Author: Chris Herrington

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Music Music Features

SOUND ADVICE

One of the most enjoyable and relaxing days of live music every year has to be the Double Decker Arts Festival in Oxford, Mississippi. A free, all-day festival of music, food, and arts and crafts centered on Oxford’s lovely town square, the Double Decker is a blast and will happen again this Saturday, April 28th.

Headlining the roots-music-heavy bill this year is British folk-rock legend Richard Thompson, who will be closing the festival with a solo acoustic set. An accomplished songwriter and extraordinary guitarist, Thompson has been a force since the late ’60s, when he was a founding member of Fairport Convention, sort of the British Byrds. Thompson went solo in the early ’70s and has been making well-regarded solo records ever since, with 1999’s Mock Tudor being the most recent. Arguably, though, Thompson’s greatest contribution to rock history was the music he made with his ex-wife, Linda Thompson, including two legitimate classics, 1974’s I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight and 1982’s devastating, end-of-a-marriage song cycle, Shoot Out the Lights.

But Thompson isn’t the only reason to head to Oxford this weekend. The rest of the Double Decker lineup is fairly predictable but still impressive, with North Mississippi stalwarts Blue Mountain, The North Mississippi Allstars, and ex-Neckbones front man Tyler Keith leading the way. Louisiana will also make its presence felt in the form of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Cajun institution The Hackberry Ramblers, and various members of the roots-rock supergroup the Continental Drifters — Peter Holsapple playing along with singer-songwriter Syd Straw and Drifters Susan Cowsill and Vicki Peterson performing as The Psycho Sisters.

— Chris Herrington

You must give in to my hypnotic suggestion and go see The Reigning Sound at the Hi-Tone Café on Saturday, April 28th. This band is, without a doubt, the best new band to emerge in Memphis in more years than I can count. Greg Oblivian, the frenzied singer and guitarist for both the Oblivians and the Compulsive Gamblers, fronts this garage-influenced country-soul outfit which also boasts Alex Green, a founding member of Big Ass Truck, on keys and rhythm guitar; Greg Robertson, who produced the compilation Memphis in the Meantime, on drums; and relative newcomer to the Memphis scene Jeremy Scott, from the New Jersey band Maximum Jack, on bass. Their sound is almost impossible to describe, but not because it is unusual in any way. It’s difficult to describe because it is such a potent combination of so many relatively ordinary styles. Imagine a post-punk version of the Byrds and you’ll maybe get some idea of what it is that the Reigning Sound does so very well. While Greg Oblivian’s previous projects have been volatile homages to ’50s and ’60s pop filtered through two decades of punk, the Reigning Sound gives voice to his, until now, less obvious inspiration — folk rock. He’s perhaps the only performer in Memphis who is every bit as convincing singing sweetly sincere ballads as he is screaming, “I’m not a sicko/there’s a plate in my head.” If you have even the slightest interest in contemporary Memphis music, you simply must see these guys.

— Chris Davis

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Music Music Features

Still Going Strong

It was rock’s Reformation. That’s what critic Eric Weisbard claims about punk in the May issue of Spin, a well-done special issue on “25 Years of Punk” that has gained poignancy after the death last weekend of cover subject Joey Ramone. The issue was produced along with a documentary — All Access: 25 Years of Punk — which will debut this week on VH1, Thursday, April 19th, at 9 p.m.

Who’d have thought back when the Ramones were chanting about “beating on the brat” and Johnny Rotten was proclaiming “no future” that punk would one day be respectable enough to have its history recounted in a glossy national magazine and be celebrated by a television network once the adult contemporary answer to MTV? But this post-alternative pop climate — where decidedly non-punk genres like metal and teen pop and jam-rock are ascendant — is an ideal time to gauge the continuing vitality of a form (a philosophy? a spirit?) that, in Weisbard’s words, changed rock-and-roll from a fact to a question.

Weisbard’s first-rate essay makes some compelling claims for the music. Weisbard writes about the importance of preserving the parallel music-biz network that punk fostered — that loose affiliation of record stores, indie labels, alternative media outlets, clubs, and (college and public) radio stations that cultivated most of the best rock music of the last decade, and I couldn’t agree more. But the most interesting claim Weisbard makes is this: “For rockers, punk touches every decision a musician now makes, because to play contemporary rock without punk feeling has become as musically bankrupt as for a jazz musician to play without blues feeling. Punk is the bedrock you leap up from.”

This is a rather contentious statement, and while I believe there are plenty of exceptions, I still think there’s a lot of truth here. In fact, that statement hints at the deeper element of punk’s impact that Weisbard doesn’t even mention, perhaps because he’s such an alt-bred critic that he takes it for granted and assumes Spin‘s readership does as well. But it’s worth noting nonetheless: Most people who came of musical age prior to the late ’70s don’t really get this and, as hard as it is to fathom, a lot of people who came of musical age later don’t either, but the contemporary revolutions of punk and hip hop in the late ’70s were every bit as important as the rock-and-roll and soul music revolutions of the mid-’50s. Just as most of the vital pop music of the ’60s and ’70s was born out of what Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry and Ray Charles did in the ’50s, most of the vital pop of the last 20 years was informed by punk and hip hop. Older forms endure, of course: Just as great jazz and blues and country records continued to be made after the birth of rock and soul, great “classic” rock records have continued to be made after punk and hip hop. But make no mistake. It is punk and hip hop that have most clearly defined who we are for the last two decades.

And, on the punk side of the equation, no record right now testifies to that enduring impact as much as the eponymous debut album from Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards. Alternating radical anthems with first-person tales of growing up punk in the late ’70s and ’80s, Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards might as well be subtitled “25 Years of Punk.”

Frederiksen is a guitarist/singer for Rancid, and since this “side project” was produced by Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong and all the originals were co-written by Frederiksen and Armstrong, it might as well be a new Rancid record. Taken as such, it’s better than the band’s last offering, the too-hard-edged 2000 Rancid.

Weisbard writes that punk is now “a way of life for some, a caricature to most others, and a surprisingly enduring pop force regardless.” He may as well be writing about Rancid specifically rather than punk generally. With the band’s stereotypical Mohawks-and-tattoos look and retro Clash-like sound, Rancid aren’t a particularly hip taste, but they’ve managed to develop into a surprisingly enduring pop force regardless, turning themselves into one of the best rock-and-roll bands of the last half-decade.

If Rancid’s criminally neglected 1998 opus, Life Won’t Wait, was, as one critic colleague insisted, the most ambitious punk record since the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, then this shorter, sharper shock of a record might be the most warmly nostalgic punk record since Double Nickels on the Dime. With a more limber, spacious, and accessible sound than the last Rancid record, the best songs on Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards bring out Rancid’s alway-present Springsteenian sense of rock-and-roll grandeur. With coming-of-age tales like “Six Foot Five,” “Campbell, CA,” and especially the ferocious take on Billy Bragg’s “To Have and Have Not,” the band has produced songs almost as moving as classics like the Clash’s “Stay Free,” the Minutemen’s “History Lesson, Pt. II,” and um Springsteen’s “No Surrender”? As Frederiksen takes a look back at his own 25 years-plus of punk, he makes it sound like a life well-lived.

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

music notes

by CHRIS HERRINGTON

McCarthy Screening/New Film Series

Local exploitation film auteur John Michael McCarthy will be making an in-store appearance at Black Lodge Video on Saturday, April 21st. The store will be screening two of his works — the recent Superstarlet A.D. and another of the filmmaker’s choosing — and McCarthy will be discussing his work. McCarthy’s appearance will coincide with the store’s unveiling of a special section devoted to local filmmakers. The event is scheduled for 9 p.m.

In related news, Black Lodge has also struck an agreement with downtown rock club Last Place on Earth to host cult film screenings on Wednesday nights. The first screening is tentatively scheduled for April 25th and according to Black Lodge co-owner Matthew Martin will likely feature a double bill of the animated classic Fritz the Cat and recent art-house hit Requiem for a Dream. Admission to screenings will be free.

Earth Day Lineup

The 14th annual Overton Park Earth Day celebration happens this weekend, with 16 bands and assorted speakers and activities spread out over Saturday, April 21st, and Sunday, April 22nd. Saturday’s schedule runs from noon to 10:30 p.m. and Sunday’s runs from 2 to 10 p.m. The band schedule is as follows. Saturday: Son of Soil, Blue Jazz, Jazz Midgets, Yard Sale, Seven $ Sox, the Gabe and Amy Show, Native Son, Instant Corndog, and the Joint Chiefs. Sunday: Phil and T., Healing Drum, CYC, Accidental Mersh, Speakeasy, FreeWorld, and Yamagata. Admission is free. For more information call 726-1473.

The King Is Back

B.B. King makes a rare appearance at his eponymous club on Beale Street this week. The Beale Street Blues Boy will play four shows, performing sets at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m., respectively, on Monday, April 23rd, and Tuesday, April 24th. General-admission tickets are $35 with a $100 price tag for reserved seating and dinner.

New Releases

Significant new records expected to hit the racks this week:

Elvis Costello — The Very Best of (Rhino)

Creeper Lagoon — Take Back the Universe (DreamWorks)

Emmylou Harris — Anthology: The Warner/Reprise Years (Rhino)

Gram Parsons — Sacred Hearts and Fallen Angels: The Gram Parsons Anthology (Rhino)

Tom Russell — Borderland (HMG)

Unwound — Leaves Turn Inside You (Kill Rock Stars)

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Music Music Features

Sound Advice

Best bet this week has to be an intriguing night of hip-hop DJs at Young Avenue Deli on Friday, April 20th. Local Memphix Records and the Bay Area’s Stones Throw Records are coming together for the first of what Memphix says will be other funk and hip-hop shows in town. Memphix DJs Chase and Red-Eye Jedi will be spinning. Stones Throw will be represented by Miles Tackett, who leads the highly regarded, nine-piece Los Angeles hip-hop and funk band the Breakestra, and Egon, a DJ with Nashville roots who currently manages the label. Stones Throw, which released last year’s underground cult fave The Unseen by rapper Quasimoto, is a label founded by Bay Area DJ Peanut Butter Wolf.

Singer-songwriter Mark Selby has penned hit songs for country stars the Dixie Chicks, Wynonna, and Trisha Yearwood, but as a solo performer he goes for more of a blues-rock sound. The Nashville-based Selby has been through town a lot lately, trying to build support for his recent solo debut, More Storms Comin’. He’ll be at Newby’s on Friday, April 20th, with the Zach Myers Band, giving fans of the genre two versions of blues-rock: one centered on songs (Selby) and one centered on flashy guitar (Myers). — Chris Herrington

One of these things just doesn’t belong here; one of these things just isn’t the same. First, we have Memphis’ own punk-a-blues band (with occasional hip-hop flavoring) The Porch Ghouls. Next, we have Little Rock’s Go Fast, a band that takes loud, scorching Southern rock to new extremes (and does a mighty fine cover of Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down” to boot). For raw redneck power filtered through a Fu Manchu, rendered totally shirtless, and fueled by a mighty beer gut, this band is hard, nay, impossible to top. Lastly, we have Syrup, a group of giant Floridians (each well over 6 feet tall) who might actually be able to make the boys of Go Fast look like a bunch of ukulele-picking sissies. These guys take scorching ’70s-style rock to new and sometimes quite unexpected extremes. Rumor has it that it was their performance that prompted the Subteens Mark Akin to disrobe at a recent show — so as not to disappear entirely after Syrup tore the house down. To be perfectly frank, I’ve no idea what the Porch Ghouls are doing on this bill. Actually, I do: The Ghouls’ El Dorado Del Rey cut his teeth in the same Florida scene as Syrup, so they’re buds, but still, they might just get blown off the stage. Then again, when a band that’s as much fun as the Porch Ghouls has the potential of being blown off the stage, you know you are in for one hell of a fine show. Check it out at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, April 21st.

And, of course, Earth Day is this week and there is no better way to celebrate that peculiar pot-party-cum-holiday than with the red-eyed Joint Chiefs, who’ll be bustin’ out all the dope-rock at the Map Room on Friday, April 20th. Revel to “Bong Queen”; rejoice to “Superdragon 69”; get lost in “Mr. Freedom”; and remember, it’s “Gas, Grass, or Ass,” because nobody rides for free.

— Chris Davis

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Music Music Features

Choose Ani

So, who’s your pick? That dude from Cypress Hill or Chuck D.? The Ruler of the Funky Buddha or The Mouth That Roared? I’m talking about who the new lead singer for Rage Against the Machine should be, of course. The highest-profile radical rock band in the land needs a new mouthpiece, and those seem to be the prime names being bandied about. I wish I could say I’m surprised that no woman’s name has come up, though it’d be a much more radical move to let a femme voice (and perspective) harness the phallic power of Tom Morello’s axe than another Boy Acting Serious and Important. Like Public Enemy before them and like many other great agit-rock acts, Rage’s rage seemed as much about macho posturing as inspiring a livable revolution, and incorporating a little girlie action into their Godzilla-like roar might be a refreshing new direction. All of which is a roundabout way of offering my own suggestion for a new lead singer: Ani Difranco!

Why not? Difranco could use the commercial boost after watching her cult diminish over the last few years, and Rage could use someone with the ability to connect their political sloganeering (and the power of their Molotov-cocktail music) to the physical and emotional realities of everyday life. Sounds like a match to me.

For those outside her core demographic — (very) young, smart, left-leaning (white) women — Difranco can be an acquired taste. After dismissing her for years, like so many others have, as a strident feminist folkie (and “folkie” is the bad word here, not “feminist”), Difranco finally won me over in 1998, when I stumbled onto “Fuel,” a cut from her Little Plastic Castles album. Righteous and caustic, funny and quirky, down-to-earth but with an unexpectedly visionary twist, “Fuel” still sounds like the “protest” song of the decade to me. The song begins with Difranco walking by a Manhattan construction site where a slave cemetery has just been found (“May their souls rest easy now that lynching is illegal/and we’ve moved on to the electric chair”), a sight that triggers a personalized, stream-of-consciousness State of the Union address that encompasses everything from bankrupt politics to crass corporate culture to our isolated citizenry — all conveyed in a thrillingly conversational, everygirl voice. Then Difranco snaps back to real time, still standing over the unearthed cemetery, with a desire to dig even deeper: “down beneath the impossible pain of our history/beneath the unknown bones/and the bedrock of the mystery” to a place where “there’s a fire just waiting for fuel.” Morello’s quicksilver guitar could be the sonic match needed to ignite the blaze.

Okay — time to cut the crap. Won’t happen, right? Rage’s sound is too monolithic to make room for someone whose rhythms and desires seem so deeply personal. Besides, married and past 30, Difranco’s radicalism knows too many shades of grey to embrace the reckless abandon of Rage’s revolution.

The political genius of Difranco’s art is her ability to demonstrate, without ever seeming too willful, how an ethical outlook and subsequent emotional responses can inform how you relate to a lover and a friend as much as it informs how you relate to your country. With the new, two-disc, two-hour torrent of images and ideas, Revelling/Reckoning — essentially her marriage album — Difranco makes this connection plainer than ever. What Difranco has done in the process — perhaps unintentionally — is leave her kids’ cult behind and craft a great adult pop album — a hard thing to do in a genre clogged with the dispiriting self-regard of people like Sting and Don Henley.

The two records have distinct personalities: Revelling boasts fuller arrangements, making the most of Difranco’s unique jazz/funk-folk. Reckoning is more intimate and introspective, boasting a more captivating group of songs. Each record lives up to its title. Revelling starts off, on “Ain’t That The Way,” with Maceo Parker background vocals and Difranco scrunching up her voice like the “Left Eye” Lopes of funk-folk. The message: “Love makes me feel so dumb.” Difranco restates this theme of romantic happiness a bit more slyly on “Marrow”: “I’m a good kisser/and you’re a fast learner/and that kind of thing could float us/for a pretty long time.”

But Reckoning is the real keeper, with “Your Next Bold Move” starting with this: “Coming of age during the plague/of Reagan and Bush/watching capitalism gun down democracy/it had this funny effect on me.” It’s a defeat song, chastising the ineffectualness of a “left wing that was broken long ago,” but what makes it remarkable is how effortlessly the song’s emotion segues into the more personal skepticism of the following marriage songs, “Reckoning” and “So What.” And so it is with the whole of the record, as the political defiance of a song like “Subdivision” (“White people are so scared of black people/they bulldoze out to the country/and put up houses on little loop-dee-loop streets/while America gets its heart cut right out of its chest”) mingles easily with the romantic travails of a song like “Sick of Me” (“The first person in your life/to ever really matter/is saying the last thing/that you want to hear”), making it all sound like part of the same struggle.

So while the job might sound tempting, Difranco probably won’t be too concerned if Rage’s invite never arrives. Judging from Revelling/Reckoning, she’s got more serious battles to wage.

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

Music Notes

by CHRIS HERRINGTON

The Premier Player Awards, held at The Pyramid Thursday, April 5th, may have been the site of a New Orleans invasion, but Memphis artists still stole the show. This annual awards ceremony, sponsored by the local chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, is essentially the local Grammys, and this year famed New Orleans funk band the Meters took home the Governors Award, the Premier Player’s highest honor. Three-fourths of the original Meters lineup (drummer Joseph Modeliste was a no-show) closed the show with a half-hour greatest-hits set.

The Meters minus one were fine. I may have gotten more of a charge from staying home with my Wild Tchoupitoulas record, but The Meters were still much better than younger New Orleans groove bands Galactic and Astral Project on a night when five of 14 performers fell loosely into the “jam-rock” category, encompassing the good (Meters, North Mississippi Allstars), the so-so (FreeWorld, Galactic), and the so, so bad (the tepid noodle-jazz of Astral Project).

The Meters may have walked away with the show’s biggest honor, but the night really belonged to locals the North Mississippi Allstars and fast-rising Cory Branan. The Allstars took home their second straight award for Best Band and also picked up the Outstanding Achievement Award, besting competition like platinum-selling Three 6 Mafia and hot producer Paul Ebersold for the award that band patriarch Jim Dickinson won last year.

Singer-songwriter Branan won the Phillips Newcomer Award and seemed genuinely surprised, explaining, “I don’t even have a record out,” but thanking voters for keeping their ears to the ground. Branan, who received fervent applause whenever his name came up, also gave arguably the night’s best performance with a typically edgy and heartfelt reading of his song “Tame” during a songwriter’s showcase with Nancy Apple and Keith Sykes.

In all, 21 awards were given, with Steve Potts (drums/percussion), Jim Spake (woodwinds), and Jackie Johnson (female vocalist) joining the Allstars as repeat winners.

The show opened with a “Mardi Gras parade” led by eclectic Best Band nominee FreeWorld and spiked by cameos from Jackie Johnson and last year’s rap winner Lois Lane. Performances from Best Female Vocalist nominees were among the show’s strongest segments. Ruby Wilson delivered a blistering rendition of the Etta James standard “At Last,” with sax man Jim Spake, fresh from winning his eighth woodwinds award in the program’s 16 years, getting a nice showcase. And female vocalist winner Johnson joined nominee Susan Marshall-Powell for a powerful run-through of William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water” and a gospel number.

Spake’s brief acceptance speech, in which he issued a casual plea for voters to check out a wider range of local music, was one of the few interesting thank-yous of the night. Gaffe of the night award has to go to host Larry Raspberry, who revealed himself to be probably the only person left in Memphis who hasn’t seen The Poor & Hungry when he mistakenly said the film was a documentary while introducing director and Best Band Award presenter Craig Brewer.

The most decorum-free performances of the night came from a couple of Best Band nominees and likely sources: Big Ass Truck, a club band that’s been around so long now they’re probably underrated, were a highlight, dedicating a performance spiked by Steve Selvidge’s animated guitar to late local musician Craig Shindler. And Lucero gave the most out-of-place and, consequently, the most interesting performance of the night with a willfully perverse reading of their slow, loud, and mean live staple “No Roses, No More.” Technical problems dulled the performance’s force, though, and it was hard to tell if the deliberate change of pace won them new fans or drove potential converts away.

This year’s winners were: Harmonica: Blind Mississippi Morris; Woodwinds: Jim Spake; Brass: Scott Thompson; Guitar: Preston Shannon; Strings: Susanna Perry Gilmore; Live DJ/Turntable Artist: Michael “Boogaloo” Boyer; Rappers: Three 6 Mafia; Drums/Percussion: Steve Potts; Bass: Dave Smith; Keyboards: Tony Thomas and Charlie Wood; Female Vocalist: Jackie Johnson; Male Vocalist: Jimmy Davis; Choir: O’Landa Draper’s Associates; Teacher: Jackie Thomas; Engineer: William Brown; Producer: Paul Ebersold; Newcomer/Phillips Award: Cory Branan; Community Service/John Tigrett Award: WEVL FM-90; Outstanding Achievement: North Mississippi Allstars; Songwriter: Kevin Paige; Band: North Mississippi Allstars.

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Music Music Features

Sound Advice

“Have you heard about the roll The Subteens are on?” I was asked at the Premier Player Awards. I had. Go-go dancers. Nudity. Drunken debauchery. So off I went to a sushi bar (!) in Oxford, Mississippi (!!), two nights later where the Subteens were capping a MADJACK Records showcase. No go-go dancers, unfortunately. But what I did see was one of the best (if not the best) punk-pop bands in town having gotten a little bit better than any other time I’ve seen them, with a second guitar player a nice addition to the mix. I saw a healthy crowd even more excited for them than they had been for Lucero, or the Pawtuckets, or Cory Branan. Have you heard about the roll the Subteens are on? See for yourself when they join Wesley Willis (see below) at Last Place on Earth on Thursday, April 12th. It doesn’t seem quite right to send you out on a Friday the 13th with nothing to do, so how about Earnestine and Hazel’s, which boasts the promising triple bill of American Deathray, Palindrome, and The Knaughty Knights?

— Chris Herrington

Wesley Willis is 6’5″ and 300-plus pounds of paranoid schizophrenic. He spent a great deal of his life homeless on the streets of Chicago where he played, well, schizophrenic songs on his keyboard for, and sold his undeniably cool line drawings to, whoever might be passing by. Now he has 20-odd albums and probably 500 songs to his credit. It’s an amazing story. On the other hand, while Wesley’s songs can be amusing, his backing band, the Fiasco, isn’t particularly interesting. It’s all sloppy, medium-energy thrash, but Wesley’s naive, funny, and often twisted lyrics make it all seem a whole lot better than it really is. Too bad the atmosphere of a Wesley Willis show is more like a freak show than a concert, because I’ve got a soft spot for lyrics like, “This beast killed as many as 100,000 people/Its wings can flap like a bird/It can break a glass/It can also stab you in the ass/The chicken cow/The chicken cow/The chicken cow/The chicken cow” and “Before I got fat I was slim/That was this time when I was eating McDonald’s/I kept eating McDonald’s for five years from 1987 to 1991/That’s when I became fat/A year later, I’m doing something about it/I’m sorry that I got fat/I will slim down.” The most excellent Subteens, who not so long ago wound up rocking on stage bare-assed naked, surrounded by a bevy of similarly dressed go-go girls, share the bill. Though I’m not much of a Wesley Willis fan, there is no doubt that when he and the Subteens unite at Last Place on Earth on Thursday the chances for divine weirdness will be large. Extra large. — Chris Davis

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Art Art Feature

THE ANTI-NOVEL?

This is Not a Novel

By David Markson

Counterpoint, 190 pp., $15 (paper)

In the library of the world, the reader who suppresses the prejudice of taste (to go beyond a favorite genre and explore those countless books of every kind that sit still unread on the shelves) is the reader who inherits the greatest riches. With a wide-open mind, she stuffs her head with works from the entire spectrum of the written word. When her field of reference has become a fruited plain stretching to the horizons of her mind, she will enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that she did her best to wring a greater understanding out of the collective consciousness of humanity.

Now, if you’re not of my ilk and you don’t consider it your duty to gorge your head on the offal of 10,000 other minds, don’t listen to me. Read whatever the hell you want to read. But if you are of my ilk, then I suggest you pick up David Markson’s latest book, This is Not a Novel, which is one of the most edifying works I’ve ever encountered.

Markson’s is a mind stuffed, a mind comprising a vast field of reference, a sated, rich mind. The title is apt. The book is more of a meditation than a novel, though it does fall into the category of highly experimental fiction (self-referential metafiction particularly). There is a narrator, called only “Writer,” who tempts you down the winding yet circuitous path of his tale, which is, if anything, a fragmented monologue, the outpouring of a mind not just steeped but drowned in the literature, history, music, and art of the world.

If you asked me to simply state what the book is about, I would say: the arts, fame and “immortality,” and the cold hard fact of impending death, all delivered in anecdotal form. But the novel is not dark at all. On the contrary, it shines brilliantly, “plotless and characterless yet seducing the reader” (to quote “Writer”) with details from the lives (and deaths) of artists of every kind: musicians, painters, sculptors, writers, et cetera.

Every page is filled with brief paragraphs throwing out ideas for contemplation. Each piece of the “story” sometimes implies much more than it says, rendering these tidbits expansive upon consideration. As you go along the ideas and information begin to accumulate and allude to other works and other points set down in the narrative before. You will find yourself learning delicious details about names you know all to well and jotting down names to pursue further, myriad creators lost to all but the most encyclopedic minds. To give you a better notion of the form used throughout, here are some excerpts:

This morning I walked to the place where the streetcleaners dump the rubbish. My God, it was beautiful.

Says a Van Gogh letter.

~

When I was their age I could draw like Raphael. But it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like they do.

Said Picasso at an exhibition of children’s art.

~

My mind and fingers have worked like the damned. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them, I devour them with fury.

Wrote Liszt at twenty.

~

Greater than any of us, Yeats called Rabindranath Tagore.

~

The greatest lyric poet Germany ever knew, Gottfried Benn called Else Lasker-Schuler.

Who at sixty-four was beaten with an iron pipe by young Nazis on a street in Berlin.

~

Fray Luis de Leon, returning to his Salamanca classroom after five years of imprisonment by the Inquisition:

As I was saying…

~

Donatello, at work on his Zuccone, heard muttering at the stone:

Speak, damn you, talk to me.

Peppering these anecdotes throughout is the narrator’s forthright, even self-deprecating, thoughts on the writing itself. He is weary of making up stories. He wants to relate those he’s already heard. He’s sick of characters, plot, theme, setting, all the trappings of the novel, yet he’s his own character, pared down to only a voice. He can speak of nothing but the creative life and the inevitability of tragedy, but nothing ever gets too heavy. It’s all leavened by the capricious glee of the narrator’s tone, his wit poking through just when needed to break any tearful tension.

Is This is Not a Novel a compendium of quotations and hearsay or is it a book that would only interest a writer? It’s a fine and compelling read is what it is.

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Music Music Features

CHOOSE ANI

So, who’s your pick? That dude from Cypress Hill or Chuck D.? The Ruler of the Funky Buddha or The Mouth That Roared? I’m talking about who the new lead singer for Rage Against the Machine should be, of course. The highest-profile radical rock band in the land needs a new mouthpiece, and those seem to be the prime names being bandied about. I wish I could say I’m surprised that no woman’s name has come up, though it’d be a much more radical move to let a femme voice (and perspective) harness the phallic power of Tom Morello’s axe than another Boy Acting Serious and Important. Like Public Enemy before them and like many other great agit-rock acts, Rage’s rage seemed as much about macho posturing as inspiring a livable revolution, and incorporating a little girlie action into their Godzilla-like roar might be a refreshing new direction. All of which is a roundabout way of offering my own suggestion for a new lead singer: Ani Difranco!

Why not? Difranco could use the commercial boost after watching her cult diminish over the last few years, and Rage could use someone with the ability to connect their political sloganeering (and the power of their Molotov-cocktail music) to the physical and emotional realities of everyday life. Sounds like a match to me.

For those outside her core demographic — (very) young, smart, left-leaning (white) women — Difranco can be an acquired taste. After dismissing her for years, like so many others have, as a strident feminist folkie (and “folkie” is the bad word here, not “feminist”), Difranco finally won me over in 1998, when I stumbled onto “Fuel,” a cut from her Little Plastic Castles album. Righteous and caustic, funny and quirky, down-to-earth but with an unexpectedly visionary twist, “Fuel” still sounds like the “protest” song of the decade to me. The song begins with Difranco walking by a Manhattan construction site where a slave cemetery has just been found (“May their souls rest easy now that lynching is illegal/and we’ve moved on to the electric chair”), a sight that triggers a personalized, stream-of-consciousness State of the Union address that encompasses everything from bankrupt politics to crass corporate culture to our isolated citizenry — all conveyed in a thrillingly conversational, everygirl voice. Then Difranco snaps back to real time, still standing over the unearthed cemetery, with a desire to dig even deeper: “down beneath the impossible pain of our history/beneath the unknown bones/and the bedrock of the mystery” to a place where “there’s a fire just waiting for fuel.” Morello’s quicksilver guitar could be the sonic match needed to ignite the blaze.

Okay — time to cut the crap. Won’t happen, right? Rage’s sound is too monolithic to make room for someone whose rhythms and desires seem so deeply personal. Besides, married and past 30, Difranco’s radicalism knows too many shades of grey to embrace the reckless abandon of Rage’s revolution.

The political genius of Difranco’s art is her ability to demonstrate, without ever seeming too willful, how an ethical outlook and subsequent emotional responses can inform how you relate to a lover and a friend as much as it informs how you relate to your country. With the new, two-disc, two-hour torrent of images and ideas, Revelling/Reckoning — essentially her marriage album — Difranco makes this connection plainer than ever. What Difranco has done in the process — perhaps unintentionally — is leave her kids’ cult behind and craft a great adult pop album — a hard thing to do in a genre clogged with the dispiriting self-regard of people like Sting and Don Henley.

The two records have distinct personalities: Revelling boasts fuller arrangements, making the most of Difranco’s unique jazz/funk-folk. Reckoning is more intimate and introspective, boasting a more captivating group of songs. Each record lives up to its title. Revelling starts off, on “Ain’t That The Way,” with Maceo Parker background vocals and Difranco scrunching up her voice like the “Left Eye” Lopes of funk-folk. The message: “Love makes me feel so dumb.” Difranco restates this theme of romantic happiness a bit more slyly on “Marrow”: “I’m a good kisser/and you’re a fast learner/and that kind of thing could float us/for a pretty long time.”

But Reckoning is the real keeper, with “Your Next Bold Move” starting with this: “Coming of age during the plague/of Reagan and Bush/watching capitalism gun down democracy/it had this funny effect on me.” It’s a defeat song, chastising the ineffectualness of a “left wing that was broken long ago,” but what makes it remarkable is how effortlessly the song’s emotion segues into the more personal skepticism of the following marriage songs, “Reckoning” and “So What.” And so it is with the whole of the record, as the political defiance of a song like “Subdivision” (“White people are so scared of black people/they bulldoze out to the country/and put up houses on little loop-dee-loop streets/while America gets its heart cut right out of its chest”) mingles easily with the romantic travails of a song like “Sick of Me” (“The first person in your life/to ever really matter/is saying the last thing/that you want to hear”), making it all sound like part of the same struggle.

So while the job might sound tempting, Difranco probably won’t be too concerned if Rage’s invite never arrives. Judging from Revelling/Reckoning, she’s got more serious battles to wage.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

TIGERS GET OFFENSIVE

The joke in the press box midway through the University of Memphis’ annual spring game was that new coach Tommy West was just trying to sell season tickets. How else to explain this new Tiger offense which under the direction of new coordinator Randy Fichtner threw on first down, operated without the benefit of a huddle, scored the first time it had the ball, and generally ran circles around the vaunted Tiger defense.

Behind quarterbacks Travis Anglin and Danny Wimprine, the offense scored five touchdowns during the two-hour scrimmage. When Anglin or Wimprine were not passing the ball effectively, they were handing it off to running backs Sugar Sanders, Aaron Meadows, and Jeremiah Bonds. Anglin had two touchdown passes and ran for another TD, while Wimprine threw for one and ran for another.

Afterward, coaches and players alike expressed enthusiasm. “How did you like that,” one assistant coach asked after the scrimmage.

“This is the most excited I’ve ever seen our team,” said junior receiver Tripp Higgins. “Our defense even gets pumped up because of the tempo of our offense. They like seeing us do good.”

“We’re pleased with what we’ve accomplished in 13 practices,” West said after the scrimmage. “I think they’ve really come a long, long way. Our offensive players have an attitude right now that you want. They realize that they haven’t been very good; they haven’t been very productive. They’re listening to the fundamental coaching.”

West admitted that there were some areas that still need work and had some blunt words for his quarterbacks.

“We had some miscues at quarterback where we got people open. That’s not good enough to play quarterback here,” he said. “When we’ve got people wide open, we have to hit them or you can’t play Division-I college football. That’s the way it is.”

The Tigers will go into August without a number-one quarterback. “I really don’t think we have a quarterback who deserves to be number one. I don’t think anybody is playing to a level that we’ll have to play to win games,” West said. “I think we’ve got some good competition and I don’t want to cut it off. I’m going to carry it into August.

“I think Travis has done some good things. He needs to improve in the passing game, but he certainly is a threat running the ball,” West continued. “I think he has improved throwing the ball. He has improved his accuracy. He is certainly in the mix.”

Wimprine said he welcomes the battle. “Competition only makes you better,” he said. “Hopefully, all the quarterbacks will get better from this situation.”

Excitement was the word of the day.

“We’re all excited about the new offense, it’s explosive,” said Trey Erye, who is competing for the starting right guard position. “The best thing is that it makes everybody accountable for themselves. Today we had a lot of good things happen.”

“Coach West and his staff has done a great job of installing a new offense. It makes it fun,” added Higgins. “The defense does not have as much depth as we do now. We just got a lot better. Not to take anything away from them, but we did a lot of things good today.”

TIGER NOTES:

  • Defensive back Bo Arnold is improving after being in a serious one-car collision near his home in Georgia. Arnold received facial injuries in the crash and has had to have his jaw wired, according to school officials.

  • A third quarterback, senior Neil Suber, played in the game but was ineffective. Scott Scherer, who was the starter at the end of last season, sat out the scrimmage. Scherer took a vicious hit at practice a few days before the spring game and is being held out of the final practices (the Tigers will practice two more times this week). Scherer’s mother, Michelle, attended the game, but his father, former head coach Rip Scherer was out of town.

  • Senior defensive end Tony Brown, who was had to sit out his freshman season because he didn’t qualify academically, says he is hopeful of getting another year of eligibility by graduating next year. “It is looking like I will be, with all the classes I’m taking,” Brown said. He and Andre Arnold, the other starting defensive end, comprise the most experienced part of a line that suffered heavy losses to graduation.

  • West doesn’t know what the NCAA will do with the university’s appeal to have defensive tackle Albert Means, a transfer from Alabama, made eligible immediately. “He can help our team,” West said. “I just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope people do the right thing and restore his eligibility. I don’t think we will know anything till mid-summer. There really has never been a case like this. I don’t know what is going to happen.” Means found himself at the center of recruiting scandal after a Memphis high school coach claimed that an Alabama supporter gave Means’ high school coach $200,000 to have him sign with the Crimson Tide.

  • Wimprine, who missed some spring practice because of academic problems says not to worry. “I will be fine,” he said. Both of his parents were at the game. His mother is a frequent poster to the message board at the web site Tiger Illustrated. She uses the screen name, “Dan’s Fan.”

  • Offensive line coach Rick Mallory says former tight end Wade Smith‘s move to right tackle has worked out well. “I went through it and a lot of guys I know in the NFL went through it. It’s always a shock to your system, to your ego,” Mallory said of the transition. “But Wade sees the wisdom behind it. He is a real athletic guy and he’s going to help us a lot.”

  • Deep snapper Jarred Pigue has quit the team. He told coaches he wants to transfer to Tennessee.

    • Categories
    News News Feature

    FUNDING DETAILS ANNOUNCED

    In a luncheon meeting of city council and county commission members, the NBA pursuit team revealed a majority of its funding plans for a new downtown arena.

    City Mayor Willie Herenton and County Mayor Jim Rout submitted six prerequisites for them to support the construction of a new arena.

    First, the mayors felt that a significant portion of the funding comes from revenue paid by those who attend the new arena for NBA events. Second, the funding should be diverse and flexible, so as to not rely on only one source of revenue. Third, the state’s contribution should compare with the state’s level of participation for Aldelphia Stadium in Nashville, which was built in part with state funds. Fourth, the use of property taxes should be minimized, and fifth, the schools should remain the number one priority of the city and county.

    Working in tandem with that list, Marlin Mosby, formerly a financial executive of the city of Memphis and now a consultant with SMG (the firm in charge of running the Pyramid) representing both the city and county governments, along with other members of the pursuit team, walked the assembled law-makers through an arena package. Below is the 7 point list. [NOTE: The following numbers are cumulative over the next 25 years]

    • Point 1: Sales Tax Rebate from NBA Events: Existing state legislation allows the sales tax from all NBA related sales in the arena to be brought back to the arena. This includes ticket tax, food and concession tax, merchandise tax, and any other revenues. Only NBA events would be included in this.

      Estimated result: 70 million dollars.

    • Point 2: Facility Associated Revenues: The Pyramid has a seating charge of 1 dollar per seat per event. That charge results in Pyramid revenue of 250-500 thousand dollars a year. The pursuit team used this formula and took into account the number of seats in the new arena, the average number of tickets sold per NBA contest, and the number of dates in an NBA home schedule.

      Estimated result: 16 million dollars

    • Point 3: Tourism Development Financing: The Cook Convention Center currently receives incremental tax returns when the revenues of the center as well as the rest of the tourism zone (i.e. hotels, shops, and restaurants in the district) exceed the amount of revenues from its base year. In normal circumstances, the state would allow an area to be a tourist development zone one year prior to the opening of the facility. However, the pursuit team successfully argued to have their first year be concurrent with the Cook Convention Center, thus missing the significant revenue increase that has occurred downtown in just the past two years as its base level. The result is a much higher incremental revenue.

      Estimated result: 35 million dollars

    • Point 4: City Hotel/Motel Tax: The Cook Convention Center actually holds a bond on this tax until the year 2016. However, after that, the arena can use that tax toward its construction.

      Estimated result: 10 million dollars

    • Point 5: Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT): Public utilities usually pay a PILOT instead of a tax. The pursuit team would take those payments on Electric, Sewers, and Gas. They would take the Water payments as well, but those funds are spoken for until 3 years from now, at which point the water PILOT will go to the arena.

      Estimated Result: 30 million dollars [without water PILOT]

    • Point 6: State Funding: The pursuit team is asking for equivalent funding as did Nashville with Aldelphia Coliseum. The pursuit team says that state government has promised the same sort of support. There will be a special briefing of the Shelby County delegation of the legislature on April 9th.

      Estimated Result: 40 million dollars

    • Point 7: 2% Car Rental Surcharge: There is already an existing 5% sales-tax on rental cars by the state but not by the city. The addition of a 2% city tax would put Memphis on the national average for car-rental taxes. This will require a change in legislation via a unanimous vote by the Shelby County State Delegation or upon passage by the State legislature itself, though that would require enactment by the County Commission.

      Estimated Result: 25 million dollars

    Adding the 7 points together results in 226 million dollars worth of public money not a result of property tax revenues. The remaining 24 million dollars would come out of the general funds of the city and state governments. The 24 million is 10% of the total cost of the arena and a contribution equal to the city and county’s contribution to AutoZone park. The construction of the arena would be repaid over a 25-year period without, according to the pursuit team, a change in the city or county’s bond rating.

    Categories
    Sports Sports Feature

    U of M SPRING GAME TODAY

    New U of M head football coach Tommy West will oversee his first Spring Game at 1 p.m Saturday afternoon. The contest, which will pit the Tiger offense against the Memphis defense, if free and open to the public.

    Usually the defense dominates the offense, at these affairs, but this year the Tigers will unveil a spread, no-huddle style when they have the ball. The new offense has provided a challenge for the defense all spring. The offense is similar to the one Arkansas State and Tulane used last year. Both teams gave the Memphis defense problems. The Memphis offense is under new coordinator Randy Fichtner, who held a similar position last year at Arkansas State.

    Most fans will probably focus on the battle at quarterback, a position featuring three different players who started at one time or other last season along with a promising freshman who was redshirted last year. Travis Anglin, Neil Suber, and Scott Scherer all got opportunities as the starting quarterback in 2000. Danny Wimprine has Tiger fans buzzing, based primarily on his high school career at John Curtis High School in New Orleans. Wimprine missed part of spring drills because of academic problems.

    But West faces a number of questions besides who will be his starting quarterback. He has to replace the entire middle of his nationally-ranked defense. Nose guard Marcus Bell and middle linebacker Kamal Shakir were seniors last season and are expected to be drafted later this month by the NFL. Junior free safety Idrees Bashir opted to go early to the pros. Also cornerback Michael Stone is also gone. Stone and Bashir were the fastest players on the defense and will be difficult to replace.

    When West was hired he said that rebuilding the offensive line would be his first priority. The Memphis program went through six offensive line coaches in six years under ousted coach Rip Scherer. Rick Mallory is back as coach for a second season and will build a line anchored by senior left tackle Artis Hicks (6-5, 315), senior left guard Josh Eargle (6-2, 292) and junior center Jimond Pugh (6-3, 300). Eargle is coming off a serious knee injury that sidelined him early in the 2000 season. Several players will be looking to nail down the two spots on the right side, including juniors Trey Eyre (6-3 300) and Joey Gerda (6-6, 307, redshirt freshman Travis Triplett (6-5, 328), and converted tight end Wade Smith a 6-4, 250-pound junior.

    The spread offense will utilize three or four wide receivers. The team has many wide outs, but except for junior Ryan Johnson, they have not been able to sustain solid play over a number of games. Speedy sophomore Darren Garcia and redshirt freshman Tavarious Davis are the most promising. Senior Bunkie Perkins and junior Trip Higgins are also expected to see a lot of playing time.

    Other Tiger players to watch include: senior defensive end Tony Brown (6-3, 274) who needs to be a dominant force in the defensive line; promising sophomore Eric Taylor (6-3, 283), who played last year as a true freshman and redshirt junior Boris Penchion (6-4, 269) will man the tackles; junior defensive end Stanley Jackson (6-6, 235) will back up senior Andre Arnold (6-4, 238); sophomore tackle Albert Means (6-4, 335) a transfer from Alabama is awaiting word from the NCAA about his eligibility for the 2001 season; linebackers Derrick Ballard (6-2, 205) and Robert Douglas (6-3, 215) are promising linebackers, Ballard is a sophomore who occasionally started in 2000 while Douglas is a redshirt freshman who excelled on the scout team last year as a fullback.

    One of the major advantages Memphis will have when it opens it season on Labor Day evening at Mississippi State is the surprise factor. The Bulldog coaches will not have any film to watch on the new Tiger offense. So, donÕt expect the Memphis staff to display too many wrinkles with its new offense today. A few razzle-dazzle plays to give the hard-core fans something to remember over the long hot summer, but not too much for Jackie Sherrill to disect.