Think it feels good, Memphis fans, being back in the Sweet Sixteen after 11 years? Check out what they’re saying in Peoria, home of the Tigers’ next opponent, the Bradley Braves.
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Month: March 2006
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A Giant Sucking Sound
Survey USA provides monthly polling numbers on various issues, state by state. The latest approval/disapproval polling on President Bush shows some startling reversals of fortune. There are only four states as of March 15th in which a majority of Americans “approve” of the job President Bush is doing.
In Arkansas, Bush has fallen 28 points since November, to a 34 percent approval rating. In Tennessee, things aren’t much better for W, at 39 percent. But Mississippi? Those folks still loves them some Bush — barely: 49 percent of Magnolia Staters approve the Prez, versus 47 percent who disapprove.
C’mon, Mississippi! Time to catch up with the rest of the country.
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Smart, Not Lucky
Bucknell is not just smart guys who play a cute brand of basketball and get lucky every March, says ESPN.com. They’re smart guys who can play. “They have the SATs, but they’ve bought into being basketball players,” Bucknell head coach Pat Flannery said. “We are a bunch of brainiacs, but we also can play ball.”
And in another note, university founder William Bucknell still holds the NCAA record for the largest moustache.
The Memphis Tigers see if the Bucknell smart guys can hang with Memphis ballers today.
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How Sweet It Is!
The Memphis Tigers advanced to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 1995 by beating Bucknell this afternoon, 72-56. The Tigers, who also set a school record for victories with 32, were led by Antonio Anderson with 13 points, one of seven Tigers who scored at least eight points. (click on headline for more)
Memphis made seven 3-pointers and shot 52.4, forcing the outmanned Bison into 19 turnovers and 36.6 percent shooting.
The Tigers trailed 10-4 early, but broke the game open with a 20-2 run midway through the first half.
“It’s amazing,” said Bison guard Kevin Bettencourt, who added, “It’s definitely frustrating because they shut everything down.”
The Tigers take on Bradley, which upset heavily favored Pittsburgh next weekend.
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Record Roundup
Garrison Starr hasn’t lived in Memphis for nearly a decade, but she is residing a little closer to home these days — right down the music highway in Nashville. Co-produced by Brad Jones and Neilson Hubbard, Starr’s fifth album, The Sound of You and Me, is a rootsy, stripped-down affair that allows her to get to the heart of the matter with tracks like “No Man’s Land” and “Sing It Like a Victim.” It’s out on Vanguard Records this week; the Hi-Tone Café will host a release party for Starr on Thursday, March 30th, at 9 p.m.
That same night, former Oxford, Mississippi, resident — and power-pop kingpin — Tim Lee is slated to perform songs from his new disc, Concrete Dog, at the Buccaneer Lounge. The album, Lee’s third in five years, will be available in April on Fundamental Records.
“The game drove me out of my mind a decade ago,” says Lee, who shot to fame in the 1980s with The Windbreakers before emerging as a solo performer. “Now, I purely do this because I love to. Some people play golf, some go fishing. I make records.”
Lee’s Buccaneer gig will mark his first Bluff City appearance in more than two years. “I love Memphis,” he notes, happily adding, “it’s got Payne’s BBQ. What else do you need?”
For more on Lee, visit his Web site, TimLeeMusic.com.
Memphis native Megan Reilly has been living in Brooklyn, New York, for the better part of a decade, but she’ll never forget her Southern roots. “I miss the way of life there, sitting on the front porch and drinking coffee. Life definitely feels easier in Memphis,” Reilly says.
Nevertheless, the singer has effortlessly adapted to life in the Big Apple, forming an all-star indie band with guitarist Tim Foijahn (Cat Power), bassist Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu), keyboardist Eric Morrison (Home), and drummer Steve Goulding (The Mekons). Last spring, the quintet laid down the 10 tracks that would comprise Reilly’s second CD, Let Your Ghost Go, which will be released March 21st on Carrot Top Records.
“I had to overcome the insecurity of writing songs and playing them for the band’s feedback. I want my songs to be good. I want them to mean something. But I’m becoming more sure of what I’m trying to do,” Reilly says of the new album, which consists of six new compositions, a reprisal of her song “Blackhearted,” and covers of Dylan’s “The Wedding Song” and Phil Lynott’s “Little Girl in Bloom.”
To learn more, go to MeganReilly.com.
Who could’ve guessed that Justice Naczycz would follow up his first album, Water for the Withered Root, with such a full-on rock project like The Secret Service‘s The Service Is Spectacular?
Yet, as Naczycz explains, the Secret Service — his band with guitarist Steve Selvidge, bassist Mark Stuart, and drummer John Argroves — has its roots in the live acoustic sessions built around his 2003 solo record. “For our first rock gig, we practiced twice,” he reveals. “We were like kids hanging out in our rooms learning Iron Maiden and Van Halen songs.”
The Secret Service’s music — laden with starts, stops, and changes galore, a la ’70s powerhouses like Thin Lizzy and Alice Cooper — is, Naczycz says, a reaction to jam bands.
“Steve, Mark, and John can do anything,” he raves. “I’m like the third-best guitarist in the group. Singing with them is like doing karaoke with the greatest band in the world.”
Although it’s only March, the self-released The Service Is Spectacular already has my vote for album of the year. Recorded at Jim Dickinson‘s Zebra Ranch Studio with Kevin Houston engineering (overdubs were done with Pete Matthews at Ardent) and mixed at Ardent, the record boasts sly songwriting, first-class musicianship, and crisp production. Songs like “Cold Sparkles,” “Good Love and a Heart Attack,” and “Milkshake,” which the group hijacked from Chicago rockers MOTO, sound as timeless as “The Boys Are Back in Town” or “Eighteen.”
Mark your calendars for next Saturday, March 25th, when the Secret Service host a CD-release party at Young Avenue Deli, with Mouse Rocket opening. For more information, visit the group’s MySpace page at MySpace .com/TheServiceIsSpectacular.
Also new in the bins: Jimmy Davis‘ Campfire Songs, an Arma Secreta full-length, and new MADJACK releases from The Tennessee Boltsmokers, Eric Lewis & Andy Ratliff, and Cory Branan.
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No Doubt
The last time Nick Hornby was in Memphis, he went to Graceland, and he went to Sun. It was 2001. When he’s back in Memphis (sponsored in part by the Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities at the U of M), he wants to make another stop: Soulsville USA. And no wonder. He’s the author of High Fidelity, and Stax is a studio in a city that “looms large” in Hornby’s imagination. He said so in a recent phone interview from his office in London. And he added: “I’m working on a couple of screenplays, one with Emma Thompson. But it’s a very slow process, because when I’m not doing something, she is. I’m writing a young-adult novel too.”
Flyer: Your latest novel, A Long Way Down … Johnny Depp bought the movie rights in 2005?
Hornby: Yeah. He’s in the process of appointing a writer. As in everything involved in the film world, it seems to take an unconscionably long time. It makes me very grateful for books. You sit down and write them. Somebody publishes them.
When it comes to film versions of your work, you‘re hands-off, aren‘t you? That‘s a healthy attitude.
It feels healthy. It certainly keeps me sane.
You didn‘t mind then that the film High Fidelity was moved from London to Chicago and the film Fever Pitch was moved from London to Boston?
No, not at all. The fact that High Fidelity worked for an American audience showed that it’s not actually very much to do with nationality. It’s more connected with a certain age and mindset. What pleased me with High Fidelity was that it became something personal for the guys who adapted it. They’d grown up in Chicago, and so it became a movie about them in the same way the book was partly about me. That’s the best you can hope for in an adaptation.
And now High Fidelity is being turned into a stage musical.
That’s right. These New Yorkers got hold of the rights. I’m curious about it, the progress of it. They clearly know what they’re doing. If it gets to Broadway in November, which is the idea, I’d very much like to be there.
You write a monthly column in The Believer magazine, a column about the books you‘ve bought and the books you‘re reading. It‘s heartening to hear about the books you can‘t finish.
I really enjoy that column. It’s helpful to examine why we read the books we do; what stops us from reading the books we’ve started. It’s an incredibly rich and complicated area — the subject of reading.
But you also wrote in March that you’re sorry to say that the column is making “only medium-sized inroads into the American consciousness.” That‘s a surprise, given your popularity.
People are nice, but The Believer‘s a pretty “niche” magazine. I don’t imagine that thousands of people not on your two coasts are reading it.
You‘ve also stated that you‘re more at home with American fiction than you are with British fiction.Yeah, it’s the literature I feel the most affinity with, because American fiction has its roots in popular culture. Even America’s first, great novels are about different kinds of people. I’m comfortable with the notion that you can write an intelligent novel about people who are maybe not educated, for example. I think a lot of British literary people still have a problem with that idea, “incredible” as that may sound.
Care to comment then on the brouhaha over last year‘s Booker Prize winner, John Banville‘s very literary The Sea?
Uh … I haven’t read it. I get the sense it wouldn’t be for me.
Do you see a lot of live music?
Not much. But the band Marah … I see them a lot, about 12 times in the past 18th months. [Note: You can see them too at the Hi-Tone March 24th.] We do a show together now. [Note: You can see Marah and Hornby at Proud Larry‘s in Oxford March 25th.] We’ve concocted something that … well, it works for us.
We‘ve touched on the books you buy. What about the music you buy?
The idea of a fossilized CD collection is not something that appeals to me. I buy new music all the time.
Such as.
The new record by Cat Power. It could be my record of the year, so far. It’s lovely. And of course, it’s got those Memphis musicians on it.
I have to ask you about Arsenal, the London soccer team you described so memorably in the memoir Fever Pitch. How‘s their season?
As of today, good. You know Arsenal?
From Fever Pitch, yes. Their season, no.
They just had a very big European match against Real Madrid, and they won, very unexpectedly. Actually, though, they’ve been a bit of a shambles this year.
This year … You wrote in The Believer that you‘ve entered 2006 on a “self-doubting” note. How? You‘re working on two screenplays and another novel. High Fidelity is being turned into a stage musical slated for Broadway. And Johnny Depp has the movie rights to your last novel. You‘re on a “self-doubting” note?
I’m full of self-doubt all the time.
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Looking for Boxty
“I always open the menu with trepidation,” says Irish-American chef Margaret Johnson, author of six cookbooks on Irish cooking, including The Irish Pub Cookbook.
She’s talking about Irish-themed restaurants. “[Even if] you put an ‘o’ on Buffalo chicken wings, I don’t care how you slice it, they’re still just Buffalo wings!”
Johnson, who traveled here as a guest chef when Memphis In May honored Ireland in 2005, explains, “A country that suffers through a famine never really gets the chance to develop a culinary legacy.”
Things are changing, however. “In the 1990s,” Johnson says, “Irish chefs realized they had to catch up with the times. Now, the economy there is the fastest-growing in Europe. Everything is ultramodern, and the food scene is undergoing a natural evolution.”
Because of this evolution, Johnson says Irish pub owners could easily devise an all-Irish menu that would please 90 percent of their American customers.
“Every chef has a great potato recipe,” Johnson says. “The boxty is a popular potato cake that can be made many different ways. Some people use leftover mashed potatoes. Others use cooked and grated potatoes, and others use raw potatoes so it looks like a latke.”
Corned beef, she states emphatically, is not authentic Irish cuisine.
Memphians hoping to find the pot of gold at the end of the culinary rainbow can go to Cooper-Young’s Celtic Crossing or visit Dan McGuinness’ East Memphis or Peabody Place locations, where menus featuring potato soups, fish sandwiches, and hearty rib-eyes aim for authenticity.
“We did a lot of research,” says Dan McGuinness general manager Jody Clark. “We found a degreed chef who was born and raised in Ireland, Rita Burk, and retained her help for the initial recipes here.”
Of Dan McGuinness’ menu items, which include Scotch eggs, bangers and mash, cod battered in Harp lager, and beef tips marinated in Guinness stout, Clark notes that “a good 60 percent is true Irish cooking, while we’ve Americanized the other 40 percent. Our chef, Victor Banks, worked directly with Rita.”
At Celtic Crossing, Amanda Naylor, an Irishwoman raised in London, heads the kitchen, baking soda bread fresh daily and churning out genuine Irish faves like boxty crepes, potato and leek soup, battered-and-fried cod with Galway tartar sauce, and the “Delicious Dublin Duo,” which is shrimp wrapped in Irish bacon that is served with a tangy Guinness sauce.
“I make the soda bread in huge batches in about 15 minutes every morning,” says Naylor, “and then it takes about two hours to bake. I don’t get homesick, but I like the Irish breakfast. The bangers and rashers [sausage and bacon] definitely remind me of home.”
Most Irish food, she says, is comparable to soul food because both are essentially country cooking.
“I think Irish cooking has a reputation for being very bland, but by mixing it with an American influence, I’m able to make it more exciting,” she adds.
On St. Patrick’s Day, Naylor expects to pull a long shift, serving up hot plates for her fellow countrymen and American celebrants alike. “I’ll be here all day, coordinating the whole structure of the kitchen,” she says, “making sure the food’s going out quickly and hot.”
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“Lord God” Bird Has Skeptics
According to The New York Times, David Sibley, one of the nation’s premier ornithologists, is a now a nonbeliever in the existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which some scientists claim has been spotted several times in eastern Arkansas.
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Disco Geography
Disco Geography
You remember Sylvester, the cross-dressing disco diva responsible for “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” Well, the story goes that Sylvester was scheduled to perform in Memphis in 1979. He joined his mother Letha and sister Bernadette for a family reunion in Arkansas. Then he and Bernadette decided to drive to Memphis “It was so dark out there in the country that you couldn’t see your hand in front of you, and Memphis after midnight wasn’t much brighter. Driving through the city, they thought they were the last people on earth. They made a U-turn and headed back over the Colorado River …”
The Colorado River? Joshua Gamson is the Yale-trained sociologist turned author of The Fabulous Sylvester, a new biography of the singer from Picador and the source for the above quote. Don’t know what the sociology department at Yale teaches, but it ain’t geography.
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V for Victory
There are three works that are largely credited with bringing comic books out of the spandex-hero ghetto and into mainstream acceptance as a serious art form: Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and two works by Alan Moore, The Watchmen and V for Vendetta.
The Dark Knight Returns served as Tim Burton’s inspiration for his Batman movie, which, for better or worse, ushered in the modern comic-book flick. Many have tried to film The Watchmen, only to have the unfilmable project collapse. Now screenwriters Andy and Larry Wachowski, flush with clout after The Matrix trilogy, have succeeded in bringing V for Vendetta to the big screen. But Moore, feeling rightly burned after the debacle that was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, has prominently and adamantly disassociated himself from the film. The famously willful and aggressively strange writer, considered by many to be the kind of genius that comes along once in a generation, is probably going to wish he had allowed his name in the credits alongside artist David Lloyd, because V for Vendetta has survived the transition to the big screen with its bite intact.
Set in a post-apocalyptic Britain ruled by a fascist government — recognizable for its red and black color scheme and for the fact that the leader appears to his cabinet on the big screen from the Macintosh 1984 commercial — the movie begins with Evey (Natalie Portman) being saved from the clutches of the abusive secret police (“Fingermen”) by a Guy-Fawkes-mask-wearing antihero (Hugo Weaving) who goes by the codename V and proceeds to wreak epic explosive mayhem to the tune of the 1812 Overture.
The character is Batman’s mirror image — an anarchist who lives in an abandoned underground station surrounded by the artifacts of culture banned under the current regime. Naturally, the powers-that-be label him a terrorist and bring the full power of the total surveillance state to bear against him. The film’s excellent second act juggles the efforts of Detective Finch (Stephen Rea) to track down the “terrorist” and V’s plan to eliminate everyone who knows his true identity — who are coincidentally the same people responsible for his transformation into anti-superhero. Moore fans will find many of the original’s gags and digressions intact (the “Valerie” subplot appears practically verbatim; even the rat hole in Evey’s cell has been lovingly reproduced), but the chronology has been scrambled and the ending given major (and not entirely successful) surgery.
But the changes ultimately don’t matter. This is far and away the best film the Wachowskis have made. Matrix fans expecting a CGI “whoa!”-fest will instead get a dark meditation on the Enlightenment question of the state versus the individual. The Wachowskis’ penchant for sermonizing exposition, which overwhelmed the second and third Matrix movies, works much better when they have something relevant to talk about.
A lot of people are going to hate this movie, and most of them will be on the right side of the political spectrum. The Internet brownshirts have already been loosed, and V’s C4 suicide belt will provide ready ammunition. But seeing Natalie Portman waterboarded and a Bill O’Riley lookalike as the mouthpiece of dictatorship should give audiences plenty to talk about as they drive home after their popcorn munch. William Burroughs said, “Success will write apocalypse across the sky,” and as the film’s closing image of exploding fireworks suggests, success is spelled with a V.