Month: May 2013

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: “Ag Gag” is Horse Puckey

CREDIT: Homeworks255 | Dreamstime.com

On April 18th, the Tennessee House and Senate passed what’s been termed the “ag gag” bill. This piece of legislative flimflammery requires that anyone who takes video or photos of animal abuse must turn over said photographs or video to law enforcement within 48 hours.

Proponents of the law say it’s designed to help prevent animal cruelty, but this is pure horse puckey. The law, identical to those proposed in many other states, is the brainchild of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing, corporate-funded outfit that’s helpfully writing corporate-cuddly legislation for GOP legislators all over the country.

The real purpose of the law is to stifle investigations of corporate food-factory animal abuse or cruel and unhealthy conditions for animals being bred or trained for sale. It might better be termed a “First Amendment gag” law, since it’s intended to deter activist organizations and the media from reporting on offensive or illegal practices.

It’s beyond absurd. What if ALEC next decides we shouldn’t have anyone reporting on corporate pollution (not that far-fetched an idea)? They could write a law stating that all video and photos of polluted streams and illegal landfills and belching smokestacks must be turned over to law enforcement within 48 hours. I honestly think many of the simpletons in the Tennessee legislature would jump on board.

It’s a textbook example of what’s gone wrong with our governing process. It’s become a top-down process driven by special interests, not the will of the people. There was absolutely no public demand for this law. None. In fact, I would wager that, if surveyed, the great majority of Tennesseans would say they didn’t want it. The only ones behind this bill are corporate lobbyists. And our legislators dance to their tune like puppets on a string.

I don’t believe the law as written would stand up in court, and the Knoxville News Sentinel has already declared that it would ignore the law — as would the Flyer. But, if passed, the law could — as it was no doubt intended to do — deter some media outlets, activist groups, and individuals without the money or fortitude to take such a case to trial.

The “ag gag” bill has been sent to Governor Haslam to sign. It only passed by a bare majority in the House, and if Haslam vetoes it, the veto might even be sustainable. Will he do the right thing? As of this writing, he was still undecided, his usual default status on anything controversial.

The Tennessee legislature is all about protecting the Second Amendment and the right for citizens to bear arms. The First Amendment and the right to bear cameras? Not so much, apparently.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

How To Watch To the Wonder

About an hour into an early-afternoon screening of writer-director Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, a middle-aged moviegoer quietly packed up her popcorn and shuffled out of the theater.

Good Lord, I thought as I watched her go, it’s happened again.

I love Malick’s work, and I’ve been lucky enough to catch every film he’s directed since 1998’s The Thin Red Line on the big screen. Yet To the Wonder is the third consecutive Malick film — following 2005’s The New World and 2011’s The Tree of Life — that’s caused at least one person in the audience to give up and walk out. Now, I may not be the most intelligent guy in the world, but I believe in the power of art at least as much as I scoff at the idea of walking out of movies. Therefore, my mission here is not to praise To the Wonder — although it contains several gorgeous passages more attentive to and agog at the miracle of human existence than any movie I’ve seen so far this year — but to convince you not to leave it halfway through.

To lesser or greater degrees, Terrence Malick’s 21st-century work presents four chief obstacles. Here’s what they are, and here’s how to handle them:

1.) His movies are boring. Nothing really happens in them: To the Wonder‘s story is admittedly difficult to summarize without yawning. A young woman in Paris (Olga Kurylenko) falls in love with an American (Ben Affleck) who takes her and her daughter to live with him in Oklahoma. After the woman and the man split up, the man has a dalliance with a former classmate (Rachel McAdams). Later, he reunites with his former girlfriend, who seeks counsel from a troubled priest (Javier Bardem) when her relationship with Affleck falls on hard times.

(A sea turtle also makes a cameo.)

For Malick, though, the precise details of this oft-told story matter far less than the intricacies and fluctuations of his characters’ minds and souls, which he often conveys through physical movements. Whenever Kurylenko dances or whenever Affleck walks alone among the suburbs and the industrial rubble, they’re using their physical vocabulary (Affleck’s action-hero gait, Kurylenko’s banner-like responsiveness to wind and weather) to assay the struggle of individuals trying so hard to be in the present moment that their lives are simultaneously exultant and crushing. Naturally, they can barely find the words to express themselves.

2.) But that’s the problem; hardly anyone talks to anyone else during the movie. And when they do, it’s not in English: Many, many memorable lines of dialogue in this film concern the search for truth, whether it assumes the form of love (“I thought I knew you. Now I know you never were”) or of God (“Show us how to seek you. We were made to see you”). But none of the characters shares these revelations and musings, because between thought and expression lies a lifetime. Plus, Malick uses voice-over narration in an unusual fashion. It’s not present to fill in any plot holes — it acts as a counterargument, commentary, or poetic analogue to the on-screen image. And yes, Olga Kurylenko delivers most of her musings in French, but think of her as a far more fetching and down-to-earth truth whisperer than the relentlessly inquisitive French semiotician lording over Jean-Luc Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her. That was another challenging movie obsessed with the mystery and meaning of the everyday. Both films share a similar conviction: Whether it’s lace curtains, wheat fields, or coffee cups, curious, abrupt questions still stir within everyone at any time.

3.) Still, it’s hard to tell what’s going on because so many scenes lack a beginning and an ending: As he’s gotten older, Malick’s movies have grown more impressionistic and abstract; according to the Cinemetrics web site, The Tree of Life had nearly twice as many individual shots as his debut, 1973’s Badlands. More than ever, Malick’s restless camera bobs and weaves like a child or a dying man trying to see as much as possible before he’s gone. (He also apparently shoots everything in 360 degrees, so there’s no angle potentially left untouched.) This may be why To the Wonder lists five editors in its closing credits. Their editing further abets the general sense of disorientation by shearing sequences into half-remembered fragments that rely on free-associative feeling for their impact.

What to do? It works best to embrace this floating-world editing strategy and see each discrete scene as part of a vainglorious attempt to capture both the elemental and the transient nature of phenomena as disparate as snow in Oklahoma and the incoming tide at Mont Saint-Michel.

4.) There are too many shots of pretty girls in fields: How’s that a bad thing?

To the Wonder

Opening Friday, May 3rd

Ridgeway Four

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Maxine Smith, 1929-2013

CREDIT: Danziger

Memphis and the world lost another iconic figure with the passing last week of Maxine Smith, the longtime executive secretary of the Memphis NAACP and a pivotal local figure in virtually every important aspect of the civil rights era. Smith, 83, was born in October 1929, just as her country’s post-World War I boom years were ending in a spectacular crash.

The rest of her lifetime would see the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War before things ultimately returned to an age of economic certainty. But one concurrent fact of human history transcended and survived that cycle — the aforementioned civil rights revolution, of which Smith was a prime exemplar.

During the years of her public school education, Smith could not, by law, attend the schools that white members of society could. Her fellow African Americans were deprived of equal job opportunities and played no role in their own governance. She was well into her adulthood before she could legally drink from the same public water fountain or change clothes in the same department-store dressing room or attend common entertainments at the same time and from the same areas as whites.

By her own actions, singly and in concert with other courageous individuals, she was instrumental in ending each and every of these legal limitations and in forcing the easing of other restrictions that had existed (and, to some degree, persist) only by custom.

As in the case of Rosa Parks, whose denial of a seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955 led to that city’s landmark bus boycott, headed by the young Martin Luther King, Smith’s ascent into social leadership stemmed from a personal rebuff. She and Miriam Sugarmon Willis, another civil rights pioneer, saw their applications rejected to do graduate work at Memphis State University in 1957. That led to Smith’s initial involvement with the NAACP and her activity on behalf of sit-ins and various protests and voter-registration drives.

She led the “If You’re Black, Take It Back” campaigns that boycotted downtown stores with segregated work forces and separate facilities. She personally escorted the African-American children who desegregated Memphis public schools in 1961. In 1969, she was a leader of the “Black Monday” boycotts to force further school desegregation. As a member of the Memphis City Schools board, she was the single most important factor in the elevation in 1979 of Willie Herenton, a black principal, to the role of school superintendent. And she was a prime backer in the election of Herenton as Memphis mayor in 1991, as she had been of Harold Ford Sr.’s election to Congress in 1974.

In retirement, she remained an inspirational figurehead, along with her late husband, Vasco Smith, a veteran civil rights activist himself and a longtime member of the Shelby County Commission.

The world she left behind was vastly different from the one she inherited. Asked once to supply her own epitaph, she said, “I gave it my best shot,” and that was a pretty good shot indeed.

Categories
Cover Feature News

On Top

CREDIT: Arnaud Potier

Billy Gibbons, ZZ Top’s lead vocalist and fuzzy guitar wizard, thinks the band’s concert at this weekend’s Beale Street Music Festival will be a special show. It’s the first time Gibbons and his longtime musical accomplices, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard, will have played the Bluff City since the Texas trio became the most eyebrow-raising act inducted into the inaugural class of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

“It should be a really special night,” Gibbons predicts, describing his inclusion in the Memphis Music Hall of Fame as “a kind of ‘fonky’ affirmation.”

“The fact that we were chosen, along with Elvis, Sam Phillips, Otis Redding, Howlin’ Wolf, Rufus Thomas, Al Green, B.B. King, Willie Mitchell, the great Jim Dickinson, and the others is one of the most gratifying honors ever bestowed,” he says.

The members of ZZ Top, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, aren’t from Memphis. But the band’s 1973 breakthrough, Tres Hombres, which produced “La Grange,” the band’s first hit single, was recorded on Madison Avenue at Midtown’s Ardent Studios, with Terry Manning running the controls. After the success of “La Grange,” ZZ Top treated Memphis as a kind of good-luck charm and returned to Ardent to record the band’s next seven records, including 1983’s Eliminator, a career-defining album with five hit singles: “Legs,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” “TV Dinners,” “Got Me Under Pressure,” and “Gimme All Your Lovin’.”

Early on in the band’s recording career, ZZ Top hit on a successful formula: dirty boogies and double entendre. Over the years, even as the band has experimented with more electronic sounds, they’ve never strayed far from the blueprint. Although it wasn’t recorded in Memphis, 2012’s La Futura, co-produced by Gibbons and Rick Rubin, proves that ZZ Top can still serve stinging blues riffs with a healthy side of hilarity and sleaze.

In a recent interview, Gibbons fondly recalled his time in Memphis recording at Ardent, playing at the Overton Park Shell, and discovering the manifold joys of Velcro.

Flyer: I’ve heard members of the band mention the whole Jimmie Rodgers “T for Texas, T for Tennessee” thing. But, as a Texas band, how does it feel to be in the Memphis Music Hall of Fame by way of Ardent Studios and folks like Terry Manning?

Billy Gibbons: It’s a most Memphian thing, for certain! The Memphis Music Hall of Fame induction is validation of the highest order. While we’re identified with Texas, we’ve long had a special relationship with Memphis and its music. What went on at 706 Union Avenue [Sun Studio] and 2000 Madison [Ardent Studios] is a tremendously inspiring experience. When you come to Memphis, you come to the source. If you want it to be real, do it in Memphis. And so we have.

Before Memphis, you were recording in Tyler, Texas. Not much going on in Tyler in the 1970s but roses, as I recall. Can you tell us a little about the circumstances that brought you to Ardent Studios to record Tres Hombres? That record sounds like it was made in Memphis, Texas, U.S.A.

The good friends we made first coming to Memphis — Waltaire Baldwin, Steadman Matthews, Butch Johnson — allowed us to recognize the first-rate recording facilities that abound in Memphis. Once we met [Ardent’s] John Fry and his staff — “The Terrible Trio” (Joe Hardy, Terry Manning, and John Hampton) — we knew we had to make Memphis our second home. You get everything you need — great studios, simpatico musical community, and great Southern cuisine and hospitality — to make “tuff” guitar-based records. That’s Memphis magic of the highest order. As far as our pre-Memphis recordings are concerned, we’ve always strived to get things right in the pocket, Memphis-style, so the influence transcends geography.

Any special Memphis memories: the good, the bad, the weird?

Hanging out with Albert King was pretty special. We saw him trundling down the street and offered him a ride, which he accepted. When we asked where he was going, he said, “Over the motel,” which was his way of saying the Peabody. That’s Memphis for you. Its grandest lodging is boiled down to gut-bucket basics and becomes “the motel.” It should be pointed out that the city’s Southern limits border on Mississippi, which tells you much about this kind of root thinking. There are many tall tales to tell about water-skiing up the Mississippi, the Saturday night runs to Southland Greyhound Park, the dice games at the North End … just too much groove to not maintain fond recollections.

King came to one of your birthday parties, right?

My gal, Christine Reid, organized the big surprise at the aforementioned “motel,” with Albert, Tony “Mr. Big” Fortune, and a host of well-wishers while we were living there and recording at Ardent. It was December 16th, and Albert’s presence at the bash was an early holiday present. What a night!

Is the third verse of “My Head’s in Mississippi” (“Last night I saw a cowgirl/She was floatin’ across the ceiling”) about Memphis musician Nancy Apple, who has often billed herself as the Cadillac Cowgirl? I’ve heard her tell a story about an “invisible 7-Eleven.” That story involves you, a candy craving, and a citywide hunt for Chick-O-Sticks.

Oh, yes! Nancy Apple’s remained a true friend once we hit town. As far as the invisible 7-Eleven, if you can’t see it, how do you know it’s not there?

I’ve heard it rumored that you first encountered Velcro at the Midtown Piggly Wiggly. Did you immediately think, Hey, this is better than a zipper?

Velcro came in strips that could be cut and sewn to make things sticky. The zipper has long been problematic. The juxtaposition of steel teeth and one’s nether regions should be a cause for concern, so when Velcro came to the fore, it was welcomed with open arms and pants. The sound of Velcro is superb.

Some bands have looks. From the sound, to the Eliminator car, to the beards, to the fuzzy guitars, ZZ Top has an aesthetic. Knowing there are other artists in the family, I’m wondering if it’s genetic?

Yes, my dad, the late Freddie Gibbons, was a bandleader/conductor in both Southern California and Houston. He was primarily a pianist and had what it took to keep his combo percolating over the years. This had a profound influence on me. It’s not enough to just play music. One must present it. His cousin Cedric was a noted art director and is credited with designing the Oscar statuette. The fact that he was once married to Delores del Rio should have been enough to put him in the history books.

Your first show at the Overton Park Shell — now the Levitt Shell — was a pivotal moment for the band?

Our longtime friend and mentor, Waltaire Baldwin, inspired us from the beginning. One long-distance call from Memphis to Houston provided the inspiration to lean heavily on the bluesy side of things, which resulted in the recording of ZZ Top’s First Album, containing the track “Just Got Back From Baby’s”. Waltaire received the send-out of the first copy off the press, which was auditioned for another instrumental Memphian, Steadman Matthews, who was organizing the initial Overton Park Blues Festival. Waltaire and Steadman considered that including ZZ Top in the show’s lineup was a must, despite the fact that Steadman thought we were black. Upon arrival, we checked into the Linden Lodge on Beale Street and found that we had been placed last on the list for the show at Overton. Not a problem, as we were hanging about the scene, still lingering on Beale, with plenty of time to prepare for the evening performance. And it went down in fine fashion! Following the show, we were greeted by the local leaders in the rock scene — Jim Dickinson, Lee Baker, Robert Johnson, the Ardent crew, all the important players on the scene! It was following the subsequent visits through town that took us into Ardent Studios. After that, we knew where we wanted to be: Memphis.

Border radio influenced your sensibility. Did you know that the man who created border radio — John R. Brinkley, a quack doctor who would restore male virility by grafting goat testicles onto human testicles — is buried in Memphis?

Yes, indeed. While Dr. Brinkley’s “cure” might have been dubious, his contribution was revving up those Mexican radio stations south of the Rio Grande so the likes of me (and Dusty and Frank) could hear blues and R&B that we otherwise wouldn’t have heard. When the three of us first got together, we realized that we had been listening to the same stuff, albeit Dusty and Frank in Dallas and me in Houston. The signal was so powerful it seemed like a local station … “Coast to Coast and Border to Border!”

We’re quite keen on how we came to know Howlin’ Wolf, so, in some way, we have the good doctor to thank for facilitating our exposure to “the real deal.” And Doc’s final resting place in Memphis: Do they have goats grazing nearby? Seems like they should.

Prior to Eliminator, you guys seemed to be actively trying to connect the relationship of hit songs and beats-per-minute. In a digital world full of samples and mix tapes, this sort of thing seems obvious. Were you nerding out before nerding out was cool?

This idea that there’s a specific formula for hit records is intriguing, but our idea wasn’t to crack the code so much as to provide a pulse — in a way, to humanize things. The human pulse is 60-80 beats per minute, and the average for hits is something like 120, so maybe there’s something to getting your pulse racing to get your attention. Seems like the blues is closer to humanity than anything else, but you’d lose your mind trying to determine the b.p.m.’s in a Lightnin’ Hopkins song. A true heart stopper!

Finally, are there really a lot of nice girls out there in La Grange?

There certainly were back in the old days when visiting there was something of a right of passage. We’ve been blamed with calling attention to La Grange’s famous/notorious Chicken Ranch in our song, but the fact is everybody knew about it for the previous hundred or so years. Our role was just to celebrate that little piece of Texas reality in song. Haw, haw, haw, haw.

ZZ TOP

Orion Stage • Saturday, May 4th • 10:45 p.m.

Beale Street Music Festival • Tom Lee Park

Friday, May 3rd-Sunday, May 5th

Single-day tickets are $35 for Friday and Sunday and $45 for Saturday. Three-day pass is $115. Tickets available at ticketmaster.com or at (800) 745-3000.

Arnaud Potier

Phoenix

After the Gold Rush

French rockers Phoenix respond to new-found fame by going Bankrupt!

When Phoenix headlined Coachella in mid-April, they arranged to have a special guest perform with them. Rumors spread that they would be joined by fellow Frenchmen Daft Punk. “Coachella is one of those festivals where you can’t just play the same show,” says Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars. “You have to do something special.”

After brainstorming ideas, the band decided to invite eccentric Chicago R&B superstar R. Kelly, who agreed despite the daunting logistics of attending the show. “R. Kelly does not fly,” Mars explains. “He only drives. So he drove three days to play four minutes with us.” It almost didn’t work out. When Phoenix took the stage, Kelly was stuck in traffic, and he arrived at the concert site mid-set. The band met him for the first time onstage. Yet, the songs they played together — a mash-up of Phoenix’s “1901” and Kelly’s “Ignition” with a few bars of Kelly’s “I’m a Flirt” thrown in — came off. Afterward, Kelly made the long haul back home. Videos of the performance went viral.

Phoenix plays highly polished, precise, energetic pop music inspired by early-’80s new wave and ’60s pop art, while Kelly has founded his career on sophisticated R&B filled with over-the-top sexual come-ons. “We like his music, and we thought it would be an artistic move,” Mars says. “We figured all the contradictions would bring something interesting.”

That is, in fact, the band’s strategy on their latest album, Bankrupt!, which despite its title and emphatic punctuation is among their more creative and daring. It’s as streamlined as anything they’ve ever done yet much more dense; it’s enormous, yet its hooks move agilely.

The band found inspiration in an unlikely purchase — the soundboard that Michael Jackson used to record Thriller — which perhaps more than any other factor determined the sound of these new songs. It was, according to Mars, a pleasure to use: “Instead of recording one melody with one instrument, we would record 20, 30, even 40 tracks — just to use it as much as we could.”

The result is an album that looks to old sounds to find something new. While recording, the band listened heavily to “Ethiopiques,” a series from Paris-based Buda Musique that compiles Ethiopian pop music. “All these sounds sound like the future to us,” Mars says. “It’s as simple as that.”

There’s a sense of constant activity to the songs on Bankrupt!, which are bracing in their frantic embrace of ideas. It’s crowded and chaotic but invigorating. According to Mars, Bankrupt! is about “watching the world without judging it, as a tourist almost. You’re just witnessing without commenting. Brands in general are very poetic and powerful. They can have powerful meanings. It’s sort of the religion of a new generation — a new authority.”

The first single, “Entertainment,” embodies these ideas. With its voluminous synths and a choir singing the main hook, the song sounds like it was written to fill the enormous venues that Phoenix now commands. Yet, its central lyric declares, “I’d rather be alone.”

Bankrupt! is Phoenix’s “fame” album — a rite of passage for every band that makes it to a level where R. Kelly even returns your calls. Most fame albums are bogged down in self-importance or self-pity, yet Phoenix take a more philosophical view: What distinguishes art from entertainment? When does a band transform into a brand? Why are we doing this? What do you want from us?

Despite the exclamation point, Bankrupt! is not a statement album. It’s more of a question album. And as the band takes it on tour, they are finding a few answers.

“I think this is our most intricate and puzzling album,” Mars says.

“What we are enjoying right now is that all of this nonsense is starting to make sense. All these things — the artwork, the album title, the lyrics, the sounds — are starting to make sense for people, and they’re starting to connect with the record.” — Stephen Deusner

PHOENIX

Orion Stage

Sunday, May 5th • 6:55 p.m.

Darren Bastecky

Charles Bradley

Second Chance

Breakthrough R&B vet Charles Bradley brings his vintage sound to Soulsville.

In 2011, soul singer Charles Bradley became one of pop music’s most unlikely debut acts. Bradley first got the music bug in 1962, at the age of 14, when he saw James Brown at Harlem’s Apollo theater. Bradley was entranced, but, for him, it became a dream deferred.

As a young adult, Bradley led a band, building a live audience, but the group fell apart when some band members were drafted to Vietnam. Bradley landed in a studio while he was in California, but the recordings never saw the light of day. He worked mostly as a cook.

By his 60s, after a largely itinerant life, Bradley was paying the bills, in part, as a James Brown tribute performer, billed as “Black Velvet” in Brooklyn clubs. That’s when Bradley came to the attention of Gabe Roth, co-founder of the record label Daptone, which had had its greatest success with another “undiscovered” traditional soul singer, Sharon Jones. Daptone hooked up Bradley with its “house band,” the Menahan Street Band, and a debut album, No Time for Dreaming, was released in 2011.

“At the time, I was on the edge of giving up,” Bradley remembers, speaking by phone last month as he prepared to tour behind his second album, Victim of Love. “It was bittersweet, because I was praying and hoping and going to every door I saw, trying to get an opportunity.”

Bradley’s debut immediately drew strong press. I was in the crowd for his live coming-out party a couple of months later, playing right before headliner TV on the Radio at Stubb’s amphitheater in Austin during the 2011 South by Southwest Music Festival. Wearing a sharp black suit and showcasing a soul scream seemingly as derived from Wilson Pickett as Brown, Bradley was better live than on record and drew a rapturous response from an industry-heavy crowd.

“Texas,” Bradley says, pausing to remember that night. “I’ll never forget being there. It was too overwhelming for me. There was so much love, I felt like I was flying.”

No Time for Dreaming succeeded beyond its story-peg concept. The opening “The World (Is Going Up in Flames)” was deliberate, tough soul that could have been Jerry Butler’s “Only the Strong Survive” follow-up. At its best, the album was often autobiographical. “Why Is It So Hard” testifies to his professional and financial difficulties. “Heartaches and Pain” recounts in detail the death of Bradley’s brother, who was shot by his own nephew.

Though a relative studio neophyte, Bradley was a veteran live performer at the time of his debut album. But that was often singing other people’s material. The autobiographical nature of No Time for Dreaming made live performance more difficult than studio performance.

“I think the first album was harder [than Victim of Love],” Bradley says, “because I had some deep, dark moments that had to come out of me. It was hard to get that onstage. One of the first places I went, on tour, was in Europe. I was singing ‘Heartaches and Pain,’ and I thought it would be impossible to be onstage singing that song without breaking down. When it was time to go on, I didn’t want to go. It was too emotional. They told me, ‘You’re missing the lyric. You’re not singing it how you’re supposed to.’ I said it hurts. I can’t do it.”

Once Bradley grew more comfortable singing personal material onstage, his well-honed performance style, well-reviewed album, and enticing back story pushed him through. A year after his SXSW debut, a documentary on his life, Charles Bradley: Soul of America, was a hit at SXSW’s film festival component.

Bradley, once on the verge of giving up on music, was now touring the world, making TV and radio appearances, and sharing a stage with Stevie Wonder. Now comes the hard work of turning a breakthrough into something more sustainable. Bradley’s told his story. Now, with Victim of Love, he’s relying more fully on his vocal gifts.

“The new lyrics … the new album … I can perform it greater and better,” Bradley says. “It’s not as much about hurt as the last album.”

There’s still plenty of deep soul here. “Crying in the Chapel” — not the standard of the same title — is horn-driven, soul pleading reminiscent of Otis Redding. But elsewhere, Bradley and his Daptone cohorts push his sound in new directions. “Confusion” is a bit of psychedelic soul that echoes the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion.” And “Hurricane” struts with a guitar-laced groove and background vocals that suggest Curtis Mayfield.

“I’m just really getting a chance in life now,” Bradley says. “I’d been working jobs, cooking, biting my tongue. The world has truly given me a chance.” — Chris Herrington

CHARLES BRADLEY

Horseshoe Casino Blues Tent

Friday, May 3rd • 11:10 p.m.

Malmsteen MGMT

Shredder

Metal great Yngwie Malmsteen remains relevant decades after the hair-metal heyday.

Yngwie Malmsteen is a virtuoso’s virtuoso whose name will be at least somewhat familiar to anyone who has spent more than 30 minutes in a guitar shop. The Swedish-born pioneer of a heavy-metal style known as “neo-classical” blasted onto the American metal scene in the early-’80s as the young guitarist for the one-album power-metal band Steeler (who originated from Nashville, btw). Malmsteen was only 18 years old at the time and Steeler’s eponymous 1983 debut is considered a genre-launching masterpiece based entirely on Malmsteen’s lightning-fast but very organic playing style. Malmsteen promptly left Steeler and formed the band Alcatraz with former Rainbow front man Graham Bonnet and the band released their debut No Parole for Rock ‘N’ Roll (1983), but the band failed to garner any attention outside of a cult following. Malmsteen’s desire to go solo won out and lead to the formation of Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s Rising Force, and an eponymous album that won Guitar Player magazine’s award for “Best Rock Album” of 1984 while picking up a Grammy nomination for “Best Rock Instrumental.” Malmsteen’s fourth album, Odyssey, garnered the MTV-heavy hit “Heaven Tonight,” and even throughout the heavy-metal unfriendly 1990s, Malmsteen nurtured a growing and loyal fan base in Japan and Europe.

Malmsteen and his Rising Force band (with many lineup changes) has since released 23 studio and live albums, plus joining fellow shred-men Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. for the double-live G3: Rockin’ In the Free World album and tour of 2003. Malmsteen and Rising Force’s most recent album, Spellbound (Rising Force Records/Universal Japan) was released on December 5th, 2012, and on May 6th, Yngwie’s memoir, titled Relentless: A Memoir will be published by Wiley Publications. Malmsteen spoke with the Flyer about all of this ahead of his Beale Street Music Fest performance:

Flyer: Let’s start off with your book, Relentless: A Memoir, which comes out this month. I must say it is refreshing and impressive that you wrote this book from the ground up, no co-author or any help writing it.

Malmsteen: I’ve been working on it for eight years. My reason for writing it is that I felt like the world needed my side of ‘the story,’ if you will, my side of things. One thing that people don’t realize about where I’m from, Stockholm, in the 70’s … no one did things that brought attention to themselves. You were supposed to go to your job every day, support your family, and avoid being a creative or artistic person. I come from a very musical, artistic family, so I grew up knowing otherwise, but by the time I was in my teens, it was time to get out. I worked very hard to establish myself as a guitar player and to follow my vision, and I just wanted the world to know that it wasn’t handed to me. You don’t know how great you have it here in America, compared to where I came up. The minute I landed over here, I was a superstar. But it was not easy during those years before I came over here. Americans have a lot more tolerance and respect for artists and musicians than in my home country. It is better now, over there, of course, but back then it was bad.

You’ve always played Fender Stratocasters, despite the explosion of “shredder” guitars via other manufacturers in the ’80s and up to current day. You were one of the first, if not the first, guitarist to be approached about making a signature model for production?

You know, Leo Fender, he didn’t even play guitar, but he was a genius designer, very intuitive. After creating the Telecaster, he knew he had to make a guitar that was more comfortable, one that felt like an extension of the player, with curves that fit a player’s body. It was such an honor when Fender came to me about making a Yngwie Malmsteen model, and it took some time and several models, but the current model is perfect.

You’ve had many lineup changes within the ‘Rising Force’ band, including the most recent stint with the famed Ripper Owens on vocals. Are there any lineups that have stuck with you or are your favorites?

No, I can’t really look at it that way. What people don’t realize is that this is a band in which the guitar player is the band leader and songwriter, so just like a bass player or a drummer, I handle vocals just like another instrument or side man. So I try to utilize someone’s vocals when they are going to be best for that particular time period or chapter of the band. Rock and metal bands are traditionally seen as those of the singer, and it is often assumed that whoever is singing, then it must be their band, but this band is different.

You seem to be getting younger fans now because of the use of your songs in the Guitar Hero games.

It’s so great. At shows, I have 12 and 13 year olds coming up and they are huge fans because of Guitar Hero. I think those games have had a positive impact, not just on my career, but on the culture with young people learning the guitar and starting bands through them.

I read that the difference between your guitar work and the work of your many imitators was to slow down the recording: Your playing always remained musical at any speed, while everyone else’s just collapsed into a sonic mess.


Other guitarists got so caught up in the speed of the notes and playing, and then everyone wanted to call it something. People call it “power metal” and “shred-metal” and “thrash-metal” but to me it is just rock and roll … a guitar into a Marshall amp turned up to eleven, you know? — Andrew Earles

YNGWIE MALMSTEEN

FedEx Stage

Friday, May 3rd • 7:40 p.m.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Having His Say

CREDIT: Cory Dugan

”Cory Dugan used to say that he used to be an artist.” So writes Cory Dugan in a biographical note he penned for gallery owner Hamlett Dobbins of Material. “Before that, he was once quoted in The Commercial Appeal as saying that ‘someday art will just be dialogue.’ Before that (and even after that) he said lots of other things about art in the pages of numerous publications.”

Yes, Dugan did say a lot of things — in the Memphis Flyer, where he once served as art critic (and art director), in Art News, Art Papers, and New Art Examiner, and in Number:, the local art publication where Dugan served as founding editor.

But that phrase “used to be an artist” … Let’s edit that to read “is an artist,” and Dugan has the recent work to prove it. In a one-night-only show on Friday at Material, he will be showing a number of drawings and paintings in an exhibit called “Counterintuitive.” The artist’s inspiration? According to an email from Dugan: the found patterns created by text and poetry, technical drawings, maps, and diagrams, in addition to the work and words of Marcel Duchamp, with “a little Titian tossed in for good measure.”

No sense getting too esoteric here, though. Good just to see Dugan the artist back at work and to see that work on display. When’s the last time he exhibited? “I don’t even know. At least 15 years,” Dugan also wrote in that email.

“When he ‘used to be an artist,’ Dugan’s artwork was regularly exhibited both regionally and nationally … ,” Dugan also writes in that brief bio. “He may have even shown his work internationally, but it’s been so long since he exhibited anything that he doesn’t really remember. Sweden and the Netherlands ring a bell for some reason. And the word kunst.”

Kunst doesn’t ring a bell with you? It’s German. It’s aka art.

Counterintuitive: a few drawings and paintings by Cory Dugan, Material, 2553 Broad, Friday, May 3rd, 6-8 p.m.

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Politics Politics Feature

Luttrell Slams Board

“To say I’m frustrated with the school board is an understatement. They have done us a disservice,” said Shelby County mayor Mark Luttrell on Tuesday, addressing the Memphis Rotary Club luncheon.

As Luttrell noted, his dissatisfaction has several causes, the most immediate of which is the Unified School Board’s failure to come to grips with items on its agenda that impact the county budget as a whole. Only last week, in two meetings, the board — deadlocked between contrary points of view held by holdover members of the erstwhile Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools boards — failed to make headway on school closures or whom the new system should hire for cleaning purposes.

Those are but two unresolved issues affecting what the school system’s projected budget will be.

“Maybe they’ll tell us what their expenses are by May,” Luttrell said, his voice not manifesting much confidence.

Asked if he thought a year’s delay in implementing city/county merger might be helpful in view of the likelihood that six suburbs will have their own school systems in August 2013, Luttrell said, “Yes, I think it would.” (More details at memphisflyer.com)

• The gun issue has now gone local, surfacing last week in a meeting of the Shelby County Commission’s government operations committee, which voted 4-1 in favor of a resolution presented by Millington Republican Terry Roland.

Called the “Second Amendment Preservation Resolution,” it would put the commission on record as resolving “to prevent Federal infringement on the right to keep and bear arms; nullifying all Federal acts in violation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

The resolution got the votes of Roland and fellow Republican commissioners Wyatt Bunker, Heidi Shafer, and Chris Thomas. Committee chair Steve Mulroy was the lone dissenter for the record, though two other commissioners, James Harvey and commission chairman Mike Ritz, made known their reluctance on the matter.

Three witnesses — Kenny Crenshaw, David Mixon, and Richard Archie, all veterans of public efforts to shore up the Second Amendment — testified in the resolution’s favor.

Roland said his proposed resolution was “doing nothing more than saying we support the Second Amendment and the Constitution as it is written.”

Commissioner Shafer rejoiced at the opportunity to support “an issue near and dear to my heart.” Recalling the recent reign of terror imposed on Boston, she said, “We’ve got a right to take care of ourselves and our family. And let me tell you: A kitchen spatula isn’t going to get it.”

Mulroy objected to the resolution’s espousal of the concept of “nullification” regarding possible new federal gun laws and a provision calling upon Tennessee sheriffs “to defend Tennesseans against infringements upon their rights and to hold the federal government to the limitations provided under the Constitution.”

The full commission will hear the matter next Monday. • Meanwhile, the Second Amendment was one of the subjects dealt with on Monday night of this week by 8th District U.S. representative Stephen Fincher, a Crockett County Republican whose constituency includes a generous hunk of East Memphis.

Speaking to a meeting of the Northeast Shelby Republican Club at the Range USA facility in Bartlett, Fincher said, “You saw a couple of weeks ago gun control could not get passed through the Senate? We’re very clear in the House what’s going to happen to gun control. It’s going nowhere. … The Second Amendment’s not about hunting. It’s not about shooting for sport. It’s about protecting yourself from who? The government! … We’re not taking the guns. It’s not going to happen, not as long as I’m up there and I’ve got a vote.”

Memorial services for longtime civil rights activist Maxine Smith, who died last week at the age of 83, were set for Saturday at Metropolitan Baptist Church, 767 Walker, starting at 11 a.m.

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News The Fly-By

Death by Cop

Two is better than one in many scenarios, but fatal shootings of civilians by police officers isn’t one. Six people have been killed by Memphis police officers so far this year. That’s two people every month with the exception of February.

The 2013 number of officer-involved shootings to date equates to the total number of people shot and killed by city police in all of 2012, according to Memphis Police Department (MPD) homicide statistics. It’s four more shootings than the two officer-involved homicides that took place a decade ago in 2003.

The most recent victim was 28-year-old Anjustine Hunter, who was killed by an officer on April 23rd. According to an MPD report, officers “were at 1414 Jackson Avenue when they located a vehicle and suspect that officers were familiar with due to previously seeing the driver operating the same vehicle with improper vehicle registration.”

The report stated that Hunter was pumping gas into his 1993 Chevrolet Caprice Classic when two on-duty MPD officers approached the suspect’s vehicle. The suspect then got into his vehicle and accelerated forward, striking both officers. After being struck by the suspect, officers responded by shooting into the suspect’s vehicle, fatally wounding him.

Both officers involved in the shooting received noncritical injuries. They discovered more than three grams of heroin upon searching Hunter’s car.

Despite Hunter’s shooting putting the number of police-involved homicides at six this year so far, MPD spokesperson Karen Rudolph said there have only been five deaths confirmed to be at the hand of officers. She said the March shooting of 42-year-old shoplifting suspect George Golden at the Walmart on Austin Peay in Raleigh has not been ruled as the cause of death. That remains under investigation.

“There were a lot of other factors involved with [Golden] that his cause of death may have not been because of the shooting,” Rudolph said. “There have only been five [deaths] that we can confirm as officer-involved shootings. Out of those five, we still have three that are pending that haven’t been ruled [to be] justified or not justified.”

January victims from police shootings are 67-year-old Don Moore and 24-year-old Steven Askew. March victims are 62-year-old Horace Whiting and Golden. April victims are 47-year-old Daniel Brock and Hunter.

MPD director Toney Armstrong said it’s common for police officers to receive public scrutiny for their involvement in shootings.

“Officers’ actions will always be second-guessed, but what people tend to forget is that we have had 11 officers shot in just two years. Of those 11 officers, two were murdered,” Armstrong said. “We continuously put our lives on the line to keep the citizens of Memphis safe. We have taken an oath to protect and serve, and we will continue to do so.”

In July 2011, Officer Tim Warren was shot and killed after responding to a domestic dispute and shooting at downtown’s DoubleTree Hotel. Last December, Officer Martoiya Lang was shot and killed while serving a drug-related search warrant in East Memphis.

According to MPD statistics, in 2012, there were six justified officer-involved shootings. One of those shootings involved off-duty Officer Terrance Shaw, who fatally shot 15-year-old Justin Thompson last September after Thompson allegedly tried to rob him. Shaw resigned from the MPD in April.

In 2011, there were four police-involved homicides. In 2010, there were three, but one of those shootings involved detective Patrick Cici of the Bartlett Police Department. CiCi shot and killed 43-year-old Malcolm Shaw while serving a drug-related search warrant at his North Memphis home.

The MPD could not provide information on whether or not any previous year had more than six officer-involved shootings.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Enough Class II

Last week, Fly on the Wall recounted the strange saga of Paul Kevin Curtis, who was arrested for allegedly sending ricin to President Obama and who was frequently described in the press as an Elvis impersonator in spite of the fact that he also performed a jaw-dropping Prince tribute act, as revealed in a YouTube clip of Curtis luridly singing Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” to a classroom full of teenagers.

Curtis has since been released from custody, and J. Everett Dutschke, an insurance salesman/Mensa enthusiast/martial arts instructor, was arrested in his place. As the story developed, word got out that a feud between Curtis and Dutschke (also an accused child molester and failed GOP politician) was related to various rivalries including shared conspiracy theories regarding the sale of human organs. Like Curtis, Dutschke (pictured below) is also a musician. He plays guitar and sings in a band called Dusty and the Robodrum, who are variously described online as “America’s favorite indie rock band” and “Tupelo’s only national touring band with an active record deal.”

To wrap things up in a nice, symmetrical metaphor, “Better Than Nothing At All,” a Dutschke song about a poor slob who, as the title suggests, is somewhat better than no slob at all, includes the eyebrow-raising lyric: “Can’t take you out in a little red Corvette, but you can ride in my Hyundai.”

Antisocial Media

A recent Facebook post by News Channel 3 openly panders to “active pro-athlete” haters. The post reads, “Former Grizzlies player Jason Collins has come out as the first active pro athlete in the U.S. Does it matter to you? Will it affect his career negatively or positively?” Collins recently became the NBA’s first openly gay player.

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News The Fly-By

To Market

CREDIT: Hannah Sayle

When Binghampton’s Urban Farms Market closed last August, no one was certain it would ever open again. A “For Sale” sign on the property suggests the quick rise and fall of this small, green grocer in the heart of a community where few options for fresh foods and groceries have led to its dubious distinction as a “food desert.”

But despite signs to the contrary, the Binghampton Development Corporation says the market will open this summer for a truncated three-month season. They plan to be open four to five days each week.

“We’ve decided to reopen for June, July, and August,” said Robert Montague, executive director of the BDC, which oversees the Urban Farm and the Urban Farms Market. “The year-round market just wasn’t economically viable. We couldn’t get the customer volume to reach critical mass.”

In March 2011, Urban Farms Market opened in a converted gas station at the corner of Tillman and Sam Cooper. Heralded as an alternative to the unhealthy, limited options at convenience stores, the market was intended as an oasis for the underserved community around it. The nearby Urban Farm, set on three acres of reclaimed land tucked away in a residential neighborhood, provided fresh produce for the market.

“The Urban Farms Market was opened in response to the overwhelming demand from the residents of Binghampton,” the Binghampton Development Corporation’s website reads.

“Previously, this neighborhood had little to no access to fresh food, and local folks were forced to settle for the limited and unhealthy corner store selection or make the up to two-hour trek by bus to a local supermarket.”

The market will now scale back operations, partially because of its determination to focus on the Binghampton community.

“The heart behind the market was always to serve the Binghampton community we were located in,” said Catherine Gross, former market manager at Urban Farms Market, “but I think where we really struggled was reaching that demographic. I think that was a big propeller in the switch to the shorter market.”

June through August is the length of Tennessee’s Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program, a voucher program that entitles low-income seniors to fresh, local fruits and vegetables. Gross says these were the months last year when Urban Farms Market came closest to achieving its community outreach goals.

“That was really the highlight of actually seeing people from the neighborhood come to the market,” she said. “I do think that picking those months was very strategic.”

Binghampton, particularly the area around Tillman where the Urban Farms Market is located, is a predominantly low-income neighborhood. Gross says the competing goals of attracting shoppers outside of Binghampton and the underserved residents within made for an identity crisis of sorts.

“I think we could have come off as trying to cater too much to the population surrounding Binghampton instead of focusing on ways that would really get [Binghampton residents] to come into the market,” Gross said.

Montague is currently searching for a market manager to take over this summer’s operations. As for the market building at the corner of Sam Cooper and Tillman, Montague says the owners, the Pirtle family of Jack Pirtle’s Chicken, has agreed to allow the Urban Farms Market to continue using the space for this year. But the “For Sale” sign will stay up, and beyond this season, the fate of the Urban Farms Market remains uncertain.

“It was part of a steep learning curve for all of us involved,” said Gross, who now works for the Memphis outpost of the nonprofit World Relief. “It is a big cultural shift when you go into food deserts and say, ‘Hey you! You don’t have access to food. Here is food.’ And then you’re offering them all this new stuff that was never made available before. It’s kind of like us coming in and saying, ‘Here, you need this.’ And maybe the community is not responding to it or not seeing it as a need.”

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News The Fly-By

Green Days

Earth Day may have been in April, but Memphis goes green for the entire month of May.

Since 2010, the volunteer-run Memphis In May Green Team has been canvassing Tom Lee Park during the Beale Street Music Festival, the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, and the Sunset Symphony to encourage recycling throughout the park.

Since the greening program began, Memphis In May has managed to divert from landfills at least 25 percent of the waste generated by the three events.

“Memphis In May is the largest event in the Mid-South, and we think there’s a responsibility for us to be conscious of sustainability and re-use,” said Memphis In May executive director Diane Hampton.

Additionally, Memphis In May now encourages all vendors to use biodegradable takeout boxes for food and to recycle cooking oil.

“As you can imagine, there’s a lot of cooking oil used, not only at the music fest but throughout the world championship cooking contest,” Hampton said.

There will be 16 recycling stations throughout Tom Lee Park during the three major events. More than 35 Green Team volunteers will canvas the park to encourage patrons to recycle waste rather than toss it in trashcans or on the ground.

Although littering Tom Lee Park is discouraged, Hampton said the events’ clean-up crew sorts and recycles waste picked up from the ground every night.

Hampton said encouraging patrons to recycle is a little easier at the music fest since every patron is responsible for his or her own trash. But greening the barbecue contest has been a little trickier.

“There are 250 teams, so it’s like having 250 homeowners. We have our Green Team going booth to booth, and there’s a green agent on every barbecue team,” Hampton said. “They make sure the team is keeping their trash sorted within their own booth.”

At the end of the contest, the team that does the best job recycling and maintaining a sustainable area receives the Grillin’ Green Award.

The Memphis In May organization is also striving to make its office and warehouse space more eco-friendly. They’ve added recycling bins in the offices, and all sorts of material waste — metals, wooden pallets, cardboard, paint — from the 15,000-square-foot warehouse is recycled or repurposed.

Hampton said the greening program is mainly intended to encourage sustainability, so there’s no green police lecturing those who litter or going vendor to vendor to ensure they’re not using Styrofoam containers. In some cases, a vendor may have stocked up on foam containers before knowing about the requirement to use earth-friendly materials, and they will still be allowed to use those.

“I’m not certain that we have 100 percent compliance, but we think it’s the right thing to do to encourage it,” Hampton said. “As the lead event in the city, we need to set a strong example. Are we where we would like to be? No. But each year, we get a little bit better.”