flowers are blooming, and youngsters start prowling the night looking for fun. Mosquitoes are all about sonic sunshine, wine, and good times, and they play the Hi-Tone Café on Friday, April 22nd.

Speaking of prejudices, a recent article about Hella and Outhud, by Flyer contributor Andy Earles, chastised audiophiles who only like old music, or music that sounds old. I guess I’m ripe for the spanking. You see, in my book, if it’s not about fast cars, cheap dates, and shimmy-shaking all night long, it’s just not rock-and-roll. If I can’t see Chuck Berry’s fingerprints on it somewhere, it may be rock, but it’s not rock-and-roll. The Angel Sluts, who boast a fuzzed-out retro-punk sound that nods to garage-punk ranging from the Ramones to the Oblivians, celebrate the release of their Wrecked-‘Em Records EP Hot Teen Action at Murphy’s on Saturday, April 23rd, with Chicago band Drip and locals The Six String Jets. It’s hot rock-and-roll, and your $5 cover includes the cost of a seven-inch single. Can’t beat that.

Last December I picked Shabadoo‘s Tantamount as one of my favorite local records of 2004. I was premature. That disc doesn’t have its official release party until Shabadoo’s mastermind Joey Pegram (Hot Monkey, 611, Joint Chiefs) takes the stage at the Buccaneer on Friday, April 22nd. Think of Tantamount as an audio chill room: a sonic escape from all the noisy garage rock and screamo that’s been making the rounds. A gorgeous mix of beats — real and electronic — move Tantamount‘s guitar- and keyboard-driven melodies in sullen fits and lush, melancholy starts, taking it to a gently psychedelic place where Lou Barlow jams out (quietly) with Low. The opening track, “Divisible,” is lovely but lyrically a little weak. It doesn’t prepare you for the sublimated politics of “A brave assault, too bad you missed them all” (from “No Duh”) or “Get up it’s time we’re on our way/All the wolves are counting sheep” (from “Wakey, Wakey!”). It’s beautiful, smart pop that makes you feel like you’re falling down in slow motion and loving every microsecond of it. –Chris Davis

As pop genres go, few are as sprawling and prolific as indie-rock. There are so many bands putting out so many records in so many places that even the most devoted specialists can’t hope to keep up. If, like me, you’re a generalist who finds the underground hype machine highly unreliable, it’s impossible. So you just dive in where you can, catch what floats by on its own, and hope you don’t miss too much of the good stuff. And sometimes unexpected treats will creep across your unsuspecting ears. Take Viva Voce, a husband-and-wife indie-rock duo from Oregon via Alabama that remind me a little of another husband-wife indie partnership, Yo La Tengo.

Where a lot of duo bands — White Stripes, Kills, etc. –have an expectedly spare sound, the musical partnership of Kevin and Anita Robinson create a reasonably dense racket but without ever sounding too busy. They both sing, and both have indie-rocker voices –hers sweet, his intentionally flat, both understated. They write smart little songs with snarky titles (“Business Casual,” “Free Nude Celebs”). And on their latest, 2004’s The Heat Can Melt Your Brain, they find that perfect balance of sweetness and crunch that so much good indie-rock traffics in, making their version of the genre’s inherent modesty one of its central charms –a charm they verbalize with the knowing “Mixtape = Love.” (“I dub the tunes in perfect form/To say what I could never voice/And hope you hear right past the songs.”) Viva Voce returns to the Young Avenue Deli Saturday, April 23rd, alongside locals The Natural Kicks (see Music Feature, page 37), Ron Franklin’s ace new band. • —

Music Music Features

Royal Treatment

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date April 22, 2005

The Natural Kicks play the Young Avenue Deli Saturday, April 23rd, with Viva Voce.

Opinion Viewpoint

Person of Pander

Post author By Richard Cohen
Post date April 22, 2005

Totally by mistake, I was summoned to meet Senator Bill Frist shortly after he first arrived in Washington. This happened because someone in Frist’s office confused me with the congressional-affairs correspondent of the National Journal, Richard E. Cohen, but I stayed to meet Frist anyway and found him impressive.

Time and tide has changed my view of him. He is now the Senate majority leader and an undeclared but neon-lit presidential candidate who is getting into shape for the long run to the White House by shedding anything that weighs him down. In his case, it’s principles.

Frist initially led the Senate’s effort to keep poor Terri Schiavo alive, even though every court that had heard her case had concluded she was, technically and sadly, dead. Now Frist will be joining a religious telecast that will attack Democrats as being hostile to “people of faith.” It will focus on the filibuster, which the Democrats have used to block 10 of George Bush’s 229 judicial appointments.

Some of the nominees are quaintly anachronistic in their views, but, to a person, they believe in God, or so they aver, and must be supported, no matter what else they think or do. Being a person of faith apparently means not having to be a person of thought.

“The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith,” the telecast’s sponsoring organization has declared

I am pausing now to wonder if the phrase “people of faith” is meant to include Muslims of several wives, Hindus of several deities, or even the odd person here and there who believes, as I am sometimes tempted to, that God can be found in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. I think somehow, however, that “people of faith” is meant to embrace only conservative Christians and maybe Orthodox Jews who are sometimes lumped together as Judeo-Christians. People of faith, you may rest assured, are people of their faith. All others need not apply.

I don’t think a gay Presbyterian would be considered a person of faith, no matter how devout, nor, for that matter, would a pro-choice Methodist — say someone such as Hillary Clinton. It would certainly not include a Baptist like husband Bill or a Jew like Chuck Schumer or, I venture to say, an Episcopalian like John McCain, a person whose faith sustained him in a Vietnamese prison. As for a Roman Catholic such as Ted Kennedy, whose faith informs his liberalism, take it on faith he would not be considered a person of faith.

The phrase would also exclude anyone of any faith who believed in a limited role for religion in public life, especially the schools, if only on the pragmatic grounds that otherwise we will be at each other’s throats. This is a lesson of history.

What Senate Democrats lack is not faith but 50 votes. Frist knows this, of course, but his mad pursuit of the presidency requires him to prove to the Christian right, the core base of the Republican Party, that their cause comes before his principles.

He did this with Terri Schiavo, going so far as to use his medical bona fides (he’s a heart surgeon) to view a videotape of the poor woman and pronounce her somewhat alert. Now he is lending his name and his fast-diminishing prestige to this reprehensible effort to enlist faith on the side of a single political issue. This sort of stuff will not, as he hopes, make him the next president of the United States. Instead, it shows what raw ambition has made him:

A person of pander. •

Richard Cohen is a member of the Washington Post Writers Group.