Month: December 2005

Big, Bigger, Biggest

Post author By John Branston
Post date December 30, 2005

Numbers are the stock in trade of news junkies, but they have gotten absurdly large. A million of anything, especially dollars, isn’t much anymore, and the word billion is creeping into more and more stories. We are getting into the realm of astronomers.

For one reason or another, these numbers caught my eye this year. If you know all the answers to this quiz, you should quit that blog and start writing a column.

1) Corporate compensation has a new wrinkle in addition to eight-figure salaries, country club memberships, and stock options: payment of income taxes. How much is Regions Financial CEO Jackson Moore getting from a merger buyout of Union Planters Bank? A) $5 million, B) $15 million, C) $27 million.

2) The biggest trial of the year in Memphis, at least in terms of publicity, was the federal trial of Alabama football booster Logan Young, which was the subject of more than 400 newspaper stories in 2005. What was the total combined prison term of Young and co-conspirators Lynn Lang and Milton Kirk? A) seven years, B) three years, C) six months.

3) In its busiest day ever, December 19th, FedEx handled how many shipments? A) 2.6 million, B) 8.9 million, C) 21 million.

4) Which corporation’s stock price recently surpassed $100? A) FedEx, B) International Paper, C) AutoZone.

5) Market capitalization is the stock price of a company multiplied by the number of outstanding shares. The ratio of the market capitalization of General Motors to the market capitalization of Google is: A) 3 to 1, B) 1 to 3, C) 1 to 11.

6) The term PILOT appeared in a lot of local news stories in 2005. PILOT stands for payment in lieu of taxes. In short, it’s a tax break for 595 local companies. The total annual value of the PILOTs is: A) $12 million, B) $48 million, C) $150 million.

7) The approximate bond debt of Shelby County is: A) $100 million, B) $500 million, C) $1.8 billion.

8) The Pyramid cost approximately $62 million. AutoZone Park cost approximately $72 million. FedExForum cost approximately $250 million. What is the estimated cost of a new baseball park in Washington, D.C.? A) $667 million, B) $1 billion, C) $90 million.

9) Not that long ago, a house in Memphis that was worth more than $1 million was enough of a novelty that it merited a story in Memphis magazine. According the Shelby County Assessor’s Office, the number of houses in Shelby County that are currently appraised at $1 million or more is: A) 26, B) 112, C) 638.

10) The median price of a new home in Memphis is: A) $100,000, B) $150,000, C) $200,000.

11) Tennessee taxes are often in the news because reporters like to look serious once in a while and readers will bite on an occasional tax story if it reaffirms their views or makes them mad. According to the Tax Foundation, the combined state and local tax burden in Tennessee puts the Volunteer State in which position among the 50 states? A) 1st, B) 23rd, C) 47th.

12) Where does Mississippi rank in the Tax Foundation survey? A) 1st, B) 26th, C) 50th.

13) Northwest Airlines is in bankruptcy but, fortunately for Memphis air travelers, still operating. The highest 2005 quarterly loss reported by the company before it took bankruptcy was: A) $1 billion, B) $210 million, C) $450 million.

14) There are two kinds of people: lottery players and nonplayers. The Powerball Jackpot in the Tennessee Lottery in December was: A) $100 million, B) $7 million, C) $25 million.

15) If a high school student has a 29 or better on the ACT and goes to a Tennessee college or university, the maximum HOPE Scholarship award this year from lottery proceeds is: A) $2,000 a year, B) $4,300 a year, C) $6,500 a year.

16) The number of felons in Tennessee prisons and jails is: A) 26,000, B) 50,000, C) 90,000.

Answers: 1) C; 2) C; 3) B; 4) A; 5) C; 6) B; 7) C; 8) A; 9) C; 10) B; 11) C; 12) B; 13) C; 14) C; 15) B; 16) A

Opinion Viewpoint

Good News?

Post author By
Post date December 30, 2005

It is clear we will need to practice hard on our credulity in the future just to get a grasp on how dumbfounding the entire Iraq war is. We need credulity up to Wonderland’s White Queen’s standards, believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast every day — practice, practice, practice.

For starters, we find the Pentagon investigating itself over the secret military practice of paying to plant news stories in Iraqi papers. Now, since it’s a secret practice, I don’t know if the Pentagon will be able to find out much, but the way it works is U.S. military personnel, also known as soldiers, write “news” stories full of reassuring news.

National Public Radio reports that stories are filled with hyperbole and pro-U.S. rhetoric. One story written by the military and obtained by NPR dated November 22nd says military leaders are succeeding in stopping terrorists. It continues, “They have proven this as quiet slowly begins again to settle on the streets of western Iraq.” At the time, insurgents were staging over 700 attacks per week — up from 150 a week the previous year.

The stories written by the U.S. military are handed over to a defense contractor called the Lincoln Group, run by young Republican political operatives. They in turn pay Iraqi newspapers and television stations to run the stories.

In an attempt to justify this, former Army spokesman Charles Krohn told NPR: “I don’t think there’s any need for secrecy, but I think it’s pretty well understood that it’s the custom in that country to pay journalists and to pay newspapers. And certainly, I think the record that Saddam has done this and others do it is pretty well established.”

Isn’t it nice that we’re following in Saddam’s footsteps? The problem is one of credibility, in a nutshell. Bruce McCall has performed a great public service in The New Yorker by imagining headlines for U.S.-created stories in the Baghdad Daily Bugle:

“26 Million Iraqis Unhurt in Latest Terror Blast.”

“Few Changes Needed to Change Abu Ghraib into an Applebee’s.”

“Voting Machines in Upcoming Elections Donated by Florida.”

If you still can’t think of any good news to create, study the recent work of the American news media, particularly cable TV, on the subject of the Iraqi elections. Just like Charlie Brown and the football, they fall for it every time. Those heroic purple thumbs, “70 percent of Iraqis Vote.” How would anyone know? Well, there were long lines. There were long lines in Ohio last year too. It meant there weren’t enough polling places. Does anyone know what the Iraqis were voting for? Does three separate little state-lets seem a likely answer? (Some analysts actually think this may be the optimum outcome.)

Meanwhile, we are further tested by the president’s improbable proclamation that he has the right to ignore the laws and Constitution because he is a wartime president. Actually, that’s a real problem. We can’t declare war because we haven’t been attacked by any government, territory, or military.

Dick Cheney, it turns out, has been fretting about this since the Nixon administration, when we used to talk about the imperial presidency. Trouble is, none of the administration’s actions have ever been discussed — Bush and Cheney just usurped the authority.

If Bush were a different kind of president, they might have gotten away with it right after 9/11. People were genuinely frightened, and there’s always that old fantasy that somehow Daddy Will Take Care of Us If We Do Exactly What He Tells Us To Do.

But George W. Bush is not a daddy president. He’s the Testy Kid — Mr. Snippy. He sees no reason why he should answer to us.

Attention, Americans: We have, under the Constitution, a strong executive, noticeably more so than in other democracies. The whole history of the struggle for freedom is about how to curb and balance the powers of the executive.

The United States of America has over 200 years of experience with these questions, and you know what? George W. Bush is not the smartest guy to come along in over 200 years. Be cautious. Be very cautious. Do not endorse authoritarianism out of knee-jerk partisan impulse. This shoe will be on the other foot eventually.

Cover Feature News

Let’s Review

Post author By Carol Knowles
Post date December 30, 2005

Memphis art in 2005: awe, outrage, and pure sass. In a year filled with natural disasters, war, and political mayhem, many local artists did some soul-searching and reassessing. Some of the past year’s most memorable exhibits were unabashed responses to life in 2005. The following are a few of these shows, some outside the mainstream. For a variety of reasons they stick in the mind’s eye and serve as postscripts to a visually exciting and multifaceted exhibition year.

In a November exhibit at Material was Bryan Blankenship’s Bed, a curious bed of nails in which 12 milk-white clay cones — suggesting breasts and penises simultaneously — pushed through a ceramic mattress painted a 1950s turquois-and-orange plaid. Sassy and serious, Bed told tales of outmoded attitudes (both moral and aesthetic) and of disquieting sleeps.

Blankenship’s Terrene 4, a December Caseworks display at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis, was far eerier. Inside a violet-lit white cube, a broken clay rope was held up by six metal poles to form a bridge spanning the lower left corner of the cube to the upper right corner. The poles had been partially whited-out along the bottom so that they appeared to be floating or submerged. Terrene means “of the earth,” but there was no solid ground here. It had been wiped out by a blizzard or maybe a flood like the one caused by Hurricane Katrina, and the bridge is broken and cannot be crossed.

For their collaborative installation, “Where I Draw the Line” at Second Floor Contemporary in November, Jeff Mickey and Bobby Spillman also had Katrina on their minds. Spillman drew cartoons of overturned houses and uprooted trees on a large canvas painted lime and lemon sherbet colors in Sweeter Homes and Gardens. His paintings’ sardonic and volatile titles — Neapolitan Neighborhood, You Said What, and Smoke, Smoke, Smoke — spoke of upheavals inside as well as outside the homes.

Mickey dangled a tiny house on a wire beneath what looked to be the hands of a huge clock (Home at 8 Home at 9), topped a seven-foot wooden funeral pyre with a metal bed (Chester Pyre), and built a row of wooden bungalows on the slats of an empty tomato crate (Vine Ripened). Post-Katrina (and the Southeast Asian tsunami and Pakistan earthquake) and beyond TV sitcoms and political rhetoric about family values, Spillman’s and Mickey’s works drew a line that encompassed all of life, including its cataclysms, its slow decay, and the emotional as well as the physical.

In a March show at Second Floor Contemporary, Tom Lee responded to war and rumors of war by rewriting a children’s marching song (“This old man/he play won/he play knick-knack/on a son”) and creating a tale of mayhem complete with cardboard circular saws, amputees, bones, and, most harrowing, graphite cartoons of baby-faced bombers, with the sign of the cross on their tails, gleefully engaging in 21st-century holy wars for their religious and political patriarchs.

At AMUM’s “MAX: 05” in July and August, Pinkney Herbert’s white-hot yellows, orange-ochre, and liquid blues blasted through incinerated architecture and suggested a world capable of and seemingly bent on self-destruction (Inferno, oil on canvas). In March at Perry Nicole Fine Arts, Meikle Gardner filled the walls with a series of grids (oils on canvas) that kept us out (Fence(d)), drew us into Escher-like infinities (Spirit Ditch), and looked like an internal switchboard for a primordial mind (Shiva Saw).

Johnny Taylor’s paintings in his June/July exhibit, “Texas Medicine,” at Jay Etkin Gallery dealt with material goods, including soda bottles, antique typewriters, and light bulbs. In riverrun (acrylic on panel), three rows of antique Remingtons stood ready to type out an endless stream of words (including “riverrun,” the first word in James Joyce’s 1937 stream-of-consciousness masterpiece, Finnegans Wake). Instead of depicting a series of seductively smiling Marilyn Monroes, Taylor painted three Morton Salt Girls who had lost their flow (When It Rains It Pours 1-3). Trapped inside thick dark outlines, faces turned down and to the side, the girls were weary, perhaps, of their own mass proliferation and appeared to be looking for a means of escape.

In a November show at Perry Nicole, Chuck Johnson combined vintage photo portraits with encyclopedia illustrations, geometric patterns, abstract gestures, and small realistic paintings. How could so many genres work together without becoming jumbled and confused? Remarkably, as it turned out. This skilled mixed-media artist (he executes all the genres well) created nearly seamless mosaics that suggested fully lived lives. Among them were star child #2 and mother & daughter.

A couple of late-year photography exhibits provided poignant auld lang synes. For her November show “Blackbird” at David Lusk Gallery, Jeane Umbreit hand-painted black-and-white photos of crumbling pre-Civil War brick, a wounded blackbird, eroding commercial buildings, and the poised, penetrating gaze of a young African-American woman. With this body of work she wove a subtle narrative about slow, inexorable changes in the Southern ethos. Eric Swartz also invoked the passage of time with terse titles (Ram, Dodge, No, and Dash) and intensely saturate digital close-ups of rusted-out vehicles back-dropped by early-spring greens in the exhibit “Machines a Dyin’ & Green Things a Growin'” at Gallery 314, which continues through January.

Underground art was at the P&H Café, where intense art-related discussions often continued past midnight. The later the hour, the more evocative the art became. For example, in October, Pink Grenade, Darla Linerode-Henson’s transparent glass sculpture, appeared to be dribbling down the wall.

Mel Spillman capped off 2005 with some quirky Southern sass at the Vault Room, a new late-night art space inside R.P. Billiards on Highland. A group show in December included Keep Your Feet Out My Shoes and Six Feet High and Rising, two floral tapestries on panel that Spillman created with Mississippi water and mud.

Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters To The Editor

Post author By Flyer Readers
Post date December 30, 2005

Blown Away?

I was blown away by the Rolling Stones’ concert at the FedExForum, and I was blown away by Jackson Baker’s incisive review (The Bang’s Still There,” December 8th issue).

The essence of the Stones is that they always deliver the goods, and this concert was no exception. Mick Jagger is an unrelenting force of nature. And the music was incredibly tight and energetic.

After more than 40 years of performing and recording rock-and-roll classics to the delight of millions of fans, the Stones are indeed a way of life.

Randy Norwood

Memphis Thanks, Tennessee

I hope that this finds all of you doing well. My wife Bonnie and I are from Katrina-stricken Mississippi, and we want to let the nice people of Memphis and Tennessee know how much we appreciate all that has been done for us!

As musicians who were scheduled to perform all over your beautiful state the week of the hurricane, we were able to play our dates, see some of the world’s most beautiful scenery, and meet the nicest people anywhere. Thanks again, and Merry Christmas! We love you.

Bobby and Bonnie Hathorn

Ellisville, Mississippi

Shep

Having been an employee at the Juvenile Court during the time when former clerk Bob Martin retired and former clerk Shep Wilbun was appointed by the County Commission, I am somewhat familiar with the events that transpired before, during, and after Wilbun’s tenure.

I find some of the comments Wilbun made to Jackson Baker curious, to say the least (“Getting It Back Together,” December 8th issue). Wilbun was quoted as saying, in response to the father of the young lady in question, that “There was no proof, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt that something had transpired.” Seems to me that what that really means is that Wilbun felt Mr. Catron was indeed guilty of “inappropriately touching” the young lady.

But in the very next paragraph, Wilbun seems to have a change of heart about the validity of the claims leveled by the young lady’s father. Wilbun states that “[Catron] was entitled to the presumption of innocence. Wilbun is in the proverbial position of wanting his cake and eating it too. First, he presumed that Mr. Catron was guilty and then he claims to have afforded Catron the presumption of innocence, which allowed Catron to continue receiving a payroll check for a month. I wonder how hard it is to balance on the fence, as Wilbun does. Perhaps that’s why he still has yet to admit any wrongdoing whatsoever on his part.

Chris Campbell

Cordova

Carpetbaggers?

If anyplace in the United States should be familiar with the term “carpetbagger,” it’s Memphis. Moving the King Biscuit Blues Festival to Memphis is a classic example of the imposition and co-opting of someone’s culture without regard to its heritage. Where was the Performa company 20 years ago when the folks in Helena, Arkansas, conceived of and created the festival? Where was Performa through the many years of struggle for funding, trying to keep the festival alive and free of charge?

Performa’s John Elkington now would like us to believe this fine festival belongs on Beale Street. The Blues Foundation and Living Blues should be outraged and doing everything in their power to alert the blues community to this gross injustice. Those of us in the blues community should boycott the effort of Performa and the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau to attempt to co-opt the King Biscuit Blues Festival.

David D. HorwitzTucson, Arizona

Old and new

Thanks to Mary Cashiola for “Broke and Building” (In the Bluff, December 22nd issue), in which she quoted Superintendent Carol Johnson as saying, “We’re bringing the old with the new, so it won’t feel like a brand-new building.”

That’s character. Emerson said: “Character is adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, and power and courage to make new roads to new and better goals.”

As Cashiola beautifully concluded: “Hopefully, MCS is paving the way for the future, not just throwing away money on the past.”

Have a New Year filled with much happiness.

Arthur Prince

Memphis

Editor’s note: Same to you, Arthur. And to all of you Flyer readers as well. See you in 2006!

Politics Politics Beat Blog

Final Notice

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date December 30, 2005

In Memphis and Shelby County, the cycles are so arranged that one year out of every four is election-free. The year just past, 2005, should have provided such a hiatus, but its political circumstances were so momentous as to keep politics — and politicians — in everybody’s face all year long even though there was no full-scale balloting.

Ah, but late in 2005 there was one local political race of consequence — a state Senate special election race in District 29 that managed to echo the year’s biggest, most overarching political event, the so-called Tennessee Waltz scandal alleging wholesale corruption in both state and local government.

And it was, after all, the eve of 2006, a year which will boast the largest ballot in local history, including races for everything of consequence but the White House. Multitudes of politicians were launching plans for political campaigns, and several score of them had their races under way.

By way of farewell to this eventful “off”-year, here is a Top 10 list of highlights from 2005. Apologies to David Letterman and, for that matter, to readers who would just as soon forget that some or all of this actually happened:

10) The incredible shrinking treasury: Actually, make that “treasuries,” since both city and county government experienced grievous shortfalls during the year. Both governments were forced to bite the bullet — closing useful programs and even shutting down long-running boondoggles. High side: The county commission imposed a moratorium on new development. Low side: The city terminated recreation programs, including (sigh!) summer softball.

9) The incredible shrinking mayor: Or maybe this erstwhile mayor-for-life is just laying back. In any case, there were frequent occasions, several of them high-protocol, when Memphis chief executive Willie Herenton was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, rumors of every known kind — some flattering, most not — continued to swirl about him.

8) The incredible un-shrinking violet: Councilwoman Carol Chumney continued her high-profile undeclared campaign for mayor in 2007, jousting with both Herenton and councilmates at every opportunity and working up a legitimate following in the process.

7) MLGW: So many controversies revolved around the city’s mammoth utility, ranging from rate questions to leadership squabbles to a ruined dialogue with the City Council to recurring rumors of potential future sell-offs that even the lingering TVA pre-purchase scandal was made to seem dull normal.

6) TennCare: Now you see it, now you don’t. Governor Phil Bredesen said he had no choice, for budgetary reasons, but to drastically cut the rolls of the state-run health-insurance system. Various critics, ranging from aggrieved activist groups to state senator Steve Cohen, a potential gubernatorial entry, kept insisting he did.

5) A C: Shelby County mayor Wharton finally moved beyond merely looking good to provide solid leadership in the areas of urban sprawl and alternative revenue sources. A C-D.C.? No, no congressional race, but some were touting him as the next city mayor. Meanwhile, his reelection is a shoo-in.

4) Harold Ford Jr. and friends: Though progressive Democrats simmered over what they saw as his Blue-Dog equivocations, the 9th District congressman’s campaign was inevitably the centerpiece of national media attention to a U.S. Senate race in Tennessee that also included Democratic state senator Rosalind Kurita and three name Republicans: ex-Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker and former congressmen Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary.

3) John Ford: A one-man Titanic saga (or should that be Sink the Bismarck!), the once-and-futureless state senator would have gone down in the Tennessee Waltz anyhow, but he’d already sprung a thousand leaks from the investigations of his wheeling and dealing that resulted from the financial info in this frequent father’s petitions for child-support relief.

2) Roland v. Ford et al.: or however the messy post-District 29-election challenge comes to be known to history. Live state senators and not dead voters will take a shot at resolving it in January.

1) The Tennessee Waltz: The FBI’s “e-Cycle” sting made for bad music in its allegations of extortion and bribery on a massive scale (involving, among others, the aforesaid John Ford and various other local pols), but it served as a rousing overture to the New Year’s special legislative session on ethics reform. I mean, let’s think positive, right?

Next: 2006, which will be busier and, just possibly, better.

Cover Feature News

The Year in Local Music

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date December 30, 2005

If 2005 was a great year for Memphis music, it often seemed like the music itself got obscured in the process. Stealing the headlines instead was the role of Memphis music in the movies: Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow, a loving, underdog story about Memphis rap, which woulda coulda made a deserving star of longtime M-town MC stalwart Al Kapone. Ira Sachs’ Forty Shades of Blue, a wary portrait of a Sam Phillips-esque Memphis music pioneer. And Hollywood’s Walk the Line, a Johnny Cash biopic that turned Memphis 2005 into a more than credible Memphis 1955. And there was the impact of Hurricane Katrina, sending New Orleans music and musicos to Memphis in the meantime and one of the Crescent City’s best musical events, the Voodoo Music Experience, to Memphis for a day that underperformed expectations.

Along the way, Memphis musicians continued to make great music, whether in local studios or on club stages. Underground hip-hop rose to compete — in artistic terms, anyway — with a mainstream rap scene that was better than ever. Newish bands such as Augustine, Crippled Nation, and the Glass stepped to the forefront of the local rock scene. Established scene stars such as Lucero, the North Mississippi Allstars, and ex-Oblivian Jack Yarber made records that might be career bests.

In past years, we’ve had each of our local-music writers count down their faves, but this year we put our heads together to come up with a consensus on the year’s best local releases. And we used the extra space to let our writers run wild, asking each for a list of what they found most memorable about Memphis music in 2005: What they loved. What they loathed. What sounds they couldn’t get out of their heads.

Top 15 Local Albums of the Year

1. Don’t Throw Your Love Away — Jack O. & The Tearjerkers (Sympathy for the Record Industry): Don’t Throw Your Love Away eviscerates the theory that you can’t please everybody. The Tearjerkers’ second Sympathy for the Record Industry release is a grab bag of style and sensibility. Punk, country, and blues commingle brilliantly with hat tips to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and the scarier side of Southern soul. Frontman and former Oblivian Jack Yarber wasn’t born with the silkiest voice, but who needs pretty pipes when you can wail like Bob Dylan, roar like Tom Waits, and rock so hard you make Iggy Pop sound like a second-rate Frankie Avalon wannabe? (Okay, that last bit was a little over the top, but not by much.) Between raging punk rhapsodies and honky-tonk tragedies, Don’t Throw Your Love Away pays strange tribute to Warren Zevon and stranger (possibly accidental) tribute to the Doobie Brothers. “Dope Sniffing Dog,” the disc’s strongest track, is an unforgettable guitar rave-up co-written by Yarber and former Squirrel Nut Zipper Jimbo Mathus. It comes on like scarlet fever and plays out like the best episode of Cops ever. — Chris Davis

2. Electric Blue Watermelon — North Mississippi Allstars (ATO): Their timing was either perfect or terrible, but the North Mississippi Allstars’ Electric Blue Watermelon, which was released the same September weekend that bluesman R.L. Burnside was buried, provided an apt coda for their north Mississippi musical patriarch. Recorded in Memphis, a city that focuses on the good ol’ days as much as it looks to the future, this Grammy-nominated album nevertheless finds new ways to bridge past and present, while on songs such as “Horseshoe” and “Moonshine,” frontman Luther Dickinson stakes his claim as one of blues-rock’s lyrical visionaries. Brass bands, raps, washboard licks, and even Lucinda Williams’ whiskey-drenched voice float in and out of the mix, as the Allstars effortlessly sketch an aural map of the hill-country music scene. — Andria Lisle

3. Broadcast — Augustine (self-released): This impressive debut album is big broad-stroke indie rock that exorcises any stigma one might associate with the term “indie rock.” With enough straight-ahead song construction to avoid alienating fans of grandiose, vocals-up-front guitar rock, Augustine manages to throw in unconventional rhythms, dynamic scares, and almost per-song episodes of guitar thunder and extravagance. As with the bands from the Makeshift collective, Augustine sounds nothing like what outsiders associate with Memphis and is a vital component to the de-pigeonholing of our independent music scene. As such, it’s easy to imagine this band finding a sizable audience outside the city limits. — Andrew Earles

4. Nobody’s Darlings — Lucero (Liberty & Lament/EastWest): For their fifth album, Memphis’ most durable rock band returned to the basics. With original guitarist Brian Venable returning to the band, they recorded live and direct, with Jim Dickinson in the producer’s seat and nary a note played by anyone but the four guys who’ve lived in a tour van for most of the past few years. The result: as confident a blend of indie-rock, Jawbreaker-esque punk, and Southern rock as they — or anyone else — has put together. “Watch It Burn” and “California” show their mastery of toe-tapping, beer-chugging, crowd-pleasing rave-ups. “And We Fell” and “Nobody’s Darlings” are self-aware without being solipsistic. And “Bikeriders” and “The War” prove that Ben Nichols can write songs about subjects other than girls, liquor, and playing in a rock-and-roll band. — Chris Herrington

5. All Seven Inches Plus Two More — The River City Tanlines (Dirtnap): River City Tanlines principal vocalist and guitar mangler Alicja Trout has proven herself to be one of Memphis’ most versatile, surprising, and satisfying artists. In light of her achievements with Mouse Rocket and the Lost Sounds, this singles collection seemed, at first glance, disappointing because it merely rocked. It also happened to be the purest dose of ass-kicking rock-and-roll to come out of Memphis in 2005, and the disc grows on you fast. The band head-fakes toward the Ronettes, then dives into Stooges territory with each song coming on like the best theme to the most breathtaking indie flick you’ve never seen. The Tanlines explode into a kind of desperate, terrified gospel as Trout chants, “You’ve got to get right,” and swells to existential alert, “Cause here comes the night!” It’s simply rock, and it’s simply great. — CD

6. Motivational Speaker — Alvin Youngblood Hart (Tone Cool/Artemis): Maybe he doesn’t haunt the clubs regularly enough to be fully embraced as “local,” but Alvin Youngblood Hart is hands-down the most talented music maker in Memphis, and Motivational Speaker is a return to form that captures Hart in exactly the right setting. Blues purists may want to hear him on vintage acoustic instruments, but this man was born to have an electric guitar in his mighty hands and a pounding rock drummer at his back. Some seem to think “Americana” and “roots music” should connote polite folk-rock. I’ll take stomping paeans to Sly Stone; loopy, lovable Doug Sahm covers; slow-burning blues-rock anthems; bracingly funky Stax tributes; aching honky-tonk. All on one album. All from one guy. — CH

7. Everything’s OK — The Reverend Al Green (Blue Note): Recorded last summer at Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studio with mostly the same cast of Hi-connected characters as on 2003’s comeback record I Can’t Stop (guitarist/collaborator Teenie Hodges a notable absence), Everthing’s OK is slightly less impressive but slightly more distinctive than the previous record. 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. A lot of the best tracks here seem barely written as songs. They exist as vehicles for Green and Mitchell to work their aural magic. — CH

8. Hibernation — The Glass (Makeshift): “Hibernation is all about waking up,” said Glass frontman Brad Bailey, and that’s as good a place as any to start. The Glass traded in their slow, aching, and stubbornly impressionistic shimmer for a bigger, cleaner, and more ominous sound. They swapped hopeless romanticism for politics and other hopeless causes. Most of all, 2005 is the year this beautiful but nearly morbid band got over their girlfriends, and themselves, and got down to the business of documenting their troubled world one striking image at a time. Throughout Hibernation meteors crash, cannibals munch, snakes crawl, and villages burn to unrelenting beats and singing guitars. — CD

9. Concrete Swamp — Tunnel Clones (Hemphix): MCs Bosco and Rachi and DJ Redeye Jedi serve as the perfect tour guides for this urban field trip, taking listeners on a musical journey that incorporates birdcalls, gospel moans, snare riffs, lilting strings, and free-form rap. Concrete Swamp, a startlingly straightforward hip-hop release for a city that’s devoted to hardcore rap, surprises at every turn: “Voodoo” combines a horror-movie soundtrack with Bob Marley’s anthemic “Get Up, Stand Up” and streetwise rhymes before fading into the Latin-tinged “What Do You Want?,” which gives way to “Freedom of Thought,” an uplifting, handclapping affirmation that sounds equal parts Arrested Development and De La Soul. Local college kids — from the U of M and LeMoyne-Owen — are already savvy to these hip-hop heroes; hopefully, in ’06, the rest of Memphis will catch up. — AL

10. Tronic Blanc — Black Sunday (Dirtnap): With the Lost Sounds chapter closed, prolific Alijca Trout’s many projects (Mouse Rocket, River City Tanlines) are no longer “side” projects but recipients of her evenly parlayed, expansive talent. This one, practically a solo outlet, will best satisfy those who miss the Lost Sounds, due in no small part to much of it being written and recorded while that band was active. While it builds on the Lost Sounds’ apocalyptic electro-punk vision, attitude, and futuristic destitution (while momentarily channeling that band’s aggression), there’s much more here in the way of weird little pop songs and wavering levels of abrasiveness. — AE

11. Somethin’ Else — Charlie Wood (Daddy-O): Charlie Wood is a performer’s performer and the true jewel of Beale Street. Wood’s a soulful, eclectic singer and keyboard artist cut from the same cloth as Tom Waits and Randy Newman. He glides easily between unbridled swing, juicy jazz, grimy R&B, and smoky late-night love songs to smoky late nights. Supported by squawking horns and steady rhythm courtesy of Renardo Ward and Gerard Harris, Somethin’ Else gets the sheer joy of Wood’s live set down cold. He’s a complicated man, lost in the Memphis shuffle, looking for something — possibly his hotel. “I must be dragged across the threshold, propped against the wall,” Wood moans on “No Condition,” a Seussian ode to inebriation. “Next to nothing is the most that I can do/Will you drive me?/Can I ride with you?” From its revisionist take on “Summertime” to the absurdist soul of the title track, Somethin’ Else is classic lounge music, sophisticated and infectious. — CD

12. The 1st Edition — Iron Mic Coalition (self-released): Bringing together nine MCs, producers, and DJs from four distinct local acts, this one-record showcase for the city’s underground hip-hop scene is less backpacker than Dixie-friend Wu-Tang Clan. It lacks the dark brilliance of those NYC forebears, but it evokes early Wu-Tang in its deep array of distinctive voices and its grimy, DIY texture. Highlights: Mighy Quinn, nimble and precise; Jason Harris, level-headed and conversational; Daralic, warm and laid-back; Empee, strident and unpredictable. — CH

13. Most Known Unknown — Three 6 Mafia (Hypnotize Minds/Sony Urban/Columbia): The simultaneous elusiveness and disregard of mainstream success elaborated on in the title track/intro seems to be something that Three 6 Mafia is comfortable with rather than frustrated by. Rest assured, even as “Knock Tha Black Off Yo ***” combines everything that makes Three 6 Mafia unique (and successful) — their brand of infectiousness, violence, and dark humor — it would nonetheless scare the living shit out of, say, the garden-variety Hollywood producer, what with the detailing of, among other things, the amount of money it would take to have an adversary “chopped up like some Rendezvous BBQ tips.” This is not to devalue the massive and deserved (Southern) crossover appeal that they’ve cultivated, which can be indirectly summed up by a scenario I recently witnessed in a local music store: a Patagonia-donning frat boy returning the “chopped and screwed” version of this album because “there’s something wrong with how it sounds.” — AE

14. Natural Kicks — Natural Kicks (Miz Kafrin): This year, Ron Franklin has worn a lot of hats: He’s backed Monsieur Jeffrey Evans in the Memphis Roadmasters; made a movie; fronted his own group, the Ron Franklin Entertainers; and released two solo albums. Yet none of his projects have resonated with local audiences more than his self-described “power trio,” the Natural Kicks. Cut at local musical mecca Royal Studio, Natural Kicks finds a relentless Franklin, bassist Ilene Markell, and drummer Jack Yarber pounding the killing floor. Treading the fine line between garage-rock and R&B, Franklin coolly channels the power of Gories/Dirtbombs frontman Mick Collins on distorted rockers like “Dark Night, Cold Ground,” then fans the flames on rave-ups like “C’mon Sarah (Let’s Shack Up Again).” — AL

15. New Born — Calvin Newborn (Yellow Dog): By the time this jazz guitarist aimed for salvation, he’d already tried everything else: He admits to abusing drugs, liquor, and women in As Quiet As It’s Kept, a self-published biography of his brother, Phineas Newborn Jr., while recordings and photographs attest to wild days traveling cross-country with Ike Turner and Lionel Hampton and wilder nights at clubs like the Flamingo Room and the Plantation Inn. But in his seventh decade, Calvin Newborn found religion. Recorded at Sam Phillips Studio with Scott Bomar at the helm and players like Donald Brown, Herman Green, and Charlie Wood, New Born features a reflective, redemptive musician on a comeback album that’s truly heaven-sent. — AL

Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: Keeping It Simple

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date December 30, 2005

“It was beautiful and simple, as all truly great swindles are.”

— O. Henry

I like simple things — the cardinal singing on the trellis as I sip my coffee; the fog that hides a cold stream before the sun clears the trees; the smell of jasmine on a summer night; the sweet rumble of a Gibson J-45 in open tuning.

Yep, simple is how I roll. Simple is beautiful. Simple is easy. Simple is as simple does.Which makes what I’m about to say a little surprising: It’s my wish for 2006 that all of us begin to realize that the siren song of “simple” has led us far, far astray.

Slogans, for example, are seductively simple: “Stay the Course”; “Bush Lied and Soldiers Died”; “Don’t Cut and Run”; “No Blood for Oil”; “The War on Christmas.” They’re either infuriating or satisfying, depending on your point of view. Simple works great for bumper stickers; not so well when it comes to policy decisions.

When, for example, the president says there are only two courses in Iraq — defeat or victory — what kind of moron would choose defeat? Simple, right? But what is victory? A secular Arab democracy? If last week’s voting is any indication, we’re more likely to have spent three years and thousands of lives setting up an Iran-like Islamic state. Is that victory or defeat? What do you think? One thing is sure: It’s not so simple, after all. In fact, it’s damned complicated.

In 2006, it would behoove us all to move beyond our chosen slogans and embrace “the complicated,” especially in matters of life and death and politics. Let’s try to reason with one another, instead of just reacting to each others’ “simple” solutions. Let’s keep simple in its place — for happiness and pleasure.

Now, excuse me while I go find my Gibson. Oh, and have a Happy New Year. How hard is that?

Bruce VanWyngarden, Editor

brucev@MemphisFlyer.com

P.S. Next week, look for the Flyer‘s Annual Manual issue. We’ll be back with a regular issue on January 12th.

Editorial Opinion

Old Year, New Year

Post author By Flyer Staff
Post date December 30, 2005

Last year at this time we editorialized with a wish list for 2005. Looking at it now, we find a mixed bag of disappointments and pleasant surprises.

On the first score, for example, we hoped that a newly reelected President Bush might remember — and act upon — his erstwhile campaign rhetoric concerning “compassionate conservatism.” Instead, we got more of the same old corporate welfare state — tax cuts for the wealthy paid for by the middle and poor classes who have been freshly gouged by an egregious “bankruptcy reform” bill that basically nullifies altogether the option of filing for real bankruptcy relief. The good news: Bush’s predatory scheme to privatize Social Security was booed off the stage and dropped from the congressional agenda.

We also got more, not fewer, casualties and catastrophic costs in the needless, and seemingly endless, war in Iraq. The good news here is that many of those who formerly acquiesced in the war or even supported it, like Congressman Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, have soured on the folly and even called for a timetable to end it. At least one serious presidential candidate, Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold, has made opposition to the war a plank in his platform. Good for him, and shame on those politicians who continue to equivocate.

Last year we expressed the hope that 9th District congressman Harold Ford Jr., a politician of rare potential, might prove a leader in shoring up our social safety net and in restoring sane and effective foreign policy goals. Not to belabor the point, but Ford, now a candidate for the U.S. Senate, seems for strategic reasons to have blunted the edge of his promise — supporting ill-considered initiatives ranging from the GOP’s Terri Schiavo flim-flam to the aforesaid bankruptcy bill. We hope for better things in 2006 but aren’t exactly holding our breath.

Nor are we as optimistic entering the election year of 2006 as we were last year concerning the administration of Governor Phil Bredesen, whose economies, reform instincts, and administrative skills, all of which we praised back then, seem to have been taken up to the edge and over in the case of the state’s now seriously truncated TennCare program.

Not to accentuate the negative, though, there were, after all, areas in which our hopes were not only realized but exceeded. Last year, for example, we wished to get “the mojo back for University of Memphis basketball.” Wow, did we! As we speak, John Calipari’s talented Tigers are ranked fourth in the nation, and so far (we are holding our breath here!) there’s not a hint of the grungy behavior that afflicted last year’s underachieving team, on or off the court.

Mike Fratello’s Grizzlies ain’t doing too bad, either. And, though the great DeAngelo Williams was hobbled here and there and didn’t realize his (and our) Heisman hopes, he led the football Tigers to the team’s third consecutive bowl game.

Yes, yes, the sports world is what the late Howard Cosell called the “toy department” of life, but we take our blessings where we can — and who knows? Maybe some of this success will bleed over into the real world in 2006.

News The Fly-By

The Last Word

Post author By
Post date December 30, 2005

“To me, if he asks to join, he should have been welcomed in. It’s as simple as that. I tell people frequently that I’ve been black for quite some time, but we have to realize that there are issues that are bigger than our ethnicity, our gender, our region, or our culture.”

— John DeBerry, state representative from Shelby County and a member of the Black Caucus. In September, a white state representative from Knoxville asked to join the group.

“We were one of the first states to have a film incentive. When we created it in 1995, it looked pretty good. Now it looks pretty anemic.”

— David Bennet, chairman of the State Film Production Advisory Committee. Though Hustle & Flow, 40 Shades of Blue, and Walk the Line filmed in Memphis this year, local film industry representatives say that the state needs new tax incentives if they expect more films to be shot here.

“[Thirty-year captains are] not a rank that we need. The rank is given at the tick of a clock upon [reaching] 30 years, not a process in which we test skills. I think you should achieve it by merit.”

— Memphis police director Larry Godwin. In February, 92 senior officers, the so-called 30-year captains, were told to take a demotion or resign. The move cut the police budget by $1.3 million.

“Our county funding, per agreement, is being reduced by $25,000 per year and will go away at some point in the future. Rebuilding an industry isn’t something that can be executed on a $175,000 a year budget.”

— Memphis Music Foundation president Rey Flemings. Earlier this year, the Memphis & Shelby County Music Commission split into the nonprofit foundation and a public commission that serves the needs of the current music industry.

“The dog-and-pony show we all produce that typically features a reporter chasing down an elected official does serve a purpose. It demonstrates exactly how determined the official is to avoid the question. Officials who are open and accessible to the media are almost never featured running from a camera.”

— WMC-TV Channel 5 reporter Darrell Phillips.

“We didn’t used to be as aggressive with our capital projects. We need to stay within our debt service policy. Why have it if we’re not going to follow it?”

— City Council member Carol Chumney. In November, the council put a hold on all capital projects until the administration could determine how large the city’s deficit was.

“We were trying to let it be known that people acting in these films were taking a chance on going to prison. That could have had a very positive effect.”

— Local attorney Larry Parrish, a driving force behind the 1976 case in Memphis against the makers and distributors of Deep Throat. Inside Deep Throat, a documentary released this year on the groundbreaking film, interviewed Parrish.

“Going into merger discussions, I wanted to make sure that none of the teachers would lose their jobs. That was satisfied. Merging schools is in the best interest of the children.”

— Stephanie Gatewood, MCS board member. In April, the district decided to close four elementary schools.