Month: June 2017

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News News Blog

UrbanArt Plans Return to Council For Budget Funds

UrbanArt Commission

Kennedy

Last week Memphis City Council members pulled $350,000 from the UrbanArt Commission (UAC) in a move that shocked leaders of the organization that commissions public art for the city.

Council member Joe Brown led the effort to pull the funding saying the commission doesn’t spend enough money with local or minority artists.

UAC executive director Lauren Kennedy said the move “didn’t knock us out” and that “we’re still in the mix.” She said she’ll return to council in July to request the funds be put back in the UAC budget for the next coming fiscal year.

When she goes back to council, though, Kennedy said she’ll show them UAC is ready to find more opportunities for locals and minorities. — Toby Sells

Memphis Flyer: So what happened at the council meeting and what led up that?

Lauren Kennedy: There have been concerns over the UrbanArt Commission awarding projects to folks out of town as long as I have been aware of the UrbanArt Commission, definitely before my time as the executive director.

I can appreciate where people are coming from. I can appreciate looking at money being spent and wanting that money to be spent locally. I have never felt that this is an either/or proposition.

Supporting local artists doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be engaging with the wider world. To ask that we only support local artists cuts us off from what’s happening in the rest of the country in a way that doesn’t do anybody any service.

(The council’s decision to cut our funding) kind of came to a head. It was an issue for councilman (Joe Brown) in such way that he called for this vote, for an amendment to the budget. It did come out of left field.

Since (the vote last Tuesday afternoon), I have been working with the city administration on what this means and how we’re going to come back to council and ask for them to restore that additional project funding.

It’s important for people to understand that this not an elimination of our funding. There are still projects in there for the (2018) budget cycle coming up. At this moment, there isn’t a reason to believe that we’re not going be successful going back to (the council).

We have a lot of one-on-one conversions to do and the need to demonstrate support from some key partners and some of the other (members of) the council that we know are behind us. I’m hoping we go back to (the council) in July.

MF: You said you found out about the funding cut maybe 10 minutes before the meeting. So, this was a surprise?

LK: It was a total surprise to me. I caught wind that that might happen walking into the larger council meeting.

MF: So, you were walking in there with all the plans for UAC laid out for the next year. Then, you find out that your year is going to be more challenging.

LK: We go to several budget meetings with council before the budget is approved. So, we had already presented the projects allocated for that $350,000. We were approved in an earlier budget meeting for that. So, we definitely did not anticipate that being an issue after that information had already been shared and discussed.

The $300,000 that is still in the 2018 budget was a late addition, a request from councilman (Edmund Ford Jr.) to reinstate the district mural program. So, we’re grateful that he elected to put that to the rest of his fellow council and that he supported that effort and that it is included in the budget.

MF: How do you make the case for using Memphis dollars to support out-of-town artists?

LK: I think we grow as a community by interacting with and spending time with and seeing art made by people living in different places and contexts. I think that fuels artists here when they see something they don’t see all the time here.

Artists that are coming into the city have a real positive experience being here and they take that home with them, which to me spreads the gospel about the art community in Memphis.

There’s also a really beautiful exchange that can happen where an artist from out of town spends time with somebody here and then they end up being invited to participate in a show or they find out about a project opportunity in a different place because now there’s a new connection.

It’s always a two-way street. I just feel like we’re not the only city making art. I don’t feel like we should act like that and I think we should invite other people to have creative experiences here. We want them to see us as that kind of city.

We want artists here to make connections with people in different places because, ultimately, we want people from Memphis to be competitive at home and across the country.

MF: What do you make of the assertion that the UrbanArt Commission doesn’t go far enough to support artists of color?

LK: It’s not true that we don’t support local artists of color. But we do have a lot of room to grow.

People of color in the art world experience the same inequities that come at people of color in all of the different industries in Memphis and across the country. There are the same barriers to educations and training and resources (in the art world) as there are in the tech industry.

There’s a lot of work to be done by a lot of different kinds of people to make sure that artists of color — any marginalized artist because in public art it’s also a very male-heavy industry so there’s a need to support women artists, LGBTQ artists, anybody that experiences any kind of marginalization… We all have a lot of work to do to make sure those people are supported and make sure they have the tools they need to be competitive here and around the country.

It’s something that we’re taking very seriously as an organization, exploring how we can be a better support mechanism, how we can engage more artists and different kinds of artists because we’d also like to see greater diversity in the media that we’re presenting to the public.

MF: How do you go forward in the near term?

LK: We’re scheduling lots of meetings, making lots of phone calls. We’re going to be sharing some thoughts on Facebook for people who are out there and feeling angry about this decision. As we get closer to knowing when we’re going back to council, we’re going to ramp up some more public displays of support around that.

But it’s touching base with a lot of people that are supported by and invested in this work and letting them know that this hasn’t knocked us out. We’re still in the mix. We’re not going anywhere.

[pullquote-1]We’ll be spending time with people who have concerns and making sure those concerns are heard and that they see what we’re going to address it as best we can.

MF: So, that’s what you’ll tell council? We have plans to maybe incorporate more local artists and maybe more minority artists.

LK: These have been priorities for us before now but we clearly need to make that understood and put that forward far more for the people who don’t see us. That needs to become a greater focus for us publicly where it has been as a team and with our board for a while now.

But we need to put some more weight behind that and we’re going to do that. We are going to respond to what we’re hearing now.

MF: Is there anything we left out or something you’d like to add?

LK: We’ve really been thinking a lot as a team about how we support artists better. The larger strategy we’ve been working on and refining over the next year is that it’s not just training opportunities or information sharing but it’s also hands-on experiences with somebody who is established in that space.

So, we’re looking for projects and budgets for projects that have apprenticeship opportunities with somebody from out of town if they’re coming in to lead a project.

Also, we’re looking at providing smaller project opportunities for people to get their feet wet so they have real images and experience to point to when applying for bigger and different kinds of projects.

This has to happen on several levels to really get artists here to where we want to see them as they show up in the (public art) space. I’m not saying there’s not talent here. I’m not saying that at all.

I know there’s so many beautiful creative people in this city but looking at proposals when they come in there’s still a lot of ground to cover to be more competitive with some of these folks from out of town.

Also, UrbanArt Commission staff does not vote in artist selections through the city-funded process. We facilitate the conversations and process, but the selection committees we pull together for each project actually make the decision about who is selected.
——-

Head out to Midtown Crossing Tuesday to hear more about UAC’s plans going forward.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

St. Louis Cardinals in Crisis: What’s Gone Wrong

When presented a good news-bad news scenario, I like receiving the bad news first. Take the punch, then find salve (or an ice bag). This week and next, I’ll share my take on the current baseball season, particularly as it’s unfolding here in Memphis (for our Triple-A Redbirds) and up the river in St. Louis (for the Cardinals, the Redbirds’ parent club). In sticking with my preferred method for good and bad news, this week’s column will focus on the rather gray skies — metaphorically speaking — over Busch Stadium.

What’s gone wrong for the 2017 St. Louis Cardinals? Everything. Literally, by every measurable component — roster composition, positional performance, hitting, fielding, pitching, and base running — the Cardinals have graded below average (at best). Areas in which they were supposed to be strong (top of the batting order, starting rotation) have at times sabotaged the team. Areas in which they needed to improve from 2016 (fielding competency, base-running decisions) have, if anything, regressed. What not so long ago was called “The Cardinal Way” in a nose-up, self-reverential tone has turned into a confused, often sloppy approach to nine innings on the diamond.

The most memorable play this season by one of the team’s core players — first baseman Matt Carpenter — was the veteran getting thrown out at third base as the potential game-winning run in the ninth inning . . . for the first out of the inning. It was reckless and embarrassing (particularly for Carpenter, one would assume), but a precise microcosm for a team that has had but one losing season this century. How have the Cardinals collapsed so quickly? Let’s explore three reasons.

• Roster “gains.” St. Louis let longtime centerpiece Matt Holliday fly via free agency (he’s now clubbing baseballs as a DH for the New Yankees), while also parting ways with Brandon Moss (28 homers in 2016) and Jeremy Hazelbaker (12 homers in a reserve role). The Cardinals finally moved Matt Adams (at one time considered a fixture in the team’s heart of the order) last month after giving the first base position to Carpenter.

Filling these roster spots are the likes of Jose Martinez, Tommy Pham, and Paul DeJong, each recent stand-outs here in Memphis and, perhaps, future difference-makers in St. Louis. But the most important roster addition last winter — centerfielder Dexter Fowler, last season a Chicago Cub — has been under-performing, and dramatically. Through Sunday, Fowler was hitting .230 with an on-base percentage of .323. These are well below Fowler’s career figures (.266 and .364) and not the kind of numbers for which a team typically invests $16.5 million (Fowler’s salary this season).

• Core four? How about a core one? Catcher Yadier Molina may well be bound for the Hall of Fame. Now in his 13th season as the Cardinals’ everyday catcher, Molina has earned a waiver of sorts when it comes to measuring his relative value. (Cardinal ownership considers that value worthy of a $60 million contract extension that will keep Molina in St. Louis through the 2020 season.) But the other position players general manager John Mozeliak and manager Mike Matheny have expected to steer this team have all stumbled: Carpenter, outfielder Randal Grichuk (currently retooling his hitting stroke here in Memphis), second-baseman Kolten Wong, and outfielder Stephen Piscotty. If one or two of these players slump, St. Louis should find its way. When all four have down years? You land in fourth place (if not fifth) in a five-team division.

• Scoring scarcity. The Cardinals have blown leads with regularity, including all three games of a recent sweep at the hands of the world-champion Cubs. Brett Cecil — another big-ticket free-agent acquisition last winter — has essentially been throwing batting practice for Cardinal foes, posting a 5.66 ERA. Jonathon Broxton (6.89 ERA) was finally released last week, making room for John Brebbia (1.69 ERA over the season’s first two months with Memphis).

But the shaky bullpen must be forgiven, to some degree, as the Cardinals simply don’t score runs. Through Sunday, they ranked 26th out of 30 MLB teams with an average of 4.1 runs per game. Since May 25th, St. Louis has scored more than three runs in but six of 18 games, and as many as five in only three games. With no Matt Holliday, to say nothing of no Albert Pujols (remember him?), the Cardinals are lacking “The Guy,” a hitter capable of cleaning the bases of runners or driving himself in when no better scenario presents. This will be a hard fix for Mozeliak. Unless such a slugger can be groomed from the farm, multiple prospects will be required to add him to the Cardinals’ roster. It’s been eight years now since the St. Louis GM actually pulled off such a move. (The acquisition was Matt Holliday.)

Check back next week for the good news. Because the Cardinals’ farm system — particularly the first-place Memphis Redbirds — has climbed its way back.

Categories
News News Blog

OPC Meets $1M Greensward Goal

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Brandon Dill

The Overton Park Conservancy (OPC) reached its $1 million goal Sunday, paving the way for a project to end parking on the park’s Greensward.

The funds will pay for a project to reconfigure and expand the Memphis Zoo’s main parking lot, which will give the zoo hundreds of new parking spots. The new lot is expected to give the zoo enough parking to end its use of the Greensward for overflow parking, which it has done for years.

OPC met its goal on the deadline day given by Memphis City Council two months ago. The fundraising campaign came after Memphis Zoo leaders prepared to back out of the agreement altogether, claiming the OPC did not have the funds for the construction portion of the project.

“We are overwhelmed with gratitude for the support of more than 1,000 donors from all over the country, but mostly right here at home,” OPC officials said on in a blog post Sunday. “If you ever wondered how much Memphians love and value Overton Park, the last two months have answered that question in a big way.”

OPC leaders said they will leave the fundraising page on their website open as they expect to have to raise another $500,000 between now and the fall. The council’s agreement splits the costs of the project equally between the OPC and the zoo and the project is expected to exceed $3 million, according to the OPC.

As of Friday, the OPC had $19,500 left to raise and donors had given $30,500 last week. That money was matched with a $61,000 grant from the Hyde Family Foundations.

Donors were from all over the country and, as of Friday, the only states missing were Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Bonnaroo 2017: The Wrap-up

I’ll be honest – I had low expectations for the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival this year. I’ve been covering the annual summer fest in Manchester, Tennessee, for the Flyer since 2010, and in my personal opinion, the line-up for the festival’s 16th year was the worst it’s been in those eight years. The headliners were U2 (not my thing), the Red Hot Chili Peppers (cool, but they headlined ‘Roo just a few years back in 2012), and The Weeknd (sad to say I’m not hip enough to know much about him). 

But they say the secret to happiness is low expectations. After all, you’ve got nowhere to go but up when your bar is way down low. I’m pleased to admit that I was wrong. This year’s festival was filled with pleasant surprises — new-to-me bands that literally blew me away, stellar weather for most of the weekend, and a new DJ/hip-hop stage that featured up-and-coming acts into the wee hours of the morning.

Nevermind the Thursday night arrest of 45-year-old David E. Brady of Albany, New York, for attempting to sell thousands of fake drugs (counterfeit ecstasy, acid, mushrooms, and more), claiming he was doing “God’s work.” Luckily, he was taken into the Coffee County Jail before he could do too much damage.

Thursday night is always low-key with lesser-known acts performing on the festival’s five main stages. We arrived in Manchester around 1 p.m. Thursday, picked up our press credentials, and set up camp. Then we headed into Centeroo — the name for the massive festival grounds — with no real agenda. We popped by a screening of the Nashville Predators Stanley Cup playoffs game at the Which Stage, our first Bonnaroo sports viewing experience (lots of disappointed Nashville-area locals there in yellow Preds tees). As for the music, we didn’t recognize a single name on the line-up for Thursday night, but we were eager to check out the new Other Stage. 

Bonnaroo’s five main stages are called What Stage, Which Stage, That Tent, This Tent, and in the past, there was an Other Tent. The tents tend to host smaller acts, while the What and Which stages are reserved for headliners and bigger-name bands. The former Other Tent was typically host to DJs and not-so-well-known indie acts, but the tent (literally a large tent shading a grassy area where fest-goers huddle to catch some respite from the summer heat) was upgraded to a full-on stage slightly larger than one you’d find at the Beale Street Music Festival. This new Other Stage was outfitted with lighting equipment capable of laser shows that gave the area a rave-like feel.

It was there, at around 10:15 p.m. on Thursday, that we stumbled upon Haywyre, a dubstep/glitch hop DJ and composer, who was seriously killing it with dirty beats and drops that could make your heart skip a beat. Just to the left of the new Other Stage was another complementary attraction called The Oasis — a sandy faux beach with blacklight faux palms, volleyball courts, and a Bacardi-sponsored tiki bar. We sat on the edge of the sand in the glow of purple palm trees and took in Haywyre’s set as fest-goers spiked balls behind us. Although the temps reached the high 80s on Saturday and Sunday, Thursday was actually quite chilly providing some relief from the warm weather to come.

On Friday, I popped by the What Stage (the largest venue on the farm) to catch a bit of Francis and the Lights, an energetic indie-pop solo artist whose stage show involves plenty of synthesizers and processed vocals alternated with some sweet dance moves that have Francis (“the Lights” is a reference to both stage lights and computer pixels) convulsing and spinning across the stage in a dizzying performance.

We caught a most of the Cold War Kids show on Friday, although I’ll admit that sort of indie bro rock isn’t my thing. But that didn’t stop me from signing along to their hit, “Hang Me Out to Dry.”

Later on Friday night, we stumbled onto, perhaps, our greatest (and most pleasant) surprise of the fest — the Preservation Hall Jazz Band performing at That Tent. This New Orleans-based funky jazz outfit has been around since 1963, and while I’d heard the name plenty of times, this was my first time hearing their music. Maybe it was the five or more beers I’d had by then, but I quickly learned that I’m quite the jazz dancer (or at least I thought so in my buzzed state). The brass beats and bass were infectious, and I felt as if I’d been whisked back to some 1960s jazz club, where Jack Kerouac himself would have been bopping and nodding to the music.

Bonnaroo always features at least one rock god-style main headliner whose fanbase spans multiple generations. There was Paul McCartney in 2013, Elton John in 2014, and the remaining members of the Grateful Dead in 2015. This year that act was U2 in a rare U.S. festival appearance, and plenty of people were genuinely stoked about that. It was, after all, also the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree album. I can’t say for sure why, but there’s just something I cannot stand about U2’s music (for the record, I have the same exact feelings about Nicolas Cage’s acting career). Anyway, the main headliner typically closes out the fest on Sunday, but in a rare twist, U2 was set to play on Friday night. My partner Paul lacks my irrational hatred for U2 and was excited to see them, so off we went. I’m sure any U2 fan would have been impressed, but something seemed off with volume on the vocals and the show felt like it lacked energy. That sa

id, even I caught myself singing along to nearly every song since they pretty well stuck to a setlist of hits.

Our Friday night experience closed out with a stellar performance by EDM/trap/electro-house DJ Major Lazer, one of the few names I was excited to see this year. He played well into the early morning hours with hits like “Lean On” and the Justin Bieber collaboration “Cold Water” as a pulsing light show and confetti rained over the crowd.

On Saturday, we caught a perfect daytime set by Canadian indie-pop/LGBT rights activists Tegan & Sara, who were joined on their last song by comedians/podcasters 2 Dope Queens Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson. The Queens had performed a set in the air-conditioned comedy/cinema tent earlier in the day. While we missed their set, we did catch a screening of cult classic Napoleon Dynamite and Q&A with Jon Heder (Napoleon himself) in that comedy/cinema tent later in the evening.

Well after sunset, we dropped into the last half of Chance the Rapper’s set, which ended beautifully with his 2 Chainz/Lil’ Wayne collaboration, “No Problem.” And then it was time for the Chili Peppers. As teen of the ‘90s, I was, of course, a Chili Peppers fan, and though I saw them headline ‘Roo just a few years back, this show didn’t disappoint. Anthony Kiedis, Flea, and company stuck to the hits, which lead to a crowd-wide 90s sing-along of epic proportions.

We had plans to head out of town Sunday before the sun set, meaning we missed the closing set by The Weeknd, but I’ll embarrassingly admit that I’m not terribly familiar with this Canadian R&B artist’s work. In fact, my lack of familiarity with most of the bands on this year’s line-up leads me to believe I may be getting old. I just don’t know what the kids are listening to these days, and I tend to get the most excited about the ‘90s acts.

That said, I did catch one last show on Sunday by up-and-comers Tank and the Bangas. This New Orleans-based funk-soul group has been getting a lot of press lately, after they won NPR’s 2017 Tiny Desk Contest. The vivacious lead singer, Tarriona “Tank” Ball, dropped slam poet-style verses to a rhythm of saxophone, synth, and bass as the large band performed in dayglo costumes in front of a colorful backdrop that looked to be inspired by an acid trip.

So while I wasn’t so impressed with U2 (other media reports from the weekend seem to show that most attendees were far more impressed than me), I discovered my love for 1960s jazz and some new, up-and-coming acts that just may be the best thing I’d never heard of.

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

When Penguin & Mr. Freeze Came to Memphis: RIP Adam West

Adam West had one heckuva ride in this Batmobile we call life. He was  88-years-old when he went out with a BANG, POW, and ZAP. West, most famous for his role as the Caped Crusader in the 1966 Batman TV series, enjoyed a second career as a voice actor, returning to Gotham City as The Gray Ghost in what’s possibly the greatest episode of Batman: the Animated Series ever. He also voiced Mayor Grange in The Batman, and reprised his role as the Dark Knight in 2016’s Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders.

And then there was that time he came to Memphis to thwart a plot by Penguin and Mr. Freeze and wound up face to face with Jerry Lawler in a Superman costume. The encounter is so Memphis it has to be seen to be believed, so here it is.

When Penguin & Mr. Freeze Came to Memphis: RIP Adam West

And here’s a photo of Lawler in his own personal Batmobile.  

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

A Slideshow Peek at Tennessee Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors

Two sets of identical twins and their parents are separated at birth. 20-years later they wind up in the same city in one of Shakespeare’s wildest romps.

Tennessee Shakespeare Company sets it all against the backdrop of 17th-Century Grease.

Have a peek.  [slideshow-1]

Categories
Music Music Blog

Listen Up: Terry Prince & the Principles

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

Terry Prince & the Principles: Kent Stratton, Ian Younkin, Jesse Davis and Jeff Drzycimski

If you think Terry Prince is the lead singer of Terry Prince & the Principles, think again.

“There is no ‘Terry Prince,’” said Jesse Davis, 30, singer/guitarist/songwriter in the band that includes guitarist Jeff Drzycimski, 25; bass player Ian Younkin, 25; and drummer Kent Stratton, 34.

“Terry Prince” was character that showed up in a series of stories Davis wrote in his creative writing class as an undergraduate at University of Memphis. Prince was “this down-on-his-luck musician who was almost always having to pawn his guitar and have his band mates buy it back for him.”

“I liked the idea of a character who was a little bit like me and showed up in some of the stories, but who was more of a loser. He was always down on his luck, which I sometimes am. Kurt Vonnegut has his ‘Kilgore Trout’ and James Joyce has ‘Stephen Dedalus. I’m not putting myself in the same stable as Vonnegut and Joyce, but he’s just kind of like an author doppelganger who gets to live in the fiction.”

Once he and Stratton started the band, Davis said, “What if we were Terry Prince & the Principles, guys?’ I’ve just like the way it sounds. Kind of like a ‘50s band.”

Davis was born in Memphis and later moved with his family to Phoenix, Arizona and Henderson, Tenn. before returning to Memphis to attend U of M.

He grew up in a family that sang in church and loved to listen to music, but Davis didn’t pick up the guitar until he was a teenager. “I got to be 15 and 16 and was like, ‘Well, maybe I’ll try the guitar.’ I, honestly, just thought I could do it. I was like, ‘That’s do-able. THere are six strings. It can’t be that hard.

“I got a Danelectro 56 u2. The lipstick pickups. Thin, plastic guitar. I hated it. I eventually turned that into a Stratocaster and then turned that into a J-45 knock off and a couple of other guitars. I just kept on wheeling and dealing with the musical instruments.’”

Davis’s first band was one he and his girlfriend at the time formed. “I think we were called ‘Yard Sale’ or something. We played a video store and a coffee house.”

He joined a soul cover band, “Riverside Yard Sale,” after he moved to Memphis. He began writing music in

 “Smokey Mountain Yard Sale,” a standard rock band.

Davis met Stratton when they were in Time, a rock band they eventually were kicked out of. “They told me that my heart wasn’t in it, which was true,” Davis said.

He got a call from Stratton, who asked him if he wanted to play an impromptu show opening for a Canadian band at The Lamplighter Lounge. “We did and the Canadian guys came up afterwards and were like, ‘You guys are awesome,’” Davis said. “‘How long have you been playing together?’ We’re like, ‘I don’t know. A week?’”

That was two years ago. Terry Prince & the Principles was born.

Davis asked Drzycimski, who worked with him at one time at Memphis Pink Palace Museum, to play guitar.

Younkin, who was Drzycimski’s roommate, became the bass player after the original bass player left. He’d seen them play before he joined the band. “I thought they were great, playing unique music,” Younkin said. “No other band was playing music like them.”

Asked what kind of band they originally wanted Terry Prince & the Principles to be, Stratton said, “Weird. I initially saw it as more of a rock and roll soul band that had these weird elements that sounded very current, but with older song structures,” Davis said. “Now I try not to bring any preconceived notions as to how the song should when I bring a new song to the band.”

When they say “weird,” they mean “eclectic,” Stratton said. “What I love about it there’s so much variety in the songs, There’s an overarching aesthetic to it, but there’s a lot of different things going on.”

Davis writes the music and lyrics, but everyone contributes to the songs. “Mostly he (Davis) leaves it up to us to add whatever we want,” Stratton said. “And I think that’s one of the most interesting things about this band.”

“We all have pretty different backgrounds as far as what we listen to and what we like,” Drzycimski. “And I think we wear our influences on our sleeve pretty well. And the fact that all these things come together and they work – it sounds cool. It’s very weird and very interesting.”

Davis often uses the same themes in his lyrics. “I have certain things I definitely return to. I wrote a lot about distance. Whether it’s physical distance or time.

“When I moved to Phoenix I had a Southern accent and said, ‘Ma’am’ and ‘Sir.’ They were too cool for that. I felt really weird. And then we moved and I lived out in the woods in Henderson in this little two stoplight town and had long hair and wore a leather jacket and a jean jacket. They’re not about that there.”

He got some grief about his long hair in Henderson. “I was told that it’s shameful for a man to have long hair.”

The “lunch lady” made that comment, he said.

Then Davis moved to Memphis, where his look was accepted. His lyrics now include “that feeling of being apart” as well as “that feeling of ‘Alright. Cool. Now we’re all together.’”

Terry Prince & the Principles released two EPs – Here Comes Yesterday and You Are Here – and currently are recording a double single at Junior’s Sweatshop. The band is going to tour in Nashville and Jackson,
Tennessee this summer. “Further down the line I’d like to do a longer tour and then, eventually, a full-length album,” Davis said. “We’ve got enough songs now. Maybe write three or four more and pick the 10 or 12 best.”

All the band members are involved in other projects. Davis, who is a copy editor and occasionally writes music articles at The Memphis Flyer, also is in The Conspiracy Theory and in a duo, Richard and Jesse. Stratton is in an instrumental post rock/jazz rock band, “Breaking the Cage;” Drzycimski plays solo performances under his own name; and Younkin is in metal bands “Shards of Humanity” and “Autolith.”

Does Davis have any future literary plans for his “Terry Prince” character? “I’ve worked on a comic script that I haven’t gotten illustrated yet, but it’s about the character having to go to the future to fight dubstep because it’s the only music they have anymore. And they all have the key of complacency. So, it makes people obedient consumers. And he has to go show them the spirit of rock and roll.”

Terry Prince & the Principles will perform at 7:30 p.m. June 10 at “Time Warp Drive-In” at Malco Summer Quartet Drive In at 5310 Summer. Tickets are $10 per person.


'Time Zones' from Michael Donahue on Vimeo.

Listen Up: Terry Prince & the Principles

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Great Balls + Pay-Per-View = Mad Confusion

How in the world did Fly on the Wall miss this one for so long?

Apparently there was confusion among WWE fans when a July pay-per-view event originally called Bad Blood was rechristened Great Balls of Fire which, in the context of a wrestling event, does seem to be an awfully specific and descriptive title. Of course Memphis figures into the picture. And Jerry Lawler. And Jerry Lee Lewis too.

A sample of delightful speculation engendered by the name change:

“My best guess? Given this is a Raw-exclusive PPV, Finn Bálor and Bray Wyatt will have an inferno match. Or some sort of match involving fire. Or hell, maybe Jerry Lawler will just pop in to toss one of his patented (patent pending, actually) fireballs. Let’s just get one very important thing clear: if Great Balls Of Fire doesn’t involve some match with fire in it, this is a massive failure from all involved.
Unless …
Oh god.
It’s going to be a match involving balls, isn’t it? Oh no. Oh no no no.”

Great Balls + Pay-Per-View = Mad Confusion

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

It Comes At Night

It Comes At Night is a monster movie about an invisible monster.

The invisible monster here is not like the invisible monster in the similarly named It Follows. The unseen antagonist in David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 creeper is a definite, distinct entity with an agenda. If you are pursued by it, there are concrete steps you can take to save yourself. The threat in It Comes At Night is amorphous, seemingly coming at our protagonists from everywhere and nowhere. It is impossible to know whether the actions they take are helping or harming their cause. It is, in this way, a strong metaphor for our age.

The deadliest threat in human history (so far) was not war or famine, but a disease. The 1918 flu pandemic killed a million people a week for eight months. Then it got worse. As much as 6% of the population of the world succumbed to the virus before it burned itself out in 1920. When It Comes At Night opens, a family is facing the same agonizing situation that plague survivors have faced since the beginning of time. One of their own is infected, in this case grandpa Bud (David Pendleton). No words are exchanged wondering about the nature of the unknown disease, but with pustules spreading over Bud’s body and his delirious fever, it looks like good, old fashioned bubonic plague. Bud’s son-in-law Paul (Joel Edgerton), grandson Travis (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) and daughter Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) are as yet uninfected, but they have to figure out at what point the needs of the entire family outweigh the needs of the sick patriarch.

They’re not the only ones having to make these hard choices. There’s a full pandemic raging, and society has broken down. The family made their way from the city to Bud’s cabin in the woods, where they have holed up to wait for things to blow over. But the relative safety of their isolation is shattered when Will (Christopher Abbot) breaks into their cabin. His family of survivors mirrors theirs. He and wife Kim (Riely Keough) have a toddler son Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner). After a brutally tense confrontation, the two families decide to work together for survival. But that’s where things get complicated. There’s another menace out in the woods, unseen and more quickly deadly than the dreaded plague. The combined threats and confined space ratchets up the tensions between the two families until it becomes unbearable.

Like many of the current crop of art horror films, director Trey Edward Shults’s film has a strong social subtext. Like most zombie movies, it’s about what happens when society fails and it’s every man and woman for themselves. But by removing the zombies from the equation, its solutions to the question become much more stark. What happens in a hypercapitalist society where everyone is heavily armed, resources are scarce, and cooperation is taboo? It looks something like Travis’ nightmares, which provide the spooky counterpoint to the brutal, bloody realism of the rest of the film. What is the frightening “it” that comes at night? It’s us.

It Comes At Night

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City to Begin Constructing East-West Bike, Pedestrian Corridor

Preparations for the Great Streets Pilot Project, a new east-to-west corridor of protected bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, and interactive public art will begin this weekend.

The space will serve as a connector between the riverfront, Downtown, Midtown, and locations further east.

“The Great Streets Pilot Project is founded on the idea that, with high-quality and people-oriented design, streets can function safely and efficiently for all users— whether they travel on foot, by bike, transit, or car,” the City’s bikeway and pedestrian manager Nicholas Oyler said. “We look forward to inviting our citizens and visitors to view our streets from a new perspective.”

Beginning at the western end of the corridor and moving eastward, Public Works crews, along with hired contractors will start Saturday re-striping and applying fresh asphalt to parts of Beale, Front, and Fourth Street, as well as Peabody Place, which will house a pedestrian promenade with areas for lounging, eating, and other activities.

Depending on the weather, the City expects the paving and striping phase to be complete in the next two to four weeks.

Following the completion of the basic infrastructure, the UrbanArt Commission will coordinate an effort to apply on-street murals, set up outdoor seating areas, and complete landscaping.

The public is invited to help lay down the finishing touches on Saturday, June 24 for a Volunteer Build Day.

The project’s opening will be celebrated at a party on Tuesday, June 27, in conjunction with the national conference for the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals hosted in Downtown Memphis.