Month: July 2005

Categories
News The Fly-By

The CheatSheet

1. Tennessee finally designs a new state license plate. It’s not half bad — a misty scene of mountains and lakes that’s certainly better than the one mounted on vehicles now, which looks like it was drawn by a third-grader. And not a very artistic third-grader at that.

2. Shelby County’s director of homeland security announces his department will install some 700 video cameras at bridges, ports, industries, and other strategic spots around town. We certainly hope they aim most of the cameras at Libertyland. If terrorists ever attack that (and we believe it would be a high-priority target, considering the name), it will be a devastating blow to this nation’s morale. If we can’t even defend Libertyland, democracy is doomed.

3. Developers announce plans to turn The Pyramid into an elaborate theme park, complete with roller coaster and, in the future, an adjacent hotel. Just one word of caution, people: “Rakapolis.” Remember? (If you don’t, you’re lucky.)

4. Budget cuts may mean the end of Amtrak service between Memphis and New Orleans. Now, how will we get to Mardi Gras?

5. Collierville officials decide not to help build an ice-skating rink. Guess, this means the Flyer hockey team will have to practice in Southaven. 

Categories
Opinion

Crystal Ball

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. 

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Beat

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. 

Categories
Music Music Features

After the Fire

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

Categories
News Television

Blaze Up

Stop! Before you read beyond this paragraph, put down the paper and go buy a copy of Rescue Me: The Complete First Season on DVD — and while you’re at it, grab The Job: The Complete Series too. Go ahead. I’ll be waiting right here until you return.

I’ve sussed out how some of you work: You’ll refuse to watch a quality TV series for free (or semi-free on cable/satellite), but put a season or two out on DVD and you’re suddenly all over it. You know, because viewing a DVD is more like screening a movie, not a lowly plebian exercise like (sniff, snort) watching television. “That box over in the corner? I only use it to watch independent films and documentaries. Oh, and Saved by the Bell seasons one and two is simply magnificent; Screech certainly emerged as a coup de maitre in the later chapters. More Chardonnay?”

Now that you’re back, allow me to reintroduce you to Rescue Me (on the FX channel), the absolute best drama — and comedy — on television right now. Numero uno. Ultra-mega. There is none higher. Are we clear? Don’t come up to me and ask, “There’s nuthin’ good on TV now, is there?” I won’t be held responsible for my actions.

Rescue Me, which — pun fully intended — caught fire last summer, comes from the creators of ABC’s excellent-thus-doomed 2001-02 series The Job, Denis Leary and Peter Tolan. The Job was about morally ambiguous New York City cops whose personal and professional lives were torn apart as much as held together by booze, drugs, sex, and chaos — and it was funny as hell, within broadcast television confines. Superficially, Rescue Me is more of the same, only with NYC firefighters instead of cops and pushing the far looser limits of late-night cable. Between this, The Shield, and Nip/Tuck, the only thing separating FX from HBO some nights is the commercials and frequency of Van Damme movies.

Season one followed the darkly comic and painfully dramatic freefall of NYFD firefighter Tommy Gavin (Leary, giving the performance of his career) and his crew of nearly equally screwed-up men who would sooner punch you out than admit to personal problems, addictions, nightmares of 9/11, or any other girly hang-ups. Tommy’s wife (Andrea Roth) had kicked him out, though he moved just across the street; in the season finale, she and the kids sold the house and disappeared without a trace — better to live on the lam than put up with Tommy’s possessiveness and boozing any longer.

Season two picks up three months later: Tommy’s drinking himself further into oblivion while calling in legal favors to search for his family, dealing with pregnant “girlfriend” Sheila (Callie Thorne), the widow of his firefighter cousin and best friend Jimmy (James McCaffrey, turning up in ghost/hallucination form) who died in the Twin Towers and, since being transferred after a heated blow-up with the crew at his metro firehouse last season, enduring mind-numbing boredom at a new station in suburban Staten Island, where fires apparently never spark. (“Why don’t we light that car over there on fire? That’ll kill a couple of hours.”)

Back at the old firehouse, the crew isn’t much better off without Tommy’s angst: Lone female firefighter Laura (Diane Farr, a Job alum) still gets no respect from the boys club; Franco (Daniel Sunjata) is slowly recovering from last season’s Tommy-caused accident and developing a pain-killer addiction; firehouse vets Lou (John Scurti) and Jerry (Jack McGee) are the only ones fighting to get Tommy back on Ladder 62, since his “new guy” replacement Sully (Lee Tergesen) is seemingly too good to be true. (He is, as will be hysterically revealed in the season’s third episode.)

Again, check out the season one Rescue Me DVD first. You could jump in now, but a series this well written, realistic, heart-rending, and funny deserves to have every frame seen. Rescue Me is not only as good as TV gets, it’s as good as any storytelling medium could aspire to be. We’re clear now, right? 

Bill Frost is a writer for Salt Lake City Weekly.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Too Many Projects

From the beginning of the budget process, the City Council’s Capital Improvement (CIP) Committee chair Myron Lowery was asking, “What can be cut?” By the end, the council had trimmed $27 million, or 10 percent, from the mayor’s original CIP budget.

While both the CIP and operating budgets for fiscal year 2006 have been approved, financial constraints still loom large.

“We’ve got too many city projects on the table, and [the city] doesn’t have the infrastructure to carry them out,” said Lowery. “The administration must cut back on some projects.”

One project on the potential chopping block is the MATA light rail system. Through a series of close votes, the $280 million project survived for consideration next year.

While reports on the project were thorough, council member Carol Chumney sent out her own press release, detailing how light rail could decrease the car-rental tax payments that support repayment of arena bonds.

“If the car-rental tax collections decrease, then will city and county taxpayers be on the line for the deficiency?” she asked. “What are the actual projections of ridership for the airport/downtown light rail project, and do we really need it?”

The MATA information joined a series of releases Chumney sent out during budget hearings addressing everything from her votes on riverfront development to the city’s bond rating.

“These are issues that the public should be made aware of,” she said. “It is also to make sure that the media is aware of what happens in meetings and to take ownership of my ideas.”

When The Commercial Appeal published a story detailing Lowery’s CIP concerns, Chumney issued a correction, saying she had been the one concerned about the large amount of CIP expenditures.

“The logic [of Chumney’s MATA] release says that everybody renting cars goes downtown,” said Lowery. “You’ve got to take with a grain of salt these things that don’t make sense.”

To balance the budget, Lowery’s committee voted to delay several projects, pushing their start dates and funding requirements beyond fiscal year 2006: a fix for this year, but still a problem for the future.

Currently, Lowery is leaning toward the sentiments of Chumney and other council members who have wanted to veto projects such as the light rail, riverfront development, and construction of a 911 facility.

“Sometimes you can have a knee-jerk reaction to things, but you can deal with issues when they arise,” Lowery said. “The misconception has been that because we delayed some projects they were automatically approved, and that is not true. Each of those projects has to come before this council again and be voted on.” 

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

They Came for Steak

Every Friday and Saturday night, the smell of charcoal-grilled steak wafts around Somerville’s Historic Town Square and the twang of bluegrass dances in the air. These come-ons to the senses emanate from Sippin’s Coffee Shop, where owner Thomas Lynne fires up the grill and makes room for anyone who has brought an instrument and is ready to jam.

In most respects, Sippin’s is an ordinary small-town coffee shop. Everybody knows everybody as the square’s courthouse crowd filters in to check out the daily lunch special or to grab a sandwich. But with its steak nights, Sippin’s has earned notoriety among the locals who say it has the best steaks around.

The secret to Sippin’s steaks is in the grilling, which Lynne does on an ordinary charcoal grill pulled into the alley behind the landmark building where he opened his restaurant in December 2002.

Earlier that year, Thomas’ father, Tommy Lynne, bought the Two Sisters’ Building, which was once a sewing and fabric store operated by Paulie and Lucy Claxton. The owners leased the building for many years after closing their store. It was auctioned following their death.

“I bought the building to save it,” says Tommy. “I was going to open an art studio. My son wanted to open up a coffee shop, and I told him you’re going to have to serve more than coffee to make it work.”

Before opening the restaurant, the pair worked together to restore the building to its original form. During the restoration, Tommy discovered that the rafters in the attic were hand-hewn and pinned with wooden pegs. “They used horse-hair plaster, where they mixed horse hair with the plaster to make it stronger,” he says.

When decorating the restaurant, father and son chose wooden tables and an Oriental rug that would complement the original features of the building, such as the tin ceiling and hardwood floors. They also created space to display artwork by Tommy, who is a nationally known portrait photographer and sculptor. Pottery by Mark Davis and sculpture by Ellen McGowan have also been on display.

“My dad had the vision of what Sippin’s has come to be,” says Thomas. “He is the mastermind behind the design.”

The elder Lynne is equally quick to lay the credit at his son’s feet. Tommy says what Thomas, who is now 23, lacked in age and experience, he made up for with determination and dedication.

“My son has worked endless hours for a little of nothing, turning it into what it is today,” says Tommy.

When Thomas first returned home to Somerville, after graduating from high school in Portland, Tennessee, he didn’t expect to be running his own business. He started working at Sonic.

“I had a really good boss, and I enjoyed working with the food and getting it out quick,” he says. “I grasped it. I knew I liked it and that I could do it really well.” He has proved exactly that.

About six months after opening, Thomas realized he would have to offer something different to succeed, so that’s when he started grilling steaks in the back alley.

“It’s what pulls us through,” says Thomas. “With four other restaurants on the square, we knew we’d have to do something else.”

Most who stop by Sippin’s on Friday and Saturday come for the 12-ounce ribeyes and 8- to 10-ounce filets. But some come for the music.

“We have bluegrass, country, and gospel — all acoustic,” says Thomas. “It’s not regular bands. It’s more of a jam session. Mostly it’s people from around here. It gives them something to do on the weekend.”

In May, Thomas expanded the hours to stay open late on Thursdays, when, during the month of June, Somerville hosts a concert series at I.M. Yancy Park. “On Thursday nights, we’ve been serving baby back ribs and barbecue. We were doing crawfish, but we didn’t have much turnout for that, so we may do jambalaya or some kind of crawfish stew,” he says.

Any time of the day, customers can enjoy desserts baked by Thomas’ grandmother, Elizabeth Lynne, along with the gourmet coffee drinks that Thomas first envisioned when he decided to open Sippin’s. 

Sippin’s Coffee Shop is located at 114 W. Market St. in Somerville, (901) 466-1480. The hours are 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday and until 9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Enter “The Force”

The first stage of the local Democrats’ reorganization is over, and after Saturday’s party caucuses at the University of Memphis, it is no easier than it was beforehand to predict who will be the next party chairman.

But one thing was obvious: The affair was not dominated by either of the party’s traditional blocs (usually referred to as the Ford faction and the Herenton faction in rough but accurate shorthand).

No, the leading influence on Saturday was —how to say it? — the Third Force, the New Force, or maybe just The Force.

In any case, as many as 150 new Democrats (new to party processes, anyhow) were on hand — largely at the behest of such freshly organized groups as Democracy in Memphis and Mid-South Democrats in Action and by activist leaders like Bradley Watkins and David Holt and, most notably, Desi Franklin.

Estimates varied as to just how many delegates these groups managed to elect to next month’s party convention — maybe 30, maybe more. Enough, anyhow, to become the likely balance of power on July 23rd, when a successor will be elected to state senator Kathryn Bowers, who resigned the chairmanship in the wake of her arrest last month in the F.B.I.’s Tennessee Waltz sting.

A new executive committee will also be elected on July 23rd, and this one is unlikely to be riven into two feuding halves, as was the one elected just two years ago, when Bowers, supported by most Fordites, eked out a one-vote victory over Gale Jones Carson, Mayor Willie Herenton‘s press secretary.

And where did these new Democrats come from? Some of them were “Deaniacs,” who entered the political process with near-revivalist fervor to support the reform efforts of Howard Dean, a presidential candidate in 2004 and now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Others got involved to support the 2004 Democratic nominee, John Kerry, against President Bush. And still others materialized in response to the Tennessee Waltz scandal itself or to Governor Phil Bredesen‘s TennCare reductions or to a myriad of other signs that the process, in their eyes and for their purposes, had ceased to function.

Whatever brought them, they were there on Saturday, and their energy, quite as much as their numbers, seemed to carry the day.

The usual political brokers were there too, of course: Sidney Chism, chief tactician of the Herenton cause, was on hand, and longtime Ford loyalists David Upton and John Freeman were there to hold the fort for Congressman Harold Ford, who was reportedly elsewhere in Tennessee campaigning for the U.S. Senate seat he hopes to win in next year’s election.

But David Cocke, the worthy longtime Democrat who is the congressman’s designate for chairman (and the choice as well of Shelby County mayor A C Wharton and assessor Rita Clark) was unable even to win a delegate’s seat, much less to organize a clear majority for next month’s election. (Full disclosure: Flyer publisher Kenneth Neill defeated Cocke in the would-be chairman’s District 92 precinct.)

Other chairmanship wannabes were present Saturday — Cherry Davis, Joe Young, and current vice chair (and acting chairman) Talut Al-Amin. But all of them must have been as uncertain as Cocke about their prospects next month. (There was even a little brushfire chairmanship talk in favor of Franklin, who planned to take off for a vacation in Italy the day after the caucuses.)

A Compromise Candidate?

For the record, Cocke professed continued optimism about his candidacy and said he’d been assured that Representative Ford was still behind him. And the Ford organization’s spin machine, spearheaded by Upton, wasted no time this week in suggesting that the newly activated Democrats would end up on its side of the ledger.

Chism, who claimed victory for his side after Saturday, would have none of that. “I doubt that he [Cocke] will end up with five delegates when it’s all over,” he said, maintaining that two areas the Ford organization had counted on in recent years — predominantly white Midtown and East Memphis — had gone over to the insurgency.

After Saturday, there were two Democratic factions, just as there were before, Chism said, but he identified these as “my side and the new people” and suggested that these two groups could fairly easily be reconciled around common goals. As for the slate backed by Ford, Wharton, and Clark — “they’re dead in the water.”

Chism, who had vowed last week to block Cocke’s election at all costs, called the two-time chairman “a rubber stamp for Ford” and said that the congressman and Wharton “had no business” trying to dictate a chairmanship candidate.

There were some reports that Davis — whom Chism praised without expressly backing — might be within a few votes of victory once the dust settled, but there was also talk of a compromise candidate, and the name of Matt Kuhn, a party activist who has served as a chief campaign aide for several Democrats, was being suggested on various sides of the factional line.

“I’m considering my options,” Kuhn, who now works as a sales marketing representative, said this week. “If I can help bring a consensus to the party, I’d certainly be interested.” Kuhn said he felt closest of all to the newly engaged Democratic groups.

To the naked eye on Saturday, these new party cadres were overwhelmingly white, though some of their key figures (Watkins, for example) were African-American. But race was not the factor that bound them together. Most of them, when asked, professed to be motivated by a desire to throw off the perceived timidity and uncertainty that have accompanied Democratic defeats in recent years.

A spirited pre-caucus speech by state senator Steve Cohen on Saturday denouncing “Republican-lite” attitudes was met with thunderous applause, and the same kind of intensity was evident in the caucus proceedings themselves.

Maybe one of the party’s traditional factions will still end up in control at next month’s convention, and maybe not. But it is unlikely that any of the same-old/same-old attitudes will persist in the usual form.

Saturday’s caucuses made it clear that something new was under way, and the increased turnout, especially in predominantly white precincts, was surely enough to pique the curiosity not just of traditional Democrats but of the county’s Republicans as well.

 Meanwhile, the qualifying deadline passed last week for candidates running in the special elections for state Senate District 29 and state House District 87 (vacated, respectively, by John Ford and Kathryn Bowers, now a senator).

A few names might sift out on Thursday of this week, the withdrawal deadline, but as of press time, these were the candidates’ names certified by the Election Commission:

State Senate District 29 (Democrats): Jennings Bernard, Henri E. Brooks, John A. Brown, Barbara Cooper, Laura Davis, John DeBerry Jr., Ophelia E. Ford, Stephen Haley, Kevin McLellan.

State Senate District 29 (Republicans): John Farmer, Terry Roland.

State Senate District 29 (Independants): Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges.

State House District 87 (Democrats): Omari Faulkner, Alonzo Grant, Gary L. Rowe, Andrew “Rome” Withers.

There were no Republican or Independent candidates qualifying for the House seat. Primary elections will take place on August 4th, with the general election for these seats occurring on September 15th.

Though hope springs eternal for long-shot candidates, perennials, and unknowns, the Senate candidates whose chances have been most touted in political circles are Brooks, Cooper, and DeBerry, all now serving as state representatives, and Ford, whose family name should count for something.

Among the relative newcomers, Haley, a Southwest Tennessee Community College professor, has indicated he intends to run an energetic campaign on the Democratic side, and Roland, a Millington businessman, will command some stout support among the district’s Republicans, a distinct minority of the whole.

Candidates appearing at a forum held Sunday at Mt. Olive C.M.E. Church were Brooks, Cooper, Davis, Roland, Faulkner, Grant, and Withers.

 Mike Ritz, who is seeking the County Commission seat now held by Marilyn Loeffel, was the beneficiary of a well-attended fund-raiser last week at Homebuilders on Germantown Parkway. Other possible entries in that predominantly Republican district are Karla Templeton, daughter of Commissioner John Willingham, and Mark Loeffel, husband of the incumbent, who is prevented from running for reelection by term-limits restrictions recently upheld by Chancellor Tene Alissandratos.

 Businessman Bob Hatton this week tossed his name into the hat for another term-limited seat — that of Commission budget chairman Cleo Kirk. Political broker Chism, who also has several business interests, had previously announced as a candidate for the seat.

 Correction: Debbie Stamson, a candidate for Shelby County clerk and a current employee of that office, is not related to the family of the late former clerk, Richard “Sonny” Mashburn, as was reported last week.

 Daily sit-ins at Governor Bredesen’s Nashville office protesting his TennCare cuts are now in their second week. The Rev. Dwight Montgomery was among the Memphians joining in the demonstrations.

Though the governor began the year looking like a shoo-in for reelection, with portions of the national media touting him as a possible presidential or vice-presidential candidate in 2008, his poll standings have declined somewhat, and Republicans statewide have been correspondingly encouraged.

State representative Beth Harwell of Nashville is reportedly giving strong consideration to leaving the U.S. Senate race she has announced for and taking on Bredesen instead. 

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

Well, she’s at it again. The Commercial Appeal’s self-appointed Memphis Morality Czar Wendi Thomas checked in with another hip-hop rant. In targeting “Wait,” the controversial new single from Atlanta hip-hop duo The Ying Yang Twins, who headline Crunk Fest at the Mid-South Coliseum Saturday, July 2nd, Thomas took dead-aim at a cultural phenomenon worthy of critique and misfired badly. As usual, Thomas’ irrepressible prudery torpedoed what was an otherwise worthy argument.

The column, which ran last Sunday, asked readers to complain to radio stations about “raunchy” music and lamented that “Wait” is the most “vulgar” song on the radio right now.

Well, raunchiness and vulgarity aren’t inherently bad qualities. Shakespeare plays. Preston Sturges movies. Little Richard records. All could be said to have raunchy and vulgar qualities. Harassment, brutality, misogyny, and exploitation — all of which “Wait” might be guilty of — are the real issues.

With its minimalist beat and whispered vocal, “Wait” is a striking record, but listen close and you’ll discover a leering lyric that works its way into the refrain “beat that pussy up.”

Whether “Wait” is merely an ode to vigorous sex between consenting adults or an approving simulation of sexual harassment leading to sexual brutality is an open question and one that warrants debate. The problem with Thomas’ protest is that she seems to disapprove either way. That said, at least Thomas is willing to address the content of popular music that might be having a negative impact. Most writers and music professionals, in Memphis and elsewhere, aren’t interested in having this oh-so-necessary conversation.

Thankfully, “Wait” seems to have finally spurred a long-overdue round of soul-searching among music critics in the alt-press and blogosphere about mainstream hip-hop’s rampantly misogynistic content. Whether these discussions cross over to the hip-hop press and the music industry generally remains to be seen, but at least something good has come out of a bad record.

As for Crunk Fest, controversy over the Ying Yang Twins is likely the least of the concerns over the event, which suffered from some serious security issues a year ago. At this week’s show, the Ying Yang Twins will be joined by Memphis artists Yo Gotti, Gangsta Boo, and Nasty Nardo, along with a host of other Southern hip-hop acts.

Or for something decidedly calmer, this week also brings Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson’s minor-league baseball stadium tour to AutoZone Park. These two legends of American song play the park Friday, July 1st. — Chris Herrington

The label “pagan singer-songwriter” usually makes me cringe. I happen to be a pagan, but all that love and light and New Age-y crap that usually goes along with the music is enough to induce vomiting.

But S.J. Tucker is a different kind of pagan singer-songwriter. She’s folksier and not too heavy on the artsy-fartsy references to consciousness and spiritual awakening. Instead, she sings about real-life “sticky situations,” as she refers to them on her second full-length album, Tangles: break-ups, a friend’s attempt at suicide, finding new love, and helping a fellow musician escape a cult-like band.

Her sound is original, but if you had to pin it down and compare, I’d say it’s a little like Joni Mitchell meets Ani DiFranco (but it may just be Tucker’s stellar acoustic strumming that brings the latter to mind). Her lyrics are poetic and occasionally a bit obscure, like a good Tori Amos song sans the random orgasmic screams. I suspect that Tucker may just be a fairy trapped in a human body, but not a frilly flower fairy. More of a dark angel with ruffled wings.

And what better place for a fairy to host a CD-release party than an outdoor location called Dragonfly Meadows? Located at 715 Oberle in Frayser, the Meadows is actually a massive backyard at Tucker’s friends’ home (but the party is open to the public). The yard has a view of the downtown skyline, and since the party is scheduled for Monday, July 4th, a portion of the party will be dedicated to watching the fireworks show downtown. Joining Tucker will be Missouri-based singer-songwriter Sede, the drumming group Rhythm Realm, and several performers from the local Broken String Collective.  —

Categories
Editorial Opinion

EDITORIAL

Several of us at the Flyer had the privilege of knowing Shelby Foote, the world-class historian and novelist whose death, at age 88, Monday instantly deprived the Western world of one of its foremost living heritages. Foote’s volumes on the American Civil War virtually define that epochal struggle. Suggesting Faulkner, or Foote’s boyhood friend Walker Percy as much as Thucydides, these three mammoth, painstakingly researched volumes combine in their 3,000-odd pages the weight of authenticity with the ease of a good summer beach-read. Or several such reads, we should probably say. The books could easily come to dominate even an extended vacation. Pick them up, they are hard to put down. Open them, and they are almost impossible to close.

What gave Foote’s work its readability was his genius at narrative. Unlike most historians, he first made his reputation as a novelist, with such works as Tournament and Follow Me Down. His 1952 novel, Shiloh, was a foreshadowing of the major historical work to come. He began what was to become his Civil War trilogy in the mid-1950s, writing each page by hand. He completed it almost exactly two decades later.

Foote’s persona would prove to be as accessible as his written work. After documentarian Ken Burns involved Foote as an on-screen commentator for his prize-winning PBS series on the Civil War, the shy Memphian became an all-purpose celebrity ‹ an icon, rather. Johnny Carson, among other national taste-makers, publicly expressed his admiration.

On those occasions when Foote met his public, he would offer enriching insights, even on subjects beyond his work. During a mid-1970s appearance at the University of Memphis, he offered as a key to the understanding of significant historical personages the insight that almost all of them got where they did by defying some definable bully. On the same occasion, Foote commented on his World War II service in the Army. “It deepened my voice,” Foote said. And his was a voice that went deep indeed.

The Court’s Commands

At last, the Supreme Court has spoken. And spoken. Surely we are not the only ones to be doing a double take in the wake of the court’s two consecutive decisions this week.

On Monday, the justices, by a 5-4 vote, seemed to offer a conditional approval for displays of the biblical Ten Commandments in public places ‹ so long as such displays had secular and historical, not religious, reference. Specifically permitted was a monument on the grounds of the Texas state capitol depicting the Commandments among other exhibits related to the evolution of law-giving.

Then on Tuesday the court let stand without comment several other rulings that had been appealed from lower courts, the thrust of which was to keep overtly religious displays out of schools and courtrooms. Not just the Commandments but prayers invoking the name of Jesus were proscribed on official grounds and at official functions.

In general, we approve of the Court’s attempts to thread this bothersome legal needle, though we would suggest an addition to the Commandments, meant specifically for the high court’s nine justices themselves: Thou shalt not issue contradictory rulings that require additional litigation and further rulings in order to resolve the discrepancy. And, since that’s on our say-so, not the Almighty’s, we suggest that such a statement is eligible to be enshrined everywhere. �