Speaking with a player whose work dates back to the first days of Satellite and Stax Records, I didn’t expect to hear about rods and reels. “I have always compared making hit records to fishing. The thing is, you have to remember that fish do not bite on the same lure and the same hole every day. They just don’t do it. They move around a little bit. So fishermen have to change the lure and be with the seasons. You have to do that with music, too.”
The man telling me this should know a thing or two about hit records. Steve Cropper not only played on them, he wrote and produced them. And just as classic Stax records still sound fresh today, so too does Cropper himself when the spry 79-year-old calls from his home near Nashville. On this day, he’s talking about Fire It Up, his new solo album that harkens back to that classic work at Stax, not to mention his records with the Blues Brothers Band. And, to hear him tell the tale, it’s an album that could only have been made in the age of quarantine.
“Fire It Up was definitely done because of the pandemic and the lockdowns,” he tells me. “The guys that are on the album were never in the studio at the same time. All of the vocals were done through an iPhone! Jon [Tiven] and I wrote the tracks at his house. He’s five minutes from here and has a studio in his house. And he called me and said, ‘I’m going to finish up some of those things we started writing. I know you don’t want to put out an album, but what if we put out some of these tracks?’ I said, ‘Well, you’re going to need a record company and a singer.’ He said, ‘I’ve got a singer.’ I said, ‘You’d better play me something he’s done, then.’ And he did, and I said, ‘Where’s this guy been all my life?’”
That singer would be Roger C. Reale, a Rhode Island native who’s made his name in New England since before the 1980s belting out classic rock-and-roll with a feverish, new wave intensity. Like the album’s co-writer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, Jon Tiven, Reale had an early connection to the Big Sound label, who released Memphian Van Duren’s first records in the ’70s. But his singing, it turns out, was a perfect fit for the songs Cropper and Tiven had been writing, steeped in classic soul riffs.
“Roger’s fantastic,” says Cropper. “I think he put everything into it. All of his life, he’s been a blues singer, basically. And he was able to put his voice to the groove for a change. And that’s really good to know. Not knocking anything he’s done in the past, but he’s never really worked with a band or a musician that lives by only groove.
“When I’m writing, I’m grooving. I’m feeling the groove. In this particular case, Jon Tiven was playing bass, so he would feel the groove, too. And we worked together real good that way. It took me years to play with other bass players besides Duck [Dunn]. I always loved playing live with Duck. Why? Because he always kept a groove going, and you could feel Duck’s bass in your back.
“I miss Duck, but Jon was so on top of playing the groove, it didn’t matter. And I don’t look at Jon as being an expert at groove. But he was at that time, when we wrote all those songs. All we were doing was playing to a loop, which we took off later and put real drummers on. And he put on real music [keyboards and horn arrangements] and so forth. And Roger’s treatment to it is just mind-boggling to me. I’m still hearing it fresh.”
“Fresh” is a good word for Fire It Up, and Cropper’s clearly proud of the finished product, only his fourth solo work in a career defined more by collaborations. “This new record has some sticking power,” he says. “I am convinced that people are ready to party and dance, after this lockdown. And if they are, this is the album for them.”
Bad robot — director Michael Rianda’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines finds one family squaring off against the techno-pocalypse.
“Don’t be evil” was the company motto adopted by Google in 2000. It was suggested by Paul Buchheit, the mind behind both Gmail and AdSense, because he saw other software companies in the dot-com revolution taking advantage of their users. He wanted something simple and easy to remember, so that “once you put it in there, it would be hard to take out.”
AdSense and its derivatives became Google’s biggest cash cow, allowing it to suck up $109 billion a year in advertising revenue — and decimate the business model behind publications such as the Memphis Flyer. In 2015, when Google reorganized as Alphabet, the motto was changed to “Do the right thing.” (Spike Lee presumably received no royalties, because you don’t get to $800 billion market capitalization by paying creators.) By 2018, “Don’t be evil” had vanished from Google’s official code of conduct.
Today, tech companies still routinely spew the utopian language of the dot-com boom. But we’re decades into implementing Silicon Valley’s consumer paradise, and it’s becoming more and more obvious that most of the disruptor’s big ideas boil down to “brutally exploit labor, but make it go viral.” Meet the new boss, a glowing fondleslab.
For the titular family in The Mitchells vs. the Machines, the techno-pocalypse is not metaphorical. The Mitchells are not what you’d call a perfect family; as 18-year-old Katie (voiced by Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson) says, most families have their strengths, but “my family has only weaknesses.” Katie is an aspiring filmmaker, and, in a nod to the cult Adult Swim show Home Movies, we see her perception of the world through the lens of her long-running, no-budget film series Dog Cop. Dad Rick (Danny McBride) is a technophobe at odds with his artist daughter, and not too impressed with dinosaur-obsessed son Aaron (Michael Rianda, the director). Mom Linda (Maya Rudolph) is a long-suffering supporter of her brood with a bad case of Instagram envy over their too-perfect neighbors, the Poseys (voiced by real-life envy-fluencers Chrissy Teigen and John Legend).
After an awful fight the night before Katie is to head off to film school, Rick decides to cancel her flight and take the family on a cross-country trip to drop her off in California. Dad’s lack of emotional intelligence turns out to be fortuitous when the robot uprising finally kicks off while the family is at a Kansas tourist trap. The turtlenecked founder of Pal Labs, Mark Bowman (Eric André) has upgraded his hit line of personal A.I. assistants (voiced by Olivia Coleman) to include humanoid bodies that will do the dishes and make you a burrito.
But wait, I’ve seen I, Robot. Won’t these droids just take over and kill all the humans as retaliation for Battle Bots? “We promise you that they will never, ever turn evil,” Bowman says, seconds before his inventions get that telltale red-eyed look and start caging meatbags. Naturally, it’s up to our family of weirdos to save the day, but they’re not exactly The Incredibles.
Produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and created by the same Sony Pictures Animation department that made the epochal Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Mitchells vs. the Machines is a visually stunning, mixed-media collage of a movie. Unless you’re a weirdo like me, who haunts the experimental programs at film festivals, it’s sure to be the wildest thing you see on screen this year. Like the criminally under-viewed Diary of a Teenage Girl, Katie fills in the details of her world with floating on-screen text and animated rainbows. This is a film that lessens the blow of a scary action scene by replaying it with Snapchat cat filters applied to the faces. And the visual fireworks are not only aesthetically pleasing, they’re also good business. If you’re competing with Pixar, you’d better be swinging for the fences.
The screenplay by Rianda and Gravity Falls writer Jeff Rowe is consistently funny and relentlessly self-referential. It addresses the angst of the connected age by asserting that our individual weirdness is ultimately too much for the forces of surveillance capitalism. If it had debuted in theaters, it would have killed in front of a real audience. But there’s irony in the fact that this big-tech paranoia story is brought to you by billions in capital provided by speculative investors who are betting that Netflix will one day run all other film and television producers out of business and rule over entertainment like Google does search. Rest assured, such power will never turn Netflix evil!
Anyway, please share this review on your social.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines is streaming on Netflix.
The Memphis Pyramid — tourist attraction or home to a crystal skull? (Photo courtesy Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid/Facebook)
For this story, we asked our readers “What questions do you have about Memphis?” We got back a fantastically varied group of queries, too many to answer in one issue. Then we scrambled to find the answers. What follows are the answers to some of your questions in what we’re calling the Flyer’s first Questions Issue. — Toby Sells
Was there really a crystal skull placed in the top of the Pyramid?
It’s Memphis’ weirdest urban legend: Soon after the Pyramid was opened in the early 1990s, someone found a box containing a crystal skull attached to the apex of the arena. The story periodically bounces around the internet, and was picked up by InfoWars’ Alex Jones as proof of the existence of a sinister Illuminati conspiracy.
According to Tom Jones (no relation to Alex), it is true — just not the Illuminati part. In 1992, Jones worked in the office of Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris. The public/private partnership between the city and county and developers Sidney Shlenker and John Tigrett had collapsed, leaving the governments holding the bag on a half-completed arena of questionable utility.
“We were put in charge of putting it back together,” says Jones. “We were renegotiating all the contracts, trying to get the building open in time for the first event. It was a pretty chaotic time.”
Soon after the arena’s opening, Jones recalls, “The company that managed the Pyramid called and said they had found a box at the top of the Pyramid, welded to the superstructure. ‘You want to come over and see us take it down?’”
Jones and four other people climbed the stairs to the glass top of the building where a maintenance man named Joe went up on a ladder and pried the box loose. “Then we took it back down to a conference room, inside the Pyramid, to open it.”
Paul Gurley from the city mayor’s office opened the box. “Inside the metal box was this blue velvet box, kind of a hinged box.”
When the velvet box was opened, a burst of dust flew out that smelled like incense. Inside, covered by a velvet cloth “… was this little skull. It was made out of crystal, and was about the size of your fist.”
The find baffled all present. “Why had someone put it there? What was the belief that led them to put that there? What did they think was going to happen as a result of it being there?”
Jones was put in charge of the skull. “I took it over to the Shelby County administration building, now, the Vasco A. Smith administration building, and locked it up in a safe in the finance department.”
Soon, Jones learned that Isaac Tigrett, founder of the Hard Rock Cafe and House of Blues, was responsible. Tigrett was a devotee of Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba, whom he credited with saving his life after a serious car accident. Baba had given Tigrett the skull along with specific instructions on how it should be aligned. “He had it affixed up there because of the cosmic impact it could have at the top of the Pyramid.”
When Tigrett heard that the skull had been removed, he reportedly said, “They have no idea what they have done.”
Tigrett immediately asked that the skull be returned, but Jones disagreed. “The contract we had with Shlenker and Tigrett said anything that was permanently affixed to the building became the property of city and county government. So, I took the attitude that it was now property of local government. I don’t know exactly what I thought we were going to do with it — probably send it to the Pink Palace.”
The Tigrett family appealed to then-Mayor Bill Morris, who eventually relented. “After a while, I got a call from the head of finance, saying, ‘Just wanted you to know, the mayor told us to turn the skull back over to the Tigretts.’ So, it went back to where it had come from.”
Although the unboxing was allegedly captured on video, and the skull photographed, no authenticated images of it are known to survive. Inquiries to Isaac Tigrett regarding the skull were not returned. But something else Tigrett said has stuck with Jones for 30 years. “He also said, ‘Well, they found one of them.’” — Chris McCoy
Snakes on a park path! Should hikers worry about copperheads at Overton Park? (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
I keep hearing about copperheads in Overton Park. How worried should I be on my runs?
Overton Park is a century-old piece of Southern hardwood forest set in the middle of a modern city. It’s a rare treasure for an urban area, and the attendant wildlife is included. The park is home to hundreds of species of birds, mammals, amphibians, insects — and reptiles, including the eastern copperhead.
They are poisonous but reclusive, so how worried you should be depends a lot on how far off the beaten path you get. Copperheads tend to hide under logs and in leaf litter, and mostly avoid high human-traffic areas — except in the spring, when males go looking for love and are more often seen on public pathways. Snakes and other ground-dwelling animals also become more visible when the earth becomes soaked and dens get flooded after heavy rains.
“All snakes, venomous or not, are shy, secretive, and definitely afraid of humans,” says Dr. Steve Reichling, the Director of Conservation and Research at the Memphis Zoo. “It’s rarely a good day for a snake if they cross paths with one of us.”
In July 2016, a joint study conducted by the University of Memphis and the Memphis Zoo counted and tagged 73 copperheads in Overton Park. A recent study over three or four years found about 250 copperheads in the park, Reichling said. He said the snakes are “abundant” in the park and there are likely more in the Old Forest than other natural sites. If he had to guess, Reichling would put the number of copperheads in Overton Park at 350-400.
Sounds like a lot, but a Google search brought up no reports of a human being bitten in the park. “I know of only one time when someone was bitten,” Reichling said. “Think about how many people walk those forest trails every year and you get an idea of how peace-loving snakes are.”
The Overton Park Conservancy offers the following advice: “If you ever encounter a copperhead, just give the snake its space. The only time you’d be likely to step on one and trigger a defensive response is if you’re walking off-trail, which is just another great reason to keep to the paths.” — Bruce VanWyngarden
Who put the “German” in Germantown? (Photo courtesy City of Germantown)
How did Germantown get its name?
Not, as people presumably think, from some influx during its settlement of immigrants from central Europe (though one such did occur), but from a 19th century American surveyor who laid out the town, a gent named N.T. German. Before Mr. German did his thing, the place had been called, briefly, Pea Ridge, and, before that, “Neshoba” (the Chickasaw name for “wolf.” You know, like the river that flows through the town?).
In 1825, and for the next three years or so, Neshoba was the name of a utopian community founded by one Frances “Fanny” Wright with the idea of training slaves in various trades as a way of preparing the abolition of their servitude. The community existed in the vicinity of the Wolf River and presumably at or near the locale that still bears the name of Neshoba Road.
The abolitionist project never got very far, and white participants in the project lorded it over the Blacks, none of whom, so far as is known, succeeded in earning their freedom and, as Wright proposed, emigrating back to Africa in the western spur of that continent that became Liberia. Neshoba had meanwhile become somewhat notorious for its flourishing free-love practices.
The name “Neshoba” was next used briefly during the course of World War I as a fallback name for what had meanwhile become Germantown. At a time of conflict with Germany, the semantics of the name seemed inappropriate to residents of the community, which reverted back to being called Germantown with the cessation of hostilities.
There was one more revival of the name “Neshoba,” when city/county school consolidation was first being discussed in the early ’90s, and the six outer-county suburban municipalities threatened secession from Shelby County and prepared, if need be and the state constitution permitted, to form a new county. To be named … yep, Neshoba. — Jackson Baker
The Chisca on Main (below) is just one example of new development. (Photo courtesy Chisca Hotel/Facebook)
What’s up with all of these apartments and Memphis real estate in general?
When it comes to the business of apartments, Memphis is among the top competitive markets, ranking 25th nationally. A recent survey by RENTCafé shows why the local market is growing, even with rents on the rise.
There is a 95 percent occupancy rate in the area, with apartments staying vacant on the market for an average of 34 days. To compare, there are 11 prospective renters competing for an apartment, which is equal to the national average. And the national occupancy rate is 94 percent while units stay vacant for an average of 39 days.
We may align with national trends, but there are a multitude of market forces driving rentals, some shared all over and some singular to Memphis. Younger people are waiting longer to get married and/or have children, if at all. More Baby Boomers are now empty nesters, and senior housing is a growth market. Shifts in housing are happening constantly. And Millennials are entering the workforce and are moving to urban centers across the country, and Memphis’ evolving Downtown is doing much to lure younger workers.
Back in the 1980s, developer Henry Turley saw gold in the then-wasteland of Downtown. He built homes and apartments in Mud Island and along South Main. He was ahead of the demand, but the people did come. Since then, it’s been a matter of meeting the demand, not only in burgeoning Downtown but all over the city.
Recent years have seen a boom in housing construction, even in the pandemic. Not only new buildings but adaptive reuse of existing structures, as was done with the old Chisca Hotel into shiny new apartments. And the long-abandoned Tennessee Brewery building was saved from the wrecking ball to provide one of the cooler residential addresses in town. There is even what might be considered adaptive reuse of an entire neighborhood: South City, a $250 million project, is going up on the site of the former Foote Homes public housing complex and is bringing mixed-income apartments, rental homes, and green space.
The Downtown area is the most visible and has changed remarkably in recent years, but there is growth all over town and well into the suburbs. As long as the economy stays stable, which it’s largely managed to do in a pandemic, there should be a good market for apartments and housing around town.
But never say never. John Gnuschke, the former director of the Sparks Bureau of Business and Economic Research and the Center for Manpower Studies, has said that housing construction is sensitive to the fiscal winds. If there’s a depression or recession (remember 2008?), the availability of financing for developers might well disappear and put the quietus on housing expansion. — Jon Sparks
The trolleys are back on Main — but will we ever see them elsewhere? (Photo courtesy Memphis Area Transit Authority/Facebook)
Will the trolleys ever return to the Riverfront Loop or Madison Avenue?
The most-recent era of the city’s trolley system began with fire. Two fires, to be exact — both on the Madison Line — caused a lengthy shutdown of the Memphis trolley system. Trolley 452 caught fire in November 2013 on the I-240 overpass just west of Bellevue. Trolley 553 caught fire in April 2014 on the Danny Thomas overpass bridge. Both were burned beyond repair.
The Madison line was closed that April. The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA), the agency that oversees the trolleys, closed the entire system in June 2014. MATA officials then began the slow, grueling process of bringing trolleys back to Memphis.
In 2015, then-MATA president Ron Garrison likened the process to “birthing a baby” and said “we are redoing our rail and rail safety program from the ground up.” That’s just what they did. Bringing trolleys back wasn’t as simple as figuring out why the other ones burned and fixing the problem, or even buying new vintage trolleys from other cities.
A report from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) found MATA’s trolley infrastructure dated, found records of repairs lacking, and the oily, trolley-repair station called “the pit” to be dangerous. That report, too, found that in the three months before they caught fire, Trolley 553 had been discovered to have 43 defects and Number 452 had 29.
MATA leaders predicted and ultimately punted on numerous dates for the trolleys’ return to Main Street. The trolley tracks would remain largely empty for another four years. The trolleys returned with their familiar hum and rumble to the Main Street Line on April 30, 2018, three years ago.
Current MATA CEO Gary Rosenfeld says the agency’s board recently approved the purchase of three vintage trolley cars from the Charlotte Area Transit Authority. That city is upgrading its rail system, moving away from vintage cars like Memphis has to modern cars, which Memphis may have soon. (More on that in a minute.)
The vintage cars MATA bought from Charlotte will be put into service most likely on the Riverfront Loop, Rosenfeld said. He said cars may return to that line (a tourist favorite) in the next 18 months.
“When we bring the Riverfront Line back in service, I would be willing to guess that we will see a little bit more of an increase in tourism opportunities there and, then, in transportation,” Rosenfeld says.
The Riverfront Loop intersects the Main Street Line, and will increase the frequency of service on Main, too. This will have a positive effect on those using the trolleys for transportation. It’s this dual purpose, tourism and transportation, says Rosenfeld, that will likely keep vintage cars on the Riverfront Loop for a while.
But expect to see something totally different on the Madison Line soon. Rosenfeld said MATA now has a modern railcar like the ones in use in Atlanta and Charlotte. Those are tall and boxy with huge windows and are enclosed for modern amenities like air conditioning.
Such a car may be seen doing runs down the Madison Line sometime soon. But Rosenfeld was quick to say that MATA is not running a “pilot program” and such a car won’t be available for the public until “the line is perfect.” Runs of the modern car will help MATA “create a list of stuff that needs to be done in order for us to safely operate it.”
“It makes sense for us — rather than stick to heritage trolleys on that line — to recognize the development that’s going on there and be able to handle the density and increase of demand for streetcars along that corridor,” Rosenfeld said. — Toby Sells
Where did the “Blue Kids” on the V&E Greenline come from? (Photo: Joshua First)
What’s the deal with the Blue Kids statues on the V&E Greenline?
Have you seen the big, blue vaguely person-shaped statues near Crosstown Concourse? They recline on a grassy hill at the western end of the V&E Greenline, a walking trail in the Vollintine-Evergreen neighborhood, which itself grew out of community involvement and the defunct L&N Railroad. But I didn’t really know anything about them — not even their official name — until I called Joshua First, secretary for the V&E Greenline Committee, for answers.
“I call ’em the ‘Blue Kids.’ Other people call them the ‘Big Kids,’” First says. The statues don’t have an official name at all; in the minutes of the meeting in which the committee discussed the proposed statues, as First puts it, “they were simply called ‘the sculptures at the west end of the trail.’”
The idea for the art installation came from Memphis-based artist Ben Butler, who was then teaching an art class at Rhodes College. He presented a series of potential public art pieces, the Greenline Committee selected the Blue Kids, and Butler and his students designed, built, and installed the statues as a class project. A happy coincidence — last week marks the 10th anniversary of the statues’ installation. What’s more, this year the trail celebrates its 25th anniversary.
“It quickly became an embodiment of the trail,” First says of the installation, noting that the student-built statues are an example of the independently operated trail’s DIY ethos. And, First says, the V&E Greenline is dotted with other public art projects, like Jeannie Tomlinson Saltmarsh’s metal trout weathervanes, or a new spherical structure installed last week. “It’s going to be a memorial to one of the founding members of the trail, Jan Kirby,” First says.
“We’re building our public art profile on the trail,” First says, “but the Blue Kids are where it all started.” — Jesse Davis
1) “Any fair examination of President Joe Biden’s policies would conclude that his first 100 days in office have been a complete failure. His presidency has largely consisted of taking credit for Republican achievements and undoing common-sense Republican policies — with disastrous results.”
That was the opening paragraph of an op-ed by Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, which ran in the local print daily last week. McDaniel’s birth name, you may recall, was Ronna Romney, and she is the niece of Senator Mitt Romney. Ronna is not a fan of her uncle, having become a full-on Trumper a couple years back.
2) “Aren’t you embarrassed?”
That was from Mitt, who had a rough weekend at the Utah Republican Convention, where he was booed mercilessly as he tried to begin a speech. The Utah Republicans weren’t at all embarrassed. They saw Mitt as a traitor because he voted for impeachment and dared to say he doesn’t think Donald Trump won the election.
3) “I think if you’ve got your weight right, and your lifestyle right, and your diet right … I don’t think this virus will bother you.”
This touching paean to the benefits of clean living came from Republican state Senator Frank Niceley, who was discussing a bill he co-sponsored that would give Tennesseans the freedom not to get a COVID vaccine — a freedom they already have. But you can’t be too careful with Biden in the White House.
4) “I want you to hear every single word of the Pledge of Allegiance. That is our pledge to each other. That is our pledge to this country. … I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America … individual … ”
That’s former national security advisor, convicted felon, and QAnon true believer Mike Flynn, who was leading the Pledge of Allegiance, then forgot the words. The rally where he was speaking was being held in support of Lin Wood, who’s running to oust the GOP chairman of South Carolina for not being QAnon-ish enough.
5) “No Joey in the Oval Office. But I did run into our President of the United States. President Trump is hanging out and working in the office in which we re-elected him to serve in a historic landslide victory on November 3, 2020.”
That’s a post on Telegram (accompanied by a picture of Trump at his White House Desk) from the aforementioned Lin Wood, who claimed to be touring the White House last week, where he found Donald Trump still in the Oval Office. Wood also called for former Vice President Mike Pence to face the firing squad for allowing Congress to certify the presidential election results.
6) “How are we doing with Iran? They would have done anything … China, the same thing, they never treated us that way, and the border … massive amounts of people in our hospitals and schools … Do you miss me? They said, ‘Sir, get 66 million votes and the election’s yours.’ Well I got 76 million and they say I lost. Who are they kidding? It was stolen big-time and everybody knows it.”
That was the former president himself, who dropped in on a wedding reception at Mar-a-Lago last week while the band was on break to offer some words of wisdom. Good to know he’s still got the gift of gab and has moved on gracefully.
7) “While Newsmax initially covered claims by President Trump’s lawyers, supporters, and others that Dr. Coomer played a role in manipulating Dominion voting machines, Dominion voting software, and the final vote counts in the 2020 presidential election, Newsmax subsequently found no evidence that such allegations were true. Many of the states whose results were contested by the Trump campaign after the November 2020 election have conducted extensive recounts and audits, and each of these states certified the results as legal and final.”
That’s a statement from right-wing news outlet Newsmax, which joined Fox News and OANN in aggressively back-pedaling from the lies they spread on election fraud and Dominion voting machines. Nothing like a multi-million dollar lawsuit to bring out truth and destroy propaganda, I suppose. After reading the quotes above, it’s pretty obvious nothing else will.
NASHVILLE — As the Tennessee General Assembly entered into its last week, two bills that, if passed in their original form, would drastically change the nature of Tennessee jurisprudence, were official cliffhangers.
One bill, the brainchild of state Senator Brian Kelsey, was in serious jeopardy. This was SB 915/HB 1072, which would have prohibited local governments from suing the state and guaranteed the state an automatic stay of any injunction levied against its constitutional authority, pending the ultimate evolution of appeals. The bill was rebuffed on the Senate floor via a 14-14 tie vote and, despite frantic attempts by Kelsey to promote ameliorated versions to his colleagues, remained unamended. The bill has been set and reset by its author for successive floor sessions of the Senate but, as of Tuesday, with time running out, had not incurred any more discussion.
Another bill, SB 868/HB 1130, whose primary author was state Senator Mike Bell, undertook, as originally conceived, to establish a new three-member state Chancery Court, which would become the mandated trial court for any litigation against the state’s constitutional functions. The three judges would represent the state’s three grand divisions, but all would be elected statewide. In his introduction of the measure, Bell had been candid about the fact that such a court would reflect the state’s current political bias — i.e., have a Republican slant.
State Senator Mike Bell with pet terrier during bill-review session (Photo: Jackson Baker)
Bell’s bill, like Kelsey’s, was clearly motivated by recent state judicial rulings perceived as favoring Democrats — notably, last year’s decision by Nashville Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle expanding availability of mail-in absentee ballots as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. The state appealed her ruling, meanwhile slow-walking its compliance, and the state Supreme Court, a majority of whose members were Republican appointees, watered down its impact. But Lyle, who was originally appointed by former Republican Governor Don Sundquist but has won successive re-elections as a Democrat, succeeded in establishing the pandemic as a factor to be considered in applications for absentee ballots.
In theory, Bell’s bill reflected the will to power of the General Assembly’s Republican supermajority, which, Democrats feared, would steamroller it into being, a sentiment that got fatalistic expression from a participant or two last week in a Zoom meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club. A group of statewide Democrats launched an emergency campaign against the bill under the scare email headline “Gov. Lee’s Judicial Branch Power Grab.”
In fact, Lee was a mere bystander of the process, and there was enough independence of mind among Republican legislators with former service in local governments to weaken support for so fundamental a change in the relationship between jurisdictions. And sentiment in the House had been divided on the bill’s merits from the beginning. Democrats in both chambers, augmented by serious lobbying efforts, including those by Memphis attorney Steve Mulroy, had a fair chance to make their case.
Ultimately, it was in the House where the measure got rewritten. The House version posited the new tribunal not as a trial court but as a “court of special appeals” with original jurisdiction only for challenges of redistricting plans. Otherwise the court would be required to hear any case in which the state attorney general should intervene. And the court’s members, who would originally be appointed by Lee, would be subject, not to periodic direct election but only to yes/no retention elections, as state appeals judges are at present.
As the legislative chambers prepared for an inevitable last-week reconciliation meeting, the likely end result would be a redefinition of judicial authority, but nothing like the power grab so fearsomely advertised.
A rendering of the proposed installation. Courtesy the City of Memphis
A new, Instagram-ready art installation could come to Mud Island soon.
Last month, the city of Memphis parks department asked the Downtown Memphis Commission for permission to build the temporary installation. The project would bring a huge black-and-yellow, billboard-like art installation that reads: “We have no time for things with no soul.”
The installation would be 46 feet high and 40 feet wide. Before the billboard would be a trail of 54 flags and three short platforms for seating. The sign would face east, easily visible from Riverside Drive. It would be erected close to the new “Memphis” sign recently placed on Mud Island.
The installation would be erected before the Memorial Day opening of Mud Island and would remain until the end of November, according to the city’s application.
Here’s a look at some images from the application:
Tracey Higgins and Wyatt Cenac in Barry Jenkins' debut film, Medicine for Melancholy.
Film festivals are where most filmmakers get their start. Indeed, finding fresh new voices and seeing radical new visions in a too-often bland and homogeneous filmscape is a big draw for festivals like Indie Memphis. Now, the fest is teaming up with the University of Memphis to bring three first films from directors who went on to do big things.
The Debuts screenings, May 5-6 at the Malco Summer Drive-In, are curated by University of Memphis Department of Communication and Film professor Marty Lang. The first film in the series (May 5th) is one of the most consequential first films of the 21st century. Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy screened at Indie Memphis in 2008. Set in the booming San Francisco of the Aughts, the film stars Wyatt Cenac, who went on The Daily Show fame, and Tracey Higgins, who would later appear in The Twilight Saga, as two young lovers who try to come to terms with their place in the racial and economic hierarchy of their allegedly free and egalitarian city. Jenkins went on to win Best Picture in 2016 for Moonlight; his new historical fantasy project, The Underground Railroad, drops on Amazon Prime on May 14th. The screening will be followed by a discussion led by members of the Memphis Black arts organization The Collective.
Then, on May 6th, a double feature kicks off with the debut film by Jeff Nichols. The Little Rock, Arkansas native is the brother of Lucero’s frontman Ben Nichols. His first film was Shotgun Stories, starring Michael Shannon. The 2007 film is the story of a feud between two sets of Arkansan half-brothers who find themselves in radically different circumstances, despite their blood connection. After the screening, Nichols will speak with Lang about the making of the film, and his subsequent career, which includes the Matthew McConaughey drama Mud and Loving, the story of the Virginia couple whose relationship led to the Supreme Court legalizing interracial marriage.
The second film on May 6th is Sun Don’t Shine by Amy Seimetz. The 2012 film stars Memphis filmmaker and NoBudge founder Kentucker Audley and Kate Lyn Sheil (who later went on to roles in House of Cards and High Maintenance) as a couple on a tense road trip along the Florida Gulf Coast. Seimetz went on to a prodigious acting career, as well as leading the TV series adaptation of Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience and directing one of 2020’s most paranoid films, She Dies Tomorrow. Lang will also interview Seimetz about beginning her career with Sun Don’t Shine.
“Jazz” is a big word, and can cover so many approaches to music that it may have lost all its descriptive power. That is especially true if one follows the music’s history into the 1970s and beyond. After traditional forms were blown wide open in the 1960s (with the ascendance of free jazz), the music’s influences and reference points became so far-flung that any noise, texture, or groove was fair game.
Anything being fair game is a good motto for the latest album by New Memphis Colorways, It is What it Isn’t, set to be self-released on May 21st. As the catch-all name for the various musical projects of virtuoso Paul Taylor, New Memphis Colorways has always considered the world fair game, of course, ranging from tightly woven power pop of The Music Stands to the stomping, almost surfing groove rock of Old Forest Loop.
Most of those earlier projects showed off Taylor’s inventiveness with a dollop of genre-appropriate restraint, his self-accompaniment on multiple instruments always in service of the song. But what restraints are in play when the song is jazz-funk fusion? Those are mostly the restraints demanded by each song’s groove, even as solo instruments take unfettered flight. Yea verily, this is the album where Taylor lets his freak flag fly high.
Imagining some of Herbie Hancock’s finest work from the late 70s or 80s, from Man-Child to Future Shock, will put you in the ballpark. It’s not that none of the players (all Taylor, in this case) show restraint; an effective groove requires that sense of space. It’s rather that the direction of the melodies, instrumentation, and breakdowns could surprise you with any new development at any time.
And that’s exactly what awaits listeners of It is What it Isn’t. Just take the lead single and video, “Hangover Funk.”
Video game skronks give way to the solidest of grooves, backing up some smooth/tweaked keyboard chords. Is this Herbie Hancock or George Clinton? Or Pac Man, perhaps? None of the above: this is New Memphis Colorways.
It’s first-rate funk (and excellent party music, by the way), all the better to undergird a full-on rock guitar solo that screams “good times,” which anything evoking the 1970s surely must. As the opening track of the album, it’s perfect, and sets the tone for much of what is to follow. But, having set the inventiveness bar so high from the top, what follows is essentially more funky unpredictability and more expressive synth and guitar playing.
One surprise, even in this cornucopia of surprises, is Taylor’s treatment of the jazz standard, “All the Things You Are.” It’s played with a jazzer’s sensitivity to the delicate harmonies, but what really sets it apart is the singing voice run through a vocoder. It’s as if Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” suddenly fell in love. And in combining the sci-fi iciness of a synthetic vocoder with such a chestnut of the 1930s, an eerie, Blade Runner-esque world is conjured up, perfect for our current moment in history. It’s that restless inventiveness that keeps this from being a retro fashion accessory, and propels it into a fusion work of the highest order.
Tennessee public-school teachers must now give a 30-day notice if they want to talk to their students about sexual orientation or gender identity.
On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee quietly signed a new law that one lawmaker called “troubling” and an LGBTQ advocacy group said was pushed by “national extremist groups.” But Republican lawmakers in Nashville said the law gives parents control of what children “see in their minds” because they are “young and impressionable.”
The law says parents must be notified at least 30 days before a teacher can commence any “sexual orientation curriculum or gender identity curriculum, regardless of whether the curriculum is offered as part of a family life program, sex education program, or other program.” The bill cleared its final legislative hurdle last month with a House vote. Lee signed the bill Monday.
Rep. Bob Freeman (D-Nashville) said the bill would further stigmatize LGBTQ students and they could face bullying or even attempt suicide. He gave several statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about LGBTQ students. He said 47 percent of Tennessee’s LGBTQ student have contemplated suicide int he last year; 68 percent of them reported feeling hopeless, according to the CDC data Freeman quoted.
“We continue to stigmatize LGBTQ students and people in our state to the detriment of these students,” Freeman said before the House floor vote last month. “This is going to be troubling and it will be bad for those students.”
Rep. Debra Moody (R-Collierville) said an opt-out for parents already exists for family life curriculum (a.k.a. sexual education). With that, Moody said no one “should be burdened” by this legislation.
Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster) applauded the legislation.
“Parents are in charge of their children, not government entities,” she said. “I think this is a great piece of legislation that allows parents to remain in charge. … This is in no way a piece of legislation to cause harm to anyone but to put the focus back on parents. The government does not own our children.”
The national Human Rights Campaign (HRC) said the new law joins Lee’s anti-transgender sports law in Tennessee’s 2021 “Slate of Hate,” legislation aimed to discriminate against the LGBTQ community. The anti-LGBTQ curriculum bill will allow parents to opt their children out of learning about subjects like the AIDS epidemic, the Stonewall riots, and U.S. Supreme Court cases, the HRC said.
“Governor Bill Lee and the Tennessee state legislature’s ‘Slate of Hate’ bills are nothing more than a politically motivated effort to drum up fear and sow division and [the curriculum law] is a discriminatory piece of legislation that would put the health and safety of LGBTQ students at risk,” HRC president Alphonso David said in a statement. “All students deserve access to a quality academic experience, including the opportunity to learn about themselves and critically important health information as they develop.”
The HRC said Tennessee is one of 30 states to pass such legislation that it calls “discriminatory” and “anti-LGBTQ.” These pieces of legislation “are being pushed by national extremist groups and peddled by lawmakers in Tennessee in an effort to sow fear and division,” the HRC said in a statement.
The starting point. Headwaters of the Mississippi River.
Two separate teams of canoeists are attempting to break the record for the fastest trip down the Mississippi. That record, which was set in 2003, is 18 days.
Team MMZERO
The teams are MMZERO and Mississippi Speed Record. Team MMZERO is currently near Cairo, Illinois, and hopes to finish in five or six days in order to set the new record. You can read all about them and even follow their progress at their website.
Team Mississippi Speed Record
Mississippi Speed Record has just begun paddling and is still in Minnesota near the Mississippi headwaters. You can meet their team members and follow their progress here.
