Will Sexton & Amy LaVere (photo courtesy Amy LaVere)
Things are understandably slow in the live-stream world, what with Christmas breaks and the general loss of urgency felt by the general public about social distancing. Some still carry the torch for extreme prudence, and if you’re one of them, there are several treats in store. No telling what Amy LaVere and Will Sexton have cooking for this Thursday’s revue, which will include many friends and secret Santas. There’s always the indefatigable Evil Rain, who call B-Side Memphis home, and the week is capped off there with a rare show by one of Memphis’ most inventive bands, Graber Grass. Look for all the bands’ virtual tip jars, and get into giving this Christmas!
ALL TIMES CST
Thursday, December 23 7 p.m. Amy LaVere, Will Sexton& Friends — Holiday Hang at Hernando’s Hide-A-Way Website
Don’t expect this to be your usual theater review. Theater isn’t my first language. More importantly, I broke my live performances fast with a production of the smash hit Hamilton. There aren’t enough superlatives in the newest edition of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary to adequately describe the veritable feast my eyes and ears enjoyed at last night’s performance.
Were the songs well-written? Well, yeah — Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote them, for crying out loud! Were the costumes pleasing to behold? Yes, it’s freaking Hamilton. Was there an electricity in the packed venue? Yes, the audience was at a Grizzlies-playoff-game level of excitement.
The set design is versatile, and with a little rearranging of furniture and adjusting of lights, a new scene can be conjured. It could have been a black box, though, and I would have been just as entertained. If the cast didn’t bring their “A” game to a chilly Wednesday-night performance in Memphis, I certainly couldn’t tell. The technical skill it takes to pull off some of these songs is impressive, to say the least, but to deliver at that level while also infusing the performance with emotion and hitting all the choreography is another thing entirely.
Paul Oakley Stovall, playing the part of George Washington, was the standout performance for me. Stovall delivered his lines effortlessly, as if he were tossing them to the audience as an afterthought. It takes a lot of work to make something look that easy.
In short, believe the hype. Six years after its world premiere, Hamilton can still capture and hold an audience’s attention. But beware — viewing this production may cause side effects, like humming the refrain from “The Reynolds Pamphlet” long after the final curtain.
Hamilton is at the Orpheum Theatre through Sunday, January 2nd.
Since this is the season to indulge, Memphis notables (and one former Memphian) were asked, “What is an essential something you must eat or drink at this time of year or it won’t feel like the holidays?”
Unapologetic founder James “IMAKEMADBEATS” Dukes: “Probably my dad’s peach cobbler. His peach cobbler is pretty famous. It’s the attention to detail in the crust. He’ll add pineapple to it [the filling]. He just has a very unique approach to peach cobbler. During the holidays, people will legit ask it to be sent to other cities. If people are swinging through town and happen to be there, they will request it.”
Paula & Raiford’s Disco owner Paula Raiford: “I have to have the homemade pound cake. My best friend’s [Tiffany Conrad] cousin (Angela Gaines makes it). It is dee-lish. One, it is homemade. She doesn’t bake as much as she used to. She always does it for Thanksgiving and Christmas. You know you’re going to get it and it makes it taste better because you know you’re going to get it for Christmas. You don’t get it year round.”
Grammy-winning engineer/producer Matt Ross-Spang: “I eat it all year round, but the first thing that comes to mind is gravy. I just love it so much. You put it on everything: the turkey, the dressing, the ham, the rolls, the green beans.”
Memphis Whistle executive chef Kyle Gairhan: “Latkes and stuffing. I’m Jewish. Those are the two things I think of during the holidays. Stuffing starts around Thanksgiving. And latkes for Hanukkah. [Made from] sourdough, onions, celery, butter.”
Former city Mayor AC Wharton: “Eggnog. [With] Southern Comfort. In my hometown, there was no alcohol, so my mother made boiled custard. But there was a bootlegger who lived next door to us. And the only time Daddy spiked his boiled custard was at Christmas. He slipped across the fence to the neighbor to get a little nip in his boiled custard, which made it eggnog. The difference between boiled custard is just that. No spices and certainly no alcohol. But you could get a dispensation on Christmas to put a half teaspoon of bootleg stuff in it. And that made it eggnog. But only my daddy could do that. Now that I’m grown, I can have eggnog. When I was a kid, it was boiled custard.”
Performer Al Kapone: “My mom’s baked spaghetti. My mom’s baked spaghetti is just amazing. It’s always festive. Number one, she bakes it. Number two, she puts these cheddar cheese chunks in it. I don’t know what all the other ingredients she puts in, but the distinctive sharp cheddar cheese chunks, when you go in and get you a helping of spaghetti, you get those nice, melted sharp cheddar cheese chunks in every bite. It lights you up like a Christmas tree. That’s how good it is. My mom’s spaghetti is a staple for any holiday. When she cooks that, I’m excited. I’m in a festive mood.”
Dave’s Bagels owner/founder Dave Scott: “No-bake cookies. One hundred percent. My wife [makes them]. It started with my mother. My mother’s been making them for years, my whole life. You’ve probably had them before. They’re chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies. Blend it all together in a little pot. Drop off little drops of that while it’s hot on the wax paper and it cools into a cookie. Whenever I see those around I know the holidays are close.”
Wrestler Jerry Lawler: “It’s just been a long-time tradition of mine. When I tell people this, they say, ‘Oh, my gosh. Are you kidding me?’ It’s the old tried-and-true Claxton fruitcake. I have to have the Claxton. This year, back before Thanksgiving, they had them at Sam’s Club. Big packs of three of them. I’ve gone through one. I’ve got two brand-new ones to finish off before Christmas. I think the thing about the Claxton is there really is no ‘cake.’ It’s just all fruit. I don’t know what they’ve done to the fruit to make it almost like a solid piece of custard. Very little cake. Just all sugary fruit. People hate fruitcake. I don’t know what the deal is. Johnny Carson used to tell this joke on his show: There’s only one fruitcake in the world and it gets re-gifted every year to different people. It never gets eaten. It just gets regifted.”
Wrestler Jimmy Hart, professional wrestler/former Memphian now living in Tampa, Florida: “I don’t drink, but just eggnog. I think it’s according to where you live. Hot chocolate if you’re up north. I think eggnog. You only see it during Christmas time, don’t you? If it’s Christmas time, it’s eggnog with or without liquor.”
Note: On New Year’s Eve, Hart and Lawler will reunite to sing — yes, sing, not wrestle — at King Jerry Lawler’s Hall of Fame Bar & Grille on Beale Street. “We’re going to do about an hour-long set,” Lawler says. “We’re going to sing in the New Year.”
Chef/owner of Alcenia’s restaurant, B. J. Chester-Tamayo: “Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Easter, you must have chicken and dressing. In the Chester household no ifs, ands, or buts. As long as I have lived, I’ve had chicken and dressing. Except maybe once when she was in the hospital, I had my mom’s. Out of 67 years of my life, if it wasn’t her chicken and dressing she made, it was her recipe.”
How was the chicken and dressing she bought? “It was absolutely terrible.”
Grammy-winning record producer Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell: “I smoke a turkey every year and I have been for 10 years or probably longer. Turkey. It just has to happen.”
And what does Mitchell like on his turkey? “Oh, bourbon. Four Roses bourbon, please.”
Rendezvous restaurant owner John Vergos: “Except for this year since my mother isn’t doing it, we have to have spanakopita. Spinach pie. I think that she’s recognized among the Greeks in Memphis as making the best spanakopita. She doesn’t write it [the recipe] down. You have to watch her. She’s fine. We’re just doing it at my sister’s and we’re just not going to have it this year. We had it Thanksgiving and we’re not having it Christmas.”
So, how does Vergos feel about that? “It’s just not Christmas.”
Toby Sells is Associate Editor for the Memphis Flyer, responsible for breaking news of great civic import and, more importantly, craft beer coverage. He had somehow managed to miss the 1988 action film classic Die Hard. True to his penetrating journalistic brain, he sought answers to the most important question: Is it a Christmas movie? Here’s how it went.
Chris McCoy: Toby Sells, tell me what you know about Die Hard.
Toby Sells: Not much. I know that Bruce Willis plays a guy named John McClane. This is from years of just hearing about this movie when I would bring it up and say I’ve never seen it. People would say, “I can’t believe you’ve never seen Die Hard!” And I’ve never seen a single one of ’em. John McClane wears the white wife beater shirt, and for some reason, he doesn’t have any shoes on. He’s trying to crawl around in a building to kill Snape. And people argue about whether or not this is a Christmas movie. I have no idea what that’s about.
132 minutes later …
Chris McCoy: Toby Sells, you are now a person who has seen Die Hard. What did you think?
Toby Sells: Well, I get 10 or 12 pop culture references that I did not get before.
CM: Like what?
TS: Well, the “Yippee ki yay yay, motherfucker!” is one I’d heard people say, I didn’t know where that was from. As I was watching it, I was trying to — ’cause I really admire the way that you write about film — I was trying to come up with some ways to go deeper into the movie somehow, but it was a lot of explosions and gunfire and glass everywhere, and a guy trying to save the day. And it was just a whole lot of fun.
CM: I think it’s tons of fun! They teach this movie in film writing classes, because it’s so efficient and well structured. By the time the credits are over, you know who John McClane is, you know what his problems are, and what his life is like. You know he’s coming from New York and he’s going to L.A., and you know that he doesn’t fit in in L.A., because he’s a New York guy. And he really doesn’t change through the rest of the movie.
TS: No, he does change in one key way! There’s the bathroom scene, where he’s cut his foot, and he doesn’t have a shirt on anymore. John McClane is thinking things are looking pretty grim, and he’s been talking to his buddy Al outside on the radio. He’s had this revelation about his relationship with his wife who is kind of not his wife, at this point. It takes a terrorist, threats on his life over dozens of times, and many, many rounds of gunfire to realize that maybe he should have told his wife that he loved her and supported her and gone with her to Los Angeles when she took the job and moved out. It took all of that for this man to become vulnerable and decide, “Hey, you know what? It’s time I supported my wife.”
CM: As you said, it should be called Die Hard, or How Hans Gruber Saved My Marriage.
CM: When this came out, Bruce Willis was on Moonlighting. He’d never done action before. Now, he’s Mr. Action Guy. But in Moonlighting, he solved mysteries with Cybill Shepherd, and cracked wise.
TS: I thought he went the other way around. I thought he did action, but he’s also funny.
CM: There’s some kind of rights issue with Moonlighting, so it’s not on streaming or anything. But it was such a good show. I was devoted to that show. But he was a comedy actor, and now, because of Die Hard, he’s Mr. Action all the time. He became a huge star and quit Moonlighting. Then he had a blues band where he played harmonica.
TS: Yeah, he started Planet Hollywood back in the day with Schwarzenegger and all those other guys.
CM: What did you think about him in the film?
TS: He was pitch perfect. That’s John McClane, that’s not just Bruce Willis. He’s the guy in the air duct. That’s who you think of when you think about Bruce Willis.
CM: “Come out to the coast, we’ll have a few laughs!”
TS: That’s him. The other thing is, I knew going into it that he didn’t have shoes on, for some reason. Figured it out!
CM: It’s literally set up in the credit sequence, when some guy tells him to take his shoes off and make fists with your toes — which I always do! Seriously, to this day, I do that. I had forgotten why I did that until today, because I haven’t seen this movie in years and years.
TS: It is a bit of a cowboy movie, and it’s also a big heist movie. It’s kinda like Oceans 11, when they’re trying to drill into the vault, and Hans Gruber’s got this whole thing planned very well. He knows they’re gonna have to come in and cut the power, and then that’s when the vault opens. It’s got the heist vibe, which is great.
CM: They talk about the cowboy motif throughout the movie.
TS: He said he was a big Roy Rogers fan and all that, and it’s like one guy saving the day against all odds. He’s cut his foot. He’s been shot at a dozen times. And somehow, you know, this gritty New York cop sees through all of it, and figures it all out enough to win the day, get the girl, ride off into the sunset, and crack jokes along the way.
CM: He’s also the cop who won’t follow the rules, which is so Reagan Eighties. All the guys who are FBI, and the police Lieutenant that takes over at the scene, are so ineffectual. The Lieutenant [Paul Gleason] is the same actor who was the coach in The Breakfast Club in charge of detention. This guy made a career in the ’80s of being ineffectual authority figures that were meant to be ridiculed.
TS: I thought the characters were perfectly all ’80s. They fit all the molds.
CM: Everybody was an archetype.
TS: But then I’m wondering if the archetypes didn’t come from this movie?
CM: I think the hero cop who won’t follow the rules thing goes back to Dirty Harry in the ’70s, which was a reaction against the counterculture. This is a deeply conservative movie. Like, we were talking about Al the, the cop, and you’re like “What’s Al’s problem?” Oh, I killed a 13-year-old kid is the problem. And then his redemption arc is, he gets to use violence again!
TS: He gets to shoot the big zombie German at the end.
CM: That’s Alexander Gudnov, who was a ballet dancer with the Bolshoi and had a second career in America playing vaguely foreign bad guys. You know, the bad guys, Hans Gruber and his people, they set you up to think that they’re leftist revolutionaries.
TS: And apparently, Hans Gruber was one, at one point. They disavowed him, but he used to be like an actual terrorist.
CM: It was like the Baader-Meinhof Group, West German communists, but they had a fake name.
TS: But now, he’s gone rogue, so he’s just a thief.
CM: Right, just a criminal. And when he calls out these other revolutionaries, it kind of dismisses them. They’re all just thieves at heart. That’s the subtext.
TS: He can’t fight for a cause anymore, so he’s like, okay, well, if they don’t think I’m good enough for that, then screw it. I’m just gonna go for the money. And I’m gonna steal from the guy who’s got a whole lot of money. That’s gonna be my redemption. Since I can’t have the glory of saying that I helped change the world, I’m gonna get mine. I’m gonna sit on a beach and earn 20 percent interest. There are no values, you know, it’s just greed at that point. He even says so at the beginning. He talks about the Nakatomi group and says that they’re just these greedy people with all this money.
CM: But he’s greedy, too. The movie says, everybody is greedy, no one has ideology — but that’s an ideology in itself. And by the way, the Nakatomi corp. is explicitly a fossil fuel company. They’re drilling for oil in Indonesia.
TS: They have got those models of the drilling rigs and stuff. As a bad guy, the only thing he’s fighting for now is just an easy life, where John McClane has got everything to fight for. His wife is in there, and they put his kids on television. It really is that story of having principles and overcoming somebody with no principles. All that stuff and all the violence does make this a deeply conservative movie. You look at the way people think about the world and how things are black and white, and it’s all right there.
CM: Here’s the bad guys: Hans Gruber’s group, who are sellout leftist terrorist or whatever, and are now like super thieves. And then there is the, the rules-following LAPD guys.
TS: There’s the FBI following the FBI playbook, which leads to disaster and everybody gets killed.
CM: And finally, the worst of all, the news media.
TS: That’s us! [laugh]. Yeah, I have thoughts on that. Of course it’s a movie and I’m not gonna hold anybody to standards or whatever. But this guy, he’s getting ready to leave, it’s Christmas Eve and he’s gonna go to some restaurant with his wife or something. Then here’s his thing on the radio. He decides he’s gonna go get glory for himself and get this crew together, go over to Nakatomi Plaza and check it out. So as it’s going along now, that can happen. Something on the scanner, head out.
CM: That happens all the time. Not to me personally, but it happens.
TS: Right. But as it’s going on — and remember, this is the evening of Christmas Eve — the station has somehow gotten the author of a book on terrorism to come in on a moment’s notice and go on the air. So then, they figured out it was Hans Gruber, and somehow his group had issued this statement, they communicate somehow that they disavowed him. And they had a file photo of Hans Gruber somehow there at the station and put it all together in no time.
CM: While we were watching, you were like, “How did they put out statements that quick before Twitter?” They called Der Spiegel and said, “Yo, that’s not our dude.”
TS: When the TV station shows up, when the press shows up, the cops have the reaction that you would think they would. “Oh great, here comes the press.” You know, that’s what we think the cops do every single time the press is involved in anything. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But the press crossed the line right?
CM: When they dug it up and found out where McClane’s kids live and they wanted to put them on air. Right.
TS: They put them in danger and all that kind of stuff. Then it became okay to punch the guy in the face at the end.
CM: I thought about that too, which is something I probably wouldn’t have thought about years ago. That actor [William Atherton] is the EPA guy from Ghostbusters. He’s another person who made a career in the ’80s out of being ineffectual authority figures. He goes to the house where we’ve established that John and Holly’s kids are, and threatens to have the housekeeper deported, because he just racistly assumes she’s an illegal alien, and then says, manipulatively, that this is the last time these kids are ever going to be able to talk to their parent. And I was like, who the hell does that? It’s never occurred to me to do anything like that. You’ve done a lot of beat reporting. Have you ever done anything like that?
TS: Absolutely not. I mean, that’s not good professional ethics.
CM: I guess people do it?
TS: You know, it’s meant to be over the top. It’s set up in a way that this guy who he was really just trying to beat channel five, as he says in the movie. But it set up this kind of emotional pivot in the movie where it then became really personal. But I’ve never, never dreamed of going to anybody’s house like that.
CM: Alan Rickman!
TS: Yeah!
CM: How amazing is he?
TS: At the beginning of this, I said, “He’s trying to get Snape.” Of course, because I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. I’ve completely rethought Alan Rickman after this performance. He was incredible, such a great bad guy.
CM: You know, he is kind of a bad guy in Harry Potter, too.
TS: Yeah, but you love him.
CM: He steals every screen that he’s in.
TS: There was that scene where he’s off looking for the detonators, and then John catches him, so he pretends to be one of the hostages. He puts on that kind of fake American accent, which was great. Still sounds like Alan Rickman with an American accent, but John kind of falls for it just enough.
CM: That scene is so great. At that point, Rickman is playing Hans Gruber, who is playing what he thinks will be a believable accent to an American. You can see the wheels turning as he fakes his way through it. That’s what makes that scene work. It’s not the accent, it’s that you can see him improvising. And that is just a stunning, stunning piece of acting. He was always, low-key, the best thing in any movie he’s in. And by the way, Bruce Willis plays that scene really well, too. That’s also really hard, ’cause he’s kind of the straight guy, and you don’t know who’s fooling who.
TS: So good. And then the fall there at the end, from the top of the tower, that was iconic too. I think I’d seen that before somewhere also.
CM: That’s been copied a lot.
TS: We talked about this being a Christmas movie.
CM: That was my next question. People argue about that.
TS: Right. I think absolutely it is a Christmas movie. They set it at Christmas time. They’re having a Christmas party. And I love the way the music just kind of peppers in little references to Christmas carols here and there. There’s kind of an ominous “Jingle Bells.”
CM: At one point, they used jingle bells in the same rhythm as the Psycho theme. Jing Jing Jing Jing …
[Laughter]
CM: You know, I think this is a perfect movie, because everything works together. Everybody’s good in it. The screenplay is well structured. We were talking about the motivations of minor characters a minute ago. Well, it’s a credit to the screenwriting that you think that these people have motivations and you can identify them. Nowadays, a lot of times, I don’t even know what the motivation of the protagonist is.
TS: They are just out there wielding weapons for some reason, and you hope they turn out okay. And that guy they’re shooting is probably bad.
CM: All the action scenes in this, I was just noticing how good they are. And that is really difficult to do, to make action scenes that work. You have a sense of what the space is like. How does this guy relate to that guy? How far away are they? For example, when they shoot the glass.
TS: You know he’s barefoot.
CM: Exactly. You know he’s been barefoot from the beginning. They show you the glass, and then show you Hans Gruber having the idea to shoot the glass.
TS: Yeah. So you’ve already had the idea and it’s like, “Oh look at this guy. He knows what’s up.”
CM: Obviously, this movie inspired so many action movies. But today, it seems like nobody can do this kind of craftsmanship.
CM: So, bottom line.
TS: Bottom line is, I’m glad I’ve seen Die Hard.
CM: Would you recommend it to others?
TS: I would recommend it to others, just for a great action movie. Unplug your brain, go check it out.
There are, strictly speaking, no “off” years in politics. The conspiring, conferencing, conniving, and cajoling is always going on at some level. But, for one year out of every four, Shelby County takes a reprieve from electioneering as such — at least of the regularly scheduled kind.
2021 was such a year. After the “blue wave” county election of 2018, the Memphis city election of 2019, and the Covid-inflected presidential election year of 2020, the local electorate got to take a breather of sorts. As did the population at large, as vaccines emerged to hold off successive iterations of a truly stubborn — and seemingly intractable — coronavirus.
Early on, Tennesseans got to shelter in a cocoon of relative peace and quiet, remote from the turmoil of January 6th and the subsequent second impeachment of Donald Trump. Tennessee — almost boringly reliable from the Republican point of view — was not one of the states seriously afflicted with post-election GOP attempts to pass regressive “election integrity” bills.
The legislative fights to come largely involved the attempts by Republican Governor Bill Lee and his partymates in the General Assembly to restrain the more proactive anti-Covid efforts of health agencies in home-rule counties like Shelby and Davidson. Memphis state Senator Raumesh Akbari spoke for many when she condemned the “lax response” to the pandemic by Lee, whose interventions, she said, “started too late, ended too early, and did too little.”
After some early miscues in the county health department’s supervision of local vaccination, the City of Memphis took over responsibility for the effort.
Fights raged both statewide and locally over the right to prescribe public-health measures, with there being a correlation between self-described “conservatives” and opposition to mandates. In the end, the state legislature in special session would impose curbs on local initiatives, though the courts would preserve a measure of autonomy for school districts. The GOP supermajority had meanwhile eliminated curbs on gun carry, declared war on the wholly illusory menace of critical race theory, and extended partisan controls over state appeals courts.
Locally, the “Battle of Byhalia” was a grassroots rebellion, which saw local activists like youthful Justin Pearson unite with such celebrity politicians as former Vice President Al Gore to block the construction of a petroleum pipeline through a South Memphis neighborhood over the grounds of the Memphis water aquifer. A follow-up victory, in a long-running legal fight with Mississippi, was a federal court decision confirming Memphis’ sole ownership of the aquifer beneath its soil.
The courts were kept busy. With another election year just around the corner, a special judge lowered the boom on the lucrative practice of sample voting ballots, barring any further ones from dissembling as official party recommendations.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission and County Commission continued to disagree over the right type of new voting machines and were locked in litigation. And two state senators from Shelby County, Democrat Katrina Robinson and Republican Brian Kelsey, faced felony charges.
It was the year after the year of the big change, the year after the year we all stayed home, the year after the year the offices shut, the restaurants closed, the live music died, the planes stopped flying. It was the year after the last year of Trump. It was 2021.
It began with the most egregious assault on American democracy in our history: The January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol — planned and instigated by the former president of the United States with the assistance and support of numerous Republican flunkies and traitors. It was a pseudo-insurrection that drew thousands of deluded Americans to Washington, D.C., to act out Trump’s final fantasy — that he could overthrow the democratic process and remain president, despite losing the election by 7 million votes. The cultish “patriots” who bought into this lunacy included a planeload of wealthy Memphis Country Club types who, as of this writing, have remained officially unidentified — and out of jail. Maybe they just watched from the hotel lobby. Or went shopping. We may never know. Screw ’em.
As February came on, the first Covid vaccines were administered hereabouts. The state urged us to try the “Sign-Up Genius,” which sort of worked and sort of didn’t. There were long lines, short lines, last-minute cancellations, and sudden open cattle calls for shots. My daughter called me on February 2nd and said, “They’re giving the vax to whoever shows up at the Pipkin today. A bunch of people canceled. You should get on over there.”
An hour later, my wife and I pulled into that strange building on the Fairgrounds, lowered our windows, and got the jab. It felt like a whiff of freedom after a year of suppression and worry. It felt even better 28 days later, when we got the second dose. Vaxxed, baby!
March came and the Tigers missed the Big Dance. The Grizzlies made the play-in playoffs but it was soon over. No one seemed to care much. Maybe it was the shortened seasons, the missed games, the empty arenas, the sideline masks. The magic wasn’t there.
In April, Memphis International Airport (MEM) climbed back atop the rankings as the world’s busiest cargo airport for the first time since 2009. And Amazon announced it was increasing its presence in the Mid-South with two new facilities: a delivery station in North Memphis and a fulfillment center in Byhalia, Mississippi. Some good news at last.
In more good news, I retired as editor of the Flyer in May and set off on a road trip to the East to see distant family and some old friends. The talented Mr. Jesse Davis stepped in as Flyer editor and hasn’t missed a beat since. Thanks, pal.
As soon as I got back to town in June, inspectors discovered a crack in the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and shut it down. I don’t think there was a connection.
Freed from having to be the official voice of the Flyer, I began to write about whatever sparked my fancy: Brooks Museum statuary cleaners, the Waverly flood, the 1919 Elaine (Arkansas) Massacre, Midtown geckos, Donald Trump’s email grift, the latest zoo/Greensward spat, kayaking Nonconnah Creek. It’s been very liberating, and I’m grateful to be able to do it in semi-retirement. Or whatever this is.
I spent most of the summer putting together a collection of my past columns, travel articles, and features for a book, which the Flyer’s parent company, Contemporary Media, published in November. It’s called Everything That’s True, and it makes a great gift, I’m told. So go buy it. It’s at Novel, Burkes, and on the Memphis magazine Shopify site. All sales revenue goes to support the Flyer. End of commercial break.
Thankfully, the year ahead looms with some promise that life can return to normal. Yes, there’s a new Covid variant, but 75 percent of us are vaccinated now and there are medicines that will keep most folks out of the hospital, even if they catch it. Those lines at the Pipkin building hopefully will not reoccur — and the “year after the year” will remain behind us. Onward.
Here’s a roundup of your faithful Flyer music editor’s favorite Memphis music from the year that felt far too much like the year before.
Julien Baker
Little Oblivions (Matador)
Opening with the crass tones of a broken organ, this is an enervating shot across the bow from an artist typically associated with delicate guitar lines. Here, the production has widened. The constant is the hushed-to-frantic intimacy of her voice, and, as the album develops, she sings from darker, grittier depths than she’s ever plumbed before, propelled by a full-on rock band.
Cedric Burnside
I Be Trying (Single Lock)
With a new dryness and sparseness, Burnside has crafted a unique approach to the blues that sidesteps preconceived riffs or licks; even those you’ve heard take on a new urgency and gravitas. Made with only guitar, drums, the occasional light touch of a second guitar (including Luther Dickinson), or cello, it’s the hushed vocals that cut to one’s soul.
The City Champs
Luna ’68 (Big Legal Mess)
In which the instrumental boogaloo trio evokes the space-bedazzled sounds of yesteryear. In this group’s hands, even cymbal rolls and an organ can sound futuristic. Sitting comfortably in this minimalist mix is a new sound for the Champs: a synthesizer. Superbly composed like their earlier works, the grooves are peppered with stinging guitar and growling organ.
IMAKEMADBEATS
MAD Songs, Vol. 1 (Unapologetic)
The founder of Unapologetic gets personal: The beats are atmospheric, the chords are a little odd, the lyrics, whether MAD’s or his guests’, skew to the philosophical. MAD’s trademark slippery bass and beats in space underpin stellar guest artists, from deft raps by PreauXX, R.U.D.Y., Austyn Michael, and others, to silky melodies from Cameron Bethany and U’niQ.
John Paul Keith
The Rhythm of the City (Wild Honey)
“There’s little Easter eggs all over the record,” says Keith, meaning the hints of Memphis music history that litter the tracks. With Box Tops-like jet, stray Stax licks, electric sitar, or two saxes cut live, the sound of a live-tracked band really pays off with Keith’s one-take guitar playing, some of the finest of his career.
Elizabeth King
Living in the Last Days (Bible & Tire Recording Co.)
King’s voice is as indomitable as a mountain, as many have known for decades. Bible & Tire released King’s tracks from the ’70s in 2019, but label owner Bruce Watson wanted to capture her voice now. The band, relative youngsters compared to King, evokes classic gospel, and it gives her work a unique stamp in a genre now deeply shaped by jazz fusion and funk.
Don Lifted
325i (Fat Possum)
Don Lifted’s music has always been rooted in hip hop’s rhythmic rhyming, while including elements of shoegaze rock and even smooth R&B. His third album ramps up the artist’s sonic craftsmanship, with lyrics mixing the dread of quarantine with the determination to unpack one’s self. This solidifies the artist’s reputation as a performer with staying power, with a surer sense of sonic hooks than ever.
Loveland Duren
Any Such Thing (Edgewood Recordings)
The duo’s third album is the Platonic ideal of pop. Exquisite arrangements for the material include strings, French horn, flute, and a perfectly Memphian horn section. And while there are some flourishes of classic rock guitar on the stompers, the album as a whole is a keyboard-lover’s dream. But the heart of this album is the songwriting, with lyrics and melodies you can chew on for years.
MonoNeon
Supermane (self-released)
Known as a bass virtuoso, this album presents the songwriter’s most focused material ever. The result is his idiosyncratic, yet more disciplined, take on the classic early George Clinton sound. Still, he makes it his own with the strongest singing of his career. “Supermane,” the song, also features the sax playing of Kirk Whalum. Its classic gospel feel is made more universal by MonoNeon’s pop instincts.
Young Dolph
Paper Route Illuminati (Paper Route Empire)
The artist/label svengali’s horrific murder last month robbed us of future creations, but his swan song captures his spirit. “My office is a traphouse in South Memphis” tells you where his heart lived, as he and featured artists (including Gucci Mane) drop witty boasts of money and women. When he spits, “Have you ever seen a dead body?” a chill comes over the album, but when he raps, “I go so hard, make ’em hate me, my whole life a movie — HD,” it’s pure truth.
Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson in the electrifying Summer of Soul
This year was an up-and-down time for film, as audiences cautiously returned to theaters. But even if box office returns were erratic and often disappointing, quality-wise, there was more greatness than could be contained in a top 10 list. Since I hate ranking, here are my personal awards for movie excellence in a weird year.
Vicky Kreips and Gael García Bernal aging on the beach in Old.
Worst Picture: Old
“There’s this beach, see, and it makes you old.”
“That sounds great, M. Night Shyamalan! You’re a genius!”
Annabelle Wallace wonders what it’s all about in Malignant.
Dishonorable Mention:Malignant
WTF was that about?
Bryce Christian Thompson stars as Shah in “The Devil Will Run.”
Best Memphis Film:“The Devil Will Run”
Director Noah Glenn’s collaboration with Unapologetic mastermind IMAKEMADBEATS produced this funny and moving memory of childhood magic. Glenn topped one of the strongest collections of Hometowner short films in Indie Memphis history.
“Chocolate Galaxy”
Honorable Mention:“Chocolate Galaxy”
An Afrofuturist hip hop opera made on a shoestring budget, this 20-minute film features eye-popping visuals and banging tunes.
Puppet Annette
Best Performance by a Nonhuman: Puppet Annette
This coveted award goes to Annette, Leos Carax’s gonzo musical collaboration with Sparks, which used a puppet to represent its namesake character, the neglected child of Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, because they couldn’t find a newborn who could sing.
Dev Patel as Sir Gawain in The Green Knight.
Medievalist:The Green Knight
To create one of the strangest films of 2021, all director David Lowery had to do was stick to the legend of Sir Gawain’s confrontation with a mysterious Christmas visitor to King Arthur’s court. Driven by Dev Patel’s pitch perfect performance, The Green Knight felt both completely surreal and strangely familiar.
Cryptozoo is not about Bitcoin.
Best Animation:Cryptozoo
Annette and The Green Knight were weird, but the year’s weirdest film was Dash Shaw’s exceedingly strange magnum opus. Think Jurassic Park, only instead of CGI dinosaurs it’s Sasquatch and unicorns drawn like a high schooler’s notebook doodles come to life.
Bad robot — director Michael Rianda’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines finds one family squaring off against the techno-pocalypse.
Honorable Mention: The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Gravity Falls’ Mike Rianda pulls off the difficult assignment of making an animated film that appeals to both kids and adults with this cautionary tale of the connected age.
Anna Cobb in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
Best Performance:(tie) Kristen Stewart,Spencer; and Anna Cobb,We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
Both Stewart and Cobb played women trapped in nightmarish situations, trying to hold onto their sanity while watching their worlds crumble around them. For Stewart, it was Princess Diana’s last Christmas with the queen. For Cobb, it’s a teenager succumbing to an internet curse. The success of both pictures hinges on their central performances, but the difference is that Stewart’s one of the world’s highest paid actresses, and this is Cobb’s first time on camera.
Wright started the year with his first documentary, The Sparks Brothers, an obsessive ode to your favorite band’s favorite band. Sparks’ story is so strange and funny, and Wright’s style so manic and distinctive, that many viewers were surprised to learn it wasn’t a mockumentary. Then, he dropped Last Night in Soho, a humdinger of a Hitchcockian horror mystery which evoked the swinging London of the 1960s. Wright continues to deliver the most fun you can have in a multiplex.
Ariana DeBose as Anita in West Side Story.
Best Director: Steven Spielberg, West Side Story
I feel like this Spielberg kid’s got potential. Hollywood’s wunderkind is now an elder statesman, but his adaptation of the Broadway classic proves he’s still got it. With unmatched virtuosity, he brings Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s songs to life and updates the story’s sensibilities for the 21st century. West Side Story stands among the master’s greatest work.
Sly Stone performing at the Harlem Cultural Festival in Summer of Soul.
Best Documentary: Summer of Soul
The most transcendent on-screen moment of 2021 actually happened in 1969, when Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson duetted “Precious Lord” at the Harlem Cultural Festival. Questlove’s directorial debut gave the long-lost footage of the show the reverent treatment it deserves. Thanks to the indelible performances by the cream of Black musical talent, Summer of Soul was as electrifying as any Marvel super-fest.
Riley Keough and Taylour Page are strippers on a Tampa tear in Zola.
Best Picture:Zola
I can hear you now: “You’re telling me the best picture of 2021 was based on a Twitter thread by a part-time stripper from Detroit?” Hey, I’m as surprised as you are. But director Janicza Bravo turned a raw story of a road trip gone wrong into a noir-tinged shaggy-dog story of petty crime and unjust deserts. The ensemble cast of Taylour Paige, Nicholas Braun, Colman Domingo, and particularly Riley Keough is by far the year’s best, and Bravo shoots their ill-fated foray into the wilds of Tampa, Florida, like she’s Kubrick lensing A Clockwork Orange. Funny, self-aware, and unbearably tense, Zola is a masterpiece that deserves a bigger audience.
An interesting aspect of the 2021 Memphis food scene was the number of heavy hitters making changes to their restaurants.
Kelly English decided to move his popular Restaurant Iris to the space previously occupied by The Grove Grill in Laurelwood. In June, English said in a Flyer interview that the new location is a much bigger space. “The dining room in Laurelwood is bigger than the entire property Iris is on,” he said.
He opened Pantà in Iris’ location at 2146 Monroe Avenue in October. English told the Flyer he went with a Catalonian concept. It was something he wanted to do since he took a six-month trip in his early twenties to Barcelona. “I really do love this type of food and the way they live,” he said. “And what we want is to be known as a later-night establishment.”
Explaining the name, English said, “Pantà is the Catalonian word for ‘swamp,’ which is reflected in the mural around the bar. Growing up in Louisiana, swamps played a big part of my youth. Mostly my mom trying to keep me out of them.”
English plans to open the new Iris at 4550 Poplar Avenue “right around Easter. We are thrilled to see that come together.”
Chef Jason Severs and his wife Rebecca moved Bari Ristorante e Enoteca from its old location in Cooper-Young to 524 South Cooper. The new location, which opened in August, is more than 300 square feet bigger. They can still seat 40 people in the dining room, but they also can seat 40 more outside on the patio and more people at the bar in the front of the restaurant.
The new restaurant features wide, open spaces as opposed to the old restaurant, which, Jason said in a Flyer interview, was “a bunch of different, small rooms.” And Rebecca said, “You couldn’t expand there.”
The food is the same as what they served at the old location, Jason said. “Southeastern Italian. Lots of fresh vegetables. From the earth. All local when we can.”
Chefs Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman, who own several restaurants, reopened their popular Hog & Hominy at 707 West Brookhaven Circle after a fire in January 2020. The restaurant was rebuilt. It opened in November.
In a Flyer interview, general manager Evan Potts said the new restaurant is about twice as large. They expanded it as far as it would go in all directions.
Hudman said he told his wife how the restaurant now has an “old Art Deco diner feel.” That rings true, from its silver metal lettered sign out front to the fluted light fixtures in the dining room and the general vibe.
They are serving Neapolitan-inspired pizzas and “fun takes on traditional Italian fare,” Potts said. And their craft cocktails, which the establishment is known for.
Finally, it’s not a restaurant per se, but people have been known to eat inside. Or maybe just pop a few cashews in their mouth. The Peanut Shoppe is closing at the end of the year at its old location at 24 South Main Street, where it has stood since — co-owner Rida AbuZaineh believes — 1951, and moving to its new location at 121 South Main.
AbuZaineh told the Flyer they weren’t informed until a few months before that the building where his shop is now located was going to be sold. It will be turned into apartments and condos, he said.
The new location is similar to the current location. “The new one is rectangular shape. This one is rectangular shape but so narrow. The width is the difference … three times the width of this narrow store.”
AbuZaineh said he will be open “through Christmas Eve. It’s an excellent day if it falls on the weekend like it does this year. We are always the last people to leave the area.”
Which means Santa will have plenty of time to stock up on nuts and candy to fill all those stockings.
Joe Biden’s presidency — by all accounts — is on a ventilator right now, and many people want his administration to asphyxiate. He could save himself, and the country, by leading us toward an innovative reform of our immigration system.
Our current system is based on an outdated, anachronistic visa system that rewards “skills” deemed necessary for the development of the United States economy and society. Specialized engineers from Slovakia, research scientists from South Africa, and concert pianists from Paraguay have been able to visit here, stay here, and thrive. But the vast majority of the world’s population is “unskilled” and thus, the contemporary conundrum.
We can keep the current system intact and add in an “Americas exception,” which would acknowledge three realities. First, the USA shares a continent with Canada, Mexico, and seven nations of Central America. Second, those nations, with the exception of Canada, are significantly poorer, in real economic terms, than the USA. Third, we’ve intervened in virtually all of the nations mentioned above, mostly in a hostile, negative, and menacing military manner. I would extend my plan of prioritizing visas for people of the Americas to the Caribbean nations, especially Haiti and the Dominican Republic
Mexico is the first obvious nation to consider. About 44 percent of the population of 120 million are classified as poor. We share a 2,000-mile border with Mexico, a border that was artificially created in 1848 when the U.S. took 51 percent of Mexico’s territory in a war designed to … take Mexico’s territory. We wanted the land to extend cotton production into Texas and further west, and we wanted to extend our national border to the Pacific. We also wanted to extend slavery.
How have we responded to this history? By building a wall and insulting the people who live in Mexico, referring to them as “rapists and drug dealers.” The vast majority of Mexicans who come to the USA want to work here, send money back to loved ones in Mexico, and improve their standard of living. Let’s make it easier for them to come here: We offer very few legal visas to unskilled workers — maybe 5,000 for the entire world. We could change this by simply prioritizing Mexico and recognizing our historic ties to the country and our 19th century “grand theft (half) nation.”
Then there’s Guatemala. A fascinating new historical novel (Harsh Times) by the Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa offers an unpleasant appraisal of the U.S. role in deposing the legitimately elected president there in 1954. Vargas Llosa — hardly a leftist — reminds us that the USA stalled a legitimate attempt at socioeconomic reform in the small Central American nation while supporting some of the most repressive, reprehensible people in the region. The legacy of our actions? Sadness, civil war, authoritarianism, and about 300,000 deaths from 1960 to the mid-1990s when peace accords were finally signed there. And wide-scale misery: About 54 percent of Guatemalans live in poverty.
We really do have an obligation to help the people of these places and we’ve certainly helped in many ways: Our nation has been generous with aid and support after natural disasters, we’ve offered people the opportunity to stay in the USA through TPS — “Temporary Protected Status” — designed for folks from countries ravaged by natural disasters and/or really absurd political policies (Haiti, Nicaragua, to name two). We also, in 2012, implemented a policy via presidential executive action called DACA, which protects kids who have come to the United States as infants with their parents. TPS and DACA are both “temporary” fixes — TPS is designated at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Both programs were attacked by a hostile Trump administration, both saved by the U.S. judiciary system.
We need permanent solutions to support immigrants — we should focus on supporting people who want to come here, work here, and help our economy and society. We have a special obligation to our neighbors to the south.
Without immigrants, we become Italy — an aging population, politically motivated low levels of immigration, escalating healthcare costs, followed by endless economic stagnation. The Italians, of course, did give us Michelangelo (we responded by gifting the world … Andy Warhol). But to avoid the socioeconomic Italianization of America, we have to bring in immigrants who want to work here, live here, and continue building our economy and society. Let’s truthfully study our history. Let’s work in collaboration with our neighbors to the south and break out of this politically motivated, unproductive, and unkind immigration impasse that’s distorting our economy and just might, sadly, suffocate the Biden administration.
