Month: September 2016

Keeping the Basses Loaded

Post author By Andrew Earles
Post date September 8, 2016

Looking at the last three decades of underground rock and metal reveals the undeniable truth that the Melvins deserve a seat at the same table with bands like Sonic Youth, Neurosis, Fugazi, Dinosaur Jr., the Pixies, and other undeniable pioneers that exacted an influence well beyond their immediate, real-time surroundings with serious and ongoing longevity that remains today.

In broad, simplistic terms, the Melvins’ chronology has two artistic peaks; albeit ones surrounded by an ocean of noteworthy-to-great releases. From 1989 to 1994 and across five full-length albums and several EP releases, the Melvins blazed (perhaps the wrong word for it) a trail that left a major impression on the future of heavy underground rock and metal that reverberates to this day. The Melvins more or less invented and then refined a very particular, wholly unprecedented and boldly experimental form of metallic post-hardcore that should be seriously studied as a ground zero for the modern idea of heaviness in sound and essence.

This era and the band’s surface-level legacy has gone on to be incorrectly defined by the most obvious sonic characteristic at hand: the most intimidatingly huge guitar riffs that had ever emerged from any faction — metal or otherwise — played at the slowest possible crawl. Endlessly imitated and found throughout the realm of doom/sludge metal, the best examples of what the Melvins perfected during this time can be found on most of the Lysol album, Bullhead’s opening track (“Boris,” from which the similarly trailblazing Japanese band would later derive its moniker), and the anomalously riff-free crawl of live staple “Night Goat” (track 2 on the Houdini album and one of the band’s best-known singles). It’s worth mentioning that the two latter albums released during this stretch, 1993’s Houdini and 1994’s Stoner Witch, might also be the band’s best pre-Y2K documents, and both were released on major label Atlantic Records.

The Melvins’ next creative (and first real critical) highpoint was made possible when they landed on then-fledgling Ipecac Recordings, the label of Faith No More/Mr. Bungle singer and well-known stylistic chameleon Mike Patton. With Kevin Rutamis (previously of the Cows) and former godheadSilo frontman, Mike Kunka, serving the cause as part of the Melvins’ constantly rotating bass position, they released a disparate trifecta of full-lengths in quick succession — The Bootlicker and The Maggot in 1999 and 2000’s The Crybaby.

These individually themed releases (heavy/metallic-crunch, Ween-like weirdness and electronica, and an all-covers album) appeared to spark a growth spurt in the Melvins’ fan-base and gave it a cult-like status, helped significantly by the band’s focus on road-dogging due to their now well-known notoriety as a live band of singular, sometimes mind-shattering intensity. In fact, the Melvins’ command of a stage translates beyond the heavy music and metal fan demographic, as it is not uncommon to find folks with much different taste in music that will nonetheless never miss a chance to see the band live.

The Melvins hit their second and much more complex stride around Y2K. Circumnavigating the static core of Buzz Osbourne (singer/guitarist/all-around strong personality) and drummer Dale Crover creates a tendency toward lineup adjustments and ever-frequent collaborations that have stuffed the band’s catalog with themed albums in recent years. But the best was 2006’s absorbing of the two-piece band Big Business (drummer Coady Willis and bassist Jared Warren). This gave the Melvins a not-so-secret weapon of great live presentations: double drummers. And 2006’s (A) Senile Animal features the “consummately Melvins” centerpiece of “A History of Bad Men,” a song used to great effect in the first season of HBO’s True Detective.

For the 10-year anniversary of this membership addition, this summer’s Basses Loaded album takes the band’s fondness for lineup adjustment to its logical extreme by featuring every member that has played under the Melvins banner over the last decade, including Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic, Jeff Pinkus of the Butthole Surfers, and Steven McDonald of Redd Kross. Another great Melvins’-related development this year was the vinyl reissue of the band’s three major label albums (the best two are mentioned above), originally released between 1993 and 1996, by Third Man Records.

Tags Helms Alee, Hi Tone, metal, The Melvins

Film Features Film/TV

Outflix Film Festival 2016

Post author By Chris McCoy and Bianca Philips
Post date September 8, 2016

The 19th year of the Outflix Film Festival finds it at a crossroads. Outgoing director Jeffrey Harwood thinks it’s a good place to be. “I’ve been working with Outflix since 2008,” and serving as director for two years, he says. “It really has been a learning experience for me, seeing the crowds get bigger and the movies change. The quality of the films we have has changed. They’ve gotten better.”

Harwood says queer cinema worldwide has expanded both in scope and subject matter. This year’s Outflix features works from Sweden, Germany, Chile, Argentina, the U.K., Ireland, France, and India. Subject matter has expanded from coming out stories and campy comedies to stories that encompass every aspect of life. “We’re seeing universal issues approached in LGBT terms — family issues, adoptions. These films aren’t all just about being gay, but because these characters are gay, it influences how they approach life. I think that’s one of the good ways that LGBT cinema is growing. We still have the campy comedies and the coming out stories, and we need them, because there are still people coming out — especially in the ‘flyover zone.’ People still need these stories, but for the rest of the community, we’re seeing ourselves reflected in far more and different ways than we were even five years ago,” Harwood says.

The opening night film is Girls Lost, directed by Alexandra-Therese Keining. It’s the story of a trio of teenage outcasts who find a magic flower that turns them into boys. Once gender switched, they find attitudes toward them have changed dramatically. “The movie speaks to transgender issues and misogyny. They find that as boys, they are completely accepted. One of the girls discovers that the reason that she never felt at home [as a girl] is because this is who she is. She is trans.”

Friday evening’s programming features films aimed at young people. In Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, “A 17-year-old preacher’s kid is having a swim party for his birthday. One of his friends named Logan is attracted to him, and Henry is attracted to another guy who is not out yet. It examines the role of not just homosexuality, but sexuality and gender in role types. There are people at the party who are at various points on the spectrum of acceptance,” Harwood says.

Harwood is leaving Memphis to go to graduate school in Ohio, so this will be his last year as director. “We are going to be having a town hall on Sunday. We’ll fill the cinema at Ridgeway. This is an opportunity for a talkback, for the public to say what they like about Outflix, and what they would like to see changed … We want to talk about where we want to take Outflix, because next year is our 20th anniversary. So where does it need to go? How does it need to grow? … LGBT film festivals are still needed, because it’s an opportunity for us to come together in one place and an opportunity to educate the community. Here we are, we’re a part of Memphis, but you don’t know who we are. Come watch our films, and learn a little bit about us.”

Check It

Friday, September 9, 9:25 p.m.

It’s an old TV trope — Kid gets bullied. Dad tells kid to fight back. Next time kid gets bullied, kid fights back. Bullies back off.

But for many of the LGBTQ youth in a Washington, D.C.-based street gang called Check It, there was no dad to offer encouragement. And for many, there was no mom either because mom was off getting high on crack or too busy calling her son or daughter a “faggy-ass bitch” to care what was happening at school.

That’s what happened to Alton, a young, slim, African-American transgender woman with long, dark hair and a penchant for Jackie O-style sunglasses. Alton’s mom called her a “faggy-ass bitch” too many times, so Alton pushed her mother down a flight of stairs and was then sent to what she describes as a “mental home.” Then Alton found a new family in Check It.

The gang, whose members carry brass knuckles and knives and are known around D.C. for not taking any shit, is the subject of Check It, a documentary that follows the lives of a few of the gang’s members and their efforts to make positive changes in their lives.

Check It was formed in 2005 by three gay ninth-graders who were tired of being bullied. They started fighting back, and their bullies backed off. Eventually, the gang of mostly black teens and young adults grew to more than 200 members.

While the idea of a homophobia-fighting street gang sounds largely positive, the documentary makes clear that Check It often resorts to illegal activity for both defense and survival. Many of its transgender members, like Alton, are also sex workers on D.C.’s infamous K Street because it’s the only way they can find work.

Others are just really into fighting. A gay man named Skittles, who has a cross tattoo under his eye and multiple piercings on his face, tells the camera that once he starts fighting, he doesn’t stop until the cops pull him off someone.

A D.C.-area gang counselor named Ron “Mo” Moten comes along and tries to help a few Check It members get out of the gang life. He enrolls Alton and several others in a summer fashion camp, and he gets Skittles hooked up with a boxing coach.

Mo’s results are mixed, and, as the members either embrace or reject the new positive outlets, the film showcases how these youth have been set up for failure. To succeed, they have to fight not only their bullies but also their own demons developed through years of parental neglect and societal oppression. — Bianca Phillips

Upstairs Inferno

Girls Lost

Upstairs Inferno

Sunday, Sept. 7, 5 p.m.

To hear its former patrons tell it, the Up Stairs Lounge was pretty tame for a New Orleans gay bar in the early 1970s. Piano Dave would regularly entertain the patrons, and beer busts would end with folks in a circle holding hands and singing. “It was more like a social club than a bar,” says Stewart Butler in Upstairs Inferno, Outflix 2016’s closing night documentary.

The bar’s back room featured a small stage that was usually used for drag shows the regulars called “Nellydramas.” On Sunday nights, as the beer busts raged in the front room, it was transformed into the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). It was on one of those Sunday nights, June 24, 1973, that the Up Stairs Lounge passed into infamy. Someone emptied a can of lighter fluid in the stairwell and started a fire that claimed the lives of 32 gay men. It was a tragedy, a crime, and a wake-up call for the Southern city’s gay community.

Upstairs Inferno is director Robert L. Camina’s second documentary after 2012’s Raid of the Rainbow Lounge. The story of the Up Stairs arson has so many facets: A homosexual community on the cusp of liberation in the Stonewall era, the perilous position of LGBT-friendly Christianity, and a mystery that leads to uncomfortable answers. Camina chooses not to focus on the whodunit aspects of the story but spends his time immersed in the survivors’ emotional aftermath. He tracks down the survivors of the atrocity and their allies and people who candidly recall their own discomfort at the fact that the crime made the homosexual community impossible to ignore. The interviews are powerful and harrowing, especially with Rev. Elder Troy Perry, an MCC pastor who fought for recognition of the victim’s basic humanity while the police dithered and the city’s mayor, chief of police, and archbishop ignored the carnage. “God does not hate us,” he told his grieving flock. “This is mass murder. Some human did this, not God.” — Chris McCoy

Tags 2016, cinema, Film Festival, Jeffrey Harwood, LBGT, Outflix, Robert L. Caminam Check It, Upstairs Inferno

Editorial Opinion

Policy Needs to be Set for Memphis Sand Aquifer

Post author By
Post date September 8, 2016

The good news? The Tennessee Valley Authority’s 2014 decision to phase out the Allen coal plant that spewed toxic gas and chemical particles into Memphis’ atmosphere for decades. Even more good news: TVA’s decision to

replace the coal plant with a much more environmentally friendly combined gas-cycle plant, which is due to go online in 2018.

The bad news? The TVA’s surprise announcement that it would drill five wells into the Memphis Sand aquifer and remove 3.5 million gallons a day of Memphis’ world-renowned drinking water to cool the new plant. This is akin to putting Perrier in your car’s radiator.

The “surprise” part of TVA’s announcement was the non-public nature of its recent policy change. When TVA announced the construction of the new plant, the agency told the public it would be using wastewater from the nearby Maxson Wastewater Treatment Plant for the plant’s cooling water system. TVA now says those plans turned out to be too expensive, primarily because using wastewater would first require treatment of pollutants.

After public blowback to TVA’s original plan to drill five wells into the aquifer and pull water directly from the ground, MLGW suggested that TVA could purchase water from them. But even if that were to happen, much of the water purchased from MLGW would still come from the Memphis Sand aquifer.

TVA says MLGW can’t sell it enough water. MLGW disagrees. Who’s right? And who makes the final decision?

The overarching issue that’s been brought to light by this controversy is that policy decisions as to how our precious water supply is used need to be made at a higher level than the Shelby County Health Department, which is currently charged with the power to grant permission to drill into the aquifer.

Other things the public needs to know: How many wells are currently tapped into the aquifer? How many wells are drilled each year? Who’s gotten permission to drill? How difficult is the process of getting permission? These are issues that need to be addressed by a commission composed of all interested parties: public entities, private corporate interests, environmentalists, state agencies, etc.

The other good news is that, according to MLGW president Jerry Collins, the aquifer is in better shape now than it was as recently as 2000, when the average amount of water pumped from the aquifer daily was 159 million gallons. In 2015, according to Collins, 126 million gallons per day were pumped. Collins credits that drop primarily to low-flush toilets and more energy-efficient washing machines and dishwashers.

But even given that bit of good news, the need has never been greater for close monitoring and smart decision-making regarding our most precious resource.

Tags Memphis Sand Aquifer, MLGW, Oversight of the Memphis Sand Aquifer, Shelby County Health Department, TVA, Who drills into the Memphis Sand aquifer?

Music Music Features

Booker T. Jones at the Halloran Centre

Post author By Chris Shaw
Post date September 8, 2016

CREDIT: Piper Ferguson

This Saturday night, Memphis music legend Booker T. Jones will kick off the inaugural On Stage at the Halloran Centre series. Most known as the keyboard player for the widely popular Stax band Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Jones has been the recipient of five Grammy awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Musicians Hall of Fame. In addition to that impressive resume, Jones has produced albums for Rita Coolidge, Bill Withers, and Willie Nelson, and played on albums by Ray Charles and Neil Young.

Joining Jones on stage at the Halloran Centre will be three handpicked horn players from the Stax Music Academy. The players will join on the songs “Mr. Big Stuff” and “Respect Yourself,” and classmates of the students selected to participate will have the opportunity to sit in on the sound check before the show. Stax Musical Director Paul McKinney said this is a great learning experience for the students at Stax.

Piper Ferguson

“Any time our students have the opportunity to interact with original Stax Records artists, it’s like something magical happens,” McKinney said.

“But for three of our students to perform in public on stage with an artist of Booker’s caliber and status in the music world will be life-changing for them.”

Individual tickets are available for $35.00 and can be picked up at the Halloran Centre or by calling their ticket office. Tickets are also available at the Booksellers of Laurelwood and through Ticketmaster. Purchasing tickets in advance is recommended.

Tags Booker T. Jones, Halloran Centre, Memphis Music, STAX Academy, The Halloran Centre

News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1437

Post author By
Post date September 8, 2016

Bacon Bits

Last week, crummy criminal Martene Stewart called 9-1-1 to report that her purse was snatched by employees at SuperLo Foods as she attempted to run out of the store with a purse full of stolen bacon. Stewart was subsequently arrested for theft of property under $500.

Almost Famous

Curry Todd may have lost his seat in Tennessee’s General Assembly, but the long-legged former legislator is taking a final victory lap in the media. In her end-of-summer roundup for MTV, political writer Jaime Fuller wrote about how Todd was caught on video stealing opponent Mark Lovell’s yard signs. Todd’s sign story was also described as a “monthly favorite” in a compilation of weird news stories assembled by Bloomington, Illinois, newspaper, Pantagraph.

Verbatim

“I did it, yeah, if they put it back up, I’ll do it again. That’s blasphemous … I’d much rather have God happy with me for something I did, even if it puts me in jail,” confessed “Naked Jesus” sign thief Pat Andrews, as quoted by Local Memphis-24. Yeah, sure, Andrews’ God-math failed to adjust for the 8th Commandment and all, but at least he didn’t bear false witness. He didn’t approve of Heartsong Church’s “Naked Jesus” signs, so he just pulled a Curry Todd and took them. The text-only signs advertised sermons about a strictly Biblical Christ.

News The Fly-By

Weed, Corn, and Guns

Post author By Flyer Staff
Post date September 8, 2016

CREDIT: Toby Sells

Packing Heat

Shelby County has the highest rate of handgun permits in the state, according to a new report by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

Toby Sells

Tennessee Touri$m

Tennessee tourism shattered records in 2015 with visitors spending more than $18 billion, up 3.7 percent over 2014.

State officials announced the findings last week, noting that tourism jobs rose 2.9 percent last year to 157,400.

Memphis in May officials announced last week that the month-long festival had an $88 million economic impact. More than 265,000 attended the festival, which supported 1,138 jobs and brought in $2.8 million in local taxes.

Mending Marijuana

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee urged its members to support local efforts to decriminalize marijuana, calling it a matter of “racial justice.”

Council member Berlin Boyd proposed lowering charges for possessing less than a half-ounce of marijuana. That proposal was slated to receive its first full vote by the council on Tuesday.

“Make no mistake — this is an issue of racial justice,” said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee. “As of 2010, in Shelby County, a black person was 4.2 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as a white person, though the two groups use marijuana at comparable rates.”

‘Not True’

Both plaintiffs in the now-dismissed lawsuit against the Memphis City Council regarding the Greensward said Wednesday that they did not tell council member Berlin Boyd that the Overton Park Conservancy (OPC) played any role in their filing of the suit as he claimed last week.

Residents Dr. Susan Lacy and Stephen Humbert filed a suit against the city earlier this year. Boyd said in a resolution before the council that “one of the plaintiffs” in the suit “has admitted to council members” that OPC provided the language and information for their lawsuit. Humbert said it was “a completely false statement.”

Greenprint Approved

The Mid-South Regional Greenprint, the plan to link surrounding communities with trails, bike lanes, and green spaces, now has unanimous support from every community it will touch.

Last week, city leaders in Marion, Arkansas, approved the plan, giving it the green light for implementation. Greenprint leaders called adoption of the plan “an unprecedented demonstration of regional unity.”

Corny Conley

As if becoming the best-paid player in the NBA wasn’t enough, Memphis Grizzlies point guard Mike Conley has been cut in the corn.

Conley’s visage is this year’s featured artwork cut into the 10-acre Mid-South Maze, which opens on September 15th and runs through October 31st.

Ag Trail

The Agricenter Trail will soon be paved, giving cyclists and pedestrians a better path between the Shelby Farms Greenline to the Agricenter Farmers Market.

The trail runs along the south side of Walnut Grove and from Farm Road to the farmers market. It exists now, but it’s an unpaved dirt path.

Paving comes thanks to Shelby County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, who donated her full $100,000 allotment of the Shelby County Commission Enhancement Grant.

News The Fly-By

Q&A with Gloria Steinem

Post author By Bianca Phillips
Post date September 8, 2016

Gloria Steinem was a young journalist working for New York Magazine in 1968, a few years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1975 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. She’d been sent to cover a meeting in a New York church, where women were sharing their personal experiences with abortion.

“For the first time in my life, I saw women standing up and telling the truth about something that was not supposed to be spoken of in public. The stories were moving, and I realized that one in three American women — then and now — needs an abortion at some time in her life. So why was it illegal and unsafe?” Steinem said. “I had an abortion when I was newly graduated from college and never told anyone. [This meeting] was a great moment of revelation.”

Steinem soon became a trailblazer for women’s equality and reproductive rights, eventually founding the feminist-themed Ms. magazine. Steinem has traveled the globe organizing and lecturing on women’s equality, and she recently published a book — My Life on the Road — on those travels and the impact they’ve had on her life.

She’ll be traveling to Memphis this month to speak at Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region’s (PPGMR) annual James Award ceremony at the Hilton Memphis on September 15th. That event will also serve as the local health services provider’s 75th anniversary event.

Steinem took a few minutes to speak about the future of reproductive rights in the U.S., sexism in American politics, and her thoughts on gender identity in the feminist movement. — Bianca Phillips

Gloria Steinem

Flyer: Abortion rights are being challenged in states across the country. Do you worry that Roe v. Wade could be overturned?

Gloria Steinem: We’ve been worrying about that ever since the decision. It would only take a couple of right-wing presidents appointing anti-choice Supreme Court justices to make that happen. There’s a lot of resistance, even though the majority of Americans clearly believe that reproductive freedom is a fundamental human right.

Tennessee’s Planned Parenthood organizations jointly launched the Tennessee Stories Project this year to give women a safe space to share their abortion stories online. That sounds like a virtual version of that meeting you attended in 1968.

There’s nothing like the truth to help us realize that we are not alone, and it is crucial for women to be able to decide when and whether to have children. Whether or not we can make that decision is the biggest factor in whether we are educated or not, healthy or not, able to work outside the home or not, and determines how long we live. It’s a human right.

Sexism seems to have dominated this presidential election. Are we moving backward?

[The equality movement] has been winning quite a lot, so there are waves of backlash. It’s probably peaking in part because, in short order, this country will no longer be a majority European-American or white country. For people who were born into a system that told them that men were superior, white people were superior, and Christians were superior, it’s very upsetting to understand that they are no longer in the majority, and they’re fighting back.

Do you think America is ready for its first female president?

It’s going to be very difficult, but it’s been very difficult for President Obama, too. The right wing has been so hostile to him. If the right wing had cancer and he had the cure, they wouldn’t accept it. They’re just dead set against him. Similarly, the idea that a female human being should be the head of arguably the most powerful nation on Earth is offensive to people who believe in the hierarchy. I did not think in 2008 that this country could elect a woman. I do think we can and must now, but it’s going to be hell.

What young women inspire you?

There are so many more feminists today than there were in my generation or the one that came afterwards. Think about the three young women who started Black Lives Matter [Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi] or Lena Dunham or America Ferrera. Sometimes I think I just had to wait for some of my friends to be born.

Where do trans women and non-binary women fit into the struggle for women’s rights?

It seems to me to be all the same struggle. We invented the idea of gender. It doesn’t exist. The old languages — Cherokee, Bengali, the oldest African languages — do not have he or she. They don’t even have gendered pronouns. We’re all trying to achieve a world where you are a unique individual and a human being.

News The Fly-By

On the Farms

Post author By Joshua Cannon
Post date September 8, 2016

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Lifelong Memphian George Payne remembers every transformation that’s taken place at Shelby Farms Park — from its days as a penal farm to the times he’d bring his son there to feed chickens and pigs. He was there, too, last Thursday morning at the Heart of the Park ribbon-cutting ceremony to witness yet another new era for Shelby Farms.

“When it turned into a park, I came to walk around the lake when it was just 52 acres,” Payne, 91, said. “Now it’s 80 acres, so we wanted to come out here and see it. It’s a beautiful place.”

At least 100 or more people, from former Mayor A C Wharton to dozens of bicyclists, gathered at the new First Tennessee Visitor Center to observe the summation of a two-year $52 million project. The Shelby Farms Conservancy will celebrate the grand opening all month long by hosting about 70 events during September to involve visitors with the new amenities that span the park’s 4,500 acres.

The Heart of the Park renovation boasts an outdoor stage, Kimbal Musk’s The Kitchen restaurant, a charging station for electric vehicles, and an added 55 acres of meadow and 3,000 trees. To commemorate the Hyde Family Foundation’s financial support, Patriot Lake has been renamed Hyde Lake, said executive director Jen Andrews while introducing a series of speakers who assisted with the project.

Justin Fox Burks

Ribbon-cutting for Shelby Farms Park improvements

“We’ve never done anything quite this big,” Andrews said. “This park has attracted some of the best talent in our city and in the country. Our community is going to benefit incredibly from it.”

Architect Marlon Blackwell said a pertinent aspect of the renovation was creating iconic experiences rooted in Delta heritage.

“We understood that the very ground at Shelby Farms was passing from a history of penalty, labor, and cultural antipathies to a place of civility, amenity, opportunity, and inclusion,” Blackwell said. “The new buildings differ in form and function but unite under the simple, Southern trope of the porch. Each building has its own variation of the porch.”

Landscape architect James Corner, the lead designer behind New York’s High Line, said the revamped Shelby Farms won’t just serve people but also acts as an impressive nature setting for vegetation, wildlife, and biodiversity.

“Every city has a great park,” Corner said. “Shelby Farms Park is more than 10 times the size of London’s Hyde Park, more than five times the size of New York’s Central Park, and more than four times the size of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Now, with these renovations to the lake, landscape, and the buildings, it’s probably one of the most distinctive parks internationally.”

Corner also said that a modernized Shelby Farms serves as a gateway for Memphians to thrive and grow.

“It offers a great resource for the improvement of public health, fitness, and well-being,” Corner said. Shelby Farms Park helps Memphis offer a wonderful quality of life that is enviable for any other city around the world. It impacts the way Memphis and West Tennessee will move forward into the 21st century.”