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Returning to Memphis after opening for India.Arie last year at The Orpheum, the English duo Floetry will perform at Isaac Hayes’ Peabody Place restaurant Tuesday, April 15th, in a refreshing infusion of contemporary R&B into the city’s club scene. The duo of Marsha Ambrosius and Natalie Stewart first formed in London as a songwriting team but are now based out of the neo-soul capital of Philadelphia. In recent years they’ve been at the forefront of the burgeoning genre, penning hits for Jill Scott, Glenn Lewis, Bilal, and even Michael Jackson. The duo stepped out as performers with last year’s Dreamworks Records debut, Floetic. Balancing the sung vocals of Ambrosius with the raplike spoken word of Stewart, the result is a smooth neo-soul with a hip-hop tinge.

For something completely different, you could check out the self-described “polyethnic Cajun slamgrass” of Colorado jam-rock goofballs Leftover Salmon, whose hyper-laidback bluegrass-lite sound will be showcased at the New Daisy Theatre Saturday, April 12th. Leftover Salmon’s latest record is something of a departure: a collection of covers of Cracker songs, including the likes of “Eurotrash Girl” and “Teen Angst.” The record, titled O Cracker, Where Art Thou?, is due in May, though it remains to be seen if they’ll break out any of these interpretations at the Daisy.

For a stiffer take on roots sounds, Louisville’s My Morning Jacket, whose indie-rock take on the Neil Young aesthetic has drawn tons of praise, will be at Newby’s on Tuesday, April 15th, with Chicago’s Memphis-connected post-punk band The Detachment Kit bringing their own slanted and enchanted vibe as the opening act.

But there’s also plenty of local action on hand this week. Shangri-La Records has a couple of events going this weekend. Caucasion rap sensations Effingham and Wheatstraw will perform at the store at 5 p.m. Friday, April 11th, and Sunday, April 13th, the store will hold its annual Spring Record Swap from 1 to 5 p.m.

Over at the Hi-Tone Café, two of the city’s finest rootsy singer-songwriters, John Murry and ex-Pawtucket Andy Grooms, have joined forces for a series of shows, playing each Monday night at the Midtown watering hole. And at Young Avenue Deli, the one and only Reigning Sound will join veteran Lamar Sorrento’s Mod Saints and The Break-ups on Saturday, April 12th. — Chris Herrington

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Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

The Best of the Classic Years

King Sunny Adé (Shanachie)

The Rough Guide to Highlife

Various Artists (World Music Network)

When Bob Marley died in 1981, the music industry, unable to find a successor to the mantle of Designated Third-World Superstar in any of Marley’s Jamaican peers, began grooming Nigeria’s King Sunny Adé for the role. A royal scion who’d begun playing music professionally in his teens, Adé was the most popular performer of “highlife,” a pealing, guitar-centered style of hypnotic dance music whose groove had spread throughout the entire African continent. America surely was next. Except, as it turned out, it wasn’t. Adé recorded three terrific albums for Island Records in the early ’80s, but, after some initial critical excitement, he proved a nonstarter in this country.

It turns out, though, that Adé had already made his greatest work by the time he got the stateside push. The Best of the Classic Years highlights 1969-74, the first six years of his recording career, and it’s enough to give even fans of the Island albums pause. Adé’s playing is absolutely demonic here: The self-titled first part of the five-song “Sunny Ti De” medley is soul-wrenching guitar talk that evokes Hendrix but never stoops to imitation, and the grooves percolate so friendly throughout it takes a while to notice how intricate they are. The singing is lovely too, but it’s secondary to the overall atmosphere, which is enhanced by the 10-to-20-minute lengths that are the rule here.

The bulk of The Rough Guide to Highlife goes back even further, to the horn-led ’50s and ’60s dance-bands that gave the style its feet, though there are more recent tracks as well, like George Darko’s synth-poppy “Hilife Time.” Here, the songs are short, though it’s probably no coincidence that the best track, Joe Mensah’s “Bosoe,” is almost 10 minutes and was edited down from a longer version. With no duds and many killers (Sir Victor Uwaifo’s “Guitar Boy” and E.T. Mensah’s “Medzi Medzi” in particular), deciding which to start with is a toss-up. — Michaelangelo Matos

Grade (both albums): A

Buzzcocks

Buzzcocks (Merge)

So my oldest relatives are now getting into the Clash, thanks to the recent media onslaught, and I’ve always been a superfan, but good God almighty, enough is enough. The Sex Pistols have never had to pine for press: John Lydon’s always had a great big mouth, and they are the Brit-punk reference point. (But, being a Svengali’s cash cow, they had more in common with the Archies than the supposed meaning of “punk rock.”) Then there’s the Damned one great album and then kaput. Which brings me to the genre’s confusing stepchild: the Buzzcocks.

The Buzzcocks were confusing for the same reasons that they flew heads and shoulders above the other three pillars of first-wave British punk. For one, they were first, and they were independent. Remember that the Pistols and the Clash were major-label from the word go. The Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP was released in early ’76, and it stands as the first overseas DIY record of the movement. The Buzzcocks also looked decidedly normal and sang apolitical, asexual (the band is/was split 50/50 in terms of sexual preference) lyrics about the human emotional condition in a wry, cynical tone that betrayed their years. The Buzzcocks didn’t hand you a stylish and easy-to-decipher extra-credit lesson on a plate. They afforded the nascent punk movement a balance between overt politics and something a little more challenging. Additionally, they were heavier, faster, louder, catchier, and degrees superior to their contemporaries in sound. A Sex Pistols or Clash fan can easily be someone who is happy owning a large number of greatest-hits CDs; a Buzzcocks fan is a lifer.

The band’s reformation in 1989 was a permanent situation, though each subsequent proper album has an unavoidable “reunion” air about it due to the volume of reissues and live documents (from the first wave) released over the past 15 years. Lifers know that the Buzzcocks are four albums into a second wind, starting with 1993’s Trade Test Transmission and edging up to 2003 with this eponymous record. Of the four, this is the most energetic and true to the band’s first run. Pete Shelley’s vocals have been torn into a deeper, almost ruined tone that comes with age or other things, and Buzzcocks poses the inherent problem of a once-seminal post- or pop-punk band making music at this age: Those unfamiliar with the ground originally broken are going to find the new material indistinguishable from younger peers.

Buzzcocks is an album made by half of a band (Steve Diggle and Shelley are the remaining original members) that invented intelligent pop punk, but listeners who don’t know that could possibly lump it in with the lowbrow Warped Tour/Fat Wreckords nonsense tainting the world of pop punk. —Andrew Earles

Grade: B-

Feast of Wire

Calexico (Quarterstick)

Tucson-based multi-instrumentalists Joey Burns and John Convertino are perhaps better known as backup for artists such as Neko Case, PJ Harvey, and Howe Gelb’s Giant Sand than as Calexico, an indie outfit that draws heavily from the musical traditions of their native American Southwest. But that may change with the release of their ninth full-length, Feast of Wire, which is surely one of the smartest and most impassioned albums we’re likely to hear all year.

Like its predecessors, Feast of Wire inhabits the nether-desert that separates America from Mexico, but the band now sounds more comfortable in this setting, and Burns’ vision of both countries is confidently epic. For the characters in these songs, for whom “the future looks bleak with no sign of change,” the vast, arid Arizona desert is a blessing and a curse, a place to get lost in and a place to lose yourself utterly.

Burns’ songwriting sounds newly assured and inventive. On “Not Even Stevie Nicks” he tells of a friend who plays Fleetwood Mac to soundtrack his own suicide: “Not even the priestess with her secret powers could save him,” he sings, his voice registering sad-sweet resignation. And the Springsteen storytelling of “Across the Wire” — about two Mexican brothers crossing the border — beats just about anything the Boss has done in the past decade.

But Feast of Wire is as much about sounds as it is about words: If Burns’ lyrics strike a rare poetic clarity, then Calexico’s music surprises even more with its accomplished eclecticism. Burns and Convertino cover mariachi pop (“Across the Wire”), ethereal folk balladry (“Woven Birds”), hipster jazz (“Attack el Robot! Attack!” and “Crumble”), and, most intriguingly, trip-hop (“Black Heart”). And then there are the interludes, long a staple of the band’s records, but here they sound inspired by a purpose beyond decoration. Instrumental tracks like “Close Behind” and “Dub Latina” are more than mere set pieces: They conjure a very specific mood that contributes considerably to the album’s atmosphere of loneliness.

All of these disparate elements could have made for a fragmented album, but Feast of Wire coheres into something unique mainly because the diverse styles, like spokes on a wheel, all lead to the same dark-hearted, desolate core — the Western states as both geographical setting and emotional terrain, simultaneously political and personal. —Stephen Deusner

Grade: A

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

Radio-rock, anyone? The Grammy-nominated Tonic will be kicking off an “acoustic tour” this week. How very 1990s retro they are. This better-than-average alt-rock outfit (whatever that may mean these days) is known for their tightness and for having fun on stage, so don’t be surprised if they squeeze a tight cover of “Jessie’s Girl” in between tight renditions of their hits. How very 1980s retro they are. They will be playing Newby’s on Wednesday, April 9th. Of course, being a die-hard lover of real rock-and-roll, I won’t be there. I’ll be at what promises to be the loudest, meanest, messiest, butt-kickingest soul-punk show to hit Memphis in quite some time. Let’s face it, kids, when The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion rolls through town, you drop whatever it is you may have planned, you drink a quantity of cheap beer, and you shake like demons were being exorcised from your body. They’ll be playing Young Avenue Deli on Wednesday, April 9th.

Spencer formed the Blues Explosion in 1991 after his previous group, the storied trash rock band Pussy Galore, imploded. By the mid-1990s it seemed like Spencer might very well be bound for superstardom as you just couldn’t go anywhere without hearing something off of Orange or the Memphis-recorded Extra Width. While Spencer’s songs covered all the tropes of classic rock-and-roll — girls, cars, bellbottoms, guitars — he seemed happiest stepping up to the microphone and screaming “blues explosion! blues explosion!” over and over again, backed by an impossibly soulful Judah Bauer guitargasm or a theremin screeching out of control. “Take a whiff of my pant leg, baby,” he would scream, and nobody cared what any of it meant. It was the loudest, wildest fusion of blues, soul, punk, funk, rockabilly, and classic rock anyone had ever heard. It made no sense at all and yet it seemed inevitable. And no sooner had Spencer burst on the scene than he disappeared. Oh sure, he kept putting out CDs filled with concentrated rock-and-roll, but nothing could match the abandon of Orange. He continued to tour, and his audience continued to grow, but the sound got stuck in a rut. And then Plastic Fang came out in 2002, proving that the Blues Explosion was still the loudest, funkiest, punkiest band on the planet.

Spencer has been spotted on more than one occasion slumming in the wilds of north Mississippi, hanging with Jim Dickinson and learning some authentic blues chops from J.D.’s kids the North Mississippi All-Stars. And it shows. While the Blues Explosion is as wild and experimental as ever, they seem less and less like a novelty and more like the greatest dance band of all times. — Chris Davis

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Weird Science

I find it more than a little ironic that contemporary movie audiences, seeking escapism by means of mind-numbing movie pap, can turn to science fiction. You would think that the “science” part would imply that the film is more intelligently conceived than regular fiction. Not so. Witness: The Core. I would hate to have seen this with any kind of real scientist, as I am sure that he or she would be uncomfortably distracted by the parade of poorly conceived scientific plot calculations. However, when the Golden Gate Bridge collapses near the end (every other review of The Core mentions this, so I’m not ruining it, okay?), even a die-hard science whiz should be able to admit that it’s pretty cool.

The United States has preemptively developed a superweapon called DESTINI: a giant system of machines that can disrupt the Earth’s core and cause earthquakes in enemy countries. DESTINI, however, has gone awry, and said core has decided to stop spinning. I can’t explain how or why it spins, but there is some exposition early on that does, so you can take my word for it that this spinning business is important and that we’re screwed if it stops.

Aaron Eckhart (a poor man’s Bill Paxton, from Possession and Nurse Betty) plays Josh Keyes, a meticulously rumpled geophysics professor who is called upon by the government to explain some mysterious goings-on. In England, a rogue flock of freaked-out pigeons destroys a neighborhood. At night, the hauntingly beautiful Northern Lights can be seen everywhere. Such is what happens when the Earth’s core stops spinning. These are fun sequences (odd that such destruction is fun to watch, but it is), however audiences may squirm a bit when atmospheric disturbances force the space shuttle Endeavor to make a crash landing in the middle of Los Angeles. The scene is well-done (the shuttle gliding low over Dodger Stadium is sweet), but it’s still a little strange to see a shuttle in jeopardy so soon after our recent tragedy. Thank God it was Endeavor and not Columbia in the film. Anyway, Keyes enlists the aid of a Carl Sagan-like celebrity scientist (played smugly and over the top by Stanley Tucci) to help set the government straight on the consequences of Earth’s temperament. This is the film’s Dumb Scene. Keyes, explaining that the spinning Earth’s core provides electromagnetic microwaves that protect Earth from solar winds, asks if anyone in the room has a can of air freshener. Oddly, none of the U.S.’s top generals does, but one is found and he uses it as a flamethrower to torch a conveniently available peach to demonstrate what will happen to an unprotected Earth. The generals gasp and sigh, having apparently never before understood that the sun is hot.

The solution to the core problem: Nuke it. A dream team is developed, and, as in all movies of this variety, they are a ragtag bunch of disparate individuals who would otherwise never be found in the same kitchen. They include Hilary Swank as “Beck,” the plucky navigator from the recently salvaged shuttle, and Delroy Lindo as “Braz,” the reclusive inventor of a megalaser that can cut a hole through a mountain. A brief demonstration of this laser is proof enough for the government (and, by extension, the audience) that this laser, installed on a ship, can cut through thousands of miles on a journey to the center of the Earth. As Blanche on The Golden Girls might observe: “Let me get this straight. We can cut through thousands of miles of lava and rock with laser beams, all the way to the center of the Earth in an invincible ship with hundreds of thousands of pounds of pressure on every square inch, set off a nuclear device that restarts the entire planet, and we can’t come up with a decent-tasting fat-free cheese?”

I wanted more on-land disaster scenes. Once our team goes underground, the special effects get repetitive. Frankly, I have seen computer screensavers that are more impressive than some of the core footage. Whales are featured prominently at the beginning and end of the film and both appearances are silly. They look like cartoons at the beginning, and at the end it would seem as though a group of them makes a phone call to an aircraft carrier. I hope someone can explain this to me.

Regardless, as escapist “science” fiction, this one is okay, as it destroys the requisite amount of recognizable, iconic landmarks. (Here, the Roman Colosseum and the aforementioned bridge. Freedom-kissers everywhere may be disappointed that the Eiffel Tower is spared.) Real acting by Lindo almost spoils the fun, but otherwise The Core succeeds as good, peachy escapist fluff. — Bo List

A sensationalistic tale of street violence in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian import City of God seizes the viewer immediately, its energetic, explosive, instantly iconic opening sequence establishing an unmistakable tone and delivering a clear message: The City of God is a vibrant, dangerous place, and there’s no way out.

The film opens in the midst of a street festival — the swirling sounds of samba and staccato glimpses of a knife being prepped for slaughter slicing sharply against a stone as chickens in a nearby pen await decapitation and plucking. One chicken gets free from the pen and tries to escape, only to be chased by the sponsors of the festival. “In the City of God, if you run away they get you. If you stay, they get you too,” says the film’s narrator, Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), who finds himself face-to-face with the bird and caught between two rival gun-toting gangs: the Rio police and the adolescent drug-dealers who control the neighborhood.

Rocket, more an observer than actor, is in some ways a typical audience stand-in, but as an aspiring photographer who chose the camera over the gun to document his environment from the inside, he’s also as much a stand-in for director Fernando Meirelles, who marshaled an army of mostly adolescent nonprofessional actors for this chronicle of the street gangs formed by poor children in Rio de Janeiro. The film follows these organic criminal units from their origins on through to a full-throttle gang war that wipes out most of the central players and finally brings the conflict to the surface in the eyes of the media and government.

When Rocket is caught between the cops and gangsters in the film’s opening moments, the camera freezes on him, then the image rotates and morphs simultaneously to leap backward to the early days of the City of God, a huge housing project on the outskirts of Rio, with the older Rocket crouched in the street turning into a younger Rocket crouched in front of a soccer goal. Thus begins a long flashback that details the origins of gang life in the City of God, but just as crucial is this early and telling juxtaposition of low-tech content and high-tech style: The mise-en-scäne of the film is neorealist, but the cinematography, editing, and effects are hyperstylized, as if The Bicycle Thief had been reimagined through the post-CGI lens of Fight Club or The Matrix.

Visually, City of God is a film of tremendous ambition that rarely falters. Its use of hand-held camera and rapid editing lends the film an intimate, energetic mood and only enhances the power of the film’s few calmer moments, such as a slow, silent pan over the murdered remnants of a brothel holdup. But surrounding this primary style are myriad stylistic flourishes — the film’s promiscuous camera running the gamut from a ground-level point-of-view shot of the fleeing chicken to the detached overhead surveillance of a spy satellite as it follows the animal’s pursuers. Chopped into chapter-like segments, each with introductory titles, the film changes styles on the fly to fit different storytelling needs. One section, “The Story of the Apartment,” shows the evolution of a drug den in one static yet constantly morphing shot; another segment conveys the hierarchy of the drug trade — from messenger to lookout to soldier — with great visual rhythm and economy.

For better or worse, this is one foreign film likely to be easily accessible to American eyes precisely because of how much it borrows from the hip and hard-boiled side of Hollywood. As a gritty, wide-scope, decade-spanning gangster tale, it echoes Scorsese above all, with the film more a South American street-culture cousin to Goodfellas than a companion to that other Western Hemisphere debut showoff of recent years, Amores Perros, to which it has been compared. City of God‘s central figure, gang leader L’il Ze (Leandro Firmino da Hora), is the movie’s Joe Pesci — an asexual sociopath whose monstrous bloodlust, even as a child, seems totally unexplained by social conditions. And, like Goodfellas, City of God is also based on a true story. But the film’s time-hopping narrative and use of pop music owes as much to Tarantino. Its chaotic bloodletting is pure Peckinpah, and it may make better use of split-screen than anything since De Palma.

The City of God was built in the Sixties as a relocation program to move the poor and homeless away from tourist-friendly areas, a fact subtly alluded to in Rocket’s voiceover. There is poverty and ruin everywhere, from the dust-covered excuses for roads to the fragile, modest shacks the residents call home to the battalion of emaciated stray dogs that line the streets. There are many nods to social conditions in the film, from the obvious poverty to comments on limited employment options to intimations of police corruption, but not much is made of this. Rather than a message movie of any stripe, City of God is a relatively amoral gangster tale. The film itself doesn’t convey much palpable concern for the people on screen and, as a consequence, the viewer may not either. But this emotional blankness is used as a slate for an exercise in pure film style. The film doesn’t shy away from the brutality of its milieu; in fact, it wallows in it, exploiting the violence for cinematic kicks while only occasionally acknowledging the suffering underneath the noise. There’s enough of a disconnect here to give reflective viewers pause, but the ride is so frenetic and so gripping that you may not care until the credits roll. — Chris Herrington

Categories
News The Fly-By

CONFEDERACY OF CONFEDERATES?

According to local AP writer Woody Baird, there has been quite a bit of infighting within the ranks of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a “patriotic organizaTIon” dedicated to preeserving Confederate heritage. According to Baird, former SCV member Gilbert Jones, who blieves white supremacists should be banned from the SCV, fell victim to “The Memphis Resolution,” a rule which forbids members from publicly criticizing other members. Jones, a self-described conservative Republican, was quoted as saying, “This is the only group in the world [where] I would be labeled a liberal,” after he was pelted with paperwads and bags of peanuts while attempting to speak at an SCV meeting in Memphis. It should be noted that pelting liberals with peanuts and paperwads, standard weaponms of the perennially underquipped Confederate troops, might be considered a simple “reenactment.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

If you like countrified soul-punk like the Gories used to play it, then you’ll be way into a little group called The Detroit Cobras, who’ll be ripping things up at the Hi-Tone on Friday, March 28th.

Fronted by the manic and maniacal female singer Rachel Nagy, the Cobras lean toward the spookier end of the garage spectrum, and their raunchy guitar sound is defiantly aimed to hit you below the belt.

If, on the other hand, you’re more interested in countrified soul-punk the way Memphis’ own Lucero used to play it, you’ll want to go see them at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, March 29th. Ben and the boys don’t play their hometown as often as they used to, so catch them when you can.

Of course, the must-see show of the week is a record-release party for Memphis’ legendary singer and songwriter Sid Selvidge at Earnestine and Hazel’s on Friday, March 28th, from 6 to 8 p.m. Selvidge, as the popular story goes, learned his critically acclaimed guitar chops from such blues masters as Furry Lewis and Mississippi Fred McDowell. But to call Selvidge a bluesman would be inaccurate. Selvidge can yodel like Jimmie Rodgers and moan an Appalachian murder ballad like some ghost from the Civil War. When he joined with Jim Dickinson, Jimmy Crosswaith, and the late Lee Baker to form Mudboy & the Neutrons — the group Bob Dylan once described as “the band nobody can find” — Selvidge proved he could also rock with the best of them. His latest recording, A Little Bit of Rain, released on Archer Records and produced by Jim Dickinson, is an eclectic mix of American folk styles showcasing Selvidge’s smooth tenor.

His cover of Little Brother Montgomery’s offbeat boogie, “Mama You Don’t Mean Me No Good,” is flawless, and his version of the folk standard “Long Black Veil” is nearly as creepy as Lefty Frizzel’s. But it’s the cover of “Every Natural Thing,” written by a gravel-voiced Muscle Shoals musician named Eddie Hinton, that really shows off Selvidge’s ability to tell a story with a song. It’s a classy record from a class act that just keeps getting better with age. So go to E&H, get a Soul Burger with all the trimmings, and enjoy. And if you can’t catch Sid this time around, he’ll be appearing on the Porch at Shangri-La Records on Friday, April 25th.

— Chris Davis

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Is Dissent Un-American?

Is patriotism synonymous with unquestioning acceptance of the decisions made by our elected officials? Is it un-American to criticize the Bush administration for “failed diplomacy” or to argue that the decision to launch a preemptive attack on Iraq was a monumental blunder? If you think the war should not have been started, does this mean you want Saddam to win, that you don’t support our troops, that you actually hope that there are American casualties? If you are still praying for peace instead of war, does this mean you are an idiot, moron, nutcase, and/or commie? If you think President Bush has done a terrible job, does this mean that you hate him? In the bizarre world of right-wing talk radio, the answers to all of the above questions are: “Yes, you #*%*&# liberal!” By this standard, millions of Americans are traitors, or worse.

We have come to expect this sort of garbage on right-wing rant radio, but similar malicious rhetoric and insinuations are beginning to appear in print and even in comments made by some of our elected officials. George Will (Rush Limbaugh with a bow tie and a much better vocabulary) recently claimed that Democrats who opposed the war were “unhinged” and “deranged.” House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert asserted that Senator Tom Daschle came “mighty close to giving comfort to our adversaries” (i.e., committing treason) when Daschle complained about the failure of Bush’s diplomatic efforts. Even Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who usually thinks before he speaks, claimed that any criticisms of the president’s decisions at this point would be “irresponsible.”

One of Mr. Bush’s heroes, Teddy Roosevelt, famously argued that “to announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” And it is beyond surreal for right-wingers who criticized every move made by Bill Clinton to now claim that any criticism of a Republican president is “irresponsible,” much less treasonous. The far right does not have a monopoly on name-calling, of course. Comparisons of George Bush to Hitler or Saddam Hussein are nonsense, and dismissing Bush as a moron is to sink to the level of the Clinton haters.

Our Founding Founders would be turning over in their graves to learn that many conservatives believe the way to honor them is to become a “Dittohead” who supports all presidential decisions no matter how bone-headed — at least during a Republican administration.

The flap over the recent comments made by Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines is instructive. Right-wing radio and Internet sites like the Drudge Report and Freerepublic.com helped make a mountain out of a molehill. Last summer, Maines infuriated some right-wingers when she criticized the (embarrassingly bad) Toby Keith song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” for “making country music sound ignorant.” When, during a recent London concert, Maines stated that “we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas,” there was little or no immediate reaction, but a concerted effort by right-wing Internet-based groups eventually succeeded in making it into the latest cause célèbre for talk-radio hosts.

Callers to country stations subsequently managed to persuade some of them to temporarily stop playing Dixie Chicks songs, but the group’s concerts are still selling out and their latest CD is still number four on the charts. In the long run, the Dixie Chicks will sink or swim based on their music, not their political views.

There’s plenty wrong with America. (If you don’t believe me, listen to talk radio for five minutes.) But we’re still the greatest country in the world because we value liberty and freedom. If our citizens (including, for better or worse, our celebrities) are only allowed to speak up when they support the actions of our government, we might as well be in Iraq.

B. Keith English, M.D., is a professor of pediatrics at UT Health Science Center.

Categories
News News Feature

A RESPONSE TO “SPEAKING FREE”

To On the Fly:

I agree 100% with Ms. Hall’s recent online article on protecting free speech; we need more of it, not less. Ms. Hall is also 100% correct when she states, “Though some surely feel that to protest the war is the most unpatriotic thing in the world, I do feel it’s important– that the right to disagree is essential to any well-functioning democracy.” Protesting the war through free speech is not unpatriotic. There are a lot of people who are not ‘liberals’, ‘leftists’ or anti-American who are totally against the war; just take a look at the positions of the free market Cato institute (cato.org), the Libertarian Party or Pat Buchanan.

Is protesting democratic? yes, if you protest with free speech such as at Overton Park. Aside from the fact that some pretty unsavory groups (essentially front groups for the anti-democracy Workers World Party) are organizing many of todays anti-war rallies, the problem with the recent protests (such as those in San Francisco) is that they are moving above and beyond ‘free speech’ and into the realm of domestic terrorism (this DOES NOT apply to the rally in Overton Park, which was peaceful and respectful of the rights of others). Specifically, anti-war activists who are

resorting to shutting down sections of the city (San Francisco and, today, New York) because they ‘feel’ that the government hasn’t listened to their pleas for peace are showing their contempt for representative democracy, and their fellow citizens. They are taking away the rights of other citizens to use the streets

in their own communities; they want to dictate through mob action what others will or will not be allowed to do.

Such tactics also turn off a lot of people who would otherwise perhaps be sympathetic to their anti-war message. Does anyone think that abortion clinic bombers help win votes for pro-life positions?

Per the San Francisco Chronicle (see http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/23/MN22135.DTL), “The protesters are acting like sore losers,” said Aitan Melamud, a retired urologist, as he watched a protest outside Bechtel Corp. headquarters Friday morning. “Like if they can’t have their way, then we can’t go on with our lives.”

“The threat to “shut this country down” is a terrorist threat that shows a loss of faith in the processes of democracy. . . In October, after days of debate, the Senate voted 77-23 and the house 296-133 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refused to give up weapons of mass destruction. Clearly the antiwar position was listened to, and 146 representatives voted against the measure, but, in keeping with the rules of our democracy, the measure was adopted.” Victor Eremita

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030326/ap_wo_en_ge/na_gen_us fifth_avenue_protest_3

I hope people continue to march for what they believe in but I hope they do so with respect to the rights of others, and I also hope that they care enough to be informed on the issues they are protesting for and about the organizations they are protesting with. I don’t think that’s too much to expect from people engaged in protests to ‘inform’ and express an opinion meant to change the hearts and minds of others.

I do disagree with Ms. Hall when she states, “See, the thing is– I often vacillate mentally as I try to understand whatever a given point of social contention is, and it doesn’t make me a good candidate for the manning of a megaphone”; that intellectual honesty alone gives her more credibility than most. It’s to her credit that, as a journalist she’s acknowledging that issues are complicated, and that there’s more than one side to any given story.

On an interesting note, Ms. Hall states, “If there were ever easy solutions to things such as a war, then of course there would be no need for protest. “. One could change one word, and come up with “If there were ever easy solutions to things such as a war, then of course there would be no need for war.” I point this out because on the web site for the Mid South Peace and Justice Center lists ‘disarmament’ as one of its field of studies. I wonder how they would accomplish this when confronted with a totalitarian dictatorship that doesn’t want to disarm…use harsh language? In their mission statement they state that the Center “engages issues of peace and nonviolence, human rights and social justice.” I don’t know the answer to the following question, but I am curious: did they ever once organize a protest against the\ horrendous human rights abuses of Saddam Hussein?

Anyway, it was a good article on the recent peaceful anti-war protest in Memphis.

Sincerely,

Chris Leek

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

You Are Free

Cat Power

(Matador)

On past albums, Cat Power’s sole member, Chan Marshall, played the role of

the girl who sits at the back of class and is too timid to raise her hand and

give the answers she obviously knows. She was eccentric, introverted, nervous,

and very nearly brilliant. If her primary flaw was her unwillingness to assert

herself, on her new album, the meaningfully titled You Are Free, she

sells herself as a major singer-songwriter with more facets than shy and skittish.

You Are Free widens and develops Marshall’s sound beyond the stark

intimacy of voice and minimal accompaniment. A slow, sad electric-guitar riff

illuminates the country-bluesy “Good Woman,” while a chorus of background

singers — including Eddie Vedder and two girls named Maggie and Emma, ages

10 and 11 — play male and female devils and angels on Marshall’s shoulders.

Other songs feature odd string arrangements from David Campbell (Beck’s dad)

and violin from the Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis. The result is a piercing, ramshackle

sound that is dynamic enough to volley confidently from the ghostly folk of

“Werewolf” to the crunchy alt-rock of “He War.”

She still communicates painful, scary intimacy better than just about anyone

else (other than, say, Lucinda Williams). On “Werewolf,” the verses

disintegrate into a wordless chorus of soft whoops and ee-ahs that conjure an

otherworldly eeriness, while on “Names,” her voice takes on the scars

of a thousand tragedies as she catches up with her teenage friends who’ve lived

rough, ill-fated lives.

Marshall has developed her songwriting voice; she has also honed her physical

voice considerably. She projects a wide range of emotions through the sheer

raspiness of her vocals and the rhythms of her phrasings. At times, she sounds

like a more nuanced PJ Harvey but without the bull-in-a-china-shop wail that

Polly Jean passes off as feminine sexuality. On “I Don’t Blame You,”

the type of rock-and-roll metasong that would fit perfectly on a Sleater-Kinney

album, she sounds self-assured and confident as she deconstructs her own tortured

stage persona, while on “He War” she sings “I’m not that hot

new chick!” with punk-cool attitude.

In other words, You Are Free may be Marshall’s fourth album, but it’s

her first to approach greatness. It should lift her out of the indie arena she

has been haunting for years and drag her into the national spotlight, a development

that Marshall will probably still view with some reluctance and that everyone

else will applaud. —Stephen Deusner

Grade: A

Lovebox

Groove Armada

(Jive Electro)

When rave came along, it was celebrated because it was the antithesis of classic

rock. Now it is classic rock and often very self-consciously so. See

the last couple of Chemical Brothers albums or Fatboy Slim’s Halfway Between

the Gutter and the Stars. And now add the new Groove Armada to that list.

Londoners Andy Cato and Tom Findlay broke through with 1999’s Vertigo,

in particular when Fatboy Slim’s remix added some badly needed funk to their

single “I See You Baby,” giving the duo a massive club hit. But Vertigo

itself was often watery — sometimes to great effect (“At the River”),

usually not. Something similar applied to 2001’s Goodbye Country, Hello Nightclub.

It’s with Lovebox, though, that Cato and Findlay make their classic-rock

move.

This isn’t to say that the album sounds all that different from their earlier

work. It’s just that these arena-rave tricks (bludgeoning drumbeats, enormous

basslines, a thick overall sonic ambience) have become so expected that it’s

hard to be thrilled by them anymore. Also, for dance artists and listeners,

disco has now become part of the classic-rock canon, so disco drumbeats and

diva wailing signify in much the same way as the guitar solo or the sneering/leering

British male vocalist does. Lovebox has a little of all those elements,

as well as the Jamaican sounds that have long been prevalent in U.K. dance culture.

The way Cato and Findlay deploy them is appealing in a holding-pattern kind

of way: The album is both more self-consciously funky than usual but also looser,

all without feeling very notable in the end. — Michaelangelo Matos

Grade: B

Wonderful Rainbow

Lightning Bolt

(Load Records)

Just when you thought a bass/drums noise duo that play through 3,800 watts

of unmic’d power couldn’t sell 30,000 albums, along come Providence, Rhode Island’s

Lightning Bolt. I know, nobody has really ever pondered that, but Lightning

Bolt have developed into a minor phenomenon. Up until Wonderful Rainbow,

their third full-length, Lightning Bolt albums have been little more than dressing

for the live experience. Said experience starts with two guys quietly setting

up gear in a corner of a club (usually opposite the stage), then the second

the opening band concludes their set, Lightning Bolt commence to cleaning the

ears of every patron sporting the berries to stick around.

Brian Chippendale plays like the future of our world depends on how hard he

hits the kit, and Brian Gibson looks like he’d rather be making lunch as he

picks his instrument (which is strung with three bass strings and a banjo string),

but what comes out of the latter’s 10-foot stack will have you second-guessing

any preconceived idea of “intensity.” Sonic Youth were wowed enough

to invite Lightning Bolt to play a handful of high-profile gigs and tried to

coerce the duo into playing last. Seems the experienced veterans had

some trepidation about following the live act of the new millennium — a live

act that has rounded up quite a drove of believers, as is evident by album sales

previously unheard-of within the realm of discordant noise so far removed from

pop or rock standards.

So what do you get out of the new record? You get a conspicuous branching

out from prior albums. Long passages of, dare I say, hypnotic bass noodlings

(don’t get the idea that we’re talking Jaco Pastorius here) provide a pretty

cohesion between the times when the guys lock into their rhythmic romper room.

Too few notes (and even less fidelity) to be prog-rock- or metal-based, the

dominating sound is a more pedestrian, driving take on Japan’s Ruins or early

Boredoms. The sparse vocals are delivered through a talk-show lapel mic fixed

inside the drummer’s ski mask, and they come out through the bass amp, so don’t

expect an intelligible sing-along to the bouncy, nursery-rhyme yelps. For a

convincing visual document, last fall’s VHS/DVD The Power of Salad lovingly

follows Lightning Bolt on a cross-country tour and is available through the

label. Become a believer. — Andrew Earles

Grade: B+

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

With a singing style that sounds eerily like Lucinda Williams

but with a songwriting voice all her own, Canadian singer-songwriter

Kathleen Edwards gets my vote for Best New

Artist so far this year, her debut album

Failer, released in January by venerable roots

label Rounder, a strong, durable collection of short stories and observations:

“Six O’Clock News” takes a clichéd

scenario and turns it into a killer song, while “Westby” is a May-December

“romance” with fangs. “Hockey Skates” adds

something new to alt-country’s store of concrete images, and “One More Song

the Radio Won’t Like” actually lives up to its title. And even though

Edwards seems to have learned her vocal tricks from Williams, she’s mastered

every mannerism and trope.

Joining Edwards at the Hi-Tone Café Sunday, March 23rd, is

John Eddie. Who the hell is John Eddie? Well, you

must not be the first to ask the question, because that will be the title of Eddie’s

new album, his first in years, which will be released in May on Nashville roots

label Lost Highway. The album was recorded locally at Ardent and produced by

Jim Dickinson. So, who the hell is John Eddie? Eddie was a fixture of New

Jersey’s Asbury Park scene in the early ’80s, his shows at the famous Stone Pony

drawing the attention of favorite son Bruce Springsteen, who would occasionally

join Eddie on stage. This helped Eddie get a major-label deal that didn’t amount

to much. Now he’s back.

— Chris Herrington

Far be it from me to complain about a straight-up

honky-tonk band making Memphis a regular tour stop, but Oklahoma’s hippie cowboys

Jason Boland and The Stragglers, who played the Hi-Tone Café last month

and who will be returning on Wednesday, March 26th, just rub me the wrong

way. Sure, they have an awesome pedal-steel player who can also grab a Telecaster

and pick like Don Rich on speed. The bass and drums are simple and solid,

while Boland, a Junior Brown-inspired baritone, has as expressive a voice as you

are likely to hear in modern country music. But somehow the individual parts manage to

be much greater than the whole. And here’s the other thing: About halfway through their

set, they start singing songs about smoking dope, and they don’t stop. Now, I’ve got no

qualms with the reefer madness, and the occasional song about weed is okay in my book, but,

in the Stragglers’ case, it’s overkill. It’s a gimmick that a band as potentially fine as

the Stragglers just doesn’t need. On the other hand, when they sing lyrics like “If I

ever get back to Oklahoma, gonna nail my feet to the ground,” they capture a kind of

pure country spirit that is at odds with the tie-dyed shirts and backward

baseball caps in the crowd. If you aren’t a country fan as

a rule, but LOVE Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Jason Boland and

The Stragglers is the band for you.

Of course, the two obvious choices for this week are

B.B. King at B.B. King’s on Thursday, March 20th, and

George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic at

the Lounge on Saturday, March 22nd. Oh sure, as a recording artist, King may

have seen better days, but live he’s still a monster. And the 30-year-old freak show

that is Parliament/Funkadelic is still plenty freaky.

But for my money, there’s not a better show happening this week than the Dirty

Gospel of the Reverend Vince Anderson. This Tom Waits-ish theologian is at the

Hi-Tone on Saturday, March 22nd. — Chris Davis