Month: July 2005

On The Scene with Bianca Phillips at youth program Graffitti Playground

Post author By Bianca Phillips
Post date July 1, 2005

“Let’s go through the Thriller routine again,” an instructor says to a room of about 20 kids. “Max, cue the tape.”

A curly-haired kid hits “play” on the boom box and takes his place in front of the other kids already assembled in gang formation in the large theater room at Galloway United Methodist Church in Cooper-Young. As the familiar cackle begins the song, Max throws his head back and opens his mouth. When the music starts, he acts out Michael Jackson’s part while the rest of the kids become ghouls and goblins.

The youngsters are part of Graffitti Playground (spelled with two “f”s and two “t”s after the program’s founder accidentally misspelled the name), a nonprofit performing-arts group for inner-city youth aged 8 to 21. Unlike similar programs, Graffitti Playground is free. The only requirements are dedication and passion.

“I started this program because there’s a lot of talented kids here in Memphis, but there aren’t very many outlets for them for free,” says founder DeWayne Hambrick. “Normally, you’d have to go to a studio for these services and pay an arm and a leg.”

Hambrick is no stranger to the performing arts. In high school, he landed a part on Disney’s teen dance show, Kids Incorporated. He spent the last 10 years on tour, performing roles in Barney and The Wiggles.

“Every time I’d come back to Memphis, there was just something missing,” says Hambrick. “But instead of complaining about it, I decided to do something.”

For many of these kids, performing is more than just a hobby, so Hambrick and his eight choreographers (some of whom are students such as Max) teach the kids as though they are attending a professional school. He says he styled the program after the movie Fame and hopes to offer kids a “New York-style experience” by making them work hard to keep their spot on the team.

Every time he holds auditions, each student has to try out all over again, and while he never turns anyone away, they can be bumped down in placement.

“I’m tough on them, and the teachers are tough, but at the same time, they know I truly care about them,” says Hambrick.

And it’s obvious that he does care. In the music room, about seven kids are talking, and Hambrick asks them to sing a song. One of the girls opens her mouth, and the sound that comes out is so smooth, it could rival any American Idol. Hambrick beams like a proud parent.

The kids are preparing for a July 9th performance of a musical called Big Mama’s Birthday at Mitchell High School. They’ll also be performing Little Shop of Horrors in the fall.

News The Fly-By

F-Stop

Post author By
Post date July 1, 2005

“Graffiti is built around the notion of fame,” says Adam Smith, aka Codak, a local graffiti writer.

How do you know you’re famous? When people driving to work or waiting to catch the trolley suddenly find your name on their lips. And so it is with TM, a spraypainted tag on walls and sign posts all over the city. TM, which appears with graffiti or sometimes stands alone, represents the crew Thoughts Manifested.

“When I first came here [from Portland], there was no graffiti scene to speak of,” says Smith, recalling his years as an art student at the University of Memphis. He began doing graffiti locally and attracted the attention of writers from other Mid-South cities.

“The original members of TM were from Nashville and Knoxville. There was Rex2, Jeka, Zoom, and Nutsack,” says Smith. “Some of these guys have stopped writing now, and there are new members of the crew such as Paco and Audroc.”

Smith is not as active as he once was, but graffiti is “one of those things that is never going to leave me,” he says. These days he works as a graphic designer in Memphis and has pieces on display at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art as part of “Brooks Introduces: Off the Wall.”

“I may not be getting out on the streets as much, but when you put graffiti in a different context … they come to understand it in a new light.”

Codak’s work, to the uninitiated, can seem like a chaotic swirl, a hyper-intricate form that has little resemblance to the letters C-O-D-A-K. Part of the thrill of graffiti, however, lies in its elitist legibility. “I can travel the whole country — the whole world — and learn to read peoples’ pieces, to pull the shapes and letters out,” says Smith.

So next time you spot a TM, look a little closer; there is a new world waiting to be discovered.

Letters To The Editor Opinion

postscript

Post author By Flyer Readers
Post date July 1, 2005

CA Responses

To the Editor:

I have no problem with The Memphis Flyer reporting on labor negotiations at The Commercial Appeal (“Extra! Extra!” June 23rd issue), although I thought your reporter would have provided us an opportunity to answer the litany of accusations made by the union’s hired guns before publishing them as fact.

Flyer writer Chris Davis spoke with Henry Stokes, our director of administration and planning and got our response to a short list of questions. But the article was replete with incorrect statements that we had not been asked about. The source of these errors appears to be union propaganda. Perhaps your reporter was confusing attribution with fairness.

I would like to briefly correct the record on some of these inaccuracies:

First, the guild does not have 371 members at The Commercial Appeal. That is the number of employees covered by the contract ‹ of which slightly less than half are members. The guild does not let nonmembers participate in its meetings or vote on company proposals.

The Flyer story states that in November of last year eight members of the guild bargaining team lost their jobs. The fact is that only one of the guild bargaining team was laid off.

Regarding the “Evergreen Clause,” federal law gives an employer the right to not process post-expiration grievances to arbitration. The guild failed to abide by the provisions of a side agreement to the contract and then tried to force arbitration in violation of the spirit of the agreement. The Commercial Appeal had no choice but to go to court to protect our rights.

The Flyer states that the police were called when the union has exercised its First Amendment rights by demonstrating at company events. This is not true. The police have not been called to prevent or disrupt any union demonstrations.

The Flyer states that the guild’s bargaining agent was banned from The Commercial Appeal‘s building. That is not true. We do require that he restrict his visits to an office provided by the Human Resources Department. He has, in fact, visited the newspaper building to conduct union business on many occasions and as recently as this spring. No guild official has been harassed. Personnel actions are private matters between the employee and the company and it would not be appropriate to discuss them in public.

The Flyer has inappropriately confused company employee drivers with independent contracted carriers. Drivers are employees who drive company owned or leased trucks and enjoy the same benefits as other employees similarly situated. Carriers, as long established by federal statute, are independent contractors. They pick up papers at our drop sites and deliver them to homes. They are paid according to the provisions of their contract. As independent contractors they have control over the means of accomplishing the tasks in their contract. No “part-time employees who once stuffed inserts” were laid off to transfer this work to carriers.

The Flyer story also features graphics allegedly showing historic “merit pay” at The Commercial Appeal. The newspaper does not have a merit-pay system for its union-covered employees. The pay described in the charts is actually “above scale pay” and has absolutely no relation to the merit-pay system we are proposing. An employee may receive above-scale pay for a number of reasons; a merit-based pay system rewards top performers better than nonperformers. The charts are based on a “study” conducted by a Washington, D.C.-area consultant that works primarily for unions and uses data provided by the union.

We are willing to increase the pay of our union-covered employees. However, we strongly believe that the amount of increased compensation should have something to do with performance. We offered to allow the union to try our merit-pay system this year so that their members and the others within the bargaining unit could receive an increase. This offer did not preclude the union from continuing to bargain for its own pay plan in the future. It was merely an opportunity for guild-covered workers to see for themselves how fairly such a system can work. The proposal has an objective set of criteria for employee evaluation and an appeal process if an employee is dissatisfied.

Finally, we should note that our guild-covered employees are well-paid in the Memphis market. The six picketers shown on page 16 made approximately $315,000 last year, not counting company-paid benefits. Under our merit-pay plan, they would have made even more this year.

John Wilcox

President and Publisher

The Commercial Appeal

Editor’s note: As Wilcox states, there are 371 employees at The Commercial Appeal who are represented in labor negotiations by the Memphis Newspaper Guild. In union terms, they are considered members of the “collective bargaining unit.” According to Samantha Norton, office manager of the Memphis Newspaper Guild, 204 of those 371 employees are members of the guild. Eight members of the bargaining unit were laid off last November. The Flyer‘s use of the phrase “bargaining team” was technically inaccurate.

“Drivers,” as defined by The Commercial Appeal, refers to those who deliver bulk papers by truck. The section of the Flyer story describing conditions under which “drivers” were required to stuff advertising materials into the newspaper should have termed those workers as “carriers.”

Whether or not police “were called” to guild demonstrations, police appeared and confronted guild members as they picketed a Commercial Appeal jobs fair at the Agricenter and a CA event at the zoo.

To the Editor:

As the child of a union man, I was smart enough to see what was going on. As a result, I am a very anti-union person. However, in this case I think both the CA and the union are wrong.

The union is outside the mainstream in opposing merit-pay raises. In the real world, merit pay is the norm. No one gets an across-the-board raise just because they show up every day.

By the same token, the CA is wrong in forcing its contractors to do company business. The contractors are contracted to deliver the paper, not become a part of its production. The CA‘s production has suffered greatly of late. Is that the fault of the CA or a slowdown by the union? I don’t know, nor do I care. I just know it’s getting lousier all the time and needs more than revamping the obituaries and putting the comics in the want-ads (two terrible decisions).

Frankie Guinle

Memphis

To the Editor:

Thanks for Chris Davis’ hard-hitting story on The Commercial Appeal‘s failure to negotiate with its union members on a contract that would uphold the union’s right to protect the senority-raise system. The discriminatory and potentially manipulative use of merit raises only became abundantly clear through reading your article.

I have been a CA subscriber for over 15 years, so I felt compelled to write to publisher John Wilcox to complain about the newspaper’s anti-labor behavior. In response to my carefully worded and respectful e-mail to him, I received the following message: “This message has been sent to a junk-mail folder without being opened.”

How’s that for caring about what your customers think?

Gail S. Murray

Memphis

Fixing the Facts

To the Editor:

Thanks for your “Fixing the Facts” editorial (June 23rd issue) on the revelations in the Downing Street memos. Nothing short of “high crimes and misdemeanors” seems appropriate to describe taking our country into an unnecessary war on false pretenses. Why is there not a massive outcry from the public?

Neil Nokes

Eads, Tennessee

To the Editor:

When it comes to government secrecy in war, I remember the words of a congressman from Illinois:

“The administration should clarify its intent,” he said. “People lack confidence in the credibility of our government.” Even our allies are beginning to question what we say, he charged. “It’s a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy,” he said. “With the secrecy, it’s impossible. The American people will do what’s right when they have the information they need.”

You see, in 1966, Congressman Donald Rumsfeld realized what not telling the truth to the American people would lead to. Amazing how history repeats itself.

Aaron Prather

Cordova

To the Editor:

Thanks to The Memphis Flyer for powerfully saying what I and so many other Americans have waited to see in the U.S. media for a long time! It is now completely obvious that we have a president and vice president who are worse than Nixon and Agnew when it comes to lying and cover-up. The Downing Street memos prove it. Bush, Cheney, and their cronies have gotten over 1,700 of our brave soldiers killed and over 10,000 wounded in a war based on lies. This is Vietnam all over again. And the result will be the same: a huge loss of life and a mammoth loss of tax-payers’ money. It is criminal!

Bob Comer

Vietnam War veteran

Magnolia, Ohio

Porno is Not Cool

To the Editor:

I picked up your Summer Issue ’05 (June 16th) to read the article about Scandaliz Vandalistz by Bianca Phillips. A few pages later, Phillips listed her “cool spots” on Summer Avenue. At the top of the list? Paris Adult, which in its supreme coolness “sells and rents porno movies ‹ gay, straight, and fetish.”

Pornography is completely not cool, and I am appalled that The Memphis Flyer would describe it as anything but detrimental, degrading, and dangerous. In the future, please act with discretion and responsibility.

Gwen Daniels

Memphis

Opinion Viewpoint

Sucker Punch(es)

Post author By Richard Cohen
Post date July 1, 2005

Edward Klein’s new book on Hillary Clinton, The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go To Become President, insinuates epic mendacities, sapphic sex, fiscal improprieties, and marital rape.

All of that Klein documents either vaguely or not at all. It is so beyond belief and good taste that the very fact his book is selling like proverbial hotcakes starkly exposes the anti-Clinton people as the village idiots of our time. It takes one to buy this book.

I did anyway. But I did so out of solemn duty and because I wanted to see if this book could possibly be as bad as its reviews — not a single good one that I know of. Klein has gone so far over the top that I, an acquaintance of lo these many years, am astonished. He is, after all, a former editor of The New York Times Magazine and, by credential, a member of the august establishment press.

He was also an editor at Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post, so the magazine is next door to Pravda in the fantasy neighborhood where good right-wingers live. All this leads me to conclude — Ed, you sly devil, you — that Klein set out to expose the right wing for the gullible nincompoops they are. He has succeeded, and vast riches await him.

His book is flying off the shelves — more than 350,000 shipped. It has become a Rorschach of conservative madness — proof that they will buy anything, no matter how badly done, that attacks the Clintons or liberalism. Klein’s book is just the most recent example. He looked at conservatives the way P.T. Barnum looked over his audience: “There’s a sucker born every minute,” Barnum said. Ed is nodding all the way to the bank.

This calculating contempt for the IQ of right-wingers is not limited to opportunistic authors, of course. Last week, it was demonstrated by Karl Rove, of all people. Speaking to the New York State Conservative Party, the president’s most important adviser had this to say: “Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.”

Actually, a Los Angeles Times poll taken in November 2001 showed Bush with an approval rating approaching 90 percent and Democrats almost as supportive as Republicans for going into Afghanistan and pounding the Taliban.

So Rove’s crack is simply not true. I attribute it, possibly, to his deep, subconscious shame over never having served in the military or, more likely, a cynical appreciation that his audience would rather hate than think. So he patronized them, knowing that they would not for a moment connect such simplistic thinking to the quagmire of Iraq, the debacle of Social Security reform, or the dash back to Washington from Texas so that George W. Bush could sign a bill attempting to keep the sadly brain-dead Terri Schiavo alive. The real reason such conservatives frequently wear Gucci loafers is that they cannot tie their own shoes.

If I were a right-winger, I would be offended by both Klein and Rove. But I am not a conservative, and so I can only wonder at their gullibility. Right-wingers are the useful idiots of our times, and while they have their occasional left-wing counterparts, the lefties will not buy essentially the same book over and over again — if only because they lack the funds. Maybe Klein has taken this as far as it will go. I hope not. My book on Hillary’s romp with Paris Hilton will be out soon. It’s hot.

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

News The Fly-By

Cleaning Up

Post author By Janel Davis
Post date July 1, 2005

With a final round of seven “aye” votes at a special Monday night meeting, the Memphis City Schools board settled the disputed question of maintenance service for its 191 facilities.

The board voted to bring maintenance services in-house under the jurisdiction of human-resources director Michael Goar and maintenance director Zeno Williams. “It will be a rough road for us to assume that responsibility,” said Goar. “There will be a need for additional resources in staff and so forth, but the employees are ready to step up if given the opportunity.”

For the last 12 years, facilities maintenance has been contracted to the Aramark company. A facilities-maintenance report detailing excessive overtime costs, employee complaints, and higher than average bid prices all played a role in the severing of Aramark’s contract. Aramark’s corporate office issued a brief statement saying only that the company has been “delighted” to serve MCS.

Aramark bid $3.3 million to renew its contract but was underbid by the Trammell Crow company, which offered to do the job for $2.7 million. But the board and Trammell Crow could not agree on cost caps. As Aramark’s June 30th contract-termination date neared, the board and administration went round and round with Trammell Crow — and with each other. An off-handed admonition from one board member for the district to have a backup plan hit home, and the board began to look into bringing the work in-house.

“We [custodial employees] had always felt that it was a slap in the face when Aramark was brought in,” said 21-year district employee James Fleming. “We were the ones doing the work anyway. They were just giving orders.”

Co-worker Martha Denman agreed. Denman, a building engineer, has worked for the district for nearly 28 years. “It was time for a change,” she said. “If the board didn’t give this to us, we were ready for a fight.”

During negotiations, Lavon Alston, the MCS staff member responsible for the transition to in-house services, resigned, leaving behind angry school board members and unanswered questions. “I know people may question why this is the board’s business,” said President Wanda Halbert. “But anything that affects the children of this district is our business.”

Goar estimates that bringing services in-house will cost the district about $2.5 million this year and $1.2 million next year. Savings for the second year are based on lower overhead and a drop in equipment costs.

“Aramark brought to the table customer service, classes, and training,” said Williams. “Prior to their coming here, we were not recognized as a group or appreciated for our work. I can’t speak for all departments, but for custodial, the services could have been brought back in-house four years ago.”

But even with the potential savings, some board members were still unsure about the plan. “We will be watching,” board member Deni Hirsh told Williams and his managers.

“I understand their concerns, but the employees have pride in their work and are going to prove it,” said Williams. “You’re always going to have that percentage of no-goods, but at least 93 percent of my people are good people. I look at it as my task to work on the other 7 percent. Most of us have been here at least 10 to 15 years, and no one knows our jobs better than us.”

The in-house staff is charged with completing its initial work by August 8th, a week before students return to school.

Food & Wine Food & Drink

Drink Pink

Post author By Taylor Eason
Post date July 1, 2005

The world would be a better place if people would get over themselves. We’re so concerned about how “uncool” we’re going to look while drinking pink wine that the act of enjoying a refreshing dry rosé becomes secondary. People, it’s good.

Many in “the industry” love dry rosés. They’re perfect for cutting the summer heat and can accompany any sort of food, from grilled hamburgers to pasta in cream sauce. Most winemakers even produce a case or two of rosés for their own consumption.

Of course, one reason some folks turn up their noses at rosés is the ubiquitousness of White Zinfandel, for years the top-selling wine in the United States. And there are still plenty of rosés out there that reek of canned cherries in syrup. But that’s what critics are for: to help you dodge the dogs.

All grapes, no matter the color of their skins, have clear juice. The tint depends on the amount of time the red grape skins are allowed to stew with the juice: days or weeks for red wines; a few hours for rosés, or blush, as some wineries call them. You’ll notice that some rosés are darker than others. That indicates the winemaker kept the juice sitting longer with the skins, coaxing more tannins into the wine to give it a more flavorful punch.

Rosés come from most countries and from any red grape: Syrah, Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Zinfandel. (Wineries that wish to avoid the déclassé “White Zin” moniker call their pink wines “Zinfandel Rosé.”) Some of the best come from the Provence and Languedoc regions of France, where citizens guzzle them by the gallons.

The characteristic smack of White Zinfandel comes from adding sugar to the juice or stopping fermentation before the sugar has been transformed into alcohol. In dry rosés, most of the sugar gets converted during fermentation, yielding a high-octane beverage. One reliable, yet not infallible, method of determining whether a rosé tastes sweet is by looking at the alcohol percentage located on the label. Those with higher alcohol content, normally between 12.5 percent and 14.5 percent, are dry, and sweeter wines show 10 percent to 12 percent.

So it’s time to get out there and look uncool, but dammit, you’ll be drinking good stuff. Besides, it’s certainly cool to be drinking the cutting edge.

Recommended Wines

Turkey Flat 2004 Dry Rosé Barossa Valley — A spectacular symphony of red fruit flavors that indulge the palate with strawberry, cherry, and raspberry. Elegant, with fantastic acidic balance. Well-priced for the quality. One word: yummy. $15.

Bonny Doon 2004 Big House Pink California — Dry, yet kinda tastes like a cherry Jolly Rancher. An odd bit of guava in there, but it works. $10.

Vina Vilano 2004 Rosado Ribera Del Duero — Like biting into a chilled strawberry, with some gutsy cranberry and cassis coming into play. From Spain and made with the Tempranillo grape. Not your momma’s White Zin, my friends. $10.

Fiddlehead Cellars 2004 Pink Fiddle Santa Rita Hills — A rosé from southern California Pinot Noir, and it’s really fun. Zesty and enthusiastic, this pink gem sports tart cherry and some lemon-lime action. $16.

Solo Rosa 2004 Rosé California — These guys only make rosé, and damn, do they make it well. It’s flirty and fun with unusual full-bodiedness. Gorgeously ripe strawberry and raspberry complete this fabulous wine. $13.

Mas de la Dame 2004 Les Baux de Provence — Pretty flower aromas. Refreshing and flirtatious with strawberry dipped in honey flavors. Energetic acids round out the sip. Limited availability. $19.

Peachy Canyon 2004 Rosé Paso Robles — A slight sweetness gives this rosé some serious body and fullness. Bright cherry with a delicious lingering aftertaste that keeps giving. $12.

Opinion

Crystal Ball

Post author By John Branston
Post date July 1, 2005

John Ford will beat the rap by wrapping himself in TennCare. The more the media, state investigators, plaintiff’s attorneys, and rival politicians bore in on him, the greater Ford’s chances of being acquitted on federal criminal charges of extortion. The investigations will blur in the public mind and look like piling on.

There is no connection between E-Cycle Management — the bogus company in the F.B.I. Tennessee Waltz sting — and United American HealthCare (UAHC) — the parent of TennCare provider UAHC Health Plan of Tennessee. But Ford has already said he was singled out for indictment by TennCare cutters. If there are criminal indictments stemming from an investigation by the TennCare inspector general’s office, which was created by the General Assembly in 2004, or Tennessee Insurance Commissioner Paula Flowers, who put UAHC of Tennessee on administrative supervision in April, Ford will cry dirty politics. And his cry will resonate in Memphis, which has more TennCare recipients who stand to lose their coverage than any other part of the state.

Ford didn’t invent the concept of the high-paid consultant, he just refined it as a legislator. This week the Government Accountability Office reported that 34 states used consultants paid on contingency fees to get more Medicaid and Medicare money.

If Ford is tried by a Memphis jury, he will walk.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on eminent domain in Kelo v. New London will not help the Riverfront Development Corporation in its efforts to develop the downtown Promenade. In fact, it will hurt it by focusing attention on the land bridge, which is the most expensive and controversial part of the RDC plan.

You can read the entire opinion in less than 10 minutes at this Web site: straylight.law.cornell.edu. It is nuanced, balanced, and bears little resemblance to the simplifications and mischaracterizations of it in media accounts. The New London Development Corporation is somewhat similar to the RDC. A small group of private-property owners whose properties were not blighted fought the development plan and lost. The case turned on whether the plan served “public purpose,” which is not the same as “public use.” See for yourself how economic development serves public purpose.

The RDC wants to take some public land for private use to help finance public improvements. The only way to get the land bridge through is by stealth. When the focus, for whatever reason, shifts to the cost, whether it is $100 million or $250 million, it’s a dead duck. Boss Crump recommended a land bridge to Mud Island in a newspaper interview in 1953, the year before he died. The most powerful man in Memphis history couldn’t make it happen, and neither will the RDC.

The Memphis Grizzlies will wear out their welcome if they don’t boost their contributions to the city in a big way. There is no causal connection, but the fact is that public parks and boulevards and golf courses are suffering while the $250 million FedExForum sits idle, the NBA finals get lousy ratings, Grizzlies malcontents making $8 million a year whine and can’t get fired up to win a playoff game, and publicists try to get us to care about the 19th pick in this week’s draft. Pitiful. How ironic that “surplus” funds from the MLGW water division are helping to pay off the bonds for FedExForum while the city can’t water the greens at the Links of Galloway golf course.

The Pyramid reuse recommendation — an indoor theme park and a shopping mall — won’t happen. It’s not that the ideas are bad. It’s that they require public subsidies, giving away the building, or both. And this is not the time to be spending public money to promote tourism or economic impact. With the arena, baseball stadium, trolley, Mud Island, and The Pyramid in place and the highest property taxes in the state, the era of big public projects in Memphis is over.

Which brings us to this: The next mayor of Memphis will run and win on a program of a better Memphis for Memphians through revitalized neighborhood parks and public spaces. His or her model will be Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, who has been singing this song for years.

“As schools lost their effectiveness as community anchors, the same thing happened to parks, libraries, and other public spaces,” Daley has said. “People stopped using them and the city stopped taking care of them. Or maybe people stopped using them because the city stopped taking care of them. … The nice thing is, if you improve the quality of life for people in your city, you will end up attracting new people and employers.”

Nothing gets the public stirred up like uncut grass or unpicked-up garbage.

Music Music Features

Local Beat

Post author By Andria Lisle
Post date July 1, 2005

50,000 Watts of Goodwill: Earlier this month, legendary local AM station WDIA released an inaugural project, a double-disc archival compilation, on its own WDIA Records imprint. The CD, which is titled WDIA AM 1070: The History, The Music, The Legend, was compiled by veteran on-air personality James Davis, who has been with the station since the mid-’90s.

While Davis is somewhat new to the scene at WDIA, he’s well-schooled in the station’s historic legacy — that of becoming, in 1948, the first radio station in the country to be programmed by African Americans for an African-American listenership.

“I remember listening to ‘DIA as a kid,” Davis says. “And back in ’98, when we were preparing for our 50th anniversary, we prepared a 15-minute video on the history of the station and realized the wealth of material we had on hand.”

Davis says that the material that made its way onto this two-disc set was culled from various sources — delicate glass and aluminum records, reel-to-reels, and cassette tapes — and was sent to a transmitter site when the station relocated from downtown Memphis to its current offices out east.

“Things weren’t stored properly, and it was almost a calamity,” says Davis, crediting the station’s chief engineer, Alonzo Pendleton, with saving the archives. “We were losing a lot of stuff, and we needed to put it into a permanent format, so he set up all the equipment — record players that played 78, 16, and 33 rpm speeds and a cassette machine — in a room where I could get all these things played.”

What Davis found was a treasure trove of recordings — public service announcements and radio jingles half a century old and vintage commentary from deejays such as AC “Moohah” Williams, Nat D. Williams, Theo “Bless My Bones” Wade, Rev. AD “Gatemouth” Moore, and Rufus Thomas.

Listening to disc one of WDIA AM 1070 is like traveling in a time machine to downtown Memphis, circa the early ’50s. Urban African Americans had established their own society, touted over the air via programs such as “The Hoot and Holler” and “The Tan Town Jamboree.“ A fund-raising concert called “The Goodwill Revue” — which drew regional and national talents such as Ray Charles, Howlin’ Wolf, Pigmeat Markham, and even Elvis Presley — was in full swing, with earnings earmarked for such WDIA-centric civic activities as the city’s first black baseball little league, its first school for handicapped African-American children, the Keel Avenue School, and the Teen Town Singers, which groomed nascent performers such as Carla Thomas and Isaac Hayes for stardom. In those days, the “Goodwill Station” also posted a regular lost-and-found for listeners, even one time famously locating an errant cow.

Like the station’s current playlist, disc two of WDIA AM 1070 is Stax-heavy. J. Blackfoot, The Bar-Kays, William Bell, The Mad Lads, and Johnny Taylor all weigh in with their only-in-Memphis sound.

“Once we got going, more and more people got on board,” says Davis, who mentions Carl Wise and Select-O-Hits owner Johnny Phillips as the facilitators for the project’s musical component.

“[Studio co-founders Bert] Ferguson and John Pepper backed into this whole thing,” Davis says, explaining how WDIA came to make broadcasting history. “They wanted to make money, but, at the same time, they held the African-American community in high esteem. They had the courage to treat the folk with dignity and respect.”

A decade ago, media conglomerate Clear Channel purchased the station, but, Davis insists, it’s still business as usual at WDIA. “In the minds of our listeners, it belongs to the community as much as it belongs to Clear Channel,” he says.

“People in the Mid-South feel an ownership of the station. Make any changes here, and you’ll hear about it. I direct community affairs, and people still call about the same issues they called in about 50 years ago. If you need help, and you don’t know where to turn, you call WDIA.”

WDIA AM 1070: The History, The Music, The Legend is available at local record stores. For more information, go to AM1070WDIA.com or read Louis Cantor‘s definitive history of the station, Wheelin’ on Beale, which was published by Pharos Books in 1992.

Music Music Features

After the Fire

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date July 1, 2005

People remember disasters. If you’re old enough, you remember where you were when President John F. Kennedy was shot. Chances are you know where you were when the Space Shuttle exploded and when the planes hit the World Trade Center on 9/11. A less horrific version of this phenomenon: Ask a Memphis musician where he or she was when they heard that Easley-McCain ‹ the studio that produced seminal recordings by the White Stripes, Sonic Youth, the Grifters, and Impala ‹ burned on March 2, 2005.

The Glass drummer John Argroves was in his truck driving home when he received a call from engineer Kevin Cubbins. Cubbins had been working closely with the band on their Hibernation album since September 2004, and he had bad news.

“He said you need to come to Easley right now. It burned. We’ve got to get everything out,” Argroves says. “I got there and there were no windows. Everything was black. The control room was scary. I saw the melted plastic and the computer towers. Hibernation, only two sessions away from being complete, was lost somewhere amid all the melted plastic and the ashes.”

“So you want to hear the saga of Hibernation?” lead singer Brad Bailey asks rhetorically. “It is a saga all right: a saga of epic proportions.”

The Glass earned their sterling reputation by melding tragic, largely impressionistic lyrics with a big indie-rock sound. Their second release and local breakout, Concorde, was a grand, and grandly morose, recording that, at a different point in music history, might have been branded as rock opera.

“We were ready to make a new record,” Bailey says. “We knew that the sound of the band had changed from touring and playing a hundred times more shows than we played before recording Concorde.“

“It’s hard to play that [slow, sad] stuff live,” Argroves says, and bassist Tommy Pappas agrees.

“We knew we wanted things to rock more. And Kevin wanted to make us feel like we could make a record that was just as good as anybody out there. He wanted us to know that we didn’t have to have a rugged, tough lo-fi sound. A lot of people ‹ and me too ‹ make the mistake of equating heart with rawness and emotion with a really crappy sound,” Pappas says. “He told us not to forget about the money, but not to worry about it. That we should go with our ideas and not watch the clock.”

And so the Glass took their time recording as their touring schedule and finances allowed. By spring of 2005, Hibernation was nearly complete, and already word was buzzing through the Memphis music community that it was something special.

“And then the fucker burns down,” Bailey says of the Easley fire. “Everything in my life broke that week. All my pedals quit working. My amp quit working. Our record burns up.”

“My girlfriend left me,” Argroves adds with a shrug. “It’s not like there’s some insurance company out there who’s going to cut us a check for $3,000 to [hire someone] to get our recordings [off the damaged hard drives]. Nobody’s going to say, ŒHere’s all your money back, go make a new CD.'”

Reeling from the loss, the band packed up their equipment and sequestered themselves in a cabin in Heber Springs, Arkansas. They had exactly one week to re-create everything they’d lost.

“This time there weren’t going to be anymore second chances,” Pappas says.

“It scared the shit out of me when we got to the cabin because [we didn’t have the equipment we needed]. Kevin wound up taking the casings off of things and soldering and wiring things together since we didn’t have connectors,” Argroves says. “He told us he didn’t have enough mics to record all of us together. He said, ŒYou have to play all of your drum tracks first from memory.'” That’s exactly what Argroves did.

“Recutting the record was stressful,” Bailey says, “but in all the ways making a record should be stressful. It was good, positive stress. The kind related to doing any good work.”

After a week of intense work, the Glass rebirthed Hibernation, a record where operatic Bono-style vocals are delivered with all the casual faltering and vulnerable charm of Pavement’s Steve Malkmus. It’s a record about snakes, cannibals, burning villages, and 9/11. It overflows with tight, shimmering indie-pop, relentless drumming, impressionistic narratives, and head-twisting electric guitar meltdowns courtesy of Bailey and guitarist Justin Minus.

“We wanted to write smart rock songs,” Bailey says. “[Hibernation isn’t] a record with a mission to inform. It’s not a political statement. What it is is a reaction to Concorde. So many people tell me how much they like Concorde, and I’m like, that’s great ‹ I get drunk by myself in the dark.”

“And weep,” Argroves adds.

“I guess maybe I’m just tired of hearing songs about other people’s dating problems,” Bailey says. “There’s just so much more going on in the world. From beginning to end, Hibernation is all about waking up.”

It’s also about looking at a cruel and random universe where meteors crash and nice people get eaten and trying to make some sense of all the chaos and imbalance. The Glass is strictly adhering to the first rule of good writing: Stick with what you know.

The Glass

Hibernation CD-Release Party

Young Avenue Deli

Saturday, July 2nd