Month: August 2006

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Envelope, Please

The fearless cast of Corpus Christi was robbed, losing the Ostrander Award for excellence in ensemble acting to the excellent but not nearly as compelling cast of Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol. Who let Bill O’Reilly on the judging committee? I demand answers.

That quibble aside, the 23rd Annual Ostrander Awards found the Memphis theater community celebrating one of its most exciting seasons in ages. Theater Memphis’ perfect production of Cats and Playhouse on the Square’s perfectly naked Take Me Out took top honors, but the night’s big winners were Germantown Community Theatre and Collierville’s Harrell Performing Arts Center, a pair of underestimated suburban playhouses that proved they could compete with the big boys.

Bill Short, a tireless behind-the-scenes worker, received the Eugart Yerian Lifetime Achievement Award.

Key

CP=Circuit Playhouse, GCT=Germantown Community Theatre, HPAC=Harrell Performing Arts Center, NSTM=Next Stage at Theatre Memphis, POTS=Playhouse on the Square, Rhodes=McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College, TM=Theatre Memphis, U of M=University of Memphis

Community Ostrander Awards

Direction of a Play: Dave Landis, Frozen (CP)

Leading Actor (play): Jonathon Lamer, Frozen (CP)

Leading Actress (play): Irene Crist, Frozen (CP)

Supporting Actor (play): Mark Mozingo, Take Me Out (POTs)

Supporting Actress (play): Mykel Pennington, Kimberly Akimbo (NSTM)

Dramatic Production: Take Me Out (POTS)

Musical Production: Cats (TM)

Direction of a Musical: Bob Hetherington, Urinetown (POTS)

Music Direction: Angelo Rapan, West Side Story (HPAC) and Gary Beard, Cats (TM)

Choreography: Mitzi Hamilton and Kathy Caradine, Cats (TM)

Leading Actor (Musical): Robert Hanford, Jesus Christ Superstar (HPAC)

Leading Actress (Musical): Rachael Saltzman, Urinetown (POTS)

Supporting Actor (Musical): Bill Andrews, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens (CP)

Supporting Actress (Musical): Megan Bowers, Urinetown (POTS)

Ensemble Acting: Cast of Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol (CP)

Cameo Role: Barry Fuller, Cats (TM)

Sound Design: Matthew Stone, Child’s Play (TM)

Makeup and Wigs: Parker and Barbara Sanders, Cats (TM)

Set Dressing: Bill Short, I Am a Camera (GCT)

Props: Bill Short, I Am a Camera (GCT)

Lighting Design: Travis Richardson, Take Me Out (POTS)

Costume Design: Andre Bruce Ward, Cats (TM)

Set Design: Nick Mozak, Take Me Out (POTS)

Behind the Scenes Award: Melinda Bott (POTS)

Original Script: Playwrights‘ Forum, Heartstrings

College Awards

Set Design: Carrie Ballenger, Parade

(U of M)

Leading Actor (play): Chadwick Rodgers, Einstein’s Dreams (U of M)

Leading Actress (play): Erin McGhee, Tongue of a Bird (Rhodes)

Supporting Actor (play): Michael Khanlarian, Einstein’s Dreams (U of M)

Supporting Actress (play): Amy Gray, The Tempest (Rhodes)

Leading Actor (Musical): Josef McClellen, Parade (U of M)

Leading Actress (Musical): Annie Freres, Parade (U of M)

Supporting Actor (Musical): Kevin Murphy, Parade (U of M)

Supporting Actress (Musical): Stephanie Kim, Parade (U of M)

Music Direction: Mark Ensley, Parade (U of M)

Choreography: Jay Rapp, Parade (U of M)

Ensemble Acting: Cast of Ubu Roi (Rhodes)

Cameo Role: Franklin Willis, Parade (U of M)

Set Dressing: M. “Jonz” Jones, In the Blood (Rhodes)

Props: Chris Davis, Ubu Roi (Rhodes)

Lighting Design: John McFadden, Parade (U of M)

Costume Design: David Jilg, Ubu Roi (Rhodes)

Sound Design: Michelle Lyn Cook-Brown and Hank Neuhoff, Tongue of a Bird (Rhodes)

Best Production: Parade (U of M)

Direction: Bob Hetherington, Parade (U of M)

Larry Riley Rising Star Award:

Stephanie Kim

Categories
Living Spaces Real Estate

Secret Society

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

It’s no secret how singular an experience a visit to downtown Memphis is. Whether they’re from Tokyo, Kennett, Missouri, or Midtown Memphis, people are drawn to the history, unique venues, atmosphere, and promise of an Justin Fox Burks

unforgettable experience that downtown has to offer. Be it navigating the human rapids of Beale on a Saturday night or divining the human experience at an art exhibit on South Main, downtown is your one-stop shop for whatever it is you desire.

Similarly, downtown is the destination for foodies worldwide. Downtown Memphis is the culinary crossroads of the professors of the indigenous — Cozy Corner on North Parkway and Gus’s Fried Chicken on South Front — and the masters of the traditional — Chez Philippe in the Peabody and Texas de Brazil on South Second.

But everybody knows that. If it’s a secret, it’s poorly kept.

What aren’t very well known are the amenities of everyday life that downtown has to offer. There are many preconceived notions about the status of downtown as a residential community, primarily the conception that there is a difficulty of access to the staples of ordinary existence. Justin Fox Burks

Downtown resident Carrie O’Guin shops at Muse on South Main.

But when it comes to schools and child-care, groceries (see page 11), health-care, and other necessities, however, these assumptions are proven to be unfounded. In fact, no matter what it is you’re looking for as a resident, downtown has it; whatever your need, downtown can provide a solution. It’s no secret to Darnell Gooch, a City Commons resident who also works downtown. Gooch says, “Most of my stuff is around here. … I don’t go too far from downtown.”

From head to toe, body to soul, for every member of the family, you can bet it can be had downtown. Downtown’s answer is like a paraphrase of Marlon Brando’s line from The Wild One: Whaddya need?

Need health-care? At the integrated medical clinic and wellness center Harbor of Health in Harbor Town, Monday through Saturday you can see a general practitioner who accepts insurance and sees patients (even without an appointment) or take classes such as cardio/strength, Pilates, yoga, and kickboxing. If needed, a recommendation to a specialist can be easily made. Justin Fox Burks

Borrow a book from the Cossitt Branch Public Library.

A membership at the wellness center includes a personal care manager who helps create goals and provides encouragement for your improving health.

Full eye services are available at Memphis Family Vision Practice’s SEE Main Street location on South Main. They offer complete vision care, and you can look stylish and smart after choosing your glasses from over 600 frames at their optical boutique. And at the Downtown Dentist on North Front, your smile can sparkle as bright as a classic sunset reflecting off the Mississippi.

For more pressing health-care needs, the Medical District is at the eastern edge of downtown, with the sprawling Methodist Healthcare system and Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center. There are also numerous attendant general practitioners and specialists located in the Medical District.

As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and if you’re looking to convert your pounds into ounces, downtown has many fitness options available. Harbor Town resident Renee Quillin prefers to exercise at the many public sites where you can walk, jog, bike, or roll — such as the Mud Island Greenbelt Walkway and Tom Lee Park. There are also a number of private fitness centers. Among the best is the Fogelman Downtown YMCA on Madison, which has an indoor swimming pool, fitness classes, nautilus machines and free weights, and racquetball courts. Justin Fox Burks

Grab your joe and go or stick around and relax at the Daily Grind Coffee Bar.

Downtown resident Jennifer Rayburn frequents the Y and takes aerobics classes there. She says, “It’s cheap for students too: They give a discount there.” For the medical-school student at UT-Memphis, it’s a valuable add-on that makes it that much more convenient to her downtown lifestyle.

WellWorX Sporting Club on North Main and Curves for Women on Monroe are other popular fitness destinations for downtown residents, while at the Peabody Athletic Club in the famous hotel, you can work out amid and be inspired by stunning visuals, such as the heated indoor pool, which is surrounded by marble, mosaics, and Greek columns.

All this exercise will have you feeling good about downtown. You can look even better with a trip to the numerous spas, hair salons, and tanning salons. At Gould’s in the Peabody and Harbor Town Day Spa, traditional therapies such as massage and aromatherapy will allow you to unwind after a stressful day on the job, while at H2Oasis, water treatment provides the same kind of relief. You also won’t have to leave downtown for your haircut, no matter how basic or how elaborate. CityHouse Salon and Silver Salon on G.E. Patterson and Rand’s Harbor Town Salon can give you locks that will make you the envy of your Midtown counterparts.

One concern expressed most often about downtown is that, without a mall on the scale of Wolfchase or the Avenue Carriage Crossing in Collierville, there must be a dearth of clothes-shopping options. David Clemons, a resident in the City Commons at South End condo complex, sees things differently. Justin Fox Burks

He does a lot of his shopping at Shelton’s Clothiers on South Main and New York Suit Exchange on Union. Also available with many men’s clothing options are American Apparel on the corner of South Main and G.E. Patterson, Lansky 126 in the Peabody hotel, and the national chain GAP in Peabody Place. And while men have it good, women may have it even better: Muse on South Main, Raiding the Closet on Union, and Ann Taylor Loft, Victoria’s Secret, and Coco & Lilly in Peabody Place. Riverset resident Jennifer Rayburn likes the excellent fashions and convenient location of Blu Champagne in Harbor Town.

Among the main considerations for people moving downtown is the availability of day-care and education. As is the case in other regards, downtown once again excels. Several of the best day-cares in Shelby County are located downtown, with Calvary Place Child Care on North Second and Bluff City Academy Daycare on North Main. In Harbor Town, educators at the Foreign Language Immersion Childcare Center take an original tack with their infant-to-pre-kindergarten charges, teaching them Spanish so that, by the time the children leave the program, they can understand and speak the language. There are also a few downtown elementary schools, including Downtown Elementary Optional School, which provides K-6 education and also makes available extended child-care for working parents. St. Patrick’s School on South Fourth is a Catholic elementary school under the Memphis diocese.

Your four-legged “children” can be well taken care of too. The Downtown Animal Hospital on North Third handles pet emergencies and regular check-ups, shots, and other care. Mr. Scruff’s Pet Service provides services that range from daily dog walking to pet sitting.

While downtown may be the public-entertainment mecca of the Mid-South, the area also provides plenty of options for those wishing to relax at home. One suggestion: Curl up with a good book and a bottle of wine. You can now buy books downtown at the just opened — and appropriately named — Downtown Books at 152 Madison. And though it’s no longer the Romanesque red-sandstone vision that it once was, the Cossitt Branch Public Library, the first public library in Memphis, is still up and running and ready to serve downtown residents’ needs. Justin Fox Burks

Gestures has flowers, gifts, and even a daily ‘happy hour.’

As part of the Memphis Public Library system, even if Cossitt doesn’t have it, you can get overnight delivery of most materials from other branches. With a book in hand, you’re ready for some spirits, and downtown has many options, including the Corkscrew on South Front, Wine and Spirits on Auction in Uptown, and Frank’s Liquor on South Main. If your tastes run to the cinematic, check out the Movie and Pizza Co. at Harbor Town, where, among other things, you can compare and contrast the portrayals of iconic downtown bar Earnestine & Hazel’s in 21 Grams and Elizabethtown.

What else do ya need? A florist or last-minute gift ideas? You can’t do much better than Gestures, Sharp’s Flowers, or Ritzee Florist, all on South Main. Need to ship something? Try the UPS Store on South Second. Or do as Darnell Gooch suggests and use the post office, which for the City Commons resident, is just “around the corner.” Need some toiletries or odds and ends? There’s a Family Dollar on Main near Monroe and a Walgreens on Main near Madison. Go to Gator Print on Monroe if you need to do some photocopying. Coffee? Start your day off right or recharge later with the java offerings at the Daily Grind or Empire Coffee on North Main or Bluff City Coffee on South Main.

You can’t throw a rock downtown and not hit a barbecue joint, a bank, or a church (so your stomach, wallet, and soul are all covered). You can also put up visiting guests in any of the numerous hotels. They’ll be much closer to you and the places they’ll want to visit while they’re in the Bluff City. Justin Fox Burks

The Main Street Trolley is a great way to navigate downtown.

Dry cleaner? There are many downtown: Kraus Model Cleaners on Auction, Happy Day Laundry and Cleaners in multiple locations downtown, and CityHouse Café Cleaners on G.E. Patterson (see page 9).

Downtown Memphis is a great place to visit. And it’s a better place to stay. It may not be widely known, but the secret is spreading. As Deborah Smith, a downtown resident and owner of CityHouse Café Cleaners, says about the gospel of downtown, “You hear all the wonderful news. One thing about positive news is that you can’t help but be positive when you hear it.”

Loose lips may sink ships, but they also can save cities. Pass it on. ●

And Speaking of Groceries …

One of the biggest concerns of prospective residents downtown is the status of grocery stores in the area.

The concerns are mirrored in current downtown residents. Darnell Gooch, a resident at City Commons condos, says, “I think we need a grocery store down here.” Gooch currently travels to the Midtown Schnucks on Union on a regular basis. Gooch has gone to the Memphis Farmers Market on Saturdays for some fruit and vegetables, but he feels it doesn’t compare to a Wal-Mart.

Downtown resident Deborah Smith agrees. She gets many staples, such as bread, milk, and eggs, at the South Main Justin Fox Burks

Happy Day Laundry provides service that’ll leave you with a smile.

Market, but she sometimes drives to the West Memphis Wal-Mart for more involved shopping.

For Kelly Kiernozek, manager at Miss Cordelia’s Grocery in Harbor Town, the task is clear: Get the word out about her business. “So many people think of this as a convenience store,” Kiernozek says. “[But] you can get every single thing you need at Miss Cordelia’s.”

Riverset resident Jennifer Rayburn agrees: “I’m probably [at Miss Cordelia’s] three or four times a week. They have pretty much everything I need.”

In fact, Miss Cordelia’s has most of the items that larger grocery stores carry, from laundry detergent to locally produced foods, from soup to nuts. For parents, there’s diapers and baby food. For pet owners, pet food. Cereals range from the health-conscious to Saturday-morning-cartoon fare. And they have a large produce deparment, a meat counter, and a deli.

There’s also beer, and lots of it. Miss Cordelia’s has over 100 beers, and they special-order beer — or any grocery item — that customers request. Customer service is paramount. Kiernozek says, “If someone wants to know how something [tastes], we’ll open it.”

Miss Cordelia’s isn’t the only place for groceries downtown. At the Easy Way Food Store on North Main, fine produce can be had, and at Dixie Meat on Jefferson, the selection is a cut above. Though they primarily cater to commercial and wholesale buyers, Dixie Meat does not neglect downtown residents. Just call in advance so they can verify availability. (Go to www.dixiemeat.com for more information.)

At South Main Market on G.E. Patterson you can also find the essentials, and every Saturday, on G.E. Patterson, the Memphis Farmers Market is held, with locally produced fruits and vegetables, pastries, breads, flowers, and sundry seasonal items.

The secret about downtown groceries does seems to be increasingly well-known: “It’s grown leaps and bounds, and every day we try to bring in new items or try to cater to the neighborhood with the new people coming in,” Kiernozek says.

As more people discover the grocery options downtown offers, the area’s best-kept secret could become one of its best-known benefits. ● — GA

Coming Clean

For Deborah Smith, the owner of CityHouse Café Cleaners (formerly CityHouse Dry Cleaners — the name change takes effect September 1st), business is booming. It’s a sign of great things downtown. The business has “quintupled” since opening “because people are moving into the condos quickly,” Smith says. Plans are in the works for several more Café Cleaners across downtown, the next to be at 99 North Main on September 1st.

The secret to her success: service. Smith “always asks [her] customers, ‘What are you looking for downtown that you don’t have?'” Café Cleaners has partnered with Starbucks, providing complimentary coffee, hot chocolate, Tazo Tea, and other products. “I’m always looking to see what can be done downtown.

“I’m loving the growth, I’m loving the vibe, how everything is like wow! It’s revitalized, because when I came, none of this was here, in 2004. I saw the possibilities before the cleaners was even here.”

Smith has a lot invested in downtown beyond business. She’s also a resident. She prides herself on the downtown way of life. “It’s a friendly-based downtown. It’s like living out in the suburbs, but we’re downtown.”

Smith has experience in urban environments in the process of renewal. Smith says, “I’m originally from New York. When I came here in 2004, downtown Main Street reminded me so much of Soho, Greenwich Village. I saw the change Justin Fox Burks

Miss Cordelia’s Grocery in Harbor Town has a wide selection of produce, a meat counter, and a deli.

[there]. I remember when everything started changing, rebuilding, and revitalizing in New York City.” Smith later lived in downtown Orlando and makes comparisons between New York, Orlando, and Memphis. “The downtown areas were like most cities — industrial, trains, warehouses — and everything just kept converting to condos. … I’ve seen it for the last 15 years, so to come here … you can really see what’s going on. It’s just like any other major city. I could easily compare Memphis to Atlanta now.”

For Smith, the improvement of downtown can happen in the little touches her business offers: alterations, wash/dry/fold service, free collar stays, free lint brushes, free cufflinks, and button replacement, with plans for a same-day shoeshine service in the works.

Smith’s philosophy is simple: “I’m a neighborhood dry cleaners.” ● — GA

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The Diebold Factor

Almost a full month after the August 3rd election, with its mammoth ballot that covered elective positions of crucial importance to Memphis and Shelby County, serious questions linger in the public mind concerning the results.

Four races, for county offices won by narrow voting margins, are being appealed by the losers. And, for reasons explored in two articles (see page 19) in this issue, the outcome of those cases is surrounded

by a variety of uncertainties.

It is probable that no skullduggery or conscious subterfuge was indulged in to influence any of the results. The problem is that there are so many remaining issues with how last month’s election was conducted, at so many different levels, that it is difficult to be absolutely certain as to just what those results were. Many have commented on the imprecise way in which precinct results have been reported — forcing would-be analysts to extract them from the released vote totals by a kind of manual labor that went out of fashion even before paper ballots were perfected.

Another issue is the oddity — for the second year in a row — of seeing presumed election winners become losers as late boxes are tabulated. Compounding the problem this year was the fact that the crucial boxes, the ones altering the results, had been received at the same time as others but were unaccountably tallied last.

Software problems stemming from the use of the county’s brand-new Diebold voting machines appear also to have been responsible for snafus in early voting, whereby some voters were given the wrong ballots. Several cases of this sort were confirmed, and it has to be borne in mind that many voters may have proceeded to vote for the wrong offices — mainly in district-specific legislative races — without noticing such errors.

All of this would seem to vindicate critics of the machines manufactured by Diebold. All five election commissioners agree that Diebold supplied software that was insufficient to prevent the early-voting errors. And the company seems to be implicated in the poorly timed precinct reporting as well. It should be noted that Davidson County (Nashville), like Shelby County, experienced a record-sized ballot this year and did so with new, untested machines. But the ESS machines used in Davidson County resulted in none of the problems experienced here. Indeed, TV commentators there were reporting and analyzing precinct returns on election night. In Shelby, we’re still waiting.

Earlier this year, when Diebold was selected over ESS as Shelby County’s designated vendor, a clear majority of the Election Commission favored the company’s product. But because that vote, based in part on staff recommendations, was made on the basis of company representations that have since proved false, it is doubtful now that Diebold would get a single commission vote.

We’re stuck with the machines now, though, and the very least Diebold can do is bear the cost of a refitting process before the election in November. To its credit, the Election Commission has threatened to sue if the company doesn’t.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Family dysfunction is more loud than lurid in The Quiet.

The Quiet is a rarity, the kind of movie where the true revelations are motivations rather than actions and where one of the most exciting things about the experience of watching it is the frequently blossoming realization that you truly don’t know what the characters are about to do next.

When her father dies, Dot (Camilla Belle), a deaf and mute teenager, is taken into the home of her godparents — Paul (Martin Donovan) and Olivia (Edie Falco) Deer — and their daughter, Nina (Elisha Cuthbert). The movie starts a week after Dot has begun living with the family, and as Dot begins to discover secret dysfunction in the Deer family, she’s forced to face the truths of her life, past and present, and what it might mean for those truths to be known.

The Quiet is directed by Jamie Babbit, a TV vet (Gilmore Girls, Wonderfalls) who knows her way around the dynamics of female relationships, and written by Abdi Nazemian and Micah Schraft, who, in this script at least, prove the same. The screenplay gets mileage out of the passive-aggressive dynamics of the Deer family and makes astute character observations such as the use of crisis-dominated news as a way to disconnect from one’s own life troubles.

The film’s handling of Dot’s impairments is excellent. The filmmakers use editing to show the psychological results of Dot’s isolation rather than using the typical trick of showing the physical manifestations of being deaf; there’s blessedly no scene where the soundtrack is also deaf.

The Quiet is reminiscent of American Beauty: The Deers seem built on the Burnham family blueprint, though each family member has flaws that differ from their counterparts. Olivia Deer abuses prescription drugs and, having issues with what money can buy (like Carolyn Burnham), passes out nightly in a room that is being remodeled. (She’s so numb she doesn’t realize when she’s wearing heels in bed.) Nina and Dot each take on various aspects of American Beauty‘s teen girls, and Paul is a less charming, less pathetic, and less forgivable Lester Burnham.

But the changes to the American Beauty formula are interesting. The Quiet‘s subject matter is more explicit: The metaphorical naughtiness of American Beauty is made literal, and the earlier film’s smug universality is removed. American Beauty is gaudy from the word “go” and succeeds because of it, whereas The Quiet has a finale that is chilling and effective but made pedestrian by giving in to a similar luridness it had avoided for so long.

The Quiet ultimately isn’t as good as American Beauty, lacking its wit, ambition, and aesthetics. The Quiet works, though, primarily because of Belle’s performance. Dot is given a voice through narration, and when she says things such as, “One day we wake up, and we realize the world sucks, and we suck for being in it, and we run away,” you can’t help but hear and believe her.

The Quiet

Opening Friday, September 1st

Studio on the Square

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Beerfest

Do you think belching is funny? What about watching people drink so much that they do horribly embarrassing things that they may not want to remember the next day? Do you appreciate a good male-prostitute gag? Does it take a lot to offend you? Do you love Jürgen Prochnow and think Das Boot jokes are das gute?

If you can answer “yes” to at least two of the above questions, do I ever have a movie for you. From the comedy team Broken Lizard (Super Troopers) comes Beerfest, a movie so vulgar, so infantile, and so slyly clever, it’s hilarious.

When the Wolfhouse-clan paterfamilias (Donald Sutherland) dies, his two great-grandkids (Erik Stolhanske and Paul Soter) are charged with taking his cremains back to the old country — Germany — for enshrinement with other ancestors. While there, they discover a secret Olympics-style games based around beer-guzzling. They decide to recruit an American team, return the following year to compete, and honor their great-grandfather’s name.

Some of the best bits in the movie are during the competition. Among the events are the volume chug, monkey chug, the long pour, trick quarters, bat spin, and beer pong. Participating nationalities are rife with stereotype: The German accents are all either like Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark or Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the Brit-speak is maximum cockney. (They boast that Beerfest is for “tossers and shape-shaggers.”)

If you can stomach Beerfest, you should.

Now playing, multiple locations

Categories
News The Fly-By

Jail Break

For many prisoners in Shelby County, jail can be like drugs. Once they’ve been locked up, it’s a hard habit to kick.

About 85 percent of the people processed through the Shelby County Jail are arrested again within three years of their release.

But the county’s hoping to reduce those figures through a pilot program projected to begin in December. By providing mandatory incentives to prisoners, such as employment services, addiction counseling, and literacy training, county officials hope to reduce the recidivism rate.

“We’re doing a good job of locking people up, but they have a discouraging profile,” said Sheriff Mark Lutrell. “The majority of prisoners are young black men, aged 18 to 26. Many aren’t above a fifth-grade reading level, and many are illiterate.”

Currently, services such as basic education, drug-abuse programs, and anger management are offered, but attendance is voluntary.

The test program will break selected medium-security-level inmates into three groups. The first group will serve as the control group, and though services won’t be mandatory, they will be marketed more heavily.

Inmates in the second group will receive a case manager who will assess their individual needs and assign them to applicable services.

“The case manager will even work with inmates post-release to prevent them from reverting back to old behavior,” said Sybille Noble, the current project manager.

The third group will mirror the second group, but they will receive additional services in literacy training provided by faculty from the University of Memphis.

“We’re hopeful we’ll know in a year after release how stable their situation is,” said Noble. “If they’re working and going to church, that should be able to help us determine if they’ll be back [behind bars].”

Test-group members will also have some post-release incentives, such as housing and employment assistance.

“There’s a lot of factors [affecting recidivism], but it comes down to the negative environment some of these inmates face after release,” said Noble. “Some don’t have a good home life. Some don’t even have a home life.”

The $1.5 million program is part of Operation Safe Community, a countywide initiative to reduce crime by 2010.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Literate Southern rock from Middle Tennessee

As contemporary Southern rock bands go, Memphis’ Lucero is more dynamic and charismatic than Murfreesboro’s Glossary. And fellow Middle Tennesseans Kings of Leon are more danceable and definitely more high-profile. But near as I can tell, the only band in the genre that writes sharper songs are the Drive-By Truckers.

I was charmed by Glossary’s previous album, 2004’s How We Handle Our Midnights, a record where the romantic rootlessness of the genre was pinned down by a very post-collegiate specificity. The music felt like it emanated from a real place rather than a record collection.

The songs on For What I Don’t Become are more generalized, which can be both a strength and weakness. This band has enough flair — musical and verbal — to sidestep roots-rock clichés. And the less concrete focus fits a band that’s grown up a little and, presumably, hit the road more.

An awful lot of songs on For What I Don’t Become muse on mortality, but they’re never morbid. The opening “Shaking Like a Flame,” which, crucially, provides the album’s title, finds lead singer Joey Kneiser bitter but bemused: “Surrounded by rows and rows of the same house/Stretched out under the sky/Like a cemetery that just waits for you to die.” But as these songs accumulate, the theme that emerges is a restlessness that’s similar to the feeling that animated How We Handle Our Midnights but made more universal. There’s an admirably understated desperation this time that feels less literary and more natural.

Musically, this band gives bar-band rock a good name. The sound is basic and sturdy, with just enough flourishes (love the piano, handclaps, and bluesy guitar licks on “Poor Boy”) to differentiate it from the pack. The key is the harmony vocals between Kneiser and his wife Kelly, but there’s also an alt-rock undercurrent (I hear echoes of Pavement and Dinosaur Jr.) that pops up here and there. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

It’s been a few weeks since John Mark Karr “confessed” to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, and still no journalist here has been able to come up with a local connection to the 10-year-old crime. Meanwhile, just about every news crew in America is staked out in Boulder, Colorado. C’mon, people; we’re really missing out on the action here.

A judge has ordered Elartrice Ingram to undergo a mental examination. The former Schnucks employee went on a rampage July 21st and is charged with stabbing seven of his co-workers and threatening an eighth. Now, why would anyone think there might be something wrong with him?

Officials with Eudora Baptist Church announce they will demolish their 1,500-seat sanctuary sometime next year. The curving structure has been an East Memphis landmark for more than 40 years. It’s an odd-shaped building, but we’re going to miss it. Greg Cravens

Local media celebrities, including the Flyer‘s own Chris Herrington, lined up to eat worms on Saturday. Yes, worms — in three different flavors. The stunt was a fund-raiser for the Memphis Literacy Council and a promotion for the new movie How To Eat Fried Worms. We’re not sure who comes up with these things, but we’re glad they didn’t try something similar with Snakes on a Plane.

After a string of prostitution arrests, prosecutors want to shut down a Brooks Road topless club called Blacktail’s Shake Joint. So that’s what the place was. Whew, that was a close call. We were planning to go there this weekend and get a tasty milkshake. That would have been hard to explain to the police officers.

Categories
Music Music Features

Twenty Years Ago Today

As blues struggles to survive as a viable pop form, the genre’s battle lines have increasingly been drawn between two sides. There are the mostly white, mostly classic-rock-reared specialists and hobbyists who dote on guitar fireworks or good-time boogie or 12-bar Chicago-style stomp. And, on the other side, mostly white, mostly punk-reared purity hounds think (usually correctly) all of that is corny and inauthentic, instead focusing their ardor on the hypnotic drone of hill-country blues masters and other obscure artists with ties to the music’s rural, pre-rock roots. Off to the side, a mostly black, mostly Southern subterranean fan base keeps down-home soul-blues alive via what some still call the chitlin circuit.

But one of the fascinating things about the most commercially and critically successful blues album of the past 30 years — Robert Cray’s 1986 breakthrough Strong Persuader — is how neatly it sidesteps all that.

Strong Persuader finished third in the Village Voice‘s “Pazz and Jop” national critics’ poll that year — by far the highest finish for a blues record in the poll’s more than 30-year history. There have been only 11 other blues finishers since the poll began in 1974, including two each from tangential-to-the-genre ringers James “Blood” Ulmer (Free Lancing, Odyssey) and Professor Longhair (Crawfish Fiesta, Rock ‘N’ Roll Gumbo) and lots of crit-baiting soul-blues mortality meditations such as Arthur Alexander’s Lonely Just Like Me, Ted Hawkins’ The Next Hundred Years, and Solomon Burke’s Don’t Give Up on Me, which finished 12th in 2002, the only other “blues” record (and Burke’s album deserves the quotation marks) to finish higher than 20. By contrast, other ostensibly tangential genres — reggae, jazz, country — have fared better.

Critics, shmitics, you say? Well, check the charts. With Strong Persuader, Cray became the first straight-blues artist since B.B. King in the ’70s to cross over — and no one has done it since. The lead single, “Smoking Gun,” was even a Top 40 hit and MTV staple.

Despite sounding as fabulous today as it did 20 years ago, Strong Persuader doesn’t show up on many “classic albums” lists anymore. And it seems to hold little stature within the blues world, which is even less surprising because Strong Persuader doesn’t sound much like what anybody thinks of when they hear the term “blues.”

There’s nary a bit of 12-bar blues on Strong Persuader. No Blues Brothers-style showmanship. No Stevie Ray-style guitar showcases. At the same time, the record is so polished and sophisticated — so middle class — that authenticity fans (most of them pretty sophisticated and middle-class themselves) are prone to dismiss it. And though Cray was born in Georgia, there’s no Southernness to his sound at all.

In fact, Strong Persuader denies much of what people expect to get from blues: grit, raw emotion, torment. Cray’s protagonists are prone to unintentional revelation, an artistic gambit rooted in distance between singer and song. He’s a conscious artist playing with form rather that simply telling his story, and the result evokes descriptions like “canny,” “crafted,” and “subtle.”

So, if Strong Persuader is so unlike what is expected of blues, why is it a great blues record? Maybe even the last great blues album? Just listen.

Pulling it out last week for the first time in years, I was immediately struck by how distinctly and warmly I remembered every song. A couple of dozen listens later, I’m amazed by how fresh it sounds; how I haven’t gotten anywhere close to tired of it.

Though sometimes dismissed as too slick, there’s a bracing musicality here, the sturdy Stax-lite groove bolstered by the actual Memphis Horns. And Cray’s better-than-remembered guitar solos are clipped, tense, articulate — woven into the fabric of the songs rather than leaping out from them. Though the music strays into soul, Cray’s voice is all blues — limited, but expressive and authoritative. And then there are the songs.

In a genre where songs have become too often mere performance vehicles at best and distractingly formulaic at worst, Strong Persuader is perhaps the smartest and trickiest batch of compositions heard on a blues record in the rock era. Cray embraces the challenge of finding a fresh or at least memorable twist in every possible cheating-song angle, playing the cheater and the cheated-on.

There’s the cuckold lashing out on “Smoking Gun.” He’s horny and on the prowl in “Nothin’ But a Woman.” On “More Than I Can Stand,” he’s worried his woman is about to walk out. On “Still Around,” he’s frustrated that she hasn’t. On “Foul Play,” he’s suspicious. On the sarcastic, “I Guess I Showed Her,” he does something about it: After discovering his woman out “having lunch with some new guy,” he leaves her (with the house, the car, and no him): “Room 16 ain’t got no view, but the hot plate’s brand new/I guess I showed her.” But nothing compares to “Right Next Door (Because of Me),” where Cray steps outside this dynamic, sitting and listening impassively through thin apartment walls as his latest conquest breaks up with her husband.

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Now and Again

Take your time. That’s my advice for anyone who checks out Memphis Heritage’s last show on South Main, “Then and Now: A Perspective on Memphis’ Historic Architecture,” before they move to their new home at Madison and Edgewood. The exhibit, a collection of Don Newman’s Memphis photographs alongside images of those same places today, looks through the lens of history. Literally.

You shouldn’t rush an exhibit more than 50 years in the making.

Some of the pictures look like identical twins, while other pairs may take more careful study to see just what has changed and what hasn’t. But like before-and-after pictures of dieters, all of them are worth a double-take.

“[Photographer] Gary [Walpole] stood as close to where Don stood as he could,” says June West, executive director of Memphis Heritage. “Sometimes it was hard, because it seems like Don was flying, but it’s still very effective.”

Newman’s widow donated roughly 300 of his historic Memphis images to Memphis Heritage in 2003 and donated about 800 more recently. They show landmarks such as The Peabody, Main Street, the E.H. Crump building, and just about every other place in downtown Memphis.

“As soon as you see them, you can’t help but think about what it looks like today,” says West. “I immediately started thinking about doing a show called ‘Then and Now.'”

West says she wanted the exhibit to show some of the architecture that has been saved, as well as some of it that has been lost. One set of images depicts the old Goldsmith’s building on Main Street, with the sleek, modern facade it had in the ’60s and what it looks like now, with its original exterior.

“When the Belzes began to redo the building, they took off the facade and the front was still there,” says West, explaining the changes that took place during the old department store’s conversion to Peabody Place. “In some cases, they would tear everything off and then put a new facade up. In others, they would put it up on top [above street level]. There are a number of buildings downtown with [original facades]. It might give the owners an incentive to take a peek underneath.”

Other images in the exhibit include Central Station (looking much the same), Beale Street (with corresponding Coke and Pepsi ads), and Riverside Drive (appearing almost naked without Tom Lee Park).

“We picked images we felt would be accessible and have a sense of importance to Memphians,” says West. “We’ve got a lot of older Memphians who come into [the gallery] and there’s a lot of reminiscing that goes on.”

Newman, a native Memphian, snapped images of the city during the ’40s and ’50s, sometimes for commercial purposes but mainly for himself. Because his negatives are 8 by 10 inches, the resulting photographs can be very large and very detailed.

West’s hope is that the show helps people focus on the importance of preserving architecture.

“Historic preservation is not on everyone’s mind. I hope 10 percent of the people are conscious of it,” she says. “This show — whether you’re a preservationist, a developer, a politician, or a citizen — will make you think about the changes we make to the architectural landscape.

“We’re not condemning what we haven’t done, but saying, ‘Let’s take it from here.’ We need to be thinking about what we want to save.”

For me, a city’s personality often comes across in its architecture. People might be the heart of the city, but its structures give it a sense of place and an identity separate from other cities.

Just as importantly — if not more so — buildings form an urban landscape that people remember. Take a street corner, but change all the surrounding structures, and you’ve lost your frame of reference. Without any landmarks, it’s simply a different place, even if the longitude and latitude are exactly the same.

I’m not trying to say we should save everything, but I think reusing historic buildings adds depth to the city. Instead of tearing everything down and rebuilding, reusing older buildings forms a connection between generations and keeps the area authentically “Memphis.”

“Some developers never want to look at adaptive re-use. They don’t see the benefit of it,” says West. “All they see is the additional cost.”

At the gallery, people spend time looking from the Don Newman black-and-white photographs to Gary Walpole’s color doppelgangers and back again. But back on the street, we should also keep an eye on the future.

“Then and Now” runs through September 29th at the Memphis Heritage Gallery, 509 S. Main.