Month: January 2007

News

Memphis Police Department Unveils New DUI Squad

Post author By Bianca Phillips
Post date January 25, 2007

Memphis Police director Larry Godwin introduced a new 18-member DUI unit last night at the Ridgeway Station in Hickory Hill.

The team was formed after Godwin pulled his officers from the Metro DUI unit earlier this month. Godwin said 71 percent of the DUI arrests in Shelby County occur in Memphis, so pulling out of the city/county team would help the MPD target Memphis DUIs. “We want the same thing the sheriff wants, but I have to be responsible to the citizens of Memphis,” said Godwin.

MPD officers assigned to the Metro DUI unit were housed 19 miles outside the city limits. The new squad will be headquartered in the Hickory Hill substation. With only eight officers, the old Metro unit was also considerably smaller than the new MPD unit.

Interestingly, the new Shelby County Sheriff’s DUI unit has also grown since the split. They’ve partnered with the Germantown Police Department, and now boast 11 officers. – Bianca Phillips

Living Spaces Real Estate

Number One

Post author By Greg Akers
Post date January 25, 2007

CREDIT: Artist Rendering Courtesy of Paradigm Productions

All due respect to the King’s Graceland, but Beale Street — with its significance as ground zero for the blues throughout much of the 20th century — is the premier cultural/real estate spot on the Memphis map. And at the foot of Beale is that other prominent component of Memphis’ history: the Mississippi River. A new development set to break ground is capitalizing on both in a manner unprecedented in the city’s history. For a town as wild and wooly as the Bluff City, anything that happens that can be described as “unprecedented” is worth a closer look.

The development is One Beale, the brainchild and soon to be very real building from the Memphis-based Carlisle Corp. It will stand overlooking the intersection of Beale Street and Riverside Drive, called by Chance Carlisle, director of special initiatives for Carlisle Corp., “the gateway to downtown.”

The location of One Beale was selected because “it’s a corner deserving of something of stature. It showcases where Memphis is headed and pays respect to where it’s been,” Carlisle says.

But what is One Beale? It’s a little bit of everything. The $175 million project is one of the biggest condominium buildings in the city in addition to housing a large upscale hotel, Class A office space, a retail and dining center, and a spa and fitness center. It’s a rocketship of a building, a two-tower steel behemoth with an insistent finger of glass improbably shooting up and enveloping the north tower’s body. It’s One Beale, and the Memphis skyline will never be the same again.

Earlier this month, Carlisle Corp. announced the teams who will design, construct, and market One Beale. Among them are a number of Memphis-based companies: Architecture firm Hnedak Bobo Group is designing the development. Hnedak Bobo is responsible for FedEx Express World Headquarters, Clark Opera Memphis Center, Peabody Place, the Main Street Trolley, and the Lofts at South Bluff. Paradigm Productions will market One Beale, and Martin Group Realty will sell it.

Artist Rendering Courtesy of Paradigm Productions

For all of the hoopla and bated breath surrounding One Beale, it’s still just a muddy patch of land right now. “We’re making significant progress each day to take condos to market,” Carlisle assures. “We anticipate releasing units this April.”

How many units need to be sold before ground will be broken is still in discussion, Carlisle says. “We haven’t decided what that number is, what’s reasonable for us and for the lenders.” Nevertheless, Carlisle is confident the development will break ground late this year or early 2008.

One of the main components Carlisle Corp. is involved in right now has to do with the mix of condominium sizes and prices. Overall, there will be 130-145 units. Condos will range from 1,500 square feet to 10,000 square feet, selling for $550,000 up to several million dollars. “That’s a wide benchmark,” Carlisle admits. But the bulk of units will run $750,000 to $1.2 million.

One Beale features two towers, one 30 stories tall, the other 34 stories high. There’s a common misconception that the hotel component of the development will take one tower, with condos housed in the other tower, Carlisle says. But it’s not true, he adds. The hotel and office space will be situated in the lowest floors of each tower, across the entire development. Condominiums will start above the hotel and office space on each side and take each tower to the sky. On the shorter tower, condos will run from the 12th to the 30th floors. In the taller tower, condos will start on the 18th floor and terminate at the top, floor 34. When built, One Beale will edge out 100 North Main as the tallest building in Memphis.

Which hotel will call One Beale home is still in negotiation. But the hospitality aspect of One Beale doesn’t stop with the hotelier. Whichever hotel partners with Carlisle Corp. will bring with it its own restaurant. There will also be another restaurant, a 4 to 5 star destination to complement the city’s already fine dining. There will be a bakery/coffee shop, retail space, and a big lobby bar overlooking the Mississippi River.

Additionally, One Beale will have a destination spa on the 10th floor. This spa will be open to the public and hotel guests; condo owners will be granted full access. The spa will feature individual treatment rooms, workout facilities, and swimming pools. Swimmers can get wet over 100 feet above the Mississippi River.

One Beale hasn’t been without its detractors and doubters. The development trod a long path before being granted city approval. It faced opposition from residents and owners of Waterford Plaza and the Candy Factory condos, two neighboring developments that stand to feel the effects of One Beale’s footprint. The development was approved by the City Council in October 2006, with some compromises made by the city with regard to neighbors’ objections.

Other concerns have to do with the downtown Memphis real estate market and its ability to support One Beale in light of so many other projects built in the last decade.

Artist Rendering Courtesy of Paradigm Productions

One Beale makes the Memphis of the future look sci-fi

Carlisle responds that there’s a flaw in such thinking: One Beale can’t be compared to anything else on the drawing board in Memphis. “We’re in a different market,” he says. “It’s a step above any proposed or current building. It’s ambitious, and we think the city is ready for that and demand it. The Memphis market is fully capable of supporting One Beale. It’s a development buyers have wanted.”

Carlisle also shrugs off the market slowdown during the last quarter. “It’s tough to use recent history as a comparison,” he says.

“We think One Beale is the next progression in downtown urban living for Memphis,” Carlisle says. “People demand to have a luxurious life on the Mississippi River and downtown. You have all of the services of a hotel and the benefits of having a pampered lifestyle,” Carlisle says, citing condo owners’ spa access and the use of the hotel’s room-service menu as examples.

“If that’s not something that interests you, you can also have a great kitchen with an unrivaled view of the river. If all that sounds good to you,” Carlisle adds, “you call it home.”

“Nobody has quite the advantage that One Beale is going to have,” says Regina Bearden, vice president of marketing with the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The hotel promises to draw more visitors to Memphis and more dollars for local businesses. It will also make Memphis more attractive for large conventions. “Anytime you add room inventory in Memphis, especially downtown, it assists us … as we’re trying to build conventions,” Bearden says.

It’s the number-one new development on the horizon in Memphis. If it’s as successful as it promises to be, things are looking up Memphis and its skyline. ■

Tags Beale One, Living Spaces, Skyscraper

Opinion

The New Age of Attack Ads

Post author By John Branston
Post date January 25, 2007

The special election on January 25th will decide whether Robert Spence gets the Democratic Party nomination to represent Midtown in the state Senate. The issues being raised by an attack ad on Spence will linger long after this week.

Spence, a former city attorney, is running against state representative Beverly Marrero. But he’s also being opposed unofficially by Richard Fields, who, like Spence, is an attorney, a former political candidate, and an on-again off-again City Hall insider and confidant of Mayor Willie Herenton.

On January 12th, Fields sent out 10,000 copies of a letter attacking Spence. A shorter version of the letter was published as paid advertising in this newspaper last week. Spence countered with a letter of his own, accusing Fields of “unmitigated lies” and “unstable behavior.” Both letters are ricocheting around via e-mail and in the Internet blogosphere, embellished with mostly-anonymous third-party commentary and more accusations of sexual, marital, professional, and ethical misconduct.

To recap, it’s an old-fashioned political story, a new-media story, a media-law story, and a nasty public clash of strong personalities all in one. While it’s not exactly taking place in a vacuum, you could say it’s taking place in a test tube, because there are no other races on the ballot that day. A single-digit-percentage turnout would not be surprising. And the mudslinging could be a taste of things to come in the city election in October.

Fields fired the first shot. In 2006, he wrote an open letter giving his views of judicial candidates in an upcoming election. Because judicial candidates are often unknown to the general public, attorney recommendations sometimes carry some weight in races where turnout is low. On January 12th, he took it up a notch, taking dead aim at Spence for “faulty advice and his personal pursuit of wealth to the detriment” of citizens. He endorsed Marrero by default. Fields says he did it because “the information needed to be known by voters and it’s all documented.”

Spence, whose first career was in pharmacy, has been an attorney for over 20 years. His educational and professional credentials outstrip Marrero’s, just as former senator Steve Cohen’s resume was more impressive than Jake Ford’s. Spence was city attorney under Herenton from 1997 to 2004, when he resigned to return to full-time private practice. A father of school-age children and a Midtown resident, he ran unsuccessfully for the Memphis City Schools Board of Education in 2004.

He thought about buying his own newspaper ad but decided instead to respond to Fields with a letter of his own, sending out 23,000 copies by snail mail and posting it online. “My letter says it all,” he said in an interview Tuesday. Asked about specific examples of “lies,” he said “the litigation [Fields] cites.”

It’s important to separate some accusations from the accuser. Well before Fields weighed in, Spence invited scrutiny from reporters and City Council members by mixing high-profile city work (the building of FedExForum and its parking garage) with private clients, including the Tennessee Lottery and former county mayoral aide Tom Jones. A search of www.memphisflyer.com, for example, will produce stories about Spence and his private practice, his law partner Allan Wade, and the garage. Then as now, Spence noted that his predecessors did outside work and that Herenton was not opposed to it. (His successor, Sara Hall, did no private work and said representing the city was “more than a full-time job.”)

But that was before Tennessee Waltz shed fresh light on consulting, conflicts of interest, and ethics reform. Spence, whose firm has seven lawyers, said he will review their accounts for possible conflicts if he is elected. One of his clients is the Riverfront Development Corporation, where he makes $25,000 to $40,000 a year as general counsel and his wife is a full-time employee. He did not work for the RDC while he was city attorney and making about $120,000 a year. The Senate job pays about $30,000 a year.

Barry Sussman, editor of the Nieman Watchdog Project at Harvard and a former Washington Post editor for Watergate coverage, said a newspaper is liable for defamatory material that appears in its ads or letters to the editor. Sussman, who is not a lawyer, said when he started a journalism Web site he at first edited reader comments but stopped after he was told that would make the site liable. He now removes some comments altogether but doesn’t do any editing, even for spelling or punctuation.

Tags Robert Spence, state senate

Food & Wine Food & Drink

In the Meantime

Post author By Simone Wilson
Post date January 25, 2007

Interim opened this week in the space formerly occupied by Wally Joe restaurant. Interim’s executive chef is Wally Joe protégé Jackson Kramer. On board with Kramer are: general manager David McWhorter, who until recently worked in a similar position at the Grove Grill; bar manager Chris Williams; sous chef Brian Ellis, who helped to get Boscos in Little Rock off the ground; and lead cook Duncan Aiken, who most recently worked for Stella and is in the process of opening his own restaurant downtown.

As to the future of a restaurant named Interim — Fred Carl Jr., founder and CEO of Viking Range Corporation and former majority owner of Wally Joe restaurant, doesn’t want to keep it a secret that the place is for sale. Carl would consider maintaining an ownership position with the right “operator” so long as he remains in the background, as is the case with the three restaurants he owns in Greenwood, Mississippi (Delta Fresh Market, Mockingbird Bakery, and Giardina’s).

Interim aims for a slightly more casual dining atmosphere than Wally Joe, with a menu that appeals to a wider range of customers. Appetizers and salads range from $5 to $14 and include oysters on the half shell, macaroni-and-cheese casserole with country ham and herb and Parmesan crust, and a Caesar salad topped with grilled chicken or fried oysters. Entrées start at $15 and include grilled beef tenderloin with garlic mashed potatoes, broccolini, fried onions and red-wine sauce or blue-cheese butter; bow-tie pasta with sage pesto, roasted tomatoes, radicchio, and Fontina cheese; and sesame-crusted salmon with glazed baby carrots, taro root purée, and miso sauce.

Interim is open Monday through Saturday at 5:30 p.m. for dinner only.

Interim, 5040 Sanderlin (818-0821)

After much anticipation, Spindini, Judd Grisanti‘s new restaurant in the South Main Historic District, is opening soon.

The concept is “simple, elegant Italian,” but in true Grisanti fashion, Spindini can’t be summed up so easily. For one thing, Grisanti has rediscovered an ancient way of preparing his dishes (and one that fascinates so many males): cooking with fire. In this case, the fire is smoldering in a $30,000 custom-built, wood-burning oven that is the center of attention from every point in the restaurant — aside from Grisanti, who’ll be right there shoving food in and out of the oven using a multitude of pedals. Even the wood — red oak and hickory — is chopped on the premises by the chef himself.

Spindini seats 120, and the kitchen takes up approximately 500 of the 3,900-square-foot space. But just outside the back door is a walk-in cooler that could easily fit the family sedan. A private dining room for up to 20 people is in the back of the restaurant, with more space for special events in a building next door. There’s a parking lot with 50 spaces on the north side of the building, and 100 feet of South Main frontage will be transformed into a patio in the early spring, and that might still not cover it all.

The restaurant’s interior, revamped in a contemporary style by archimania, mixes shades of black and charcoal with copper and earth tones. Most seating is banquette-style with a few free-standing tables near the oven. The bar and the “chef’s table” (the bar around the oven) offer seating, and flat-screen televisions will keep diners in the entrance lounge entertained.

The restaurant’s atmosphere is laid-back, with a $5 martini bar, live music some nights, and early hours for dinner. Appetizers include: beef and tuna carpaccio; Miss Mary’s salad; bacon-wrapped spiedini (skewered) shrimp; and Grisanti’s oysters Rockefeller soup. Entrées include: trout stuffed with apple-wood smoked bacon, tarragon, and Yukon-gold potatoes; Tuscan beef steak; double-thick pork chops with herbed gnocchi, cremini mushrooms, and shallots; and a variety of pizza and pasta dishes, such as lobster ravioli, smoked chicken fettucini, and white pizza with potato cream and portabella mushrooms. Diners can also choose from original Grisanti family favorites, such as spaghetti with Grisanti Bolognese, ravioli Mezzo Mezzo, manicotti, and eggplant Rollatini.

Spindini is open daily from 4 p.m. for dinner only.

Spindini, 383 S. Main

siba@gmx.com

Tags Food, preview, Review, wine

Editorial Opinion

Juvenile Justice

Post author By Flyer Staff
Post date January 25, 2007

Whether it’s the inevitable effect of a party-line shift on the Shelby County Commission, which went from a 7-6 Republican majority to a 7-6 Democratic majority after last year’s quadrennial elections, or it’s a matter of purposeful effort on the part of new members, race-consciousness has returned to the commission’s front burner. (See also this week’s)

Not that it was ever wholly absent. Any number of issues before the commission in the last decade or so have been affected, at least implicitly, by the issue of race. For starters, there is the matter of school construction — and disagreement between blacks and whites (aka Democrats and Republicans) over how city and county systems should be governed and funded. Another racially tinged issue, dormant for the moment but a raging controversy during the last several years, was that of privatizing the county’s correction facilities.

But justice, and the question of whether it is dispensed equally and equitably, is at the core of explicitly racial concerns that haven’t been so directly addressed on the commission since arguments over redistricting preoccupied the body more than a decade ago.

The focus of recent discussion has been the matter, which simmered after last summer’s countywide general election and came to a boil with the swearing-in of the new commission, of whether there should be a second Juvenile Court judgeship. That probably wouldn’t have been an issue had anyone other than Curtis Person — a respected longtime state senator, a white, and a Republican — won in a field in which three prominent African-American and, presumably, Democratic candidates canceled out each other’s votes. The fact that Person had served as a part-time court administrator for several years (and thus could be identified by critics with its practices) exacerbated matters, as did the question of racial inequities in the administration of juvenile justice.

Though support for the candidacy of last year’s court runner-up, former U.S. attorney Veronica Coleman, is part of the reason for the current controversy, race has become the overriding issue. There is no denying that black youths predominate before the court, that their cases are disproportionately remanded to adult courts, and that, as was recently disclosed, suburban white youths have often had their own cases diverted to alternate and presumably milder handling outside the court’s jurisdiction.

This situation is but the tip of the iceberg, say several of the commission’s black Democrats, some of whom are demanding both a federal investigation of the court and a command appearance before the County Commission by Judge Person, who, for his part, has promised to address all concerns if permitted to do the job he was elected to do. The commission’s Republicans, who tend to be Person’s defenders, balk at what they consider the peremptory nature of the summons.

Meanwhile, a decisive vote on the issues of a second judgeship has been delayed, and, following a stormy, racially tinged debate in a committee session on Monday, so has a vote on commissioning a formal study on the court’s procedures.

While there is no doubt that the moment of truth is approaching on the issues of Juvenile Court, we hold on to the hope that racial and political comity will survive the final resolution.

Tags editorial, political, Politics

Art Art Feature

Back and Forth

Post author By Carol Knowles
Post date January 25, 2007

In a recent phone interview, Jerry and Terry Lynn, identical-twin artists who paint together as the singularized “Twin,” spoke of their Southern roots, religious faith, and some 21st-century challenges, including the havoc caused by Hurricane Katrina and the violence in Darfur. Their new exhibition, “Twin: Paintings & the Story” at the David Lusk Gallery, bears witness to the ongoing struggles of humankind.

At first glance, the acrylic on canvas At the Sea looks like a group of Creole women dressed in white gowns and turbans standing at water’s edge performing the rite of baptism. But the acidic yellow sky looks rancid, a dark red sea is filled with rust, earth, and/or blood, and dead tree limbs reach across the top of the painting. In Twin’s apocalyptic landscape, the baptizers stand at the edge of a dying world.

Paint jabbed, impastoed, and flung across the top of The Journey: Refugees explodes above seven men and women, all in profile, who appear to move slowly, resolutely across the bottom of the painting. A patchwork of color becomes the hats, shawls, skirts, and shirts of this line of refugees whose will to go on in spite of chaos makes this poignant image a reminder of the more than 20 million people displaced in the world today.

The artists build complex metaphors and rich narratives in this body of work. For instance, in their retelling of the Genesis creation story, In the Beginning: Early Morning, a small white building that represents the church the artists attended as children (a recurring motif in Twin’s paintings) also looks like a medieval castle. Clouds surrounding the fortress-like church look heavy, pregnant with moisture. The aerial perspective, somber colors, fortress, and stormy sky depict a cosmos full of cataclysmic energy and mystery reminiscent of El Greco’s View of Toledo. As a final touch — one that feels free of satire or kitsch and full of respect for the unadorned power of the rustic — a large black rooster in the foreground stands guard over the primeval scene.

There are masterful passages of understatement in Twin’s paintings as well as images that roil. In The Temptation, another work based on a story from Genesis, tiny flecks of white and touches of umber on a scumbled brown background successfully suggest the stubble of a cotton field, the face/turban/bodice/skirt of a woman, and the shirt and trousers of her companion. Ousted from Eden, these two minuscule figures walk across a stark, barren world.

Women dressed in long white dresses have served as archetypes in Twin’s paintings throughout the artists’ career. In Strength: Manna, five iconic figures stand in a field as impressionist as Monet’s haystack series. Gallery lights reflecting off collage elements (frayed bits of burlap and dried grasses) suggest a harvested field and the loose weave of the women’s muslin dresses. The dark featureless faces of the figures contrast sharply with a landscape bleached out by noonday sun. The central figure’s large frame, stooped shoulders, and muscular forearms draped across her broad, skirted thighs speak of hard work, endurance, patience.

In the Garden speaks of grace in the face of hardship. Two women dressed in wide-brimmed straw hats and long muslin gowns appear to glide across a landscape lathered with green and brown pigment and a splatter of white cotton bolls. A closer look draws the viewer into the strata of this 75-by-129-inch vision of a cotton field as Eden. It depicts the same fertile delta on which we stand.

With white paint in one hand and pink in the other, Twin poured, splattered, and looped multiple layers of pigment across the surface of Isaac’s Everlasting. There is no Isaac, no Abraham in the painting. At the center of this pink and white jubilation, a dark-skinned Sarah, dressed like a bride in the exhibition’s whitest-whites, looks full of hope and confident that life will go on.

The twins are also skilled portraitists who, early in their careers, painted large canvases of sportsmen and musicians. Instead of stylizing the figures in Trio, the artists capture the nuanced body language of three honky-tonk players, dressed in Panama-style hats and brown Sunday suits, bending over their guitars — strumming, listening, keenly aware of the sounds they are making. Shades of electric blues and smoky indigos envelop the musicians. Bits of frayed burlap and dried grasses collaged onto the surface of this huge (approximately 6-by-9-foot) painting bring to mind wooden floors strewn with debris tracked in by laborers who have come to hear music that is both a hallelujah and a wail.

At David Lusk Gallery through January 27th

Tags art, Review, Twin

Music Music Features

Summer of 69

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date January 25, 2007

True music lovers understand the value of Smokey Robinson’s sound maternal advice: You better shop around. Pop crushes can be as easy and regrettable as a drunken one-night-stand, because even the homeliest melodies can be made over by major-label cosmetologists, dressed for quick sale in trendy studio fashions, and shipped out to walk the slinky, unavoidable streets of Top 40 radio.

Pop is easy and available, but time passes, tastes change, and a decade down the road your beloved prom theme — once a constant aural companion — loses its hormonal urgency, youthful blush, and deep personal meaning until all that’s left is an embarrassing “Oops! … I Did It Again.”

Nobody seems to understand this better than the Magnetic Fields’ wryly misanthropic Stephin Merritt, whose 1999 triple-disc release 69 Love Songs was a triumph of quixotic craftsmanship over the assembly-line style of hit-making that prompted Frank Zappa to ask the musical question, “Is that a real pancho or a Sears pancho?”

Containing nearly three hours of material drawing inspiration from every page of the great American songbook (pre- and post-rock), 69 Love Songs was bigger and far more ambitious than the average boxed retrospective of an established, best-selling artist. It was destined to become either an instant classic or a cautionary tale for megalomaniacal indie rockers everywhere. Fortunately for Merritt (and for the rest of us), it was embraced by critics far and wide, earning a top slot on countless year-end lists and astounding brand penetration for an ad hoc band that never, ever tours.

“Well, we haven’t gone gold,” says L.D. Beghtol, the former Memphis Flyer writer who collaborated with Merritt on 69 Love Songs and the author of 69 Love Songs: A Field Guide, the latest installment in Continuum Press’ wonderful 33 1/3 book series.

“Maybe if you counted every individual disc in the three-CD set it would be gold,” Beghtol adds, reconsidering the industry standard as slyly as Merritt has reconsidered the industry.

Books in the 33 1/3 series focus on single, highly influential rock-era recordings ranging from Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn to the Smiths’ Meat Is Murder, and beyond. Each book presents its subject matter from a semi-insider’s perspective, eschewing academic treatments and all the banal tropes of traditional rock journalism.

“Music writers write about themselves,” Beghtol says, staving off a yawn. “How many times have you read a review that started out, ‘When I was 17, I was really, really sad, and this album I’m about to write about saved my life.’ It’s boring, and I wasn’t going to do that.”

L.D. Beghtol

According to Beghtol, who played a number of unusual instruments and whose rich, raspy baritone voice can be heard throughout 69 Love Songs, Merritt is a pop artist more in the mold of Andy Warhol than Justin Timberlake. His images are coolly appropriated from a distance, as are his sonics, which are borrowed in equal measure from the Mod sounds of “Summer Nights”-era Marianne Faithfull, the darker side of ’80s new wave, Hank Williams-era honky-tonk, and the pre-rock stylings of Cole Porter and Hoagy Carmichael. In Merritt’s songs, “keeping it real” is rejected in favor of “keeping it interesting,” and romance is only approached in purely literary terms.

“In the late-’60s/early-’70s context of ‘man with an acoustic guitar,’ commercial sincerity is taken literally,” Beghtol explains. “Stephin’s is a more distanced reality. It’s more like saying, here’s a bunch of emotions. If you like them and want to believe in them for three minutes, you can. Because if artifice is good enough and complete enough, then it’s real.”

Just as Merritt rejects any traditional sense of realism within the framework of his songs, Beghtol has abandoned traditional narrative and presented his take on 69 Love Songs (the music) in the form of a devil’s dictionary.

Although there’s plenty of interview material for fans, including wry commentary from various band members about the recording of each individual song, the author has devoted the majority of his pages to a funny, endlessly fulfilling exploration of the famously literate songwriter’s most effective tool: language.

“There was no point in writing for the casual reader,” Beghtol says. “A casual reader’s just not going to pick up one of these books. It’s not going to happen. It’s for fans. These are smart kids, so I wanted to give them something that would be worth their $10. And I wasn’t going to write another piece about the genius of Stephin Merritt.”

In addition to penning 69 Love Songs: A Field Guide, Beghtol, a multi-award-winning graphic artist, also designed the book’s layout, filling its clean, easy-to-read pages with quirky illustrations and subtle visual puns.

“One of the conditions of my doing the book was that I got to design it. I knew it would be fun and that I would have the ability to access images in a way that [the publisher] just wouldn’t have either the time or the energy.

“I’m an enthusiast,” Beghtol says of his approach to music writing. “I’m a cheerleader for justice. So many music writers want to tell you all the reasons why something is bad just to show off how smart they are. What I like to do is say, Hey, here’s all this really neat stuff that you should know about.”

In addition to his work as a freelance writer, designer for Village Voice Media, and sometime member of the Magnetic Fields, Beghtol has been associated with at least three other literate art-rock bands: Moth Wranglers, Flare, and L.D. and the New Criticism, whose newest EP, Axyareal, is due out in March.

Tags 69 Love Songs, album, book, LD Beghtol, Review

Music Music Features

From Beale to Sundance

Post author By Andria Lisle
Post date January 25, 2007

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Beale Street Caravan, the locally produced radio program which draws an estimated 2.5 million listeners each week, brought a few hundred Memphians to the New Daisy Theatre on Wednesday, January 17th, to celebrate its 10th anniversary at a three-hour filmed concert.

Jim, Luther, and Cody Dickinson‘s set included two takes of “Nighttime,” Big Star‘s stirring, stripped-down homage to Midtown life, which singer Alex Chilton recorded with Jim Dickinson three-and-a-half decades ago. Afterwards, Stax alumnus William Bell strutted his stuff with The Bo-Keys, singing hits such as “You Don’t Miss Your Water” as guitarist Skip Pitts, clad in jeans and a Hustle & Flow T-shirt, nodded and grooved behind him.

Sporting a velvet blazer and a U of M Tigers cap, rapper Al Kapone appeared next. “I come from the hip-hop side of the map,” he informed the audience before bringing the Bo-Keys back onstage and name-checking B.B. King, WDIA, and songwriting team Porter and Hayes on “What About the Music,” the ideal closer for a perfect night of Memphis music.

Now, Bo-Keys bassist Scott Bomar is headed to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival, where Black Snake Moan premieres on Wednesday, January 24th. Bomar served as music supervisor for the film, written and directed by Craig Brewer, and at Sundance, he’ll oversee performances by Bobby Rush, Kenny Brown, and Cedric Burnside, who will be playing a post-screening party at the Celsius Lounge.

“Al Kapone performed at Sundance for the Hustle & Flow premiere, and it was one of the wildest parties I’ve ever been to,” Bomar recalls. “Even the Los Angeles premiere wasn’t like that. [West Coast audiences] aren’t exposed to much Memphis music. They’d never seen a rap show like Al’s, and they’ve probably never seen a real blues show. Having Bobby Rush and Kenny and Cedric there is gonna add so much flavor to the party. It’s like taking a piece of the South to Sundance.”

“Forget the budget. The reason I don’t shoot in Los Angeles or Canada or wherever is because I don’t think anyone from central casting is gonna understand grooving to that beat the way we do in the South,” says Brewer. “I can’t help but want to create here.”

Two days ago, the Black Snake Moan soundtrack, released by New West, hit store shelves. Laden with cuts from The Black Keys, Precious Bryant, and Jessie Mae Hemphill, plus recordings made expressly for the film (with star Samuel L. Jackson singing and backed by the likes of Brown and Burnside, Jason Freeman, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Big Jack Johnson) and samples of the score, as performed by Bomar, the Dickinson trio, and Charlie Musselwhite, it’s a must-hear for fans of the Memphis and North Mississippi hill-country region.

This Friday, forgo the happy-hour drinking and head to Shangri-la Records at 1916 Madison. Last November, the record store inaugurated its indoor performance space with a free set by soul star Howard Tate, followed by The Wallendas, Harlan T. Bobo, Robby Grant & Alicja Trout, and Brooklyn UK.

“We’ve talked about it for a long time,” says store owner Jared McStay, who inherited a long tradition of free outdoor concerts by the likes of Beat Happening, Guitar Wolf, and The Smugglers when he took over the business from Sherman Willmott in 1999.

“We do so many shows on the porch,” McStay says, “and we wanted to do ’em without worrying about the weather.”

Citing an unlikely windfall that came when Tower Records shut its doors and Nostalgia World deleted its vinyl stock, he says, “We got a lot of new racks, and at the same time, we expanded inventory to our back room, which made space for a stage.”

McStay’s running a 20 percent-off sale every Friday from 5 to 7 p.m., while the free music (this week, Monsieur Jeffrey Evans and Ross Johnson are playing) starts around 6 p.m. For more information, call 274-1916 or go to www.shangri.com.

Local rappers take note: The Southern Entertainment Awards are scheduled for the Grand Casino in Tunica this weekend. On Friday, January 26th, and Saturday, January 27th, there are several free components leading up to the main event. Don’t miss the panel discussions, organized by Rap Coalition head — and former Memphian — Wendy Day, which will feature wisdom from locals such as MemphisRap.com proprietorM Town Luv, industry consultant Nam Moses, and K-97 DJs Lil Larry and Devin Steele. For more details, check out www.SEAPanels.com.

Tags live, Local, Music, preview, Review

We Recommend We Recommend

A Fine Romance?

Post author By Leonard Gill
Post date January 25, 2007

When native Memphian Joan Williams died in 2004, she left behind five novels (one a National Book Award finalist) and one short-story collection — work that, with the exception of two early stories, she produced after 1953. The year is significant, because it’s the year Williams ended her romantic involvement with William Faulkner, a man who, when the two met in Oxford in 1949, was 31 years Williams’ senior and married. The exact nature of that relationship is explored in William Faulkner and Joan Williams: The Romance of Two Writers (McFarland & Co.) by Lisa C. Hickman.

The book is in many ways a ground-breaker: It draws on unpublished letters between Williams and Faulkner; it draws on information supplied by the psychiatrists who treated Faulkner at Memphis’ Gartly-Ramsay Hospital; and it draws on the willingness of Williams to talk openly of these years — years that she feared overshadowed her subsequent writing career.

As Hickman writes in the Preface, “Joan often, and rightly, felt she struggled more for recognition because of her relationship with Faulkner, that her talent somehow was dismissed because of their association.”

Hickman, who teaches writing and literature at Christian Brothers University, is on the record too. In an interview in the January issue of Memphis magazine, she explains: “It’s tiring to point out over and over Joan’s literary legacy and then have someone reduce it to ‘Didn’t she have an affair with William Faulkner?’ It’s that sexism that I find extremely trying. … It is past time for Joan Williams to assume her rightful place in the distinguished roster of Southern women writers.”

Booksigning and reading by Lisa C. Hickman at Square Books, Oxford, Thursday, January 25th, 5 p.m. (662-236-2262)

Tags book, Faulkner, Joan Williams, Review